The Vampires of San Francisco

Jim: “Is this the first time you’ve diablerized in-game?”
Chris: “Since Carlos. Rabenholz has been carrying around those onions entirely pre-emptively—”
Me: “WHATARETHEONIONSFOR?!??!”
Chris: “What? Who said anything about onions?”
Me: “Do…do the onions have something to do with diablerie?!”
Jason: “I don’t know anything about onions.”
Jim: “What is she talking about?”
Me: “I feel like an idiot, it’s been LITERAL MONTHS and I’m apparently THE ONLY ONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THEY DO!!”
Jason: “I don’t remember any onions in this game.”
Jim: “…Are you thinking leeks?”

Continue reading →

Jim: “I’m going to do Illuminate the Trail of the Prey.”
Jason: “On whom?”
Jim: “On the woman.”
Jason: “…Who is….?”
Jim: “Jiao or whatever.”
Jason: “…You don’t remember!?”
Jim: “No! It’s hard to remember!”
Jason: “I’VE TOLD YOU HER NAME EIGHT TIMES TONIGHT!!”
Jim: “Yeah well I didn’t grow up in an area with a large Asian populatio—”
Jason: “Aright, you know what? Raw Intelligence test to see if you remember her name.”
Jim: *rolls* “…Botch.”

Continue reading →

Jason: “So. Tom wakes up and finds that someone has been doing…something interesting with him.”
Chris: “Like sewing someone else’s arms and legs onto him.”
Jason: “…Yes, yes they have. What’s even more helpful is the fact the limbs are fresh. But the damage was more extensive than they initially realized. Several times they poured blood down his throat to heal his chest cavity, onto to find out that no, they still needed to do work in there.”
Me: “O…kay…?”
Jason: “You still got only one lung. They gave up on the other and carved it out. Various internal organs are missing. Your pelvis feels…odd-sized, like it’s from someone else, but it’s rapidly adjusting to your proportions. They basically replaced everything. And more than just blood was involved. There was some fleshcrafting, there was some ritual shit….”
Me: “Wow. Dat Sabbat healthcare tho….”

Continue reading →

Alt Title: Mind Your Bloodpool

My first Movie Review post started as kind of a lark, but the moment I decided to expand the ambitions of the project, I knew this movie would have to be on the docket. Like Blade, it’s a movie I had heard about for years during my childhood of the 90s but, due to my hatred of anything related to vampire mythos, had steadfastly avoided. I mean, I’d seen clips here and there (and, on one notable occasion, was present for a middle-school slumber-party where  girls who had seen the movie talked about it and spoke in hushed tones of the strange tingling some of the scenes made them feel). But I’d never sat down to watch the whole thing. Knowing now how pivotal this movie and Rice’s original chronicles were for the development of not only World of Darkness vampires but the entire genre thereafter, I knew I had to slot it into my review schedule right away.

Considering my audience, though, I must share a few caveats. First and foremost, this is a review of the movie only. Keep in mind I only started caring about vampires  three years ago, so I’ve never read more than a few excerpts of Anne Rice’s original writing. Yes, I understand her written work has a lot more details and there are nuances that don’t translate well into the movie, that’s fine. But a movie is a movie, so it should be evaluated on how well it stands alone. And before you ask, no, I am sorry, I do NOT have time to go read them any time soon. I have books on my nightstand written by friends of mine that I’m already barely able to scrape together enough time for.

Except for any of them reading this review. I totally already read your book, you!

Anyway, that being said, there’s quite a lot about this movie I did enjoy, most especially the irony of watching it through the lens of the canon it helped inspire in the first place. So I hope you enjoy my observations as well.

Continue reading →

Hello, regular-readers and random wander-throughs, I just wanted to drop a quick note updating you on my writing plans in the next month or two:

Continue reading →

Me: “Oh my god, I’m gonna start calling you Lord Gussie now.”
Chris: “…I will remove your lungs.”

Continue reading →

This one doesn’t have any good pull-quotes that work out of context so let’s just get right to it!

Continue reading →

Chris: “I call Georgia Johnson.”
Jason: “…Oh, Christ…why do you do this to me?”
Chris: “It’s what he would do! There’s all these schemes in play that involve her!”
Jason: “Yeah, there are….”
Chris: “And Paul is going to be doing the same thing about an hour from now—”
Jason: “Alright, you know what? Ms. Johnson is off on another plane of reality right now so she isn’t taking any calls. That’s my solution for right now, we’ll work the rest out later.”
Chris: “That’s fine. I leave a voicemail. Paul will as well, eventually. ‘Georgia, this is Paul, I’m with a were-alligator, you said you’d be here forty minutes ago, please help, thanks bye!’”

Continue reading →