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justhereforthefanartbean-blog · 7 years

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10 Questions Tag

Tagged by @ellipsesarefun heeeeey ^_^ I feel like we’re getting to know each other through tags, you’re my tag buddy!

1. Ever danced in the rain before?

Have I? Dude if you haven’t danced in the rain you haven’t lived. Beginners level: umbrella and a streetlamp involved. Mid level: dancing down a street whilst going somewhere just to see people’s faces (I only had the confidence to do that the once but it was so fucking worth it, so many surprised smiles from strangers). Pro level: Drunkenly appropriating a wet lamppost and somehow not killing myself using it as a pole XD

2. What do you like most in a character?

Ooooh, good one! If we’re talking about fictional characters, then the ability to change. It’s what brings the realism, and what differentiates fun characters from ones who actually touch you. rEDEMPTIONS ARCS, AMIRITE? If we’re talking about people, then kindness. I gotta lot to learn, so surrounding myself with kind people is step 1 to getting better at it.

3. Coffee, Tea, Chocolate, others, or all around?

How is this even a question? I’m a Brit and I work in a speciality tea shop. I can explain the taste difference between first and second flush, and why the First Flush of Darjeeling is the best crop, whereas the Second Flush of Assam is preferable. I know who started afternoon tea, and why the actual blend Afternoon Tea contains both Green Tea and Black Tea Leaves, whereas Earl Grey is Black Tea with Bergamont. I am poised to explain the difference between red tea, black tea and Puerh. I’m a fucking tea dictionary at this point, choosing anything else would probably be considered treason.

4. Opinions on Wonder Woman movie? If you haven’t watched it yet, would you?

FUCK YEAAAAAAAH it was 90% perfect.*spoiler alert* Shoehorned in a totally unnecessary and badly done romance, and the fact that the god of war was making the nazis be nazis and they were actually not doing it themselves, but apart from that... Diana being a BADASS and not GIVING A SHIT, but her own judgement also being LOGICAL and CONSIDERED (well, based on her available knowledge) and not just a straight up adverse reaction to the society she’s been thrust into, the “BABY!!!” moment, ripping the impractical dress (I want to know Diana’s opinion on the lack of pockets issue rn), the THIGH JIGGLE, the lack of male gaze (at no point did I do the thing that I regularly do in other superhero when there’s a gratuitous boob or butt scene and I call it), the BADASS AND FULLY CAPABLE WOMEN EVERYWHERE, the fucking SWORD IN THE DRESS (fuck I wish my ass did that), the joke about ‘no man’s land’ and Diana not being a man and it not occurring to her that it meant human, and A FULLY FUNCTIONING WARRIOR SOCIETY WHERE FEMALE FRIENDSHIP IS VALUED AND A WOMAN WHO IS A CAPABLE FUCKING HUMAN BEING AND A VULNERABLE FUCKING HUMAN BEING AND A REALISTIC CHARACTER ALL IN ONE INSTEAD OF JUST BEING FUCKING EYE-CANDY WITH A GUN. I WALKED OUT OF THAT CINEMA AND I WAS LIKE FUK IS THIS HOW GUYS USUALLY FEEL AFTER A MALE SUPERHERO FILM? BECAUSE FUCK I NEED MORE OF THIS. MORE FEMALE SUPERHEROES DONE PROPERLY. MORE EMPOWERMENT DONE PROPERLY. WHEN ARE WE GETTING NON-CIS SUPERHEROES???

Okay I think I’m done.

5. Sweaters, leather jackets or both?

... is a sweater a jumper or a hoodie? I have both of those things but I do not own a leather jacket. So.

6. If I were going to watch Game of Thrones, what should I be looking forward to? (i haven’t watched a single episode haha) If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones, would you watch?

Ugh, no, I have also not seen a single ep. I’d love to, because DRAGONS, but on the other hand, I’m hella squeamish and get nausea from having blood even talked about (first aid training was fun) so I cannot deal with the gore XD

7. Favourite dessert!

I mean it’s probably churros. But like, proper churros, made off a food cart in a night market, with too much cinnamon sugar and so fresh they scold your fingers. Supermarket churros can go die in a hole. Or a Zanzibar pizza (it’s more like a pancake) with nutella and pineapple.

8. Any book recommendations?

Fuck, SO MANY. The Help, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Handmaid’s Tale, Wyrd Sisters, The Reader on the 6.27, The Fair Fight, A Man Called Ove, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Book Thief, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Ella Enchanted, Pride and Prejudice, The Bedlam Stacks... I could go on. That was the most restrained I’ve been in a while :P

9. Fave author?

Terry Pratchett. Taught me that I can write however I want to as long as I enjoy it. Got me through my pessimistic and sceptical teenage years with a pinch of humour and satire, and pretty much single-handedly saved my optimism. I owe that man so much. I think he’s the only death outside of the family that I ever cried over.

10. Favorite braiding style?

I don’t know if I know what this means. Plaiting? If so, I haven’t had long enough hair for this for years, but I love fishtail plaits on other people. They’re so simple but so neat and pretty and so easy to customise! Get some flowers up in that bitch, man. Kill it.

QUESTION TIME! Tagging: @sound-alchemist @sofia-altin @pleasantlyuniquemeeple @q-not-qt @earlydeadlines @demony0hane @eclair @thisistuples and anyone else who wants to do it.

1. If you could recommend one song to every other human being on the planet, knowing that they would listen to it, what would it be and why?

2. What is one thing that you do/are now that your ten year old self would think was REALLY COOL?

3. Do you believe in Aliens? What about Ghosts?

4. If you could choose your animagus and/or patroness what would you pick? Why?

5. What’s your favourite flower?

6. What pokemon would you be? Why?

7. What’s the number one item on your bucket list?

8. If you could go back in time and meet anyone who is dead, who would it be? What would you say?

9. If you could spend one day in any fictional world, which would you choose? What would you do?

10. What’s your favourite thing about yourself?

#tagged #ten questions #book recs #wonder woman

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skelliet-0-n · 5 years

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The Terrible Politics of PS4′s Spider-Man

This Spider-Man guy likes beating up criminals a little too much.

The DLC for the PS4 Spider-Man recently went on sale, so my housemate bought it, and I’ve started playing it again. Full disclosure, I love the gameplay. It seems a direct spiritual successor to the PS2's Spider-Man 2 game, and it's endlessly freeing to effortlessly swing from skyscraper to skyscraper.

But in the process of obsessively completing missions to unlock the underpants outfit, I’ve become reacquainted with how confused and abhorrent the politics of Spider-Man are. It’s largely in relation to the police, the NYPD, which has always had a fraught relationship with Spider-Man throughout his existence - comics, films, and games.

But this time, it feels utterly unlike any previous incarnation - while this relationship remains fraught, it’s only in terms of how the police view Spider-Man (only in the sense that he’s doing their job for them). Spider-Man, on the other hand, is unwavering in his adoration of the NYPD, the ‘brave boys in blue’. This is deeply troubling, for obvious reasons - Spider-Man is the point-of-view character, and in a world increasingly disgusted at the wanton violence, racism, and lack of accountability displayed by not just the US police force, but indeed police forces worldwide, it’s utterly tone-deaf.

The police in Spider-Man are best represented by Jefferson Davis, an average police officer and father of future Spider-Man Miles Morales. Davis is a good cop - noble, self-sacrificing, and community-minded. This is how Spider-Man perceives the force at large, rarely forgetting to thank those brave boys in blue for their service. Spider-Man’s internal dialogue often references the supposed friction between him and the police, but you’d never know from the actual cops in the game, and he nevertheless goes out of his way to support them.

You could argue that this is an aspirational representation - what the writers want the police to be. But there are a few problems with this. First, the police aren’t really all that great - it’s just that the immoral things they do in the real world are ignored, whitewashed. Some of them are generally antsy around Spider-Man himself, but equally, many are adoring (and of course, Spider-Man himself is similarly adoring of the police force).

The other problem with it foregoing a real-world representation for an idealised representation is the fact that Spider-Man already engages with other real-world representations. Jonah J. Jameson has forgone his role as newspaper editor to play talkback radio host, his wild accusations and angry ranting a clear analogue to Alex Jones. Norman Osborn, meanwhile, has become mayor in this story, rather like another high-profile businessman turned populist politician. So, to ignore the reality of the police force is irresponsible, given that the game already critiques existing institutions (admittedly, institutions that are safe to critique by the standards of liberal defenders of the status quo).

There’s even condemnation levelled at the fascist paramilitary organisation Sable, which continues to overstep its boundaries, depriving people of their civil rights. Spider-Man takes the time to (with utter lack of self-awareness) shake his head at this, declare that it's not how things are done in New York - before going right back to gushing over the NYPD. In 2018, the NYPD held a transgender Latina woman overnight, charging her with ‘false personation’, misgendering her, and mocking her. If that doesn’t sound like an autocratic organisation depriving people of their rights, acting above the law, and being an antagonistic force towards parts of the community, then God knows what is.

This is equally an issue with Brooklyn 99, arguably the world’s most influential fictional representation of the police force. Again, it shamelessly portrays the police as fundamentally good, despite the inclusion of the rare bad cop. Instead, the show depicts the NYPD as being diverse in terms of race and sexuality, though if the above example proves anything, it’s that this is far from the truth. It’s not just ineffectual wishing for a better tomorrow, it’s actively creating a false narrative, one that is irresponsible in its refusal to acknowledge the harm that police forces do.

On the one hand, you could say that Spider-Man is no more problematic than crime fiction, in its black-and-white moral of order versus chaos. Superheroes and crime fiction are inextricably intertwined, are they not? But Spider-Man goes further - it brazenly dehumanises criminals (by ‘criminals’ I mean the everyday criminals, not the supervillains, who get complex backstories), reducing them not to victims of circumstance and poverty, but simply to animals that long for destruction and self-gain. Of course, Spider-Man could never give every two-bit goon a backstory, but it goes too far the other direction. Crime is some sort of malevolent force, completely other from ‘normal’ humans. Criminals are some sort of vicious, orc-like beings (and lest we forget, even Tolkien had trouble reconciling the moral implications of orcs, sentient beings who were apparently pure evil and less-than-human).

To return to Brooklyn 99, the first episode demonstrates the two lead characters (both model cops) in a race to see who can arrest the most people. Sure, it’s treated as comedy, but it’s still tone-deaf against the context of real-world abuses of police power, and presents criminals as abstracted, shapeless masses that police have to dispose of to keep us all safe. There’s not even the slightest acknowledgement of the complex socio-economic circumstances that lead many to actions that are considered crime.

45% seems way too high to me.

This article explains, better than I ever could, the dehumanisation of criminals in Spider-Man. In particular, there’s a contrast between the in-game Riker’s Island, a hive of scum and villainy, and its real-world counterpart, a prison full of disadvantaged groups, trapped by a system constructed to keep them down.

Even Spider-Man’s dialogue demonstrates this. In every crime-busting side mission, Spider-Man seems to view criminals as misbehaving children. Spider-Man’s gleeful efforts to return them to prison are jarring and distasteful, compared to real life, where revolving door prison systems keep minorities and low-income people beaten down, thanks to the serious handicap of being labelled a criminal.

Spider-Man’s tone-deaf dialogue shines through again in describing the cops. Coming across a shootout between police and escaped convicts (again presented as thoughtless marauders), he compares the scene to a Wild West setting, of brave lawmen engaged in a firefight in some urban canyon. And then there’s Spider-Man’s juvenile, faux-serious self-narration as 'Spider-Cop’. It’s ironic that Spider-Cop evokes a child’s efforts to play a cop; such a child would have, no doubt, a largely positive view of the police, thanks to media representation such as Spider-Man’s pro-police narrative.

Maybe the game exclusively presents police as noble heroes because the writers tacitly approve of their real-world heavy-handed treatment of minorities. After all, Spider-Man himself declares drug-dealing to be his 'least favourite criminal activity', and while he corrects himself to say it’s one of his least favourites, it’s very telling that he has such a strong reaction to a crime that, in the US, has largely been used to victimise minorities and opposition to the elite. During the Nixon administration, for example, the criminalisation of heroin and marijuana was used as an excuse to harass the black and anti-Vietnam communities respectively, neither of which were friends to Nixon.

As a side note, the clear association between Alex Jones and Jonah J. Jameson is evidence of Spider-Man’s uncertain message, much like the imbalance between the critique of Sable and the lionisation of the NYPD. While he starts out as a bitter, conspiracy-theorising radio host with a clear vendetta, he starts to make intelligent, sane points. For example, he starts to question the conflicting interests of Osborn, a capitalist who has been elected mayor of New York (again, an obvious allusion to Trump). He also urges citizens to fight for their rights in the face of Sable’s abuse of power - is he supposed to be a satirical lunatic, or one of the few sane voices? In a world as black-and-white as Spider-Man’s, a character like Jameson just seems confused.

To return to the point, perhaps this begs the question, what’s the right way to depict the police? Maybe, if you’re not going to take any kind of stand on the injustice they commit, you shouldn’t depict them at all in a piece of fiction, especially if it’s something fun and light-hearted like Spider-Man or Brooklyn 99. Admittedly, in the case of the latter, that would necessitate it not existing, but then, you wouldn’t write a buddy comedy about two US troops in the Iraq War, would you?

DISCLAIMER: You could say that it’s just a game, and that politics should be kept out of this. But those who say they’re apolitical really just mean they’re content with the status quo - everything is political. Especially if it depicts an organisation like the police.

#spider-man #police #politics #gaming #ps4

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legendary · 7 years

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Constructing a Dystopian World

A Conversation with The Thinning Director Michael Gallagher

The Thinning is a new YouTube Red Original Movie from Legendary Digital Studios starring Logan Paul, Peyton List, Lia Marie Johnson, Calum Worthy and Ryan Newman. Set in a future where population control is dictated by a high school aptitude test, two students must take down the system before it takes them first. We had the chance to sit down with Michael Gallagher, director of The Thinning, to talk about how he went about creating an original dystopian world from the ground up, what it was like working with Logan Paul, and what real world elements inspired the film’s design. See what he had to say below.

Q: Legendary has a history of putting an emphasis on “world building” and The Thinning very much follows that trend. Talk about what it was like creating an entirely original dystopian world from the ground up for this. Did you pull inspiration from any other dystopian/sci-fi/young adult geared stories or worlds to help you create this one?

MG: The movie is set in a sort of not-too-distant future / bizarro version of America— an authoritarian government runs all schools like prisons. The failed students are sentenced to death and passing students are thrown lavish parties. Designing the high security school was key. We have a fictional task force called the Department of Population Control— DPC for short. Showing a high school run by militarized guards forcing students into a scary TSA-style search really helped warn the audience that this is a new America. I was heavily inspired by paranoid thrillers of the 60’s and 70’s like The Parallax View and 3 Days on the Condor. I love movies following an innocent thrown into a conspiracy plot and having to prove that nothing is as it seems or they will lose their life in the process. I am also a huge fan of the social satires of John Carpenter, who is such a master at exploring current issues in a sci-fi setting and making them edge-of-your-seat, entertaining thrill-rides.

Q: The Thinning feels timely and relevant in so many ways, even aside from any political themes. The film feels like it resonates with young people and their anxiety about school and getting into college and test-taking in particular, especially as there’s more and more focus put on learning differences and test-taking abilities. What was it like satirizing this in a way that hadn’t been done before?

MG: School always felt like it had life-or-death stakes to me. Kids are trained from literally pre-school, that they have to do well on tests, get good grades, and get accepted into the best college or your life will be a complete failure. And most of the emphasis is put on the weekly/monthly results as opposed to actually learning and retaining information. And the fact that colleges are becoming so expensive that students are taking out massive loans that they are stuck paying long after school is over. So really students are becoming imprisoned in debt by following the system. I don’t want to discourage teens from going to college, but I do think it’s important to not just follow what everyone else is doing and find your own path.

Q: Talk a little bit about finding and shooting in the high school location – that was a real school right? It looks so futuristic and cold in a way that feels like it should have been made up just for this film.

MG: We found this real, public high school called Diamond Ranch out in Pomona, California designed by Thom Mayne. I never thought we’d find a school that already looks like a high tech prison. All we had to do was add motorized metal shutters to create the lockdown effect, a few metal detectors, guards, and we were good to go!

Q: The officers in the film definitely have some twisted Stormtrooper vibes to them and go a long way in creating the tension of the world. What was the process in designing their look?

MG: I was heavily influenced by riot police imagery, particularly in other countries like the Taiwan— we used the same ballistic face masks that they use. I think using real items in a new way can be an efficient means to stay grounded and keep costs down while building a new universe. I love the tactical feel of Sicario and how brutal the police imagery felt. But I realized that the feeling of a tough and punishing task force was achieved by just watching these soldiers waiting for something to happen. This led me to take time early on in the film and show the DPC Guards watching the students, waiting for someone to get out of line. The threat of violence is often more terrifying than showing acts of violence.

Q: : It’s not easy to make a scene of kids taking a test particularly exciting, but the film succeeds in making those sequences perhaps the most tense of any in the film. How do you go about constructing that tension in the cinematography, visual and sound design, and editing?

MG: I was so lucky to be surrounded by an incredibly talented team. Our Composer, Brandon Campbell, did a phenomenal job scoring this movie. His music creates so much heart-pounding tension. Our camera team— Greg Cotten, Director of Photography, and Arjun Prakash, Gaffer, really nailed the lighting and atmosphere of the testing sequences— we wanted an eerie blue-green glow from the tablets as the main source of light on the students faces to give them a sickly look as they nervously punch in answers. But the biggest props go to Brian Ufberg, Editor, who really built an amazing pace for the testing sequences. It was their combination of talents that made those scenes so cinematic and tense.

Q: Logan Paul is obviously a big talent but this was one of his first ventures into dramatic acting. What was that like working with him to bring Blake to life?

MG: Logan Paul is an enormous talent. He came into audition for the movie, as this role was worlds different from the type of persona he normally portrays online, and he just nailed it. I was honestly amazed at how controlled and dedicated he was to creating this character from the ground up. When he walked out of the audition room, we all knew Logan was our Blake Redding. And throughout rehearsals and production, Logan was so focused and incredibly fun to work with. He has an infectious energy and kindness that rubs off on everyone. I really can’t wait to work with him again...

Q: The film feels oddly relevant with some aspects of our current political climate. When you were developing this, were there any real-world headlines you were pulling from as inspiration or is it mostly a coincidence that the film has turned out to be a sort of satire of our current political landscape?

MG: Our running joke is that The Thinning is a vision of “post Trump” America— and that if we do a sequel it will just be a documentary. The film was meant to feel more dystopian than I think it actually does because of the recent political promises of restoring “law & order” back to America. The only person who I hope doesn’t watch this movie is President Trump. I’m afraid it might give him some ideas…

Q: The film hints at the larger world beyond Texas and the US in the creepy video before the little kids take their test. Can you tell us what life is like in any other countries with the way they handle the need to cull the population? Any possibility of exploring other parts of the world going forward?

MG: We originally expanded on the bigger population questions in our screenplay. Because the story is so centralized to America, we felt it might be confusing to have so few mentions of other regions. The idea is that every country can choose how they will meet their quota of eliminating 5% of their population annually. Some countries would have mandatory birth control, others would eliminate 5% of the elderly— you can see how it can quickly raise so many questions. If we were to continue the story, I hope to explain that the thinning is a controversial law that some US states are attempting to replace with other solutions— which explains the Governor’s charge to run a pro-thinning platform and make it a federal law.

Q: Talk a little bit about the film’s color palette and how it changes throughout the story. I noticed early on how gray the school was before all hell breaks loose and a lot of reds and blacks obviously work their way in once the breakout begins. How did you go about mapping that out?

MG: In the script, we had a clear idea of using the red light as a sort of mood setter— to show that this world we know is being disrupted and our heroes are in immediate danger. There is a major power shift at that moment in the script so it’s nice to visually convey this to the audience with a dramatic change in color palette. Our production designer, Alec Contestabile, was really terrific in helping determine the colors and moods of various locations— we landed on cool metallic blues for the school and dry yellows for the desert to really create that desolate sand-swept Texas vibe.

Q: Without spoiling anything, the film ends with a big surprise that still leaves many things open-ended. Can you give us any hints at what’s to come next?

MG: Honestly, I am just following the political news as closely as possible to get ideas. I feel like any continuation of The Thinning will have to be more comedic since real life is basically devolving into a long, sad, episode of VEEP. But in all seriousness, any sequel would follow our characters further down the rabbit hole and show how deep the corruption goes within the government. And we will definitely add more fuel to some of the love triangles because if there is anything I love more than crazy politicians, it’s love triangles.

The Thinning is currently streaming on YouTube Red and is NOW available to rent or purchase on iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon. Storyboard art by Amy Umezu

#Worlds

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hermanwatts · 5 years

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Sensor Sweep: E. C. Tubb, Bernie Wrightson, The Professionals

Horror (Skulls in the Stars): I would draw some attention to my friends at Valancourt Books, who have been doing such an amazing job reprinting classic works of horror. In particular, I thought I would mention the great job they’ve done in bringing some of the best haunted house books back into circulation! When I first started blogging about horror, I wondered why there seemed to be so few “classic” haunted house books around.

RPG (Walker’s Retreat): Wizards of the Coast wants to turn D&D–and, by extension, all tabletop RPGs–into lifestyle brand extensions. To that end, they have to change how D&D is perceived, and that’s what all the changes with 5th Edition is about. The rule changes correspond to changes in the game’s brand narrative; Critical Role and other well-publicized Let’s Play series such as every single one on the Official D&D Channel are as much a part of this scheme as the rules changes themselves.

RPG (Empire Must Fall): This small corporation has had an outsized influence on both gaming and fantasy fiction since it acquired TSR Inc. in the late 1990s. Because its fiction publishing and its games publishing, Wizards of the Coast has had a massive influence on what is considered “fantasy” in most of the world- and especially so in gaming. Tropes that it, or TSR, originated are memes that both employees and customers spread globally and are now prominent in properties such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy.

Fiction (Pulp Rev): There was nothing routine about Goshawks over Babylon. Fast, stealthy, armored, each dropship could ferry a platoon of troops. It was the military’s heavy-lift aircraft of choice. The STS used them for long-range deployments, or to transport vehicles and armor. BPD most assuredly did not have any in their inventory. These specimens had to be here for the Black Watch. The only question was which organization they belonged to: the military, the STS, or the New Gods. Regardless of the answer, Fox did not want to fight them.

Games (Niche Gamer): Following the pro-Hong Kong protest statements from professional Hearthstone player Chung “blitzchung” Ng Wai and Blizzard Entertainment’s suspension of the player, many have wondered how much influence Chinese investors or profits from the region have influenced such a decision. The truth is, very little. According to both The Daily Beast and PC Gamer cite that Chinese tech giant Tencent own a mere 5% of shares. As stated on PC Gamer.

Games (Jon Mollison): The game so nice, it’s already been banned by OrcaCon despite not being funded, printed, or on the market. Thus proving the point of the game in the first place. What can I say? As I type this, the campaign is just over $30K at the post. The world is hangry for this kind of satirical take at the scolds and schoolmarms who patrol our thought places for badthink. My guess is that the “Alt Right” expansion set will be received by its targets with the opposite reaction as the core game.

Pulp (DMR Books): Such tales are characterized by sword-swinging action focused on personal battles rather than world-shaking events, with an element of magic or the supernatural and sometimes one of romance as well. Tros of Samothrace has all those ingredients and was serialized a number of years before REH’s work; doesn’t that mean that it is Sword & Sorcery too? Well, not quite but the distance that separates the two is much shorter that you might think.

Horror (Thomas McNulty): Joseph Payne Brennan fans will be pleased to learn that Dover Publications have reprinted Brennan’s quintessential anthology, The Shapes of Midnight, originally published by Berkley in October 1980. That Berkley paperback, with Stephen King’s introduction, is a now a highly sought-after collector’s item. However, there is a caveat to this Dover edition. This edition does not faithfully reproduce all of the stories from the Berkley edition.

Fiction (Karavansara): In the recent evenings, I’ve had a lot of fun with Heroes of Atlantis & Lemuria, recently published by DMR Books. The volume collects the five stories of Kardios of Atlantis, originally written by Manly Wade Wellman in the 1970s, and that we meet at the opening of the book as he’s washed ashore after Atlantis sank. Kardios, lone (maybe) survivor of the lost continent, is actually the one that caused the sinking of Atlantis (or so he says), and he takes it from there, exploring the world beyond and generally getting into a whole lot of trouble.

Science Fiction (DMR Books): Earl Dumarest is one, grim, deadly space-traveller. He’s seen a lot of hard light-years as he’s followed the star-roads and he’s been burned by many an outworld sun. According to Michael Moorcock—who knew Tubb and described the Dumarest series as “excellent”—Earl Dumarest was a “conscious and acknowledged imitation” of Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark.

Sword & Sorcery (Adventures Fantastic): Wagner considered himself more of a horror writer than a writer of fantasy or sword-and-sorcery (a term he hated). As a fiction writer, he was all of that and more. His work, if you can find it, and if you can afford it, is worth reading. He’s out of print and getting harder to find (and more expensive) all the time. He was also an editor to the top rank. He edited DAW’s Year’s Best Horror anthologies for years. They are worth seeking out for the introductions and essays alone, never mind the great stories.

Comic Books (Tentaclii): I’m pleased to see that Marvel are producing beautiful crisp reprint print-books of their black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan magazines and its precursors. The first 1000-page volume is out now, with Vol. 2 due in mid November, and Vol. 3 in January 2020. According to the reviews Marvel have done an excellent job here, apparently marred only by some copyright trolls who are preventing the reprinting of stories featuring certain of R.E. Howard’s supporting characters.

H. P. Lovecraft (The Westerly Sun): The life and work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Providence’s best-known fantasy and horror author, will again be at the center of a popular walking tour and film series conducted by the Rhode Island Historical Society and presented as part of the Flickers’ Vortex Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror Film Festival known as “Vortex.” The festival continues this year from October 19-27, with the Lovecraft Tour returning for four very special days.

Arthur Machen (Wormwoodiana): In Arthur Machen’s 1915 wonder-tale “The Great Return” we hear of marvelous lights, odors, bell-sounds, Welsh saints, the Rich Fisherman, and healings, as the Holy Graal is manifest, briefly, in Wales in the 20th century. The story needs no detection of “sources” to be reasonably well understood and enjoyed. However, our enjoyment of it may be enhanced if we see it – or recognize it – as a “sequel” to one of the great medieval Arthurian works.

Comic Books (Broadswords and Blasters): I first encountered the works of Bernie Wrightson as a kid decades ago in the 1980’s. Back in those days, before I had access to a proper comic shop, my local supermarket carried shrink wrapped bundles of comics, usually (if I remember correctly) four to a pack. There was no rhyme or reason to the packaging of these bundles, it was purely luck of the draw; you could just as easily land an issue of Simonson’s Thor as you could Moench’s Aztec Ace.

History (The Lost Fort): Archbishopric, seat of the Teutonic Knighs, and member of the Hanseatic League – Riga’s Old Town has plenty of churches, a castle, and lanes and squares with pretty old houses. I spent a day there and managed to snatch a nice collection of photos to go with a post about Riga’s Mediaeval history. Settlement at a natural harbour 15 kilometres upriver from the mouth of the Daugava river (also known as Dvina; in Old Norse as Dúna ) dates back to the 2nd century AD.

Science Fiction (M. Porcius): In his essay in praise of Leigh Brackett, “Queen of the Martian Mysteries,” Michael Moorcock tells us that E.C. Tubb’s Dumarest books are “excellent,” and were inspired by Brackett’s own planetary romances about Eric John Stark. So when I saw Tubb’s Derai at a used bookstore (the 1968 Ace Double, combined with Juanita Coulson’s The Singing Stones) I picked it up.

Science Fiction (Matthew Constantine): Way, way, way back when I was first scoping out tabletop role-playing games at a local shop, I remember flipping through some Tekumel book or another. Along with Skyrealms of Jorune and a few others, it really stuck in the back of my brain. As I went on to create my Conquest of the Sphere setting, elements of those games (mixed with countless other things) informed me.

Westerns (Paul Bishop): The Professionals is second only to The Magnificent Seven as my favorite Western film. Watching Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster relish chewing the scenery together while trying to out macho each other in The Professionals is sheer late night viewing entertainment. The movie led me to the book, and to the discovery of the sheer Western storytelling power of Frank O’Rourke.

Sensor Sweep: E. C. Tubb, Bernie Wrightson, The Professionals published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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