Moe Lane's Blog, page 746

The BROKEN TALES dark fairy tale RPG Kickstarter.

The premise of BROKEN TALES is you’re playing a former villain of a classic fairy tale, made good by a young boy’s wish. And do we know what happens when you wish, in a fairy tale? Yup: everything promptly goes to Hell. Guess what happened to all the heroes of the fairy tales?

Anyway, BROKEN TALES looks fun, and I checked with the publisher: they’re working under the expectation that it’ll be ethically sourced (i.e., not printed by the PRC). I have having to ask about this stuff, but what are you gonna do? It’s never going to get any better if we don’t make it clear that some costs can’t be honorably cut.

And I’m back.

A successful vacation! Kites were flown, boardwalk food was eaten, golf carts were ridden, my wife got to make a camp fire, many dogs were seen and made much of, a moose plushie was won in an epic battle with a claw machine*, and I slept a remarkable amount of hours. A good Mother’s Day was had by all.

Moe Lane

*As it went into the hopper I half-hissed, half-shouted: To the last, I grapple with thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last venom at thee in full Khan Noonian Singh mode. By now, my wife doesn’t even roll her eyes. She has become resigned to my little ways.

Soon to be off!

See you Sunday. Happy Mother’s Day, for the moms out there. And enjoy the weekend, even if you’re not at the beach.

Book of the Week: Geez. Something that’s *not* $11.99 on Kindle, I guess?

…Look, I’m sorry. You cannot expect to charge paperback prices for something made digitally and not have people look at you all cross-eyed. I self-publish books now. I have at least a limited understanding of publishing costs. If you’re an author and they’re telling you the only way to make back expenses is to charge that much for the Amazon e-book, see if you can figure out where they’re skimming money off of the top*.

Moe Lane

PS: It’s also hurting (most of) your sales.

*Spoiler alert: everywhere. They’re skimming it everywhere.

‘The Gates.’

OH. NO REASON. WHY DO YOU ASK?

The Gates, Da Vinci’s Notebook

Mini-vacation this weekend…

…the kind where I don’t bring the Chromebook. It will be good for me, I think. Besides, I will have my phone for reading books. But mostly there’s going to be a bit of digital decompression going on.

Anyway, I’ll be around in the morning, at least.

So, I guess they’re not filming a new season of THE MANDALORIAN any time soon.

I almost wrote ‘at all,’ but maybe another six months or a year will be enough time for the heat to die down. GeekTyrant aside, Dave Filoni did not ‘tease’ information on THE MANDALORIAN so much as he evaded giving out any. The Good Morning America segment was remarkably free of information on the subject (ScreenRant provided the relevant transcript):

Oh, that’s a tricky one, you know I don’t like to go into those answers without Jon here, my partner Jon Favreau. It’s exciting, we’re both working on that, we’re working on Boba Fett right now, so there’s a lot of new adventures coming up. I have to be careful, I can’t really say anything specific, but I think the Force will be strong with it. Let’s just say that.

Back in the Before Times I called this ‘Dorwinization:’ which is the ability to carefully and easily speak for some time and not say “one damned thing.” Working is such a broad term, really. When it refers to the Boba Fett show, it means that the show’s about to leave production. When it refers to the Mandalorian third season, it means that production has yet to begin.

But what do I know? They’ll probably start filming next week, just to prove me wrong.

Moe Lane

Much as I would like to believe in native Martian Death Fungus…

…I suspect that if that fungus actually exists there, it’s because it came along for the ride. And that ‘if’ is a big if. I don’t think we’d be able to really tell without sending somebody to actually look, preferably with a full biolab included.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I’m assuming that the fungus would try to kill us. I don’t trust fungus in the slightest. Not on Earth, and definitely not any hypothetical Martian equivalent. I’ve seen zombie flicks. My kid played The Last of Us. I know how this ends.

05/06/21 Snippet, Rescue from Chateau d’Aléatoire.

More telling where I should have been showing. Tsk, tsk, Moe…

Patreon!

Gerard also took the effort to palm a knife when he finally staggered out the door. He flattered himself that it was quite the feat, but it was also wasted on all the stumbledrunks who might have possibly noticed. No matter, Gerard thought. They’ll remember I was there, drunk, and full of drunken cheer over a future ‘advancement’ coming my way. Hardly the sort of person to blame for a reckless act of heroism, no?

The thought made Gerard scowl, and he was unsure why. But that was also helpful, in its way; it added bite to his arrival at his quarters. “Pierre!” he slur-shouted as he pushed open the door. “Where are you, you whip-worthy layabout?”

That got his manservant’s attention. Old Pierre was an unpleasant sort, even if he wasn’t a spy for either Gerard’s enemies or (worse) his cousin. At the best of times Pierre was barely worth keeping around, particularly since the servant knew Gerard wasn’t the type to beat his social inferiors.

But Pierre also knew his master wasn’t the sort to get loudly drunk and profanely drunk, either. He came out of his own room at what, for him, approached a rush. “Is… is all well, milord?”

Tweet of the Day, I’d Buy It In Hardcover edition.

No question, straight up.

Maybe I’ll just quit my entire life as I know it and instead write a cookbook called “longer than you think” and the whole thing will just be honest takes on how long it actually takes to caramelize onions and brown butter.

— chelsea brasted (@cabrasted) May 5, 2021