Temples of Bone

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Good Morning Folks! One of the things that I have been trying to do this year is keep better track of the movies that I end up watching. I remember it was a bit of a challenge when I pulled together my 2025 in review post to figure out what exactly I had seen in a calendar year. Even then I realized that I missed a few phenomenal films like Sinners that I would have definitely talked about. My friend “The Librarian” reminded me that Letterboxd is a thing that exists, and also that I apparently have had an account for a very long time. This should not shock me because I tend to sign up for things as soon as they enter my consciousness, and then often times not use them for several years. See also that I signed up for SpaceHey three years before making a single post on it or even configuring my profile. Anyways part of this is that I am also trying to watch more movies overall and start chipping away at the massive backlog of things that I want to watch. Long gone are the weekends when I would rent 20 movies from Video Giant… but that does not mean that I lack the desire to do this thing.

Queens of the Dead – 2025 – 3 Stars

I think we are going to go with a lowest ranking to highest ranking scenario, and as a result we are beginning with Queens of the Dead which I gave 3 stars. I was honestly fairly disappointed with this… I love Zombies, and I love interesting takes on Zombies. Queens of the Dead gave me neither really… it is effectively a combination of Birdcage and The Return of the Living Dead. The film is way more of an “in joke” about drag culture than it is a cohesive zombie film, and the movie quality feels like this was a student project filmed on phones, and not even in a found footage way that would make it interesting. I specifically relate this to Return of the Living Dead instead of Night of the Living Dead, because this is a film that is way more interested in setting up the next punchline than doing anything interesting with the actual zombies. It could have been a much better film, and in theory it makes attempts at social commentary…. but does so in a hamfisted nature like a student play that has to tell you what its point was at the very end. There were some fun moments, and some humorous punchlines… but cohesively it was a bit of a mess.

The Running Man – 2025 – 3.5 Stars

One of the things that the 80s gave us, was a lot of dystopian action films… in truth a shocking number. The 1987 Movie featured Arnold Schwarzenegger and has gone on to influence so many things from the direct one to one copy via the Smash TV Arcade Cabinet, or more subtle influences like the existence of The Purge and Hunger Games. The remake takes things in a different direction, and instead of prisoners attempting to regain their freedom… we have a man who is just trying to get enough cash so that he can pay for medical treatment for his child. It is not a bad film, but it is not a great film either and I gave it 3.5 Stars. It was a fun dystopian romp, and I think it is probably way better than a lot of the negative buzz surrounding it. If you’ve played Cyberpunk 2077… everything is very thematically on point, and given that we find ourselves in a deathmarch towards our own dystopia… there are moments that feel a bit too on the nose. It was worth a watch, but I can’t see returning to watch it a second time.

Predator: Badlands – 2025 – 4 Stars

Another film that I have seen a bunch of negative buzz around is Predator: Badlands. I love the Predator series, and was also a junkie for the various Dark Horse comics adaptations of this shared Aliens/Predator and potentially also Bladerunner universes. I think the big complaint that I have seen is the design of the Yautja from this film, but this seems fine to me especially given that Dek is speccifically described as a “malformed runt”. I am mostly on board with seeing more of this society fleshed out, and I really like the character of Thia. The thing that would have made this movie so much better for me personally is if they did the thing where they shifted from spoken Yautja with subtitles to both characters spending english, and there was a perfect moment to do this transition where Thia applies an “universal translator”. I don’t love spending an entire movie reading subtitles… and for this and this along I docked it a full star so only gave it 4 stars. I had a lot of fun with this movie and would absolutely watch another film with this grouping of characters.

Rental Family – 2025 – 5 Stars

Watch this film if you need a good cry. I am a sucker for Brendan Fraser in pretty much every role he has ever done, and I am so happy to see him back in the active rotation film wise. The premise of this film is so interesting to me, folks being rented to play a role in someone’s life… and the messy rammifications that come from that. Do you actually become that person for them? Does the role ever truly end? I feel for Fraser’s character when the lines start to blur significantly… in part because Fraser also needed people to play a role in his life. This hit me pretty hard because I am someone who has a pretty signficant adopted family, that augments my blood family… and all of them are so much more important to me than just digital folks I will never probably actually meet in the flesh. I have two people that I consider literal siblings… that I have never actually met. I think the whole blending of lines in this film probably hit me harder than it might a lot of people, and I cried… quite a bit at various points during the film. It was such a good cry however… and while I think this will be an emotional sucker punch to most people… I still think it is worth a watch.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple – 2026 – 5 Stars

It is rare that you have a film that comes out and so completely gives the previous film a redemption arc. 28 Years Later was an incomplete film, and having watched The Bone Temple… I understand why. These are essentially two parts of the same film, given that Bone Temple takes place literally seconds after the conclusion of 28 Years Later. I would highly suggest watching them back to back and largely thinking of them as a single complete story. Bone Temple ties up the events of 28 Years Later neatly, but more important than that… ties up the loose bits of the entire series in a pretty little bow. There is a massive payoff at the end of this film for anyone who has been watching along as this series wound its way from days, to weeks, to years. I love zombies, but I have always found this particular rage zombies genre to be interesting… and this film does some deeply intersting things surrounding it. When taken collectively 28 Years Later with both parts is one of the better films I have seen in awhile.

So there you have the films that I watched since this weekend. Do you vehemently disagree with anything I said about these? Is there anything that I really have to watch? Drop me a line below.

Snowmageddon and Livingroom Rain

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Good Morning Folks! Hopefully yall are surviving Snowmageddon 2026. For the most part I have stayed in out of the mess. I had plenty of food, and so long as power stayed on I was going to be good. We got somewhere in the neighborhood of eight to ten inches. The snow was so dry that drifts were pretty rampant so it was really hard to tell an actual estimate, but I know when I was clearing my jeep yesterday and making a path so I could get out today for an appointment, it was coming up to mid calf high at times. I cleared the front porch enough that I could start putting food out for the outdoor kitties as well. I’ve not seen Tripod, but in the past when we have had cold snaps like this she has an underground borough system that she crawls down into. For years we had bunnies in our backyard prior to Tripod taking up residence there, and I think she has been using their underground warrens.

Things have mostly been okay… save for the fact that it has been raining in my livingroom. This is a problem that I had hoped we solved about three months ago when the roofers came out to work on the flashing at the top of the roof. My guess is that the snow sitting up there has basically been on top of wherever the leak starts, and then heat rising up through the roof is melting it. Essentially as far as we have been able to guess it runs down under the shingles and then finds a way into the house in the middle of the livingroom, dripping out onto this cross beam, and then down onto the ceiling fan before ultimately hitting the floor. Sadly the leak does not come down in a single spot, so essentially I just have to put towels out. It had stopped mid day yesterday, but then started up again late last night as things started to re-freeze and was still going whenever I went to bed. It stopped at some point over night because it is not going this morning. I’ve called the roofers to be on the list for after this is all over, but for now there is not a whole hell of a lot I can do. I have some IKEA bathmats and some towels down to soak up the water…. which I will run a load in the washer once things have chilled a bit.

My folks I think got it worse north of me. This is their front yard and you can barely make out the wheelchair access ramp. My dad of course had already trudged a path out to his shop, because he spends most of his time there. I think more than anything he was checking on the cats, who stay overnight in there with a heater on. I never knew my Dad was as big of a softie for strays as he is, until later in life. Maybe I get my own attachment to street cats by genes. I got out yesterday and cleared the cars and a path out, and then was wondering why the hell everything hurt today. These are all activities that I do not normally have to do, so I guess it makes sense that everything feels like it aches in my chest and arms. I don’t even have a proper snow shovel, because this happens so infrequently. My old shovel was rusted through so I tossed it, and had not gotten around to getting a new one. I guess I will make that a bigger priority. Essentially I cleared what I cleared with one of those giant plastic yard rakes and a nylon bristled broom.

This weekend I spent a lot of time snuggled with cats and watching movies downstairs on the television. I will probably make a post tomorrow about some of the things that I watched. “The Librarian” reminded me that I have a Letterboxd account so if you do that thing feel free to follow and I will likely give you a follow back. I like keeping track of media consumption and previously my plex server log was the most reliable method up until this point. However that was flawed because when I was pulling together my movies of the year post… I completely somehow missed the existence of Sinners. I figure I will try and keep up with this similar to how I do Storygraph and Bookwyrm. Speaking of those two I really need to get back in the swing of reading, or at least listening to an audiobook while I do other things. I figure on the 29th with the launch of the Phrecia league it might be a good time to get back engaged.

Speaking of gaming… I played a heck of a lot of Destiny Rising this weekend. I was trying to keep all three accounts active, because we were having some bad luck finding strongholds. Yesterday morning we cleared the three that we had access to, but did not find the third until we were already logged in trying to clear the other two. Thanks to Jade Rabbit I have been playing Umeko a lot more on my alt accounts, and apparently doing well enough to regularly get MVP when I run some strikes. Essentially I am trying to get account two high enough so that I can get 3 charges of Iron Commander and can get my 60 Pinnacle done without running any strikes. Account three… at some point I just need to put my head down and push through the campaign because I have not even unlocked the second planet.

Last night I played a bit of Path of Exile II, especially since Kodra has been talking about it quite a bit. I know come the 29th I will be over in Path of Exile and playing the new Legacy of Phrecia event, but in the meantime I am hopping around and making things explode in POE2. For Phrecia I am all over the place on what to play. Right now I am looking at either doing something akin to my Ice Trap of Hollowness build, a Blind Prophet bow traps, or Poison Minions. Pohx is going for a life stacking Righteous Fire build, but it is going to require a lot of gear to make it work. I had fun with RF Scavenger last time but I also needed a mageblood to make it work, and I am not sure if I want to push that hard. It sort of annoys me that there has not been a lot of fresh theorycrafting for builds within the POE community. Everyone seems to be focused on currency strats… which will fucking sort themselves out pending you have a good build.

Anyways! I hope you have fared well during the winter onslaught. I hope my livingroom rain comes to a close finally, and I hope todays tests go well and they don’t find anything else wrong with me. I am deeply scared about everything that is going on right now with cancer diagnosis and still not having much information. I will hopefully make it through this however.

AggroChat #554 – Games of the Year Show 2025 – Part Two

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Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are back in full force and continuing our adventure through the second part of the Games of the Year 2025 podcast.  We cut the list in half, giving us fifteen games that we were talking about in each episode.  This is not necessarily a numerical list, but the titles that appear later in the shows did get more votes. It was a great year for gaming, but also a year where we were constantly getting distracted by the next big thing coming down the pipe.  While we played a lot of games… we did not necessarily FINISH a lot of games.

Topics Discussed:

  • Fantasy Life – The Girl Who Steals Time
  • Chess.Com
  • Guild Wars Reforged
  • Cauldron
  • Ghost of Yotei
  • Dune Awakening
  • Atelier Resleriana The Red Alchemist & The White Guardian
  • Deltarune Chapters 3-4
  • Wanderstop
  • Where Winds Meet
  • Path of Exile Legacy of Phrecia
  • Split Fiction
  • Hades II
  • Blue Prince
  • Silksong

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bolstered Breachlords

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Good Morning Folks. Today we mostly return to our regularly scheduled gaming content. I’ve been playing an awful lot of Path of Exile, mostly because I feel like I am maybe done with Path of Exile II for the moment. My jumpy Fire Bear build works amazingly well, and has completed most of the content in the game except for the most tryhard hardcore content. I have no real interest in doing any of that, just like I have never had much interest in doing it in Path of Exile. So instead I have shifted gears to working specifically on trying to get 34 of 40 Challenges in the Keepers of the Flame league. Since my Righteous Fire Chieftain is pretty much as blinged out as I can get him…. I have opted to start working a bit on my Ice Trap of Hollowness Elementalist, which was not a thing… prior to me doing it I think. It has been freaking potent as far as characters go and I would honestly do this over and over if I had the option. Unfortunately a lot of the power of the build is coming from Foulborn Uniques, specifically the double explode Berek’s Respite. I hope this shit goes core.

I had been trying to finish the challenge that requires you to run 50000 quant worth of maps. However on a whim I decided to see just how well my Ice Trapper could do at the Bolstered Breachlords challenge. I had knocked out one of the three conditions, and I figured since I do so well at Hive Fortresses I might as well give it a shot. The thing about the Ice Trap build is that it essentially freezes the entire damned screen. You know what is really good defensively? Freezing the entire screen when you are facing a boss. Sure enough I was able to effectively keep the “It that was” bosses locked down for the entire fight and kept them from firing off any of the specific abilities that I was not supposed to get hit by. After my second hive brain, I managed to complete Bolstered Breachlords and with it my 34th challenge of the league. I am not sure if I am going to try and knock out any more challenges at this point.

The real thing that I am chasing is getting the same sized totem pole for my hideout. I have been collecting totem poles since the Sanctum league, and when Necropolis league happened I was able to get 34 of 40 challenges. After that it has sort of set a benchmark for me in my league journey, and now that is my ultimate goal is to be able to get the same size as I have previously gotten. I doubt I will ever be a 40 of 40 andy, at least not without paying for some of the ubers… which is not a thing that I want to do. Please note when I talk about paying for carries in Path of Exile, we are not talking about real world money. There is a thriving business of people who make bossing specific characters and then spend the entire league doing nothing but carries for Chaos or Divine Orbs. There are a lot of places where you can get access to this but the most common is The Forbiddden Trove discord. I specifically hate doing The Maven fight. I CAN do it… have done it more than once… but I hate the fucking “simon says” round and as a result I almost always pay for that carry to get my last voidstone.

In my travels of completing my last challenge of the league I happened to get a Hinekora’s Lock to drop, and these were at that time going for 147 Divine Orbs. I don’t really NEED the Divines right now since I am winding down the league, but I figured I would rather than the Divines in standard than the Lock. For reference at this point in the league a Lock effectively sells for Mageblood money. It is not like I need a Mageblood for anything however, because I do not want to shuffle the gear on either of my characters to try and make room for it. I still stand by my statement that a Mageblood is the least interest of the high priced items, because it mostly just allows you to cheat things on your build, and doesn’t really add anything interesting to the mix. Given the choice I will always build around a Headhunter instead, because it actually does something interesting mechanically. Though in truth I rarely play the type of builds that can benefit from either of those.

In other Path of News… we are getting a redo of The Legacy of Phrecia event and I am pretty pumped about it. Instead of using Standard as the baseline we are getting all of the bells and whistles that come with the 3.27 Keepers of the Flame league. Phrecia was one of my favorite events last year, and honestly it was hype enough that I put it on my games of the year list. Essentially every normal ascendancy is replaced by 19 new alternative ascendancies, and what is wild about this version is that we will also have the new bloodline ascendancies… which will create some truly wild combinations. I have no clue what I am going to be playing, because I am waiting on the patch notes to drop that explain some of the updates that rebalance the state of things in the last running of this event. Everyone is assuming this will mean some nerfs for Scavenger and Ancestral Commander because they dominated the last round. Scavenger for example made it trivial to get 90% of physical damage converted to elemental damage, because you could stack that cloak of flame node with an actual cloak of flame. Anyways this one starts on the 29th and I am fully expecting to be mainlining this event for awhile.

Last night I spent a bit of time in Destiny Rising, because due to all of the shit going on in my life we did not get to do our normal “Sibling Time” night on Tuesday. We knocked out a couple of rounds of Grandmasters, and unfortunately learned the lesson that you can in fact run with characters that have run out of stamina… but you do not get the Grandmaster rewards. We got enough to Calamity Ops to not be relegated, which we are calling good and then finished up with some Morgran’s Hunt. I will still need to do another 5 key run, but that should be easy enough before the reset. We have found two Strongholds for the week, but I know I have expended resources on three accounts… so that is probably all we are going to find. I know I need to spend some time running The Expanse this weekend so I can get some fruit and progress for the upcoming reset next week.

As far as the other news in my life… I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support that I have received. It is honestly overwhelming. I had a bit of a nervous breakdown yesterday at one point when out of the blue and without warning I was scheduled for two diagnostic tests that I do not remember the doctor mentioning. I of course immediately expected the worst… but then later called their office only to find out that no they did not have the biopsy results back and that these were just part of the standard procedures to look for anything else that might be going on. I still know next to nothing other than I have cancer, and at some point it has to be removed. I am just hoping that the snowmageddon we have barrelling down on us, is such that I can get out Monday for those diagnostic tests. I am trying desperately to hold my shit together in the meantime while my nerves eat away at me. I go between being largely fine and resigned to whatever is going to happen, to being a basket case.