Although it's been something I've been into for more years than I care to remember, I haven't really looked into werewolfy stuff in any great detail for some time -- with the exception of the RPG Werewolf: The Forsaken, I suppose. However, there's been a few items of related news recently, and I also delved into Amazon for a number of books on the subject, so I figured I'd talk about that here.

On the gaming front, I've got a few more supplements for Forsaken, and it really is an excellent game. I'd be happy to either run or play it at some point, so hopefully I'll get the chance. More to the point, though, I managed to track down a second-hand copy of its old World of Darkness counterpart, Werewolf: The Apocalypse; while I already had the second and revised editions of the game, along with maybe 80% or more of the supplements, I'd wanted a copy of the first edition for a while but never got around to doing anything about it, and now I finally have one - it dates from way back in 1991. (I'd also like the revised live-action rules, the Laws of the Wild, but the newer edition of that is still pretty expensive, even second-hand; I guess it's one of the rarer ones to come by.) As I've mentioned previously, I'm hoping to get hold of some more of the old Werewolf supplements, either through PDF or buying off friends.

The other gaming news that probably everyone has heard by now is that the werewolf-like Worgen as playable characters in World of Warcraft has been confirmed, as posted by everyone in the world ever. I used to play World of Warcraft a long time ago, and I quit just before Burning Crusade came out; apparently there's been a ton of improvements, and with this new expansion it looks to be even better -- so I'm finding myself tempted to try it again, although the outlay for the game and all three expansions will likely be steep. That being said, I mean holy crap you can play a werewolf for god's sake. That's enough of an incentive for me at least. There's also a few nice Worgen pictures in the concept art for Cataclysm, which is well worth checking out - though the Werewolf News post has all the Worgen concept art at a substantially higher resolution than the official site, for whatever reason. No word as of yet when the expansion's going to drop, though. (On the subject of art, check out this piece from Jerad Marantz - Creature Spot is a pretty neat art blog as a whole, too.)

Someone posted a link to this (werewolf cupcake! so cute!), and as a result I ended up searching Flickr for photos tagged "werewolf". In amongst all the Twilight related crap, there were a bunch of shots of this rather tasty fellow (sfw, pretty much) which made wading through all the other stuff almost worth it. For moving pictures, although the release date is slipping constantly, Werewolf News again comes up with the goods in the form of the Official Wolfman Trailer, which looks fucking awesome. I've got a few new werewolf movies to keep me occupied in the meantime, though; the first two, Big Bad Wolf and Wild Country, I got based on recommendations, and War Wolves just looked pretty entertaining for a low price - reviews aren't great, to say the least, but even cheesy werewolf flicks can be fun.

In terms of books, I've ordered quite a range (though I'm still waiting on a couple to arrive). Obviously at first I went for the 'classics': Sabine Baring-Gould's 1865 Book of Werewolves, Elliot O'Donnell's Werwolves from 1912, and Montague Summers' 1933 classic, The Werewolf. As for more recent works, a long time ago an ex-partner got me Brad Steiger's rather unimpressive Werewolf Book; more interesting among modern works are Adam Douglas' The Beast Within (which the aforementioned ex had a copy of, but wouldn't give or sell it to me), Leonard R. N. Ashley's Complete Book of Werewolves, and perhaps most interesting of all is The Curse of the Werewolf by Chantal Bourgault du Coudray.

While all of the above are (broadly speaking) non-fiction, I did come across a couple of novels as well. I got one by Russian author Victor Pelevin (described by the Independent as the "Zen Buddhist Will Self of the former Evil Empire"), with the irresistable title of The Sacred Book of the Werewolf, and one that I'm sure I had recommended to me but I can't for the life of me think of where I heard about it, Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar. [edit: completely forgot to link to Lycanthrope Library, a kind of werewolf book review service; one recent entry memorably features a "gun-toting, lycanthropic nun".] I've also had some enjoyable graphic novels on the same subject; I picked up the recent miniseries of Werewolf by Night, with the titular character being an anti-hero at best; I must say I preferred The Astounding Wolf-Man, in which the character uses his abilities for good, a rarity in werewolf stories. The artwork's awesome too; Jason Howard posts some of his work over on deviantART.

It's also worth mentioning that I have a couple of books on Real Actual Wolves that I've got hold of via friends; I have Barry Lopez' seminal Of Wolves and Men, along with The Wolf Almanac by Robert H. Busch, apparently one of the best available on the subject. Finally, I -- perhaps unwisely, from my bank account's point of view at least -- searched eBay for 'werewolf', and found all sorts of interesting things. All I bought, though, was something that immediately caught my eye -- a pair of Tibetan silver (were)wolf head charms, as pictured. The price was low, and as I had a spare silver chain lying around, I've decided to give the other charm to torque_tiger as a little gift.

Around this time last year, I'd just bought my Asus Eee PC 701 4G, and replaced my broken Nintendo DS with a brand new DS Lite. Of late, I've got hold of various add-ons and equipment to add to the functionality of those, along with rekindling some of my other 'geeky' interests: comics, anime, and roleplaying.

( First, the tech... )

That ties in nicely with the roleplaying, as both series are often touted as inspiration for and/or examples of Exalted-level combat. While I'm still very interested in that game, and continue to acquire books for it, I've recently got (back?) into the new World of Darkness. I had the core rules, and (naturally) Werewolf: The Forsaken since the release of the latter, but until recently I had not really looked at the line at all. A few weeks ago I picked up another of the main 3 games, Mage: The Awakening; and on Wednesday, I was able to get hold of Vampire: The Requiem -- completing my collection of the core three games -- and Changeling: The Lost.

As of last week, we'd begun to play a Vampire game run by Miquel; it is thanks to his efforts and those of kolat_ray that I've got back into roleplaying, and I can't thank them enough. The game we're playing is set in ancient Rome, and so far has proved to be quite interesting; it's really held my attention despite me not being familiar with new Vampire, or overly fond of vampires or Roman settings in general. (I also got interested in Orpheus, as Miquel owns the main book; although that and at least one of the supplements is fairly readily available, all six books may prove difficult to find.)

I tried to find some places to get cheap roleplaying books from, and I was surprised to find Amazon had some good deals. I've ordered Promethean: The Created and Hunter: The Vigil to complete the set of new World of Darkness main books, along with 3 supplements for Werewolf and two for general World of Darkness use.

I'm vaguely considering going to the comic/gaming shops in the near future, possibly today, as I've not been in a very long time; it'll be interesting to see what they have.

(How am I affording this? Well, it was my birthday last week, and I am eternally grateful for generous relatives. Also? They let me have a credit card.)

Werewolves are lame.

Well, at least that was my logic.

I hate the damn things. I figure they're these hokey old holdovers from another age where we actually used to find such cartoony monsters scary. They've seeped into popular culture now. You'll be more likely to find them in romantic comedies and kid's cartoons. They've been neutered, so to speak. And let's face it, they were always the poor second cousin to the vampire.

So I was asked to adapt a screenplay into sequential art, dealing with werewolves, no doubt to help sell it as a movie... and I declined. I just didn't want to go there. Visually I'm just not into them, and couldn't see myself gettng enthused at all. All I could think of was Teen Wolf.

Then I got a letter from the Colorado department of corrections or some such, explaining to my publisher that another of my books [...] had been banned from their fine institutions [...]

But I got thinking. Prison, eh? I'd been watching a lot of prison documentaries at the time anyway and wow, there are some messed up people in some messed up places... and something clicked.

After that, this thing sort of wrote itself to a degree. I sincerely hope you like it and want to desperately thank you for picking this here graphic novel up in the first place.

Whatever you do, just don't drop the soap.

     -- Ben Templesmith, preface to Welcome to Hoxford

( Needless to say... )

Finally, to inject a touch of humour, the last line of dialogue in this trailer for the godawful-looking Lesbian Vampire Killers ("Like an episode of 'Goosebumps' but with two swearing cretins") is... interesting... at least. And probably the only interesting thing about the film.

[edit: Thanks to Mr. Templesmith for linking here on his Twitter, and hi to anyone who came here via there... most unexpected.]

So, based on various people's comments, the view on Twitter seems fairly sharply polarised, with some people quite vehemently against it. (Personally, I like it a lot.) As this post is not so much about Twitter but more things from there, I think I'm safe to proceed with only a reference to nidonocu's rather eloquently-put post, "Twitter, or how I learned to stop worrying and love 140 characters". For what it's worth, although I still have the service set up to ship tweets to LJ, I've now set it so only tweets with a certain tag will appear, and even then (assuming it works) they'll be under a cut. And surely, if scrolling past a cut tag is that much of an issue, then it's not just my entries you'll have trouble with.

( Anyway, without further ado... )

[continued from here]

The second theme of my time away (as well as the creativity mentioned in my last post) was the media I acquired while I was there. I explored two main interests of mine, which carried throughout the different things.

( Two main themes )

Finally, but by no means least, I managed to pick up Fallout 3 at a very reasonable price while I was away, and I've been playing it a fair bit. "Oblivion with guns" has been a comparison that's been made, as it's by the same developer and shares some superficial similarities, but if anything it's "Morrowind with guns" -- those who have played both extensively will know the difference.

In fairness, both comparisons do a disservice to a game that stands up to its heritage but also has its own identity and style. It's a lot more of an intense experience than many other role-playing games, and I've not been able to play it for very long in one sitting because of that. And, with the 50's-meets-scifi stylings, it knocks BioShock into a cocked hat, which I thought was overhyped and overrated in the first place.

It's looking like my stay with my mum and stepdad is finally drawing to a close, and at present, I'm planning to go home on Tuesday. Unfortunately, they're fighting at the moment (I won't go into details, but it's really Not Good) and so I've been hiding in my room pretty much all weekend. With luck, though, things will have got better before I leave for home.

That being said, I had a good time with my stepdad ( last Tuesday. )

There's a couple more things to add. Games-wise, and especially with the DS, I often play things for just a little while before deciding I want to keep or get rid of them, and with a lot of titles, especially RPG's, you can't make a judgement quickly. To this end, I've spent the last couple of days playing all the DS games I have here, and I'm pleased to find I've chosen well.

Next, although I've talked about books already, there's a couple more to mention. I decided to further my interest in wolves by getting a further two novels: Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver, the first in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series, and Promise of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst, first of the Wolf Chronicles trilogy. I can't find any info about her or the book on Wikipedia, so I'm guessing it's a first novel -- it did, however, lead me to find rather interesting articles -- I suspect footpad may well want to check them out -- about wolves in fiction and werewolf fiction.

Finally there are two technical issues. First, it seems that my phone is damaged or something, as in a few calls I've been unable to be heard. I haven't tested this extensively but it seems like I need a new one. Secondly, I see no point in renewing the domain name for my old site loopback:reconnect, having done nothing with it in about four years, so some really old links and images may be broken.

In a way, I'm looking forward to going back home. I want to escape the bad stuff that's happening right now -- though maybe that'll be gone tomorrow -- but I also have things waiting for me, and I can hopefully sort out something positive for my future.

So, things are looking up. For the past several days I've been trying to foster a more optimistic attitude than usual, and it seems to have paid off. I've been thinking a lot, and I've also ( done a few things too. )

At the recommendation of m'dear filterchild, I downloaded Renoise, a multi-platform piece of music software, and I'm considering buying it as it's only €50 and it seems really good. It runs reasonably well on the notebook, and the license lets you use as many different versions of it as you like, so I could install it on a Windows machine too, as long as I was the sole user. I got a pretty sweet pair of DJ/monitor headphones, too; I don't mind using the little earbud ones for my mp3 player or whatever, but the ones I had for serious use broke. (Also got some music by Super Furry Animals and The Stranglers, for a bit of variety.) On the level of appearance, I found the time to re-dye my hair, and it's a much better colour now, if somewhat darker than usual. My folks bought me a really awesome pair of durable sandals. And I still love my keffiyeh.

I've also been considering taking up a course again, and one thing I have in mind is to go down to Red Tape Studios back home and see if I can try again at the music training course I attempted (and failed) last year. It occured to me that if I went for the Thursday afternoon class (assuming they run it on the same days again), I could avoid the rush-hour trams and go down to Games Workshop after class and get some gaming in, then come back after that when the trams would be quieter.

Other than that, I'll take a look at what the Open University are offering, as well as investigating Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield U; I've just now requested a prospectus from each.

[edit: Totally forgot to mention, we've been looking into the details of our planned holiday in Amsterdam at the start of September over the last few days. There's some really nice apartments and there's a lot we want to do, so hopefully it'll be a good trip -- I'm certainly looking forward to it.]
[edit2: I've done some photography while I've been here too, so if any of that turns out well, I'll post it here when I get back home -- I don't have the cable with me to connect the camera to a computer.]

Although I never saw 300 when it was at the cinema, I'd read a couple of issues of the comic when it first came out, back in '98, and I'd still like to see the movie sometime. Recently, though, I'd picked up a few similarly-themed games; most obviously Spartan: Total Warrior, but also God of War and its superb sequel, the obviously-titled but nonetheless stunning God of War II (thanks to Penny Arcade for the truth, and to mattlazycat for the charming mental images).

I've often said that I tend to get a lot more out of games than some fairly mindless(?) entertainment. They can often make me think about things in a different way, or inspire me to look into something in more detail. In this case it was the latter; curious about the Greco-Roman myths and legends, with only a dim recollection of studying history in school, I decided to read some literature of the classics. I now have Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, along with Virgil's Aeneid, waiting to be read.

Whilst I was out earlier in the week -- I've been in town today, as well as on Tuesday and Wednesday, and may be out again tomorrow, some or more of which may merit a writeup -- I also saw (and bought) the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, apparently to be released on DVD at last on the 23rd April. In the same shop, I found another graphic novel, The Fountain. This is based on the Darren Aronofsky film of the same name, which I'd never heard of before, but it looks absolutely fascinating; I'll be picking up the graphic novel when I next have opportunity, and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie when it's released on DVD here on the 28th. In a way, it looks a little reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth, another film I never managed to see at the cinema.

[edit: Forgot to mention, as a little bit of trivia -- five years ago today, the Nintendo Gamecube was launched in Europe. Can't believe it's been that long; nice enough machine, some very good games, but it really didn't enjoy a lot of success.]

[edit2: Been watching trailers &c. for 300 on YouTube, and it looks like they did a great job of converting it from the comic. I also found an awesome video using the sound from the trailer and footage from the God of War games - mindblowing stuff. Check out Ghost of Sparta.]