Category: Words Words Words

KNIFE GAMES for 2 Players

  1. Stabby Dodge-y
  2. My Knife Is A Question
  3. Finger Parade
  4. Where’s the Pirate Ship, Matey?
  5. Catch
  6. Right Side Up
  7. Pumpkin Jack
  8. Toothpick Tango
  9. Swisharoo
  10. Who’s the Butter / You’re the Butter
  11. Kansas City Handshake
  12. Bootlegger’s Kiss (optional rules for 3-4 players)
  13. Down the Lane
  14. Tic Tac Poke
  15. Hide
  16. Where She Lands
  17. The Game of Knife (aka “Knife Game”)
  18. All Meat
  19. I Don’t Like This Game
  20. Connect Four (with a knife)

Cocoon: An Electric Zine

Cemetery Guns

a few images of ancient weapons and a tweet from DIane Doniol-Valcroze reading: "Cemetery Guns from the 19th Century. Used to protect caskets from bodysnatchers. They were set up at the foot of the grave with 3 tripwires strung in an arc around its position.

I may have failed to kill Moby Dick in life, but in death I shall be avenged when that great devil-cetacean comes to pass water upon my very grave.

ALT: I may have failed to kill Dracula after a life of pursuing him across the continent, but in death I shall be avenged, for I have proffered to that slick-haired fiend an invitation to enter my grave plot, an honor to which he shall be supernaturally compelled to take advantage.

Autodidactimal [a Troika! background]

Autodidactimal

No university in the realms could teach you what you yearned to know about being an animal. Your adopted curriculum: Lived Experience

POSSESSIONS
Animal skin
Hydration pouch
Notepad

ADVANCED SKILLS
Instincts 4
Scholarship 2
Herd Safety 2

Striptease Frankenstein [a TROIKA! background]

Your creator failed to give you purpose and so you found your own: to make of your stitched-together flesh a paean to passion.

POSSESSIONS
• Easily removable outfit
• Charging station

ADVANCED SKILLS
Dance 4
Romance 2
Pathos 2
Science 1

after us

There was about half a year
where I was often alone
in the office and
I wouldn’t bother
to turn the lights on

I’d make coffee in the dim
kitchen and pretend
it was the apocalypse already

imagine the windows blown out
and an unobstructed view
of the lake below

but I still wasn’t ready
for the pandemic and never going back

for grocery shopping with
fogged glasses
and empty
shelves

maybe ’cause all the
lights were
still on

Cupid Wrangler: Troika! background

A bonnet-wearing woman with a sly expression toting a cupid in a custom carrying case.

Whether clearing an infestation or delivering a trained one for a targeted love connection, you’re a trusted pro when it comes to these winged pests.

Advanced Skills:
Cupid Lore 4
Trapping 3
Romance 1

Equipment:
1d3 cupid traps
Wet wipes
Mangled book of love poems

new year’s resolutions (draft)

  • Lure the sailors aboard The Merry onto the rocks, drag them down
  • Fulfill promise to sea crone who crafted my gills and fins
  • Make NEW promise to sea crone for jelly wings
  • Read 10 books
  • Revenge myself upon the seaside town of Baylock, swooping over them with dripping wings, snatching up babies
  • Lose some weight
  • Get betrayed by sea crone, dissolve into foam

Deep Red

Over the last couple of years, I’ve watched a lot of Italian giallo movies. Giallos tend to be quasi-thriller, semi-slasher, kinda-horror films, stylized, exploitative, and way over the top.

If nothing else, the genre offers up a wealth of fun titles: All the Colors of the Dark. Kill, Baby, Kill! Hatchet for the Honeymoon. The House With the Laughing Windows. The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears. The Perfume of the Lady in Black. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key.  

The best-known giallo to U.S. audiences is probably Suspiria, Dario Argento’s dizzying supernatural thriller. Suspiria makes its mark with a hypnotic (or just repetitive, depending who you ask) soundtrack and a blaring oversaturated color palette. Anytime anything happens, the screen is drenched in color. Why be subtle when you can just light entire scenes bright glowing red? The genre already showcases stylized, over-the-top violence, so why not go nuts with the visuals to match? It may not be good, strictly speaking, but it’s definitely memorable.

But never mind Suspiria (and definitely don’t mind the terrible po-faced 2018 remake, unless you enjoy watching a film zoom straight up its own ass on a rocket blast of bombastic self-importance). Suspiria is usually classed as more of a horror film, for its supernatural aspects. 

But the same director also made what might be the ultimate pure giallo film, Profondo Rosso, a.k.a. Deep Red. Deep Red hits every giallo formula note perfectly, cogs clacking like a roller coaster climbing to the top. It’s also a thriller so strained and tissue-thin, it almost becomes a comment on the genre. 

I’m going to spoil almost the entire plot of Deep Red now, in the sense that I’m going to tell you what happens in most of it. But at the same time, I can’t spoil this plot for you any more than I can spoil a bowl of alphabet soup. One is about as coherent as the other.

Continue reading Deep Red