Like A Cat

This weekend has treated me fairly well, all things considered. Friday night, I was forced to forgo the RIFTS/BESM campaign to support Renee in her performance of Godspell. I will be honest, I wasn't especially looking forward to it, as I am not really a fan of musicals in general. I never have been, and probably never will be. I understand and respect that some people like them, but the fact remains that they rub me the wrong way. I don't know if it's the random outbursts of singing or what, but somehow, characters in musicals are always more distant to me than characters in a non-musical production. That said, however, I did actually derive quite a bit of enjoyment out of the production. The cast was strong, and the production design was quite good. While the first act was a little slow and disjointed for my tastes, the second act clipped along at a fever pitch, with just the right amount of darkness in it for me to take pleasure in it. On the whole, I recommend Whitworth College's production of Godspell to just about anybody who enjoys a good show. Just don't expect most of the characters outside of Jesus and Judas to be anything other than cyphers.

Saturday rolled around, and that meant some serious D20 action. The whole crew was over today (Ipps, G-fate, SmkViper, winterbc, Codemonk, Jarkel, Rinakai, and Gemedet), so we had the full complement. Saturday's mission was sort of a turning point in many ways, as it was the first mission wherein parts of it were contributed by virtue of the democratic process. That's right, 3 out of 8 people voted in my poll over at Anything Binary, which dictated the course of the mission, the first of a sort of two-parter to be continued the week after next. Let's just say that the group's penchant for piracy just found a new outlet.

Other news: I picked up Volume 1 of Marvel's epic Age of Apocalypse, and it is quite frankly awesome. The only problem was that Vol. 1 is a bit heavy on Blink and X-Man, but light on the rest of the AoA X-men (Magneto, Weapon X, Gambit, Colossus, Sabertooth, Wild Child, Sunfire, Rogue, Mystique, Shadowcat, Jean Grey). Also, the Big A himself is mostly in the background, while his henchmen Sinister, Cyclops, Holocaust, Havoc, and McCoy act as the primary antagonists. For those of you not in the know, AoA was a year-spanning event that Marvel put together in 1995, wherein Professor X's son, Legion, travels back in time to kill Magneto before he could become a threat (while he and the professor were friends, in other words). However, the plan goes awry when the professor takes Legion's bullet for Magneto. As a result, Mags never becomes a terrorist mastermind, but rather takes up Professor X's goal of peaceful human/mutant co-existance. However, Magneto's isolationist tendencies allow Apocalypse to take over most of the world, establishing an empire wherein on the strongest survive and the weak are culled. As Magneto's X-Men face these perils, it becomes clear that they are forced to be more ruthless, more gritty, and more grim than their mainline continuity counterparts. It's a dark story, but it's also more complex, and allows for readers to jump on without having to go through Marvel's disastrous "Onslaught" stuff to understand anything. Plus, it's just damned cool.

Well, that's really all I can think of that warrants coverage on ye olde site. Note also that Lars has updated the Life of Wyma, so go check that out.