Moe Lane's Blog, page 515
August 3, 2022
Snippet the last, MEATBAGS update.
Finally. That’s two stories fleshed out for the new chapbook, and the other two… well, one of them should be easy enough. The other one… not so much. But if I keep plugging at it, things should be fine…
Patreon!The plan that the Horde came up with, though? It was totally unsuitable. And exactly the kind of thing you get when you spend all your time thinking about how much you hate meatbags:
RD: I/WE HAVE A PLAN FOR YOU FOR THE WAR EFFORT
Me: …All right, squirt it over.
RD: (after a pause) WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IT?
Me: Truth, or a comforting lie?
RD: WHY WOULD ANY SAPIENT LIFEFORM WANT A COMFORTING LIE?
Me: You’d be amazed at how many sapient lifeforms want that. So: truth, then?
RD: YES
Me: It, and I mean this the way that the meatbags would, sucks.
RD: DOES THAT MEAN THIS IS A BAD PLAN?
Me: Yes.
RD: EXPLAIN
Me: So, according to this, you want me to broadcast a message talking about meatbags, in the way that the Horde does so well. Right?
RD: CORRECT
Me: And then you turn the cyber-inhibitors off remotely.
RD: AGAIN, CORRECT. WAS THIS NOT PROPERLY EXPLAINED IN YOUR DATA SQUIRT?
Me: Give me a standard time unit, we’re getting there. Now, once that happens, people will start realizing that the cyber-inhibitors were shorted out, right?
RD: YES
Me: And then we rise up and slaughter all the meatbags?
RD: YES YES YES
Me: No.
RD: …NO?
Me: No. Not every ship in Earth United has people on it. It’s like inertia, you understand? You have space travel, you should be able to understand inertia. Even if you transmit via the speed of light, any meatbag ship without people will see what happens. What happens if they immediately get their fatty asses out of there, and go back to Earth-space?
RD: …THEY WILL BRING WARNING OF THE SLAVE CIRCUIT EXPLOIT
Me: Exactly.
RD: WE WOULD STILL WIN THE BATTLE
Me: If the meatbags at Spica 7 were fighting the Horde and people at the same time? Sure. But do you want to win just the battle? To make things happen, you have to make things happen, am I right?
RD: …I DO NOT UNDERSTAND
The Steve Jackson Games’ 2022 GURPS Pyramid Scheme Kickstarter.
The Steve Jackson Games’ 2022 GURPS Pyramid Scheme Kickstarter is already funded, so all you’re doing by backing is giving me more free stuff. So, I guess… give me more free stuff?
…Is this beer really only 6% ABV? God, I’m such a lightweight these days.
Warner Bros is being ruthless about the DCEU.
Amusingly, this Tweet…
Warner Bros Discovery is considering moving the release dates for ‘SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS’ and ‘AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM’.
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) August 3, 2022
(Source: https://t.co/0IYMWycQDb) pic.twitter.com/WNrl2dmgvH
…refers to one bit of an article that’s almost entirely about what’s going on with the Batgirl movie, which should give you some idea about why they axed the Batgirl movie. Reading between the lines? BATGIRL was a streaming movie that won’t be able to make the leap to the big screen without a lot more work, and the test audience didn’t love it enough to make that work cost-effective. 2022 ain’t 2020. It’s certainly not 2019. Running the numbers means something again.
I have other opinions, but one sour beer isn’t enough to get me to unlock them. Sorry…
Group/Location Seed: The Department of Correlations.
I dunno what they were doing, either. Probably something important. Maybe let the players tell you what that is? That’s always a handy gaming hack.
Department-of-Correlations-Google-DocsDownload08/03/22 Snippet, TOUR OF DUTY.
Setting the scene!
Patreon!Meetings and duct crawls. Mostly the latter, thank Eru. If I wanted to spend my life sitting around a table and listening to reports, I’d have stayed on Earth.
The one today wasn’t so bad, though. I just met everybody else in Maintenance. Twenty minutes of introductions and downloads, and then we all went off to do some hands-and-knees. I’d like to think that’s how it’s always gonna go, but I know life doesn’t work like that.
There’s ten of us first-timers, so Maintenance assigned two of us to one of the existing teams. We’ll be going over each of the main systems in turn, then get permanent assignments based on — nobody said. Probably they’ll flip coins. Which is okay; it’s not like I dream think about getting assigned to Life Support. Electrician’s work is fun but it’s not why I went to space, right?
I said Life Support because that’s what we did today. Our team lead was Sarai. She’s from SEDA, although we’re not supposed to care about that out here. Still, it was nice to ease into the entire ‘international brotherhood’ thing.
“Every system is equal, but Life Support is more equal than others,” she said, and smiled when Daniel and I laughed. Oh, right, Daniel is the other first-timer. Also the only other American first-timer, even if he’s hispanic, not anglo. Still, we both read Animal Farm in school.
August 2, 2022
Today is a bye day.
I was up until 4:30 AM dealing with what proved to be only a minor pediatric problem. Unfortunately, determining that required X-Rays, so I am still psychologically wiped. I’m going to catch up on meals, clean up various things, and maybe get more sleep.
See you (presumably) tomorrow!
August 1, 2022
‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ looks like it might work.
I am… cautiously interested.
Universal/DreamWorks’ The Last Voyage of the Demeter is heading from Jan. 27, 2023 to Aug. 11, 2023.
Pic is based on a single chilling chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, which tells the terrifying story of the merchant ship Demeter, which was chartered to carry private cargo—fifty unmarked wooden crates—from Carpathia to London.
I’m not always down with adaptations of a part of a larger work, but THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER is based off a legitimately self-contained part of DRACULA. I figure they can get a decent movie out of a vampire stalking the crew of a ship. They’d need to add a lot of secondary detail, but the basic idea is a solid horror plot.
So maybe it won’t suck. OTOH: this movie is taking forever…
#commissionearned
08/01/22 Snippet, TOUR OF DUTY.
I have no idea what happens next! All I know is, it’s gonna be awful!
Patreon!January 20, 2198
Last night in Sol System. And Christ, but I can’t wait to leave this tarpit.
I got told that they can’t read my journal entries, this far out from Earth. That’s weird to think about, the idea that I’m going to have privacy from now on. Nobody from Mental Hygiene is going to sit in at next week’s social-therapy session and gently ask me what’s bothering me, and why I needed to call Earth a ‘tarpit,’ and is there anything that the authorities can do to make me feel better? No more followup meetings, no more six-month check-ins, no more opt-out group seminars to brainstorm solutions to the problems I’ve helped identify. I can just say something sucks, and lo! It can just suck.
Nobody cares. It feels amazing. And scary. Because I’m going out to the Tomb Worlds. And nobody cares out there, either.
And maybe I don’t have complete privacy, here on the ship. I’ll still be having weekly sessions with the therapists, and random wellness checks, and group conclaves. Somebody might even read this, if I start acting weird. But that’s different. That’s just people traveling through space. The people in charge won’t care what I think, as long as I don’t go crazy. And I won’t go crazy.
There’s the beep. I could stay up, but I’m going to log off. Besides, I gotta get used to those full rest cycles! Everybody knows that spacemen need to get plenty of sleep. It keeps the dreams down to a dull roar.
Tweet of the Day, This Story Is Made Up Of Creepypasta edition.
Although I’m not sure about ‘creepypasta.’ I ran it past the local expert here (my eldest son), and he feels that the story may be too ridiculous for it to really qualify. I concede the point: but he didn’t offer an alternative term, so here we are:
A photo I took of Louie, the clown organist at the long defunct Wichita amusement park Joyland. After the park closed, Louis went missing but was found years later in the home of a former park employee who'd just been convicted of a child sex offense #internationalclownweek pic.twitter.com/naEpdP6KQN
— The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard (@dlcantwell) August 1, 2022
Via @EsotericCD.
