How'd We Resolve A Platform Like This Here?

A couple of weeks ago, spurred by my attempts to keep up with Random Number Generator Horror Podcast Number Nine's weekly schedule, I carved out some time to watch "The Platform". I loved it. It's in no way scary - save in the ways it reminds us of our current political moment, for which the word "scary" is far too mild a descriptor - but it's certainly unsettling. That alone wouldn't earn it an essay, though. What really stuck with me here, and this will surprise you not one quantum, was the films subtly socialist message.

Spoilers below

A Tale Of Cocktails #62

Tea Thyme

Ingredients

80ml vodka
40ml lemon juice
30ml honey
30ml water
2 thyme sprigs

Taste: 7
Look: 6
Cost: 8
Name: 6
Prep: 5
Alcohol: 4
Overall: 6.4

Preparation: Let a tea bag steep in 320ml of vodka for two hours. Meanwhile, heat120ml of honey and 120ml of water in a pan, stirring until the honey dissolves. Remove tea bag from vodka, and add in honey/water mixture. Add 6 to 8 thyme sprigs and muddle. Shake with ice, and serve.

General Comments: Whenever I got a cold as a kid, my mum would make me hot honey and lemon. That's what this reminds me of, despite the added taste of the thyme (sophisticated, elegant, stick your little finger out) and vodka (vodka). In fact, were I in charge of cocktail names, this would 100% be called a "Cheeky Lemsip", copyright laws be damned.

It's weird to drink something so reminiscent of medicine; not unpleasant so much as incongruous. I'm sure for those more used to ice tea, and less used to a Yorkshire woman's idea of how to shut a sick child up, the effect is more pleasing - particularly in the kind of sweltering heat we're currently cursed with - but this is my blog and so my subjective experience rules supreme. 

Less idiosyncratically, I'm also not a fan of how much faff is required to make this. I could probably have steeped less vodka for less time, but the honey/water mixture won't scale down too well. You end up with quite a bit of this on your hands, then, and you have to plan ahead, which doesn't really match my chaotic approach to cocktail preparation. It's not without its charm, but I don't see myself making more.

Friday Talisman: Sagacious About Death

 I done me a Sage, which means I done me the Grim Reaper Talisman Expansion.

Quite happy with that marble base - never done anything like it before, and I think it's come out broadly OK.

The whole gang:

We Have No Mouths And We Must Scream: Give Me Away (Season 1)

A little while back, I read a Bluesky post from Mac Rogers - creator and main writer of Gideon Media's Give Me Away - in which he noted the general lack of critical engagement with podcast fiction. This is a state of affairs which leaves a lot of creators firing audio drama into the void, their comments sections all but empty, save the occasional review bomb casually tossed by some right winger dedicated to harming whatever art he’s been told he shouldn’t like. 

The post reminded me of an exchange I had with Jonny Sims back in 2020, about the mammoth series of tweet threads I’d written on the Magnus Archives, which – before I nuked my Twitter account - had covered every episode of his show. While he didn't always agree with my takes (a remarkably charitable framing of the situation, I'm sure), he thanked me for critically engaging with his work as a piece of art, something which, at least at the time, he felt hadn't been happening as much as he'd like.

So I thought, hey. I love Give Me Away, I have a lot of respect for Mac as a writer and a general human being; maybe putting together an essay or three on his (thus far) only multi-season podcast might constitute a solid. It'd also give me a break from focussing on Star Trek, which is probably an extremely good thing in itself.

First, a disclaimer. I am mutuals with both the creator/writer and director of Give Me Away on Bluesky. It would be presumptuous of me to call either Mac or Jordana even casual acquaintances, never mind friends, but I don't want to suggest, even implicitly, that I am coming to the show from a position of pure neutrality. Caveat lector, innit.

First, a summary of the show’s setup. This will necessitate some spoilers, of course, but I'll keep them low-level, since one aim of this post is to persuade newcomers that the show is worth their time. Give Me Away centres, at least initially, on a four-person family; Graham and Morgan Shapiro, and their two now-grown kids, Talia, and Jamie. Graham and Morgan's marriage is on the rocks, at least in part because Graham always seems to be distracted by something Morgan can't understand, and Graham himself doesn't seem able to articulate. Early in the first episode, two things happen at approximately the same time: Morgan finally gets sick of Graham's endless refusal to do anything about their growing estrangement, and an alien spacecraft lands in the Nevada desert.

A spaceship that won't stop screaming.

A Load Of Balls 2026

Doing this almost literally last-minute because it took me until after half twelve today to finish watching last night's session. Man, them lads take time over those balls.

Anyway. This year's scientifically verifiable and utterly unimpeachable prediction:

Murphy 18 - 15 Wu

Friday Talisman: The Pointer Sister

And so, at very long last, we reach a major milestone. I'd be lying if I said I'd saved the best for last - as always I struggle with painting eyes. I'm happy with her dress and hair, though. The original artwork puts more into her staff, including making the skull and feathers "real", rather than carved/sculpted, but I ultimately decided I needed the warm gold to offset the coldness of the purple and pale flesh (the warm reddy-pink also helps there, but only really from the back.

Anyway, we're not here for a single Lass of Evil. We're here for the whole kit and kaboodle. Here is all is, sixteen and a half years after I first bought it: a fully painted set of Talisman 4th Edition (2008) minis.

Good to get that done. Just three expansions and Assault On Black Reach, and I'll be done with every box set I got in my 20s.

Friday Talisman: A Blasphemy Against Nature

Today's toad - the fourth and last of the set - tickles me somewhat. After a few days of agonising over how to paint them, I was struck by revelation. Talisman is a fantasy game. I don't have to limit myself to the pathetic three hundred plus species of true toads. In the spirit of the hippogriff, the cockatrice, and the owlbear (HOOT GROWL), then, I present the strangest mix of animals yet imagined: a toad coloured as 'twere a frog.

I think I've done a good job here of at least nodding to the luminescence of the blue poison dart frog I've used as inspiration here. I got a bit annoyed about getting some Agrellan Earth on its legs, but even dusty earth is going to get on you a little if you're wondering around in it. Whether I not I decide to house rule this lad to make trying to attack him extremely dangerous decides to be seen. Like, in theory it should be fine, but you don't wanna be the first brave adventurer to kark it because you squished a lethally dangerous amphibian with a hand sporting a paper cut.

Friday 40K: Meet The Big Man

My small coterie of Ultramarines (all of thirteen dudes) just got a wholly unnecessary addition to their command structure with Lieutenant Calsius. I'm still trying where possible to maintain a bright line between my Firstborn and Primaris armies (such a stupidly confusing pair of names), but Calsius' sculpt would have made it very difficult to paint him as anything else but XIII Legion. 

I'm fairly happy with him in the end - the freehand helmet stripe isn't quite straight, but having let my painting skills atrophy considerably in the last decade-plus, I can live with it. The power sword has my trademark gradation across the blade, but it's easy to miss it with so little of it showing. I thought about painting it a duller colour, given presumably one doesn't switch a power weapon on while it's still sheathed, but the need for the red as a spot colour eventually took me a different direction. Maybe the dude is just that good that he can slide a powered blade from its scabbard without anything catching fire at all.

I quite like the lad in all three angles here. The common denominator is they're all carefully chosen to not show how poorly his right leg fits to the rest of his body - that was a huge problem in assembly, and a reminder that I really need to get better at using green stuff to plug gaps.

Friday Talisman: A Dreaded Sunny Day

The mission to paint the whole of my Talisman collection continues with a trip to the cemetery. 

The Talisman ghoul is pleasingly craggy, so this was mostly just a basecoat and some dry-brushing. I thought about deviating from the colours the official art gives him, but having already done that with the Troll, and with the FF iteration not having any orcs or goblins, I decided this was probably my only chance to let the greenskins represent.

Just the Sorceress and one more Toad to go, and that'll be the base game I bought back in (fuck) 2009 fully painted.

No-One Doubts The Sincerity Of His Belief In The Pah-Wraiths

 Not gotten political around here for a while, lads.