#if i have to deal with the horrors my mind produces i should also be able to use them for my writings

[sastielsfandom]

This would be a good opening to a time loop fic:

The sense that something is wrong is more than a simple feeling. The feeling that washes over you, that suffocates you before you act, whether you freeze, run, or fight it is a feeling like no other. It follows you as it follows Sam, racing for the elevator. Behind him he heard the footsteps closing in as he slammed the doors closed and hit a random floor level. It had nothing to do with the destination and everything with simply putting distance between him and the dread. But there was no relief to be held in the metal box as he went down two floors. He could hear the elevator next to his moving, and held his breath, awaiting the doors to open. It had stopped in movement, but the doors remained closed, and for a moment he thought it was a delay. The other elevator had opened and could be heard moving away, and panic filled his lungs as he pushed for the doors to open. Nothing. Pushing another floor number, nothing. Pressing it again, for the same result. Pushing the emergency button had no effect, and he hit every single button waiting for anything. Hitting the door, and trying to pry it open himself, he was trapped. It didn’t budge. A sudden bang hit the doors, with a yell to get out. Sam ran to try open the door once more, when the elevator jolted and the air was knocked out his lungs, falling to his knees, unable to breath or think. Vision blurring, gasping for air that simply wasn’t there. He blinked, vision spotty as it appeared the doors were opening, people were holding it open shouting at him. The shouting stopped as a sharp piercing noise entered his head, as he stumbled out of the elevator, hands were on him but he didn’t know whose. Everything got brighter as he fell back on the ground, staring up at the ceiling. The ceiling was opening on itself, and something shouted to him to move, but he couldn’t. He stared at it, feeling himself being dragged away, unable to feel anything. The panic was gone, yet his vision remained spotty.  “Sam!” Castiel tried again, but he was unresponsive. He picked up the hunter, throwing him over his shoulders, trying to avoid the carnage from up top, Castiel’s relived this day many times, but this has never happened. This time it feels like if they lose Sam today, there’s no getting him back. 

[wilwheaton]

When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.

This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.

I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.

I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.

A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.

I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.

I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.

To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.

But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.

After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.

River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.

I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.

At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).

I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.

My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.

It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.

Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)

But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.

Okay. Back to The Curse.

This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.

One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.

No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”

It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.

I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.

It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).

So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.

My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.

Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.

My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.

The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?

My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.

My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.

Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.

She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.

Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.

But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.

There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.

I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.

I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.

This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.

As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.

Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.

There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).

Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

A 2024 Film List

At first, I thought I could do a regular top 10 film list for 2024, but after a reconsideration, I realized it's not really possible.

First, I stopped logging every movie that I've watched. I used a mubi account, I don't have letterboxd and it felt like a chore. I regret it slightly, but nothing can be done about it now.

What I will do is to stick to films released in 2024 and to which I had access to this year. That means that I won't include The Brutalist, Queer or Babygirl, etc., as I haven't watched them yet.

It is also a list that includes well-known titles. This year has been one in which my desire to explore unknown areas of cinema dwindled significantly. But this is not the post in which I ponder about what the reasons might be.

This is the list of significant films watched in 2024 that made a notable impression, in no particular order.

Conclave (dir. Edward Berger)

I doesn't fill in the gap left by The Young Pope, nor it captures the absolute camp and absurdity of the Vatican world, but it comes close nevertheless. It has the intrigue to capture anyone's attention and the good acting from veteran actors that can deliver a memorable performance.

All of Us Strangers (dir. Andrew Haigh)

I remember how much I had to wait to be able to watch this, but it finally paid off. Andrew Scott should have won a lot more awards for it and he is such a sensible actor who can portray a man dealing with depression and loss and how it shapes one person forever.

Maria (dir. Pablo Larrain)

This film is for fans of Larrain's trilogy of films made about 20th century notable women. It's for those who want to see a more than decent comeback of Angelina Jolie. It's for those who like Maria Callas and could pair it with another documentary about her that came out in recent years. It's for those who would like to see a fictional incursion into 70s Paris without anything looking like a theme park.

La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

This was perhaps the only one which made me think of european art cinema in the most obvious way. From the story, to how it was directed, but most importantly, to the cinematography. It is a meditation on art and our relation to it, but also a nod to mid-century Italian directors.

Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

I did have some higher expectations from Anora, simply considering its Palme d'Or win. It might leave my mind the moment award season will be over, but in the context of an American cinema that produces less and less good mainstream films, Anora stands out. Adding a comedic tone helped in moving away from the usual stereotypes associated with a certain nationality and something fresh, considering that American film and tv still focuses on only a villain/spy archetype.

The Apprentice (dir. Ali Abbasi)

To this day I condemn Variety and anyone who refused to have a one on one talk with Sebastian Stan because it would have touched on the topic of The Apprentice. Not just because it is ultimately a work of fiction which should not impose any problem, but particularly because of its subject matter. Evil and in this case, an examination of its origins and what made that man who he is, is something that should not be ignored. Instead, it needs to be addressed head on. It needs to be understood and The Apprentice did it. Perhaps it tried too much in the span of 2 hours, but I admire the attempt. And Jeremy Strong once again proved its calibre.

The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)

Was it too on the nose? Yes. Is this a theme explored in so many movies with a feminist twist? Yes.

But it was fun, it was well made, it brought a dose of body horror for us fans who are lacking in any new Cronenberg film. And it was also fascinating for me to see Demi Moore back with such a role.

Longlegs (dir. Oz Perkins)

It includes a serial killer with a supernatural twist, of course this film would be on my list. I don't particularly seek out horror fiction, but it's a nice surprise whenever something really good comes out. And Nicolas Cage had a unforgettable part, as one of the scariest antagonists that I've seen in years.

Trap (dir. M. Night Shymalan)

This might seem like a really odd choice, considering all the other films on the list. But I do want to point out that even in the case of a film with faults in its script, unrealistic scenarios or characters, it can still be a fun viewing experience. It is ridiculous, like many of Shyamalan's movies, but I do think the backlash against Trap has also been over the top. I loved seeing Josh Hartnett behave like the worst serial killer, making the dumbest mistakes, but also getting away with it every single time!

Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)

This was the only horror film that actually had a deep, visceral impact on me and which made me feel uncomfortable long after it ended. A psychological horror that doesn't show much of the actual atrocities that had happened, but its impact comes from the examination of fangirls obsessed with serial killers, but also of those who lack any sort of empathy and whose fascination with such criminals borders a very problematic line.

Special Mentions

There are three films in the special mentions category. Their inclusion has nothing to do with my opinion regarding their value or if I enjoyed them or not. It has to do with the fact that they stood out due to their directors commitment to do something different through cinematic language. Not just for the sake of it, but because it served their stories and their vision about cinema as an art.

1. Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

2. Emilia Perez (dir. Jacques Audiard)

3. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World (dir. Radu Jude)

[kwillow]

I alluded to this fact in a previous question about Theo's preferences for companions: it really depends.

Read more because this got long... tl;dr: IT WOULD REQUIRE A LOT OF SQUEEZIN' AND THE JUICE WOULDN'T BE WORTH IT TO ANYONE IN-UNIVERSE WHO WOULD HAVE TO DEAL WITH HIM EVERY DAY.

Someone could exist who could, in theory, get along with him perfectly and be his ideal man/woman (which again, he doesn't even really know what that would be, so he wouldn't know it when he saw it), and they could start off on the wrong foot with him, set off a tantrum spiral and never recover his esteem for the rest of his life.

Even if someone who could be compatible with him was able to pick their way through the bear traps of his mind and get close to him, that doesn't necessarily mean anything would come of it. He can get infatuated easily, experience flickers of attraction - but he would much rather ignore those feelings than act on them in any way beyond just trying to be a good and loyal friend and benefactor.

And then, even if someone got close to him, and he was infatuated with them AND recognized those emotions for what they are (a big ask in and of itself), he STILL would not want to enter a romance because that would change the nature of the relationship, he doesn't know what to do in a relationship, and he wouldn't want to entrap someone in a relationship with him (Gods, the horror) or suffer the travails and indignities of romance because all his experiences tell him that eros is a corrupting force and always ends really, really badly.

So one could ask him to start a relationship, and the absolute best result would probably be a polite and firm decline with some blathering about the nobility of "unrequited courtly devotion," with the more typical result being a meltdown.

Effectively, one would have to stay close to him for actual years in close proximity without leaving for greener pastures than him (which one should) and maybe, maaaaaybe if the right mental dominos fall he could conceivably think of entering a relationship. Except in Amaranthine, he'd only want to do that with a childbearing woman because he feels he needs to have children to continue his withered, hollow excuse of a family tree. AND THAT WOULD START A WHOLE OTHER SAGA. ALL THAT ABOVE WAS JUST GETTING TO FIRST BASE, LET'S NOT EVEN GET INTO WHAT IT'D TAKE TO GET ALL THE WAY TO FOURTH. Anyone not able to produce more Norths would have a whole 'nother endurance test to slog through to work through his issues about debt to his family and legacy and all that nonsense. And would either path be worth it to someone? Performing years worth of informal therapy (not real therapy, he hates doctors!) on a messed-up guy just to get him to maybe agree to go out with you? Probably not!

To bring it back to the beginning, despite all I've written here, it all depends. I don't think I can write a rulebook or point-by-point guide for "how to get Theo to agree to date another imaginary person" because in the end, he is a fictional character and he is more beholden to what would be interesting for my partner and I to write and draw versus anything else. And it would depend on the setting, the characters involved, the circumstances that befall them, myriad little factors that could influence what feels natural for him to do. Maybe there could be an interesting story we come up with where he falls irrationally head-over-heels for someone and proposes the same day. He could also spurn all companionship and focus his attention on other pursuits.

So... if anyone is expecting any sweet blossoming love stories to come to fruition within Theo’s story in Amaranthine… the odds aren't good. I don’t have much interest in writing “romance” as a genre, only incredibly dysfunctional relationships as a vehicle to cause strife and comedy in fucked-up weirdos' lives.

[lets-try-some-writing]

Your pretender au is probably one of my favorites. You are an excellent writer but I have to ask. Ratchet is a good medic. Does he ever notice?

Would Optimus ever have to replace Ratchet with something pretending to be him? Can other bots be replaced like Orion was?

If that wasn’t your intention with the story I’m sorry it just gives such a good horror vibe of this secondary eldritch race replacing them or maybe it’s Primus’s next stage in evolution or maybe it’s unicron infiltrating.

Also just as a bonus, how would the humans react if pretender Optimus and Bee were finally revealed while on earth?

I gotchu buddy. I will forever expand on my precious pretender au.  And don’t you worry, this was 100000% my intention with this AU.  I will need to get to your last little question in another post, but don’t worry, it's all coming together o(^▽^)o

Previous part here. 

━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙ ━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⊙ ❖ ⊙

Ratchet knew the moment the supposed Prime arrived that he was not Orion Pax. He had been one of Orion’s closest friends. He could sniff out a fake without so much as rebooting his optics once. In light of this, his very first instinct was to interrogate the fragger to find out who sent him and then promptly drop his body in a ditch somewhere. At least that way Orion could rest in peace. 

That was Ratchet’s plan, but then the fake presented the Matrix of Leadership and had the relic confirmed by the Primacy priests. It was legitimate. He was a true Prime, even if he wore the face of one who should have been dead. With that in mind, there was no way Ratchet could kill him. The fake did not hesitate to take up the position Orion left behind, quickly becoming the leader the Autobots desperately needed. Optimus never attempted to leech off Orion’s old connections or otherwise abuse the legacy he’d stolen, and for that reason, Ratchet let him be. He had no clue how Optimus had gotten Orion’s face and memory, but whenever he attempted to dig into any files and ask Jazz about Orion’s situation before death, the results came up unsatisfactory. 

Of course, Ratchet did not need to search in vain for long. As soon as the Prime began turning up on the battlefield and subsequently required medical attention, Ratchet quickly found out just what he was dealing with. Optimus’s CNA was a convoluted mess that shouldn’t have even been capable of producing a living being. There were strands from Shapeshifters, Insecticons, and even a small amount of Predacon within the Prime’s genetic code. There seemed to also be a bit of Cybernetic flora mixed into his CNA, but it was all so jumbled that Ratchet could hardly make sense of it. Orion’s CNA was like an accessory, a veil that hung over the monstrosity that Optimus really was. 

But Optimus had already proven to be highly intelligent, and he did not allow Ratchet to so much as record his findings. Clawed digits dug into his shoulders and mandibles clicked together ominously behind him as Ratchet looked over the scans he’d taken during Optimus’s examination. Every part of Ratchet screamed at him to run from the predator behind him. He could feel optics glaring at him, hot events brushing over his neck, and a rattling voice that sounded as though it were a sick mockery of his friend giving one order.

“Keep this to yourself, old friend. If you wish for your kind to be preserved, my nature must remain between us alone.”

Ratchet did his best to not shake, but the command rang out in his audials, causing his spark to spin in terror. He did not look behind him, he couldn’t bear to. He watched the screen in front of him, his optics on the distant reflection of the thing behind him. It was blurry and difficult to make out, but there were claws, fangs, optics, and mandibles that did not belong. He did not move from his prone station until he heard the definitive sounds of transformation and a dull almost comforting hum from the being behind him.

“Calm yourself. I mean no harm to your people. My purpose is to preserve, to protect… and to ensure that never again may you fellow creations of Primus enslave yourselves to the whims of your own desire.”

Dangerous digits ran along the side of his audials in what could have been a fond manner before the creature that proclaimed itself a Prime left the medical bay without another word. Ratchet remained still, watching the CNA scans as a biological hologram pretended itself. 

He feared what he saw.

Hidden behind an armored disguise was a being that was in no way Cybertronian. The computing program projected the image of a monster, one Ratchet could not find it within himself to look at for long. It was just a prediction, but beneath his shining shell, Optimus’s appearance was horrific at best. The predictions spoke of a long gangly build with extra arms and two jointed legs not too dissimilar to Soundwave’s. It had a hard shell almost akin to a carapace but with plenty of thin transformation seams where outer armor folded away. Three sets of optics were on a face filled with fangs and covered in mandibles. On the thing’s back were spines that extended down its back and developed into vicious looking raptorial claws that jutted out from around the base of the shoulders. The only familiar things present in the prediction were the colors the thing bore, the familiar finials, and the same optical structure Ratchet knew his deceased friend to have.

A being that masqueraded as one of their own… one that was capable of doing any number of horrific things to further its own unintelligible goals. Ratchet shuddered at the implications, but he closed and deleted every single scan after a few kliks of observing what he had discovered.

He would wait. He would see what Optimus wanted. Then when he stepped over the line, Ratchet would act and use what he knew to his advantage. Whatever Optimus was… he had Cybertronian roots in his CNA. Despite being a convoluted mockery of that which Ratchet and his people were, that simple fact ensured that toxins and disease were likely still viable options when it came to eliminating the threat. And so that is what Ratchet prepared for. Vorns were spent dutifully crafting the ultimate plague, one he carefully ensured was tailored to Optimus’s CNA specifically. No others would die should it be unleashed, just Optimus Prime.

It was a foolproof plan, one Ratchet had every intention of enacting as the war dragged on, peace treaties fell through, and Optimus’s sick tests put him and Jazz through all kinds of torture that thankfully were reserved for them alone. It was easy to see that Megatron would likely be willing to stop the war effort if he could kill Optimus. Somehow, he’d learned the truth regarding what the Prime was. Ratchet could see it in his optics when he flew forward in rage. If Optimus died, the truth would come out and the war could come to an end. Ratchet was not happy with the idea of Megatron ruling Cybertron, but in the face of the threat Optimus posed?

He was willing to compromise.

He spoke with Jazz and silently he selected a date to unleash his plague. But then, out of the blue, Optimus vanished. He was known for leaving for extended periods of time, but this was new. For six stellar cycles not a spark knew where he was. Ultra Magnus held the army together and Jazz wove a few lies to keep everyone calm, but Ratchet only felt relief. There was a looming fear of what was to come, but he enjoyed the lack of predatory presence for a time. And then of course, Optimus Prime returned carrying something in his arms. 

“What in Primus’s name is this?”

“He is what you would call a sparkling.”

“Where did you find him?”

“I did not find him.”

“What… does that mean?”

“This one is mine. Tend to him in my absence.”

Ratchet’s plans shattered into a million pieces as he held the sparkling Optimus brought with him. The little one had wide blue optics, so trusting and so innocent. And yet when he smiled in his attempts to coo at him, Ratchet saw fangs and small mandibles hidden within the sparkling’s intake. His servos shook as he caressed the little one’s helm, coolant gathering in his optics as he came to a harsh realization. This was Optimus’s spawn, the precious life within his arms was another abomination. Despite that, the little one had not asked to be created the way he was.

Ratchet couldn’t kill a sparkling.

The plague vial was hidden and Ratchet gave a series of encrypted codes to Jazz which would lead to its location. The spy was no master decryptor, he would need time and a great deal of expertise to find the location Ratchet had imputed onto the drive containing the codes. That simple fact ensured that in the worst case… there would at least be time to get Bumblebee away. He may have been an abomination like his Sire, but Ratchet could not bring himself to do anything but treat the sparkling with love. He tended to him while Optimus went off to war, he taught Bumblebee how to read and write in numerous dialects, he showed Bumblebee their stories and their culture, and he took all the time in the world to make sure that should all else fail, a piece of what Cybertron was would remain. 

Optimus was a monster, but he cared for his spawn in a strange sense. He brought Bumblebee strange substances to consume, and sometimes he would take Bumblebee away for cycles at a time. Upon their return, Ratchet would quickly take scans and note a disturbing amount of Cybertronian protomatter within the sparkling’s tanks. He never commented, he merely rocked Bumblebee into recharge and sang him songs while trying not to look when Optimus began to grow harsher. No matter how much his spark cried out when Bumblebee was beaten or neglected by his Sire, Ratchet did not act. He refused to. He couldn’t risk it. Over and over he tried to remind himself that killing Optimus would likely only lead to Bumblebee’s death as well.

He refused to kill the sparkling he helped raise. As such, as vorns passed, Ratchet’s tolerance broke and he made one rash decision. 

“Ratchet! Where are we going!?” 

“Away from here! Don’t fight me Bumblebee!” 

“What about Optimus?!”

“He’s not coming. I am going to take you far away from this plasma pit of a world until we can deal with things here. Don’t worry, I won’t let them kill you.” 

“I don’t understand!” 

“You don’t need to. Just remain quiet and live in silence until I recall you. Then… then I will plead for your life before whoever rules our world.” 

He knew it was a death sentence, but Ratchet had to take the risk. He dragged Bumblebee kicking and screaming toward the space ports with every intention of putting the youngling into stasis and shooting him to some far off world. Once that was done, he would unleash his plague and wait until he was sure every other abomination was dead. Only then would he retrieve Bumblebee and proceed to plead for his life. It was a weak plan, but perhaps, if Primus was willing, he might be able to find a way to make Bumblebee normal. It all depended on his desperate attempt to get the youngling off world.

Ratchet did not have that chance. 

“What are you doing with my creation?”

“Optimus! Stay back!” 

“You know too much, and your loyalty has proven to be fickle.”

“Get away you abomination!”

“You have served your purpose, old friend. I believe it is time for another to take your place.”

Optimus grabbed him just before he reached the spaceports with his charge. Ratchet recalled very little of what followed, but next he knew, he was bound to a slab in some facility he did not know. Above him Bumblebee smiled at him eagerly and Optimus stared down at him with calculating optics. The Prime held a larva of some sort in his servos. It couldn’t have been bigger than a digit, but evidently that was as large as it needed to be to burrow into his processors through his right optic. 

He remembered screaming. He remembered feeling nothing but agony for cycles afterwards. He remembered gaping in horror as he ran scans on himself and found the same symptoms Orion Pax had presented. Most importantly, before his recollection faded into nothing but waves of torment, he remembered Optimus calling out to him, telling him that all would be well.

He did not know how long it took, but as he purged energon and organs alike and felt the sweet embrace of death, he smiled, content in the knowledge that Jazz would know. The spy would tell someone, he would give them a chance. All he needed to do was look at the drive Ratchet gave him and decode it. Then-

-Their people would have a chance. 

━━━━━━ 

━━━━

━

It did not have a designation when it woke. But it knew instinctively that it was hungry. Energon was given to it by those its code recognized as kin, and it devoured. It sensed another who was not of its kind observing, but that one fled soon enough. Then, once it had finished consuming, it stood up in its new frame and met the gazes of those who were also of its line.

“Hail Hierarch.” 

Its speech was disjointed as it settled into itself and the memories of its host began to funnel into it, but as the Hierarch leaned down and placed his servo on its helm, it was at peace.

“Hail Ratchet, second born of our line. With the knowledge you have inherited, we shall thrive.” 

Ratchet? That was a fine name. It was the name of its host. A smile crept across it- no, HIS face as he settled. He would surpass his host, he would serve, and by the grace of their maker, he would ensure their survival on a world filled with those not of them.

[thepaintedsable]

Sketchbook page, but this time I think I've found a thing I like. That's Not My Neighbor OC and a few extra worldbuilding concepts for them + a little sketchbook Journaling to commemorate the northern lights being pushed down across the entire US!

Talking headcannons/fun concept stuff and closeups under the cut:

Have I played TNMN? No. Do I think I'd even like playing TNMN? Probably not for more than a few minutes or when I need a repetitive task to procrastinate or something. Not a fault of the game, just not my style haha. Does the concept of postwar/Cold War era monster horror intrigue me to no end? Hell yeah.

I'm not too into history, really, but I don't think people are digging into that fact enough. It is Febuary of 1955. Nineteen. Fifty-five. The Second World War was only a decade ago, the second red scare and McCarthyism is still on fire in the states, the US-soviet arms race is in full force, the Cold War is still weighing heavy on citizens minds, and a lot more stuff I’m not educated enough to remember!!! But what's this? There's non-human creatures of unknown origins preying upon citizens, often attempting to take the form of a human being but failing and producing horrible, mangled excuses for the human form as a result? To the point where we have a whole new protective service to deal with their capture and new jobs formed to watch communal living facilities?

Are apparement complexes more or less popular, considering the risks of living without a doorman and those of living in a highly populated area? Is the arms race contributing to more weapons being created for the common citizen, for the DDD? How does this change the political situation, the rumors, the drama? Gosh, the world must be on fire in that regard!

Why, the draft is in very recent memory. Why wouldn't they employ it to instate their doormen? I mean, not many would want to be face to face with a traumatizing, intelligent monster, even behind glass.

Meet Doorman #365, an unfortunate fellow drafted to be locked in the building, forced to wear a gas mask used in the last great war, and entrusted with a dozen human lives!!! Yay! He's been nicknamed "Leroy" by his residents, to give him a more... human touch. Really, they find the masks and military nature of this new batch of doormen to be highly unsettling, but it must be for their own good, right? I mean, just look what happend to the old doormen who didnt have these safety measures, the old tenants...

Drafted and unhappy about it, he is basically on house arrest within the building, and what used to be just an office space and surprisingly large janitors closet is now officially his apartment. Whenever out of the enclosed parts of his room, he is expected to be in full uniform, mask included. He is currently one of two Doormen stationed at his building, the senior of the pair. Neither knows what the other actually looks like. Doormen are escorted by DDD to new complexes and should not be allowed to enter otherwise.

The masks were found to confuse some of the less intelligent doppelgangers, producing much more obvious yet twisted forms as they attempted to replicate what they believed to be extra or less eyes (glass visors), intestines (breathing tubes), etc. at the residences that employed them. It swiftly became policy. With some tweaks, the old gas masks of the war could also mask voices as well. To avoid further issues of doormen being copied, doormen were bid to stay indoors and stay covered at all times. Being extremely unpopular job, a draft was set.

Doormen must appear friendly, though! So styling and care of uniform also became extremely important. This is mostly up to the doorman (to increase morale, of course!) so each uniform, and therefore each building, will have its own personality :) DDD graciously supplies all uniform pieces, room decorations, and weekly rations for their Doormen, selected from the catalog! Residents are encouraged to increase connection to their doormen, though, so home-cooked meals and outside trinkets are not uncommon.

Leroy is not... enthused about this job. Hes not even allowed to use his actual name outside of his coworker, and he thinks he might be going a little stir crazy at this point. He certainly wouldn't have chosen this position for himself, but his birthday was picked, so what can he do? Desert? And be hunted down like a doppelganger? Hell no. At least he gets to sit behind some hopefully bulletproof glass and surely reinforced walls all day. His residents aren't too bad (he thinks some try too hard at not seeming suspicious, though), his coworker is... undecided, and even though the doppelgangers are, well, scary they haven't been too clever at his location. He often gets handed newspaper clippings or used wrappers instead of the entry forms and IDs. They're getting smarter, just very slowly. He hopes he isn't around when they wise up.

I really enjoy thinking about all this lol.

[goodluckclove]

Actual Hot Take: Ramble Incoming

I'm in a mood, less than a week out from my hysterectomy, and I have some thoughts. Rough thoughts. Medium spicy.

They're about world-building and critiques and readers and writers. It turned into a big ramble as I processed some feelings - you'll note the subject change partway through - so I'm throwing a read more.

I would say here that this is my own personal opinion but essentially I realized that my real issue here was how sick I am of cynicism in lit spaces and like...yeah I don't think that's a crazy hot take. I feel at this point that I am incapable of hot takes.

I am deeply intimidated by the kinds of writers and readers who eviscerate logistical world-building choices in genre fiction. I usually only see it in sci-fi and fantasy communities but I have to imagine it happens in every genre.

Maybe an unrealistic fabric is used in a historical fiction novel. Or a poor choice of saddle in a western. Or a medical inaccuracy in a horror scene. It has to happen all the time because certain people have expertise that research might miss, or a writer's research could be wrong, or they could've just not researched at all. But for some reason specifically the Speculative Fiction crowd are the most likely, in my experience, to lose their goddamned minds.

Has anyone read Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder? It's about the hardest sci-fi out there. So esoteric and thorough in its scientific accuracy that when I tried to read it it circled back around and sounded like fantasy. Listen to this excerpt from the plot summary:

Huh? Huh???

I don't know about you, but this is virtually indistinguishable to me from the schizophrenic rambling of Philip K Dick. I did not hate the book. I couldn't finish it because I had no fucking clue what anyone was talking about, but I enjoy it's existence. The prose was pretty retro. It's like a pulp novel from an alternate universe where everyone has a PhD in Quantum Physics.

It's just a weird spectrum, the questions you're supposed to answer and the ones you're allowed to leave a mystery. What mysteries will the reader use against you as proof that you didn't think it through? People say write for yourself, and you should, but some of those same people are quick to produce massive think pieces on why your choices make you a bad writer. That's just a thing some writers choose to do. And there's really no way to predict what someone might get unreasonably rant-y about. As I put my writing more out there I have no idea what people will use to claim I put no thought into the most emotionally vulnerable writing I've ever created.

And they say that's not supposed to bother you. But like. Of course it does? There's a level of thick skin you're supposed to develop about writing, but I don't think that applies to all aspects of writing or all the time. If someone disregards my entire novel that I gave myself tendonitis over because my depiction of back of house food service wasn't realistic or my magic system didn't go in a direction they thought it should, I'm going to be upset. It won't ruin my life or get me to give up writing - I don't see anything doing that at that point. But I'll get sad. I'll probably get pretty sad and it's weird that I feel like it's bad for writers to admit that.

My hot take, nestled within this hot take, is that I think this applies to every writer. Even the ones that react with ego and anger to massive critiques on their books - right before we cringe and scoff and laugh online - are probably also just sad that we didn't like their writing. Unless they specifically didn't try, or posed a scam in the form of a book, they're likely sad they offered something born out of creative effort and got rejected. Nobody likes that.

It's one thing if the writer themselves has some trash beliefs. I am fine with people eviscerating JK Rowling or any of the writers who feel like the best way to get a book deal is to bring down other writers or pretend to be a different race online. But it's just crazy to be a writer in an age where you might publish a book someone hates so much that they release a three hour-long video essay roasting entire segments for a potentially incalculable audience.

I used to be into that kind of stuff, but after being here for so long relishing in that rage-bait feels weird. Because a lot of the people here, even if they write themes I'm not interested in, seem like nice enough people actually trying to do something. I had strangers on here send me their writing and someone sent me what was clearly a fetish thing and even though I wasn't into the kink I talked to the person about it and they were perfectly civil and courteous. I'm almost 30 and I'm learning that while some artists are using their medium to push unhealthy beliefs or hateful ideologies, a lot more people just want to tell a story that feels important to them. Even if other people don't like it.

I don't know. I was angry at first when I started this but by now I'm just sentimental and I think people should stop treating complaining as their primary hobby. I think critiques are important, but there comes a line in which I'm forced to think you'd just like hearing yourself talk. And if you like to talk why not talk about something you enjoy?

If you've read this far (you're very odd), I'm going to go ahead and list a few books that inspired my writing and say why I like them a lot.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut: Love my man Vonnegut. His prose is so warm and easy to read and his stories are so wild and interesting to think about. Everyone should read Vonnegut he's great and he seemed like a pretty nice guy.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison: This book wrecked me hard. Some of the descriptions were so beautiful I put the book down and let out a sigh. When I finished I walked out of whatever classroom I was in without asking for permission from the teacher and spent the rest of class wandering campus in the rain and weeping openly.

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock: it's a trilogy told through postcards and letters you can physically open and remove the pages. Has some of the most beautiful romantic intimacy between two people who never meet. There's one particular letter I read and reread a lot when I was younger because it was exactly what I wanted in life.

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals Pitch Meeting

[Should be experienced imagining the voice and acting of Ryan George, who is linked to above.]

Producer Guy: So, you have a musical for me?

Screenwriter Guy: Yes sir, I do. It’s called The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals because the main character, Paul Matthews, doesn’t like musicals.

PD: He doesn’t?

SG: No, he can’t stand them. Watching one is his own personal hell. And that isn’t a throwaway quirk, it comes up several times and is integral to the plot.

PD: Isn’t the protagonist typically meant to be relatable to the audience?

SG: Yeah.

PD: And won’t the audience be full of people who like musicals?

SG: Yeah.

PG: Bit of a weird choice, but okay then. So other than the musical thing, what’s Paul like?

SG: Oh, not much.

PG: What?

SG: Yeah, he’s the most average, boring, white middle-class American everyman you can imagine. No desires, ambitions or hobbies; he never expresses much passion for anything except things he doesn’t like. He has an office job at a company that’s so generic, I didn’t even think of what it does. He’s not particularly nice either. Like, when his best friend Bill asks him to help him reconnect with his teenage daughter Alice, he refuses to avoid his own discomfort despite having nothing else to do. And when his other friend Charlotte right next to him is clearly upset because she’s in a miserable marriage to a neglectful, cheating husband, he doesn’t bother to comfort her.

PG: Isn’t the protagonist typically meant to be likeable and interesting?

SG: Yeah, but we’re not gonna do that I decided. So another important character is Emma Perkins, this barista Paul has a crush on. She’s the only reason he keeps going to this crappy café.

PG: And what’s her deal? Is she kind and friendly to balance out Paul being so apathetic?

SG: No, she’s also rude, but she has better reasons for it. She hates her job and has really annoying, mean coworkers her boss favours over her, who just won’t shut up about how great musical theatre is. They all love it so much that there’s a new rule that if they get tipped, they have to perform a whole song and dance routine.

PG: But working for every tip negates the point of a tip!

SG: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I said, it's a crappy café.

PG: I gotta say, though, you’re presenting musical fans in quite a negative light there. They are the people whose money we want.

SG: (aside) You haven’t seen anything yet. Anyway, Emma and Paul bond over not liking things and people - it’s cute. But then at the end of the day, a meteor crashes down in a big storm and lands right in the town’s theatre, which is putting on a musical. And the meteor turns out to have evil alien life inside it!

PG: Oh my God. What happens to everyone in that theatre?

SG: Well, it’s offstage, but we find out later that the alien works by taking over your body like a virus and killing you to use you as a vessel for its hive mind. So that probably happens to most of the people. Bill and Alice get out okay, but a lot of people are dead now.

PG: This escalated very quickly!

SG: Yeah, this show does that. It’s a horror comedy; it’s like a sitcom where anyone could brutally die. But here’s the thing: the alien hive mind makes the Infected sing and dance like they’re in a musical, so all the fun, catchy songs are actually it controlling people’s corpses. That’s how everyone knows the lyrics and can move in time to music nobody’s playing. You only hear the music if you’re Infected. And it spreads really fast, so this mindless musical obsession could literally destroy humanity!

PG: That’s so dark and tonally dissonant. But I have concerns about the villain essentially being a living musical, in a musical. Won’t that kinda alienate the audience? As in ‘make them not like it’, not ‘make them aliens’.

SG: No, it’ll be fun. The first song after the intro is very entertaining. There’s this really funny part with a silly, crazy homeless guy.

PG: Ah, yes. Making fun of the homeless and mentally ill is tight!

SG: Not what I… (moving on) and, and, we can cleverly parody musical tropes. For example, Paul’s boss tries to get him to sing an “I Want” song because the Hive want him to be the protagonist of their ‘musical’, but he doesn’t want anything so he’s a terrible protagonist.

PG: Oh, that was on purpose! I thought you were just a bad writer.

SG: Yeah, no, I’m setting up an arc. So the Hive take over most of the town - which is on a island and the bridge gets pulled up, so there’s no way off - including Emma’s café. But she escapes with Paul and they meet his friends from work, plus this obnoxious asshole Charlotte’s cheating with called Ted, who's the worst. But then the Infected police show up, including Charlotte’s husband Sam. She begs him to snap him out of it ‘cause she still loves him, but he pulls a gun on her.

PG: Oh no.

SG: Fortunately, Ted knocks him out.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But he hits him too hard and his brain falls out!

PG: Wait, even putting aside how unlikely it is that his flesh and skull were broken open wide enough that his whole brain could fall out, isn’t the brain… attached? That’s a very implausible injury.

SG: I’m gonna need you to get all the way off my back about that.

PG: Well, okay then.

SG: So Charlotte has a mental breakdown and Emma suggests they go to her biology professor, Henry Hidgens. He’s an eccentric doomsday survivalist who somehow predicted this exact incredibly specific apocalyptic situation and has a huge house with top-notch security. And he's a biologist, so he might be able to study the alien infection if they bring him Sam.

PG: It’ll be hard to get there safely with the town swarming with alien zombies, especially carrying a dead man.

SG: Actually, it’ll be super easy, barely an inconvenience.

PG: Oh, really?

SG: That part just happens offstage.

PG: So they get to shelter?

SG: They do, so they start to relax for a bit. Except Charlotte, she’s dying inside and stays with her tied-up dead husband. Bill and Ted have this funny argument where Bill threatens to kick Ted’s head, which, you know, is a stupid threat.

PG: It is?

SG: Yeah, because you’d have to kick really high and most people can’t do that.

PG: I thought you would just push the person to the ground with your arms and then kick their head. Most people can do that.

SG: True.

PG: And it would be highly effective. You could kill someone that way.

SG: (getting an idea) You could, couldn’t you? (writes that down)

PG: What are you writing?

SG: Nevermind. Emma and Paul have a nice heart-to-heart where she reveals her backstory. Turns out she had a sister, Jane, who lived a great life, dream job, true love, kid, everything, while Emma left home at eighteen and travelled around being aimless and irresponsible. But then last year Jane died and that’s why Emma came back and is studying, to try to do something with her life now that Jane can’t anymore.

PG: Aw, that’s sad.

SG: Even a zany horror sitcom has its serious moments. So she and Paul bond some more, until Charlotte and Sam burst in.

PG: Wait, what?

SG: The Hive made her think he’d come back to life and manipulated her into letting him go. Then he just killed her.

PG: Dick move.

SG: Massive dick move! So now Ted gets beaten up by the possessed corpse of the woman he loves, after the last things he said to her were mean because he’s the worst. Fortunately, Hidgens kills the zombies.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But Alice calls Bill and she’s under attack at her school!

PG: Oh no.

SG: If Bill goes to save her alone he’ll almost definitely die. But Paul volunteers to go with him.

PG: So he won’t be nice to his friends in everyday life, but he will risk his life for them?

SG: Precisely, this is really bringing out his inner hero. But when they get there, Alice is already Infected. She sings a whole song about what a terrible father Bill is and he's so guilty that he failed her that he tries to kill himself with the gun they brought. Fortunately, Paul takes the gun off him.

PG: Oh, good.

SG: But he drops it on the ground, so Alice just shoots Bill herself.

PG: Oh my God! Why did he let go of the gun? That was a very poor decision!

SG: Extremely poor, yes. Alice nearly kills Paul too, but the army rescue him. Specifically this secret special unit that I made up called PEIP that deals with supernatural stuff like magic and aliens that most people don't know about. They're ordered to kill everyone to keep the weird stuff secret, but the leader, General John MacNamara, is a good person so he doesn't do that.

PG: So he lets Paul live?

SG: He does, and he sends a helicopter to take him and Emma off the island.

PG: Paul tells him about Emma?

SG: Uh-huh. He realizes that he's in love and finally does want something: to be with her.

PG: Cool, cool, cool.

SG: Meanwhile, Hidgens and Emma are studying the Infected. Emma theorizes that if the brain of the Hive is in the meteor, they could take out all of them by destroying it.

PG: Is that true?

SG: There's no reason it couldn't be! But Hidgens changes his mind about the Hive being evil, knocks Emma out and ties her and Ted up. Then he opens his house's gates because he wants the Hive to get in.

PG: Why does he think the Hive isn't evil?

SG: Well, he's thinking that since humans are so immoral and harmful we're killing the planet and each other constantly anyway, but the Hive will bring peace and harmony. And he loves musicals.

PG: Oh, he does?

SG: Yeah, he's even written his own awful one, and he plays a song he wrote and composed to lure the Infected inside. He's willing to die and doom humanity for his twisted, irrational love of musical theatre.

PG: Really slamming your audience again. Hey, why wasn't he at the musical the theatre just put on?

SG: I don't know.

PG: Fair enough.

SG: So Paul comes back, frees Emma and Ted and they escape, but General MacNamara kills Ted because the soldiers are Infected now!

PG: And this is all onstage?

SG: Yes.

PG: Then it's gonna be hard to get past a division of fit, armed zombie soldiers who can survive not even having brains in their heads.

SG: No, it isn't. Emma shoots MacNamara in the shoulder and that makes him just give up.

PG: What about all the other soldiers?

SG: Please ignore them.

PG: Okay.

SG: So Paul and Emma get to the helicopter and think they've made it, but the pilot is Emma's mean coworker from earlier and makes them crash.

PG: Why is she Emma's coworker and not just the army pilot, if the Hive got there first?

SG: Because.

PG: That works. Are they okay after the crash?

SG: Paul is, but Emma's too hurt to walk. Paul says they should find a boat -

PG: Wait. There are boats? Or does Paul just think there might be?

SG: I have more notes on this town and it has a boating society, so there are boats.

PG: Then why haven't the Infected got in the boats and gone to mainland? Shouldn't they have done that by now?

SG:

SG: ...You're right. I didn't think about the implications. Oh my God, I didn't think about it!

PG: Whoops!

SG: Whoopsie! So anyway, Emma tells him her theory and he goes to blow up the meteor with a grenade.

PG: But then he could die, and right when he actually cares about something. That is heroic. Do he and Emma have a touching maybe-last goodbye?

SG: Kinda. They try to kiss, but she coughs up blood in his face. The Hive knows Paul is coming and lets him in order to infect him. He does his best to resist its control, but it makes him sing and dance and have an existential crisis.

PG: Oh no.

SG: But at the last possible moment, he pulls the pin, blows up the meteor and saves the day!

PG: Wow, wow, wow. Wow.

SG: So we cut to two weeks later. Everyone else in the town is dead, but Emma was saved by the army reinforcements and she's getting out of hospital on the mainland and ready to start a new life.

PG: Well, at least she survived and the Hive is defeated. That's what Paul wanted. But it's still a shame he died.

SG: That's what Emma thinks... until he walks in!

PG: (excited) What?

SG: Yeah, he's okay and he gives her this soft smile and she's the happiest we've ever seen her and they hug.

PG: That's such a sweet ending. After everything they've been through, getting to be happy together feels earned, and I really have warmed up to them both.

SG: And then Paul starts singing.

[Beat. Producer Guy's relieved expression turns to confusion, shock, sorrow and horror as he processes that information and its implications. He stares at Screenwriter Guy, betrayed.]

PG: But that means he's... (SG nods, proud of himself) and Emma's theory was wrong, and... (SG nods again) the Hive is on the mainland now, so the entire world is... (SG nods again) oh, a very depressing ending!

SG: Set to a very cheerful song! The cast even stay in-character for the bows; the Infected bow while Emma screams and cries and begs the audience for help before being dragged away. So what do you think?

PG: That ending will haunt my dreams. But as creative as the premise is and as emotional as it gets later on, I don't know if this will be that big of a hit. The tone changes so fast and jarringly, the main characters aren't that likeable at first and it all just seems pretty niche. And it spends so much time mocking its own genre and audience. I can see it becoming a cult classic, but I don’t think you’ll be able to launch a series with it or anything.

[ranboo5]

Ooh, you mentioned c!Techno — any c!peerpresurduo headcanons? I may or may not be a bit obsessed with them :)

REAL AND ALWAYS TBH CPEERPRESS THE WORLDDDDD when I was more I active I was fully a cpeerpress blog at heart tbh and I like to think in essence I still am... they really are all that matters. Under cut for. Oh my god I was worried I wasn't gonna be able to deliver but THEMMMM

Headcanons wise I'm not gr8 at dragging up novel stuff on the spot BUT . I do like to think wrt offscreen interactions - I laruve cRanboo litol Hypixel backstory . The fashion thing is extremely covered ground but I do thing they discuss also specifically the angle of like . OK so going off Techno's skin Ranboo's skin and hell even applying it to Squid's tuxedo I like 2 think that fictional Hypixel fashion sense/movements just kind of are like that (see: Myzzy design!!!) so I think they should trash on people's wardrobes. - Idr if I ever posted this but it's fine. Philza being the kind of guy he is definitely has some kind of preserved:tm: cellar and he among other things at one point gets into keeping a ginger bug. He produces a decent amount of pumpkin sodie using the farm and the bug and ofc his store is officially open to both of the other commune denizens, which they both do interpret as an "at all times" thing. Which it is, even if Phil didn't necessarily intend to get woken up by the world's unstealthiest insomniacs walking into his house in the dead of night in search of a carbonated drink - I don't know if they run across each other during this or if it's during an excursion of some kind but I have the image in my mind so strongly that at one point in conversation Ranboo as like a haha yeah semi-sequitur just drops an episode of The Horrors as like . It's not Quite a litmus test but it's there, both spontaneous and dragged out like pulling teeth somehow, and even someone more astute than Techno wouldn't have a clue what to do with it. Fortunately, Technoblade, being greatly socially competent at Chilling and Having Fun, takes only a second before going "oh yea. HATE it when that happens." I don't know what the Horrors being obliquely referenced in just enough graphic detail to be unsettling while also deeply useless in figuring anything out are so I also don't know if Techno knows how it feels:tm: or not odds are strong either way tbh but regardless of that he DOES say "oh yea. HATE it when that happens" - on a lighter note one day Techno gets sick for an excursion and fervently denies this, which Ranboo dutifully yes-ands while also handing Techno tissues every five minutes - Ranboo once explained the cobblestone decisions made about the sky city EXTENSIVELY to Techno, and in this explanation also never got around to mentioning what they were building or why. Techno didn't ask. - Techno successfully taught Ranboo at least one recipe that he did not know prior to teaching it as if he'd known it for years. If this happened multiple times it has a roughly 50-60% success rate wrt making things that are good - I think it does matter that during and leading up 2 Ho16 proper Ranboo was not in contact w/ people at the commune . After it respawns somewhere locally it takes off in disgust as soon as it can, makes for the mangled desert, falls asleep in an alcove of sandstone somewhere and is awoken when a wandering enderman chances upon the sand it's walled off with, and before it can say anything they ask Ranboo if it's lost. The question pulls him up short and he finds himself saying something like "a little bit, I guess," and the language isn't as clumsy in their mouth as it was last month and a nondescript memory of talking at Phil slowly clicks into focus Techno is dealing w/ his Distraction Of The Week when Ranboo walks back into the commune -- this week he's reading about bead recording and is trying to figure out if and how to apply this to Syndicate signaling. It's not going great. Anyway the snow rustles and Ranboo clambers awkwardly over the fence across the yard, and when Techno throws him the "sup" he just stops mid path to his house and walking circles into the snow explains that he is going to bed which manages to start a ten-minute conversation about nothing that lasts until Ranboo attempts to lean on a fencepost in fidgeting and nearly passes out asleep on the spot, in similar kind to when you pop into a Discord call for "just a minute before bed"

[wgc-productions]

The Magnus Archives 4- Page Turner

I think it's been a week since the last one of these. That is mostly because I was preparing for the season 2 premiere of my own show, Small Victories, and that took up quite a bit of time, wouldn't you know it.

But now I'm back and ready to bite into a new (to me), delightful, and hopefully scary episode of TMA.

00:00- Skipping the ads

00:30- I lied, I actually am listening to this ad for an actual play podcast. I want to, eventually, produce an actual ply podcast because people get a heck of a kick out of it, I have friends who love D&D and I think it'd be fun to make a show they'd really enjoy, but I don't really "get it" so I'm looking for ones to listen to. Recommend any if you have them.

01:21- Oh, we just jumped right in. Usually there are 3 minutes of ads.

01:39- I love an orchestral score. It sounds so polished. I just love scores.

02:00- I think in the winter of 2012 I was studying for the FCATS (a deep cut for all you folks who aren't from Florida)

03:14- I think, as a rule, all weird things should happen to actors because I feel they are more equipped to handle the strange than Paul the accountant from Danville, IL, you know what I mean?

04:18- Oh, it's bound in human skin. Calling it!

05:18- All Latin? I bet he wished he joined the priest hood (or was a Classics major).

05:55- Oh, buddy boy there are plenty of people who buy books with no intention of reading them.

06:47- Oh no! He sounds like me!

08:11- Oh, he's a Shakespeare boy. I wonder which role he was.

12:08- Okay, I'm genuinely curious as to what exactly is the books deal. They've got me. A magical/cursed book is what really scratches me. Maybe it's because I know that I ~as a writer~ would probably get pulled in the same way.

13:06- A cursed book that pushes you to madness feels perfectly Grecian. Or at least a little Arthurian.

16:30- I don't know if it's because I'm actually quite tired, but the narration is so soothing. I feel like I'm about to flutter off to dream land. This would be great for bedtime stories (excluding, of course, the vague atmosphere of eeking horror)

21:55- Don't answer the door!

22:00- NEVER ANSWER THE DOOR!

22:15- Oh, he's a goner.

22:23- Okay, so personal hygiene isn't high on the list, but that's not necessarily terrifying.

22:52- Yeah, sell that book. Just sell it and mind your business like that bloke with he coffin in his apartment. Get rid of it and mind your business.

25:04- Woah, this feels way longer than the other episodes. I think the extra time does the stories well.

25:33- I wonder what they used to give the underscoring that spooky wind tone. Does anyone know?

26:03- Light that poppet on fire! Get rid of it!

27:02- Honestly, I kind of love Johnathan the pissed off archivist. You pissed him off Gertrude! Prepare for his wrath!

28:51- I feel like Jared will make him self known again further along.

29:00- Okay, I am proper curious about how these things all run together and also if the creators knew beforehand how this was going to go or if it was more organic.

I think "Do Not Open" is still my favorite one out of the bunch so far. I think that scenario was much more chilling to me than the others, but I will say this piqued my curiosity which is a fun time.

[maximuswolf]

Very mixed feelings about Alan Wake 2...

Very mixed feelings about Alan Wake 2... I just finished the deluxe physical edition including both expansions. Writing this is helpful for me to conclude my thoughts about it before moving on. What I liked: • The tone and setting. The creepy detective, X-Files/Twin Peaks thing the game was doing was excellent. I was genuinely on edge through certain sections. Even when it got wacky i.e. in the musical sections I was entertained. The Lake House expansion was also a stand out in tone. It felt like if Control was a horror game and less an action game. • The story, writing and characters. Though convoluted, it was well done. I haven't played the original Alan Wake and I didn't struggle to understand too much. At first I found the ending abrupt, but I was won over by the mid-credits scene and then the final draft ending I watched on YouTube after. As a fan of early Sherlock episodes, I enjoyed the use of Saga's mind place for narrative purposes, less so for actual detective work, in helping understanding the story as it progressed. And I cared about the dual protagonists. What I disliked: • Terrible combat and movement. Both character's had poor maneuverability, almost nonexistent dodging skills, excruciating reload time, slow running speed, and painful walking speed. I assume these decisions were made to produce a sense of fear? Unfortunately I felt only frustrated when dealing with the speed of the enemies or bosses closing in on me or grabbing me compared to my ability to deal with it. If I were to compare this to something like Resident Evil: 4 Remake, seeing as though this was touted as a survival horror game, then this was a very disappointing gameplay experience compared to the enjoyment I found in that game. • Awful boss fights. There wasn't a single boss fight in the entire game that was intuitive or fun. I found myself feeling exasperated and crying out my feelings of frustration multiple times. There is a difference between difficulty and frustration. Difficulty when done well feels challenging but fair and leaves my enjoyment intact. This did not. Spoken by a Soulsbourne player! Again, compared to RE:4R, those boss fights and enemies put me under stress and made me fearful while keeping my maneuverability and speed intact, and making it easier for me to process what I needed to do. In the end, I ended up just turning on the cheat for invulnerability and that was a real shame because it inherently removed any fear. But I felt so frustrated on numerous occasions that the only feeling I had was a desire to get things over with and finish the game.Conclusion:Clocking in with over 30 hours of play time, I found a lot to enjoy here when thinking of this game as a story or experience only. But sadly the game kept tripping over itself with its lackluster, frustrating gameplay. It took my focus away from the horror I should have been feeling on numerous occasions. And so for that reason, my favourite Remedy game is still Control. If nothing else, my experience with Alan Wake 2 has left me with anticipation for the sequel to that game instead. While I'm fond of certain things here, I will unfortunately be unable to replay it and will instead sell it. If Alan Wake 3 ever arrives, I will be looking for reviewer's thoughts about the gameplay before jumping in. Submitted December 25, 2024 at 02:10AM by 8enevolent https://ift.tt/ThHQC1A via /r/gaming

[blackbookbulletin]

November 2nd, 2024

Ok, so I know I said I was tired of being alone earlier, and what I just did definitely isn’t helping.

After I broke up with my ex, naturally I hit the dating apps to see how the market was fairing. I found someone I was interested in, and we were seeing each other for a few months. Generally, it was mainly physical, but for the past few months he started getting more touchy-feely. It wasn’t a problem initially, but the closer he became, the bigger and heavier this pit in my stomach grew.

I don’t know what came over me, but he just kept holding my hand even after I told him I needed to leave for work on time. He wouldn’t let me go, and something inside me snapped. I don’t even remember how the conversion started, but I told him all the baggage I've been carrying around with me. I told him how I need to go on this whole healing journey of self-discovery. I explained that everybody who I have any amount of romantic interest in ends up happier after I leave their life. I also told him this was for his own good. 

I ended up staying two extra hours past the time I wanted to leave. He was crying, head on my lap, asking over and over, “why?” To be honest, I just wanted him to be happy, and if he were with me, he just… wouldn’t be. I want him to find his other half, this amazing person who could go to all the punk rock shows and horror movies his heart dreams of. I want him to experience a life that I can’t provide. But he just wouldn’t let me go.

I told him all the things I wanted to tell my ex. For the first time in a relationship, I was honest with myself and my wants and needs. I only wanted him to be happy with someone who actually likes him back. But he said, “he only wants me.” He elaborated: he went on dates, had flings, shared feelings. But his mind always drifted back to me. He couldn’t shake this feeling, and he was going at my pace in order to not scare me off. He said he saw a future with me. And honestly, it pissed me off.

I know I self-sabotage. I have known for a long time. I hold on to these tendencies like a life preserver, as these behaviors have literally saved my life time after time. They hurt the people around me, but I just can't change. But I am also unsure if I even want to. I have such a deep love for all these people in my life, and I want them to have the life they deserve. I don’t mind if that comes at my sacrifice or endangerment. I honestly enjoy it. It seems the more I hurt, the better the outcome. It feels like, in a way, I am giving up my future so they can go live theirs.

In a way, I deserve this. I am a burden, and that’s not being hyperbolic. I have baggage I am still working through, and a majority of it was self inflicted. I did all this to myself, I deserve all the consequences that come with my choices. It would be cruel to ask anyone to help me with my shit, cause its mine to deal with and carry. I guess I don’t understand how what I am doing is wrong, when I am the only one suffering. Why is it wrong for me to sacrfice my life? Its my life, and if I want to give it up to make others better, I should have that choice. I know these behaviors aren’t healthy, but they produce good outcomes. They help people find happiness, at the cost of their relationship with me. It's a weighty cost, but one I am willing to pay over and over again.

Maybe I am the villain I think I am. I sure hope not, but after seeing a grown man cry at my feet by my doing, the truth seems uncomfortably close.

[woundedheartwithin]

I'm kinda hoping that Tango Gameworks reforms under a new name outside of Bethesda/Microsoft with a good chunk of the employees. I know that would mean they wouldn't necessarily be able to work on past IPs. But the Evil Within games are reasonably well liked in terms of horror titles, I really loved Ghostwire Tokyo and Hi Fi Rush didn't necessarily sell badly - it just didn't happen to sell the same sort of numbers as say Call of Duty or something like that. In terms of a middling "AA" studio, they could do those games. They seemed to only be closed because they weren't selling AAA numbers on AA games. Those middle of the road games between Indie and AAA are important to.

I hear you, but unless Microsoft starts laying off Bethesda employees (which isn't unlikely but also isn't something I would wish on anyone), I just don't see it happening. At the end of the day, GWT and EW were both cult hits, and in the case of Ghostwire, as much as I truly adore that game and think everyone should play it, I feel like I'm maybe being a bit generous there. For Evil Within... yeah, it's really not that great of a game (though it was incredibly fun), and I think the only reason it actually did garner a cult following was because of Shinji Mikami. So at the end of the day, since the remaining Tango devs were dispersed within Bethesda, I don't see them risking relative job security without someone like Mikami at the helm, and he actually left Tango last year before shit hit the fan. I'm not sure if he has anything in the works, but who knows, maybe he'll come up with yet another new studio and poach some of his old employees from Bethesda

But Hi-Fi Rush... I'm pissed about that one specifically because it is honestly a case study in how fucked the industry is right now. Matt Booty literally said, right after nuking Tango, that Xbox needed more small, successful titles. This comes right on the heels of Starfield, a highly anticipated and expensive ass AAA Bethesda Game Studios title led by Todd Howard, fucking bombing, mind you (which lol. Lmao even)

long winded, rambling, barely coherent rant below the cut

Now, it's difficult to gauge success in the gaming industry these days because the metric is changing as major subscription services become popular, but we do have some promising numbers on Hi-Fi Rush that should have set an expectation on how titles produced by Tango might have performed beyond it. The old metric on judging the success of a game was to look at how many copies had been sold. Well, now that GamePass and services like it are a thing, folks aren't buying as many games because it is cheaper to just pay the subscription fee and get a bunch of games packaged in, so companies are now looking at number of players, as well

I wanna stop here and say that I am not an expert on this. I know a lot because I read a lot, but I'm not a consumer analyst and I'm not involved in the gaming industry in any meaningful way outside of being a consumer myself, so take all of this with a grain of salt

Anyway, let's look at Hi-Fi Rush's numbers. There aren't many concrete sources on this simply because Bethesda doesn't like to share their numbers unless they're staggering, but based on my cursory research, insiders and consumer analysts have estimated somewhere between 300,000 (Steam only) and 2 million (gross) copies sold. That's a huge discrepancy, and really not one that matters at the end of the day. It's unlikely that a great many people actually bought the game simply because there was no physical release (despite promises that one is coming), and the game was listed on GamePass the same day. Why pay $30 for one digital game when you can pay like $20 a month and get a bunch of digital games including Hi-Fi Rush (aside from the obvious downside of when it's inevitably rotated out and you can't play it anymore, but y'know)? People love to feel like they're making a good deal. But if you look at the number of players the game boasts total, it's a whopping 3 million, and that is confirmed. The current average number of players for the last 30 days according to Steam Charts (which we'll assume is roughly half of the player base) was 362 players, with the peak being 974. The all time peak for players at one time for Steam players was 6,043. Not fucking bad for a small game made by a niche studio that had little to no commercial campaigning, and that's just on one platform. I couldn't find any concrete numbers on the Xbox player base, but if we assume, again, that Steam makes up roughly half of Hi-Fi Rush players, then we see some impressive numbers.

So yeah, Matt Booty's right, Xbox, and indeed the entire gaming industry, needs small, quality titles made by small, dedicated dev teams. That's the heart and soul of the industry, and with the closure of so many subsidiary studios under BethSoft and Microsoft, we're losing that. And a lot of that is hinging on Microsoft's insistence on holding onto permanent exclusive titles, despite both Sony and Nintendo loosening their stance on the same in recent years. Because exclusive titles that never release outside of the platform it was made for simply don't make as much money as cross platform titles by their very nature, and this strangles small studios.

For instance, let's look at Starfield. Starfield, which was highly anticipated since it was announced back in 2018, is a hilarious example of how big a fucking mistake it was for Microsoft to buy Bethesda (which I think they're learning). First of all, Bethesda has never been a good company. Their games are fun simply because they're broken as hell and oddly charming, and that makes them actually kinda good. But Starfield was literally billed as "Skyrim in space" since day one (seriously, Todd really said that). They spent a fuckton of money and time on this game and ended up with a piece of shit that had all the graphical errors of a BGS Elder Scrolls game or Fallout game and literally zero of the charm. And it's numbers, considering it is a AAA title developed by Bethesda's main studio, are abysmal.

Let's look at sales first. Now remember, this game DID get a physical release. Bethesda has not released the numbers on number of copies sold, but consumer analysts project about 2.5 million copies sold gross. Remember, analysts projected Hi-Fi Rush sold 2 million gross. Obviously the total player count is going to look very different from Hi-Fi Rush's because the game is more accessible and more well-known by virtue of being a AAA title. Starfield's player count for the last 30 days averaged 7,386, with the peak being 14,258, and an all time peak of 330,597. Again, these are Steam numbers only. I couldn't find a total player count. Since it's not fair to compare a AAA title to a small studio game, let's compare it to one of Bethesda's own blockbusters, indeed their most successful title to date: Fallout 4

So we all generally agree that Fallout 4 sucks, especially compared to previous installments, but it is a fun game and it performed extremely well. It's also not quite as overrated as Skyrim is (much as I love both, and I truly do, they both are overrated and terrible, I mean FO4 even has a tv adaptation now, which has probably skewed current numbers but y'know), and hasn't been rereleased a billion times over three generations of consoles, so I think it makes a decent point of comparison for a game the Toddster claimed would be Skyrim in space. Hey, if you're gonna make a claim like that, we might as well put it through its paces, right?

lmfao

Last Sunday, there were a grand total of 11,185 Starfield players, a game that isn't even a year old yet. It was outclassed by Fallout 4, a nine year old game, at 37,963 players. That's fucking hilarious.

Now let's look at Fallout 4's numbers. Fallout 4 sold 12 million copies in the first 24 hours after release, and has gone on to sell 25 million copies. For it's player count, according to Steam Charts, last 30 day average was 28,690 with a peak of 52,978, and an all time peak of 471,955.

Just for comparison's sake, let's look at Skyrim. Skyrim sold 7 million copies in the first week of release, with a total of about 60 million copies sold since 2011. For player count, according to Steam Charts, last 30 day average was 17,205 with a peak of 27,296, and an all time peak of 69,777

Here's that handy little comparison chart with Skyrim added

Like that's just embarrassing. But yeah, Bethesda was such a great acquirement wasn't it, Microsoft???

And before anyone says this isn't fair because Starfield's player base was reduced thanks to exclusivity, that's the fucking point, isn't it? Literally they are digging this grave themselves. They bought Bethesda because Skyrim is a so-called 10 year game and they thought they'd make a bunch of money and get to say they own one of the most well known studios in the industry, then cut their player base literally in half and expected Skyrim in space to do numbers

The point is, exclusivity obviously does large studios no favors, but it straight up destroys small studios, and we've seen that with Tango and Arcane. They never had a chance because this was always going to happen. Microsoft acquired a publisher because of its success and then willfully took away the exact thing that made it successful, and then they were surprised when they were no longer successful. And this is a bad environment for developers these days because job security is nonexistent, big publishers are choking their studios by imposing arbitrary deadlines on games that already don't have adequate budgets and then laying off employees before release so that they make more money (looking at you, Bioware and Rockstar), so I'd imagine forging on to create a new studio is the last thing on most developers' minds. They're gonna keep their heads down and hope they don't end up in the same boat as the Dragon Age devs, and the RDR2 devs before them, and countless others. The only way we'll see folks bailing is if they have the opportunity to follow a name that has enough clout to keep them safe, like Mikami. And that fucking sucks because it's such a waste of talent, and it's completely unfair to everyone involved. And like, it puts even big studios and publishers like Bethesda in danger, too, though I'd be willing to bet Bethesda will pull up stakes and leave long before Microsoft drives them totally into the ground. Todd Howard is many things, but he's not stupid.

So TLDR, the whole situation is fucked and I hate it :(

[agentnico]

The Exorcist: Believer (2023) Review

Whenever a year actually has October 13th land on a Friday, I am honestly surprised more studios aren’t dumping more horror film releases on this day. Friday 13th is literally THE horror day, and when it happens in the month of Halloween I feel like it should be a bigger deal, and I’m not even superstitious.

Plot: When his daughter, Angela, and her friend Katherine, show signs of demonic possession, it unleashes a chain of events that forces single father Victor Fielding to confront the nadir of evil. Terrified and desperate, he seeks out Chris MacNeil, the only person alive who's witnessed anything like it before.

I have seen the original Exorcist twice in my life. The first was when I was very young and all I recalled from that experience was seeing a little girl vomiting and being overly creepy. The second was actually recently only a couple of weeks ago, and this time around I managed to actually appreciate how stylistically unsettling director William Friedkin managed to make that original horror release. From the consistent feeling of dread that spreads throughout each moment - it’s truly horrific. Though I myself don’t get scared when watching horror films, which most likely is due to me having analysed that art of film for so many years that I have now lost that magical sense of escapism, which is a tragedy in itself and one that I shall hold upon my shoulders for the rest of my life and I accept that, but with said that, even I can admit that The Exorcist is a masterful piece of demonic horror, and one that feels so wrong to watch. Not in that it is a bad movie, but more so that we are breaking the mould of nature and are bearing witness to something that should not be shown.

There have been multiple sequels that have followed the original, none of which I have the interest in seeing, however the new The Exorcist: Believer comes from director David Gordon-Green who did a solid job rebooting the Halloween franchise (at least with his first entry) and has also previously excelled on the indie market with his small budget thrillers, including Joe where he worked with Nicolas Cage, and look, I’m always willing to give anyone a shot after they worked with the greatness that is the Cage Man! Additionally this new Exorcist comes with a lot at stake, with Universal supposedly cashing out a whopping $400 million on the rights (like what the actual fudge??), with having major plans to spawn multiple sequels and even billing this new one as a direct sequel to the original film with the return of Ellen Burstyn as Chris MacNeil, who if you recall was the mother of the original possessed girl. Honestly, I am scratching my head as to what came through the minds of the producers to spend so much money on the rights - it’s such a massive gamble. Then again, it was only a few years back that Netflix completed a similar purchase with the rights to those Benoit Blanc-centred Knives Out films, and of course we don’t hear much about the success rate of the Netflix algorithm as they profits aren’t reliant upon box office numbers, but seemingly the streaming viewership for Glass Onion paid off. I think. Who knows? Regardless, a triple figure million pay out for movie rights is astonishingly crazy. At the very least one would hope the movie ends up being decent.

Right from the bat I’d say it is not fair to compare Believer to the original Exorcist, as it was never going to replicate the original’s shock value. But due to the connective story beats and the shared title it is hard not to. But judging the film on its own merit - it’s okay. I didn’t find it to be particularly scary nor shocking, and the creepier moments from the trailer in the movie lose that value. It’s visually solid, even though the over reliance on CGI took away from the horror. Again, not wanting to constantly harken back to the original, but that movie excelled by managing to show something so terrifying in such a simplistic way. Probably helped that back then they didn’t have the technology to go bigger, but the simpler effects back then actually benefited in showcasing fear in such a brutal way. With Believer, we’re treading all too familiar ground, with the only new aspect being that instead of one possessed girl there are two. I must add, Lidya Jewett and Olivia O’Neill do really throw themselves into the madness of playing the two possessed girls and should be applauded for that as they did well. Leslie Odom Jr. and Ann Dowd as the ones trying to stop the demons are alright. Both are talented actors, but they are not given enough material to work with. What else….the music is good. The play on the original piano notes and accompanying score was solid, certain cinematography shot were done well. But overall it’s a by-the-numbers supernatural possession flick.

Now in regard to the connection to the original movie - it’s very silly. Ellen Burstyn’s return is a waste. For those excited to see her, she’s only in 3 or 4 scenes total, and the creative choices made with her character are such a disservice to the original movie. Without spoiling, it’s a choice that seems to be inspired by the modern woke culture, with Burstyn’s Chris having being studying the art of exorcism ever since the events that transpired with her daughter, and then when questioned about why she herself did not partake in her daughter’s exorcism she blames the patriarchy. The choice of bringing her into this narrative and then what happens to her…it’s basically taking a classic character and making them dumb. I must say though that the only actual shocking moment in the movie comes in a scene involving her character, and though that moment itself is memorable, the build up towards it is so stupid. Also, with the return of Burstyn it comes as no surprise within the movie when a certain other character pops in for a cameo. Does it add anything to the movie’s story? No, it’s just there for cheap fan service.

Overall The Exorcist: Believer is very disappointing in that it does not offer many frights, the story is as generic as they come, the connections to the original are wasteful and as a whole, this movie doesn’t have much to offer. I’ll give it that, I was never actually bored during the film - it runs at a decent pace with enough going on to keep one’s attention, but let’s be honest, this isn’t a movie that will stick in one’s memory. The power of this one is not that compelling.

Overall score: 3/10

[grex-statera]

Chapter 8: Soft Rain - Spring, Year 1

Lewis: You should expand your horizons, Elliot. I mean, shipping crops IS good but imagine how well your farm could do if you added animal produce and artisan goods to your exports.

Lewis' words were running over Elliot's head. He was right, though. She should expand her horizons.

The following day after the Flower Dance, Elliot had been busy focusing on her farm and it's performance. She thought she'd made good progress on her combat abilities so she took a break from going to the mines for now.

Various documents and lists littered Ellie's table. Her laptop opened on a spreadsheet monitoring her finances.

Elliot: Hmm. Alright, let's get a coop then.

+++++

It was a rainy afternoon when Ellie started walking to Robin's.

Robin: Oh no! You're soaked.

Ellie: Ah, sorry 'bout your floor, Robin.

Robin: No worries, Ellie. I'll just mop that later. How can I help you?

Ellie and Robin discussed the terms and process of getting a coop.

Robin: Alright, I'll get started on your new coop first thing tomorrow.

Ellie: Thank you, Robin. Would you like to have breakfast together then?

Robin: Ooooh farm fresh ingredients? Sign me up!

+++++

Ellie closed the door behind her and opened her umbrella.

Seb: You gettin'a new coop?

Ellie jumped.

Ellie: Jeez, Seb!

Sebastian laughed. He was leaning on a wall, smoking.

Seb: Sorry... You're so jumpy!

Ellie: I didn't even know you were there!

Seb: Hah, yeah I went out while you and mom were talking.

Ellie: Stop sneaking up on me!

Sebastian laughed again. He threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped on it, putting it out.

Ellie frowned.

Ellie: Man, could you stop that?

Seb: I thought you didn't like the smell?

Ellie: Yeah, but I meant littering, also.

Seb: Alright, I'll try. Headed home?

Ellie thought about what Elliott told her the night of the Flower Dance.

Elliott: Maybe you could look at my drafts and give me feedback...

Ellie: Ehhhh. Think I'm going to the beach for a bit.

Seb: Oh? I'm going there too, actually.

Ellie: Really? Didn't know you liked going there.

Seb: Yeahhh, I only go there when it's raining. Not a big fan of the sun.

Ellie: Same! Rain is so nice, don't you think? Come on, then.

Sebastian smiled and opened his own umbrella.

Seb: So, uh. Whatcha doin' there?

Ellie: Think I'm gonna visit my friend, Elliott.

Seb: I see. The writer, right?

Ellie: Mhm.

Seb: You like books then?

Ellie: Yeah, I guess. I don't read very often, though. Just when my friends recommend me something good.

Seb: Cool. What genres do you like?

Ellie: Hmmm, lemme think... Sci-fi, fantasy, mystery and horror, maybe. Sometimes I read classics, but never romance. Not really my thing.

Seb: That's nice. I like basically the same genres but I never do classics. I respect a good romance, though.

Ellie chuckled.

Ellie: Really? Didn't expect that from you, to be quite honest.

Seb: Hah, guess I don't look the part. You also into comic books?

Ellie: Yeah! Do you know Cave Saga X? One of my friends absolutely love that series.

Seb: Yeah! Have you caught up with the new volume yet? I wont spoil it for you, but oh man...

The two of them spent the entire walk chatting with each other with a lot of comfortable silence in between. A few more paces and they were nearing the beach.

Ellie: Oh man, it's cold. What do you usually do here?

Seb: Me? I guess I just hang out by the docks and enjoy the view. The sound of rain on the ocean's very soothing.

Ellie: Hmm, yeah that sounds quite nice.

Seb: ...If you want to, I guess we can hang out here sometime.

Ellie: Sure. I'll be quiet so I don't ruin your drift.

Sebastian chuckled.

Seb: Alright, deal.

They parted ways near the shore.

+++++

Ellie knocked on Elliott's door.

Elliott: Ellie! It's so wonderful to see you!

Ellie: Hi, sorry. I hope you don't mind my boots.

Elliott: Not to worry. I haven't really cleaned my cabin thoroughly anyway. Please, make yourself at home.

Ellie tried her best to remove as much sand and mud from her boots then made her way to Elliott's desk.

Elliott: Would you like something to drink? Coffee or tea, perhaps?

Ellie: I'd like some coffee, please.

Elliott: Coming right up.

Elliott's desk was littered with books and paper. It was quite a mess. A draft was sitting in the middle.

Ellie: Do you have a story in mind right now?

Elliott walked over to Ellie after setting the kettle on his stove. He pulled out a chair for Ellie to sit on, then sat on his own chair.

Elliott, sighing: To be completely honest, Elliot, I cannot decide on what genre I would like my novel to take on. I have characters and arcs in mind but I cannot seem to find a solid setting for them. Say, do you have any suggestions for me?

Ellie thought for a bit.

Ellie: Hmm. You know, Elliott, I'm gonna be honest with you. You seem like such a romantic guy, so I think if you decide to write a romance novel, you would be great at it. Um, I don't like the genre, though, so my second suggestion would be... Mystery? Maybe?

Elliott blushed.

Elliott: Well, I'm quite flattered with your words, Ellie. I'll keep them in mind.

Elliott went over the characters and plot points he had in mind with Ellie. Going over what could go together, which areas need more structure and the like. After a few minutes, the kettle screeches.

Elliott: Oh! Perfect timing.

Elliott walks over to his small kitchen and makes two glasses of coffee. He hands one to Ellie and takes a sip from his own cup.

Elliott: Thank you for the company, Ellie. It was such a lovely surprise to have you here on such a dreary day.

Ellie: You're welcome, Elliott. I hope you finish your novel soon.

Elliott smiled at her and opened a window.

Elliott: Ah, would you look at that. The rain has finally stopped.

He leaned on the window pane, sipping his coffee. Ellie walked over to Elliott to admire the scenery outside.

Elliott: Ah, Ellie. You must know what's bothering my dear companion rose over here, yes? I think it may be wilting under my care.

Ellie took a good look at the rose.

Ellie: You're not watering her with seawater, aren't you?

[briankeene]

The Greatest Show On Earth

Someone asked me the other day what's the most fun I've ever had working on a project, and what was the most rewarding. That's a tough question to answer. There have been novels that were absolutely fun (with bold italics) to write -- EARTHWORM GODS, THE COMPLEX, and the various CLICKERS books immediately come to mind. Certainly, the most I've ever laughed while working on a project was when Jesus and I would try to one-up each other with the CLICKERS books.

But for an overall combination of Fun and Rewarding? I'd have to go with SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR.

In 2018, I was approached by Serial Box (now Realm Media) -- a producer of audio dramas. They'd just obtained licensing deals for a number of media properties, including Orphan Black and Tony Valenzuela's Silverwood. I'd enjoyed the first two seasons of Blackbox TV’s Silverwood -- they were pioneering as far as made-for-YouTube original horror content went. So when Lydia Shamah (now Director of Original Content Scripted Drama at Audible, but then with Realm) asked if I'd be interested in serving as showrunner and head writer on a new Silverwood series, I immediately said yes. 

Then I contacted a bunch of friends who had actually served as showrunners on various television and audio series, and I said, "Hey, I just signed a deal to be a showrunner, and I should probably find out what that actually is and what I've gotten myself into." And so I got a crash course from some of the best in the business.

The first thing I did was come up with an overall concept for what would effectively be season 3 of Silverwood. It had to be respectful of the continuity of the previous Blackbox TV series, and wrap up some plotlines from those. But it also had to be readily accessible to people who had never watched Silverwood and weren't at all familiar with the show. I also wanted to run the gamut, as far as the horror genre went. The first two seasons of Silverwood had lent themselves to cosmic horror, extreme horror, slashers, quiet horror, bizarro and more. I wanted a plot that encompassed all of those things. When I had that, Lydia and I ran it by Tony and then by her bosses at Realm. And once it was approved, we started putting together the team.

Throughout this initial process, I really enjoyed working with Lydia, and it remained that way throughout the rest of the production. To this day, she remains one of the best editors I've ever had the pleasure of working with, and she's a big part of why Audible's original scripted shows are doing so well. Tony was great, as well. Protective of his I.P., which he absolutely should be, but gracious and supportive and enthusiastic of what I wanted to do with it.

For the writing team, I was allowed to have three writers in addition to myself. I decided that the fair way to do it was to tap one veteran, one up-and-comer, and one talented newbie who needed a big break. 

The up-and-comer was an easy choice. Stephen Kozeniewski was already making a stir in science-fiction and horror circles by then, and his stuff was firmly played in both of those genres -- something which was crucial to the pitch I'd developed. Furthermore, he had a good sense of corporate and business pathos, irony, and culture. (Everybody talks about the influence of Alien on his novel The Hematophages, but I'd argue that Office Space is the bigger influence on that book). And since one of the plotlines I'd pitched involved a group of office employees on a company retreat, I knew he'd be able to deliver on those characters and their stories.

The veteran was a hard pick. Lydia and I both came up with wish-lists, and then we narrowed it down. She suggested that, since I'd known him twenty years at that point, Richard Chizmar might be a good pick. I agreed that Rich would be great, but I had my doubts as to whether or not he'd do it. Those of us who know Rich personally know that he is absolutely all about his family. He dotes on them and is devoted to them, and he is disinclined to get involved in anything that will take time away from them. He's also, like myself, a creature of strict work routines. For him to abandon the comfort and familiarity of the Cemetery Dance office, and take a week away from his family to go sit in a writers room in either New York or Los Angeles? I didn't think he'd go for it.

Until he did. He was noncommittal at first, but after his family and Mindy and Brian at Cemetery Dance convinced him this would be a good career move, he joined the team. As he said, "I guess it can't be too bad if I've got Keene watching my back."

Now we had to pick a newbie. I knew that I wanted a woman, and I knew that I wanted someone who could alternate between extreme horror and quiet horror, often within the same episode. I finally settled on Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason, aka The Sisters of Slaughter. There was just one problem. I was only allowed one more writer, and they were a pair. So, Lydia and I went to the higher ups at Realm and said, "They're called the Sisters of Slaughter. You can't just hire one sister. You have to hire the pair".

And thus, the dream team was assembled.

What came next was the writers retreat -- what was supposed to be a week spent with all of us gathered together in a conference room in either New York City or Los Angeles, brainstorming and coming up with our characters and the plots of the individual episodes and such. Once again, Lydia came through for us. The Sisters both had young children at home, and they couldn't just up and leave them for a week. So Lydia convinced her bosses to rent us an Airbnb in the Sisters hometown in Arizona. 

That week remains probably the single most fun and rewarding experience I've ever had working on anything. As I said, the CLICKERS series was always fun, but Jesus and I weren’t shooting for anything more than blowing off some steam with those books. SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR was a different kind of animal. We had things to say. The creative energy inside that Airbnb is impossible to describe. It was absolutely magical. We lived together in close quarters for a week (the Sisters went home to their families at the end of each day). Every morning, we woke up and had coffee and sat around a big conference table -- me, the Sisters, Stephen, Rich, Tony, and Lydia. We hammered out everything -- every character, every plotline, every episode -- the works. Tony contributed his knowledge as the creator of the Silverwood universe, and he was so gracious and excited and kind. Lydia contributed editorial notes, and let us know what was possible with audio -- a format that none of us had ever written for before that. She was our guide, opening us up to all kinds of possibilities that we wouldn't have thought of, otherwise. I served as showrunner, jotting down everyone's contributions onto sticky notes and placing them all around the room. And by the end of the week, those sticky notes formed a season long narrative -- a living, breathing story. It was fucking magic.

It occurs to me now, looking at these photos -- we were in Arizona for a week, and it was scorching hot, and that Airbnb had a private swimming pool in the back, and we didn't use it at all that week. Not once. That's how much fun we were having. 

Mostly, we stayed on site for the week. But we did go out to eat as a group, and see a bit of the town, and have a few drinks at the local bars. And Paul Goblirsch of Thunderstorm Books visited us a few times and hung out. And there was a whole side misadventure with Rich and the home's Alexa A.I. assistant (Kozeniewski and I often refer back to that when trying to make each other laugh) . But the vast majority of our time was spent communing together, and being creative together, and basking in that wonderful group energy, and I've got to tell you -- it's very hard to go back home to your life when you've been basting in that sort of incubator for a week. 

Back in Pennsylvania, I transferred all of our post it notes around the kitchen, and for the next month, Mary was constantly plucking them out of the sink, the cat bowl, and various things cooking on the stove. Then I got to work on writing the show bible -- a long, in-depth document that outlines the entire season's overarching plot, the plot of the individual episodes, the characters, their biographies, etc. I then wrote the pilot episode, and the team began writing their episodes, and I also wrote episode eight and the season finale, and then we went through many rounds of revisions and rewrites (because that is going to happen in episodic media work like this, just as it does in television, comic books, video games, etc). Eventually, Tony signed off on everything and Realm signed off on everything, and the next stage of production -- the audio narration -- began.

Here is what the kitchen looked like during that time. Photos by me.

I remain extremely proud of the work we did together on SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR. I believe it is some of the best writing any of us have ever done. I absolutely think it's some of my own best writing, particularly the burn victim in the finale, and the father-daughter main characters and their struggles with her OCD. That stuff was extremely personal for me. And that is part of the reason why it was such a satisfying and rewarding experience. It’s also scary as hell.

Sadly, although we left it open and set it up for a season four, nothing further was ever greenlit. Eventually, Lydia moved on to Audible, and Tony moved on to new horizons with Blackbox TV, and Rich, Stephen, Michelle, Melissa and I went back to writing books. The five of us ended up writing for Realm again with EXQUISITE CORPSE, and I wrote for the company again with NOT ALONE and THOR: METAL GODS. But none of those projects ever quite recaptured the magic and energy of that SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR creative retreat. I think for NOT ALONE and EXQUISITE CORPSE that's because they happened during the pandemic, and it was impossible to get everyone together. And THOR: METAL GODS was initially soured by a fly in the ointment, who luckily, wasn't involved in the final product or final drafts. Sure, it was fun to play with Thor and other Marvel characters, but that's all it was -- fun. Playing with Tony's characters and with Silverwood? That wasn't just fun. It was rewarding. It was a rare kind of magic that I wish I encountered more often in this job, and it was done alongside the best creative team I could have ever hoped to work with. They were a joy, each and every one of them. 

While it lasted, it was the greatest show on Earth.

SILVERWOOD: THE DOOR is available in the following formats.

eBook: Publisher - Kindle -  Nook - Kobo - Apple

Audiobook: Publisher - Audible - Apple