Matt Duval

Lots of other stuff I liked but honestly making it onto my writing playlist is the main key to success ☺️

2025 music recap. 11133 minutes of listening. Top 5 artists are Stealing Sheep, Thomas Bergersen, Aviators, Gunship, The Offspring. Top 5 songs are BOOM, Let's go, Found You, Empress of the Damned, and Take me back

Got my 2025 music recap! 🎵
Stealing Sheep and the new album G.L.O. dominated the year. Found You is so good. Wish I could visit the UK to see them tour.
Gunship hanging on from last year.
BOOM claimed the title though. kickass indie rock that fills me with youthful rebellious energy 💥

Bit late but read Halloween Folklore and Ghost Stories by Brice Stratford, looking at the continuity and origins of English traditions around the last week of Oct and first week of Nov. Fascinating bits of culture and hauntings, though also some gory crime so cw. #25booksin2025

So here's to Desert Bus for Hope 2025, where we raised over $1,048,000 FOR THE CHILDREN! We've cried, we've crashed, and we will miss you dearly. See you next year for our *20th* Desert Bus! And make sure to keep an eye out on our socials as we prepare for our big anniversary...

Album, vinyl and signed album poster for the band Stealing Sheep and their new album, G.L.O.

My vinyl for the new Stealing Sheep album finally arrived! Listened to it digitally over a dozen times now. So good! 🥰🎵

Read The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This was a properly macabre tale of witches and things lurking just outside the light, told through three interconnected women's stories across a century. It's haunting me a bit even after finishing. #25booksin2025

Desert Bus 2025 A charity fundraising marathon in support of Child's Play Charity.

Ladies, Gents and all between and beyond.
Desert Bus 2025 is now departing for fun, joy, hijinks and a whole lot of hope!
Let’s prepare to get silly for a good cause!
desertbus.org

Anything you would perish without
(food, housing, water, healthcare)
should be free.

Read Anima Rising by Christopher Moore. Klimt, Freud and Jung meet the Bride of Frankenstein in 1910ish Vienna. Lots of farce and absurdity. But also a lot of brutal violence alluded to, sexual and otherwise. It's a good read but definitely a warning necessary. #25booksin2025

Donate to Desert Bus 2025 Donate directly to Child's Play Charity, supporting children's hospitals and domestic violence shelters across the globe. Every donation helps keep the bus on the road just a bit longer.

We're exactly one week away from the start of #DB2025, so it's time to open up the donation page for some pre-gaming! It's also a great time to sign up, or update your donor account.

I can do some of those things, like modifying, pulling out pages, in affinity publisher, though I haven't used it enough for that to be sure it'd cover everything you're looking for. They repackaged it as free for now unless you want their ai features

Another graphic novel roundup. Read ch1 of Grant Morrison's Invisibles, which felt like Hellblazer but without the strong central character. And Justice by Alex Ross, a Justice League story with gorgeous oil paint art and cool scenes but a messy plot that doesn't pay off its ideas #25boooksin2025

Lit Jack o lantern carved like a cat smiling

Happy Halloween! 🎃 Wishing everyone lots of treats and to be the trickster and not the tricked 👻

We're 18 days (!) away from the start of our 19th run. Why not spend the next week with us welcoming the volunteers working in front and behind the cameras to keep our show running? Each shift runs 6 hours, features beloved segments, and might just have a few additional surprises or cross-overs.

After reading Timequake I wound up reading Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut to follow up. Think I last read it in high school. Both jump around but the earlier work is more of a story, and is more straightforward in its thesis. #25booksin2025

Read The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel, a fiction about a mystery cult and indoctrination and how the world shapes the protagonist and she shapes it in turn. It's evocative and visceral and at times viciously cruel. A compelling but unhappy read. #25booksin2025

Hadn't planned to build a deck with her but now I kind of want to! 🧚‍♀️

Are is a sacred conversation between people across time and place. When I read Octavia Butler or Emily Dickinson they’re here with me, speaking right into my heart. When I look at Frieda Kahlo’s paintings I can see through her eyes. Ai slop just can’t compete with that.

My local pfs group picked Dreams of a Dustbound Isle for our Halloween party. Now I'm doubly responsible for giving them a spooky time 😅🕯️ Have to figure out what costume to wear... ✨

Continuing my browse through the local library and read Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake. Difficult to sum up since it meanders across a multitude of topics but there's an honest humanity to it I was very caught up in. #25booksin2025

Another graphic novel roundup with urban fantasy in Manila with Budjette Tan's Trese and very silly action in Mark Roger's The Adventures of Samurai Cat. The artwork in Samurai Cat had no business being so good. Oh and Ryan North's Star Trek Lower Decks - Warp Your Own Way was so fun! #25booksin2025

I still have most of my old paperbacks from then. I was always rereading them and the Van Richten guides in the 90s. The Objets d'Art short story from Tales of Ravenloft is one of my favorite horror stories. The ending is so visceral

Read Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams and the Minority Report. The ending of Human Is had me cackling and the Hanging Stranger I have to incorporate in a game at some point. Really excellent short fiction. Back to the library tomorrow! #25booksin2025

They seemed to be tracking those things from what I could see so all I can say is what they told me. Maybe a different class would engage them more. I don't know.

That's what two of the five of them conveyed to me after the game (tactician and censor) when we were talking about the experience so I wanted to mention it. I've only run at this point so can't speak to it personally. And this was everyone's first experience

The adventure was well designed for onboarding to the system, with character abilities added in each encounter along with read aloud explanation.

The complaint from a couple players was that there's still a fair bit of downtime between each person's turn, but otherwise they said they had fun 👍

Tried out the Delian Tomb starter adventure for Draw Steel today. I enjoyed how streamlined it was that I was able to run 20 monsters and it wasn't a slog. Lots of positioning and forced movement kept things dynamic. The heroic abilities in later encounters felt impactful with evocative names

A message from Dana Terrace

YouTube video by LoadingReadyRun How to Talk like a Pirate

Back in the Internet olden days, on September 19th we’d celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And we here at LoadingReadyRun made an educational film to help folks out. Enjoy our 19 year old video, How to Talk Like a Pirate 🏴‍☠️🙂

youtu.be/RzkQC0e91Nc

Finished Terry Brooks' new Shannara book, Galaphile. The Shannara books were a big part of the 90s for me, but reading this the style didn't feel familiar and I'm wondering how much Brooks has changed or I have changed. May still have my copy of Sword somewhere. #25booksin2025