Fairy Tale Spotlight: Beware of the Mouse [Book Review]

"Beware of the Mouse" is a novel written by Leaonard Wibberley. It is the fifth and final book of the Grand Fenwick series. It is also my favorite. The book was published in 1958, making it the second book released, but it seems to be the suggestion of the author that it be read last.

"Beware of the Mouse" actually takes place in the Middle Ages and goes into more of a history tale of the world's smallest fictional country. What's interesting about setting the story so far back in time is that very little has even changed. Even in the modern era, Grand Fenwick still lived as if they were in the Middle Ages. They even used the long bow, which is their weapon of choice.

The plot of this one has to do with a serious threat from France after the rival country begins deploying a new weapon called the cannon. It is a terrifying weapon that threatens to destroy anybody who has to content with it. France hates Grand Fenwick and wants to claim them for themselves. The issue is that Grand Fenwick knows nothing of gunpowder and cannons and worries that their mastery of the long bow will fail under such a frightening new weapon.

As usual in this series, it is up to Grand Fenwick to act as the underdog while dealing with overwhelming forces going against them. In this case, the forces coming outnumber them 40 to 1. I don't want to spoil how it goes, but it was wonderfully told.

All the characters in this book are charming an wonderful. The knight known as Sir Dermot, an Irishman, steals the show by being both the bravest and the most cowardly all at the same time. His duality is hilarious, and I loved every single scene with him in it. Much of the story is about him trying to determine his destiny, not only as a knight, but as a man.

This story also is a great way to learn about how people lived in the Middle Ages. It all seemed very accurate to the era, which actually helped sell some of the more humorous moments. Nothing here is sensationalized. If something was awkward, then the author gives us the truth.

I think the best part of this book was that you don't need to read any of the other ones to get into it. It is entirely not dependent on the modern stories. I love this because it really ended up being, not only my favorite in the series, but just such a damn fine Middle Ages book in general. I'll even go so far as to say that, if you only read one, read "Beware the Mouse." It's really that good!

All in all, I loved this series. I am so happy they exist and are now apart of my imagination. Thank you, Leonard Wibberley, for these wonderful stories. I will always have a special place in my heart for the tiny country of Grand Fenwick.

This blog was written on January 26, 2025.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Thing [Video Game Review]

"The Thing" is a video game developed by Computer Artworks and published by Black Label Games. It was released in 2002, and the remaster was recently released by Nightdive Studios in 2024. It is considered the canon sequel to the 1982 film of the same name. Yes, it is canon. That was entirely confirmed.

I played this game on console back when it originally came out. I was fascinated by the concept, but found the game to be very glitchy and unpolished. Apparently the PC version was better, but I never knew that. Because of all the problems I had, I never bothered to finish it.

The remaster has given this game a new life, and it is yet another reason to love and adore Nightdive Studios for all that they do for us. This review is mainly for the remastered PC version.

Taking place mere moments after the original movie (and having nothing to do with the prequel that came later), this game follows the story of Blake, an American soldier investigating the site where the movie took place. Along the way, you encounter other people at the site, and they may or may not be the thing. Once again, we are in a situation where we have to be suspicious of everyone.

Or do we?

Honestly, one of my biggest complaints was how the game tries to implement the paranoia aspect from the movie. Without going too much into it... they sort of failed. I never actually cared if anyone with me was the thing; I was just happy to have someone to help shoot the creatures coming at me for as long as they were willing. If they changed along the journey, they were honestly easy to kill. The blood test from the movie was in the game, but it was not always accurate, and because of the reason I gave above, I never really was interested in forcing the thing to come out. So this was a fail.

The story, however, was very interesting. The game actually does make for a good sequel. It does involve a bit of stretching though. Like... it is about a secret military base that was examining the thing as possible weapons/immunity research. It doesn't make much sense, but the game still makes it interesting enough. I liked it.

The gameplay is fun and engaging, and the combat is exciting and thrilling throughout. Although sometimes the game forces you to leave people behind for absolutely no good reason. It baffled me whenever this happened. All I am saying is don't get used to anyone with you. Just be happy you're staying alive.

"The Thing" is a very flawed game in almost every aspect of itself, but the good news is that it is fun. It's a fun game, and that's all we can ask from something like this, I suppose. I do recommend it, although you really should get the remastered version. It is much better and even closer to being canon-accurate.

This blog was written on January 1, 2025. Happy New Year!

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Going Down [Video Game Review]

Do any of you know a guy named Cyriak? His full name is Cyriak Harris, and he has been making music videos on YouTube for a very long time. These videos are very creepy and strange and often feature themes of cyclical repetition, fractal patterns, and mutations. They are intensely creepy and weird. He takes one theme or video and completely turns it into a terrifying nightmare set to some very discordant music that he makes himself. They are also often very humorous which contrasts pleasantly with the fact that they are terrifying. I have been a huge fan of his stuff for over a decade, and I always look forward to his new videos.

Well, recently I found a new Doom game called "Going Down" (released in 2014) that I downloaded completely at random. Honestly I was looking for a new game to blow off some steam on. I wasn't even going to finish it. The first thing I noticed was that I hated the music. It was discordant and silly and did not really sound like any music I had ever heard in the Doom games. I actually said to myself out loud, "This kind of sounds like Cyriak's stuff."

But then I had a sudden feeling of dread wash over me. I turned the game off and began searching information on the "Going Down" map pack. It was created by a user known only as "mouldy." And when I dug just a teeny bit deeper, I found out that the true name of mouldy was none other than Cyriak Harris. Well, I'll be damned. Cyriak made a Doom game.

And I figured he might have done a great job too since he was listed in the "featured mods" section of the Doom+DoomII Remaster. Anything in that category means that it is not just any Doom mod... it's considered one of the all time greats. And I then decided to play the whole thing through (all 32 maps) and see how much they stack up to Cyriak's body of work.

The whole concept of "Going Down" has to do with traveling from the top of a building and working your way down, killing everything you see along the way. This ultimately leads down into the basement areas... and eventually something that greatly resembles Hell.

Cyriak has perfected the concept of the "monster closet" by very strategically making a very empty room turn into a room full of enemies in seconds flat. One thing that is very particular to this map set is that, when enemies suddenly appear in front of you, they very often appear behind you as well. Cyriak loves trapping the player in between enemies very quickly. He's using a lot Doom voodoo to make it happen too. I have rarely seen so many tricks pulled in Doom in one map pack.

The map author also uses his sheer mastery of map editing to create situations where you can only use one weapon in a map, by either making all the other weapons less useful or just somehow taking the other weapons away. One mission had me only using the chainsaw and another just my fists. No matter what you are forced to use, a ton of enemies will be appearing regardless of if you feel it is fair or not... so just deal with it!

The main thing that happens so often in this map pack is that you can go from zero enemies to an absurd amount very quickly. I think this is his way to falling back to his music videos. In a strange way, it does sometimes feel like the monsters are repeating out in some absurd version of macro cellular mitosis.

There was also some witchcraft created by Cyriak that rather boggled my mind. In one situation, you are in an elevator, and when you take a few steps forward, the light go out and then, when they come back on, the whole room is covered in blood. That is not easy to accomplish in the classic Doom engine. He had to pull some very silly tricks to make that happen. He had to, in some crazy way, transfer the player seamlessly from one elevator to another just to make that happen.

The intermission scenes are silly. They have Doom Guy taking phone calls from his mother and mentioning that he is busy killing demons and such. His speech is very British. This is a bit off-putting, but it happened because Cyriak happens to be British.

The map pack had two secret levels which were very enjoyable and easy to find. The final mission had an original boss in it, and it was a very epic battle. It was followed by a epilogue mission where you are attacked in your own apartment complex. Very cool.

Without a doubt, I recommend "Going Down" as an absolutely must-play Doom map pack. If you have the Doom+DoomII Remastered available, it is free to download. Also check out Cyriak's music videos on YouTube! They are super creepy and fun to watch.

This blog was written on January 15, 2025.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Harmony [Video Game Review]

"Harmony" is a video game created by one man named Thomas van der Velden. It was released in 2009 for PC. It was entirely made on the classic Doom engine.

Back in my old video game days, I used to play a lot of "Star Wars Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight." While playing this game, I soon found out that there was a huge modding community for it online. A lot of them just reused assets from the original game to make new Star Wars games for me to play, but some of them did what was, at the time, called Total Transformations or TTs for short. These TTs replaced all the assets of the game but kept the engine. In this way, the game could look entirely different and even represent source material for other universes such as the Alien franchise or even *gasp!* Star Trek!

"Harmony" is one of these Total Transformations but for classic Doom. Although, today they seem to prefer the term Total Conversion. Even though you are actually playing Doom, you don't see anything that resembles Doom at all except for the movement controls. Everything else is completely different from the scenery, the enemies, the weapons, and even the sound effects. But don't be fooled. You are actually playing Doom; it just feels like an entirely different game.

The ascetics of "Harmony" feel like they are ripped out of a cheesy 1980s scifi flick. It's actually based on a comic book written and drawn by the author of the game. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of his art, but the overall design of his universe is amazing.

As far as the story of the game, I'll just copy and paste it to you since Doom games are reliant on text to explain anything:

In the near future: Led by greed and hatred mankind drove itself into another world war. The forces of the Northern and Southern Hemisphere attacked each other with everything their destructive arsenal had to offer. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons wiped out entire countries. The combined effect of the weapons resulted in an unforeseen side effect; a supervirus emerged that mutated all the men on Earth. For unknown reasons the women were unaffected. But they weren't safe either...

The mutated men, though intelligent, lost touch with reality. From their corrupted minds a new order was formed; 'the Pax Pox'. Its first priority is to rid the world of the "impure".

The women who survived the war united to form an army against the mutant aggressors and called themselves "the Amazons".

Today one of the Amazon outposts is attacked and their leader; Amira is taken captured. Her last hope is her loyal friend; Harmony.

Will Harmony be able to rescue her friend and the rest of the human race?

That's all you really need to know to get into the game. The rest of it is pure action scifi video game. The monsters are all very unique and interesting. The 13 maps have a really nice scifi design to them, and often really feel like real places. I really enjoyed exploring them and fighting off all the various enemies and mutants that it had to offer.

My only big complaint came in the form of the second level. It was really long and tired me out. I almost quit. I kept working on it though and found the rest of the game to be much more engaging. I am glad I kept with it. The sheer love that went into making these strange maps really shows.

If you are interested in playing this game, which I totally recommend, you can find it in the Featured Mods in the excellent "Doom+DoomII Remaster" recently put out by NightDive Studios. It's free and worth the playthrough. It will honestly just feel like you are playing an entirely different game, and that is incredibly cool in and of itself.

This blog was written on January 24, 2025.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Mouse that Saved the West [Book Review]

[I spoil the main plot of this book.]

"The Mouse that Saved the West" is a novel written by Leonard Wibberley. It is the forth book in the Grand Fenwick book series. It was published in 1981.

I just wanna say that I have really been enjoying this series. I love the whole concept of it. It's all very cute. I am going to read the rest of it right away.

This one has to do with the energy crisis which is not something I remember too well. I was just being born when this book came out. From what I understand, OPEC was being stingy with its oil prices, and it was making everyone sweat bullets because they didn't wanna pay the asking price. It's a bit confusing to me, since all you have to do is just drill your own damn oil, but it was what it was, I guess.

As usual in the series, Grand Fenwick, the smallest fictional country in the world, gets involved in a scheme to solve the world's problems. The idea they come up with is to fake Grand Fenwick as a producer of oil and then sell the barrels at cost. Hilariously though they end up striking oil for real.

I don't want to say more than that, but I do want to say that the character Mountjoy is someone who I generally see as very intelligent and reasonable, but I don't think he was as on the mark in this one. I think he bit off more than he could chew and made some bad decisions. Even so, he was still very cool. He is probably my favorite character in the series.

I do recommend this one. I didn't like it as much as the other ones, but it was good enough for a single read.

This blog was written on December 30, 2024.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Wurst Seller [Book Review]

[I spoil one of the comics inside the book.]

"Wurst Seller" is an adult picture and comic book made by Wallace Tripp. It was published in 1981. It is really weird. It was so weird that I put off reading it for like three years. I finally did it though. I went through it in one sitting.

I was actually gifted this book by my editor, which means I am a terrible friend to take so long to go through it. Really, I just have a hard time with bad jokes. This book is full of them. Some of them are extremely hard to understand. They just baffled me and hurt my head.

Make no mistake, this book is pain. Some of the jokes are genuinely funny, but the majority of them are jokes that will just make you groan really hard. I mean groan so hard that it hurts your chest. That was clearly the idea. The writer/artist wanted to hurt his reader. It is safe to say he succeeded.

I do want to point out that this book may look like it is for children, but it really isn't. Ignore all the cute, cuddly little animals. This entire thing was intended to hurt adults. I don't think it would be particularly damaging to kids, but they probably would not understand 75% of what's inside. It really takes an intelligent adult mind to comprehend most of this, which is ironic. He actually turns people's intelligence against themselves. That's insane.

My favorite part of the book was a single-page comic called "Little Bunny Wuffy and Tee Wee." It is about an extremely adorable bunny and a bird who goes around trying to cheer up other animals who are having remarkably terrible days. (I mean REALLY terrible. The worst kind of soul crushing days that can lead to suicidal thoughts or worse. I'm not joking.)

The problem with Little Bunny Wuffy is that when people have days like this, they don't want to see smiles and laughter. They want to be hugged and possibly helped. All Little Bunny Wuffy does is just spout off silly poetry about how they should just smile and get over it. Hilariously, the bunny gets eaten by a wolf at the end which nobody mourns.

One last thing about the Little Bunny Wuffy comic! There may possibly be a "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" reference. The bunny comes across a mother mouse who had her house destroyed and her children eaten up by rats. This is possibly the worst outcome of that story, and the bunny just teases her that she'll easily be able to make more children since mice are so prolific. Yeah, it was probably good that Little Bunny Wuffy got eaten. That was incredibly cruel.

That's all I want to say. I guess I will recommend the book purely on the grounds that it entirely accomplished what it set out to do. The art is good, and the man behind it is clearly insane. If you are a masochist who wants to destroy your brain, buy this book.

This blog was written on December 25, 2024. Merry Christmas!

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Oz Gazette #20 [Review]

"The Oz Gazette #20" is the Autumn 2024 edition of the possibly canon mini newspaper published by the International Wizard of Oz Club. I never can pass up reviewing these because they seem to be the only link to Oz I have left after reading all the books.

This edition is a mixed bag, but none of it is bad. They stick with what seems to be an ongoing canon related by these little issues. This one calls back to the time where the Nome King took over Oz and was saved by the Cowardly Lion. They are still worried he might come back and try again. This issue is all about raising security in the Emerald City in case that happens.

One funny thing is that they use the Gump's Head as an alarm system. It's not a very good one. All he says is "Awooga!" if he sees something wrong. But if my knowledge of the canon is accurate, this is more than he was allowed to say before. As I remember it, Princess Ozma told him to be quiet, which always made me sad. I also did not understand why she would do that.

Also this issue makes interesting references to the excellent Disney movie "Return to Oz." In several places, you can see the faces of some of the Nome goblins talking to each other like they did in the movie. Remember how their faces would appear in the rocks? That's how it works here, although they seems to be materializing directly into the pages of this newspaper. And at the same time, Bungle the glass cat is also in the newspaper watching them do this.

Think this doesn't make any sense? Well, it actually does! Remember that Oz is a magical country where crazy stuff like this happens all the time. If you were living in Oz, you might actually see stuff like this in the local newspaper. This addition is incredibly clever, and I really loved it.

The issue also recommends a few books. One of them was a new interpretation of the original "Wizard of Oz." Actually doesn't look that bad. I might take them up on that someday. There was also a recommendation to read Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen." That's actually not a bad one! Much of his stuff is really depressing. This one is too, but it's really better than most of his stuff.

All in all, this was a solid 4-page read. I'd recommend it, but these require a membership to the International Wizard of Oz Club. Gotta get one of those to see these. Worth it though, especially if you are a die hard Oz fan!

This blog was written on December 25, 2024. Merry Christmas!

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