Quick Review of Doom: Incredibles 2

Good movie. Keeps a narrative focus of what it is to be a super hero, and how society feels about it. Keeps that Golden Age feel for the villains while being very modern in execution. Just as good as the first one in my humble opinion.

Quick Review of Doom: Deadpool 2

Surprising first Act. 2nd Act was what I expected based on the previews. 3rd Act had some great special guest stars. End of the movie establishes the Cinematic Deadpool formula. I really hope to see Deadpool 3 sooner than later.

Quick Review of Doom: The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

This show on Netflix is an easy watch. Fast digestible mini-episodes strung together into 23-minute mega episodes. Fast, funny, and featuring and OP protagonist that has weird drawbacks and limits. The best part for me is how much he reminds me of one of my friends. Worth a watch.

Happiness is Finding the Story that Speaks to You

I've been into reading since I was little. One day, we were in the grocery store, and I was reading a story on the back of the cereal box. I must have been 3 or 4. I read the box all the way to the car, where my mom realized she had never paid for the cereal, and took me back inside to pay for it.

I read a lot of stories in elementary school. The Whipping Boy stands out with one very clear scene. Some context, the story is about a brat who is so rich (maybe a prince, I don't clearly remember that part), that he has a whipping boy. Whenever the brat does something wrong, they whip or spank the whipping boy instead of the brat. As the story goes, the brat never learns. Until two guys kidnap the two of them. Now they are holding the brat for ransom, but they confused the two boys. So they think the whipping boy is the rich kid. Since they want a full ransom, they realize the can't hurt the rich kid, so they use the whipping boy. But since the story is a role reversal, the rich boy actually gets spanked.

Another story from that time period that I read that stood out to me was, There's a Boy in the Girl's Bathroom. Ooooh boy, that story triggered some funny thoughts in my head. This boy, who kept saying all these mean things to people, and how they would behave when he hurts them, and then he expresses those traits when he gets hurt.

There's a bit of a theme so far. But there's one more story that really brought it home for me. Dealing with Dragons. Dealing with Dragons was about a princess who didn't want to be a princess. She wanted to be a hero, a sorceress, a cook. Just about anything else would be more interesting to her than needlepoint. So she runs away from home and becomes a dragon's princess. Which, makes her parents very happy, since a knight who rescues her would get to marry her, and they were afraid they wouldn't be able to entice anyone to marry her on their own!

To top it off, all the skills she secretly learned on her own gave her the ability to help the dragon she ran off with! She used her abilities and made her choice, and in doing so, she satisfied the people who weren't satisfied with her behavior before. But it is because of her skill set that the dragon accepts her in the first place.

Expectation versus reality. People expect the rich kid to be educated and well behaved, but the rich kid is a brat. People expect the macho guy to not cry, but he's just as human as everyone else. People expect the princess to be ladylike, but she'd rather clean and organize a library and sword fight her way out of situations.

These kinds of stories really speak to me on a personal level.

What kind of stories do you like?

Patreon! Going Live on the 1st!

I am a writer, a dungeon master, and a game designer. Make of that what you will. More to the point, I am Eddie Gomes, better known as Pangoria Fallstar. I have been writing poetry and short stories for over 20 years. I’ve also been creating small games for the past 5 years, and have otherwise been a Dungeon Master for Dungeons and Dragons for 15 years on and off.

I live in Southern California, where the debris meets the sea.

I'm a small creator in a big world of content. I can understand that there are levels of things in this world. There are creators across a wide spectrum of work online, and deciding to spend money on someone because they cater to something you want to see more of can be very special.

I want to thank anyone and everyone who supports my work. It can be strange, straightforward, or over the top. I am definitely ludic and very diverse overall. But, for me to be able to express myself completely I have to find a way to pay the bills.

Create to Pay Bills

The way the ecosystem of creation is, a person can’t just make something and make money off of it, without a lot of luck. A diversity of resources is important. I have long-term projects that I’m working on, but the pay off isn’t here. I would love to be able to just work on these things and not worry about money, but I have a family and a very particular set of skills that unfortunately mean that most places will not hire me. Essentially, I’m unable to get a job in retail anymore. I had an office job for too long, and I’m on a long list of people who are overqualified and in abundance for the work I do have experience with.

So, my goal is to take my skills and try to create things for people who want these things created. I’m a short story writer, and so, by supporting me, you support original short stories across a gamut of sci-fi, space opera, fantasy, urban fantasy, magical realism, and romance.

Supporting me means getting downloads of content that I’m making, as I’m making it. I have a variety of stories I want to write, and I have a list of "topics" (concepts, general ideas, entire outlines) that I work on. Most of it is original content, some of it is fanfiction, and others are chapter stories. I'll release either a chapter a month or a different story each month, depending on how the voting goes.

I'll continue to use Fanfiction.net for my Fanfiction stories, and original short stories will be put on tapas.io.

"That is...a tremendously f-ed up story. I'm damn near non-shockable, but this definitely threw me for a loop." - Tuatara

"Rather funny, in a chick-flick comedy sort of way..." - Mr. Qwerty

"…Sigh." - Anonymous

"This story has gotten really weird yet not completely unbelievable considering what we know of these characters." - Compucles

"Seems to get weirder all the time..." - Shadowstalker666

There's a law called COPPA that is causing a lot of online creators on youtube and beyond to make sure that their content is being directed at the appropriate audiences. There are extra rules designed to protect kids from being advertised to, and since my target audience would be young adults and older, I am saving myself the grief of dealing with someone thinking that any video games, cartoons or images I use are targeting kids, when I am trying to target the inner child of an adult audience.

Update! Patreon Coming soon!

I've spent these past 4 months testing the limits of how much I'm able to write in a month within a reasonable expectation. I then took those numbers and came up with a goal of what I can reasonably reach, word count wise, each month. I took that goal and placed it as a reward on Patreon to give to people who are willing to support my writing.

A few aspects that stand out to this, are things like how I do not have some grand following of people. I also plan to write regardless of Patreon, I just reward those first and spend the month double checking some grammar and spelling errors before submitting online. I'm planning on releasing stories on tapas.io for original content and fanfiction.net for fanfiction stories.

But those will occur after the Patreon rewards. Also, people who support certain tiers will be able to vote for what I write next, or even flat out make requests. I'll post an update once the Patreon goes live, I'm still doing some work on it, trying to make it look nice.

I'm hoping that people who are close to me, family and friends can support a $1 a month, since having numbers can help generate numbers. These will be short stories, averaging about 3,000 words, and they will range from one time tales to chapter stories depending on what gets voted on.

I'll update everything as I go, so keep an eye out here. Thank you very much to anyone who chooses to support me on this.

Chasing the Hashtag

Youtubers tend to chase what's trending so that their videos show up on the recommended list of videos to watch when you end up trying to find out what PubG or Tidepods are all about. They have a very fast medium, and many are able to respond to trends quickly.

Blogging has its own niches that if fills, and trending on those topics can be very specific based on not only what the blog is about, but the site it is on. With blogging though, its usually about something that happened, and it can usually be a conversation about it, rather than doing the thing yourself.

I've been writing a fanfic, and it is very much within a category, but all the currently updated stories have been trending to very similar ideas. Fanfiction tends to act more like live writing, with chapters published before the next section is even planned or thought of. As chapters can take time to write, people who read a story and like it, will sometimes do their own version of it quickly. It feels very much like how doujinshi ends up being.

It would be like live streamers watching live streams as they live stream, and imitating the most popular live streams as they stream.

Thing is, that this work, this chasing is what brings views, and depending on the platform, audience and what not, it is what brings in money. But, does longer form media (novels, movies, games) trend this way? Usually there is so much time and energy required to finish these works, that chasing a trend could just leave you being dated. I feel like this kind of work has to do its own thing and in part create its own trend.

As Ford is quoted as saying but probably never did, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

But how do you show up in a search result, if people don't know to search for you? At least SOME of what you do has to chase the hashtag. Some of it has to be based on what is trending. Otherwise, people will never stumble across your content. Chase a little, create a little. Hope that people like enough of your quality and content to want to explore what else you have done.

Some sites make it easy, like being able to browse people's profiles for similar work. Other sites, are a bit more obtuse. Authors for example slowly start replacing the name of their novel, with their own name on the cover of books to help people who liked their other work to find them again.

Actors and directors become the headline of the movie, rather than the movie's subject or plot. Eventually a streamer becomes popular for who they are, and not the game they play. But they had to play that game first. Game Theory had to make theory videos first, and now they make... I don't know, some sort of streaming quizzes or something.

I think that if anything, that is the current state of entertainment right now. I'm not sure this is a good thing or a bad thing. But if you want to get started in any of it, start by chasing a trend or hunkering into a niche, and then go on from there.

My Magic the Gathering Spellbook: Pangoria

With The Jace Spellbook announced and coming soon, mamy Magic the Gathering players are asking, "What is my Spellbook?" This would be a collection of 8 cards that define you as a planeswalker. I came up with mine:

1. Kiln Fiend

2. Simian Spirit Guide

3. Nahiri, the Harbinger

4. Emrakul, the Aeons Torn

5. Eternal Witness

6. Ghostly Flicker

7. Well of Lost Dreams

8. Words of Worship

What is in your spellbook?

Deck Tech: Budget(?) Mogis God of Slaughter EDH/Commander Deck

So a buddy of mine asked for me to take a look at a few of his decks, which I gladly do for food. So if you ever want to buy me a sandwich I can give you some quick recommendations. Now at my FLGS (faluhgus) I'm known as "that guy who does a bunch of infinite combos in the same deck, what a pain in the ass, his wife is so right about him not having any friends", and because of this, people have fun. I specifically go out of my way to make my combo convoluted. It takes multiple pieces on board, and it is ridiculously difficult to pull off without people letting me do it.

In commander, where Bane of Progress and Terastodon are common ways of destroying EVERYTHING I need to go off, it's not a bad thing to say, "It is entirely the fault of the group I won."

Even when people KNOW that they can't let me keep things, they forget, and suddenly I'm winning. So, like I said, a bit of a reputation. Anyways, the first two decks (and footlong I got out of it) that I did were more of a fix on a philosophical scale, in that he was playing giant dragons, without enough ramp.

This deck he handed me the other day though, is built kinda sideways. It has Mogis, but I think a huge chunk of the deck is just red/black cards he had laying around. So, I went looking for themes that are just built in. I think Mogis decks often try to be control decks. They want to stick Mogis, and then spend the rest of the game destroying EVERYTHING. This makes sense, but with Mogis, that is such a slow clock, that not only will you run out of cards, but eventually your opponents will just grow out of reach.

So my first instinct was to build towards that. Well, actually, the first thing I did was try to stuff more mana rocks into this deck, I mean, seriously, every deck has that deficiency. Well, okay, it's a bit harder in a 2 color deck. Surprisingly the more colors you have, the easier it is to justify rainbow lands, but with two colors, it becomes more of a challenge.

So a lot of his sub themes were: Attack for big effect (discard, destroy or damage, etc), a light discard effect/damage theme, and big creatures theme. There was already some good removal in there, but not enough board wipes, and there was also a lack of ways to deal with certain things.

Overall the subthemes were weak and under represented, but I liked the big spells theme. I liked the control theme, and I wanted to throw something extra in there. Now I know that for me personally, I would have made an aristocrats deck. And if I didn't at least stick to one of his themes, I'd end up changing 70 cards instead of only like 30. Though, 30 cards in an EDH deck is practically changing the entire thing.

To top it off, I'm also trying to keep things within a certain budget. He does proxy things to scope out results before investing into it, but it should still be reasonable. Because of this, I find it hard to recommend cards like Liliana of the Veil, even though I think it should absolutely be run in this deck. In the end I think I changed quite a bit from what he had, over 50 cards changed!

So Step 1: The Lands

The deck starts with 30 basics, and 4 Duals. I think step 1 is just adding more dual lands, more utility lands, and maybe some gold lands.

The more I think about it, the more I do want to run Blood Moon in this deck. So for calculation purposes, we count the duals as Red Lands, and stuff more basic mountains. We'll come back to this at the end after we figure out mana curve, but for now we throw in: Akoum Refuge, Bloodfell Caves, Dragonskull Summit, Geier Reach Sanitarium, Hanweir Battlements (more on this later), Terramorphic Expanse. He already had Temple of Malice, Evolving Wilds, Rakdos Carnarium, and Smoldering Marsh. I also would want to add BlackcleaveCliffs, Blood Crypt and Bloodstained Mire when money is more available. Overall we want to stay at around 32-34 lands.

Step 2: Mana Rocks and Ramp

This became a bit of an interesting question, how many 2 and 3 mana Mana rocks do we want?

I feel like we want to shoot up in mana. Things like Lotus Bloom, Dark Ritual in combination with Sol Ring and Thought Vessel. I also liked the Idea of Thaumatic Compass if we are going to maintain a relatively high (20 or more) basics in the deck. Rakdos Signet, Cluestone and Keyrune should probably find a home somewhere.

Step 3: Take Out the Trash

So these were cards that are generally draft chaff, or that don't play well in multiplayer (single target discard spells, single target planeswalkers, etc). I also took out some powerhouses that are better off being built around, and that just didn't have the support in this deck. This was 16 cards. I still had 13 cards in a theme (the attack benefits theme) that I could keep in to maintain or support the theme with changes and a couple of just okay effect cards. If I take them all out I have 31 spaces to add to the deck. This is where I started having trouble deciding which direction to take the deck. I'm not sure what would be the best direction. Now he already has a couple of aggressive 5 color dragon decks, and so I think maybe some of these are not the best themes to be going in this deck with.

Step 4: Acknowledging Strengths and Weaknesses

Mogis is strong in the same way that most Theros gods are strong, but it gives opponents a choice. That is its biggest weakness. But since that choice can allow us to choose how we mess with opponents, or allows us to remove the choice entirely, we have some things we can do with the way we build the deck around it.

The other thing is that we want to keep things as one sided as possible. So we want to avoid us not being able to gain life, we want to avoid us taking damage as well, and we want alternate win conditions to speed up the game randomly.

Step 5: Winning the Game

Revel In Riches. This card was already in the deck and I love it in the deck. It punishes opponents for sacrificing creatures, and with board wipes it can help us out. So lets get some treasures going! Brass's Bounty, Captain Lannery Storm, Contract Killing, Pirate's Pillage, Trove of Temptation.

Star of Extinction. This is the killing things portion. Languish, Terminate, Dreadbore, Hero's Downfall, Never//Return, Cruel Reality, Torment of Scarabs, Blasphemous Act, Unlicensed Disintegration, Chaos Warp, Decree of Pain, Black Sun's Zenith, Void and In Garruk's Wake.

Then a few cards to make sure they have a hard time gaining life, like Tainted Remedy and Erebos.

Finally a discard theme with Raider's Wake, Liliana's Caress and Megrim. Torment of Hailfire, Blightning, Rakdos's Return, Skull Rend, Chandra Ablaze, Dark Deal, Incendiary Command, Molten Psyche, Myojin of Night's Reach, Words of Waste, Syphon Mind, Pain Magnification.

Sunbird's Invocation. Now we are just going to find value and value like things. Koth of the Hammer, Kaeverk the Merciless, Hanweir Garrison for that random combo with Battlements. Goblin Rabblemaster, Tilonalli's Sumoner, Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury, Steel Hellkite,  Rakdos Charm, Vial Smasher the Fierce, Angrath the Flame Chained, Obnixilis Reignited, The Scorpion God, Defiant Bloodlord, Exquisite Blood, Sanguine Bond (a combo by themselves), Thundermaw Hellkite, Rise of the Dark Realms, Lightning Reaver and Wound Reflection.

And that's what I figured would be a good EDH deck for him that wasn't about beating face.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions or replacements? Let me know in the comments!

Deck: Budget(?) Mogis, God of Slaughtering Everything
Lands		Spells		Creatures		Sideboard
1	Akoum Refuge	1	Angrath, the Flame-Chained	1	Captain Lannery Storm	1	Mogis, God of Slaughter
1	Blood Crypt	1	Black Sun's Zenith	1	Defiant Bloodlord
1	Bloodfell Caves	1	Blasphemous Act	1	Erebos, God of the Dead
1	Dragonskull Summit	1	Blightning	1	Goblin Rabblemaster
1	Evolving Wilds	1	Blood Moon	1	Hanweir Garrison
1	Geier Reach Sanitarium	1	Brass's Bounty	1	Kaervek the Merciless
1	Hanweir Battlements	1	Chandra Ablaze	1	Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury
7	Mountain	1	Chaos Warp	1	Lightning Reaver
1	Rakdos Carnarium	1	Contract Killing	1	Myojin of Night's Reach
1	Smoldering Marsh	1	Cruel Reality	1	Steel Hellkite
14	Swamp	1	Dark Deal	1	The Scorpion God
1	Temple of Malice	1	Dark Ritual	1	Thundermaw Hellkite
1	Terramorphic Expanse	1	Decree of Pain	1	Tilonalli's Summoner
		1	Dreadbore	1	Vial Smasher the Fierce
		1	Exquisite Blood
		1	Hero's Downfall
		1	In Garruk's Wake
		1	Kolaghan Monument
		1	Koth of the Hammer
		1	Languish
		1	Liliana's Caress
		1	Lotus Bloom
		1	Megrim
		1	Molten Psyche
		1	Never // Return //
		1	Ob Nixilis Reignited
		1	Pain Magnification
		1	Pirate's Pillage
		1	Raiders' Wake
		1	Rakdos Charm
		1	Rakdos Cluestone
		1	Rakdos Keyrune
		1	Rakdos Signet
		1	Rakdos's Return
		1	Revel in Riches
		1	Rise of the Dark Realms
		1	Sanguine Bond
		1	Skull Rend
		1	Sol Ring
		1	Star of Extinction
		1	Sunbird's Invocation
		1	Syphon Mind
		1	Tainted Remedy
		1	Terminate
		1	Thaumatic Compass
		1	Thought Vessel
		1	Torment of Hailfire
		1	Torment of Scarabs
		1	Trove of Temptation
		1	Unlicensed Disintegration
		1	Void
		1	Words of Waste
		1	Wound Reflection
32	cards	53	cards	14	cards	1	cards
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