#sorry for learning how to live in the mold and spores of my life“

[avastrasposts]

Sourdough - A Baker's Dozen TedTalk

I’ve mentioned sourdough a few times in A Baker’s Dozen but I never dedicated a chapter to it even though it’s probably my personal favourite to bake. So to make up for that, I’m indulging in making a whole post about my other obsession, sourdough bread!

I love baking with sourdough because the process behind it is like magic to me. Flour, water and salt, three ingredients, and you can get the most delicious bread. The magic, unseen, ingredient is of course those wild yeast bacteria that live around us. 

My mum was always the one who baked sweet things around the house when I was a kid, my dad made the bread. When he first got into it he produced bricks. You legit could’ve used some of his loaves as a foundation for a house. And I’ve produced my fair share of bricks in my baking career too… But he got better and for most of my life I had the luxury of having fresh, homemade bread for breakfast. That’s where my need to make my own bread came from and once I got past the novelty of being “allowed” to buy bread from the store after moving out of my parent’s house, I got into making my own bread pretty fast.  

I started baking with sourdough about ten years ago when I stumbled on a blog about it. My first loaves were flat as pancakes and it took A WHILE before I graduated from baking in bread tins to managing to make loaves that actually held their shape. Sourdough dough does not behave like regular yeasted dough… But when I did manage to make my first proper levain, you know one of those beautiful golden loaves with nice holes and crunchy crust? I ate the whole loaf in one day. I couldn’t stop. Just butter, some sea salt and that was my food for the whole day. I’d never tasted bread so good. It’s tangy and flavourful in a way that yeasted bread just can’t imitate. 

I’m no expert but here is how I make and manage my starter and my bread. Important to remember is that flour, water and climate, especially the humidity, has a HUGE effect on the dough and the bread. No recipe will have the same results and to a certain extent, it’s a process of trial and error and learning how to bake in YOUR kitchen. 

In order to make sourdough, you need a starter and it’s surprisingly easy to make and maintain. I have a tiny starter, only about half a cup in size. The starter is your “yeast”, a small colony of yeast bacteria that you feed and culture so that you have enough for whatever you want to bake. 

The starter takes about 5-7 days to make and once you have it, you can keep it in the fridge and just feed it before you want to bake. 

So to make it you need: 

Organic whole wheat flour, stone milled if you can find it. 

Organic will contain more yeast spores and make the process easier. Don’t use old flour, check the expiration date of the flour you have at home. Flour can actually go rancid and wreck your bread. 

Water

I use tap water but if you live somewhere with chlorinated water, use bottled water. The chlorination will kill all bacteria, the good and the bad. 

A clean jar with a lid. 

It doesn’t have to be a clear glass jar but it’s pretty handy because it makes it easy to see what’s going on. 

Ok, now that we’ve got everything, let’s start. 

Day 1 - Evening

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoons tepid water (roughly body temp, maybe a bit cooler)

The amount of water you need to add can vary depending on how your flour has been milled. The mixture should be like gruel, not porridge. If two tablespoons isn’t enough, add a little bit more water until you have a fairly loose and liquid slurry. 

Mix together in the jar, put the lid on top but don’t screw the lid on. Leave for 48 hours in a warm place. Inside the oven (turned off) is a pretty good place. 

You can check on your jar after 24 hours. It’s pretty liquid and should smell warm and a bit sweet, almost like honey. If you see any brighter colours in it, red, yellow, orange, I’m sorry, but you have to toss it. That’s mold and that’s not what we want. So throw it out, start again (this is one benefit of this method, all you lost was a tablespoon of flour). 

Day 3 - Evening 

Ok, so if your flour/water mix is looking good, a bit liquidy, maybe it’s separated a bit, maybe a bit bubbly and frothy, we’re all good for the next step. 

Add 1 tablespoon of flour and mix in. Leave it overnight. 

Day 4 - Morning 

If the starter is on the right track now, you should begin to see small bubbles on the side of it, inside the glass jar. It should smell sour and yeasty, “bready”. 

Add 2 tablespoons of flour and two tablespoons of water and mix it in. Leave until evening. 

And that’s it! By evening you might/should see that there’s activity in the jar, bigger bubbles forming, the starter will rise up in the jar and expand, just like a dough. If it doesn’t, feed it 1 tablespoon of water and flour again and leave it overnight. Like I said at the beginning, lots of different factors are at play here so despite the fact that it’s all chemistry, it’s not an exact science (well it is, but since we can’t measure all the factors in each individual kitchen, we need to depend on a bit of trial and error). 

So now you have a starter and can start playing around with making bread. I won’t go into that because there are so many good instructional videos online. I can really recommend Claire Saffitz’s video, I’ll link it below. 

Obviously this starter is very small. Many recipes I’ve seen online call for much bigger starters and then discard half of it when they feed it but that always seems very wasteful to me. So what I do with my tiny little starter is just keep it in the fridge in its jar. When I plan on baking I take about 30 grams of starter and put it in a bowl and mix with 100g water and 100g strong bread flour. That is then the base for my bread the next day. To that mix I add whatever flour I’m baking with. The starter gets fed another tablespoon of flour and water and stays on my countertop overnight. That replenishes the starter and gives me enough for the next time I want to bake. In all, I usually have about 150-200 ml of starter in the fridge at any time. 

If I’m not baking, the starter stays in the fridge. I’ve had it there for a month without feeding (I was away travelling) and when I got home, I just fed it like above and left it out overnight. I had to feed it a couple of times before it got back to full strength. But the yeast bacteria don’t seem to die very easily, they just go dormant and are easily revived with flour and water. 

Fun fact, the actual science behind the yeast bacteria is that they eat the carbs in the flour and then convert that into energy and emit the gas carbon dioxide. The gluten strands in the dough traps that gas and makes the dough rise. So essentially, farts make the dough rise, tiny bacteria farts. I love science :D 

What else did I want to say about sourdough? Oh yeah, TIME! Time will make your bread taste better! And this goes for regular yeasted bread too.  By letting the dough cold proof in the fridge the yeast activity is slowed down but at the same time, flavour develops. With sourdough, you get a tangier, more sour bread. I usually keep my loaves in the fridge for 24 hours before baking them, same for my pizza dough. 

So thanks for coming to my TedTalk about sourdough! It’s amazing and frustrating and a real pain sometimes but when you get it right and you get to cut into that perfect loaf that YOU MADE and it tastes better than anything you’ve had, that’s real magic. 

#Youtube

[bogleech]

Okay here’s the whole entire text of my original pokemon gen concept under a cut (sorry if that screws you up on mobile)

I’ve only ever sketched a tiny number of these (like my fly ideas here), but I can see most of them in my head pretty clearly and might sketch more of them by request someday. I originally set my fan-region in Florida, a place I hated living but still had a lot of interesting characteristics. This changed over once I moved to Oregon, and the thing about Oregon is that it has desert, forest, swamp, coastline and frozen mountaintops that are all pretty vast, ancient and in places relatively untouched compared to the rest of North America. This is not only a perfect setting for some really wild pokemon, but makes a believable choice because our Pacific Northwest is pretty popular in Japan.

The different biomes of this region have "deep" areas where the pokemon change. Some also have "polluted" areas. The region is environmentally themed and heavily deals with human interference on the natural world.

The villains are Team Bio, genetic engineerers lead by a mysterious old woman who narrowly survived the original Mewtwo experiment. Her underlings all use "mutant" pokemon, and she seeks to create a new species of hyper-intelligent, pure-hearted pokemon that will replace humans entirely. Along the way is a strange increase in reports of interstellar pokemon activity... I actually tried hard to minimize how many pokemon in this are just “my kind” of concept, but I think I failed pretty hard. It probably does feel like it leans a little more towards Mortasheen than something Pokemon would actually make, but for basically every pokemon that’s one of my “dream concepts” or “most wanted” I tried to come up with one that I thought would appeal more to somebody else’s taste than mine.

THE STARTERS

Grass Starter: a grass "lumberjack" pterosaur with an axe for a beak. Second stage has more saw-like beak, final stage is a grass/steel quetzalcoatlus (the pterosaur) with a beak and crest forming a chainsaw, no longer flies

Fire type calf whose black cow marks are actually soot. Evolves into cow with craggy black “helmet” and horns of charcoal. Final stage a charcoal-armored minotaur like fire/ground type.

Water Starter is a beady-eyed water shrew with big webbed flipper feet, known to steal shiny objects. Second stage more humanoid, said to dive for treasure. Final stage is water/dark lanky, stripey shrew with a black mask, said to rob boats like a “highwayman” of the river.

Meadows and forest:

Normal type mammal is a spherical porcupine, like a chestnut. Rubs its spines with noxious fruit juices, giving it a multicolored look. Evolved form is a colorful “punk” porcupine.

Early bug is a sticklike inchworm Evolves to cocoon resembling a wooden log on top. Final form is bipedal stick mimic grasshopper, evocative of a cute wooden puppet with a pointed nose.

Basic bird is a hummingbird Evolves to be four-winged and legless, never lands in its whole life. Final hummingbird is a fierce looking hunter that drains energy from grass types like a predator.

Grass type walking bud creature, looks nervous. Evolves to grass/flying orchid-like angelic flower. Alternate evolution is wilted, grey, grass/ghost goth orchid with tattered petals, cute but sad. (evolves this way if it levels up after a battle in which it sustained super-effective damage)

Ground type earthworm sticking out of dirt, cute flower-shaped head. Evolved worm looks like shark sticking out of the dirt, nose looks like its prevo

Electric/dark pikachu-like packrat holding a large coin. Electrically charges its treasure as a booby trap. Actually said to be employed as underlings by the water-type shrew starter.

MISCELLANY:

Bug/poison type grub with fangs. Only encountered in garbage cans. Evolves into a fly pupa Final stage is a gloomy looking, drooling anthropomorphic fly.

Single stage bug/fairy type: a beautiful Maleficent-looking parasitoid wasp. Evolves from any cocoon/pupa pokemon if they're holding a "suspicious egg" item.

Ocean

Water/grass nudibranch with flower on its back. Evolves to a glaucus, each "arm" a colorful flower that absorbs sunlight as it floats.

Water type fish that "sails" on the sea's surface with its fins. Sleepy looking stingray evolution. Final form is water/dragon deep sea fish, combines some traits of anglerfish and viperfish with eyes on stalks. Only evolves from stingray when you're in the sea trench.

Water/flying marlin with huge, dazzling butterfly like fins.

Water type baby dolphin, fuzzy like a seal pup, only evolves if it has fainted more times than the number of its current level. Evolved form is water/dark, shaggy-furred, fierce looking, battle scarred dolphin with legs instead of flippers, a throwback to the doglike ancestors of delphinidae.

Polluted inlet

Water/poison oil slick with two tentacles and beady white eyes, signature ability changes it to water/fire type if it uses a fire move. Evolved form is an oil slick rising into a cartoon octopus with x's for pupils.

Water/steel fish hook with tiny head and eyes, like a barbed metal worm. Water/steel fishing jig, googly eyes and everything.

Barren Island - just a very big rock in the middle of the inlet

Ghost/poison: a greenish "dodo bird" with a face like a biohazard mask, the ghost of a species that went exinct due to sickness.

Sea Trench

Water/fire bristleworm "snake" Water/fire tube worm "dragon"

Water/ghost wailord skeleton draped in pink fuzz and a garden of one-eyed bone worms.

Swamp

Electric/flying bird resembling a lightbulb kiwi. Evolved form resembling a neon light lawn flamingo.

Grass/fairy giant sloth with sleepy face, completely covered in shaggy moss with various flowers and mushrooms. Protector of the swamp, able to control plant life.

Grass/psychic sundew, just a pair of sundew leaves atop a sleepy looking oddish-esque bulb. Evolved sundew is mostly a big circular sundew rosette, but a humanoid flower rotates in the center like a music box to lure prey.

Water/fighting borzoi pup with long legs, acts like a water strider. Evolved form is an elongated, elegant borzoi "ballerina" that dances atop water

Water/ground red leech slightly evocative of a vacuum cleaner. A healer that sucks poison from the body instead of blood. May mysteriously appear in your team after walking through swamp water.

Deep Forest:

Grass/ground banana slug with colorful mold spots, learns spore. Evolves into mold splotched, brown banana peel creature, more like a big squid.

Grass/dark autumn leaf in the shape of a bat, has levitate. Evolved form redder, bigger "vampire cape" leaf-bat.

Psychic/ghost cheshire cat with Meowth-like proportions, bright crescent smile. Evolved form just huge smile and cat eyes hovering in the air, beastly cat body fading into view only for physical attacks or when struck.

Rock type humanoid made of transparent amber with a strange mayfly-like bug sleeping inside. Outer body can "break" at low HP and release faster, more offensive pure bug form.

Rock: incredibly huge, stony looking moose with long white fur draped over its eyes and back. Comes in size variations like Pumpkaboo line and said to never stop growing. A truly titanic one is used as transportation through the deep forest.

Snowy patches

Bug/ice velvet worm that spews a freezing liquid. Silly looking, almost like wiggler from mario.

Ice/flying fluffy white bird resembling a tiny Japanese style snowman. Evolves to resemble western style snowman with clawed bird feet, pointed beak nose. A flightless pure ice mountain dweller.

Electric/ice with levitate: a crystalline "UFO" sky-jellyfish with many colorful lights, core body looks like a cute pikmin-esque "alien" inside. Catch by fishing off of ledges into the sky. Mistaken by locals for alien activity.

Lava Tube Caves

Psychic type bipedal pink salamander with no eyes. Evolves into beautiful milotic-like psychic/dragon blind olm.

Rock/fighting spearhead with feet, eyes are just round holes through blade. Evolves to gain a stick-figure sort of body.

Abandoned town

Normal/bug filthy dog, a shaggy pile of fur with goofy eyes and pink tongue. Little black specks jump about it. Ability changes normal moves to bug moves. Evolved form more obviously a dog but still very shaggy, surrounded by constant cloud of black specks.

Grass/electric "christmas tree" made of holly and lights. Found in a burned down house, glowing eyes peer out from beneath it.

Ghost: has a colorful quilt for a body and a pincushion for a head. Found inside houses.

Garbage dump - accessible through abandoned town, possibly what drove people away (includes piles of toys you may investigate to encounter a banette, mimikyu or klefki)

Water/poison: cartoony fish with blank eyes and humanoid pair of legs. Fish for in toxic green garbage pools. Evolves into ground/poison skeleton fish with four limbs, walking like a lizard.

Steel/bug rusty orange silverfish. Eats junk metal. Evolved form so big it wears a rusty car for protection with just its legs and feelers sticking out.

MICROPOKEMON - enlarged artificially in a laboratory where you can also take your fossils.

Bug/fighting flea - spiny black flea with big jagged white teeth. Create from the "pest sample" an item carried randomly by the normal/bug dog.

Poison/fairy germ - fuzzy multicolored mold ball with eyes, stalked suckers. Retrieve "germ sample" from the dodo ghost.

Water/fairy tardigrade - transparent, cute bug stylized almost like a "gummy bear."  Retrieve "dew sample" from moss sloth.

Pseudolegendary:

Rock type baby gargoyle creature. Evolves to winged gargoyle with levitate and a few mossy patches. Final form is an elegant griffon-like rock/dragon with an elaborately carved surface

SPACE ARK DRAGON This location is itself a dragon/fairy legendary pokemon so massive you can enter its body. It exists to collect and preserve species from dying worlds. Most common wild pokemon inside is duosion and sometimes Reuniclus. You can also collect "gene samples" from crystalline pods to replicate the ultrabeasts in the same lab you enlarge the microbes and resurrect fossils.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a little like weird yellow plant suckered to the ground, red flower-like head with an eye on each petal ala the yokai parasite, gyochu.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a colorful worm with cute eyes and beautiful mothlike wings, a little like the yokai parasite koshi-no-mushi.

Bug/dark parasitic alien, a pale, red and white striped "lizard" with six spindly limbs and a tubular proboscis, inspired by the yokai parasite kagemushi.

Fairy type alien medic, looks like a cute flatwoods monster with heart motif and nurse coat. Flees from all battles unless you have defeated at least one of each of the parasites.

LEGENDARIES:

Dragon/electric: the ark dragon's smaller offspring, looks like an electronic space whale.

Dragon/steel, menacing, sleek black starship creature. Rival to the ark dragon, a "world reaper" that attempts to destroy planets that it thinks are already dying.

Psychic/fairy little white, fluffy mothman-like being, an observer that casts judgment on suffering worlds to call one of the dragons (version based)

Normal type legendary is the most human-like pokemon we've ever seen, a serene floating figure with long hair and black, almond-shaped eyes. A genetic experiment to supplant humans.

Electric/fighting: a hulking humanoid beast, almost frankensteinian with asymmetrical features, a failed early experiment.

A "glitched and scrambled" two dimensional pokemon. The result of the earliest known experiments in digital pokemon transfer. Actually literally typeless.

POISON FUSIONS created in the garbage dump:

Weezodor - poison/flying - Garbodor/weezing hybrid, like a jellyfish bag with smog tentacles.

Mukking - poison/water - Weezing/muk hybrid, like a koffing with slime appendages.

Garmuk - poison/ground - Muk/garbodor hybrid, like a giant slug made of trash.

MUTANT POKEMON: mutations of classic first-stage pokemon into creatures slightly tougher than even their original final stages.

Mutant Caterpie - bug/dragon - huge, dragonlike Caterpie with more menacing eyespots, clawed limbs.

Mutant Paras - pure grass - giant paras with far more mushrooms of different colors, body pure white with no mouth and white sphere eyes, actually made only of fungus.

Mutant Venonat - bug/dark - same old venonat with a big shaggy monster body

Mutant Zubat - Psychic - somewhat larger than crobat, has actual legs and a pair of clawed arms instead of wings. Much bigger ears.

Mutant Voltorb - electric/steel - a Voltorb even bigger than Electrode, otherwise looks normal besides angrier yellow eyes...until it splits open to reveal sharp teeth.

Mutant Tangela - grass/fairy - more like its scrapped Gen II evolution but perhaps a lot taller, with two very very long arms.

Mutant Geodude - rock/fighting - HUGE spiky arms and hands but head/body are the same as always.

Mutant Shellder - water/steel - it's the spiraly slowbro one!

Mutant Exeggcute - psychic/poison - bigger and more plentiful but "rotten" looking eggs with gloomier eyes and dark purple goo.

Mutant Eevee - normal - bigger than any of the eeveelutions, shaggy and beastly with the "camouflage" ability. Learns strong attacks of every eevee evolution type.

Mutant Doduo - fighting type with only one head

Mutant Luvdisc - the only one based on a non-evolving pokemon. Angry "broken heart" Luvdisc with record offensive stats for the series, but even worse defenses than regular luvdisc.

Mutant Trapinch - dragon/bug - giant turtle-like Trapinch, redder, spiny, second mouth inside jaws.

Mutant Dratini - dragon/fairy - huge long dratini with longer feathery wing ears, identical wings down body.

Mutant Larvitar - dragon/dark - big, armored green reptile, still has larvitar type head with craggier, meaner horn.

Mutant Bagon - dragon - huge, more t-rex proportioned bagon, spiked shell on head.

Mutant Deino - bigger and shaggier with a ring of five long-necked deino heads

Mutant Gible - dragon/fighting - only usually seen as a huge sharky fin sticking out of the ground. When it emerges, its body isn't much bigger than regular gible.

Mutant Goomy - psychic/dragon - giant goomy with gaping mouth, antennae are much longer, green and stripey.

Mutant Jangmo-o - dragon/steel - same old head but more ankylosaur-like big body, entirely a dark iron color with more pitted looking scales.

ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATIONS no mechanical or typing difference, but new color schemes and decorations on existing pokemon, totally an aesthetic change. Have their own shiny forms.

SEA TRENCH FORMS: Entirely pale pink golisopod line with closed eyes transparent red tentacool line with darker red nodules dark maroon inkay line with blue lights red and purple feebas line

CAVE FORMS: White, eyeless venipede line White, eyeless magikarp line

DEEP SWAMP FORMS: crocodile-green Sandile line with lily pad on head black shelled "freshwater" shellder line with green algae growths pure red and purple colored bellsprout line

DEEP FOREST FORMS: braviary with more hawklike colors foongus line with no pokeball pattern...the original foongus? wolf-spider colored joltik line

POLLUTED INLET FORMS: Dewpider line with all black body and limbs, yellow glowing eyes in dirty green water Grey wailmer line draped in red algae, clumps of barnacles (presumably degenerated binacle) Wingull line with grey and black oil-splotched feathers, tin can on head

GARBAGE DUMP FORMS: Bounsweet line with only grey, brown and black colors, dark spoiled looking splotches Black bag trubbish line with green trash, copper colored pipes Rusted looking klink line, rotates only once every few seconds.

----------GYM LEADERS -------------- In this region the gyms are dual type, and bring back past mechanics and gimmicks as their focus.

flying/normal: a blind, wheelchair-bound old man who specializes in dog and bird pokemon. Uses a baton pass team.

Steel/electric: an astronaut commanding his gym by remote feed from the station. Uses Magnezone, Rotom forms and, surprisingly, a random steel or electric ultrabeast.

Poison/bug: a germophobic lady scientist ironically obsessed with pollution pokemon, always wearing a biohazard suit. Has weezing, garbodor, the fly pokemon and Yanmega. Uses Z-moves, but it's random whether she uses a bug or poison one and on which pokemon.

Dark/fire: an elderly biker lady. Has no gym and in fact roams around the region. Surprisingly challenges you to a third-gen style beauty contest with her frightening selection of pokemon.

Grass/fairy: witchy pharmacist and botanist who lives out in the woods, all of her grass types are mushroom based. Unusually has you team up with her in a double battle against a random pokemon of unusual size and strength, like Alola's totem pokemon.

Ground/fighting: an extremely frail little nerdy guy who likes amazingly fearsome pokemon, hates bullies but kind of is one. Makes you face a horde battle with all of his pokemon vs. only one of yours at a time.

Dragon/rock: a boisterous monster movie director who dresses his pokemon in costumes, gym is a cardboard city. Uses a dynamaxed pokemon.

Ghost/psychic: a horror author, Vincent Price like, lives in a mansion and makes visitors face scenes from his books. Instead of a single battle, he has you face a series of singular mega pokemon behind each "scene." THE LABORATORY This location is of course secretly associated with the villain team, but you can free it up from them in the endgame. Here you can make fossil pokemon, micropokemon, regional forms from past generations, ultrabeasts and even mega stones, but all require you to spend one or more “gene crystals.” You’re handed a number of these through the storyline but it would be very challenging to farm more than that  (think Gen 7 bottlecaps). Spending more crystals at the lab would allow you to finally alter abilities, natures and IV’s at a whim, and for an exceptional cost you could upgrade the BASE stats of any L100 pokemon permanently. This is a percentage increase applied across the board to all of its stats at once, and stops at either 100 total points beyond their normal limits, or a final base stat total of 530 (equivalent to a fully evolved starter) MISC STUFF:

Your mom this gen asks you if you hope to have an easy, challenging, or very challenging adventure. You can return to her at any time to adjust the difficulty again.

When you beat the game, you can make a custom trainer for online battles using the models of other NPC trainer types, i.e. you can finally be a swimmer/scientist/grunt/etc. You can unlock some popular ones from past generations.

You can select one pokemon as your main partner, which not only has it following you, but involves it a little more in the storyline (special events based on its first typing) and gives it some in-game perks.

A special item attached to any one of your pokemon allows your whole team to “share strength,” meaning that their weaknesses are mitigated for each teammate they share a type with. This allows for type-themed teams to be more viable but wouldn’t completely eliminate their weaknesses, and the effect diminishes proportionately for every pokemon that faints.

You can designate a seventh pokemon to be your “team mascot,” a non-combat role with different effects depending on species/type.

A single team can have either the mascot, a z-move, a dynamax/gigantamax form or a mega, cannot mix these.

Legendary pokemon now suffer a stat nerf for every other legendary pokemon on the same team. A team of six legendaries would actually be somewhat below-average in stats.

#pokemon #fakemon

[ghostbustershq]

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - Trailer A Breakdown

“Troy, wondering what you thought about that new Ghostbusters trailer?”

Well, I’ve waited thirty years for this moment. Something tells me that my long-winded and verbose writing sensibilities won’t be able to convey my thoughts in a text message or 140 characters on Twitter. Welcome anyone that I’ve pointed in this direction. I’ve been waiting an awful long time for this. And that’s not to be dismissive of the wonderful experience and entertaining film we received just three short years ago. This is something different. But the same. Something new, but also something familiar. In one word?

Wow.

Quite a bit to unpack in a trailer revealing the first details on what has otherwise been a very tight-lipped production. Needless to say, the first real look at Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife blew me away. The direct sequel to Ghostbusters II looks to take some twists and turns, while incorporating the iconography and elements that made the original film and its sequel so popular in the 80’s. To be completely honest, it’s quite difficult to sit here and put into words my reaction to seeing a trailer for a movie I’ve been waiting 30 years to see. Excited doesn’t even begin to describe just how fun and exciting this trailer release has been. Not to mention just how special this film release will be.

But you’re not here for a review or my sentiments, you’re here for a breakdown to the trailer with a few comments and screen grabs.

Let’s do it, eh?

Hitting the Road

Right out of the gate, some stunning cinematography from Eric Steelberg on full-display here as a car full of teenage kids approach what appears to be an old mine elevator at the top of an incredible looking vista. Kids being kids, golden hour in full effect, it’s a lovely first introduction to the world in which this film will inhabit. Finn Wolfhard’s character Trevor answers a pointed question that his family has moved to Summerville because they’re completely broke. To the point that he’s getting a haircut at home by his own mother, Callie (played by Carrie Coon). We’re meeting a family on some hard times, forced to make a hard turn in their lives because of finances.

Grandpa’s “Creepy Old Farmhouse”

The family pulls up to a farmhouse and barn that looks like they’ve both seen better days. A giant barn with a collapsed roof and several silos surround a Gothic looking weather vein riddled house that may as well be out of the Addams Family. Dire circumstances have forced them to move to a family farm inherited from an, as of now, unknown grandfather. Phoebe (played by Mckenna Grace) gets out of the car with a look on her face that says it all. And those eyeglasses… well, we’ve all talked about who those look like they belong to at great length.

Something’s Amiss

Trevor’s tender moment with a new friend (Celeste O’Connor’s still as-of-yet-unrevealed character) is interrupted by the mine elevator they’re sitting on shakes violently and a green glow emanates from the mine below them. All is not picture-perfect Americana in Summerville as we’ve been led to believe. An entity explodes from the mine, escaping into the air and pushing the teenagers back in the process. That glimpse of our paranormal haunting kicks us into the studio and production company logos.

Bron Studios/Bron Media Logo

Interestingly, no Ghost Corps logo attached to the trailer. But there is a newcomer to both the trailer and the teaser poster released on Friday, Bron Studios. A Canadian company, Bron gets a logo right after Sony/Columbia possibly suggesting they’re a financial backer of the film or a large partner in some shape or form. A quick look at iMDB shows that Aaron L. Gilbert of Bron Media has been added as an Executive Producer to the film as well.

Earthquakes and Mr. Grooberson

Here’s our first real taste of how Paul Rudd’s character will factor into the film. He’s intrigued by Summerville’s seismic activities, given the fact that it doesn’t lie on a fault line, nor does it have any of the telltale signs of locations that should be moving and shaking. The protagonist family huddles under a table during a quake where we get a good taste of the film’s humor courtesy of Trevor with a quippy one-liner about the summer that they died under a table. So what is happening? Stay tuned. Also, admittedly I was too distracted by the beautiful lighting in the shot with Trevor to notice the symmetrical book stacking visual gag in the background until others pointed it out. Well played, set dec team. I’d expect there will be visual easter eggs like this throughout the entirety of the film.

Mystery Box Revealed

Following one of the quakes at their new home, Phoebe seemingly finds a loose floorboard and a sliding puzzle that has been left behind by their grandfather to hide the presence of a familiar ghost trap. Which Phoebe takes to school and shows off to her still unnamed friend, played by Logan Kim. The sight of a ghost trap tickles Mr. Grooberson, who connects it with the famed-Ghostbusters who saved New York City back in the 1980’s. The kids have no idea of the existence of ghosts, nor what occurred back in 1984 near Central Park. Grooberson is more than happy to educate them.

Jason Reitman Front and Center

After the ghost trap’s appearance, Jason Reitman (deservedly so) gets a card proclaiming the film coming from him as a writer-director hyphenate. The credit comes over an industrial space with a whole lot of Ridley Scott creep-factor going on. If I had one nit to pick with the trailer, it’s the producer in me that is concerned poor Jason’s credit never resolves with the “R” in Reitman not obstructed by the light blooming in the center of the frame.

A Free-Roaming… Something?

Right after Jason Reitman’s card, comes a panning shot across the same industrial space where a gelatinous blob is in the distance doing something. It’s tough to make out exactly what type of entity we’re looking at here, but it seems to appear (and move) like a microscopic organism or something found at the depths of the sea. Which I quite enjoy. A ghost that looks unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Also worth noting that the movements feel practical - there is weight and almost a rubbery movement to it just like the creature designs from the shop in the 80’s. Love it.

New York Was Like the Walking Dead

Mr. Grooberson shows Phoebe and Logan Kim’s character archival footage from the 1980’s where he remembers seeing the ghost trap utilized as a kid. The Ghostbusters were a phenomenon 35 years ago, but have been forgotten. As history tends to move on and generations aren’t impacted by the events of their elders, they’re learning about who the Ghostbusters were. Phoebe comments that her mother has never spoken of the events that took place in New York and that their father isn’t in the picture.

Of note, these two shots are incredible angles that I don’t believe I’ve seen before. Perhaps the result of Jason Reitman and his post production team digging into the mines and finding the original dailies and negative from the 1984 film for use in Afterlife?

PKE Readings and “Does This Pole Still Work?”

Phoebe seems to have found other Ghostbusting equipment and uses it to trace readings back to a makeshift shed. Presumably a continuation of the scene based on the editing, Phoebe slides down a fire pole (!!!) to a subterranean hidden space. She continues to follow readings on the PKE Meter, finding equipment including the orange piece of machinery taken from the original Ghostbusters at Columbia University, a Betamax recorder in the far distance, an oscilloscope, and a whole lot of fungi growing in jars. The camera pans over sample dishes of spores, molds and fungus collections, (subtly cued with Phoebe talking about picking through the rubble of her grandfather’s life) and then continues past a proton pack in progress of assembly.

Admittedly, this was the first moment in the trailer where I could feel my heart doing backflips. We’re seeing the past through Phoebe’s eyes and everything looks, feels, and sounds like Ghostbusters. I love it. This movie is about discovery, as we’ve heard over and over. To me, it feels a bit like we’re (the viewer - the broader public outside of us fans) are rediscovering our love for what made these movies so popular.

The Shoe Drops

This is where any other trailer would take the opportunity to pepper in the bass drops, kick in the soft-breathy cover version of Ray Parker Jr.’s theme song, or some other overused trope. But Ghostbusters Afterlife takes a pretty bold stance and tries something different. And to me, it really works. When Mr. Grooberson discovers that the ghost trap isn’t a replica and is, in fact a real ghost trap (and may be occupied still), he questions who Phoebe is, as there’s a cut to Phoebe’s hand grazing over a rack of flight suits revealing the name tag, “Spengler” barely having enough time to resolve before a smash to black.

In what is absolutely a stroke of genius of whomever is responsible for this wonderful trailer, Bill Murray’s line for the original movie as Venkman and Stantz share a bottle of Apricot Brandy talking about going into business for themselves takes on a whole new meaning: “Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason,” is said while - - to my ear - - a new rendition of the same Elmer Bernstein cue that plays under the scene swells.

A Certified Genius or an Authentic Wacko

After a “Next Summer” sell card, another beautiful Americana (c/o Calgary) vista of the Shandor Mining Company. Interesting, perhaps Ivo Shandor from the original film fancied himself an entrepreneur at one point before he became an architect? Or perhaps this is a result of his interest in metallurgy mentioned by Stantz? Perhaps he mined his own supplies for projects? Either way, I’m starting to think that Sumeriaville… ahem… sorry… Summerville might be following in a classic trope of some of the best horror stories. A town with an incredibly horrible secret. Warning signs don’t matter to Phoebe and Logan Kim’s character as they trudge ahead.

Hello, Beautiful

Meanwhile, in the narrative of our trailer, Trevor follows in Phoebe’s footsteps into the fields of the farm and finds something of his own: a beautiful (but a little rusty) 1959 Miller-Meteor Cadillac as the ground shakes again, something shatters through a row of school buses seemingly attacking Phoebe, and the town goes into high-alert. Amid the chaos, there’s a striking 20 frames or so of Phoebe staring into a horrifying fire pit of arms - lost souls? Something else? And immediately after that, Mr. Grooberson frantically tries to escape from a snarling beast that slams a foot on the hood of his automobile. Trevor’s Ecto-1 adventure continues as he turns the key and an homage that would make Laszlo Kovacs proud reveals the familiar license plate and front grill emerging from the garage and into the field for a joy ride. The ol’ Ecto has a whole lotta horsepower left in the tank.

Damn Right, This Thing Has a Gunner’s Seat

And that’s when the trailer hits us. What can and should be the most amazing surprise in the trailer (if not unfortunately spoiled for you by a few self-interested rotten apples with horrible cell phone photos) - this isn’t the Ecto we’re familiar with. Perhaps an explanation as to why it’s the ol’ Ecto-1, or maybe the car was always being changed throughout the duration of the Ghostbusters’ longevity, THIS Ectomobile looks to have been heavily modified for field work. Phoebe, with a thrower in her hand, swivels out into an attack position and we’re off to the races. The Ecto-1, with Phoebe in the gunner position, looks to be chasing the microscopic entity seen earlier in the industrial space - though some people have speculated that might be Slimer, I don’t think that’s the case. Either way… Dear Hasbro, take my money now. My goodness, what an awesome set-piece (and toyetic moment) that looks like it will be.

Everything about this movie speaks to me. It’s playing with my nostalgia. It’s also giving us something new and the promise of the next generation discovering the Ghostbusters both on-screen and off. The fact that a main character is named Trevor for some reason immediately made me think of my amazing former boss and now guide to the next generation of comedy Trevor Albert, who was a long-time friend and colleague of Harold Ramis. Phoebe’s an intriguing character and the friendship that we saw Mckenna Grace and Logan Kim develop via social media throughout the course of the production seems to have carried over to their on-screen performances.

Of course, noticeably absent are any of the original cast members. But, as the theme of this trailer and seemingly the movie as a whole is discovery and things slowly unfolding, I can imagine that moment will be saved until the absolute very end of the marketing campaign. If the cast isn’t kept in secret similar to Mark Hamill in The Force Awakens completely. To be completely honest, I don’t want to see another frame until opening day of the film itself. And if this is the only trailer they release, that would be a wonderful mystery box. Particularly for this Ghostbusters podcast host who would have to break another TV spot or trailer down frame by frame. I get the sense that the less we know and see about this movie before the first viewing experience, the better.

But most of all - - the iconography, the designs from Stephen Dane, Michael C. Gross, and so many other artists has carried over successfully and looks authentic. This is no replica, as the trailer blatantly tells us. This is the real deal.

#ghostbusters afterlife #ghostbusters (2020) #trailer #Jason reitman

[anotherwhumpblog]

I don't remeber if i ever wrote an introduction, so here goes.

My name is Pie but you can also call me Lara or Jer. I use any pronouns.

Ive been interested in whump since i was a small child, I think 4 or 5. I was one of those "gifted" kids who could read at a college level before starting school. My favorite books were always the ones where someone got hurt or sick.

I like whump because i find it relatable, and it helps me to cope with some things i went through.

Most people, i think, dont find whump relatable. A friend of mine said that most people didnt have a childhood anywhere near mine ^^" so here's a brief description of some of the things about me:

Im only 5 feet tall. Which is odd since my family is above average height and my brother is 6 foot and 15 years old. Most of the time when people point it out, i just laugh it off or say i dont know why im so small. But to be honest, its from malnourishment. My family was very very poor (we still are rather poor but not as bad as it was). I lived with my little brother and my mom, and my dad was very abusive and didnt live at home. I'm extremely lactose intolerant, and mom would make macaroni and cheese a lot because my brother really liked it. But I couldnt eat it, so i was forced to go hungry a lot. My mom also has become more and more abusive as I've gotten older, and stopped making meals for me altogether in my early teens, so i had to either cook for myself or live on chips. Which i did. Combine that with no milk, and you get me.

I have hundreds of scars. Most of them are knife wounds. Most of them have pretty cool stories, too, like the one where i was stabbed with a sword (i used to fence), and the one where i was shot with a paintball at point blank range (as in the barrel was right next to my skin).

I have chronic pain. Theres something wrong with my bones that causes them to ache and makes my joints occasionally give out. Ive also got the beginning stages of arthritis from sewing 10 hours a day when i was a teen.

I cant swim. I know how, but i get exhausted very easily and my arms and legs start hurting and then I start to sink. Its terrifying and embarrassing, so I just dont go in deep water. I still swim in the local river though haha.

I get sick easily because I'm allergic to pretty much anything that gives off pollen or spores. I get frequent bloody noses and respitory infections. My childhood house was also rotten with mold and mildew. I remember that if i pushed on the wall in my bedroom, I could actually move it a couple inches in, and the drywall would slide along the nails. We also had rats and ants.

I have difficulty remembering things, and my brain has actually blocked memories from me. Im in therapy because of this. It affects my short term memory too, and sometimes i get lost in the mall and stuff because I forget where im at and who im with.

I sleep on the floor, because I toss and turn from nightmares and got tired of falling off the bed. I do this in hotel rooms too, much to the concern of my friends. Yes i have a mattress, yes I'm comfy, yes i prefer it this way.

When i was 11 my mouth grew a second pair of upper inscisors for absolutely no reason and i had to have a set removed because they stuck out like a vampire and were causing problems with the rest of my teeth. The remaining set were also too pointy and i was constantly biting my lip by accident so the dentist filed them down. They had to sedate me for that and as a result i hate the dentist. I also had to have braces afterwards.

Those are the teeth they removed ^^"

I stutter really bad and have a lisp. I can keep it under control unless im really anxious. When im in a new setting, i cant talk at all. I have specific friends who I've given permission to talk for me, and im trying to learn asl.

I was sexually assaulted as a teenager, but that's the one thing i don't feel comfortable talking about.

So yea thats me!! If you have any questions go ahead and ask me them! I have a lot of stories about my life and telling them helps me heal. You'll see a lot of stuff on this blog that's similar to what i went through, but not all of it is that, I just really like whump in general. I don't really have any ""turn offs"" except for extreme medical inaccuracies like gallons of blood loss and stuff. i also sometimes reblog my art here too ^^"

Sorry this is so long

#whump #introduction #whump intro #whump blog #irl whump #whump introduction #about me

[fpcgv]

Reports from Houston

by Karen Trost

Immediately after Hurricane Harvey, the associate pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Grapevine (a church in the PCUSA’s Grace Presbytery) sent out a call to the congregation, seeking volunteers who might be interested in participating in hurricane recovery. At the same time she reached out to Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, who referred her to All Hands and Hearts - Smart Response, a secular organization that was the result of the 2017 merger of two nonprofits, All Hands Volunteers and Happy Hearts Fund. Both organizations had been in existence since the devastating Thailand tsunami in 2005. According to the All Hands website, together they have helped over half a million people around the world recover from natural disasters over the last 13 years (www.hands.org). The combined organization was recently given the highest possible ratings (four stars) by Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org).

Many more church members responded than were able to volunteer in the middle of the Advent season. Our group consisted of six people from all walks of life: a retired technical writer (Beverly), a former pharmaceutical CEO (Miles), a pastor (Ashley), a retired pilot (Larry), a freelance editor and writer (yours truly), and a real estate attorney (Rick).

                        Day One (Tuesday December 12, 2017)

Larry in front of the All Hands Base (Photo: Beverly Chernoff)

Caraleigh giving All Hands orientation (Photo: Beverly Chernoff)

Work completed as of December 12 (Photo: Karen Trost)

All Hands and Hearts is set up to provide transportation only at the beginning and end of a full day of work. After learning that we would be unable to work a half day, we changed our departure time from the rather ungodly (sorry, Pastor Ashley!) hour of 5 a.m. to a much more tolerable 10 a.m. We met at the church, split up into groups of three in two cars, and got to know one another better on our road trip and during our lunch stop at a local burger place. When we arrived at Faith United Methodist Church, which had graciously donated a Sunday school building to house the All Hands Base, we were greeted warmly by a number of volunteers and staff members, received Home Base orientation from Caraleigh, the fabulous All Hands volunteer coordinator, and learned about the great work that has already been done. Although our group came in on the later part of this process, “muck + gut” is pretty much what it sounds like: mucking out/cleaning damaged portions of the structure including walls, floors, and studs; removing moldy sheetrock and flooring; and scrubbing and then vacuuming all surfaces of the exposed studs to loosen the mold spores in preparation for the next step. Sanitizing involves application of Shockwave, a mold-killing chemical that is so potent that hazmat suits, masks with hard filters, and gloves are required for application, and the homeowner cannot return for several hours (sadly, many of the homeowners found it necessary to occupy their damaged homes during the restoration process). Sanitization may need to be done more than once if the home does not pass the post-sanitization air quality check.

Sanitizing product (Photo: Beverly Chernoff)

              The four braver (?) members of our crew then toured our accommodations to select upper bunks (all of the lower ones were already taken). The church had cleared out all of their Sunday school rooms in this separate building so that 20 or so metal bunk beds with air mattresses could be brought into each one to house the enthusiastic volunteers. Two in our crew had already elected to get rooms at a local Motel 6 (“We’ll keep the lights on for you!”).

Ashley, Karen, and Miles seeking bunks (Photo: Beverly Chernoff)

              Dinner—prepared by volunteers--was served at 6:30. Following dinner, a very organized but friendly meeting was held that included reports of work completed that day, staff notes and reminders, group assignments for the following day, hellos from new volunteers (including us), and heartfelt goodbyes from those who were departing. This evening and throughout the week we observed a passionate and somewhat paradoxical sense of community among a continuous flow of volunteers old and young from all walks of life who came to Houston from all over the world (including Canada, the U.K., Australia, and states throughout the U.S.). Some stayed for just a few days and others remained for weeks, but it was very evident that all were touched by their experiences and formed lasting bonds with their fellow volunteers.

Toasting our upcoming adventure at Bo's (Photo: Karen Trost)

              After the meeting, our group had after-dinner fellowship with some of our new friends at a (very) local establishment called Bo's. We had passed this worn, corrugated metal structure on the way to the church, and I had remarked to the others in our car that Bo’s looked like a place where outsiders would likely be unwelcome – I was SO wrong!

 Day Two (Wednesday December 13, 2017)

Miles geared up to re-sanitize at Evelyn's (Photo: Karen Trost)

              The lights came on at 6:30 a.m., and there was no time to waste – breakfast had to be consumed and individual lunches prepared by the 80 or so volunteers before climbing into the vans promptly at 7:15 a.m. to head to the equipment pickup site (at another church) and then to our assignments. Our group was split up. Miles and I went to a home occupied by a lovely senior citizen named Evelyn that had to be re-sanitized (on retesting, the air level of mold in her home was not low enough to pass muster). We learned the hard way that the rather innocuous-sounding process of "mold dusting" was not as easy as it sounded (unless you’re accustomed to scrubbing every exposed wood surface with a brush 7 times!). Then Miles got to gear up for sanitizing while I did more scrubbing and played photographer.

Me (less geared up) doing more mold dusting (Photo: Karen Trost)

              Once the sheet plastic mold barrier was installed to protect Evelyn’s home from mold seeping in from the attached house next door (the likely cause of the retest fail) and spraying was complete, we ate lunch in Evelyn’s driveway (after extensive use of hand sanitizer), observing a steady stream of potential buyers going into said attached house, which was up for sale (and wondering what they made of the motley crew in hazmat suits next door). Then we joined Beverly's group at a different site to mold dust/vacuum/spray an elderly man's garage that her team had to empty in order to get the job done—with the exception of a 2000-pound safe that was just going to have to stay.

Ashley (aka Picasso) joined another group to muck and gut at Teresa's home, which involved using a saw to cut a straight line through the sheetrock to be removed. Our beloved pastor got her nickname from the results of her efforts, which was supposedly a very straight line (hmmm).

Beverly mold dusting the emptied garage (Photo: Karen Trost)

              Larry and Rick mucked and gutted Martha's home, giving her a ray of hope--and maybe even a little joy--during this very dark time, which involved the loss of her father and sister as well as the home she had shared with both of them, in the span of just a few months.

After our return to The Base and much-needed showers (some at The Base and others at Motel Six), we enjoyed a pizza dinner and another meeting that included more heartfelt sharing by those members of this tightknit community who had just completed their last day of volunteering. Following dinner our group met to share our experiences and for devotional time/sermon/advent candle lighting preparation at another fine local establishment called Dry Creek (note the developing pattern...).

Day Three (Thursday December 14, 2017)

Larry and Rick continued to muck and gut at Martha's, which necessitated the removal of some plumbing; this caused a water issue that their dedicated Team Lead (also a volunteer) returned to fix at the end of a very long day. Ashley continued work at Teresa's, who was so discouraged by the prospect of continuing expenditures that she was rethinking her pride in home ownership. Beverly helped prepare All Hands' new base, which did not appear nearly ready to be occupied on the planned date of December 21, but we hope that they are all tucked in there by now and continuing the great work we helped with in our small way. Miles helped sanitize Minnie's house by removing damaged sheetrock (no word on how he fared with the saw…). I was delighted to be a member of a team that was helping one of the helpers; our homeowner, another Martha, had been involved with a group called Hurricane Harvey Leadership in Action since shortly after the hurricane, but waited until now to accept help (removal of ceiling and wall sheetrock) because she felt the needs of others were so much greater.

Karen's All Hands crew at Martha's (Photo: Karen Trost)

              Note that I was not nearly as successful as Ashley at cutting sheetrock, and was relieved of my duties after the first try (no Picasso here!). Before the day even started something happened that made me realize that, while asking for help is tough enough, maintaining dignity when doing so can be even more challenging. On our way over, the team lead had to call the homeowner to arrange for a waiver to be signed so we could begin work. Martha had to explain over the phone to a complete stranger that she was unavailable, but that her ex-husband would be there and--despite their divorce--the house was still in his name. Martha shared this very personal information with grace, and was deeply moved by the small amount of help we were able to offer her.

 Day Four (Friday December 15, 2017)

On this last full day of work, my team went to Sheryl’s home. She had followed some popular - and false - information and remained in her home after the storm, under the mistaken impression that spraying bleach on the flooded areas would get rid of any mold. By the time of the All Hands evaluation, she had been living in her home for two months post-flood and was appalled at the extent of the mold that was discovered behind the sheetrock. While she moved between a backyard tent and a motel room as her lodgings, the All Hands volunteers took her home of 20 years all the way down to the studs in a process that lasted for more than two weeks. While plugging in the shop vac to vacuum the exposed studs (which had already been scrubbed by other volunteers), I noticed a tilted, candle-less menorah on the windowsill next to an extension cord that led to the backyard tent (it was day 4 of Hanukkah). We hope that the work by All Hands helped her see some light at the end of the tunnel during the 2017 Festival of Light, and that in 2018 she will be able to actually light the candles each night in her fully restored home.

Karen, Amy, and Team Lead Laura making tar angels at Sheryl's (Photo: Karen Trost)

              Some areas of Sheryl’s home were being sanitized as the vacuuming was completed, so all work had to be done in Tyvek suits and masks; this is the only way I would consider participating in the making of tar angels (and other shenanigans) on the sticky floors with Amy and Team Leader Laura. All floor coverings had been secured with tar except for the tiled kitchen, which we heard made life miserable for the last crew of volunteers, who had to pry up the linoleum bit by bit during the muck and gut process, until they got fed up and headed to a local home improvement center to invest in some additional equipment.

All Hands and Hearts - can you see it? (Photo: Karen Trost)

Ashley's group at Teresa's (Photo: Ashley Hood)

              Ashley continued her work at Teresa’s, taking time out for a group photo to celebrate a job well done. Her group must have had more energy than mine – at the end of the day my group witnessed them doing an unfamiliar line dance to some rather loud music as we unloaded the surprising large amount of equipment that we had jammed into the back of our van. And unloading was not the end of the job; as on the other days, we also had to put the equipment away and sanitize all hats, masks, filters, and gloves so they were ready for the next group of volunteers.

Beverly mucked, gutted, and sanitized at a new (to her) location: “I’ve learned much about gutting (tearing out sheet rock et al.) and black mold remediation. The woman at our second site today was so sweet and incredibly grateful.”

Miles continued mucking and gutting at Millie’s, and Rick and Larry did the same at Martha’s, who was becoming increasingly concerned about getting back into her home, as her FEMA money was running out and she had nowhere else to go.

All 80+ volunteers crowded into The Base for dinner, as the church was busy hosting the first of two weekend weddings. After dinner, Rick and I delivered the goodbyes he had prepared so beautifully on behalf of our group, which included sharing how the outstanding leadership of the dedicated All Hands staff members and volunteers—most of whom were Millennials--had given so much hope for the future to this group of baby boomers (and one Gen Xer – you’re welcome, Ashley!).

Beverly's Day 4 assignment (Photo: Beverly Chernoff)

Day Five (Saturday December 16, 2017)

Despite Ashley’s assurances that she could still preach on Sunday even if we arrived home in the wee hours, we decided to give her (and us!) a break and head back to Grapevine by early afternoon. As we could not go on site for just part of this last day, we were assigned to Day Crew. After sleeping in just a little (waiting until the volunteers left at 7:15 to ease the people traffic), breakfast and lunch makings were put away, bathrooms were cleaned (thanks, Beverly!); hallways, bathrooms, and kitchen were swept and mopped (way to go, Larry!); dishes were washed (Rick rocked this!); the coffee/tea station and microwave were cleaned and a new pot of coffee set up to warm the volunteers who would be returning after a drizzly, dreary day (my small contribution); and rooms and the staff office were vacuumed (kudos to Ashley and Miles). All of us did post-experience surveys, and I was able to set up an All Hands account to accept the very generous donation by my sister on behalf of the AYNI Foundation, which sent our group over the moon! Once we were done, the staff took our picture in our new shirts in front of the All Hands Christmas tree.

We cranked all of this out by mid-morning, so we headed back to Grapevine a bit earlier than planned, stopping for lunch at—where else?—Whataburger. We all agreed that it was a wonderful experience to help such grateful recipients with the assistance of some truly amazing and accomplished staff members and volunteers. Although we hope beyond hope that Houston won’t need their assistance for much longer, we would all be happy to go back and again serve alongside other All Hands and Hearts volunteers as God’s hands at work in the world.

[zippdementia]

Part 11 Alignment May Vary: Undying

Today’s post is part 11 of an ongoing series detailing the converted 3.5 campaign of Tomb of Haggemoth into a 5th edition romp. In this post, the three players go on an adventure of my own creation, giving them the opportunity to level and to add some length to the main campaign.

First of all, a shout out this session to Rock, Paper, Wizard, a welcome oddity among D&D licensed board games. We played it before our session and it is a blast. Quick, active, and hilarious—the point of the game is to have your token be at the front of a small linear board by the end of the round (because you get more gold that way). To acomplish this, spells from D&D are dealt below the board (Burning Hands, Fireball, Charm Person, and the like). Each spell does some combination of advancing yourself, pushing another player, or stealing gold from another player. Each one also has an accompanying unique hand shape, like making horns with your pinkie and forefinger, or a circle with your thumb and forefinger, or a fist. Every player reviews the spells, secretly decides which one to use and on which player, and then you call out “ROCK PAPER WIZARDS!” On Wizards, everyone makes the hand gesture of their spell at the player of their choice, and then going around the table in turn order the spells are resolved.

The resolution of spells often leads to hilarity, as some of them do fun things like reverse your target’s spell back on themselves (this is how I fireballed myself in the face second round). Others might pivot the spell clockwise, or affect the people on either side of you. Also fun is that if two people use the same spell on each other, the power of their magic explodes and turns into Wild Magic—mechanically, giving them both random spells from the deck.

A game takes about 20 minutes to learn and play, plays up to six players, is simple enough that anyone can pick it up, and is a great pre-session warm up to get everyone in the mood for hanging out.

House of Horrors

Last we left our adventurers, they had followed a distressed woman to a mansion on an otherwise deserted island, only to witness the death of her husband as he expires with a final cryptic message: “You cannot leave!” The man is holding a teddy bear that draws some suspicion because it seems so out of place, but when Abenthy uses his Aasimir powers to detect demons, undead, or aberations he picks up on nothing abnormal about it.

This is the beginning of a one-shot adventure I came up with for this session, and which I’m planning to put onto DriveThru RPG, once I write it up and PDF it. I was inspired by a monster called the “Treacle” in Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts—which is an amazing product well worth the $30 for any D&D DM—though I redesigned the monster extensively for my adventure.

This is a good example of how a single monster can be a great inspiration for an entire adventure. Read the monster manuals you have and pick a monster that piques your interest. Really delve into it—one of the benefits of modern gaming is the internet as a research tool. Many D&D monsters have been aroud for multiple generations of the game and you can learn a lot about them online. Just a single interesting detail might become the basis for an entire adventure, like how the Treacle is supposed to split in two after it eats enough, and how its most frightening targets are when it becomes a toy and drains the life from children...

The background is that fifteen years ago, a brilliant inventor, Franke LaCroix, took his wife, Maria, their two twin boys, Marcus and Tom, and baby girl Olivia, and moved them away from what he called the “taint” of Waterdeep out to a deserted island, where he built a manor to be self sufficient. He raised goats, hunted in the forest, and cultivated crops. He kept inventing—most of his inventions practical to make the running of the manor easier (such as special fertilizer to keep his crops healthy and needing little care) but some of them more playful (such as a recording device much like a video camera and accompanying projector). Overal, He and his family settled into a life free of the concerns and dangers of modern society.

He also studied spores and molds and fungi, of which there were several interesting varieties on the island. He became obsessed with one in particular, which seemed to be semi-intelligent, or at least responsive, and able to shift into several simple shapes. He kept this sample, which he labeled the “Dopple-Ooze”, in his workshop in the mansion he had built for his family.

And that was his first mistake.

The Dopple-Ooze proved to be a more malevont hunter than Franke had expected. It made its way from the workshop to the nearest bedroom, which was Olivia’s, and took the form of a teddy bear, which she snuggled into bed with. Having made contact with her skin, it sapped her strength and blood until she was an empty husk.

When Franke found out what had happened, a piece of his mind broke. He captured the Dopple-Ooze and locked it in Olivia’s room, using a combination of magic and technology to keep it there, semi-dormant. Under normal circumstances, the Dopple-Ooze would split into two after feeding. This was its normal “breeding” pattern. But Franke kept it from doing this, convinced that somewhere inside its limited intelligence was kept the memory and soul of his daughter.

Weeks went by, and again the ooze found a way to escape, calling out in Olivia’s voice to her mother, Maria, and then laying with the grieving mother while she slept her last sleep. With his wife and daughter now both consumed by the creature, Franke’s mind snapped and his plan changed. He gathered up the twins and fed them into the creature. Then, desperate to rejoin his family, he offered himself to the Dopple-Ooze.

It rejected him.

Perhaps some memory of his family did linger in the ooze, or perhaps it recognized its captor and was getting back at him. Regardless, the next several weeks Franke found himself the target of vicious taunts from the creature, as it took more and more the form of his family, calling out to him, but never devouring him. Never accepting so much as a drop of his blood. Franke kept the door to Olivia’s room locked, but it didn’t seem to matter. The Ooze seemed able to manifest through the walls of the home. Eventually Franke confined himself to his workshop and lost all motivation to live. He fell into malnutrition and sickness, and eventually passed, alone.

The Ooze remained, in a semi-dormant state, until a hunter came to the island to poach the pelts of the Displacer Beasts that lived in its forests. He went looking for pelts, but instead found Maria, who lured him back to the mansion under guise of being a lonely widow, and then trapped him in the house and (along with her twins, all representations of the Ooze) bled him dry. The man did not last long, and soon the Ooze was hungry again.

The second “guest” to arrive was an explorer and his crew. This time, the Ooze was slower, trapping the men in the walls of the house (which the Ooze was able to infect) and bleeding them almost to death, before releasing them, nourishing them back to health with the bounty still being produced by Franke’s inventions, and then doing the process again until finally they all expired from the strain. Their bones still line the walls of the twins’ room.

This baiting has gone on for over five years, and the house has become one entity controlled by the Ooze to the point where it can block doors and windows and control the forms of Maria and the Twins enough to tend the land and the animals to feed its “guests.” Most recently, it attracted a shipwrecked sailor and fed on him for six weeks, finally letting him die the night my players arrive at the house. They believe they are witnessing the death of Maria’s husband, Franke LaCroix, when really they are witnessing the death of the house’s latest victim.

Whispers of Fear

Abenthy knelt by the bed and began to pray. Twyin walked over to Maria and offered her a gentle embrace. “My lady, I am so sorry for your loss. Words cannot express the sorrow that fills my heart for you. If there is something I can do to ease your pain, but name it and it is done.”

“May Tyr watch over his soul on his journey,” Abenthy murmured, from his place at the foot of the bed, head bent in supplication.

“What am I to do?” Maria sobbed. “The children... what is to become of them? Of us? The fields and the goats, the hunting—this was all Franke’s work. I do not know how to operate his machines or tend to his gardens. We have enough set aside for a time, but...” she trailed off.

“... and may he find his way into your light, oh lord of justice...”

“You will come with us,” Twyin said. “We will set you at any port.”

“And then what?” Maria asked. “What do you propose we do next to care for ourselves?”

“I... I do not know, but we will figure out something.”

“... think well on his deeds, and judge him not only for all the good he did, but for all the good left undone.” Abenthy rose, as Maria moved away from Twyin.

“Supper,” she said suddenly. “The twins must eat. And so must you all. Yes, I’ll prepare our supper. Just like normal.” In a daze, she wandered off downstairs.

“Well that was awkward,” Karrina mumbled.

Though trusting of Maria and the twins, my players realize several things are wrong with the house while supper is being prepared. Twyin finds a locked door to the West Wing, underneaht the main foyer. When he tries to open it, it bangs and rattles in the door frame, and he hears a heavy moaning come from somewhere behind it. 

Abenthy, meanwhile, helps Maria prepare supper, and discovers some of the history of her husband’s illness and a lot of the backstory that I described earlier (of course, stopping before any mention of the ooze is made). Olivia is conspiciously absent from this story, conspicious because while Abenthy is hearing this, Karrina finds the mansion’s study, where a large painting of the LaCroix family hangs. In the picture is Maria and the Twins, and Maria is holding a baby. Also, Karrina notices that the man in the picture looks very little like the man they saw die upstairs.

Supper is a quick affair, and afterwards Maria shows them to their assigned rooms (it is too dark to make their way down the spire tonight and besides there are displacer beasts out there). Karrina and Abenthy are shown to one room, and Twyin to another—though, after Maria leaves them, Abenthy forces Twyin to “do the gentlemanly thing” and sleep in his room, giving Karrina her own. Karrina is only halfway grateful, as the house has her seriously spooked, and this room is full of old toys Franke made for his children. The party agrees to sleep for a few hours, to stave off their exhaustion, and then to sneak into the sick room and get a closer look at the dead “husband.”

In the middle of the night, Maria comes looking for Twyin under the guise of desperately needing companionship. She wears naught but an open robe, come prepared to seduce him and be taken into his bed. Of course, what she really wants is to be taken into his bed so she can make direct skin contact and start bleeding him (1d8 necrotic damage to hit point maximum every hour), but Twyin traded beds with Karrina... so she crawls into bed with her instead.

Both Karrina and Maria are startled by each other, but Maria plays to Karrina’s sympathy and the Tiefling agrees to let this human girl (or so she thinks) sleep in the same bed with her—minus the seduction and aftermath. Maria doesn’t care: she doesn’t need sex, she just needs touch.

Meanwhile, Twyin wakes up suddenly, feeling something moving at the foot of his bed. He sees a dark shape there and leaps from the bed, turning on the lamp. He sees nothing out of the ordinairy... until he notices the teddy bear at the foot of the bed.

Wholely freaked out now, Twyin wakes Abenthy (”What? Is it time?”) and tells him: “That teddy bear was moving.” Cue long pause. “Are you feeling okay?” Abenthy asks.

Long story short, the two eventually decide that, whatever is going on, they aren’t going to be able to get much more sleep right now. So Abenthy gets his armor on, while Twyin goes to wake Karrina. He opens the door to see the mostly naked Maria wrapped around Karrina, spooning her. He takes a good eyefull before coughing politely and waking the two women up.

“Goddamit,” Karrina says, when she realizes who it is and what he has seen. Maria blushes and quickly covers herself. Twyin’s smirk died on his lips though, when he saw something glistening on Karrina’s chest.

“Is that... blood?” he asked.

Karrina, startled, rubbed a finger across her chest. No wound, but yes, that was blood. Fear took her as she remembered the man in the other room had died from some kind of sickness. Was it contagious? Why had they decided to stay in a plague-ridden mansion?

Before she could contemplate or regret further, they all heard a scream coming from down the hall.

“That’s Marcus!” Maria said, and turned deathly pale.

The point of this set up, as a game designer, was to give the setting some weight. We didn’t spend a lot of time on supper or exploring the house, maybe twenty minutes between the two, and a lot of this action was driven by the players, like deciding what to do before supper. It let them settle into the environment and become uncomfortable with the situation. The trick with a slower set up, esepcially a horror set up, is to give the players a mixture of “things to steer the action on” and “things to react to.” The first (examples: what rooms to explore, letting them steer conversations, giving them time away from the NPCs to discuss plans and change things, like what rooms to sleep in) is important because it keeps the setting from feeling like a tour of a bunch of pre-planned encounters and jump scares. The second (example: Maria coming into Karrina’s room, the banging door, the scream from the twins room) makes them feel like they are in the middle of something bigger than them and keeps the action moving forward.

Speaking of which...

Twin Trouble

Twyin did not waste time grabbing his armor. He ran from Karrina’s room down the hall, grabbing Abenthy on his way as the lithe Paladin entered the hall. The two burst into the twin’s room, Maria and Karrina not far behind them.

“Oh gods,” Maria said in a shocked whisper.

Twyin had to agree with her sentiment. The room ahead of them was lined with bones. They were in the walls, the remains of bodies in twisted positions. The lamps in here flickered on and off, casting disturbing shadows that made the bones look like they were moving, reaching for the interlopers at the door.

“Help me!” Marcus’ thin voice cried out.

The child was halfway in the wall between his and his brother’s bed, his arms flailing madly as he fought to pull himself free. Behind him, the wall was a mass of angry scars and pustules, and his screams spoke to something horrible happening to his lower half, already embedded in the wall.

Abenthy ran forward and grabbed the child’s arms. “Help me pull him free!” he called. Twyin was quick to respond, leaping onto one of the beds and getting a grip on the child’s arm.

In response, Marcus grinned at Twyin, wrapped his child arms around him, and buried his teeth in Twyin’s throat. Twyin yelled in surprise and fear. Karrina moved forward to help but then felt cold hands wrapping around her throat as Maria grabbed her from behind.

A small giggle came from another wall as Tom emerged into the room, pulling free of a stack of bones in the wall. He ran at Abenthy, and leaped onto the warrior’s back, seeking a place he could bury his fangs.

These three are the main baddies in the house. Maria is the easiest of the three, basically a weaker doppleganger. Her main point is to (a) trick the person whose bed she sneaks into, lowering their max hit points. In another scenario, the party might have slept a lot longer, but as our group decided to set a wake up call at around 3:00am to explore the house more, she only drained about 10 hit points from Karrina. After that, she simply exists to make the twins more difficult.

The twins are no joke. They have two main attacks. One is to try and latch onto a person with bite. If successful, it turns into an automatic grapple while they suck the life and strength out of the victim. But worse, they then try to drag that victim into the wall, where the escape DC becomes much higher, and their AC becomes higher. Also, the damage done each round while an opponent is grappled is automatic max hit point drain. It is a low die roll, a 1d4, but it adds up quickly. Twyin drops his hit point maximum by nearly half by the time combat is over!

Their other attack is a multi-attack swipe, which doesn’t do life drain like the bite, but which is heavy enough damage to keep party members distracted fighting them instead of helping their friend getting pulled into the wall.

The party plays against them perfectly. Abenthy lets himself take the brunt of Tom’s attacks, because his 19 AC is tough to break through. Karrina turtles up, too, using her arcane skills to cast Blade Ward and keep Maria occupied (and ineffective). Twyin takes the brunt of the hurt in this fight, as his arm is stuck in the wall and slowly being stripped of its flesh by Marcus, while he struggles to break free. But once he is free, he unleashes his dual weilding forces upon the wall where Marcus is hidden, until both twins flee.

Maria isn’t so lucky. One of the joys of this fight is that Abenthy refuses to attack the children with anything other than non-lethal damage, which does nothing to an these oozes. He simply can’t bring himself to harm children. But when Twyin chops Maria’s head off and it continues to scream at them despite hanging upside down from her neck, he finally presses the attack and chops her in half, sending her sprawling into the hallway in a bloody heap.

I wanted this house to feel less like a dungeon and more like an environment, so I moved away from the idea of filling certain rooms with certain encounters and opted instead to build a “creature” that could roam the environment, being fought in multiple locations. Thus, the twins ability to move through the walls. Doing something like this occasionally in your own game can keep dungeons from feeling too simliar to one another, and it works especially well in horror settings, where the focus might be better placed on a singular monster or two, rather than on a dungeon crawl.

The twins continue to haunt the players as they move through the mansion, throwing Karrina off the foyer to the entrance hall 20 feet below, and trying to pull Abenthy into a door frame. Finally, they have a last confrontation in the dining room, where Tom rushes Abenthy with butcher knives, and Marcus tries to absorb Karinna into a wall (he fails, as she does a barrel roll... no really, she barrel rolls over the dining room table to get away). This is where the twins are finally cut down.

Abenthy looked at the ruin of the child that had once been Tom. Your blades did this, he thought to himself. You brought this one’s life to an end. Even though he knew that this creature was no longer Tom, nor a child, and had likely not been for many a moon, he still could not get the image of cleaving a child in half out of his head. Was there nothing he could have done to save him? Was there nothing he could do now? A thought began to form in his head, and Abenthy knelt close to the body...

So Abenthy, who has roleplayed his character’s justice flaw so well, gained a minor madness here as he cut down what looked like a young child. I rolled on the random madness chart in the DMG and got “you feel compelled right now to eat something.” Abenthy and I looked at each other. “You start eating the child,” I said. “You believe you can take his soul into your own body this way and deliver him unto Tyr.”

And so things get gross for a moment.

The West Wing

With the Twins defeat, the door to the West Wing flies off its hinges and opens up the way to the rest of the “dungeon.” I’ve talked in previous blogs how I think a good adventure should have a mixture of four different kinds of obstacles:

Social obstacles, in which players have to interact and roleplay with NPCs, usually trying to get something from them, whether help, directions, or an item.

Skill obstacles, in which players have to use their skills and ability scores to bypass barriers or make something easier (jumping over a chasm, climbing up a tower, finding the secret door behind a bureau, beating the pirate king in a game of chance in exchange for his help).

Combat obstacles, in which players use their stats, spells, and abilites to overcome monsters and other enemies in combative situations.

Puzzle obstacles, in which players have to use their own minds to figure out how to beat an obstacle (solve a riddle, figure out a way past a trap, figure out where a hidden key might be).

So far, the adventure has started out with a nice dose of social obstacles, and then led into a long section of combat. Now I bring the focus to puzzles. Past the locked door are two rooms: Franke’s workshop (where his dessicated body still lies, untouched by the ooze) and Olivia’s room. The latter is locked (and is the location of the final encounter). The former hides the key to her room. The recording device I mentioned earlier is here, and by searching the room the players find the gems that activate the device and hold the recordings. From this, they learn the true history of Franke and his family tragedy as described before. They also find a ring which makes them look like Olivia. Disturbingly, Franke had used this ring to make himself look like his daughter, then record himself talking to himself as her. Later, when he would play back these recordings, he could pretend Olivia was alive and speaking to him, a mental mindscrew that speaks to just how far gone he was. His video says as much:

My mind is going... I’ve been putting things in the wrong place... I can’t remember one day to the next. I wish to rejoin my family...

Franke’s message here is a clue. Above the worktable is a shelf holding four jars. One holds a key—but it is a red herring. It unlocks nothing. The real key is hidden “in the wrong place,” inside a jar containing brown mold. In previous messages, they have seen him put the key away on this shelf, and say it is important, which does trigger Karrina to wonder if there is something to the other jars—but it isn’t enough.

My players figure it out eventually, and also find a way to destroy the brown mold and get to the key, but it takes some prodding and first they try pretty much everything else—searching the whole hosue for the  key, attempting to pick the lock and break down the door... and this is after they’ve already gotten all of the clues to the puzzle. This leads me to believe that the riddle might be a bit obtuse—I think in the final version of this adventure I will change this and add in a skill based option to bypass it. Maybe a loose panel somewhere that leads into Olivia’s room through the woodwork—that could be freaky and also explain how the Ooze escaped from the room in the first place.

In any case, inside the room is the final boss, a creature that resembles a giant teddy bear dripping with ooze and pus (if you’ve seen Akira, you know my inspiration). It has Ogre stats, making it an easy to hit heavy hitter. In addition, it can try to grapple on a hit, and if successful forces a single character inside itself, pressing them into its gut where the ooze traps them, removing them from combat until they can break free. It also reduces damage against him by half, dealing half of it to the trapped character.

The idea in designing this fight was to create a monster that wasn’t too hard on its own, but would get harder depending on how much life the players had lost in the previous sections of the house. The beast can hit pretty solidly, possibly killing a character whose life has been drained to leave him with only a dozen or so hit points.

My players actually don’t have much problem with this fight, and I think I will ultimately toughen it up a bit in the final version, maybe adding a “Maria” or two to the room as well, to force players to split their attentions, or giving him a multi-attack to let him at least target multiple characters and try his grapple more than once. Twyin, in particular, makes this combat a breeze, trapping the teddy in a corner and going to town on it with his multiple attacks and special abilities. As a battlemaster he has acces to parry, which reduces damage by 1d8. He uses this to immense effect, saving himself from death dealing blows twice.

I’ll talk a little more next session about designing fights and monsters in D&D 5th Edition.

After this, there is not much else to tell. The players escape the house as it collapses, the ooze having infiltrated most of its structure and dying when its central brain was destroyed in the final shape it took. They eventually make their way back to the boat, where Krisp tells them they missed a rockin’ beach party last night, and that the repairs are done and they will reach the oracle’s island within a couple of days.

Everyone is now level 4. Karrina resolves her flaw, too! It used to be that she was racist against humans, but her time spent amongst them in the last month—not to mention having her past companions sacrifice themselves so that she might live—has changed her perspective. She realized this fully when she was willing to comfort Maria when the woman came to her in the middle of the night, claiming she felt so alone in the room she used to share with her late husband.

Karinna’s new flaw is a tendency to perform acrobatics in the heat of combat. Her natural arrogance has increased as she has survived more deadly encounters and now she is like a kid who has learned to ride a bicycle well enough that they start to wonder: “Can I ride with no hands?”

Next time, depending on how things go on the oracle’s island, we may get a chance to find out...

#playthrough #dnd 5e #Red Hand of Doom #Tomb of Haggemoth #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG