Seth Harris

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Little Town Part One

Little Town
Designed & Written by Gustavo Coelho

If you have been following this blog for several years, you already know I love Twin Peaks and David Lynch. I first saw the series when it originally aired, and I was only 9 years old. Despite being far too mature for my age, I was captivated by the show’s tone. It was unlike anything my little brain had ever experienced and has permanently affected how I approach art my entire life. When I saw there was a solo tabletop rpg based on Twin Peaks and using the Apocalypse World engine, it was like everything I loved was distilled down into a single object. I also discovered the existence of this game the week of my birthday. It was a no-brainer to purchase this one, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with how it uses elements from other solo game systems to evoke the feel of Twin Peaks.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)
Written & Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

I’ve never really been into action movies. I am male, straight, and white; the period where I came of age (1980s thru 1990s) seemed focused on hyper-violent action media that people like me were supposed to eat up. I enjoyed the worlds, designs, and ideas behind many of your typical 80s fare. I was obsessed more with heroes who were not action-oriented. Marty McFly was someone I saw as a fun hero. The same with the superheroes in the comic books I read. I never enjoyed espionage or gun-wielding fare. That still remains today. I am okay with guns being part of a film’s story or nuclear bombs or hand-to-hand combat. I just don’t get a thrill from those things. A story with a strong character arc, especially one that is bittersweet, is what really draws me into a narrative. I know some people adore this movie. I thought it was fine. It’s certainly not the worst Mission: Impossible movie, but I’m doubtful these pictures will ever hook me as they do for many others.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)
Written by Christopher McQuarrie & Drew Pearce
Directed by Christopher McQuarrie

And with this film, we reach the McQuarrie Era of Mission: Impossible. When Dead Reckoning Part 2 releases in 2024, McQuarrie will have directed half of the MI franchise. That makes it worth diving into what McQuarrie says about global foreign affairs. MI is a franchise grown out of the Cold War and anti-communism. Currently, communism as an engine of state power has been beaten back by an unrelenting capitalist assault. I know China has a Communist party as its core governmental body, and they implement policies that have undoubtedly lifted people out of poverty. However, I would argue, and many other communists would, too, that they have been teetering on the edge of communism and capitalism since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms. Communism has never been the offensive threat the West has made it out to be; nations who claim to have communist governments have always been entrenched in defensive positions from outside interference. All that to say, there is no genuinely threatening “commie” bogeyman for these types of films any longer.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)
Written by Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Christopher McQuarrie
Directed by Brad Bird

Brad Bird was not a director likely to have been chosen to direct Mission: Impossible. Before Ghost Protocol, he had no live-action directing credits but had helmed The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. Bird proved to be up to the task and partially ended up shifting the tone of the MI series to a style that remains today. He also was part of a change in the types of villains the films presented. Previous MI films featured rogue IMF agents (MI & MI2) and an arms dealer (MI3). One of the biggest problems with a director like Bird is that he is intensely objectivist, following the writings of Ayn Rand. This can be seen most prominently in his box office flop Tomorrowland but is present in nearly all his work. It follows that his villain in Ghost Protocol is someone whose motives are never clear or coherent but is an outsider attempting to disrupt the status quo. This is also a typical villain archetype in Marvel films which has been a primary reason why those films have become increasingly less appealing to me.

PopCult Podcast – Sanctuary/Rye Lane

Love is in the air this week on the PopCult Podcast. Our first film explores the power dynamics between a wealthy hotel heir and his ambitious dominatrix. The second film is about love blossoming between two young people in modern London.

TV Review – Deadwood: The Movie

Deadwood: The Movie (2019)
Written by David Milch
Directed by Daniel Minahan

It wasn’t the ending we would have liked, but we never believed there would be an ending. That’s how I feel about Deadwood: The Movie. The original idea was to do a series of made-for-HBO films that brought a satisfying conclusion to the series. Money and life saw to that not happening. The film was made just in the nick of time, I suppose. Shortly before he began work on the movie’s script, series creator & showrunner David Milch was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He currently resides in an assisted-living facility as the disease has no cure and weakens a person’s ability to function daily. Milch’s gift to us as he undergoes this tragic transformation is a final glimpse at Deadwood and the characters we grew to love over three seasons. It’s a spotty, often messily structured film, but it is a way to say goodbye.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Supersworn Part Two

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Supersworn Pre-Alpha
Designed & Written by Ben Adams

You can check out this game and many other hacks of Ironsworn here.
Read part one of our Supersworn campaign.

Before we jump into the game, I’d like to review more of how I built my character of Slingshot. In Supersworn, you switch out your spaceship for your headquarters. As for my other Assets, I chose Tendrils as it was the very “slingin'” power I had in mind for this blatant Spider-Man knockoff. Starting out, Tendrils can provide +1 if used in a non-combat Move, and they add another Momentum to whatever the specific Move offers typically. I chose Journalist to go with Christopher Kelly’s background as a collegiate reporter, which gives me +1 to any Gather Information or Compel moves in the context of a story I’m working on. Finally, I picked Loyalist, which lets me add +1 when I Aid an Ally (in a solo instance, this would be friendly NPCs). On a strong hit with a match, this Asset lets me mark my Bonds track.

Comic Book Review – New Gods by Jack Kirby

New Gods by Jack Kirby (2018)
Reprints New Gods #1-11, New Gods reprint series excerpts, DC Graphic Novel #4: The Hunger Dogs, and excerpts from Who’s Who
Written by Jack Kirby
Art by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, D. Bruce Berry, Don Heck, and Greg Theakston

Did DC truly understand what Jack Kirby had given them in his Fourth World concept? Do they realize it yet, or will they just never get it? While Jimmy Olsen was the foot in the door, once Kirby got his core books off the ground, he unleashed a reinvention of what comics could be. New Gods is a comic that doesn’t always have to be about its central characters in the present day. During this year-long run, Kirby would go back in time and tell us stories from these characters’ pasts or stories that gave us information they were not privy to. The result is a sprawling synthesis of Biblical storytelling and modern pop art sensibilities. This is the kind of comic book that only a person like Jack Kirby could have conjured up, a vast cosmic ocean emerging from the mind of a true artistic visionary.

Solo Tabletop RPG Review – Be Like a Crow

Be Like a Crow (Critical Kit)
Designed & Written by Tim Roberts

You can purchase this game here.

This was the first tabletop rpg I have been approached to review by the company that publishes it. That made me feel quite good, and I hope I do justice for every game I review here. If you’re a regular reader of these solo TTRPG reviews, you know I was a newcomer to these games circa 2011. After being very enthused by the gaming scene for a few years, I fell out of love with it due to the reasons many hobbies go sour for people these days. However, this year’s discovery of the plethora of solo games and gaming tools has reinvigorated my joy. One thing to note is that my preference as I perused the ttrpgs back during my first round with them was that I just really wasn’t an Old School Renaissance guy and, in fact, preferred what was sometimes referred to as “story games,” i.e., games that are fiction first rather than crunchy with stats or heavily dependent on mapping and measurement. As a result, I wasn’t exposed to certain kinds of games, and I especially have never played a hex crawl before.

Movie Review – Mission: Impossible III

Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and J. J. Abrams
Directed by J.J. Abrams

For a brief shining moment in 2002, we could have had David Fincher directing a Mission: Impossible movie. But that didn’t happen, and there would be a sequel. As cheesy & silly as Mission: Impossible 2 was, it was the second highest-grossing movie of 2000, just behind How The Grinch Stole Christmas, which meant we would be getting more of them. Joe Carnahan (Narc, The A-Team) was working in pre-production on the project, and the film was reportedly going to feature Kenneth Branagh as a Timothy McVeigh-styled villain with Carrie-Anne Moss and Scarlett Johansson starring in supporting roles. But after a conflict over the film’s tone, Carnahan left, which sent Tom Cruise to the phone to call J.J. Abrams. Due to scheduling delays, many of the film’s actors left the project, which led to recasting. Eventually, all the pieces came together, and a new Mission: Impossible came to the big screens with a whole different tone & style than the previous two.