LOUISA JOINES

Straight Blogging it

5/24/2026

Back on my bullshit. I will continue these when I feel like until I run out of things to talk about (hopefully never)

What I've Played:

Since last I've started up that Cain campaign, which is going really strong. It's a shorter, smaller thing I'm trying to hold back on art for but I've done a little. Here's some NPC portraits. Horror/battle shonen is a really fun sandbox to GM in- I always find myself working in a lot of big genre maximalism into my games and it really fits here. Running it as a heavily catholic tinted mesh between Chainsaw Man, GM's Doom Patrol, Evangelion, general conspiracy fiction and I plan on going real Devilman/Go Nagai in the last bit (any of you seen Getter Robo Armageddon?)
Even through the genre filter though, what's keeping me head over heels with Cain is that it's a game with a tight focus on people and empathy and human lives and problems, which is so rare in this hobby. You can tack on as much crazy bullshit as you want but that emotional center is really the pillar (of course, it's helps that it's so cool)

These are for a family man with a grudge to hold (you can trust him), the players handler (she's very bitter about it) and Justice, a legendary exorcist who gets unfrozen and shot out of the atmosphere to deal with big crisis events (don't worry about it)

What I've Made:

Keeping up with my Lancer character sheet refresh series. I'm trying not to flood my entire portfolio page with this series but maybe I should. These are a lot stronger than the similar ones I was doing just late last year which makes me pretty happy. Improvement! Super fun to revisit some characters like Aishe who I haven't drawn in a long time, pull my babygirls out of epilogue retirement and give them the glowup treatment. Look at her... so proud of you girl.

What I've Watched:

-Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971)
I'd seen Terayama's Pastoral: to Die in the Country a couple years ago and had this on the list since. Finally got around to it. A pulsing, beautiful, sometimes quite distasteful bit of scrappy and genuine punk art. Warts and all this is the "real deal", a little cut out bit of counterculture rebellion and thought. Fixating and provocative and impossible to look away from. There's an incredible, unreal sounding soundtrack done with the Tokyo Kid Brothers which I'd recc seeking out on youtube even separately from the film. The lead there would later go on to write and score Revolutionary Girl Utena's battle songs, and you can really hear it.

-Edvard Munch (1974)
Peter Watkins is one of my favorite recent-ish discoveries, and I've been working my way through his catalogue (at the end of April I also finished the intimidating the Journey, at 14 hours. On youtube if your insane like me). I was scared by this one for a fair bit (4 hours! One sitting!) but put it on while rendering and the length flew by. I find myself loving Watkins mockumentary style, which in other hands could be a gimmick but here is constantly being interrogated. A biopic trying to come to terms with how useless a biopic is at actually examining its subject. Edvard Munch paints looking for a meaning, Peter Watkins scrambles to understand him.

-Here and Elsewhere (1976)
Am I the only person under 40 to actually like Godard? Verdict still incoming. This is a brutally challenging and dense work. Godard is uninterested at presenting a neat narrative of global activist unity, instead he spits in the face of the idea. It's a mess, says Here and Elsewhere. We know so little. Even harder to write about than it is to watch; a manifesto of images that's quite impossible to translate to text.

-Giant Robo: the Day the Earth Stood Still (1992)
Simply the best. Essential viewing.

What I've Been Listening Too:

-Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971)
The soundtrack by the Tokyo Kid Brothers, as mentioned above. Great stuff. Fave track is "Tale of an Abandoned Mother"

1 Comment

It's a Blog? Always Has Been.

4/8/2026

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I'm going to try keep a blog page running on here. Everyone (including myself) complains about not having personalized web pages anymore so fuck you, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to aim for monthly updates focusing on:
-Neat things I've recently played/watched/read/listened etc
-Artistic side projects & hobby work that doesn't fit on my portfolio.

What I've Played:

I've been on a short ttrpg gap recently, but we'll be starting a little game of Cain soon. I last ran in Feburary for my Shadow of the Wolf campaign of Lancer, so I'm exited to get back into the GM chair. Here's a look at some experimental work I've done for that, just putting together investigation maps from google earth pro screenshots and random stock image collage.
You can make or find things like urban maps super easily and I always find it improves investigation games, I love finding old period-specific city maps for Call of Cthulhu adventures and just printing them out/putting them on the foundry. Lends a bit of context and geography to the scenes, plus everyone loves getting to stick pins into the important locations like a movie detective.

We also recently wrapped up a brief campaign of D&D 5e, which was a sort of tongue in cheek nostalgia trip with some newer ttrpg friends who'd never touched the monolith of Dungeons and Dragons before*. Here's my character art for that though- I'm happy with how she turned out for the time investment!

*I do not like Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Hadn't touched since I was a teen (holy shit I feel so old) and it plays even clunkier than I remembered. Just a bit naff really.

What I've Watched:

-Red Rooms (2023)
I've been in the mood for something evil and sinister recently and this did the trick. Reminded me a lot of personal classic Demonlover, with it's pitch-black cyber-noir overtones. Detached, cold, methodical. High rise apartments with wind howling at the windows and crypto gambling on the monitor, sterile courtrooms where people formally discuss unthinkable violence. If a movie was haunted, it'd be this.

-Iran, Utopia In the Making (1980)
This is a documentary by Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, who's filmography
I've been slowly working through. It's the first film of hers I've seen set outside her home city of Beirut, and is quite different in it's style and delivery.
Saab takes a heavy back seat here, and the result is a fascinating look at the contemporary viewpoints and climate of immediate post-revolution Iran. A lot of people say a lot of poorly aged things- it's a real humanization and grounding of a place in history we just don't see covered this way from western media. A genuine historical curio.

-Nashville (1975)
This "Robert Altman" guy is pretty good at making movies, huh? I love how
meandering this is, a great movie with the confidence to completely waste your
time on a bunch of mediocre country songs and dead end narratives. Awkward
and bumbling and totally pointless but also weirdly coincidentally meaningful in
the way real life is.

What I've Been Listening Too:

-Sabotage/Live (1979)
This is a real deep cut by John Cale of the Velvet Underground, and one of my favorite of his solo recordings. A nasty, violent bit of cold war paranoia. Cale rips his voice apart screaming about nuclear bombs and military intelligence, music for the times. Dreadful stuff!

0 Comments

Straight Blogging it

What I've Played:

What I've Made:

What I've Watched:

What I've Been Listening Too:

It's a Blog? Always Has Been.

I'm going to try keep a blog page running on here. Everyone (including myself) complains about not having personalized web pages anymore so fuck you, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to aim for monthly updates focusing on:-Neat things I've recently played/watched/read/listened etc-Artistic side projects & hobby work that doesn't fit on my portfolio.

What I've Played:

What I've Watched:

What I've Been Listening Too:

Archives

I'm going to aim for monthly updates focusing on:
-Neat things I've recently played/watched/read/listened etc
-Artistic side projects & hobby work that doesn't fit on my portfolio.