Moe Lane's Blog, page 791

Tweet of the Day, My School District Would Have Rioted edition.

I mean, good God but this is insane.

Criminal. pic.twitter.com/wJq8ioymKg

— Gabe (@cwgabriel) December 30, 2020

Moe Lane

PS: Make-up work over the break is one thing, mind you. We’ve got a stray ELA assignment to straighten out today, and that shouldn’t take more than the five minutes we’ll need to send in the right document. But freaking homework? This is straight-up meanness.

Tweet of the Day, “LAUGH WHILE YOU CAN, MONKEY-BOY!*” Edition.

Caleb saw the theory in the Tweet below, decided to check it, and lo!

Theory: confirmed. https://t.co/YWGzFLW8bI pic.twitter.com/mSQOQXtsA8

— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) December 29, 2020

*Classical reference.

Rewrite, GHOST OF THE DEVIL-HORSE, December 29, 2020.

Some action! Finally.

Patreon!

If this was a lurid adventure tale, I’d be writing that all of this was going through my mind while fending off a rampaging ghost, a few days later. But that’s absurd. Who on earth spends valuable time reminiscing about meetings in the middle of a fight?

The Council Chamber dig was a bust, at least from the point of view of people trying to find the airport. When the Dominion conquered Denver, back in the day, they had also pretty thoroughly degraded the local civic symbols, and that absolutely included the centuries-old building where generations of Denverians held their courts. What spirits were left after that scourging had hidden themselves so ‘deep’ in the metaphysical bedrock that I’m not sure any could hear us, even if they wanted to. And none of them seemed to want to.

But we did release a tormented spirit that some nameless Dominion bastard mage had bound to the walls, in chains of infinite pain, which was nice. Or it would have been, except that after several centuries of agony the spirit was homicidally crazy. Judging on how often they do it, a torture spell like this is apparently the Dominion’s idea of ‘humor.’

Right now the spirit was trying to strangle me with its bare hands, which were only not bursting into flames because I was using my own spellcasting abilities to counter the spirit’s. I don’t recommend this, mind you. Direct spell-to-spell negation works, but it also makes it impossible for you to use any magic of your own.

Behold! Not-Merch (expanded explanation)!

It’s not merch because it’s a Christmas present. It’s also not merch because I’m not at the merch stage yet. I have one novel and two chapbooks out; the goal for 2021 is to get at least one more novel, one collection of short stories, and at least a third chapbook done. I don’t have the budget and I don’t have the time for more, right now.

What I do have is a sister who is good at graphic design stuff. Check out her site!

Behold! Not-merch! pic.twitter.com/zpfPoJg7gk

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) December 29, 2020

Moe Lane

PS Mailing list sign-up here. I need to start pushing that more.

There will be free DLC for CYBERPUNK 2077*.

The asterisk represents the unfortunate* truth that CYBERPUNK 2077’s DLC will likely be effectively for just the PC. This is merely a guess – the website doesn’t say anything – but I imagine that CD Projekt Red is going to be more interested in first fixing the main console versions before they get around to adapting the DLC, too. They do it the other way, they’re just making more work for themselves later.

Well, the good news here is that there’s going to be free DLC. CDPR did it up pretty nice in WITCHER 3: everything from tweaks in appearance to actual new quests. I’m glad they’re keeping that up in CYBERPUNK 2077.

*From a certain point of view.

In the Mail: THE GREEN KNIGHT RPG.

Got THE GREEN KNIGHT RPG in the mail today…

In the mail. pic.twitter.com/RxNMnC5XOY

— Ogiel (Moe Lane) (@Ogiel23) December 29, 2020

…and surprisingly it’s not a 5th ed clone of D&D. The review here is pretty accurate, as far as I can tell; I haven’t played the game, obviously, but it looks more or less right. I was struck by the work done on this. I was honestly half-expecting something a lot more derivative. Live and learn, hey?

The ‘Sometimes people should shut up about the stuff they like’ SHADOW IN THE CLOUD trailer.

I almost didn’t look SHADOW IN THE CLOUD, after seeing the review (favorable, but in a way almost designed to make me suspicious of it) – but when somebody sets a creature flick in a WW2 airplane, I generally feel at least mildly inclined to give it a chance on general principles. This looks… pretty damned gonzo, actually. Ridiculously gonzo, in the way that may not actually be bad. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for seeing a blond fire a .50 caliber machine gun. I’m not gonna apologize for that.

Rewrite, GHOST OF THE DEVIL-HORSE, 12/28/2020.

Better get to that horse soon!

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“So, tell me about the dig,” I said over the inevitable cups of coffee. Even if you don’t drink the stuff, you end up drinking the stuff. By now I even like it. “How many do we have on-site already?”

“With your group? About fifty. You’re the last ones in; the Imperium Orci University folks showed up last night. Hank’s having a meeting after supper, let us all know what’s what. Figure he’s got a surprise, Johnny. You know anything about it?”

“Not unless it’s me,” I said. “But I don’t think so. He’s really excited about the airport, so maybe it’s that.”

“That’s fair,” allowed Barbara. “There’s a lot of folklore about the place. Damned lurid stuff, too; dating back to the Old Americans, some of it. Secret cults and hidden passageways, all burrowing through the ground.” She barked (I’m sorry, but it’s how it sounded) laughter. “Surface folk always do get too excited about that sort of thing.”

“It’s what they’re used to,” I said as I poured another cup. “What about that encampment at the old Tower? They’re not with us, right?”

“Aye,” Barbara said. “Military research, Alliance-only. Oh, the folks there are nice about it, but what goes on there’s none of our business until somebody says otherwise. They’re probably just playing spy, though.” She sipped her coffee. “Better them than me.”

A faint hope offered for an ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL sequel.

A very faint hope. Essentially, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL director Robert Rodriguez is hoping that the Mouse might be more interested than Fox was in doing something with the IP. Disney owns it now, after all, and since (as GeekTyrant notes) Rodriquez is working on THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT he might have some juice there. I myself would not object to a miniseries – not that I have any say in the matter at all, mind you.

But still. ALITA was a lot of fun. I’d like to go back to that world, even if it was just on the small screen.

WONDER WOMAN 1984… did well this weekend. We think.

This is, like, terra incognita territory, all right? “Wonder Woman 1984 opened to an estimated $16.7 million over Christmas weekend, the best three-day debut at the distressed domestic box office since the novel coronavirus began, according to Warner Bros.” Which gives you an idea of just how messed up the movie industry is, these days. How much would it have made in a normal year? Damned if I know: aside from everything else, it should have been out months ago.

And then there’s the HBO Max stuff: “Nearly half of the platform’s retail subscribers viewed the film on the day of its arrival, along with millions of wholesale subscribers who have access to HBO Max via cable, wireless, or other partner services (the streamer didn’t provide particulars in terms of the numbers). HBO Max also saw the total viewing hours on Friday more than triple in comparison to a typical day in the previous month, the company said Sunday.” Whatever the actual numbers were, they were enough for the studio to greenlight a third Wonder Woman movie, which at least suggests that it wasn’t a flop.

I’ll just end this in passing that if there are people you trust who are telling you that WW84 isn’t any good… yeah, that’s happening a lot. A lot of people are saying it’s great, a lot are saying it’s awful, and somebody’s hitting every point in between. I have rarely seen a movie that got this range of reaction; I liked it, but it feels like everybody who streamed it got a subtly different version of the film. Put another way: when it comes to figuring out whether to try this movie out…