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Had a good run through VtMB this year. My gangrel OLL (unfortunately named by way of keyboard mashing) managed to defeat both Ming Xiao and LaCroix's sheriff without too much trouble. (Having a flamethrower and fortitude 5 helps a lot). Bloodlines is a lot of fun to stream.

I was taking pictures of fish (in the game) and thought to take one of OLL before I put the game away until next Halloween. (A silly thing to do, the picture, as VtMB doesn't have visual character customization, but I felt like doing it anyway.)

#streaming Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines tonight at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

Part 4: the Society of Leopold and (hopefully) the end. Will try to finish the game this session.

CW: Horror movie talk, spoilers, The Spiral (1998)

Just watched The Spiral (1998, directed by George Lida) for the first time. It's a direct sequel to Ring (1998), one of two, the other being Ring 2.

Surprising! More of a strange medical thriller than a horror film.

I've read that this film is a closer adaptation of the source novel(s) (in this case the novel "Spiral" AKA "Rasen") and it certainly feels that way. It feels somewhat cut down or condensed from a larger story.

The new complications to the Ring curse were kind of cool and make sense to me as Ando's (our protagonist, a medical doctor) understanding of the problem. It does cross the line into showing too much, though, IMO, and so scenes that should have been scary didn't work for me.

Two things did work for me however. 1: the emphasis on trauma (Ando at the loss of his son, Mai at the loss of Ryuji). I found that moving and believable. 2: the unreliability of Ando's perspective.

Unfortunately the vibe and atmosphere of the movie is mostly... I'll say much less interesting than that of Ring. The sense of doom and the pressure of a time limit are both largely gone. I also found it to be less interesting visually though I'm not sure I could explain why.

It presents a number of ideas that are fun to think about, to consider the implications of, and for that it was worth watching.

I dunno. On the whole: seems OK, fun to think about, I'm glad I watched it. Not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Ending was pretty wacky.

#streaming Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines in a few minutes at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

Today we meet Gary Golden and start the Chinatown hub.

#streaming Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004, PC) again tonight at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Just now starting the downtown hub area.

(This is around where the game starts to get gory / nasty so if you're sensitive to that or to early 2000s edginess then maybe skip this one).

I think my Halloween viewing this year will be Ring, Spiral, Ring 2, and Ring Zero. They're all on Tubi right now (at least for me in the US) and I haven't seen past the first film.

I've heard good things about Ring 2.

I'm starting my yearly playthrough of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (2004, PC) tonight over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

Playing the unofficial patch (ver 11.5) in Wine (whatever version of Wine Debian ships).

Clive Barker's Undying is good! I really enjoyed it. Loved the creature design and sound design. Some great levels and striking imagery / set pieces too. Most of the game takes place in a giant spooky mansion and those levels in particular were done well.

The game gets very dark and nasty at a couple points (thinking of some scenes in Oneiros) which is what I was hoping for. It was very clearly written by Barker.

Gameplay was interesting - there were more puzzles than I expected and many of the monsters required unique strategies. I think the game did a reasonable job hinting at what to do but I did have to look up a few things in a guide.

It was a fun time & I'm glad I played it this month leading up to Halloween.

Back to Clive Barker's Undying (PC, 2001) tonight at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

I think I'm around the halfway mark of this game (just defeated Ambrose Covenant at the end of last stream).

Continuing Valkyrie Profile (2000, PSX) tonight over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

The goal this session is to finish chapter 6 and chapter 7.

Continuing Clive Barker's Undying (PC, 2001) tonight at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

Back! Not sure how long I'll play tonight, a few hours at least. I'm still on the Lizbeth quest so near the beginning of the game I think.

What started me down this path (of listening to audiobooks) was Elliott Gould's readings of Raymond Chandler. Those are excellent; I wish that more than 3 of them were unabridged.

Something about hardboiled detective fiction works real well read aloud. I guess it's the blunt, direct, economical prose.

I've been listening to and really enjoying the audiobook versions of Sue Grafton's alphabet series lately. The private detective Kinsey Millhone novels.

I just finished "E Is For Evidence". I'd read "A Is For Alibi" years ago in a bookstore and have been meaning to continue them. They work well read aloud I think, the versions I've been listening to are mostly read by Mary Peiffer (who does a great job).

just remembered this old tune by Exzakt:

put it on and immediately wanted to grab a copy of Lasttrak by Plastikman to mix into it.

I'm starting a playthrough of Clive Barker's Undying (PC, 2001) today over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

I might be a little low-energy, I'm fighting off an illness I think. The game has enough atmosphere to cover for me.

Picking up Valkyrie Profile (2000, PSX) again today over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Starting in a couple minutes.

Might be a shorter session today; we'll see what progress I can make.

I moved from FreeBSD to Debian a while back and I don't often think about it. Maybe the thing that I notice the most is the lack of cal(1). Whenever I want to look at a calendar I type in cal then remember it's not there, I have to mouse over to my desktop panel and click on a thing instead.

I should just install cal, I'm sure it's in the Debian package repository somewhere.