Straight Blogging it

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"