Erratica Reduex

Warning: not for children, or well, anybody.

In which bad grammar leads to my worst character concept, ever.

As a test of the PDQ system, a poster on rpg.net presented us with a challenge: create a character based on one of a list of concepts he gave us. Well, I looked at the list, and though most of them didn't appeal to me, one caught my eye:

4) a 1920's cthulhu detective


OK, I'll bite. In my own way.


Great Cthulhu, Private Detective.

Great Old One (People) Master (+6): Surviving distant eons, intimidating lesser beings, flying through space when the stars are right, sleeping underwater, etc..

Nonterrestrial Matter (Faculty) Expert (+4): Size and shape change, turning insubstantial when hit by a boat, etc..

Invader of Dreams Good (+2): invading dreams, dream telepathy, causing insanity, etc..

Sorcerer (Magic) Expert (+4): Dark dangerous magic, just as in Jaws of the Six Serpents.

Flatfoot (Profession) Expert (+4): Snooping, shadowing, shaking down mooks, walking down those mean streets, etc..

Squid of Honor (Driver) Good (+2): Down these mean streets a Great Old One must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete Great Old One and a common Great Old One and yet an unusual Great Old One. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a Great Old One of honor.

Can Give as Good as He Gets Good (+2): Every detective needs to be able to take the occasional love tap to the back of the skull, or punch out a thug.

Trusty Service Revolver Good (+2): Because all dicks need to have one.

Marge, the Secretary (Companion) Good (+2): Again, a mainstay for an effective private eye.

Weakness: Heavy Sleeper (-2). It's tough getting out of bed first thing in the eon


I have to admit I really like the Prose Descriptive Qualities system: it's simple, modular, has a unified conflict resolution system, and much like it's ancestor Over the Edge, you can describe pretty much anything in it. So, I'll be talking more about how I ca use it later.

Context:





Oh. That's who. How utterly humiliating.

Anyway, that's what I got when I did the writing analysis of my last "Under the Green Moon" story. When I tossed some character backgrounds for a Heroquest game into the shredder I got:





*sigh* Is it too early in the day to start drinking heavily yet?

A legal letter I wrote to the government received this result:





You heard it here people! Margaret Atwood reads like a formal appeal to a labor relations board!

Finally, I tried my resume:





Maybe I should stick to writing resumes. Or maybe I should just crawl under the bed with the cats.

Edit: links taken out due to site being a vanity press.

(Edit: Forgot to mention: original story nicked from James Nicoll's blog) Britney Spears shows original pictures of herself next to airbrushed ones. Just to show how the perfection-obsessed world of mass media alters already attractive humans to remove any "imperfections" and make them adhere to an inhuman standard of beauty.

Not that I've ever been a fan of Britney Spears, either her music or the person, but this is actually pretty interesting and frankly, something of a brave move.  In the original pictures Britney is still a fairly attractive woman, but the editing makes her something different, less human, frankly.  It's like the people in charge of advertising are desperate to approach the Uncanny Valley from the other direction, and on some magazine covers and advertisements have succeeded.

Myself, I think the future will probably end up with everyone wearing VR goggles that automatically photoshop away all imperfections in real time.  After all, why stop at magazines if you can 'shop the people themselves?

Helpful safety hint:


After a long, depressing day, one that includes crappy work stuff, uncooperative bureaucrats, and reading about the horrible death of a pet kitty....

In seeking to relax, DON'T open a book of Russian fiction.

No really. Just DON'T.  RED LIGHT.  STOP.

After cooling off with a couple chapters at the tail end of Nightwatch, I'm ready to curl up in bed and go into vodka-induced catatonia, rather than the party I'm going to. I know my mood will lift after I'm with some happy people, but it'll take some effort. 

Geez, those Russians authors need to lighten up!

So, Identify that song!


Trick question actually, AFAIK there is no song with those lyrics(Though I'm waiting for one of my friends to dredge one up).

I am exhausted. This weekend I went to a party, watched Shakespeare, drank too much port, couldn't sleep, and woke up with a headache. More or less in that order, and repeated. So today I am dragging along, too tired even to take a nap during lunch.

On the plus side, my resume now reads that I've worked at this job for a year, though according to the earliest message I have in Outlook, I actually started on the 6th of last February. I am dimly amazed that I've lasted so long; I fully expected multiple times to be fired or quit, or for the business to go out of business, or be raided by the IRS, or...but we're still here. I feel kind of a perverse sense of accomplishment at being here as long as I have, kind of in a samurai "It's more honorable to serve a bad master loyally than a good one". Not that I'm inclined to serve all that well any more. And I may be here as much for my resume and a "better the crappy job you know than the unemployment line" attitude than anything resembling loyalty.

Still, I have this thing to cling to; I have survived here a year. I choose to feel good about that. And I have more UTGM posts coming out Real Soon Now. That makes me feel much better. Live for my hobbies, say I.

Oddly enough, for all that the Lovecraft mythos have infiltrated geek culture, there aren't that many comics or webcomics that reference the Mythos directly. There certainly aren't very many comics that feature Lovecraft and other Mythos writers in a Mythos-based adventure.

First to get you started: A Cthulhu Chick Tract!

And another Cthulhu Chick Tract!


And finally, Lovecraft is Missing, the Webcomic.

And so to get things started, we have a story that starts off slowly, but with a charming absence of normality. A woman with a gun is let off in a very horrible slum neighborhood, and searches out a bookstore and its odd inhabitants, in order to purchase a  complete edition of...something. She also appears at the home of a vanished artist, the notorious Pickman, to buy a map, and later we see her working a special collections room, dealing with the fact that a book is missing an important section...and was last borrowed by one HP Lovecraft. Interspersed with her bibliophilic adventures, we also meet a two-fisted pulp author who is travelling to the east to meet his pen pal, Lovecraft, as well as some pulp magazine editors and writers.  We watch some creepy people who seem to know too much about what's going on. We even meet Lovecraft who well, disappears.

And that's about it for action, as this webcomic is new.   It's hard to tell where it's going at this point, other than we've already had glimpses of the mythos and hints of multiple conspiracies. But at this point I don't mind, because this comic does a good job of giving the feeling of menace lurking both in the shadows and behind the facade of ordinary life.  Beyond that the art is of a quality that's far higher than most webcomics, resembling a hardcopy comic done in a European style. Some of the backgrounds are wonderfully detailed, and no wonder- the artist took plenty of reference pictures in Boston.  Characterization so far is slim, the story jumps around a lot, and I'm hoping that soon we'll actually find out who our mysterious flapper book buyer is.  But since this seems to be more of a graphic novel than a standard webcomic, I'm willing to give the story a while to make its revelations known.  And frankly, at least for now the artwork makes the ride to whatever horrifying conclusion there will be a worthwhile

At this point,

This was done in response to Jason Corley's fascinating The Best Changeling: The Lost Game Without Changelings idea, which involves human smugglers the World of Darkness, urban legends, magic, and well, Changeling: the Lost.

The story itself though turned out to have far less to do with Changeling: the Lost, and more to do with a character and some elements that I've been tossing around. And of corse this was a quick one-off, and I could definitely use some work on the vernacular and slang.

Still, I kinda like it. let me know what YOU think:


( The Coyote and the House )

And that's it. Any criticism, good or bad, welcomed.

I never thought I'd actually say it.

Or really, that I'd have to. 

After the rumor that Keanu Reeves was planning to create a live-action "Cowboy Bebop" movie hit Metafilter:

"Uh guys? Your geek rage is at 11, and I need down to about a 6, OK? Thanks. "

We lost another person today, taking our company down to five people.

Today, I drove into the parking lot in time to see Adrian, one of the two people running the fortune cookie store, walking away. He had come in lone enough to get his check, and left. I really should have stopped and said goodbye to him, since he was a decent guy with a good sense of humor. Evidently being told to cold-call and try to sell fortune cookies to tax preparers was the last straw.

Joy of Joy, two more employees have whispered to me (Bossman doesn't like us to talk to each other) that they are looking for other work, and are on the brink of just quitting. Which will leave as employees, let's see...the IT guy and me.

And right now the one person Board of Director/backer/investor has come to talk to Der Bossenstein- they've gone to an early lunch to talk, I guess. I didn't even KNOW we had a backer. This seems ominous, even though the guy on the phone sounded so senile I couldn't give him directions to our location.

At this point, I'm mainly hanging around so I can use the computer to toss resumes out, and also to watch this slow train wreck happen.

Then again, I know a company a block away that just lost three employees this weekend- admittedly in a triple homicide. Maybe I should apply there. It couldn't be worse then here.