Moe Lane's Blog, page 885
August 12, 2020
The FREAKS Netflix trailer.
FREAKS looks rather German. Well, obviously, because it is:
The special effects look pretty good. Whether or not it sucks or not is up to the gods of the Internet, I suppose. I’m getting the vibe that it’s difficult to casually use your powers in this without breaking things/people, which is promising. I like the four-color mindset of easily repaired landscapes, but I know not everybody agrees with me.
08/12/2020 Snippet, MORGAN BAROD AND THE ELDRITCH TOME.
Peril!
Patreon!And right about then, Morgan Barod almost died.
It wasn’t the old, weakened, and never really sturdy roof giving way underneath him that was the problem. It wouldn’t have been the drop, either. The floor was all of six feet below his suddenly flailing feet as Morgan’s hands frantically sought out and found a beam to hold onto. He could have easily survived a drop that small.
No, the problem was how the carpet beneath him rippled and lashed out at the debris which had dropped to the ground. There was a bit of light revealing the room below now, so Morgan could see what looked like vicious tendrils of dark yarn stabbing at the plaster and metal with some force. They quieted down after a moment, but the carpet moved in a way that was distinctly unpleasant to look at for too long.
From above came a soft call. “Morgan?” said Ben. “You all right?”
“Oh hell no,” he replied. “There’s some kind of carpet shoggoth down here.”
A pause from above. “Like from the Azz and Hastur cartoon?”
“I really doubt it,” said Morgan. “Can I get a levitation spell?”
“If I had one, I’d be using it, sorry. How about a fireball?”
“This is a library, Ben. With books made out of old-style paper.”
“…Oh, right. They’d burn real well, wouldn’t they? I really should have thought more about what spells to master before making this trip.”
Morgan’s hands were getting a little strained. “Focus, Ben, please. Carpet golem, nasty-looking tentacles. What you got? Because I gotta let go soon.”
08/12/2020 Snippet, OMBUDSMAN.
Things going too well!
Patreon!Famous fucking last words, Bad Jack thought as he read the latest ‘Executive Summary’ from Old Hershey. At first he never bothered reading them, because who the hell cared what happened in the rest of the Consortium? But he had started, a little after the Yapper Incident, and now Bad Jack was hooked on the weekly gazette. According to Gumball, the Summary was ‘lurid’ and ‘sensational;’ Bad Jack got the impression those words were supposed to be bad, somehow, but damned if he could see why. Lurid and sensational were just the kind of things he liked to read.
Problem was, this week’s Summary had things he didn’t want to read. Today, it was all on the front page: UNHOLY TOLEDO CONQUERED! See of Iniquity set ablaze! Anti-Pope captured! And so on.
Out there, the Steelworks was celebrating pretty hard. Bad Jack didn’t blame ‘em, really: Unholy Toledo had been a fucking rat-nest. Half of western Ohio was running scared of them, and the other half wondered if they should start running. And everybody knew the Universal Dominion was using Toledo to conquer Ohio on the cheap, just like they did up in Michigan.
So when the Consortium came sniffing around, Bad Jack figured it was time to pick a side. It wasn’t a hard choice, either. But I figured they’d just keep Unholy Toledo away from my throat, he thought. Not that they’d tear out Toledo’s.
Tweet of the Day, The Best Part Is The Ending edition.
Not the ‘winning the lottery twice’ bit.
I'll never forget the Aussie that came out of coma after 12 days to win a car on a scratch card and when he gets asked to re-enact it by a news channel, wins 250 grand
The Twilight: 2000 – Roleplaying in the WWIII That Never Was Kickstarter.
Ooo…
:checks very quickly to see where they do the actual printing. In-house in Europe? Good*:
Yeah. Yeah, something like Twilight: 2000 – Roleplaying in the WWIII That Never Was is gonna be primo nostalgia-bait for me. I bought the original, back in high school. So, about thirty five years ago, when ‘2000’ was the scary future instead of the nostalgic past. I wonder what happened to those books, anyway? They might have ended up being sent to Iraq for the troops.
Moe Lane
*I’d check anyway, but it’s doubly important to make sure that a game that might touch on the PRC military is not subject to the PRC’s incendiary veto. I hate having to, but this is the world we live in now.
August 11, 2020
08/11/2020 Snippet, OMBUDSMAN.
Bad language and commiseration!
Patreon!Just Jimmy was pissed. “That’s one of my guys, boss! Now he’s in a fucking cell!”
“What, you want I should throw him in the blast furnace instead?” said Bad Jack, who was a little pissed himself. “Because right now that’s what I want to do. I looked at that shoe contract; Yapper wasn’t skimming off the top. He was pouring it into a jug. I didn’t see a goldpiece of it, either. Betcha five that neither did you.”
That shut Jimmy up. “No,” he eventually admitted. “He didn’t cut me in for any of it.”
“Yeah.” Bad Jack decided it was time for a little smooth, so he got up and poured them both a drink. “I get you want to fight for one of your guys. But when he steals from you, is he really your guy? You trusted him to keep a hold on the workers. And he fucked up, really bad. Good news is, Jimmy, none of it slopped on you.”
“Yeah, but what if he talks?”
“About what?” Bad Jack laughed. “Shit, Jimmy, Hershey knew what they were getting into when they made the deal with us! As long as we weren’t in on whatever crap he pulled with the books here, they ain’t gonna bug us over that. It ain’t their style.”
Today was a Smashwords sort of day.
I’ve been working on the Smashwords stuff today: updating my profile, self-creating an interview, and reading a book on the subject. Well, all right, I started reading the book first. That’s why I updated my profile and created the interview. It’s like everything else in the world, really. The work’s gotta get done, and if you don’t do the work, nobody’s going to swoop in and do it for you.
You can find the Smashwords version of FROZEN DREAMS here. The next book will go up more easily, I think. I’m already noting where I made mistakes the last time.
08/11/2020 Snippet, MORGAN BAROD AND THE ELDRITCH TOME.
Overthinking!
Patreon!The roof wasn’t in the best shape; it was at least a century old, and probably had been overdue for renovations even before the Discovery made that sort of issue moot. Kiddo and Ben found it easy enough going, but Morgan was hearing an alarming amount of creaking underneath his feet. He figured it wouldn’t be a problem if they moved quickly enough.
Then he looked at the windows themselves, and swore. Ben drifted over, looking absurdly light on his feet. “What’s the problem?” he said. “The smart locks frozen in place?”
“Worse, “said Morgan. “There aren’t any. The locks are all non-powered. Take a look; the damn things use screws, for Christ’s sake.”
Ben looked a little more closely. “It looks like you can’t open them from the outside at all. Doesn’t that violate about a dozen health ordinances?”
“It did.” Morgan shook his head. “But this was a state university; they probably got grandfathered in. Or maybe nobody bothered to check. Which doesn’t do anything to get us in, you know.”
“I’m starting to think that maybe we should have brought some specialists with us,” Ben said. “Like someone who knows how to pick old-style locks.” He stared at the window for a moment, then looked over at Kiddo. “Hey, Kiddo! We could use your help.” When Kiddo came over, Ben went on, “Do you know how to get through to the other side?”
Kiddo looked at him, then at Morgan, then gestured for Morgan’s pack. After he handed it over, ignoring the creaking underneath him, Kiddo went neatly rummaging until she found — a towel and a hammer. She tucked the towel into the top seam of the window, smacked the towel with the hammer a few times, and was rewarded with the muffled sound of breaking glass on the other side. She then shoved the towel over the bottom of the now broken-window, smiled at both of them, and put the hammer back in the pack.
“Well,” Ben said. “That’s us told.”
The AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER Honest Trailer.
The writing’s suffered a little in these lately, but this Honest Trailer is still pretty good. THE LAST AIRBENDER is currently on the rotation again: we’re about at the end of Season 1. Lots of fun and your ‘kids’ will love it. Note that this is for the TV show!
