seneschal

That's just it. It isn't just nostalgia. The stats back it up. Individual personal morals affect how free and how safe a society is. Times got tough in the Thirties and there was plenty of sin and crime to go around. But Nancy Drew (and her real-life readers) didn't have to worry that some weirdo from out of state would locate her photo and address and come to hunt her down and rape her, or that a former classmate would gun down friends still finishing high school. Narcotics dealers existed, but Drew didn't have to worry that they'd show up at her little niece's elementary school. Personal morals and societal conventions restrained human evil in a way that they don't today.

That's the thing. Socially and morally 1930 America was a very different place than 2020 America. Even the bad guys had standards, things they just wouldn't do. That's why all the gangster stuff was so shocking. People lived in a world where a woman could walk home from work late at night and not worry about getting mugged or raped. People could leave their doors unlocked even in town. Kids could play outside all day without parental hovering because the neighbors were looking out for them, too. Neighborhood watch was the norm, not a program. Kids bought or were given long guns by their parents and openly carried them to school so they could participate in shooting class or ROTC. Point it in the wrong direction and get two spankings, one from the principal and another from Dad. Mom and Dad were married and tended to stay so whatever their disagreements. You went to the movies on Saturday, church on Sunday, and the Rotary or Lion's Club on Tuesday. Civic, religious and fraternal organizations were a big thing. Public opinion and your personal reputation mattered. Folks were more free because they were largely more responsible. You avoided charity and government handouts even if you were hungry both because of the work ethic and stubborn pride. Were there crooks, perverts, cultists, and counter-culturalists around? Sure, but a strong, stable, and moral society could endure a few beatniks, Addams Families and Deep Ones and keep going. It was when the abnormal became acceptable that things began to unravel and we produced the CW generation, where everything that used to be good, clean fun must be "Riverdaled". Speed Buggy with porn stars, anyone?

Hey, but it's a bargain. You lose your soul and risk the Earth's destruction for a mere $6.99. Beats even McDonald's these days.

Tired of being the good guys? I stumbled across this $7 game in my phone apps folder. Don't know if it is any good but the premise is that you're looking for validation in all the wrong places, hoping to gain power, wealth and acclaim by tampering with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. No instructions. You poke around with forbidden knowledge and take your chances. Hmmmm.

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that." In such a discussion as this, it isn't that we're tossing rotten tomatoes at you. It is the Killer Tomatoes leaping to the attack!

Imagine Batman '66 thrown into a blender with Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and The Tick and you have a vague concept of what the Aquabats Super Show was like. Sadly I've only seen the first season, which ended on a cliffhanger. When not battling crime on TV, the Aquabats! are a real-life rock band. The show used some of their songs as background music. Aquabats! is what happens when you blow your SAN roll.

Yet another scenario seed for my fellow Cthulhu-philes to twist and play with. During her enforced sabbatical my wife has been binge-watching "El Clon," a Mexican remake of a Brazilian telenovela set in modern Morocco. It is stranger than Star Trek and Babylon 5 together ever dreamed of being. The plot has something to do with a Sexy Young Thing who finds herself romantically drawn both to a distinguished older gentleman and an attractive man closer to her own age, both of whom have been treated for the same type of skin cancer at a nearby research hospital that also hosts a cutting edge fertility clinic. The rest of the story resembles Real Housewives of Morocco -- shapely women seeking love, matrimony and babies while wearing as much cosmetics and as little clothing as possible despite the Islamic setting. Do bitter relational and professional rivalries abound? Of course they do! In the middle of these shenanigans is an unscrupulous doctor willing to steal genetic material and even toddlers to further his scientific inquiries. So what can we do with this? The presentation is the most suds-laden of soap operas but the underlying situation -- a prestigious medical center concealing illegal and unprincipled experiments, is genuinely horrifying. The physician needs to kidnap that cherished newborn, both to complete his research and hide his crimes. And there is likely a practical reason the Sexy Young Thing lusts after both her lovers.

😳

We've got a Yithian possession going on here: an apparent teenager expressing attitudes based on when the mind-swapping alien last impersonated a human being! Stranger Things indeed. Somebody call Chaosium, now! The authorities will, of course, be useless. Who'd have thought a mundane discussion of a popular author would endanger mankind! Travern, are your bicycle tires still aired up? What do you mean you sold your bike in a garage sale? It's only been 40 years!

Night Shift, a collection of short stories, might be a good place to start. That way you can sample King in small bites and decide whether you like him (be careful when you bite; he can afford expensive lawyers!). The beginning of Firestarter is a real grabber as I mentioned earlier. King spent 15 years teaching high school English and publishing short stories in small magazines under a pseudonym. He became an "overnight success" in 1973 when his novel Carrie was published and he never looked back. Whether he is a successor to Lovecraft or not, his works have suffered from the "Lovecraft curse" when adapted to film. Sometimes his written vision just doesn't translate even when he's heavily involved in the project. He's cried all the way to the bank nonetheless.

You forgot the essential ingredients: chocolate and walnuts! https://recipegoldmine.com/candydiv/chocolate-divinity.html I can see the scenario you paint arising from ancestor worship or respect for a particularly brave and capable leader.

Whatever his beliefs, King apparently has prophetic powers: Thing is, what scares him encourages me and vice-versa. Would he be willing to discuss worldviews over No. 5 Combo meals? Dunno. He might telekinetically skewer me with sporks (since plastic drinking straws are banned). And we'd have to be in the drive-through lane. Yikes! Carrie's mom got off easy!

Personally, I think investigators should have access to Slayer Laser Lances (patent pending) from "Krull." The weapon fires two to four high-intensity laser pulses, then the stock/haft flips around to serve as a sort of energy-enhanced pike. Good versus annoying Nazgul and Imperial Stormtroopers as well as Mythos baddies. https://www.pinterest.es/pin/381609768406193803/?amp_client_id=CLIENT_ID(_)&mweb_unauth_id=eb577ef21fe849b5838af4f4fba563da&simplified=true

I didn't intend to get this far into the weeds. All I ask is that if you're an atheist who feels the need to confront the Evils of Religion (because Reason alone apparently isn't sufficient to sweep away Higher Superstition as we were promised more than three centuries ago) at least be consistent. Don't clobber Pentecostals and Catholics but give Shinto believers and followers of tribal religions a pass because of political correctness. If there is no Higher Power, no supernatural, then its all nonsense. Also, if you're writing horror and spiritual forces don't exist, you've limited your possibilities. Are your only monsters depraved humans? And who's to say they're depraved? Without a Higher Power there is no morality, only survival of the fittest (or luckiest). Go ahead and eat that kindergartener. You know you want to! B-movie space aliens don't count either. They're just D&D critters with cooler gear. 😀

His villains tend to be Christians, always fanatics. Because of course no reasonable person would believe the gospel. Strangely no similar shade cast on other faiths that I can tell. No bad guy Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Bahai or Sikhs. That would be bigotry.

I was impressed with the opening chapters of Firestarter, not so much with The Stand. Skimmed Cycle of the Werewolf and enjoyed the movie version Silver Bullet. I'm not a gore hound and was also put off by King's overt hatred of Christianity. I mean, Lovecraft was an atheist but he didn't feel the need to shove it up the reader's nose. Subtlety is not King's strong spot, either in his writing style or his opinions. 😉

He could have been Superman ...

Like Holli Would? Oh wait, you said "Cool Underworld." Never mind. 🤗

One theory is that Supes generates a forcefield that holds such objects together until he throws them or swats a baddie with them. If the Hulk tried the same thing, the battleship would fall apart (with pieces bonking him on the noggin to boot). 😉

The worldview of the early stories is very different from that of current Feminism. Sure, WW performs amazing deeds and inspires red-blooded American college girls to outsmart and clobber spies and fifth columnists. But Diana and her followers aren't afraid to be feminine, to be girly. They certainly don't hate men generally and unabashedly pursue romantic aspirations. In fact, Wonder Woman's desire to be near Steve Trevor motivates the whole story arc. They're not angry at and resentful of men. Diana and Company are comfortable being female, confident in their ability to accomplish their goals, lacking the need to tear down men to do so. They know men and women aren't the same and use the differences to their advantage.

FYI, the '30s version of Nancy's second adventure, The Hidden Staircase, also available:

Ok, this is where things get complicated. The Pussycats came first in comics and were an established part of the Archie-verse. Hanna-Barbera adapted the core Archie characters for The Archie Show cartoon in 1968, a modest success demanding a follow-up. However, while Josie was in production the studio had a mega-hit with Scooby Doo in 1969. Plus HB had originally conceived the kids of Mystery, Inc., as members of a traveling rock band. So it was perhaps inevitable that Josie and the Pussycats would get shoehorned into what Hanna-Barbera considered a winning formula. It was possibly also inevitable that HB would save money by reusing character designs and voice actors. Not only did road hand (and red-haired Josie's love interest) Alan Mayberry look more than a bit like Freddie Jones but radio DJ Casey Kasem provided the voices for both Scooby Doo's Shaggy Rogers and Josie's cowardly manager Alexander Cabot.

Don't forget Josie and the Pussycats (Archie Comics, 1963, although the 1970 Hanna-Barbera cartoon is perhaps better remembered today). The three-member girl band and their entourage at least had a practical reason for traveling around and stumbling into trouble -- they had to reach their next gig, mystery or no mystery. That also gave their problem-solving urgency. They had to make it to their next destination in time to set up and couldn't stay in one place too long searching for clues.

Any excuse to sneak Captain Caveman into a campaign works for me! Captain Caveman Source: Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Hanna-Barbera Productions, 1977-1980 Quote: (As his Flight power fails) “Ugh! Bad time for energy crisis.” There are those who insist that Superman was the original superhero. However, the latest DC Comics reboot indicates that the Man of Steel arrived rather recently (and is much younger than we thought). Hanna-Barbera, on the other hand, says the world’s first superhero was Captain Caveman, predating even Mightor, another prehistoric crusader for justice. We don’t know Captain Caveman’s origin or what his early career was like. He never speaks of it. He rarely speaks coherently, period. He survived into the present day frozen in a block of ice. Found and thawed by a trio of youthful investigators – Dee Dee Skyes, Brenda Chance and Taffy Dare – Captain Caveman became their assistant and protector. He accompanied the girls during a series of seemingly supernatural mysteries similar to those encountered by the kids of Mystery, Inc., in Scooby Doo, Where Are You? Captain Caveman is a squat, wiry man – approximately 4’8” tall – completely covered in thick, matted brown hair except for his limbs and prominent nose. He wears a leopard skin cape (nothing else that we know of) and carries a stout club. He isn’t the sharpest tool on the bench, but he is outrageously strong and tough. He routinely hoists animals the size of Brahma bulls overhead and runs around with them. “Cavey” is perfectly willing to let others handle deductions; he just wants to bash the bad guys. His club enables him to fly and serves as a sort of utility belt, its hollow interior concealing a number of useful tools. In addition, Captain Caveman can pull assorted helpful “pets” from beneath his hair ranging from parrot-sized lizards to small mammoths to giant carnosaurs. The latter are particularly good for intimidating modern felons. Exactly where these creatures come from and what happens to them when the Captain is done with them isn’t clear. Each animal can perform a specific task the Captain needs done – providing a ride, acting as a leaf blower or vacuum cleaner, providing local illumination. Although this ability is technically a Sorcery spell, the effect occurs instantly. He doesn’t have to prepare for so many turns in advance. STR 50 CON 28 SIZ 7 INT 8 POW16 DEX12 APP 9 Move: 10 Hit Points: 18 (35 CON + SIZ) Damage Bonus: +3D6 Armor: 10 (kinetic, cold) Attacks: Brawl 63%, 1d3+db; Grapple 63%, 1d3+db; Projection 62%, ?d6; Club 63%, 1d8+db Skills: Climb 78%, Dodge 62%, Fly 54%, Jump 63%, Language (Caveman) 40%, Language (English) 38%, Listen 63%, Parry (with club) 63%, Projection 62%, Spot 63%, Swim 63%, Throw 63%, Track 48% Powers: “Thick, Matted Hair” – Armor, 10 points vs. kinetic and cold damage; 20 power points “Throw Club and Hang On” – Flight, 8 levels, 8 power points; costs 2-8 energy to activate (depending on whether Captain Caveman is carrying someone in his free arm), plus 1 energy per turn to maintain. He can carry a person or object up to SIZ 15 while flying. Super Characteristics – + 33 STR, +11 CON; 44 power points “Cartoon Character Tough” – Regeneration, 4 levels, 4 hit points healed per combat round, 12 power points Instantly Summon Prehistoric Beast, no range Extra Energy, +80 energy points (total 96) Failings: Dependents (Teen Angels), significant involvement, +3 power points; Noxious personal habits (Uncivilized, eats anything, no manners whatsoever), +3 power points Notes: Captain Caveman’s stats were randomly rolled at the “Mighty” level on the online Call of Cthulhu Creature Generator, but his SIZ, INT and APP then were greatly reduced to meet the character concept. He had 86 power points based on these modified characteristics, plus 6 for Failings, total 92. He had 500 skill points plus 80 personal skill points based on INTx10, total 580.