June 23, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Flash Fiction, Free Fiction, Pokemon, Post-Apocalyptic
I limp into the bazaar late in the afternoon and eventually find what I’m looking for: A pre-war bike tire patch kit. The sharp-eyed woman behind the counter has actual wrinkles. She might’ve even seen the bombs fall. This is going to be tough.
I look in my pack and see what I have to trade.
When governments fell, money became worthless. Gold wasn’t portable. But there were other systems.
I pull out a near-mint holographic Pikachu card. Flashy, but more common than you’d think. She gives me an inscrutable look, and we get down to bargaining.
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
The first collection of Everyday Drabbles stories, Winter, is now available from Amazon!
June 17, 2019
hughjodonnell
Nostalgia Pilots, Podcast, Uncategorized
Gundam Wing, hugh, Jason, Jurd, Nostalgia Pilots, Podcast, Spence
Welcome to Nostalgia Pilots! This week, Hugh, Jason, Jurd and Spence consider Gundam Wing episode 39: Trowa’s Return to the Battlefield!
Click HERE to listen to the podcast!
Tonight: Noin makes a controversial fashion choice, Dorothy foments dissent, and Zechs makes some new friends! Plus, Duo steals Trowa’s show, and Heero gets back to what he does best, trying to murder Relena!
Promo: Nutty Bites!
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June 16, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fiction, Free Fiction
The villain burst into his head scientist’s office without knocking.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” He demanded.
She arched an eyebrow. She juggled a lot of projects, but freedom from consequences was one of the perks of the job. “Enlighten me.”
“I asked you to supply my army of minions with gravity knives.”
“I did!”
“I meant knives that opened by gravity, not made of gravity! They did considerable damage to my volcano base!”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said. “Gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces. Wait until you see my Quantum Flavordynamic Oven!”
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
June 15, 2019
hughjodonnell
CCR, CCR Commentary, Uncategorized
CCRC, Commentary Track, hugh, Jurd, Opopinax, Rich The T T, Sonic The Hedgehog, The 90's
Tonight your hosts, Hugh, Rich the Time Traveler, Jurd, and Opop, take an extreeeeeme trip to the 1990s.
Click HERE to listen to the commentary!
And HERE to watch along with us!
Chrononaut Cinema Reviews is presented by http://skinner.fm and http://hughjodonnell.com, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
This podcast originally posted at Skinner.FM on Friday, June 14, 2019.
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June 9, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fiction, Free Fiction, Mad Science, Sci-Fi
The mad scientist’s cloning machine was complete! He’d tested it (on himself, naturally) and the five replicas were perfect. They weren’t quite as brilliant as he was, but they were healthy, and loyal.
But he was out of funds to continue his research.
Some time later, a car pulled up to the drive-through at a local burger joint.
“Greetings! Recite your demands into the listening device!”
The driver pulled through and picked up their order. As she turned back into traffic, she turned to her passenger.
“You ever notice how the guys at this place all look the same?”
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
June 8, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Fiction, Uncategorized
Fantasy, HLF, Hugh Likes Fiction, LGBTQ, The True Queen, Zen Cho
The True Queen
Written by Zen Cho
Audiobook narrated by Jenny Sterlin
Published by Recorded Books
The Skinny: Cho’s second Sorcerer Royal novel is just as delightful as the first.
When Muna washes up on a beach after a terrible storm, she can only remember two things: Sakti is her twin sister, and they have both been cursed. In order to break the curse, save her sister and discover who she really is, Muna will have to travel to the distant and strange island of Britain and pass herself off as a great sorceress. But with war brewing between Britain and Faerie within, will she be able to save her sister, or will she be drawn into the intrigues of the Faerie Court, or worse, English high society?
The follow up to the delightful novel Sorcerer To The Crown, Zen Cho returns to her Regency-era fantasy filled with dour magicians, witty witches, and blithely cannibalistic faeries. The author has carried over all of the charm of the first book, telling a new tale with just enough of her beloved cast of characters while introducing new main characters and shifting the spotlight. Muna is a fantastic main character, and I loved spending more time with Henrietta, Rollo, and of course, Ma Geng Gang.
Cho’s fantasy England is centered on the sort of very real people who were pushed to the margins by 19th Century British society: women, people of color, gays and lesbians. Cho deftly presents high society through Muna’s point of view, making it as strange and inaccessible to her as the Faerie Court. It is a welcome and fascinating shift, carried over from the first book that continues to astonish.
Jenny Sterlin returns to narrate, and does an excellent job. Her acting and narration flow well together and her voice is perfectly suited to the story.
The True Queen is a rollicking adventure that builds on its prequel, but new readers won’t be lost if they pick this one up first. It is available in audio, print, and ebook. It has my highest recommendation.
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June 5, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Video Games, Uncategorized
Devolver Digital, HLV, Hugh Likes Video Games, Indie Game, Metroidvania, Nintendo Switch
Gato Roboto
Published by Devolver Digital
Developed by Doinksoft
Played on Nintendo Switch
The Skinny: More Like Meowtroid, am I right?
Gato Roboto is an indie Metroid clone that lets you play as a cat in power armor. That is really all there is to it, and all you need to know to know if this is a game for you or not. The graphics have a black and white game boy-style look reminiscent of rouge-like shooter Downwell. This extends to the collectables, which are simply either health pickups or swappable palates for the visuals. The animations are quite cute and expressive, though. I love the way main character Kiki hops out of her humanoid mech and perches on its gun arm.
The game controls well, with a pleasant sensation of weigh when in the mech, and an option to explore tighter passages by getting out of the suit. Kiki the cat can also climb walls and reach places on her own that she can’t in the suit, with the tradeoff being that she can’t attack or defend herself, giving the game a nice mix of action and stealth gameplay.
The game doesn’t make you keep track of ammunition and save spots are rather generous, which streamlines the game. Traversal is pretty easy once you get the hang of the mechanics, but that’s balanced by some punishing boss encounters.
All in all, Gato Roboto is a short but satisfying little metroidvania with memorable and adorable characters. It’s available from Steam or Nintendo Switch eShop.
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June 4, 2019
hughjodonnell
Podcast, Uncategorized
1960's, CCR, Chrononaut Cinema Reviews, Italian Cinema, Public Domain, Ugh
Tonight your hosts, Hugh of HughJODonnell.com, Rich the Time Traveler, Opopanax, and Jurd, battle the last of a Nazi tank battalion.
Click HERE to listen to the podcast
Click HERE if you want to watch the movie.
Chrononaut Cinema Reviews is presented by http://skinner.fm and http://hughjodonnell.com, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
This podcast was first posted at Skinner.FM on Friday, May 31, 2019.
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June 3, 2019
hughjodonnell
Hugh Likes Comics, Review, Uncategorized
HLC, Hugh Likes Comics, Marvel Comics, STEM, Untoppable Wasp
The Unstoppable Wasp Unlimited Vol. 1: Fix Everything
Written by Jeremy Wihitley
Drawn by Gurihiru
Published by Marvel Comics
The Skinny: After escaping from the assassin school where she was raised and establishing a lab for teenage scientists, Nadia Van Dyne discovers that her greatest enemy may be herself.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the over-too-soon first volume of Unstoppable Wasp, I was delighted that Marvel revived the series. This book collects the first five issues of the second volume, and is even better than the first, mixing superhero action with personal drama and super-science in a way that is accessible and compelling.
One of the things that really drew me to Nadia as a character was her optimism and sunny personality. In a world filled with gruff badasses whose personal traumas made them into tough loners, Nadia relished the opportunity to finally live the life she was always denied. She was a constant delight in a grimdark universe.
But of course nobody can be happy all the time, and Nadia’s father, the original Ant Man Hank Pym, had a history of mental illness that wasn’t presented as thoughtfully or carefully as it maybe should have been. When an unexpected super-villain attack catches Nadia by surprise and puts her friends in danger, she cracks. But Whitley and Gurihiru do an amazing job in how they present and resolve Nadia’s mental health crisis, as well as the reactions of her friends and mentors. This is rarely handled well in a medium where so many rogues galleries are littered with the ‘criminally insane,’ and it is all the more an achievement that it was handled so deftly and so frankly in a comic with a YA audience.
Whitley has managed a rare comeback with a character: building on the first volume and raising the personal stakes without falling back on the status quo. That’s an easy trap for comics to fall into, and I’m glad that he not only avoided it, but vaulted it. Gurihiru’s art is a perfect fit for the book as well. Their style is fun and poppy but still has that edge to it that the book needs. This book is a must read for its hidden depths.
Unstoppable Wasp Unlimited Vol. 1: Fix Everything is available digitally from Comixology, and you can also find it on Amazon and at your local comics shop.
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June 2, 2019
hughjodonnell
Free Fiction, Uncategorized
Drabble, Everyday Drabbles, Fiction, Free Fiction, Sci-Fi
The mech suit rumbled along the sandy track, making more noise than the pilot liked. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The foundation of the colony was supposed to be glorious, even easy!
He had been assured that the locals would be either awed by their technological majesty or cowed by their firepower. So why was he the only unit left?
He spotted something laying in the road and paused. It was a broken toy, a mech suit action figure with the arms and legs ripped off. By the time the message registered, it was already too late.
This story originally appeared in Everyday Drabbles, a daily free fiction project on Wattpad. Visit the link for more free stories. And if you enjoy my writing, support my work by buying me a coffee!
Older Entries
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Hugh J. O'Donnell 
Podcast: CCRC50 – Sonic Underground S1E1
June 15, 2019
hughjodonnell CCR, CCR Commentary, Uncategorized CCRC, Commentary Track, hugh, Jurd, Opopinax, Rich The T T, Sonic The Hedgehog, The 90's Leave a comment
Tonight your hosts, Hugh, Rich the Time Traveler, Jurd, and Opop, take an extreeeeeme trip to the 1990s.
Click HERE to listen to the commentary!
And HERE to watch along with us!
Chrononaut Cinema Reviews is presented by http://skinner.fm and http://hughjodonnell.com, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
This podcast originally posted at Skinner.FM on Friday, June 14, 2019.
Support Me on Ko-fi