Suze's Do - the whole story

Rather than post up Act Three of my Choose Your Own Dinner Party gamebook on its own, here's the whole gamebook from start to finish.

As dessert is served, the party may end very much as you'd expect. Or perhaps not.

Click Pop out on the preview below and then download the PDF so you can make use of the handy go to links at the bottom of each section.

As with all trad gamebooks, you'll need a pencil and paper to keep track of a few numbers and codewords.

Have a go and let me know what you think.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1976 & 1979

How have I never put this up? I wrote it up in 2014, inspired by a couple of homages to the excellent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.
(Not the movie. Never the movie. Which was never made.)

Like my own efforts, the spoof 1988 and 1996 incarnations of the LoEG consisted of characters from US movies, rather than Moore and O'Neill's more literary source material:
http://comicsalliance.com/top-shelf-announces-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen-1988/
http://comicsalliance.com/the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlepersons-1996-art-parody/

Subsequent to my writing the pitches below, some of the characters I used cropped up in the ongoing comic series (see Nemo: River of Ghosts), so I guess I was in the right groove.

If anyone fancies their ability to draw decent team shots of either group, please do get in contact and save me several hours swearing at Photoshop.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1976

Gathered by the rumpled man in the hat calling himself K, a new League is assembled to face a satanic threat to America and the World:

• Teenage demonic possession survivor Regan MacNeil

• Fearless marine biologist Matt Hooper

• Driven narcotics cop Popeye Doyle

• Haunted outdoorsman Lewis Medlock

• Taciturn martial artist Lee

Together they overcome Texan cannibals, murderous trucks and rampaging grizzlies before finally storming the Bramford, an unassuming New York apartment building where they must face the ultimate evil: the child Damian Thorn and his resurrected consort Carrie White.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: 1979

Recruited, blackmailed and in one case literally rewired by shadowy New York businessman M, a new League is tasked with putting a stop to a sinister force intent on uniting all the city's street gangs under one charismatic leader. They are:

• Resourceful babysitter Laurie Strode

• Never say die debt collector Rocky Balboa

• Historian and runner Babe Levy

• Nurse turned avenging angel Coffy

• Quiet taxi driver Travis Bickle

• The silent, black-clad Gunslinger

They must run a deadly gauntlet through the turf of the Gramercy Riffs, not-so tranquil Crystal Lake, past Illinois Nazis and finally to sleepy Stepford, where visionary youth leader Jack Curry and his mentor Dr Christian Szell are busy creating the perfect society.

Suze's Do - Act Two

Here's Act Two of my Choose Your Own Dinner Party gamebook (see Act One here), in which sloe gin may or may not be drunk, past lives may or may not be revisited and the Burgess shale shelf may or may not be discussed.

Click Pop out on the preview below and then download the PDF so you can make use of the handy go to links at the bottom of each section.

As with all trad gamebooks, you'll need a pencil and paper to keep track of a few numbers and codewords. Make sure you have played Act One first.

Suze's Do - Act One

Hello. This is the first part of a Choose Your Own Dinner Party that I have written. If you are familiar with Choose Your Own Adventure books, Fighting Fantasy books or any of the other so-called gamebooks that followed them into the 80s and 90s, then the structure will be familiar to you.

Loyal pouchwatchers may also recall my earlier effort The Fright Before Christmas, which I wrote for the 7TV game a few years ago. There's also the thrilling half-orc detective adventure Murder Run which I will endeavour to post to the Pouch shortly.

Unlike traditional gamebooks, Suze's Do draws on a very different genre for its source material, that of the 70s Mike Leigh drama. Classics like Nuts in May and (of course) Abigail's Party. Not an obvious choice for a Choose Your Own I know, but I think it has legs as a play with many branching plotlines, though I pity the drama group that attempts to put it on the stage.

Please do have a go at this first act of the book. Click Pop out on the preview below and then download the PDF so you can make use of the handy go to links at the bottom of each section.

As with all trad gamebooks, you'll need a pencil and paper to keep track of a few numbers and codewords, but it's nothing too onerous. You may be relieved to know that there is no die-rolling in this; I prefer to let players stand or fall according to their own decisions rather than blame the capricious D6.

Disclaimer time: I should probably also mention that the tone is intentionally comic / darkly comic / dark, depending on the choices you make. Themes and subject are meant to homage both the source material and the period in which it is set. The author does not endorse the views of the characters. Apart from the bit about caravanning holidays.

Finally, I had specific actors from the 70s in mind for each of the characters in this story. See if you can work out who's who. One actor is actually the template for two different characters.

Fear not; the rest of the book is written and ready to go. If there is sufficient interest in Act One, we'll see about publishing the entire thing.

Enjoy.

Act Two is here.

Zenith: the TV series

(Originally posted on Saturday, April 1st, 2017)

Cautiously optimistic about Amazon's Zenith cast. Laurie Kynaston from Cradle to the Grave is a good choice for the lead and old reliables Walker, Nighy and Teale are spot-on for the retired superhumans of Cloud Nine.

We Have to Talk About Taboo

So the BBC's shiny period drama Taboo came to an end last night, and I think it's time we talked about it. To be specific, I think it's time we talked about how it promised so much in the first episode and then proceeded to deliver increasingly little with each installment.

What started out like a sort of Regency Batman of Monte Cristo, with dollops of mysticism and gorgeous scenery of equal parts East End mud and East India bling, soon deflated into a confused muddle of board meetings, growly monologues, pointless visions and shots of Tom Hardy striding through the mud with his special hat on. All structured around the least engaging trade negotiation plot since The Phantom Menace.

No, I didn't use an accent coach, since you ask 

Rather than rant further, I give you some alternative titles for the show that I feel are more accurate descriptions than the one which makes it sound like an aftershave from the 80s:

• Jonathan Pryce Drops The F-Bomb
• Bane Has Magic Skype Sex With His Deep One Sister
• Look! It's Another Muddy Scene On The Thames At Low Tide!
• How Come The Only Two Doctors In London Look Identical?
• Sea Otter Pelts: The Crystal Meth Of 1814
• What, So Is It Magic Or Not?
• We Get It, A Boat Sank
• Mark Gatiss Is Apparently Allowed To Play Any Character He Wants In The Style Of Widow Twankey
• Just Get On A Boat To Nootka Fucking Sound Already

Alan Moore's Providence - a plot map

Hello.

If there's the remote possibility that you - like me - are

• slavish devotees of the wizard-author Alan Moore, 
• obsessive-compulsive continuity freaks and 
• strangely compelled to distil all complex structures in your life into colourful Visio diagrams to better please your 'probably some way along the spectrum' mind, 

then you may be interested in this pictorial project I have just completed.

It's a stupidly complicated plot map of his latest HP Lovecraft-inspired comic series Providence.

As well as charting all the characters, locations and objects in a delightfully rainbow-hued explosion of arrows and polygons, there are supplementary pictures laying out specific areas of interest such as the methods of prolonging life as detailed in the story, a timeline of St Anselm's college and a timeline of the sinister Worshipful Order of the Stella Sapiente.

I'm going to lie down now.

YLYL YR NHHNGR.


UPDATE: Below is the complete, revised and reviewed - by none other than Alan Moore himself - plot map, which is more pleasingly shaped than the previous version. Much like the roiling nuclear chaos of Great Azathoth.

Causal Sexism

A teeny little thing happened recently and has been niggling away at me ever since. It's not even a thing that happened really. It's just something someone said. A single word in fact. A throwaway single syllable that has left me in a state of… I don’t know what ever since. See what you make of this.

I've been trying out a new garage recently. Or should that be motor mechanics? Garage is a weird one for Brits; it's the little room where you put your car, it's the place where oily people in overalls make your car better and it may even be a place where petrol and/or diesel for your car is obtained. And even some sort of music, I am given to understand.

Anyway, this is beside the point. I took my car to a new garage for to get it serviced and MOT'd. MOTted. Motted. Signed off as roadworthy. The main person there, we'll call him John, was friendly, did a good job on the vehicle and didn't charge me a fortune. So far so good. But he did also call me love.

Now, whoa there. Easy. Before you jump ahead, this isn't your common or garden casual sexism article here. Though it may well include casual sexism, and probably does, that's not the whole of the story. So let's return to our tale.

Yes, so he called me love a few times. Just casually in that sort of way he almost certainly says mate to other sorts of people, naming no names and gendering no genders. It was delivered, I have no doubt, with absolutely no thought of perpetuating the patriarchy, keeping the sisters down and or even a doomed attempt to flirt with the customer. The Ocelot is not at home to Dame Flirt in any case. It was just a throwaway term that he probably uses on lots, if not all, female humans.

Now, standard practice would be for the recipient of the aforementioned love, in these days of zero tolerance to casual sexism, to dwell upon John's love as the tool of oppression it is, and rightly so Maybe have a word with him about what century this is. Maybe quietly seethe about it to friends later. Maybe write an overly long self-regarding blog, I don't know. But your friendly neighbourhood Ocelot was momentarily pleased, for the Ocelot is differently gendered from the vast majority, and thus constantly frets about being accepted as female in day-to-day transactions, and not chased across the moors by outraged citizens wielding torches and pitchforks. And for someone who is regularly 'sirred' on the phone (usually by overseas call centre operators) it was thus a strangely validating incident, and yet one that was also, of course, a bit sexist.

So I am, much like Natalie Imbrugliuglia, torn. I should be irked and annoyed and peeved at John's sexosity, but I am also a bit grateful that at least one stranger that day accepted me for my apparent gender. Of course, one cannot possibly know how others see oneself in terms of gender identity, not without engaging the services of a first-year psychology student with a clipboard and a questionnaire who constantly follows one around at a discrete distance and asks anyone that one has encountered on the street or in a shop what they made of one, genderwise. Incidentally, I have no idea why I have started using one all of a sudden. It may be in an attempt to use a gender neutral term that avoids the foulness of it, the plurality of they and bonkersness of zhe.

Many among the differently gendered strive for total transition. 100% confirmation of the gender to which they identify. Sometimes this is called passing or going stealth or simply fitting in. Some folks achieve this goal with great success, either through luck of genetics and physical features, transitioning at a young age (something increasingly common, though perhaps a bittersweet pill for older folks who switched sides later in life after the ravages of puberty had left their mark), or simply through massive amounts of practice, therapy, medication, surgery and ongoing cosmetic treatments. Some others are happy to exist somewhere in between the monolithic poles of M and F, and this self-identification as gender non-binary is an increasingly acceptable option in recent years, and rightly so.

But for a lot of the differently gendered, an occasional confirmation that society accepts who one (there I go again) wants to be is a welcome pellet of encouragement. In a life where one may be constantly fretting about walking funny, talking funny, looking funny, it's nice every now and again to get a bit of a thumbs-up from someone, though they know it not, who says yes, you're fitting in. Even if it is a bit of casually sexist chitchat from an oily fossil who's just been fiddling with your sparkplugs.

It's a weird situation. I am literally holding two opposing opinions of the incident at the same time. Which might make me some sort of philosopher. Or nut. Or vacillating wuss. It's like Schrödinger's Casual Sexism. Or maybe Causal Sexism. It both is and is not insulting. Both is and is not validating of different states of being. Or transition. Or identity. Argh.

I do know it's bloody confusing though.



Actually, now I come to think of it, he may have called me sweetheart. Is that better or worse?