THE BATTLE OF NEW VAMPYRSBURG

THE PLACE: New Vampyrsburg.

THE TIME: Dead o'clock.

It was a lovely day when it happened, not that the residents of this village could know much about that. The shine was shining, though no birds sang, for New Vampyrsburg was not the sort of place where any beauty that was not distinctly gothic could exist.

Evil Constable Darkslay walked the streets on his day patrol, keeping carefully in the shadows so as to not burst into horrible flames. He hated the day patrol so very much.

It wasn't too bad today though, and the citizens were always well behaved. No one wanted to fuck up their chances at living among their brethren in peace. Crimes were rare, though not...unheard...

Darkslay froze. Had he working lungs, he would have gasped.

DUST!

A pile of necrotic dust, just sitting in the middle of the street! Next to the dust was a wooden stake. On the stake was a note. It said "FUCK VAMPIRS" in a sloppy, hasty script.

By the name of Dracula, there were humans here! At least one! And they had a vendetta, a truly horrible one. Darkslay turned into a magical sunbat and flew away to warn the mayor McLestat of this horror.

===========================================

GET READY BITCHES! FIRST TWITTER-BASED VAMPIRE GAME!

This time, you're hunting HUMANS!

Some of you have played before, many will be new. Here are the rules.

Sign up by sending me an @reply with the text #vampyrsburg in the body of the tweet. All posts will have this tag in order to keep things organized.


I will choose one at random to be the Slayer. That person needs to tell me who their partner is, and we will begin. This means there are two Slayers.

One vampire, the Dream Eater, will eat dreams. Since vampires don't dream, he/she can pick out the villagers easily. The Dream Eater will be chosen randomly; each game day they will send me a direct message on Twitter inquiring about someone, and I will inform them of either that person's vampire or Slayer status.

One of you will be His Redundancy, Count Alucard Dracula. Dracula is awesome and protects other vampires. He is like Van Helsing, but not, because Van Helsing sucks. Especially when you get to be Dracula. He (or she) will be randomly chosen and tell me via direct message who they want to protect from human attack that day/night.

Each evening, everyone will learn, via twitter and this blog (the blog is for my ridiculous write-ups) whether or not there was a staking, and who the unfortunate victim was. Then, they will accuse one of their own of being a filthy villager. The winner of the vote will have their sweet blood candies drained from them. They won't be turned though. They'll just die. Vote by tweeting @nameofyoursuspect to @deathwishjones with the tag #vampyrsburg.

I'm taking between 10-15 players, based on how fast it fills up.

Remember, mark all tweets relating to the game with #vampyrsburg. Feel free to write up any character shit in the comments here. Or obviously on Twitter, though that'd be a short character.

CURRENT PLAYERS:
Only Isaac actually used the #vampyrsburg tag, but I'm not going to be a prick about it. Just everyone else, please, use it. I send too many retarded @replies.

@SteelFan714
@arikjames
@CitizenSnipes
@mmmcoffeetogo
@laylaym
@Thinhenien

I'll update the list as it grows.

I have a macbook.

And it has a camera in it.

KEEP ON TEEMIN

A PLOT TWIST

TEEM FORTRESS ELITE

CLICK PICTURES TO EMBIGGEN



















BEST WEBCOMIC EVER? YOU BE THE JUDGE. (HINT: YES)

In a world without a dramatic trailer voice

I was over at Slashfilm where I saw it reported that Voiceover Master Don LaFontaine Has Died at 68. I had never really heard of him, but apparently he was the over-dramatic deep voice on all those action movie trailers and Fox commercials. Complications from pneumonia, apparently. So that's two down from that cause this year, counting Bernie Mac. Bummer.

I see that they're rebooting the Superman films. I'm kind of disappointed; Superman Returns had a lot of flaws, but I genuinely liked it. It was just good old fashioned Superman, minus the whole bastard-child subplot. All the overwrought messianic imagery, the broadly portrayed Lex Luthor, Superman's big gay costume.

Apparently Mark Millar, the guy who wrote Wanted, is probably going to be writing this Superman. Again, Slashfilm has an article. I'm a little bit skeptical. From the (admittedly limited) amount of Mark Millar's work I've seen, he's got kind of a whole weird badass vibe happening that doesn't really fit with the Superman mythos. He's talking about making it something all the old fans will love while updating it for a modern audience.

I posit that this is not entirely possible.

Problem: Superman has a stupid fucking costume. I suppose if anyone read this blog I'd get a little slammed for that, but come on. I shouldn't have to elaborate on this: that outfit is beyond outdated. Actually, now that I think about it that raises a somewhat interesting point in my mind: with the exception of Batman, have any of the DC heroes really had much costume change over the years? Wonder Woman's wardrobe has been limited to unitards that show somewhat more cleavage sometimes, Aquaman and Flash have always looked the same, Green Lantern/Arrow, etc. How come the artists never saw fit to update the costumes that looked less god damned goofy as the years passed? Surely by the time ten years had passed someone had to have decided that Superman looked weird with underwear on the outside of a spandex full-body pantsuit or whatever the hell. And they could have updated the costume, made a big to-do about it, advertised it and all that, and it would have been fine. Now the character's like a national fucking treasure and if in this new trilogy they choose to 'update' the costume at all, there will be ridiculous fan outrage. And Superman has enough fans for it to make a difference. Funny that Batman has more fans, but they're free to change that costume all over the place without raising anyone's ire. They just have to remember that A) there is a cape and B) there are horns/ears.

That said, I'm actually pretty excited by what Millar is talking about. An epic trilogy, shot back to back! That could be very cool. He could cover some pretty major stories. Doomsday MUST be in the third one, cover the whole Death Of Superman thing, taking out all the bits that don't work. I guess Doomsday may be an obvious choice, but hey. It could be so kick ass.

I think I may start my movie blog today. Arik didn't like the name I chose, but critics be damned! I can do this shit.

WOOO

It's been a while since I posted anything here. I was contemplating abandoning this one altogether for a Wordpress personal blog, but decided that fuck it, I like this one.

Started a new blog called Cage Rage. Arik Knapp and I are going to watch all Nicholas Cage movies ever, or at least until we get bored. I'm not looking forward to Bangkok Dangerous, but any excuse to watch Raising Arizona sounds great to me.

MTV News ran a story today over three damn months ago about Wizard Rock. (I get my retarded news from Fark, and they just now put it up.) Now of course that "scene" was known to me, but I didn't realize just how many of those bands there were, and I sure didn't think they'd still going a year after the final book was released. It's cool, in a way, that they're all doing this; such a fan movement rivals anything Star Wars or Star Trek fans have ever done. Most of it is pretty much impossible to enjoy or even listen to, but it's nice to see all those fans uniting in the name of creating art based on other art. (Yes, when I was going through a deep obsession with the HP universe, I listened to a few of the more popular wizard rock bands. I found them all to be fairly shitty, with the exception of The Remus Lupins, which is actually just one guy.)

K, nothing interesting to say. Out.

Patronous Media Exclusive Article: The Rise And Fall Of Auroric Thunder, part one

Auroric Thunder is one band in the magical world that, like Weird Sister (for power pop fans) or The Wand Pleasers (for the punk-magecore crowd) or even The Hypnogryfs (for people who like shit), needs no introduction. Their story is legend: following the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Harry Potter went on front his own band. They played to an enormous audience, touring the magical world for exactly seven years before disbanding (a move which has been shrouded in mystery.)

Appealing always to the public and never to critics, they were the very definition of an overnight success (their debut, "Notes From Under The Stairs", sold in excess of five thousand copies within the first hour of its release,) causing such a stir that even The Daily Prophet reported on the phenomenon of hundreds of young wizards and witches lining up outside the magical music stores, a first in the history of magic and music. (EDITOR'S NOTE: To clarify for some of our younger readers, the Daily Prophet was once a prominent news outlet, maybe the only one really seen as legitimate. After the rise of the wizardnet, it fell into the same category as its sister paper, The Quibbler.)

As we mentioned, however, not everyone felt the same affinity with Auroric Thunder. Critics and self-proclaimed "serious music fans" scorned them, calling them arena rock and worse.

"Harry Potter's endeavor into the musical world should be contained to this one single album. It is the worst kind of tripe, with simplistic melodies acting as the background to the overly sentimental drivel standing in for lyrics."
-Gridmore Scillopuffs, Magical Blender

"Of course it's terrible. That's stating it simply, of course, but sometimes that's really all you need; just a simple statement. Nine of the disc's twelve songs are nearly indistinguishable from each other, and it wasn't much of a template to base the music on to begin with. Not that it will matter, of course. Loath as I am to admit it, this will sell simply because of what our world owes this band's leader."
-Vladimus Gortenbaug, Wand Beat


"What the fuck? It sounds like fucking magical Nickelback or some shit."
-Luna Lovegood, Patronous Media

Even with such harsh criticisms, however, Auroric Thunder went on to produce three more albums ("Lament For A Falsely Accused Grim", "A Long Walk To The Woods With Mortality To Think About" and "Fuck Slytherin", which resulted as a long rivalry between Potter and entertainment mogul Draco Malfoy [see "In The Wake Of Wars" from our November issue].) Each album was certified Griffin, though none would sell so well as the debut.

But let us cut through all that and get down to business. Auroric Thunder was founded shortly following Potter's short lived career in Quidditch, which was ended by a particularly nasty sporting injury (the golden snitch, for reasons still unknown, went berserk and buried itself in the seeker's belly; due to its magical properties, it proved impossible to remove.) Potter drifted about for a while, career-wise, at one point authoring a book about his heritage (speculation suggests that it was largely ghost-authored by Potter's long-time friend and mistress Hermione Weasley) that, while it became a best seller of epic proportions, is regarded as the single most unread book in England. Following this he collaborated with former classmates Seamus Finnegan and the late Neville Longbottom (typically known in those days simply as "N") to form Auroric Thunder.

Longbottom, as is well known, died after overdosing on the narcotic "Flos-For's Stone" and Finnegan has drifted into obscurity. Potter, however, remains alive and well and active in the wizarding community. He recently shocked the world by announcing his return to music, yet refused to give any details... until now.

Join us in our next issue for an exclusive interview with Harry Potter as he candidly discusses life after the war, his injury, the fate of "N", his affair with Hermione Weasley and of course, Auroric Thunder.