Shelved By Genre Bonusode - Caves of Qud
Added 2023-12-01 14:39:30 +0000 UTCWe're joined by Jason Grinblat to talk about the science fantasy postapocalyptic far future roguelike/RPG Caves of Qud. We love this damn thing, and he talks us through some of the influences of the game and lays down some ideas about how to make games in that space. It's Wolfe season here on Shelved By Genre.
Next episode is a big Q+A episode about Book of the New Sun, so send in your questions!
Listen to the new Shelved By Genre bonusode by clicking here.
Comments
RE: sci-fi/fantasy Christmas movies, there's a few really good candidates from the Rankin/Bass catalog. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1985) is definitely the wildest, but Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1970) and Jack Frost (1979) also have a bunch of weird fantasy and sci-fi elements thrown in.
Nigel Spudes
2023-12-09 18:01:24 +0000 UTCAs requested on the main episode: A comment on one of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy oriented holiday movies. I actually have a bit of a special interest in specifically gay Christmas romcoms, which some of the big Christmas romcom channels have finally started producing in the last few years. There are a handful of examples from earlier in the 2000s, but it was really 2020 when the trend first really started to take off. One of my favorites from that year was A New York Christmas Wedding, which was initially released on Netflix but which can now be streamed on Freevee. A New York Christmas Wedding is a sort of a spin on an It's a Wonderful Life style alternate-timeline exploration. In it, a woman named Jennifer is preparing to get married to her fiance David when a passing angel gives her a chance to see how her life might have been different if she'd instead ended up acting on her love for her childhood friend, Gabriella. It's overall a fun movie, and I find it an interesting reversal on the usual trope because (spoiler warning) Jennifer ultimately chooses to stay in the alternate timeline with Gabriella. Most of the time this kind of magical "what if" plotline ultimately serves to teach the main character a lesson about how they really should just be grateful for the life they already have, but in this case it instead offers the main character a chance to let go of the comfortable status quo and embrace radical change in her life. In that way, on a purely thematic level, it's one of the least philosophically conservative Christmas romcoms I've ever seen lol. (It's a notoriously conservative genre, which I find fascinating in its own way, but it's always refreshing when one of these breaks that mold.) Also, maybe the angel was really a higher being intent on reproducing its own suffering onto humanity over multiple celestial years in order to lead humanity to ascend to a higher level as well, and this whole alternate-timelines thing is just part of that? Maybe Jennifer has an important destiny and time travelers from the future (and/or other alternate versions of herself) are interfering in her life in order to ensure she eventually meets that destiny? There are many possibilities, once time travel is involved. I don't generally keep up with the straight Christmas romcoms as intently, but I'll have to watch Next Stop, Christmas to prepare for your episode on it!
Teddy Asplund
2023-12-09 08:10:10 +0000 UTC
