Mellifluent Mondays: Midlake
Seeing as how imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I thought I’d go ahead and make a a series of posts about music after the Sunday Night Serenades of Greg, my internet acquaintance over at A Chronicle of Fables. This series of mine won’t just focus on music I particularly enjoy, though that may often be the case, but also on the strange and unique.
A post of note…
…although it’s not one of mine. I am working on posts of my own but they’ll also vary on a scale of originality. In any case, here’s an interesting article which poses the question: Ever wonder what it would be like to play Final Fantasy VII on the original Nintendo Entertainment System?
For those of you lacking in curiosity, who may not wish to download the rom and play the game yourself, there are plenty of screenshots in the article itself. Myself, I only fought two battles before I gave up. I suppose I might have played the game a little longer if it hadn’t been in Chinese.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
What do you get when you mix the production aesthetics of MacGyver, Quantum Leap, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and Heat Vision and Jack? This:
Now go forth, watch all six episodes of this magnificent relic of the eighties any which way you can, and thank me later.
GUTS
Before I finally complete my previous media update, I’d like to describe a more recent D&D character I’ve played recently, having been reminded by some overseas mail of one of my all time favorites. (Thanks Jon! I pity the DM who lets me play that particular character again.) Apologies to those who stumble upon this and have no idea what I’m talking about.
Guts is simply a force of nature. He’s my half-orc epic level frenzied berserker. I’m not sure you know what this means so I’ll go ahead and tell you. He cannot die while he’s in a frenzy which is pretty much the same as rage except the bonuses and penalties are greater and they also stack onto those of rage. He also has Supreme Power Attack. This essentially allows him to deal his regular damage + 80 with each attack. Yeah. He’s also wielding a mercurial great sword. Critical multiplier of x4 baby.
Did I mention our party fought the Tarrasque? I’d like to say that my character had quite a hand in this. I’d also say Guts could have taken it on by himself. In fact, he kept the Tarrasque dead while most of our party bartered their souls away to Mephistopheles for a wish to destroy this dreadful beast. Thus, Guts was left to his own devices at the southern pole of Eberron. Rumor is that he became the new Tarrasque.
Role-play wise he was fun, much better than Orange Crush, although only slightly more intelligible. His voice is a nearly indescribable screech which brought the DM to tears on a number of occasions. Having gotten covered with the insides of a hostile beast, the barbarian would announce, “That’s why they call me GUTS!”, spittle and blood flying from his gaping mouth onto whomever he was introducing himself to. Who they were was never ascertained.
Whenever someone or something did damage to Guts, he was forced into a frenzy unless he made a will save, which made for a couple of awkward situations with the rest of the party. Luckily the party saw the benefits of having Guts around, or perhaps they were unsure how to get rid of the ticking time bomb.
Guts wasn’t much of a talker unless his best friend Nom was around. I call him Nom for the reader’s benefit, but being a Chaos Gnome, Nom would choose names at a whim. Or should I say, adopt the names that Guts had called him that day: “That’s why I calls you Wally!” after Nom had been slammed into a wall. “That’s why I calls him Flamey!” Nom had (has?) a thing for fire, etc.
There’s much more or much less to Guts than I’ve presented here but, much like any other force of nature, you really have to witness him in action to understand his full effect.
