Road to Justice: Steel

Steel
Directed by: Kenneth Johnson
Starring: Shaquille O'Neal, Annabeth Gish, Judd Nelson
Released: 1997
Watched: November 25th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I have no idea how a Steel movie got made in the 90's. Steel isn't a bad character, but he's never really done much aside from assist around Metropolis when Superman is away, and honestly, after four Superman movies that all left me disappointed and a just as bad Supergirl movie I'm a little nervous when it comes to movie's starring characters revolving around the man of steel's city of choice. I never saw this, and aside from having seen pictures of how terrible his armor looks I have no idea what to expect.

Double Justice: Batman Forever and Robin

Batman Forever/Batman and Robin
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey/George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Alicia Silverstone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman
Released: 1995/1997
Watched: November 13th, 2015/November 20th, 2015

Thoughts Before: I watched these as a child, as such I've only ever really viewed these movies as more than cartoons. They've become known for being notoriously bad movies, and I have to agree. Forever sees Batman meet up with his ward who becomes Robin while fighting off Two Face and Riddler. Batman and Robin introduces Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy and even Bane for the dynamic duo to fight, and not only that, but Batgirl shows up as well! How could they possibly ruin this? Joel Schumacher.

Chronicles of Ivera - Second Session

We awoke, our barbarian companion had seemingly wandered off into the night. We shrugged it off, and continued on our way up the mountain. A dragonborn monk hurriedly made his way towards us, with the third dwarf brother in tow. After discussing matters we discovered that a group of cultists, including one of the two evil men we saw earlier, were up further summoning some dark force. Erik took his wounded brother and left for town. Our group was hesitant to go into battle having lost one of our warriors, but the other dwarf brother convinced us.

Double Justice: Batman and Returns

Batman/Batman Returns
Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger/Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny Devito, Christopher Walken
Released: 1989/1992
Watched: October 30th, 2015/November 6th, 2015

Thoughts Before: At some point in my youth my mother made an awesome decision to show me all the great movie series. She wound up kind of dropping the ball (still haven't watched Back to the Future for example) but overall I ended up experiencing a ton of fantastic movie series'. The first series we went through was Batman, and damn, what a disappointment. I'll get to that over the next couple of weeks, but the first movie was fantastic. It was one of the first times I was subjected to the greatness that is Jack Nicholson. His Joker is one of my favorite portrayals of the character (don't worry Mark Hamill, no one can top you), even Heath Ledger's Joker couldn't compare (though I think he did great too). This movie still stands up, Tim Burton's vision shines through and really helped this film stand out. Returns on the other hand feels as though they turned the Tim Burton aspect up to eleven. It isn't the worst of the series, but definitely sets up the soon to come massive disappointments to follow. At the very least Catwoman is always entertaining in this movie.

Chronicles of Ivera - First Session

Recently my friends and I finally got around to playing some good old fashioned Dungeons and Dragons (well 5th Edition is decidedly new-fashioned, but whatever)! Currently four of us are playing together; Ivera is our dungeon master's own home brew world where we are journeying through. As far as I know it's an amalgamation of most standard D&D settings as we can use pretty much any rule book we can find. These chronicles are to record the happenings of the game, just because I want to, and possibly for a refresher depending on how long the game lasts. We're mostly amateur players, so I describe some fairly newbish shenanigans I apologize. Also, one of our teammates died immediately because he was being a dick. Maybe he learned his lesson?

DLC I Beat: Operation Anchorage

Fallout 3 Operation Anchorage
Reverse Engineered RPG
1 Player
 System: Xbox 360
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Year of Release: 2008
Beaten: November 11th, 2015 (and sometime in 2008!)

Fallout 3 bastardized the series pretty hard. Going from a classic infinity engine inspired RPG to a post apocalyptic Elder Scrolls with guns. It did reignite a fan following for the series though, even if many still cannot get into, or flat out dislike the original two, either way, Fallout 4 is THE game right now. Unfortunately a day after release and I still haven't been able to pick it up. I'd been playing Fallout 3 prior to release because, well, I was pretty fucking excited to head back to the wasteland. Little did I know I'd still be playing after 4 came out, like a sad little drug addict.

NaNoWriMo 2015 and Apologies

I kind of dropped the ball last month, at least personally I did in regards to wanting to write more blogs and failing to. Luckily, this month I'll keep that trend a-going! For those in the know, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) takes place throughout the course of November. Ever since High School I've talked about taking part, and have always let myself down. Not being in school or working is leaving me a lot of free time, so this year I'm aiming for it. 50,000 words in 30 days. I think I can do it. I'm not sure if what I write will wind up being worth editing together into a real novel, but either way I'm hoping the exercise will prove fruitful either way.

Due to this though, I'm going to probably not post much here for the month (oh look, it's already a week in!). I plan on turning the next couple of Road to Justice's into Double Features (Batman/Returns and Forever/& Robin) which will help, especially since conveniently these movies almost feel like two separate duologies. Aside from that I have at least one Games I Beat to finish up (Dragon Quest Heroes, in short, please buy it new to support the series overall, it's mostly worth it /spoilers), and hopefully something else? Another huge detracting factor is Fallout 4 and Bloodborne's expansion are releasing this month. At least that will give me more stuff to write about I guess!

Before I stop procrastinating from my NaNoWriMo (or at least before I look for something else to use to procrastinate) I do want to mention I originally intended to do at least three other Occult Origins of October. I was considering Ghost Rider, Swamp Thing, Frankenstein (one of them at least), Son of Satan, Tomb of Dracula, Blade, and many other "horror" comic icons. I'm sure eventually I'll get to them, maybe next year for Halloween?

Regardless, I hope you've enjoyed reading so far. Feel free to leave a comment, I would really love to hear from someone who isn't a robot that reads this blog! I'm sorry for the (probable) lull here, but I don't plan on abandoning good old It Is A Title anytime soon!
-Adam