Buffy Fan Fiction Challenge, Part II

Way back in October, I posted Part I of the Buffy Fan Fiction Challenge, in which my wife challenged me to read three chapters of Lori's Fan Fiction. I was kinda mean, in retrospect--after all, I've written plenty of fan fiction myself and the definition of fan fiction is that it's not professional material.

Tonight, for Part II, I read the chapter "Ch-ch-changes", which starts with Spike and Giles (good friends in this alternate end to Season Six) arriving back in Sunnydale just in time to stop Willow from going batshit crazy and destroying the planet. The plot here concerns two demons known as Tollers, because they act as door openers for major demonic entities: in this case, the door just happens to be the Hellmouth. The Scoobies and friends mount up and go demon hunting before that can happen.

I liked the concept of the Tollers, even though they're not really fleshed out very much (they have electrical and cyclone powers it appears). It's competent, if not original: I could see the plot making an eight-page backup in the original line of Buffy comics (comics which, to my mind, encapsulated the definition of mediocre--not really terrible, but not particularly memorable either). I still find the buddy-buddy Giles and Spike friendship really weird to read, but there was one moment that made me laugh: Spike, in his interior monologue, trying to wax poetically about the cloudy night, making a hash out of it, and realizing that even after 120 years he makes a crap poet.

Fantasy Football: Weeks 16 & 17

Hm, if I only I had done so well in the regular season as I have in the playoffs. I won the second round of the consolation ladder (combining weeks 16 and 17) by a narrow margin of 160-152. I actually lost week 16 because I forgot to pull Peyton Manning and Pierre Garcon (they didn't play much since the Colts had everything wrapped up), but I made up enough ground the following week to get the overall win, mainly because my opponent's team suffered a couple of key injuries. For Week 17, I subbed in Brett Favre (the second time I've played him all season) and Mike Wallace (the Pittsburgh WR)--they both came up big, with Favre pulling in 28 and Wallace 12.

The win moved from the last ranked team in the league of ten teams when I entered the playoffs to the # 7 team when the playoffs were over. I have a much better idea now how fantasy football works in terms of scoring and drafting, so I think I'll be able to improve next season. When I first signed up, I was curious whether fantasy football would be any fun--I can happily report it added a little to my enjoyment of watching the games, because I was not only rooting for teams but also for individual players around the league. It's also not very time-consuming (blogging about takes far longer than tinkering with my depth chart). The one disappointment is the particular league I played in was very quiet--no trades as far as I could tell.

WEEK 16

SUN RUNNERS: 87 Points

QB Peyton Manning, Ind QB 7
RB Ricky Williams, Mia RB 5
RB Jonathan Stewart, Car RB 27
RB/WR Beanie Wells, Ari RB 14
WR Chad Ochocinco, Cin WR 9
WR Pierre Garcon, Ind WR 0
TE Fred Davis, Was TE 2
D/ST Steelers D/ST, Pit D/ST 10
K David Akers, Phi K 13

GREENVILLE GONZOS: 95 Points

QB Tom Brady, NE QB 26
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD RB 17
RB Pierre Thomas, NO RB 12
RB/WR Knowshon Moreno, Den RB 8
WR Marques Colston, NO WR 5
WR Wes Welker*, NE WR 13
TE Heath Miller, Pit TE 3
D/ST Vikings D/ST, Min D/ST -3
K Mason Crosby, GB K 14

WEEK 17

SUN RUNNERS: 75 Points

QB Brett Favre, Min QB 28
RB Ricky Williams, Mia RB 3
RB Jonathan Stewart, Car RB 18
RB/WR Beanie Wells, Ari RB 1
WR Chad Ochocinco, Cin WR 0
WR Mike Wallace, Pit WR 12
TE Fred Davis, Was TE 4
D/ST Steelers D/ST 8
K David Akers, Phi K -1

GREENVILLE GONZOS: 57 Points

QB Tom Brady, NE QB 5
RB LaDainian Tomlinson, SD RB 1
RB Pierre Thomas, NO RB 0
RB/WR Knowshon Moreno, Den 21
WR Marques Colston, NO 0
WR Wes Welker*, NE WR 1
TE Heath Miller, Pit TE 11
D/ST Vikings D/ST 11
K Mason Crosby, GB K 7

Final Fantasy Legend

A few months ago, I got a huge craving to play an old-fashioned computer role-playing game. I ordered Final Fantasy I & II for my Nintendo DS, but while waiting for it to arrive I got impatient (and desperate) and picked up a really weird little game for the original Gameboy titled Final Fantasy Legend. According to Wikipedia, Final Fantasy Legend has absolutely nothing to do with the Final Fantasy saga, other than that they're both imports of Japanese monster-slaying games (the idea behind Legend was that, probably accurately, any game with Final Fantasy in the title would sell better in America).

Anyway, Final Fantasy Legend is interesting in a few different ways. First, your party of adventurers can be made-up of three different types: humans (who can wear the most armor and get permanently stronger and more agile through expensive potions); mutants (who have magic spells which change constantly and are of vastly different power levels); and monsters (who change their monstrous forms and abilities by eating the flesh of dead foes). Second, the game starts you off on the lowest level of a strange tower of worlds. As you progess in the usual way and defeat bosses, you climb higher and higher along this tower until eventually you meet the ultimate boss: the Creator himself! Third (and I guess this is in keeping with some of Final Fantasy), the technology level of each world gets higher and higher as you climb up--so your characters start out with swords, for example, and end up with "N-bombs" or guns.

Of course, the game also has a lot in common with other mid-80s computer RPGs: There's no way to tell in-game how effective various weapons, armors, potions, and spells are (or even what they do) other than by trial-and-error; each NPC has only one line of canned dialogue, which he or she will repeat over and over again; the plot is about as sketchy as possible.

Like I said, it's a weird little game, and its opacity in a few places made me occasionally resort to a walkthrough for guidance. But now that it's over with and I have killed the Creator (blasphemy?), I can move on to something better.

Hidden

Hidden was one of the early Torchwood audiobooks, read nicely by Naoko Mori (a.k.a., Tosh). It's a very unusual Torchwood story in that, as far as I can remember, it has absolutely nothing to do with aliens or alien artifacts (Countrycide is the only other example that comes to mind of a Torchwood story that meets the same criterion). It's actually more in the Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) style, as it involves an ancient arcane mystery (in this case, alchemy), a Templar-like secret society of masked gunmen willing to kill to keep their secrets, and a couple of brutal car chases (one of which leaves Ianto a bloody pulp). Also unusual for Torchwood is that Jack has more of a background role (he spends most of the time in a police interrogation room). On the whole, I'd probably give it an average grade--definitely better than Everyone Says Hello, but not as good as The Sin Eaters.

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste

The Mystery of the Mary Celeste is another of the "hidden object" computer games that my wife and play play frequently. She really loves that type of game for some reason, and I find them relaxingly easy, so it's a good way to spend a couple of hours together. This one has at its core the usual activity of trying to spot stuff hidden in cluttered backgrounds, but with occasional puzzles to provide some variety. (I see that "walkthroughs" have been posted on the Net--who the heck needs a walkthrough for a hidden object game? They're almost completely linear, and if you really can't find a particular hidden object, there's a hint feature . . . ) The "plot" of these types of games is usually pretty simple, and this one concerns a voyage on the Mary Celeste II on which strange phenomena hearkening back to the disappearance of the original ship begin to occur. There's a generic "twist ending" which doesn't proffer any sort of explanation for what really happened, but then who plays these games for the story?

Clone Wars Campaign Recap Extra: Still in the Holster

This was the first piece of fiction I ever wrote to help fill in some gaps in the long-running Star Wars role-playing game. A long jump of gametime (around two years) took place around Session 33, and I wanted some things to be very different for the characters on the other side of that jump. One of those things was that the Sun Runner Twitch was dead--which naturally led to the players asking how that happened, and so here's what I came up with . . .


STILL IN THE HOLSTER

Twitch sighed and spun the empty glass on the bar. He was sitting in one of the disgustingly bright and colourful Alderaanian lounges that were the closest thing an off-worlder could find to a cantina. Bouncy music like something from a turbolift played in the background. The bartender had cut Twitch off of synthale three rounds ago, citing some sort of pro-sobriety policy. Now it was either keema juice or caf, neither of which would help Twitch forget about the humiliation of the past few days: not only had Arresta and her friends somehow managed to escape a perfectly good deathtrap, she had completely ignored his back-up plan and left the planet. An ignominious beginning for a life as a bounty hunter, and Kronos probably wouldn’t help him now that Twitch had parted ways with the Sun Runners. Maybe Jocasta would take him back . . . it was hard to find a good pilot, even if she kept blathering on about that Duros and her destiny.

A middle-aged, fit man with just a hint of gray at his temples sat down next to Twitch and slid one of his two synthales over to the Rodian. Twitch looked the man in the face and slowly shook his head before sliding the drink back.

“I might’ve had a mishap,” Twitch said in heavily accented Basic. “But I’m not a moron. Everyone in my line of work knows Stefan Cassadine. You really think I’m going to drink from a glass prepared by the galaxy’s foremost practitioner of Malkite poison techniques.”

“I’m just here for some conversation,” Cassadine responded calmly.

“You’re here for revenge,” Twitch said. “Well, I’m glad I got a chance to look you in the eye. Your wife might’ve escaped on that Hutt freighter, but you and me can step outside.”

“I’ve heard of you too,” Cassadine said. “Quick draw duelist with a disintegrator. Well, thanks for telling me what I needed to know.” Cassadine finished his drink, stood up, and started to walk away.
“What, you’re backing down?” Twitch chortled, finally feeling himself again. Imagine, the notorious crimelord Stefan Cassadine backing down from him. He’d be able to tell this story at every dive on Nal Hutta, and no one would ask how he bungled the Mongui princess bounty.

Cassadine paused, halfway out the door. He turned around and looked Twitch in the eyes. “The poison’s not in the drink. It’s on the glass. If you haven’t taken the antidote like I have, you’re already dead. Nobody touches my wife. Nobody.”

Twitch jumped up and drew his disintegrator. The other patrons screamed and began scrambling for the door. By the time Twitch made it outside, Cassadine was gone. And then the first convulsion came . . .

Return to Clone Wars Campaign Main Page

Torchwood Magazine # 18

The newest issue of Torchwood magazine continues with a heavy emphasis on Children of Earth. Here's some of the stuff I noticed:

* An update on the three newest Torchwood novels, with a short "behind-the-scenes" of the writing process. I really liked a sidebar which collated continuity references in the novels (both taken from the show and original references shared between novels).

* An interesting "Torchwood on Trial" feature, which argues the case for and against convicting each of the main actors in Children of the Earth. Jack, not surprisingly, gets an "irrefutably not guilty" verdict.

* A cleverly titled short story, "Stakes on a Plane", which features Jack, Gwen, and Ianto dealing with a vampire threat on a commercial flight. It's a fun and original setting for a Torchwood adventure, so thumbs up on my end. (I also really like the artwork the magazine commissions to accompany the short stories--much better than they get for the comic strip).

* Part 4 of the 5 part comic strip "Broken". Jack, Gwen, and Inato are still trapped in haunted house thing, trying to find Bilis Manger and figure out how to escape. A rift monster which feeds on living energy apparently wants Jack for a neverending buffet. Bad artwork continues, okay story and dialogue.

* A short titled "I May Be Some Time", which concerns the real life doomed Antartica expedition of Captain Lawrence Oates. Oates has somehow fallen through the Rift, but he's being chased by a shadowy creature which is killing everyone in its path. More an encomium to Oates than a particularly good story.

* A "Beyond the Hub" featurette, this time on alleged real-world cases of possession (and exorcism). Some very interesting and ghastly accounts of exorcisms performed on people who probably quite simply mentally ill. I continue to really like this series.