BOO! The 13 Posts of Halloween

I'm back, baby! Happy Halloween!

Well, it's been a month, and I'm feeling about ready to get back into the habit of posting again. I'm doing a lot better now; not up to 100%, but getting there.

Anyway, while I was on my break, I had a great idea: Why not do a series of 13 posts, one per day, sharing creepy, Halloween-related, or just plain weird things related to comics, movies, and other pop cultural things I like talking about on my blog? Great way to motivate myself to write a bit more often, right?

Unfortunately, I only thought of it three days ago.

So instead of counting down to All Hallow's Eve, I've decided to start on the 31st and keep going from there. Stretch the season out by two weeks or so. It'll be like the Twelve Days of Christmas, only spookier!

Index
Oct. 31 - Changeling: The Dreaming
Nov. 1 - The Deader the Better
Nov. 2 - Always 2
Nov. 4 - The Max Headroom Incident
Nov. 5 - Death Seen
Nov. 6 - Hansel and Gretel
Nov. 8 - That Lovecraft Feeling
Nov. 8 - Anatomy of a Scream
Nov. 9 - The Enigma of Amigara Fault
Nov. 10 - Ravenloft
Nov. 11 - Repercussions of Evil
Nov. 12 - Frankennerd
Nov. 12 - Finale

Since it's going to take me a little while to plan this whole thing out, all I have to share today is a sketch I drew a few years ago when I still had a working scanner. I promise that most of the posts I write from here on out won't be this self-indulgent.


Beastie by ~Filby on deviantART

For a short while in my adolescence, I was a fan of Changeling: The Dreaming, a role-playing game published by White Wolf Game Studio as part of their World of Darkness line (which also included Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and a half dozen other games titled Noun: The Noun). Unlike the other games, though, Changeling had a much more pronounced sense of idealism, even whimsy, though it still had its fair share of things that go bump in the night.

The idea of the game was that the players were fairies* disguised as humans, trying to fight off the banality of the modern world lest they fade away. Players were given a variety of different types of fairies to play as, from the beautiful Sidhe and mighty Trolls to the inventive Nockers and vicious Redcaps; fairies of all types were aligned with one of two Courts: the haughty yet benevolent Seelie or the cold and amoral Unseelie. One of the fairy types, or "kith" as they were called, associated with the Unseelie were the Beasties, who thrived on the fear of little children. The bogeymen, the monster in the closet, whatever you want to call them.

Beasties come in all shapes and sizes - anything that anyone would find scary, really. The one I drew was supposed to look sort of like a corrupted stuffed animal, a teddy bear gone bad. You can probably tell I saw Gremlins (which I may or may not also end up posting about) before drawing it.

Since I drew this, Changeling: The Dreaming has been discontinued and I've drifted away from RPGs, but I still like this piece. I'm not a terrific artist by any stretch, but I think I did a fair job at making it look good 'n' creepy.

That's it for now. Watch this space!

*I refuse to say "faeries". It's trendy, yeah, but it misses the point that fairies were supposed to be downright dangerous, and that calling them "fair" was supposed to be a way to get on their good side and keep them from spoiling your crop, poisoning your livestock... or abducting your children.