Uncategorized – PopCult Reviews

New Short Story

I made my first post on my fiction blog, PopFic.

Variations on a Life in Macaroni & Cheese

Comic Book Review – JSA: The Golden Age

JSA: The Golden Age
Reprints The Golden Age #1-4
Written by James Robinson
Art by Paul Smith

The post-World War II period in the United States appeared to be a period of jubilation from the outside. Propaganda became full of images of happy white families enjoying their new homes in the suburbs. The German Nazis didn’t really lose. Some of them were tried & punished in Nuremberg. But many of them became founders of NATO and helped lay the groundwork for the European Union, everything done with the intent of undermining communism. Operation: Paperclip created cover to funnel Nazi scientists into the U.S. to aid in the development of the nuclear and space programs. America has a new coat of pain, but underneath is something dark & evil.

Laptop Blues

So my laptop’s charging port finally gave out after years of struggling with it. That means the podcast is on hold and text reviews may be spotty until we get this resolved. The repair is estimated around €200.

I’ve always had a difficult time asking for money/charity, but our budget is fairly tight. It doesn’t escape me that so many are struggling far more than me. If you are able to give, I appreciate it.

Below are links to places I can receive funds. Hopefully we get this resolved sooner rather than later.

Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/c/popcultblog

Ko-Fi – https://ko-fi.com/popcultblog

Ariana’s PayPal – vesseltosea@gmail.com

31 Days of Character Creation #7 – Traveller 2022 Edition

I have heard about the complexity of the Traveller character creation system for years, particularly that your character can die as you are rolling up their lifepath. After going through it, it is quite an experience. I really love systems where character creation is a game unto itself, like Heinrich’s Call of Cthluhu Guide to Character Creation. I had zero idea of who my character would be going into this, but by the end I really understood her much better.

September 2024 Posting Schedule

This is a sparser month for films as we’re focusing in on the work of Bela Tarr. I also wanted a lighter month without taking the whole thing off. I’m really looking forward into diving into Tarr’s work and have a couple books I’ll be reading after watching to help provide more context.

Film Series
[Bela Tarr: Masterworks Sep 12 thru 30]
Damnation, Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies, The Turin Horse

TV Reviews
Sep 8 – Batman: The Caped Crusader Season One
Sep 22 – Northern Exposure Season Four
Sep 29 – Ripley

Comic Book Reviews
Sep 7 – X-Men: Inferno Prologue Omnibus
Sep 14 – X-Men: Inferno Omnibus
Sept 21 – X-Men by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee Omnibus Volume One
Sept 28 – X-Men: Days of Future Present and X-tinction Agenda

Solo Tabletop RPG Reviews & Actual Play
Sept 4, 11, 15 – Liminal Horror Solo
Sept 7, 14, 21, 28 – Supersworn: Victory Academy

Podcast Episodes
Sep 1 – Kinds of Kindness/The Teacher’s Lounge
Sep 8 – Beetlejuice/Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Sep 15 – Rebel Ridge/Evil Does Not Exist
Sep 22 – His Three Daughters/Cuckoo
Sep 29 – Green Border/Didi

Solo Tabletop RPG World Building – Finishing Touches

Read our last session where we used Becoming the Villain to develop one of the main antagonists for our campaign.

I am almost ready to start playing this superhero campaign I’ve been world-building, but I wanted to use three more tools from superhero tabletop RPGs as some finishing touches. I decided to use Starforged as the system with some fan-made superhero assets, but these other games provide instruments that help get a sense of how the world operates. I discovered these by reading other blogs and paging through the PDFs on my laptop.

Solo Tabletop RPG – Worldbuilding: Solo Microscope

You can purchase Microscope here.

Read our previous world building session with The Location Crafter here.

Microscope is not a solo tabletop RPG by design. As I didn’t come to ttrpgs until I was nearly thirty years old, I got tired with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition (the current version at the time I started) and began seeking out other games. Microscope was one of the first I found – a game centered around collaboratively building a timeline. I’ve been lucky enough to play it a few times with other people, but now in my solo era I wanted to see if I could shape it to fit that. I also wondered how better to shape it for a superhero campaign as I am working on one. I found that with Signal Light, a superhero-specific Microscope add-on.

July Film Series Poll

I have a poll on our Patreon that is one of the rare ones open to the public. I’ll include voting You can choose which film series will make up the last two weeks of July. Your choices are:

Fantasy Worlds on Film – 1980s sword & sorcery style tales
The Last Unicorn, Dragonslayer, Conan the Barbarian, The Neverending Story, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Contemporary Filmmaking Women – movies made by female filmmakers working today
The Chambermaid, Happy as Lazzaro, Pariah, The Second Mother, Capernaum

French Film Noir – The French take on the very American genre of Noir
Bob le flambeur, Rififi, Shoot the Piano Player, Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge

Solo Tabletop RPG Review & Actual Play – Sundered Isles Part One

You can purchase Sundered Isles here.

You can purchase Starforged here.

You can purchase Sea of Sands here.

To say I was happy to see Sean Tomkin’s announcement for the Sundered Isles Kickstarter this year would be an understatement. While I am not a big fan of pirate-y-themed things, any expansion of the Ironsworn ruleset is always good. Rather than just make a second science fiction-themed book, Tomkin developed a third-themed way of play while leaving the mechanics open to be easily reskinned for whatever genre you wish to play in. This is an expansion, though, not a standalone game, so a copy of Starforged is required. It is very well worth it if you don’t have a copy yet.

TV Review – Calls

Calls (Apple TV+)
Written by Timothée Hochet, Fede Álvarez, Nick Cuse, Aidan Fitzgerald, Noah Gardner, and Rodo Sayagues
Directed by Fede Álvarez

Apple TV+ has been called the platform with lots of good shows that they never make an effort to promote. I had never heard of Calls until stumbling across a TikTok post. The series was released in 2021, and if not for this horror fan sharing it with the world, I would have continued unaware. Calls is a science fiction/horror anthology, a structure I always find a mixed bag. In this instance, all the stories are connected in the same universe…well, sort of. By the final two episodes, we get a conclusion that wraps things up. What makes Calls such a success where other anthologies falter is how the story is told.