Ha-HA! NO GREMLINS SINCE CHRISTMAS!
I WIN!
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If anyone wishes to hire some Totally Reliable goblin mercenaries to avert the coming Pouncepocalypse, reasonable rates and easy financing are available.
A LIKELY STORY!
Faces filled with joy and cheer
Goblins up and down the street
Fire, fireworks... AND SONGS! GLORIOUS, MELODIC SONGS!
Lunch?!
I couldn't find the bactine... That's because I DRANK IT ALL!
♪♫ I'm beginning to see a lot of caaaaaaaarnage,
♪♫ I'm beginning to see a lot of caaaaaarnage,
ACTIVATE ENGINES! TURBINES TO SPEED! THROW THE SWITCH, IGOR, THROW THE SWIIIIIIIIIIIITCH!
... I bet it’s kobolds- little lawful brains incapable of appreciating some creative disorder!
Well if someone starts a >>Ask Wilkins, Goblin Scholar, and Mimdel Boom, Goblin Pyromaniac, Anything At All<< thread, I will consult goblins on such issues. until then, Gremlins are the only respite. Two things... 1. Those lunatics aren't in charge! I AM!
How do you feel about being featured as the big boss monster in PF2's first bestiary?Vindicated! Note... there are NO ELVES in there. Ha. But... but... LOOK OUT! THERE'S ONE ON YOUR BACK! EEEEEEW!
MIMDELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
Don't be embarrassed. A droopy cutlass is a fairly common problem for older goblins or goblins under stress. I know a good medusa doctor who will stiffen you right back up in a jiffy. STIFFS IS CORPSES!
APPARENTLY NOT!
HA! FOOL! I am a goblin! If my thoughts strengthen your arm, you must be FEEBLE INDEED!
Ham? I LOVE ham! Almost as much as I despise thee!
The only dog I see here is going to get SLICED!
I LOOK FORWARD TO SPLITTING YOUR INFINITIVES! HAVE AT THEE! FLATTERY WILL GET YOU NOWHERE!
MY RESOLVE REMAINS UNDAUNTED! MY FURY KNOWS NO- ... What is that HEAVENLY aroma?
I LOOK FORWARD TO SPLITTING YOUR INFINITIVES! HAVE AT THEE!
Oh, my dear silly little gremlins... Amateur hour is over.
HAHAHHAHAHAHAHA! STUPID HUMANS! Shoulda tried biting those sea-thingys. Oh well!
The exact number of daggers I'm carrying at any one time varies. Because, yeah, I do leave them somewhere now and then. Especially when things I throw them into freak out and cry and run away. Huh, got the same problem with members of my crew... ANYWAY. Y'ever meet Treerazer?
ALL ABOARD THE I.G.S. FUNBREAKER!
SILLY FUMBUS! PICKLES ARE FOR EATING!
*Drinks the bactine*
... Trying to ree-pare? What's ree-pare?
OI! TRASHING THE SERVERS IS OUR JOB! Just look at the picture they put up!
DETAILS!
Anybody need some discount rats? Right now we have a sale on: Buy ten rats and get a ratking, free! Oooooooooooo!
Are you enjoying the lore-work to make goblins more... acceptable as a core option, given that some ground work has been in place for a while now?
No stinkin' gremlin outsings us! ♪♫ Rudolph the Russian reindeer
♪♫All of the other reindeer
♪♫ Russian winters ain't the same,
♪♫ Details are banned by Moscow
"Sound off! Where my Goblin Navy at?!" AHA! A CALL TO ARMS! ROUST, ME HEARTIES! THERE ARE BOATS TO PILLAGE, SHEEP TO BURN, INFINITIVES TO SPLIT! LET US SAVAGELY DESTROY THE ENEMY! ... Whoever they are. Just... assume anyone we meet that isn't us is the enemy, we'll do fine!
... CREW! BURN IT ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
NO HUGGING!
Back?! GOOD! (Hope you still take the time you need when you need it)
WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRATE AND WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL?!
Joyous! Can't have that!
But IIIIIIIIIIIIII doooooooooo!
... Guess that answers the question of how much alchemist's fire we need to do the job right... MORE.
Not if we find my mallet...
WE CAN SO SWIM! ... Well. I can. It's how I get to be captain...
Aha! WATER! Crew! Hoist the mainsail! Splice the main brace! Get that dead rat down from the topsail yardarm and onto the captain’s table! THE IMPERIAL GOBLIN NAVY’S TIME HAS COME!
Hereditary- Almost Brilliant As a departure from my standard practice with these things... I’m going to open with a spoiler-free section: Hereditary, the latest horror offering to hit the big screen in this little burg of ours, is very good. It’s a slow burn, for the most part, and anyone looking for jump scares is going to walk away disappointed, but it manages to build a sense of dread out of essentially nothing but the flawed and wounded interpersonal dynamics of the family the film centers around. Also note that the trailers, if you’ve seen them, are grotesquely misleading. But if you’re so inclined, give it a go- there are definite flaws (which I’ll get into in more detail in the next section), and I think it fumbles its chance at true brilliance, but it’s well worth the price of admission. All right. From here on in? Here there be spoilers. My god, the trailers sold a bill of goods. The narrative sold in the trailers (the idea that maybe the dead grandmother is trying to possess the family’s daughter) is not even hinted at in the film. Rather, the film is sort of a meditation on grief for large chunks of its running time- we do indeed open with the grandmother’s funeral, but it’s a second death that actually serves to drive most of the dramatic action of the film. That death being, of course, the daughter- Charlie, played by Milly Shapiro with a sort of terrifying thousand-yard stare for most of her time onscreen. The central character of most of the film is Annie, whose portrayal by Toni Collette is absolutely incandescent. Annie is profoundly wounded at the core of her being well before the movie begins, and the movie’s most effective scenes are the ones in which we simply fixate on her and her pain- pain which, in one memorable scene, causes her to lash out at her surviving child in a way that is brutal to watch- and satisfying because of it. I seriously cannot praise her performance too highly. But therein lies the problem, because Annie is not really with us in the climax of the film. Instead, the final (short) act is focused upon her son Peter, played excellently by Alex Wolff. Peter’s not a bad character, and Wolff does a good job (especially in the scene in which his sister dies while he’s at the wheel of the car they’re in and its immediate aftermath), but the fact of the matter is, he’s simply less compelling than Annie in almost every way. And moreover... his segments involve the overtly supernatural more than any other character. This is a horror film in which the supernatural elements actually get in the way of simply experiencing the actual horror of the situation. There’s a fairly familiar occult subplot if you’re genre-savvy (or have simply seen Rosemary’s Baby, The Sentinel, The Wicker Man, or other films of the sort), and a climax involving the demonic possession of the last character standing, and it’s all... less terrifying than watching Annie disintegrate under her grief and a sense of guilt. Let me stress this point- A headless body floating up into a treehouse is just not that scary after you’ve watched a woman you kind of like just sort of crash and burn in her own mistakes. The knowledge that a King of Hell walks the earth in a host body with the service of an obedient cult is just not as good at twisting the knife in your gut as watching a family fall apart due to a single horrifying accident. It’s not often I say this, but I honestly think Hereditary would have been a stronger film if played either as a straight drama, or at the very least, as a horror film whose spectral boogums are the hallucinations of a fractured mind. I’ve heard it compared favorably to The Witch, a film I kinda sorta love with a fiery passion... and there is some truth to the comparison. Unfortunately, the biggest commonality is that the final scene of each film feels tacked-on compared to the wonderful build we have leading up to it. Both films are about families coping with loss- and doing a bad job of it- but if The Witch lacks any single performance as searing as Toni Collette’s, it makes better use of its characters- the script doesn’t suffer from quite the same misplaced focus. Hereditary is really, really good- but the pieces were there for something truly mind-bending.
Oh, they didn't.
Huh. And here I thought it was because there are no >>Ask *Master Pugwampi* Anything<< or >>Ask *Hunt, the Pugwumpus* Anything<< threads. Oh, there were, my precious little gremlins. There were.
Press the attack, crew! WE CAN DO IT!
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