side chat

Traces of Pulp

11.25.25

Amelia and I have been playing a lot of the Arkham Horror Card Game lately. It's been in my collection for a long time, but only an occasional play. We attempted to form a group with another couple to play the game, but that didn't end up working out for various reasons. And I think we both learned that we enjoy the game most when it's either just us two, or at a player count of two in general. I'd say for well over two years now we've kind of just looped through the game's core mini-campaign a few times, running practice and learner games across the three Night of the Zealot scenarios while The Dunwich Legacy sat unplayed in the box. But now we're finally playing that expansion and I think we're both really impressed by its variety and cleverness. Last night we managed to finished Scenario 2: Arkham Museum on our first attempt. It's hard to say for certain, albeit very likely, and thus a safe assumption, that the reason we made it through was because we failed to apply a rule unique to the monster in that scenario... but it seems pretty unanimous online that scenario is one of the simpler of the expansion. I don't think that means it isn't fun however, like some of the comments I'm reading may be implying. In fact, I really liked it. It was fun having to play around an unstoppable, hunter enemy while venturing out from and returning to a central hub over and over again. I think the risk is clear and thus the puzzle is easy to grasp. This is one of the least tricky scenarios, but it feels pretty immediate for it, much like the first in the Night of the Zealot.

It's a little embarassing to be involved with as many Lovecraft-themed properties as I am currently; playing the AHLCG, working on developing a scenario for the RPG, and returning to some of the literature for a better understanding of certain things about how Lovecraft does horror or science fiction and the way he depicts conspiracy and paranoia or mystery in general. But, what can I say, I have a long history with Lovecraft, his derivatives, and the literary aesthetics at work in them both (1,2,3, etc.) Admittedly, I think it would be worthwhile to go even deeper than this. I am curious by what weird path does the strain of detective fiction find its way into so called Lovecraftian works, like Call of Cthulhu and Arkham Horror. When did the pulp and pulp detective first appear? Was it there in his work in some way I don't appreciate? In the work of precursor authors like Machen and Algernon Blackwood, and in Poe, or the romantics before? In what way do these detectives, or investigative figures (for I don't think they are in truth much like the Continental Op himself) come to appear as rough and downcast as noir anti-heroes. That to my mind doesn't seem to be the kind of protagonist that a man with a biography like Lovecraft would identify with, and my feeling as of now is that somewhere along the line the DNA of these two kinds of literature fused and created the Pulp Cthulhu style that so much Lovecraftian stuff leans into. How many commonalities did noir fiction and investigative fiction and weird fiction have in the early 20th century, and was it painful or easy for them to all fuse as they now have?

This kind of investigation is something I've been half-heartedly pursuing for a little bit, ever since I bought a volume of the collected novels of Hammett and Raymond Chandler last year. I think my interest in E.C. Comics must relate as well. But reading Thomas Pynchon's Shadow Ticket over the past month, questions about the detective fiction genre have been frequently on my mind. So maybe it's time to promote this line of inquiry to a greater layer of my attention, and find how it serves all my other current interests at the same time.

A new page rises!

November 18 2025

I want to get back into the practice of documenting the things I am working on. I realize that is an important part of my process. Over the past year I think that practice has wained a bit, and helped to create a feeling of confusion and overwhelm for me. It isn't that I've stopped documenting things outright. I still keep a journal I write in fairly regulary (it varies, the month of October did not see many entries) and I have other things I write in too (a planner, select button, discord with my friends). But I think I need to organize my thoughts. And so I need to write them down. This is a new section of my website I'm calling Side Chat, which won't exactly fulfill what I am talking about here, but I hope may help me along the way. It's just a page I intend to record small thoughts or updates. For my larger posts I'll still host them on the home page, and in the blog archive.

I need to document a few things that have been going on. Each of these topics may be its own post, or could wind up mentioned in the same post.

A summary and reflection on my time working as a designer on a project at work, the War of the Harvest Nobles. This was a very large project, and a strange circumstance for me professionally, and I think there is some signficance in its design and where the company was as it pursued investor money in LLM technology right before it laid off half of the staff.

I have been studying Spanish for about a year now. Do I understand why I've chosen Spanish? Why learning a language has been something I've invested this much time and effort in? What are my goals, my methods, and plans?

We played so many board games this year. I bought many and enjoyed probably a great number of them too. I am curious what my favorites have been. And how my taste has changed and what I know about it three years into the hobby. What are some games I like, that I dislike, and what do I think about playing boardgames in general as compared to playing videogames.

Against the Day

June 18 2025

Finished up Against the Day. There is so much here you cannot possibly retain or see in a first read, which at times I encountered with not a whole lot of enthusiasm (I think I started googling things like “Against the Day is boring” as far back as like March). I am really satisfied by the big picture having at last seen the whole thing. It’s as sad and beautiful and bigger than any one person as Gravity’s Rainbow is, but a great deal less horrifying. It ends somewhat happily, or at least in an abundance of found families. Some of them in the 19th and early 20th centuries of our world headed exactly to where we know it all headed, but at least one of them in another world headed into something that seemed at least pretty optimistic. But who knows? And I think that’s one of the book’s great themes: just as you wake up day after day to find yourself growing further from the person you thought you were or were headed to becoming, so too does the world and the spirit of it in like pace. Unfortunately the motivators of such change are often horrible less than lovely, and in this book it’s namely capitalism.

I was supposed to be the world’s greatest anarchist bomber, but I am doing pretty alright when I look around and take stock of things. A comforting yet haunting thing to notice about yourself.

May 28 2025

Just got through an absolute all timer Pynchon chapter in Against the Day. I’ve battled with enjoying this book, but, this whole time, it’s been for chapters much weaker than what I just read that I told myself I ought to stick it out. To think I hadn’t even glimpsed how good it could be with this book. Stupendous!