Tidal Blades: Slow Burn

Yesterday, sea creatures. Here's last time.

Our heroes fought and killed a giant mudcrab, ate some of it, and now drag the shell back to Angler's Cove to see if anyone wants to buy it. They find Angler himself playing cards in a pub, and he gets excited when he hears they caught a mudcrab. Less so when he finds out it's dead - live ones are really valuable, he says. But he'll pay 250 shells for what's left. The characters accept that, Angler calls some of his guys to take it away, and they ask about whether there's anywhere around to buy a ship.

Not for 250 shells! But maybe they could rent one. Sometimes there are ships in the dock that stay there because their owners need to remain in port for a while. Angler warns them, though, that stealing one of those ships or bringing it back damaged is a good way to have every pirate in the Howling Sea after you.

Taking this into consideration, the characters ponder their next move. But then Hobie sees fire! A building down the way is burning!

The characters run to help; Bait joins a bucket brigade, Hobie goes around knocking on doors trying to get people to assist (no one listens). Faesli gets close to the fire and realizes it's burning slowly. Like, not smoldering, but the flames are literally crackling at about 1/10 the speed they should. She gets close and senses michronic energy. She glances up at the storefront's sign: Bol's Oils. That's not good. From the back of the store she hears someone call for help. She runs in to get the person, but slips on the oil and falls on her bum.

Sobek spots her, grabs her and pulls her out, and then runs into the back himself. He sees a betalod trapped under a cabinet, hefts it, and picks the little gal up and carries her out. The four of them help with the bucket brigade (sand, not water, because you don't throw water on an oil fire), and once the danger is passed, they talk to the betalod and survey the damage a bit.

The betalod is named Bol, and it's her shop. She mixes oils and spills them (in a tray, not on the floor) to read fortunes, and then has people dip bread in it to taste their future. Sometimes the future is sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes salty, sometimes sour, sometimes...the other one. "Savory?" says Faesli. "Umami?" says Bait. "No, I have no children," says Bol. 

During all of this, a chameleon pushes his way to the front. He says that he runs the shop with Bol; she mixes the oils, he does the readings (which makes sense; Bol is a lovely person but talking to her takes patience). The chameleon, Thwin, points to a hole in the building's roof - it's round and scorched on the edges. Bait wonders if it's a meteor strike. Thwin says he doesn't know, but there was a boom last night, but no fire until now. Bol adds that the cabinet didn't fall until just now. Faesli guesses that the oil's michronic power might have something to do with this.

A passing citizen notes that he saw a beam of light lance in from the north and strike the roof, but since it didn't catch fire and no one seemed hurt, he didn't raise the alarm. Faesli realizes that she probably caused this when she fired a cutting light beam at the mudcrab and missed yesterday, but keeps that to herself, as she suspects that Thwin isn't the type to let that go. Instead, she offers to help clean up. Thwin enthusiastically accepts - he has a bad back. Old war injury. 

The four of them join Bol in the oil shop and start mopping up. Being that close to the spilled oil gives them visions, though. 

Faesli sees herself swimming deep underwater, and then sees red tentacles emerge from the shadows, grab her, and try to drag her away...

Hobie sees themself stepping up to a podium in front of an audience, with Garnet in the front row giving them a thumbs-up (or as close as a shrimp can manage without thumbs). They start to talk, but then realize they have a huge stain down their shirt...

Sobek is giving a rousing speech to a crowd of crocs, all armed with hooks and tridents. As he takes a breath to start his rally, he inhales a bug, so the first thing they hear him say is "ACK"...

And Bait is on a longboat, watching a ship sink in the distance. He looks down and sees his own body, and he drifts upwards...

Somewhere in all of this, Thwin, who's been watching, offers to go get breakfast. Everyone enthusiastically agrees, and then he hits them up for money, since the store's cash probably burned. Bait, however, holds up the cash box, and Thwin, unable to fast-talk his way out of that, goes to get money. 

The five of them talk a little about the oils and how Bol mixes them and uses them to see the future. She says they'd be welcome to dip some bread into the oil, and offers to go to the back to get some bread. Hobie points out that Thwin is coming back with breakfast. "But will he have bread?" says Bol. "There is no way to know. It makes you think."

"Go get some bread," says Sobek. Bol nods affably and goes to the back. Bait takes the opportunity to lick some of the oil, hoping to time travel. He does, kind of - it's a moment ago, and Bol is talking about bread and breakfast and the possibilities thereof. And then Bait licks the oil...and time loops again. This continues a few times until Bait manages to lick the oil within the loop before licking the oil and break the cycle. 

Thwin returns with a box of flizzers and a jug of jellyfish smoothie, everyone eats, and the characters go on their way (someone asks Bol if her partnership with Thwin is even, and she replies that no, it's pretty odd). They head down to the dock and ask around if there are any ships to rent, and the harbormaster points them in the direction of the Ungava, a small sailing ship that put in to the Cove some weeks back. It hasn't moved because the owner got stabbed in a bar brawl and the crew is working out what to do with it.

The characters find the captain, a tyro, playing darts in a pub. They explain the situation, he verifies they're not planning on taking the ship into the Fold or anything stupid like that, and charges them 20 shells for a week of use. They pay up, give the ship a once-over, and then the six of them (the four characters plus Bait's dads) get on the ship and head out to sea! 

They wind up not far from where they fought the crab, and Hobie holds Garnet up to see if she can direct them. She just wriggles right out of Hobie's grip and jumps into the water, and starts swimming down happily. Hobie jumps in after and Sobek follows for protection, and they wind up discovering a long coral reef with the brightest, most vibrant colors they've ever seen!

The whole place is a riot of color, and the fish that live in it are just as colorful. A tyro (also brightly colored and stripe) swims up and says hello, and Hobie asks about their shrimp, only to discover that the tyro's dialect is thick enough that they can't really understand him. A little pantomime later, and they learn that the mantis shrimps live down below the reef, and they might well eat an outsider. 

Hobie swims after Garnet, but Sobek runs out of breath and has to head for the surface. Up top, a small boat with a crew of four - a turtle, a croc, a tyro, and a magnafron - pulls up and anchors. The tyro and the magnafron jump in and the turtle tries to make small talk with Bait, but quickly finds him insufferable and tells him as much. Faesli asks what they're doing and the turtle tells them "surveying," but when he tries to say more the croc raps him on the head with his spear. "Um, water," he says.

Sobek resurfaces and fills the other two in, and Bait jumps in to go help out Hobie. Hobie, meanwhile, swims down below the reef and sees a fissure in the sea wall, covered in more colorful coral...no, that's just a lot of mantis shrimp. 

They jump off the wall and swim/wriggle (swrimgle?) towards Hobie, but don't get hostile. Garnet swims up and hugs Hobie, and Hobie realizes that Garnet is scared. She leads Hobie to the fissure and indicates that something is in there, something Garnet...wants? But she's scared of Hobie going in. Hobie tosses in a biorb to light the area, but it just...stops. Doesn't sink, doesn't bounce around, just halts in place.

Bait swims down, passing the tyro and the magnafron (the magnafron picks a little piece of coral off the Bright Reef and crumbles it, and then nods - that's probably not important). He finds Hobie and offers to go into the fissure, but that scares Garnet too. Bait tries to poke the biorb with his trident, and finds that as he pushes the trident into the fissure he meets more and more resistance. He manages to extract it, but it takes some effort. 

In the back of the fissure, they think they see something move slightly, but they can't quite identify it... 

Movie #884: Backcountry

Backcountry is a survival horror/thriller starring Missy Peregrym, Jeff Roop, Eric Balfour, and Nicholas Campbell. And a bear.

Alex (Roop) takes his girlfriend Missy (Peregrym) on a camping trip, intending to propose to her at a place he used to go in high school that he finds really special. Missy is a city girl and really doesn't much care about camping, but seems game enough. The first big red flag should have been when a park ranger (Campbell) offers them a map and Alex refuses (at which point Missy should have said "well, I'll take it, just in case", but she trusts her man), and then off they go into the park!

The first night, a dude with a bunch of fish (Balfour; the dude, not the fish) happens across them and things get a little tense, and you're not sure if this guy is dangerous or just kind of aggressive and Irish. And then they delve deeper into the woods, go off the trail (red flag number two for Missy!) and eventually wind up lost because Alex does not actually know what he's doing. And then comes the bear.

The last half hour of the movie is the "horror" bit, wherein the bear attacks them, kills Alex, wounds Missy, and she has to get back to civilization with no gear, claw wounds on her arm, and no real idea of how to wilderness. 

So, it sounds like not much happens in the movie, and that's fair on one level, but I don't feel like it's padded. The movie takes its time and shows us the relationship between the two of them, and while I think Alex could have been portrayed as a little smarter (like, stepping on a bear footprint and then going on anyway?), one thing I've always liked is that the movie plays fair by camping and hiking. Likewise, the bear attack is fucking horrific, as we get to see the bear attack, get driven away by bear spray, and then come back to finish the job. Also, I never think of black bears as especially huge, I guess because they're usually, like, smaller and leaner in movies? But this one is a monster, and the scene where it presses its snoot into the tent while they're sleeping is a really amazing tension builder.

I also like that the bear just kind of fucks off at the end. Missy escapes by sliding down a waterfall (and breaking her ankle in the process), but the bear has no particular interest in following her and just goes back to bearin'. That's also why I see this as survival horror rather than creature feature; it's not really about the bear, it's about the environment and the man vs. nature hubris. 

Watching the behind the scenes is funny because the cast seems to have a really inflated view of how amazing this movie is, and like, it's good, but the producer's like "it'll leave people gripping the edge of their seats! Like, leaving permanent indentations!" and I'm like dude, settle down, you'll attract bears.

My Grade: B+ (like I said, it's a solid movie) 
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: The Blob (1988) 

Character Creation: Wilderfeast

Perhaps I will like Monster Hunter better in TTRPG form?

The Game: Wilderfeast
The Publisher: Horrible Guild
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one 

So, I freely admit that I have not read the entire book, but I've read chargen and the basic system and I think I've got a good enough sense of the game to make a character (I really do want to finish it, but my new work schedule is killing me and I want to get my nine characters in this month). Wilderfeast has you playing wilders, part-monster, part-human, who can cook and eat the monsters infected with the frenzy plague and absorb their abilities. It's very heavily inspired by Monster Hunter (the video game, not the god-awful movie with Milla Jovovich), and I played Monster Hunter: Wilds for a while, but I just couldn't get into it. Really love the aesthetic and the premise, but the gameplay was so freaking grindy. I quit when I caught myself thinking one day "I should play some Monster Hunter" and my instinctual response was "nooooo." That's a pretty good indicator that you're doing your hobby time wrong.

Anyway, none of that is relevant here. We're here in the One Land, which has a long and interesting history that I have not read much of. There's are bad guys called the Charter, and the vibe is that they're exploiting the land. You eat monsters, yes, but there's also a focus on caring for them in an ecological sense, which I very much appreciate. 

So! Let's chargen.

First we choose a Tool (huh-huh). This is very much a Monster Hunter thing, since the first thing you do is pick a weapon and it pretty much defines your approach to the game (you can switch to other weapons later on, if you can figure out the dogshit menus. I swear I'm not gonna talk about the video game all the way through). The Tools are all cooking tools that are also used as weapons or monster-catching apparatus, and they're comically oversized. The book does the helpful thing of saying "pick this if you want to X", so what X do I want today?

Well, Pan would play to my usual "support character" impulses, but I think I'll go with my other impulse (do tricky shit that requires thinking outside the box) and pick Twine. This means I have a big spool of Arksteel twine. This gives me either Tricky 3 and Swift 2 or vice versa. I think I'll do the former, though. That sets Mighty and Precise at 1. 

I get the Lasso & Leash Technique, which lets me either pull myself closer to a creature or a packmate closer to me. And then I can pick one more Technique. Oh, Snare, please. That lets me make a Tricky Craft roll to set up a trap for a monster.

And then I choose one adjective that I am and one that I struggle to be. Let's say I am creative, but I struggle to be flexible. 

So now we move on to Specialty. This corresponds to a monstrous lineage, and gives me a monster trait. Let's see. I think I want to be a Stockkeeper; it says they're about monsters that make lairs and hoard food. 

I get a Trait, and I think I gotta go with Nest Builder. That lets my pack keep Conditions after camping, which I didn't think was beneficial (Conditions are mostly harmful), but there are a few that you'd want, so I'll assume this Trait is worth it.

And then I can pick a Trait from any other specialty. Ooh, neat. Let's take...Slippery, from Saucier. I can't be Caught (which is a Condition). 

I have a monstrous acquaintance, chosen from a list. I'll take Crumbs, a lazy pondon.

WHO'S A GOOD MONSTER

Anyway, what's next? My three-course background! Character background is tied to meals, one that defines your childhood, one that made me a wilder, and one that I want to eat. 

Starting with upbringing...ooh, there are 20 of each of these, so I could roll. Oh, no, wait, I found one I like for upbringing. Fermented vegetables! It says that villagers pickled veggies in "my" jars, and since this gives me a point of Craft, I have to assume I was making the jars. That actually makes some sense for a Stockkeeper, so that's cool.

Let's flesh this out a little more, though. We'll say that my character is from an area that, following the monsoon season (which is when the pondon feast on worms and subsequently get long like ferrets), there's an explosion of vegetables and suchlike. Tomatoes, squash, herbs, gooseberry-like things, they all grow really quickly, and that led to the practice of pickling them so that they didn't all rot away. My family takes the clay and makes pickling jars, and it's traditional for people to offer the jar-makers samples. Every family has a blend of spices they use to pickle, so it becomes pretty easy to tell who made a particular dish by how it's spiced. My character's family pickles stuff too, of course, which is going to become relevant at the end of this process.

Moving on to initiation! This is the monster I ate to become a wilder. It doesn't have to be a pondon, though it could be. Ooh, no, I got an idea. I became a wilder to save my village. There was a frenzied monster that was kind of like a pondon, in that it burrowed through the ground, but while pondons eat worms and then sleep, this thing would tunnel up into people houses and yank them down to its lair, leaving them to stew in a toxic soup it excreted (ew). My character set a trap for it, killed it, and then pickled (well, cured) its meat. 

And, finally, what meal does my guy want to eat? Ooh, spice-crusted dishes from the palace kitchens. My guy has heard that rich people don't know how to spice their food properly, they either under-season and leave everything tasting bland and weak or they over-season and it all just tastes like pain. But he's not sure if that's true. In his village you get to know someone's family by eating their pickles. Maybe this is the way to know the people in the palace?

Neat! So that gives me a point in Craft, Study, and Hoard. Oh, I forgot my Hometown Staple and Spice! Well, let's say that the Hometown Staple is green tomatoes - they're tart, they're firm, they're great for pickling or frying (if there's fat around). The Hometown Spice, I'm going to cheat a bit and say that it's my character's family's spice blend. My guy's family likes including smokey flavors in their spice mixes, and they call their mix "char". 

Cool, I think the only things left are a name and a description, because the other stuff would require a pack. Names in this setting typically consist of a family name and then a given or chosen name, so we'll say my clan is called Kra and my character's adult name is Shozhi. 

Shozhi is small and compact, but his limbs are a little longer than they should be. He's got green eyes and black hair, and in addition to his spool of arksteel twine he always has a length of it around each wrist (for emergencies!). He also usually has a jar or two tied to his hips; nice for picking up samples, and in a pinch he can smash them for a quick bladed weapon. 

That's it! Let's eat!

Chill: Making Contact

Yesterday was Chill! I am very sleepy, which is nothing to do with Chill. Here's last time, on we go.

The envoys are in Nicholas Failor's car following their weird ordeal in the woods. Amelia Rostov is pretty wiped; she's not the most lithe person on the best of days and she had to really push herself to get out of the strange barrier zone that some Unknown being imposed. Mercy Williams is chilly and damp from the rain, but otherwise intact. Britt Lepus is mostly fine, as she spent most of this time in the trailer looking for (but not finding) Unknown influence on old SAVE papers.

The group talks a little about what happened and what the next steps might be. Digging up the area where the presumed SAVE envoy was buried might be a start, but they don't want to try and do that at night. They're all tired, but decide to check in with the four friends who are experiencing Unknown difficulties. Britt texts them, and Dustin and Danika reply. Jean and Rochelle don't, but they both have young children and might already be in for the night. They decide to do a drive-by, just to make sure no one's house is on fire or anything.

Rochelle lives nearby, so they check her place first. As they approach, they see a woman in a bathrobe walking along the street. They pull up and find that it's Rochelle, kind of stumbling along. Amelia gets out and gets in front of her, and touches her shoulder, using Disrupt. Rochelle starts, and then looks around, unaware of where she is. She says she must have been sleepwalking. Amelia walks her back home, and Rochelle's mother emerges from another room and speaks to her in Russian. Amelia asks what's being said, and Rochelle answers that her mother was reminding her that this has happened once before, but she didn't get out of her driveway. Rochelle goes to bed and Amelia wards the room.

Rochelle's mother notices this and then gets Amelia's attention before she leaves. "Ведъма?" she asks? Amelia's Russian isn't great, but she recognizes the word "witch." "Kind of?" she says. The older woman points to the bedroom then to the front door, and says "more." "She's done this more than once?"

Rochelle's mother holds up five fingers. "Five times?" Her mother nods, and then mimes typing at a computer, and then drops her head forward. "While she's working?" Another nod.

Amelia thanks her, and goes back to the car and reports all this to the envoys. They discuss why Rochelle didn't report this, but Amelia suspects she might not remember, or might be in denial a bit. In any event, with the ward Rochelle should be safe for tonight. They head to Jean's to check on them.

There's a light on at Jean's house, so Britt and Amelia go up and peek in. They see Jean's wife walking around the living room holding their son, but no sign of Jean. They decide to roll the dice and knock on the door; after all, she's up, hopefully she won't be mad (and hopefully Jean has told her at least something about what's been happening). 

She answers the door and is perhaps a little perplexed, but talks to them a bit. She tells them that Jean is asleep; their leg was hurting and they took a pill to help sleep. The envoys thank her and wish her luck with the little one (he's got an ear infection and is having trouble sleeping), and head out.

The envoys figure that they're best off sleeping in the same (warded) room, so they head back to Amelia's place. She wards the living room and they all bed down, and manage to get some sleep.

Next morning, Tuesday, July 9, the envoys wake up bright and early and rested. Britt texts the group for a check-in, and gets responses back from Jean and Rochelle (which makes sense, if Dustin and Danika were up later they might wake up later). They go and get some coffee and talk through their plan.

They decide not to immediately go into the woods to start digging up bones. Instead, they decide to do some research. They head to the trailer to go through papers and learn a little more about what's happening.

Amelia digs through the archives looking for names of former envoys in the area. She comes up with four: Desiree Cummings, Stan Walton, Dee Thorton, and Mimi Renault. They know who Mimi is and where she ended up. That might mean that Desiree was the woman murdered in the woods, and maybe Stan was the guy that did it (or, rather, whatever was possessing him). 

Mercy tries to get a sense of how long the HQ in Seward was active, but isn't able to come up with anything definitive. The last dates she sees are in 1998.  

Nicholas looks into learning the Art, and comes up with some stuff they already knew (the six schools), but also a little more consolidated info about how the Art is taught. Very generally, it involves focusing on the same feelings or instincts as sensing the Unknown, but then filtering those feelings through different areas of the body or mind. Want to learn Restorative Arts, you push those feelings through the body as a whole and the muscles, that kind of thing. Nicholas also sees some discussion of an upcoming "Symposium" in Seattle, and sees the name "David Robinson" mentioned as a speaker.

Britt takes the names that Amelia found and starts researching them. She learns that Stan Walton's body washed up on a beach a little ways south of Seward in late 2000. Desiree Cummings was reported missing in May 2000 (which lines up with her being the victim of the murder the kids witnessed). Dee Thorton died in a weird accident in Anchorage in 2000 - she fell down an elevator shaft. Apparently the door opened, she was talking on her phone and didn't notice that there was no elevator, she stepped in and fell to her death. There were witnesses and everything.

They do a bit more digging (and Mercy goes to work), and find that Desiree Cummings has a sister named Deanna who still lives in Seward. They decide to go see if she's feeling chatty. As they pull up, they see an older woman working in her garden. Amelia and Britt go to talk with her (Nicholas stays in the car). Amelia introduces herself as being from QCOM, and tells the woman (who is indeed Deanna Cummings) that she's working on a project to shine some light on missing and abused or harmed women from the area, and would she mind talking about her sister?

Deanna agrees and lets the two of them into her house (her ancient yellow lab, Callie, gives a perfunctory wuf and then goes the heck back to sleep). They all sit down and Deanna says that Desiree disappeared in May of 2000, but she'd been acting strange for a few years before that. Actually, Deanna thinks her sister joined a cult. She started hanging around with a group of people that took up a lot of her time, she wouldn't talk about what they did, and the only one Deanna ever met was a guy named "Stan." With something of a sinking feeling, Amelia confirms that the "Stan" in question was Stan Walton, and informs Deanna that Stan died a few months after Desiree disappeared. 

Deanna says that they held a service for Desiree a couple of years after she vanished (when she was declared legally dead), and Amelia asks if there was anyone at the funeral she didn't know. Deanna says that there were maybe five or six such people, but she doesn't know their names (obviously). Britt asks if there was a guestbook for the service, and Deanna goes upstairs to find it. She returns and points out a group of names that she believes were the people in question: David Robinson. Alison Ware. Mimi Renault. 

Britt and Amelia take some photos of the guestbook, thank Deanna for her time, and head back out to the trailer. The three of them start googlin'. "David Robinson" is a bust; it's far too common a name to get anywhere without more parameters. But as Nicholas searches for Alison Ware, he finds a personal web site that's password protected. "That seems kinda of SAVE-y," says Amelia. 

Nicholas obligingly types in "SAVEy" as a password. The page disappears and is replaced by a page saying "HOLD ON." And then a second later Nicholas' phone rings. 

"You've got ten seconds," says the voice on the other end. Nicholas, who isn't capable of saying anything quickly, takes a breath, but Britt grabs the phone and actually starts talking. Once it's clear that the envoys are indeed envoys, Alison is much more forthcoming. 

She was the office manager of the SAVE HQ in Detroit, she says, until that HQ was destroyed. She barely made it out alive, and she doesn't do field work anymore. She did, however, present at the Seattle Symposium in 1998; she's a master of the Kinetic School of the Art. David Robinson is a friend of hers ("he lives in New England somewhere, maybe Maine?"), and is a master of the Incorporeal Art. 

Alison gives them a crash course in SAVE history - started in the 1850s by some dudes in England, spread all over the world, had some ups and downs, one of the biggest downs was in 2000 when the Society was infiltrated and nearly destroyed. But then a Syrian woman named Hayat Nejem came along and taught SAVE how to survive and fight a bigger and badder enemy (she had been involved with the struggle against Al-Assad's regime), and SAVE shifted to its current model of mostly autonomous cells with some, but minimal, contact between them. She also mentions that some HQs still run on the old model of having lots of contact and organization, which is great, but the more you know, the more knows you. 

She tells them, too, that Anchorage used to have an HQ with maybe 20 people at its biggest (but to the envoys, that seems amazing; "we could have naps?!" says Britt). But Anchorage fell during the infiltration. She came out to Seward in 2002 for the service for Desiree Cummings ("she was a badass, really good at the Restorative stuff"), and worked briefly with David on trying to find out what happened, but there was so much else going on that they couldn't spare much time. She is not surprised to learn that Desiree was murdered, though is a little taken aback that it was Stan (or something wearing Stan) that did it. 

But on to the matter at hand: The envoys explain everything that's been happening, and Alison notes that the creature seems to be using them (and the four meditation friends, and Stef Copeland) to use powers through each of them. She tells them that creatures of the Unknown that show this kind of diversity of ability are generally pretty powerful and dangerous, but notes that it might be multiple creatures all summoned in the same act. The way to test that, she says, is see if powers are getting used simultaneously in different places (but does note that if something has its hooks into all of them, that might not matter - the Unknown is a bitch that way). 

Around this time, Nicholas' phone jumps out of his hand, spins around, and throws itself through the trailer window. Nicholas goes after it, and the wind immediately kicks up, blowing debris around and into him. He goes back into the trailer and Amelia wards it, and the wind immediately dies down.

Mercy, who'd been on speaker, calls back and confirms that everyone is all right, but then immediately gets an emergency call and has to hang up. Amelia goes to Alison's site and Alison calls her back (and actually gives her a number this time), and says that she'll do some digging on her end. 

Mercy heads out to her call, which turns out to be at a shop in a strip mall. It's called "Sweets of Seward"...that's Jean Cameron's store. A man is there waiting for them, and tells them that he went into the shop and saw someone lying on the floor bleeding. Mercy and her partner rush in and see that Jean is the one on the floor. Both of their wrists have been cut, the knife is lying on the floor nearby.

The two EMTs patch Jean up and get them onto a stretcher, but Mercy starts to feel a pain at the back of her neck, just like she did last night. The pain grows in intensity until her muscles start to spasm. She tries to fight it off with the Resilience discipline, and tells her partner that she thinks she's having some kind of neurological event, but then passes out. 

Britt texts the four friends and asks for a check-in, and everyone responds except Jean. Dustin says he's right near Jean's store, so goes to look in, but quickly discovers that there's no one there and a lot of blood on the floor. He talks to someone who says that one of the EMTs passed out and both the EMT and the person working at the store were taken to the hospital.

Hoping that Mercy is OK, the envoys ponder their next move... 

Movie #883: Thor: Love & Thunder

Thor: Love & Thunder is the fourth Thor movie in the MCU and the second directed by Taika Waititi. It stars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Watiti, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and (for a brief moment) the Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Sean Gunn, Pom Klementieff, Vin Diesel, and Bradley Cooper). 

Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Thor (Hemsworth) has been romping around space with the Guardians of the Galaxy. We don't know exactly what they've been doing, other than kind of vaguely protecting people. Thor, meanwhile, is in the midst of an existential crisis brought on by losing basically everyone he's ever loved either to death or just time. He has, however, worked out enough to lose the fat suit he was wearing in Endgame. This is all narrated by Korg (Waititi), Thor's rockpile friend. 

Meanwhile, a hapless dude call Gorr (Bale) has become an entity known as the God-Butcher after taking possession of/being possessed by the Necro-Blade, following the death of his daughter (India Hemsworth) and has begun hunting down and slaughtering gods. Thor notes this when Sif (Jaime Alexander) sends him a distress call, he winds up back on New Asgard just as shadow-monsters start attacking...

...but he is joined in battle not only by the King of Asgard, Valkyrie (Thompson), but also his ex, Jane Foster (Portman), now wielding the shattered Mjolnir as Mighty Thor! Gorr is defeated by steals all the children of New Asgard, so it falls to Thor, Jane, Valkyrie, and Korg to go and get them back, first by trying to rally other gods to their causing and failing miserably, and then by just...I dunno, going to the ends of the universe and pounding on Gorr with a hammer or two. Oh, right, Jane's dying of cancer.

Look, in my humble opinion, this is probably the weakest feature film in the entire MCU. There are entertaining bits, and Hemsworth is a solid comic actor, but the movie feels thin and kind of rootless. I hadn't seen it since it came out, but I remembered thinking that, so last night while we were watching it, I tried to nail down what it was that bugs me. And there are a few things.

First of all, I think it's too goofy. Ragnarok kinda set us on this path by turning Thor's depiction in the MCU about 75% more bro-y, and while Thor having a sense of fun and humor has always been there, the overt flip to him being a comic character started happening in Ragnarok. And that was OK; that movie ended with kind of a dire "oh shit" moment because it was the lead-in to Infinity War, and then we got Thor being traumatized and depressed because obviously. And the depiction of Thor at the end of that movie, fat, hurting but healing, and maybe imposing on Star-Lord's good graces a little too much, was fine, and that should have been what we got here.

Instead, Waititi chooses to have Thor's central conflict be that he keeps people at arm's length because of how much he's lost, and that's awesome, that fits nicely into his arc through the last two Avengers movies...except it's handled so clumsily because the surrounding movie is so silly. Sure, Jane is dying of cancer and turns to Mjolnir to stave off death, except channeling that energy is sapping her mortal body's ability to fight the disease (OK, whatever, that's no dumber than anything else in a comic-book movie), but then we have these goats that just won't stop screaming lol. Valkyrie is coping with being King and loving her job, but also kind of missing battle and still numbing herself because she lost all her fellow valkyries in battle, but then we've got Daryl (Daley Pearson) from the "Team Thor" shorts suddenly made canon as a tour guide in New Asgard? The tone of the movie is all over the map and it comes off sloppy. People (rightly) complain that a lot of Marvel movies are too quippy, that they don't let emotional moments breathe before someone makes a joke (thanks, Joss Whedon) and this cranks that to 11.

Second (yeah, that was all the first point), I've figured out something that Taika Waititi is bad at - he is shit at world-building. Look at his best films, which I'd argue are Jojo Rabbit and What We Do in the Shadows. They had worlds built already, 1940s Germany and our own modern world, respectively. Waititi didn't have to think about the "rules" of those universes, because they were already set (sure, WWDITS has vampires, but like, those vampires do not do anything remotely new with the legendry; they're more homages to other vampire stories than anything). And he doesn't play well in other peoples' sandboxes, which was apparent in Ragnarok when gods were suddenly a real thing rather than just space aliens. But here we not only have a whole city of gods, but they are a known quantity and are supposed to protect their people to the point that when the Guardians are inundated with distress calls, it's all about "these peoples' gods are dead and now there's no one to protect them!" That...has not been a thing in the MCU thus far. And, we still have the goofy bits, because when we visit Omnipotence City (ugh), we see Korg's people's deity, who not only has a stupid name ("Ninny of the Nonny") but sits on a throne bedecked with scissors because GET IT?! HE'S MADE OF ROCKS fuckin' hell. 

And, along those lines, when did weapons become sentient? There has never been any mention that Mjolnir or Stormbreaker were thinking, feeling beings in any MCU property previously, and it's stupid. 

And, finally, there's the problem that a lot of post-Endgame MCU movies have: It introduces plotlines and characters that are probably never going to show up again. Where, I wonder, will Love be in Doomsday? Will Brett Goldstein ever show up as Hercules? I rather doubt it, and that's a shame. 

Oh, oh, wait, thought of another one! (Though this is probably Disney's fault, not Waititi's.) In the lead-up to the movie, Waititi claimed it would be "super-gay." What's the queer content? Val kisses a woman's hand. There's a throwaway reference to her girlfriend. And Korg's species is apparently all male, so the relationship he's in at the end is technically same-sex. THAT'S ALL YOU GET, QUEERS. Yeah. Pretty queer-baity.  

So, what's the good news? Um. Movie's pretty, a couple of terrible unfinished effects aside. While I don't love Hemsworth's performance as Thor (I think it's too goofy), I think Bale, Portman, and Thompson did well. I think Russell Crowe's mid-credits scene where he gets to monologue about how gods are getting ignored in favor of superheroes was really cool and thematically much more interesting than the rest of the movie.  

OK, I think I'm done.

My Grade: D
Rewatch Value: Low

Next up: Backcountry 

Character Creation: Thrilling Adventures!

I keep thinking I'd done this game, but it's that a) I've read it a couple of times because it's been on the one-shot list and b) I've done this game and this game.

The Game: Thrilling Adventures!
The Publisher: tolleSpiele Games 
Degree of Familiarity: Conversant with the source material, very conversant with the system
Books Required: Just the one

So, pretty simple: Pulp adventure, clearly inspired by Indiana Jones. The book is very short, only about 60 pages. It manages that by being incomplete - there's pages on the subject of safety and sensitivity, but "character creation" is only ever mentioned here:

The individual playbooks do the usual early PbtA thing of telling you to pick a name and so forth, but the process of setting up a group and choosing bonds (rather, what bonds mean; each playbook tells you how to pick bonds) is never explained. There's actually a lot of assumed knowledge, and it's weird, because the book tells you the design assumptions of PbtA up to a point (GM doesn't roll, how moves work, etc.) but it's never contextualized for this game. I could run this because I'm an experienced GM, but is that the intended audience? And really, what would a "here's how group set up works" section have required, two or three more pages? Like I said, weird. The Kickstarter actually gives you more basic information on playing the game than the book does.

Anyway, let's make an adventurer. As may be apparent, we start with a playbook. Let's see. I don't want Aristocrat or Treasure Hunter. I don't think I want Thief or Inventory. Schmo is too close to my Temples & Tombs character. Kid appeals, as does Movie Star. I think I'll go with Kid; I did something like a Movie Star way back in Feng Shui 2nd Ed. 

So: Getting started, I pick name. Let's say that my kid goes by Floss; he's English, and when he got involved in this adventure (which I'll have to leave the details murky on, given that I don't have a group) he was eating a big thing of cotton candy (or candyfloss). Floss has a wicked sweet tooth. Going through the "look" section of the sheet, I'll say he's got a bratty face, wears shorts and overalls, and has a cowlick. 

Stats! I'll pick...sure, that one. Tough +1, Quick +1, Savvy 0, Suave -1, and Instinct +2. That'll give me the best bonus to suss out when something's Not Right Here, and to help other PCs, which both is appropriate for a kid character and plays to my usual playstyle. 

Motivation! Picking one from the list, I'll take...How can I overcome my fear of heights? That seems like something that might come up in a pulp adventure.

I get two kid moves. I shall take...my grandpa told me a story about this (lets me do a cutscene related to information we need) and through the legs (I can avoid harm by being small and lithe). 

Gear! I get a Kid's Backpack, which includes three things that a kid would have. So, rock candy (basically candyfloss in solid form), a jacks set (very useful as caltrops), and a magic slate (I can see that being useful in an RPG if we're clever). And then I get a thrown weapon or a short staff. I think we'll take a slingshot as a "thrown" weapon.

And, finally, I get a pet! Rat, lizard, crow, and dog are the choices. Ooh. I think I gotta go with rat. Her name is Belle, she's grey with brown patches, and she likes candy, too (but I don't give her much, because it's bad for her teeth). 

That'll do it! The game actually looks solid, I just wish it was, like, complete.

Movie #882: The Thing (2011)

The Thing (in this case) is the 2011 prequel to the classic John Carpenter film of the same name, because there's this weird trend of doing sequels, prequels, or squeakquels that have the same title as the original film (see also Halloween 2018, Scream 2022, and any number of video games that do the same thing). It starts Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Eric Christian Olsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Jørgen Langhelle, and a bunch of other Norwegians. 

Obviously the film focuses on the Norwegians who first encountered the titular "thing" in the 1982 film, so we start with a couple of given based on that movie - we've got the spaceship in the ice and the video footage showing them blowing up said ice to expose the spaceship, we've got the burned, two-face mass of flesh near the Norwegian's base, we've got the damage to the base itself, and of course we've got the opening scene where the two dudes in the helicopter kill themselves trying to kill a dog. The Thing (2011) gets us there by introducing the site through Kate (Winstead), a paleontologist specializing in working with frozen vertebrate remains, brought in to examine the "survivor" of the spaceship crash. The site is actually run by an arrogant wanker called Sander (Thomsen), but our other important character is, once again, the pilot, Sam Carter (Edgerton), an American, and like thank god because what if there were subtitles all the way through!?

Anyway, they dig up the alien-sicle, it thaws out and jumps up through the damn roof, and proceeds to slaughter and infect the rest of the crew. We wind up with everyone except Kate and the non-English-speaking dog keeper Lars (Langhalle) infected and/or dead. We last see Kate in a snow-cat ready to either freeze to death or try to drive to a Soviet base (and since we don't see the snow-cats in The Thing 1982 we have to assume she at least tried to make the drive) and Lars flagging down the refueling copter that arrives at base and chasing a husky out into the snow. 

So, this is by no means a good movie, but it's not terrible and I think it more or less succeeds at what it tried to do. The notion of telling the story of these hapless Norwegians is actually a fun idea. I wish they had just been...Norwegian, because introducing a bunch of other characters, including Americans, kind of muddies the waters somewhat. Likewise, though the movie is set in 1982 (immediately before The Thing, obviously), if you just showed me the movie past the title card telling us that I'd never have known. About the only nod towards rooting us in the decade is Kate listening to Men at Work's "Who Can it Be Now" (which, given that this property is based on a story called "Who Goes There?", is a nice touch). 

Likewise, the movie leans a little too much on CGI, but it's actually not as bad as I remember and there are some practical effects that look pretty cool. The Thing pulls out some more obviously insectoid or arachnid looking features that are gross and scary, and watching Olsen and Trond Espen Seim merge into the two-faced creature that the Americans take back to base in the first movie is pretty effective. Kate's idea of checking for tooth fillings (since the Thing can't replicate non-organic matter) as a way to identify humans is clever; it's something that the Americans could theoretically have thought of, but doesn't contradict anything.

About the biggest mark against this movie is that it's trying to worm itself into the same universe as The Thing, but it doesn't quite reach the heart and atmosphere of that movie, partially because it doesn't have the same claustrophobic and paranoid vibe, and partially because it feels new and slick and that's really not what the original went for. Both times I've seen it, I've immediately watched The Thing because I want to see the "real story," and I don't know if that's necessarily a point against the prequel, but it does make for a long evening.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Thor: Love & Thunder