What a great weekend for TV: a Dr. Who special and three brand Red Dwarf episodes!
Dr. Who was enjoyable and fun, but I was much more excited about the Red Dwarf specials. I can’t wait till Dr. Who starts proper (I think that’s penned in for next year), but the Dr. Who special filled in the gap for the time being. At least we’ll have Torchwood in April (I think).
The Red Dwarf specials were fun and they left it open, possible, for a new series? I live in hope. There were lots of great nods to previous episodes, the fans, and Bladerunner. Loved it. If I had the box set of Red Dwarf, I think I would be watching it from the beginning again right now.
I have to say so far this year has been great telly wise. “Being Human” on BBC3 was, IMHO, by far the best fantasy I’ve seen this year on either side of the Atlantic. Pity it’s already over, but I have my fingers crossed for a second season. For those who don’t know, it’s about a ghost, werewolf and vampire living together trying to be “human”. Sort of a “situational drama” rather than the typical mystery-action or horror-action. There was some great episodes in there and I really recommend people try to watch it if they can.
Even the current “volume” of Heroes is markedly better than the previous season and other “volumes”. I don’t know if it’s enough to get people back into Heroes because you need to watch the previous half of season 3 to get the context and that was diabolically bad. The plot is much tighter and makes more sense, characters aren’t been added and dropped for no reason, and old forgotten characters are being remembered and used. There was even one particularly poignant episode with the death of two of the more recent characters.
And then Fringe just re-started there. Thoroughly enjoying it. The last few episodes before the break have really made it interesting, and, like recent Heroes, I want to see wants going to happen.
Still watching Dollhouse too. Episode six seemed to mark a huge improvement in the show, though I’m still not overwhelmed by it yet. The most recent episode, they seem to be “evolving” the show quite quickly with some of the characters. My wife suggested a good theory: it’s been written as a one season show, so if (or rather when) it gets cancelled, it’ll have come to some sort of conclusion. For the moment I’m still watching and I’ll see how it goes.
And then there is the excellent new seasons of Criminal Minds and Medium! So much to watch.
Of course, you can’t have it all ways and, though I’m late to say it, I’m sorry to see Pushing Daisies canned.
Now that I’ve declared my love of TV, it’s time to resume normally services! 
While working on Lost Heroes RPG over the Christmas, I wrote this little flash fiction. I was hitting a bit of mental block so I changed tack and wrote something else. I think it works actual, what do you think?
He put down the staff beside him and scratched his head. “I don’t know if it’ll work. I’ve passed the message up the ranks, but Hermes doesn’t really have any pull with Hades you know? Do you happen to have a fag? I’m dying for a cig.”
I pulled a pack out of my pocket and offered him my last one. He accepted it and used his herald’s staff to light it. It sort of glowed and a flame squirted out of the top, lighting his cigarette. “You don’t happen to be a great singer or artist or something that I didn’t know about?” I shook my head. He weighed his hand heavily on his shoulder, “its not looking good.”
“I need to save her, bring her back.” I pleaded with him.
“The best I can do is allow you to see her one last time from the opposite shore of the Styx. You can say you’re goodbyes and all that. I hope she made it to the Blessed Isle otherwise…” he buried his head in his hands. He was suppressing a sob. “Why do you want to bring her back? The dead is better dead, Hades let nothing leave his domain.”
Controlling my own grief I said, “Because it was my fault. I killed her. I made a mistake…” But at my words, his entire body shook and his face drained of colour as he stared at me.
“Oh my. What have you done my friend!” The sky started to darken. “I’ve given them a connection, a connection to you and you damned fool admitted your stupidity!” His staff started to glow, the wings on his shoes started to flutter. “I can hear Erebus demanding justice!” He added meekly, “you’ve given her to the Furies by telling me this…”
“I don’t understand…” but I could barely speak, the roaring sound of a car drowned out my words and its lights stinging me and holding me in place. He was gone, already flying into the black stormy sky. Before the truck hit me, I saw her face, in the driver seat, an awful black aura burning of her deathly beauty, rage and revenge.
“Its been a long journey” from Laura’s Blog
I know I haven’t posted in ages. I’ve been going through a few things recently and it’s just been too heavy to write so openly about it. This whole year since John’s funeral hasn’t been easy. When he passed away everything went dark in my life. It made just getting out of bed in the morning a nightmare, waking up in that big empty bed was a stark reminder I’d never see him again. Our huge house became cold and eerie where before I was always telling John to tidy up his gear because I was always tripping over it. In those then empty evenings I found it easy to finish a full bottle of wine listening to bad romantic ballads to starve off the tears. I know, cliché.
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I’ve been struggling with a roleplaying-gaming design issue. It’s probably just my own pet-hate. It’s something I call the “Big Pile of Skills” problem.
When creating a roleplaying character, there is nearly always a section on “Skills”. Most of the time you can choose any Skill you like and invest points into them. Some systems have some concept of grouping Skills like D&D’s Class system and Riddle of Steel’s Skill Packets. But most of the modern day systems I’ve played just let you pick any skills you like. I’m under the impression that most players considered this a good thing and limiting character choices to a select set of groups is considered Badtm.
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… would you think they look good, assuming of course they are theme appropriate? (Click on them to see in higher resolution).
I was trying to figure out if I could do, myself, good or high quality images or at least create something that looks like it is good or high quality. I think I hit on the right technique. (Some more images after the cut).
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Well, lets get specific. What I mean is, I discovered that Vampire High was canned after one season and there is little or no chance of it being started up again. (see my previous post here!) (But it’s not all bad on the vampire front…)
And the Dresden Files TV show sucks. I haven’t read the books or played the RPG (there is one by the way, done by the same folk who did Spirit of the Century). I’ve watched the first three episodes on Sky 1. Quite simply, unoriginal and boring. Read More…
“He is dead you say?”
“No. Alive. He is one of the Quick.”
“Alive? You mean dead don’t you?”
“Alive.”
The Mayor rolled this thought around his head for a moment. “So let me get this straight. He’s dead and…”
“No your not listening he’s alive.”
“Alive, it’s just preposterous. Doesn’t make sense. But because he is dead, it’s no problem…”
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I never knew the name of the shop. I used to study the flakes of grey letters hanging above the main window as a kid. I fancied it spelled out “Fudge” but it might as well have spelt out “Fridges”. Not that it actually helped identify what the shop sold.
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A little story about a group of lads who journey out to a unnamed pub for an ultimate night but find something very different.
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A short story about a girl called Alice who finds herself in a strange school in the land of dreams.
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