The Longest Con by Michaelbrent Collins

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“I had begun to throw on my clothes, but the way Larry said that stopped me with one leg in my jeans, the other hanging in air as I hopped around with all the dignity of Kanye West at the Grammys.”

The Longest Con by Michaelbrent Collings is a semi-autobiographical horror comedy that takes place during a Comic Con type convention. There are cos-players, panels, vendor booths, celebrities like Stan Lee, a game room, and everything else you’d expect at such a convention. However, there’s also a hidden world of supernatural creatures including brownies, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, witches, succubi, gremlins, and so forth who like to go to conventions dressed up as people… and not all of them like to play nice. Continue reading

The Complete Works of Lord Byron

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I can’t help comparing Byron’s poems to those of Keats and Shelley. Like them, he liked writing about Greek mythology, gave long descriptions of nature, and had an obsession with death. Byron seemed to write more about lost love than they did. He also lived longer than them and produced a lot more writing. Perhaps due to this, he moved on from the familiar themes into new territory. Compared to them, he was also something of a bad boy and gave us the Byronic anti-hero. The protagonists of his poems and plays are often deeply flawed, yet still sympathetic characters. (Byron even makes us feel sympathy for the Biblical Cain.) Continue reading

Video Game Review: Beyond: Two Souls

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In Beyond: Two Souls (2013), you play Jodie Holmes (Ellen Page), a girl who is linked to another soul named Aiden. Working with this other soul, Jodie has several unique abilities including remote viewing, telekinesis, the ability to possess other people, speak to the dead, have visions, super healing, the ability to make herself bulletproof, and probably others I’ve forgotten. Continue reading