#Gaming Horrors in the Dimension of Spookiness | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adarkrainbow · 7 months

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Spooky season fairytales (4)

This series of posts is supposed to be about movies and a few television series, but given it is about dark, spooky, creepy or eerie fairytale-inspired works, I am bound to explore some non-movie pieces. More specifically three works.

The Book of Lost Things

I talked previously about my great love for this 2006 book. John Connolly had already proven his talent at making teenage fantasy mixed with dark comedy (not to say burlesque horror) with his series of "Samuel Johnson" series, but with this book he also left his mark within the world of fairytales. Dark fairytales.

There is still a bit of humor and comedy in this book - but not much. One chapter maybe. The rest is dark, creepy, sad, disturbing... but also very touching, very poetic and very beautiful. "The Book of Lost Things" tells the story of David, a young boy living a hard life in 1930s England. He had to live with the long sickness and death of his mother, he cannot stand his stepmother and her new baby, his father is away from home due to his work involving him with the nascent World War II, the threat of said war forces the family to move to a remote countryside house with a tragic past... And David thinks he is going insane because strange things are happening. He can hear books talk for example, and a strange shadowy "crooked man" keeps appearing at the corner of his eye...

The culmination of these supernatural events results in David entering the world of fairytales, a gigantic forest filled with knights and princesses and talking animals and dwarfs and witches... Except that it is a world where fairytales went wrong. Very wrong. It is a dreadful and horrifying world where all the grimmness and terror of the original tales are played at full force, and David only has one hope to return home: find the good king's magical "Book of Lost Things"...

This book deals with a lot of serious topics - which is what makes it at the same time hard and beautiful of a read. It is a book that doesn't just twist fairytales for the sake of it (though there is a perverse game about reinterpreting the folktales in the most shocking ways). But it does so to help us, and David, explore themes such as grief, disease, war, the loss of the people you love, the desire to return to a nostalgic past... It is a great book.

(And how come I just learn TODAY upon writing these lines that Connolly just RELEASED A SEQUEL! 13 YEARS AFTER THE ORIGINAL! I'm going to buy this for Halloween)

Dimension 20: Neverafter

"Dimension 20" is a web-series by the team of CollegeHumor. In the same way as "Critical Role", "Dimension 20" is a D&D role-playing show, with each season following a campaign where the members of CollegeHumor, using their talent as stand-up and improv comedians, make their reole-playing adventure as entertaining and engaging as possible for the viewer.

Each season has a different theme, setting and universe, and the season known as "Neverafter" is, as you can guess, the "dark fairytale" season. Neverafter takes place in the world of fairytales and nursery rhymes - but things are starting to... be wrong. Happy endings go missing. Gruesome deaths spoil the magical happiness. The peace of the kingdoms is troubled by monsters popping out left and right. Armies are rising up. A storm is coming. The Time of Shadows falls on what was supposed to be a "happy ever after", and in this upcoming chaos, a group of travelers gather together to try to survive... Before discovering a cabal of manipulative fairies, tyrannical lords, creepy princesses, ancient witches and other abstract monsters trying to deal with world-threatening troubles, plunging a simple dark fantasy tale into a cosmic horror epic...

In 20 episodes, the campaign depicts the adventures of six characters. Princess Rosamund du Prix - the Sleeping Beauty princess, who had to free herself from her thorns when her prince failed to come, and is now searching for him. Ylfa Snorgelsson, Little Red Riding Hood, whose fairytale went off to a very traumatic end and left some of the wolf inside of her... Prince Gerard of Greenleigh, the prince from the "Frog Prince", who is now returning to being a frog as the love of his wife wanes... Puss in Boots, forced to return at being a scheming and scamming scoundrel after his kingdom and master were destroyed by giants... Timothy "Mother" Goose, an old man who inherited a magical book after the death of his son Jack and is haunted by a terrifying black gander... And Pinocchio, the magical puppet-boy, now a warlock who uses as a staff his own broken nose and whose patron is a disembodied and mysterious "mother" figure...

Little Nightmares

Ah, Little Nightmares... Who hasn't heard of this groundbreaking video game that marked 2017 with its unique, eerie story?

A little girl in a yellow raincoat wakes up in the dark and humid depths of some sort of industrial area, near the corpse of a hanged man... She wanders with a little light throughout pipes and cells, infested with deadly vermin, filled with the remnants of the presence of other children, overseen by mechanical eyes turning flesh into stone... And soon she discovers herself inside a nightmarish, impossible structure inhabited by child-killing giants, deformed monsters that are out to get her.

Little Nightmares is primarily an attempt at capturing and translating into a video game primal childhood fears and the type of nightmares a little kid can have. It is about a small, helpless child, confronting monsters that are grotesque caricatures of adulthood, in a world too big for her and designed to destroy her... But Little Nightmares also take a strong inspiration from traditional fairytales, making the video game a dark fairytale epic. I don't think it will be a spoiler by now due to the game's huge success but...

... A little girl exploring a dark and haunted supernatural world. A blind giant looking around for his victim using his other senses. A pair of monstrous cooks killing and preparing children for the gargantuan and repulsive feast of obese clients. An intense focus on food and hunger and cannibalism. Helpful little gnomes straight out of a children's fairy book. A beautiful but evil sorceress with a special relationship towards mirror, antagonizing the female protagonist while having some maternal untertones towards her... What if the evil queen of Snow-White was the head of a restaurant for ogres? And no need to add that the games has strong Del Toro tones evoking his fairy-related movies (Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy II), while also disturbingly twisting the Ghibli movie style, making this the horror version of "Spirited Away".

The game received an acclaimed sequel, but I couldn't see very obvious fairytale tones in this one, much more focused on a dystopian feeling and ambiance.

#spooky season fairytales #spooky season #dark fairytales #horror fairytales #fairytale books #fairytale video games #creepy fairytales #little nightmares #the book of lost things #dimension 20 #neverafter

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sleepysnailart · 2 years

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watching Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City for the first time and I think it’s pretty cool so far but how on earth did Leon sleep through all THAT

#dude was sleeping in another dimension #just jamming listening to some music #also I’m in love with Jill Valentine all over again #resident evil #resident evil welcome to raccoon city #welcome to raccoon city #idk some of the characters feel a bit…flat?#but maybe that was bound to happen in a video game-film adaptation idk #but it’s actiony and horror spooky #nice

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thelittlestspider · 9 months

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horror themed writing ask game

🧭 - what would your character do if they got lost in another dimension/world/universe/timeline? do they try to go home? do they even want to?

🏚 - what would your character do if their house was haunted? are they haunting their house? does the house reflect their state of mind, or does the house love/hate them and vice versa?

🪞 - what would your character do if faced with an evil doppelganger? would they run away, fight? is the doppelganger a reflection of their inner fears?

☄️ - what would your character do in an apocalyptic event?

🌃 - what would your character do if they were trapped in a labyrinthine city that's alive?

🔮 - if your character had a dream they or a loved one was going to die a horrible death (that is probably inevitable), what would they do?

📼 - if your character found a cursed videotape, would they play it? how would they get rid of the curse? can they?

⚰️ - if your character lost a loved one, what would they do? would they grieve and move on? try to bring them back? cling to their remains?

🔦 - would your character go investigate that spooky noise? the local ghost story? cryptid? that rash of murders in town?

🩸 - if confronted with a monster, would they romance them, befriend them, fight them, run away, kill them? something else?

🏕 - if there was a camp or woods infamous for a string of murders or disappearances, would your character still go camping there? or are they there to investigate? why are they investigating? (documentary, former survivor, etc.)

🕰 - what would your character do if they were stuck in a time loop?

🪚 - what would happen if you put two of your characters in a saw trap maze together?

#writeblr #horror #writing ask game #this is just fun scenarios to put your ocs/blorbos in 💖#also pls rb this bc i want to ask you guys questions too

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spellbound-willow · 6 months

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An under-utilized Horror subgenre:

Fae Horror

There’s so many ways to do it! So many aspects of fae that make for solid horror concepts.

Being taken away, coming back wrong, being replaced by something else, transforming into something, the cold indifference of nature, getting tricked or manipulated, holes in the ground, feeling like you’re being watched, time moving faster while you’re gone, getting lost in the woods, games, riddles, myths and fate

There’s not a lot of examples of fae horror but here are some I have seen starting from overt fae stuff to objectively not fae but my personal interpretations

- Pan’s Labyrinth – the most obvious, I think they actually use the term fairy. You even see the Court.

- The Hole in the Ground – the title kind of solidified my point. Nature, holes in the ground, changeling horror

- Coraline – come on, the Beldam is totally an unseelie. She takes children, and she loves to imitate real life, trick people and play games

- The Midnight House – I can’t really explain this one without spoiling the whole movie, if you know you know. Basically the house and the reason for the house.

- Hellraiser – the most controversial on this list but the riddles, puzzles, pain and pleasure, interdimensional beings beyond our understanding, you see what I’m saying right?

- Over the Garden Wall – not technically horror but it is very spooky and fae, especially closer to the end. Another world, lost in the woods, things aren’t as they seem, The Beast loves to trick people, talking animals, Adelaide of the Pasture, and one of the main antagonists isn’t even a character, it’s the indifference of nature

- Annihilation – the strange dimension, the body horror (especially the flowers scene), nature warping, the rainbows everywhere, the doubles, time warps, coming back wrong, being replaced. I think it’s a totally valid interpretation

Please add more if you can think of any! I only listed ones I have personally seen, movies I’ve only heard of before didn’t make the list but if you have recommendations or personal interpretations please share!

#horror #fair folk #fae #unseelie #pan’s labyrinth #coraline #hole in the ground #the night house #hellraiser #otgw #annihilation #scary movies #fairies #fairy #seelie #body horror #my post

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theresattrpgforthat · 10 months

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hi! firstly, i wanted to thank you for your blog :) its actually gotten me into ttrpgs and you run a great service! secondly! im in the market for a two player ttprg for people who… haven't exactly played ttrpgs ever before! we both like the genres horror and comedy. as for mechanics, we love character creation and coming up with lore / improv on the fly! any games that fit this would be great. thank you so much, mint!

THEME: Duet Games for Beginners

Hello, and thank you so much for your message! Welcome to the hobby, there’s oodles of fantastic games out there and I’m glad that you find my posts helpful. Let’s get started, shall we?

First of all, I’m also going to shout out @jeffstormer 's Party of One podcast, which was my jumping off point for looking for 2-player games that would work for you. I heavily recommend checking him out, as he has years of experience playing (and running) games for two, regardless of whether they’re designed to be played that way.

Second of all, I tried to recommend games that either come with a lot of tools or that are pretty short, because I wanted to give you options that either really guide you through the process or don't overwhelm you with instructions. Your mileage may vary, but I hope something here stands out!

Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy, by Ghostly Rituals.

Dead Friend is a roleplaying game for a necromancer and a ghost. That is, it's a collaborative storytelling game for two players. You will each play the role of a friend, one living and one dead. You will ask and answer questions to develop the characters, their community, their history together, and the motivations leading up to their final conflict.

The script follows the dramatic structure of a necromancy ritual, and you will use the spellbook of instructions throughout the entire game like a witch reading spells from an ancient grimoire. The mood may be spooky or intimate, heartwrenching or hilarious — it is up to you as storytellers. Dead Friend requires 1 Tarot deck or 1 deck of mundane playing cards.

I think this game looks like a good combination of horror and comedy, as it carries horrific tones but allows you to choose the mood. You’ll be answering question prompts throughout the game using tarot cards, so this is another excellent method of creating lore as you play. This game has an actual play episode of it with Jeff Stormer and Dani Costello that you can listen to if you want an example of play as well!

Standoff, by Matthew R.F. Baloušek.

The necromancer shrieks with cruel laughter, plunging the glowing dagger into the warrior's heart. "Fool! All your struggle was for naught. Your soul will be but a tasty morsel for my dark master!"

He starts to pull the dagger out, but finds his wrist stopped cold by Francesca's iron grip. She stares back with an icy glare. A glint of light catches the necromancer's eye, and he looks down to see the talisman of protection.

Wresting the dagger from the necromancer's cold hands, Francesca grins. "I hid all my vital organs in a pocket dimension!" Taking a free hand to dip a finger in what appeared to be blood, she tastes it and chortles. "You wasted the ichor of Ag'tekk on nothing more than a large ketchup packet!"

Standoff is a game where everyone works together to tell a ridiculous story full of twists, ripostes, counter-feints, and triple-double-crosses.

This is a chance to take turns one-upping each-other in a world of your own design. You’ll need a number of index cards in order to write down what you introduce to the world, but little else. What I appreciate about this game is the structure it provides - I find that structured sections and examples help new players get used to coming up with pieces as they go.

This is improv comedy at its finest - and it can also play with a larger group! There aren’t specific characters assigned to each player, but if you want to take more responsibility for either the Protagonist or the Antagonist then you should still be able to do that. This game looks exceptional, and I hope you check it out!

What’s A Vapourwave, by fen slattery.

A two-player, 200 word RPG about explaining vaporwave to your grandpa. Based on a true story.

One player is Casey, who kinda knows what vaporwave is. Another is Grandpa, who loves Casey and wants to understand their life. Played via text message.

This is a simple game that can be played via text message that navigates a humorous attempt at a grandfather doing his best to understand his grandchild. I love the aesthetic of this game, and I can see how easy it is to let the conversation within this game devolve into hilarity.

Heart Full of Trash, by StarshineScribbles.

Heart Full Of Trash is a 2-player roleplaying game where you play as raccoons on a date!

Sort your recycling as you create your characters and tell the story of their romantic endeavours. Will your date be a triumph or will your raccoons develop a deep and long-lasting friendship?

Either way, by the time the game is over, your recycling will be sorted and ready for correct disposal.

This is an adorably cute game that leans much closer to the comedy side of your request. The two of you will actually sort your recycling as you role-play - so since you’re using something you already have in your house, you don’t need to go and buy any extra gaming materials! This game is a bit closer to an improve game as well, so it might be a good introduction for someone who is less familiar with traditional character sheets and rolling dice.

You’re in Space and Everything’s Fucked, by Nevyn Holmes.

You’re in Space and Everything’s Fucked is a love letter to sci-fi cosmic horror and gore-filled splatter films.

You're In Space And Everything's Fucked emulates the trappings of isolation space horror video games through the lens of a tabletop role-playing game and is inspired by similarly fucked-up situations found in the Dead Space, System Shock, and Alien franchises.

The Station takes on the role of monsters and setting; generating both as the Struggler explores. They take a bird's-eye-view of the story and throw obstacles and objectives at the Struggler.

The Struggler fills the boots of the hapless sap that ended up in this situation. They scavenge, sneak, and generally work to survive by any means necessary in the face of horrifying creatures and untrustworthy NPCs.

The Demo version of this game is designed for two players, although it looks like the Kickstarter that Dinoberry Press ran back in March is for a bigger game down the road. The game includes a character creation section, a hint of map generation, and a handful of generated Boss Monsters! Because you generate the map as you go, I think this gives you a chance to come up with lore as you go. If you want chilling horror and a constant struggle for survival, this is the game for you.

Games I've Recommended in the Past

My Duet Flirty Games Post.

My Epic Two-Player Games Post.

#dnd #comedy #horror #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #asks #game recommendations #duet

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badsummer · 7 months

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Hey, everyone! If you have been eagerly awaiting a new gaming experience that will transport you to new dimensions of romance and horror, then search no further. "Bad Summer" is a captivating journey that promises to immerse you in a hauntingly beautiful narrative, filled with twists, turns, and unexpected encounters. We can't wait to introduce you to "Bad Summer," our upcoming visual novel and analog horror experience!

"Bad Summer" weaves a chilling tale in the form of a dark visual novel, blending elements of horror, mystery, and romance to create an eerie tapestry of the unknown. Play as Jenny, a teenage camp counselor fighting for her life as a deadly creature of unknown origins stalks her every move. Can you survive the dangers of Camp Bear Ridge summer camp and find love along the way?

Our visual novel has unique point-and-click adventure elements. Interact with objects and use/manage your inventory well to discover hidden lore and solve puzzles. Found a key in an inconspicuous location? Take it with you! Might be useful for later. Items stored in your backpack will help you progress through the game. Take it everywhere you go. Never know when you might need it.

Unlike normal point-and-click adventure games, "Bad Summer" has a big emphasis on romance. Our horror elements are inspired by successful visual novels such as The Letter and Doki Doki Literature Club. Our romance took inspiration from k-dramas, TV shows, and steamy best-selling fiction novels. Our storyline was also heavily inspired by interactive drama video games such as The Quarry and Halloween movies starring Jason Voorhees.

Expect jump scares, blood, gore, death, and analog horror sequences.

Although horror and unsettling themes is the primary focus in Bad Summer, this is a narrative-heavy game with choices, consequences, and multiple endings. Your decisions can either save lives or end them. The stakes are high in Bad Summer and you will find yourself constantly questioning who to trust.

Romance is a critical part of "Bad Summer", but we didn’t want our game to feel like an average dating simulator. Instead, when pursing a romantic interest in this game, there is no “right” or “wrong” choices. Converse with your love interest however you choose. Take a timid approach, speak with them from the heart, boldly make your advances, or shy away if you want to.

You won’t need to choose the right answers to romance a character in this game. No need for a guide or silly mini-games. Be yourself and you’ll find love regardless. You deserve it.

But you can only romance one and you’ll be locked in early in the game. (There will be a notification before you make the choice, don’t worry.) Choose wisely. Your life might depend on it.

Warning!

"Bad Summer" is rated 18+ and is intended for a mature audience. This game includes violence, blood and gore, sexual themes, strong language, and discussions of death, grief, and depression. Jump scares too. Horror and distressing depictions go hand-in-hand. It is a core element of our game, and is not suitable for children. You’ve been warned.

Interested? Follow us for more updates, teasers, and cool spooky stuff! Also, check out our website for more details! 🔥

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hurgablurg · 3 months

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the whole point of a silent hill game is that the protagonist

a) did something very wrong

b) is in denial about it

the titular Silent Hill isn't a "ooh spooky hell dimension", it's a psychological manifestation of subconscious ego, fears, and doubts

a silent hill where the protagonist is a flat-out victim isn't a silent hill. it's just an exploitative horror game.

#silent hill the short message #silent hill

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desolationcleo · 3 months

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Things That Happened In Evo That More Life Series Fans Should Know About

I've finally committed to watching evo in full and kept this in my drafts for AGES just compiling a list

-it starts with everyone gathered around a central circle in the ground, just like how last life did

-jimmy died by creeper not even ten minutes in. fairly certain he died first.

-just... something about how pumpkins are naturally carved in these versions. naturally carved with that same face that gives me last life war flashbacks

-there is a base made of snow. pompeii by bastille intensifies

-bigb puts a large cookie on his base. y'know, a thing he did a second time in 3rd life

-and said cookie is stolen by an inseparable duo (jimmy and martyn in this case)... time is a flat circle

-they did a few games for halloween and one was a hunger games

-just... whatever is going on with the horrors that taurtis experiences. i couldn't not watch his pov and like. You know his experiences of missing a portal jump and getting stranded in some other dimension he likened to the upside down from stranger things? and later having dreams that take place there? yeah it's fucking SCARY. everything was purple and the lighting was all weird and there was weird noises. there was spooky whispering after he jumped through the portal. that's not even getting into the glitchy white-haired purple-eyes-and-mouth version of taurtis that speaks in tongues and appears to be... haunting him? it's so fucking spooky

-anyways the reason i'm bringing this up is. aside from needing to ramble about minecraftian horrors beyond my comprehension. if it is indeed another dimension as he claims, then it naturally follows that this dimension also exists in the life series.

-the cactus maze (and yes grian goes in it)

-the watchers don't even try to hide that they have favourites and least favourites. yeah this is about the jimmy sapling coal incident.

-in that same episode, the watcher dungeon (and i mean dungeon, that basement had what looked like cells but with broken/incomplete bars. tally mark looking I's on the walls and everything) has a spooky face on the wall of one room that grian says looks like a pumpkin

-just. everything about how defiant and rebellious grian is towards the watchers. huh i wonder if he's gonna keep being like this

-usage of galactic is not entirely fanon. the obelisk of the eyes has galactic letters on it

-we oughta do smth with "one day we will deem it your moment to shine" (said by the watchers to martyn at one point) and martyn's victory

-ik we've all seen this clip but. the scene where jimmy and martyn joke that the watchers are gonna put them in the hunger games. (jimmy pov episode 83 timestamp 1:15 if you wanna see for yourself)

-one of the last things grian did was get tnt pranked by jimmy, and he said to the latter "when will you learn that your actions have consequences". eventually in last life, after killing jimmy, he states once again that jimmy needs to learn that his actions have consequences.

-someone needs to caption their third life fanart with "who won that in the end?" "there are no winners in war, friend"

-jimmy after doing his mission for the listeners and finding out what the other players were up to during this time: the watchers are EVIL bro

-mumbo is brought up a couple times. between this and the "do you think mumbo would be proud" scene in 3L, coupled with mumbo being added to the life games through association via grian, i've decided to interpret this as grian and mumbo having been besties before evo and grian is just going around telling everyone about this redstoner friend of his

-the listeners use white bedrock. you guys should be putting this in your fics

-the parallel with this

and the listener dialogue at the end of limited life

#pspsps come get y'alls juice

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l-1-z-a · 1 year

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Recognizing stories in the player's head in The Sims 2

The last part of Will Wright's "Will Wright's Design Plunder" presentation at GDC 2001, called "Story Recognition," provides a picture of how what has been given the name "System of generating personalized player’s game reality in The Sims 2" should work. It binds together all the disparate pieces of available information and observations from players.

Here's a record of the presentation:

youtube

The presentation of this system begins at minute 58 and goes all the way to the end of the presentation.

This is what Will Wright says:

Now, the last thing I want to talk about here, real briefly, is interactive storytelling.

I've always been really happy in my little sandbox, you know, doing these open-ended games, these simulations. And I've always really avoided the idea of interactive story. But at this point, as you can see, our fans are going to basically drag me into it whether I like it or not. So I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, how we might enable this.

What's happening right now is the simulation is going off and doing one thing, and the fans are saying, "Oh, to hell with that, I'm going to tell my story over this direction." And frequently, they're having to take these Sims that just want to, you know, pee and eat and sit in front of the TV, and they're grabbing them, "No, stand over here, I need to take this shot." And so they're like these little actors on strike, you know, that you're trying to manipulate to take the screenshots.

So, what we need to do is try to get these things more to converge, bring them back into line. We've got basically this open-ended space, you know, you go in a direction in, but it's very flat dramatically. Now, drama, you know, is linear but has this added dimension that we don't have. And so, how do we get this added dimension of drama in our open-ended space?

I think the path to this, I see, is not teaching the computer to tell a story, but rather teaching it to recognize a story. If, when you're playing these stories out in the Sims, the computer can actually get some sense of the story that's in your head, it could then start helping you a bit.

It might, at first, be just a very simple thematic recognition. It might look at the things you've bought in the Sims and the interactions you've chosen, "Oh, you tend to kiss a lot, and you buy this type of stuff, I think you're doing sort of a romantic story." Or, you buy, you know, heart heads and jars, or shackles in your dungeon, and it might say, "Oh, that looks kind of like horror." And then it looks at what you're doing, it might even drive events to resolve it later.

You know, if it's not quite sure if you're doing a horror or comedy, you might walk into a room, and then there's a chainsaw and a cream pie, and it's looking to see which one you pick up.

Now, there are a number of approaches we can take towards this. One might be language to parsing, in language parsing, this is the way computers try to understand natural language. They'll look at the string of words and from those try to build higher and higher levels of features and eventually parse it into a complete sentence. I suspect there might be something similar possible with story parsing, where you look at an event stream and look for higher and higher levels of structure coming above to build the computer's understanding.

Let's assume that, for instance, we could do this. If the computer could parse this story, then it could actually start changing the presentation of the story in something like The Sims. We could start having the camera angles change, we could have the lighting change, the music. So, if it thinks you're doing horror, the lights start to come down, the spooky music starts, you see lightning in the background, the camera gets really close in, ambient sound effects, and all this stuff.

And the next step would be probably for the computer to actually start driving the events, rather than the events being random as they are now, events that are there to support your story.

Another way to look at this is that we have users always in the game trying to confine these success landscapes. If the computer can detect what goal the user is trying to pursue in the game, then perhaps, so say that a million people are playing this game every day, and after they play it, there's some fitness test.

You can measure how long you've played, maybe you score at the end, you give it a 1 to 10, "Oh, I really liked that experience today." Then it goes back up to the server, and it compares all the results. So, at the top level, we can have the server discovering these rules of story. It's not like we're trying to engineer a story grammar, what we're trying to do is develop a system to where we have enough information for the servers at the top end to discover this. This is very much like SETI at home, where we're doing a vast parallel search, except in this case, we're really using parallel things like SETI at home.

So, I think long term this might really be practical. And of course, you can look at different players, and they're going to want to play the games in different ways. So, a mapping that might work for me won't necessarily work for you. So, at some point, you want to classify the players. It might say, "Oh, that's the type of player that really enjoys the comedy experience." So, they get this mapping, and they'll be evolving a certain mapping for that group of players. These other players, we know, elected to kill and torture their Sims, and so we're going to give them a completely different experience.

So, that's about it on this. One more thing: once you've done this, you know, assuming we could do this, which is a big "if" - I know it's a very difficult target - once you finish this, once you've done the parsing, presentation, the computer is helping you tell the story. In essence, you've made a movie at the end, what you can then share with your friends. Maybe you can even go back and edit the camera angles. Other people with the game, you should be able to send this movie, very much like Quake movies we're doing, which was a very cool idea. If you have the engine, it's a very small amount of data I have to send you to send the movie, or it could be still saved out as a JPEG or an MPEG and given around other people, posted on websites. So, really what I think this is going to end up being more like is The Truman Show, where you're Truman kind of living your life out. You know, there's boundaries, but the boundaries are as far away as we can make them, and the computer is back there, sitting there, looking at what you're doing, saying, "That might be dramatic. What if I had this happen?" And maybe trying things on you all the time. The computer might be sending NPCs into your life, you know, seeing, "Oh, I see this love story developing. I'd better make the jealous ex-girlfriend appear at the door right now," so always, you know, trying to keep the dramatic tension going.

So, that's about all I have to say on that. I just wanted to close with one more remark, and that's that in game design over the years, I found that two things really made the biggest difference that I've seen in design, and it has to do with self-confidence and determination. A lot of times, you'll come up with a really crazy idea, and you'll start telling people about it, and they'll say, "That sucks. That's horrible." And frequently, you know, that's not always the case. I've only had two games where I had that experience where most of the people I told, you know, my idea for the game, they said, "That's a horrible idea," and those two games were Sim City and The Sims. All the other games I would describe, when people say, "Oh, sounds great. Let's do it," and they were all on board. They understood it.

So, basically, you know if you have an idea like that, and you go around telling everybody, and they tell you it sucks, you know, will prevent it pragmatically. It probably does suck. But um, there's really a chance that it doesn't, that you're actually going to jump outside the box. If other people don't understand it, that's probably a good thing, and that's where the determination comes in. At that point, it's entirely up to you to have the determination to fight, to scream, to do whatever it takes to get that idea out there, and maybe, you know, maybe it'll be a success. So, thank you.

Description of the process of determining the theme of the story that the player has in his head and setting camera angles and lighting - a description of what the developers wanted to implement for The Sims 2, one of the goals about told Mike Sellers (Mike Sellers), game designer of game:

Make the environment adaptive based on the player's decisions. This is probably my favorite thing that didn't make it in: we wanted to vary the lighting, camera angles used, and music based on the kinds of objects the players purchased -- so if you bought a bunch of creepy things vs. hearts and flowers, we'd use lighting/sound/view angles corresponding more to a horror movie vs. a romance. Among other things we were able to show that the same animation of two Sims kissing looked and felt very different when set to romantic violin music vs. smoky sexy jazz music (one exec who watched the two sequences said the jazz one had a lot better resolution -- but it was literally the same video of an animation in both cases).

From this answer you can also understand the degree of readiness of this particular part of the system, which is responsible for changing lighting and camera angles, before it was hidden.

But the system itself, the system of story recognition in the player's head is still in the game, and it works. How does it show itself in this case? You can find this out at the link directly after the question you asked - "How does the system behave?":

Add to that these interviews with Will Wright:

EA SimCity 2000 Will Wright Interview

youtube

Will Wright's 5th minute answer to "What do the people get out sim games?".

And this interview:

Will Wright on Big Thinkers [March 2000]

youtube

Here's what Will Wright says in this interview:

I mean, I think there's certain areas of technology that I would like to explore, and I'm not sure what would come out of that exploration. Like, what artificial intelligence or something like that? Well, actually, I think more importantly would be um, adaptive, uh, intelligence, adaptive computing, where the game can actually measure what I'm doing, look at what I'm enjoying, what I'm not enjoying, and then reprogram itself around my activities. So, I might get this game, and I, the longer I play it, it's basically uh, rewriting itself around what I like to do. And so, you might get the same game, and after a month of play, your game and my game are totally separate. You know, we're doing totally separate activities, totally separate settings. That would be good. Yeah, and you know, so in that case, it's more like having a, you know, it's like when you're a kid and you have, you know, a really good friend that you like to play with, and together you build these shared imaginative worlds and these activities you go and do together. Um, you know, I think the computer could do that to some degree in the future.

This relates with a previous interview and it also ties in with an answer from Mike Sellers to a question about goals in developing The Sims 2.

And it looks like The Sims 2 should be like this, a perfect Will Wright game.

На русском языке (On Russian language):

#Youtube #sims 2 #ts2 #sims2 #the sims 2 #sims 2 beta #game desing #Will Wright #Mike Sellers #ai #artificial intelligence #adaptive learning #adaptive mapping #machine learning #neural networks #story recognition

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thenightling · 2 years

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My review of The Sandman episode 1: Sleep of the Just

There is a long opening so you have ample time to press control and J and skip past any spoilers.

The first time I read The Sandman by Neil Gaiman is probably more recently than you may expect considering how much of a fan of it I have become. I read Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman for the first time in the early summer of 2017. And it all started because someone had asked me to portray DC comics canon Lucifer for a role playing game. What little I knew about the character came from the Lucifer TV show that was (at the time) airing on Fox. I knew that he made his first appearance in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and I knew that he resembled rock icon David Bowie. I also knew that the main character looked like a “Goth Jareth” and that his sister was Death. Years ago (in 1999) a friend had recommended The Sandman to me under the descriptors of “He’s like a Goth Jareth” and Death, his sister, is “So cute.” Jareth was the main antagonist of Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth. He was the Goblin King portrayed by David Bowie.

I was thirty-five-years-old (In 2017) when I finally read Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. I also just so happened to have reached the issue / chapter Dream of a Thousand Cats in The Sandman: Dream Country (Volume 3) on the very same day I adopted two of my cats. Loki and Vlad. That was just a happy coincidence. I came very close to naming Vlad after Morpheus AKA Dream (the main character of The Sandman) but his little fang over-bite made me decide to call him Vlad after Count Dracula instead. Having read other works by Neil Gaiman, including Stardust, I was familiar with his style of writing and how it could go from extremely whimsical and child-like to dark and horrific. When I first started reading The Sandman I expected a typical comic book experience, an easy-to-follow story with some fights and explosions that I usually would skip or skim out of boredom. I never liked combat scenes.

It was only when I got to the end of issue 4 (Chapter 4 in the audio version) that I finally realized, this was no normal action-adventure story. No. There were no explosions, or punching out bad guys. This was more like a traditional fantasy novel series disguised as a graphic novel. It was surreal and complex with loving homages to classic Horror anthology comics and references to things like The House of Mystery and the House of Secrets (DC’s equivalents to EC’s Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror Comics.) And there were heavy references to classics too, like Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It was a strange experience, finding a new obsession at this age. For many years my obsessions had been a cycler collection of classic Gothic Horror figures like Dracula, Frankenstein (Literary accurate depictions), and Goethe’s Faust. Reading Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman was like finding a piece of myself I hadn’t known I was missing. It was like coming home.

The Sandman tells the story of Morpheus (also known as Dream of The Endless or The Sandman), the lord of Dreams. When a group of occultists try to capture The Grim Reaper they accidentally summon The Lord of Dreams and decide to keep him prisoner.

After a century of captivity, Morpheus escapes and has to restore his crumbling kingdom in the collective unconscious of all sentient life, a dimension known as The Dreaming.

Morpheus used to be something of… well, an asshole. So most of the saga is him setting right the wrongs of his past. It’s a long redemption story with themes about the importance of change and the value of stories and imagination. It’s a story about stories. It’s beautiful and it is surreal.

The character of Morpheus is very much a Gothic aesthete. He loves long, draping, black clothing, candles, ravens, spooky old houses, Gothic castles, Jack-o-lanterns, Nightmare-monsters, and all things Halloween. A man after my own tastes! Fast forward two years to 2019 when The Sandman TV series was announced by Netflix. Needless to say, I was delighted. The story had become something precious to me, from the graphic novels, to the novella, Dreamhunters. Soon there would be a new audiobook adaptation with a full cast of voice actors add background music and sound effects like an old radio play. This was a stunningly elaborate audio drama and I could only hope the TV show could do the show as much justice. And much like other obsessions that pulled me through rough times, The Sandman was there when I needed it. Volume 1 of The Audio drama version happened to be released July 15th, 2020, the very night I was in the hospital with a serious bacterial infection.

The Sandman holds a special place in my heart and that means my opinion of the new TV adaptation could be the extreme of being overly critical or watching it with rose colored glasses and thinking of it as perfect and flawless.

I was fortunate enough to have been given a ticket to the virtual advanced screening of the first episode which included a thirty-minute introduction with Neil Gaiman and George R.R. Martin. I admit that through their conversation I grew very impatient and wanted to skip straight to the episode. They talked about both working with Charles Dance and Gwendoline Christie and how good the actors were. At long last I got to watch the first episode of The Sandman Netflix Series, Sleep of The Just. From this point on there will be spoilers.

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON!

The first episode of The Sandman Netflix series is fairly faithful to the original issue (Chapter 1 of the audio book / audio drama). I had thought they might leave the John Hathaway character out of the show adaptation but to my surprise he was there just like at the start of the original story. Charles Dance is absolutely perfect as the dastardly Roderick Burgess, the leader of the occultists who summon and trap Morpheus.

Tom Sturridge (Morpheus) Provides the narration of the episode while his character, in the story, is silent for most of it. There were certain scenes I was worried about before viewing the episode such as having heard that Morpheus’s raven familiar, Jessamy, learns of his captivity and tries to free him. I had worried about how she might have found out about the capture and if that would change certain plot elements but the show actually handled it very well. She was with him when he was summoned. The only reason she wasn’t trapped in the binding circle with him is she was dragged out while tucked into his robes. I was also worried that they might make Morpheus’s escape too “actiony.” The Sandman is not an action story. There aren’t a lot of fight scenes or explosions. The escape is very similar to the original depiction. The only difference is when the binding circle is breached (which may have been deliberately by Paul this time) the guard dreams of the beach and of Morpheus and the guard opens fire on him, and wakes to find he is shooting the cage in The Waking World, shattering the glass of Morpheus’s prison. It’s a much more visceral escape scene than what was originally written but I don’t mind it.

I felt that Tom Sturridge’s acting was the best thing about the episode. He is extremely emotive in his body language and facial expressions as Morpheus. You don’t see his character talk until the end of the episode and yet I could always tell what his character was thinking and feeling in every scene even without the often provided voice over narration. I would even say that Tom Sturridge deserves an Emmy for the first episode of The Sandman. Too bad the show won’t be eligible until the 2023 Emmy Awards.

The acting of the young man who played teenaged Alexander Burgess should not be over-looked either. He was fantastic and very sympathetic. I very much wish that the show would deviate from the source material so that Morpheus might free Alex from his curse earlier than he does in the original version of the story. In the original story Morpheus gets his revenge for being held prisoner by condemning Alexander Burgess (the son of his original captor) to ”Eternal Waking” which was a nightmare that leads into yet another nightmare where he thinks he’s waking up but really he’s just entering yet another nightmare. In this show the curse is of Eternal Sleep and we do not see what Alex is actually dreaming. I still pity him though. He was made very sympathetic for the show.

Alex came very close to freeing Morpheus. I think he sympathized with him and may have even found Morpheus a little attractive.

Alex even offers to free Morpheus if he just promises to not harm him or Paul but Morpheus is too stubborn (and angry over the death of Jessamy) to pay attention to him. Also Alex had previously said he’d free if not for his father and Morpheus had believed him then and Alex backed down on freeing him after his father’s death. Roderick’s Burgess’s Death is no longer a heart attack, by the way. Now he dies after a confrontation with Alex where Alex accidentally knocks him against Morpheus’s glass cage and Roderick’s head cracks open. I wonder how Alex managed to make that look like an accident and managed to also keep the police from entering The Undercroft. Oh, well. Money talks. And he was still rich.

Over a year ago some fans of “Dark fantasy” got to see a rough cut of the first episode before it was finished. Someone on Reddit, who had seen the rough cut, complained that Alex and Paul’s homosexual relationship was too blatant and “in your face.” It was no more blatant than in the original story. You don’t even see them kiss. I am not sure what that person was talking about. And obviously, if this person couldn’t catch on that Alex and Paul were a couple in the original story, it probably should be more blatant than. It was always obvious to me. The musical scoring is beautiful and haunting. If I was to be critical of the music is that it’s deceptively whimsical when Jessamy is trying to free Morpheus. I almost felt it was wrong for what was about to happen to her but perhaps that was the point. We were to be thrown off guard into thinking this would be light hearted or easy and it wasn’t. Speaking of what happens to poor Jessamy, (she gets killed by Alexander Burgess under pressure from his father), I actually saw tears in Morpheus’s eyes with what happened to poor Jessamy.

The whole scene is a deviation from the source material. Jessamy doesn’t even appear in The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (the first volume of The Sandman). Her first appearance in The Sandman is in the story Thermador (Act 2 of the audio drama and in The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, which is volume 6 of The Sandman). I have mixed feelings about Jessamy being killed this way as she IS a dream entity made from the soul of a deceased human and probably should not (in my opinion) die from a shot gun blast. However it does give Morpheus more reason to seek his revenge on Alex later in the story.

The end credits feature art by Dave McKean. Each episode will feature different art by Dave McKean on the end credits.

In general, I loved the first episode of The Sandman. It was about as faithful as the Interview with the vampire movie was to the novel. Now as a fan of the source material I did notice a few changes that I wasn’t too thrilled with but these were minor. The first is you do not get Morpheus audibly thinking “Soon.” Before the binding circle is breached. This scene, in its original form, may well be the source of the famous meme.

I felt Morpheus’s confrontation with Alexander Burgess felt a bit rushed. It lacked Morpheus explaining that time moves no differently for his kind than it does for humanity. This line felt important since many people might mistakenly think a century in captivity is nothing to someone like him. (“Time moves no faster for my kind than it does humanity and imprisoned it crawled at a snail’s pace.”) I think that line should have been left in there. Another line that was chopped was when Morpheus refers to the spell that summoned and trapped him as “Petty Hedge magicking.” (Meaning weak and amateur spell casting.) I felt that would have established his sense of ego quite well and the line is somewhat iconic to those who have read the story.

I was also a little surprised that when Morpheus finally returned to his own realm (dimension) of The Dreaming, that it is Lucienne, the loyal Librarian (I don’t understand the point of changing the spelling from Lucien) who finds him instead of Gregory The Gargoyle. This will definitely mean there have to be changes to how the Imperfect Hosts (episode 2) story is done. I had hoped to see him recover at The House of Mystery, being cared for by Cain and Abel. Imagine convalescing in the care of the character equivalents of The Crypt Keeper and Vault Keeper from EC comics. I would have liked to have seen that. The only time we see Roderick Burgess use any real magick is during the summing spell and he seems surprised that it was working. The implication is that without the Magdalene Grimoire he has no real power, which is disappointing, because he was an actual sorcerer in the source material. Also they changed his motivation that he now wants to resurrect his older son (the only one he actually loves). In the original version he just wanted to capture Death for clout and power among the occult community. I don’t really think the change was necessary. A power mad magician should have been enough. But he’s still as much an ass as he was in the original story. The sets were fantastic, from The Undercroft where Morpheus was held prisoner to the manor house, which to me, felt like it should have been used in a revival of Dark Shadows for Collinwood Manor in Maine. Everything was beautifully atmospheric. The CG was decent. The villainous escaped nightmare, The Corinthian, is shown earlier than many may have expected but I did not mind that. He’s a good character to show early. And he also guided Roderick Burgess on how best to contain his prisoner.

After the end credits there is a teaser for the rest of the season that is very enticing and definitely has content that was not in the original story. I do like that Matthew the Raven (Morpheus’s new familiar) is shown early and even delivers a fantastic and nonchalant “F—k it. Let’s go to Hell!” like they’ve decided to go to McDonalds for supper. Patton Oswalt was an excellent choice to voice the character.

In general, I loved the first episode though. I would give this show an 8 out of 10 or perhaps an 8.5 out of 10 as a rating. Honestly, I thought the first episode was fantastic. I hope the rest of the show is just as good and that other people give it a fair chance.

#The Sandman #Sandman #Neil Gaiman

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powerrcp-g3 · 2 years

Video

youtube

Hello there and welcome to this year's Gaming Horrors in the Dimension of Spookiness where we continue our history with the BloodRayne series of games. In 2004, BloodRayne 2 was released and it improved on a lot of areas that the original game had. 2004 was also the year that Electronic Arts Japan published the original BloodRayne game. As we venture forward, we try our best to find out why a series that had potential to be the Castlevania of the modern age faded into obscurity. Tune in to October 28 to see what happens next!

Music used: Penumbra by Kevin MacLeod

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

Text

All the books I reviewed in 2022 (Part I: Fiction)

Every year around this time, I round up all the books I reviewed in the previous 12 months; both as a convenience for readers and to remind myself that I don't need to feel quite so horribly guilty about all the books I *didn't* review (to those authors: rest assured, I still feel horribly guilty).

I should probably mention here that I had a book of my own come out in 2022:

Chokepoint Capitalism (co-authored with Rebecca Giblin)

A solutions-oriented look at how concentration in the tech and culture industries screws over creative workers, filled with detailed proposals for unrigging these markets and getting artists *paid*:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Before I get to this year's books, here are links to previous editions. These are also good books and deserving of your attention!

* All the books I reviewed in 2021: https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#bibliography

* All the books I reviewed in 2020: https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading

Now, on to 2022!

NOVELS:

I. Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

An ambitious, sprawling tale of an eccentric Texas truck-stop magnate who unilaterally begins a program of geoengineering in a bid to cool the Earth by doping the stratosphere with sulfur. A great look at the social and technical dimensions of geoengineering, filled with Stephensonian grace-notes, from superb use of language to delightful, idiosyncratic characters.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/04/general-ludd/#geoengineering

II. Dark Factory by Kathe Koja

Koja – an incredible, versatile writer who has pioneered multiple genres of fiction – presents an "immersive novel," about a high-stakes Bohemian party scene of mixed-reality artists, wealthy dilettantes, weird theorists and the very serious business of fun.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/20/a-walk-in-the-park/#all-night-party-people

III. Aspects by John M Ford

The long-awaited, unfinished first volume of a steampunk fantasy series, with an introduction by Neil Gaiman; "what Game of Thrones might have been, if the author had been fascinated by trains…communication and politics, magic, redemption, and the forms that love can take." A book of quiet – but stunning – erudition. Every aspect of Ford's world – its politics, its history, its geography, its magic, its technology, its economics, its mythos – rings true. What's more, every part of it fits together with the rest of it in a way that is so believable that it feels realer than our own world at times.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/09/john-m-ford/#aspects

IV. Up Against It by Laura J Mixon

The cracking first volume of WAVE, a space-opera series that manages to be both original — full of smart new ways of looking at science fiction ideas — and old fashioned — full of the kind of whiz-bang action-adventure that made so many of us fall in love with the field in the first place, about high-stakes administration of a space colony, where being good at your job is the utmost praxis. Republished as part of the Tor Essentials line.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/25/mj-locke-rides-again/#two-fisted-astro-bureaucrats

V. The Animals In That Country by Laura Jean McKay

An extraordinary debut novel, about a plague of understanding that sweeps across Australia, leaving the infected cursed with the ability to communicate with animals. It's an inversion of the standard trope of people and animals communicating with one another and finding mutual understanding and peace as a result. McKay sets herself the (seemingly) impossible of dramatizing human-animal communication without anthropomorphizing the animals, and then pulls it off – brilliantly.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/27/im-a-backdoor-man/#doolittle

VI. Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey

A gothic horror/haunted house novel that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It's a spooky tale of body-horror and homecoming that's full of twists and turns and unexpected villains and heroes. Vera's father Francis Crowder was a serial killer, but he loved her. He built the house she grew up in with his own hands, including the soundproofed basement. He did bad things, and he went to prison for them, and Vera never saw him again.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#crowder-house

VII. A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys

A spectacular first-contact novel about complicated utopias and networked conflict – it's a wild ride, where the protagonist is a perfect match for the world, where a century of incredibly hard, smart work has carried us through the climate emergency, to the point where it's possible to believe that, over time, we will stabilize our relationship with the only known planet in the known universe capable of sustaining our species.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

VIII. When Franny Stands Up by Eden Robins

Here's the McGuffin of this debut novel: The advent of World War II and the rise of woman comedians (filling in the vacuum left by the departure of all the men) reveals the existence of Showstoppers: involuntary psychic reactions that woman comedians can induce in female audience members when they're really cooking. A book that feels simultaneously utterly contemporary and like an old, beloved classic.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/01/eden-robins/#alt-history-comedy

Next up: Kids books!

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/702452328987508736/all-the-books-i-reviewed-in-2022-part-ii-books

Image: Matthew Petroff https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George-peabody-library.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Interior of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore.]

#pluralistic #book reviews of 2022

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ozzgin · 7 months

Note

(Normal talk here if you don’t mind) Cosmic Eldritch Horror, and Digital Glitch Game Horror are both my favorite type of horrors. It would be cool if someone writing crossover or making mix of both. I am huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft and Video Game creepypastas. (I also like Japanese Urban Legends but I still prefer Lovecraftian and Digital for me. I feel like my horror taste is on different level, anyways it’s almost October I am getting excited lol)

-🌸🎀

Truth be told I’m not too knowledgeable when it comes to video game horror. For my first Ben Drowned request I had to do a little bit of reading because it never sparked serious interest despite knowing about it beforehand. Though I do like technological horror, if you can call it that. I’ve seen Serial Experiments Lain and Pulse (Kairo) and they provided me some insight into the fear of technology when it goes beyond our control or understanding. I suppose it’s of a similar principle to the video game take.

All in all, I think the key element for me is the fear of the unknown. Poe reflects it fantastically in his works of torment when faced with unspeakable terrors, and Lovecraft continues with an added dimension of ancient, alien secrets beyond our comprehension. If something is too detailed and laid out, it’s no longer scary to me. It needs that half truth that always remains veiled and leaves you wondering. I’m very glad that other people share this preference, it seems to be less approached in popular media.

This is just a side ramble, but if you have TikTok I’d suggest checking out @cmfoxwell. They have an entire written lore of religious, Lovecraftian horror and use AI imagery as pairing. Very imaginative and well structured.

I too am very excited for Halloween and I’m hoping to write at least one horror piece during October! Let us have an exciting and spooky month. :)

#personal

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mirantulavt · 10 months

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⋆𝕎𝔼𝕃ℂ𝕆𝕄𝔼 𝕋𝕆 𝕋ℍ𝔼 𝕄𝕀ℝ𝔸 𝔻𝕀𝕄𝔼ℕ𝕊𝕀𝕆ℕ⋆

🕷️✨ Hi! I'm Mirantula, the Miracle Tarantula! I'm a rainbow sparkly spooky spider magical monster idol girl! I use she/her but am chill with any pronouns! Wow! <3 ✨🕷️

I'm just a silly cotton candy computer bug trapped in a pocket dimension, but don't worry it has the internet!!! I'm primarily a digital artist and live2D rigger but I love many art forms! I'm trying to be less shy and stream some silly games as well as my art process on twitch and youtube! My #1 artistic passion is colorful unique diverse character design and fashion illustration, which is why I love designing vtubers! My interests are all over the place, but some random things I love are: dogs, makeup+fashion (lots of j-fashion), drag artists, horror, clowns, vocaloid, and spiders /╲/(˵◕w◕˵)/\╱\

🕸 check out mirantula.carrd.co for all my links including commission availability! yay! 🕸

#vtuber #indie vtuber #bug girl #vtuber uprising #envtuber #mirantulaart #my art

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mrs-evadne-cake · 2 years

Text

S4: The Good, The Mediocre and The Weird

Yep, after the mess that was S3 I’m apparently easier to win back than your Intrepid Girl Reporter High School Ex, so there isn’t even a bad category, I truly enjoyed most aspects of the season. Hell, I have so much good will toward it even Murray was tolerable (might just be dead inside, who knows).

The Good:

The Characters: They’re back! They care about each other! They don’t act like they absolutely can’t stand each other for no reason and treat each other like trash! I was expecting pointless multi-episode bickering about if Lucas Had Really Betrayed Them or no one believing each other about supernatural shit absolutely arbitrability, but nope. I kept being pleasantly surprised as characters showed love and concern and logical priorities. Even minor characters like the Parents or Callahan and Powell, or Chrissy (RIP, I really liked you Chrissy) got some excellent, compassionate beats.

There were also so MANY great little moments that actually show development (Nancy nearly breaking down in tears the SECOND she sees The Gang back together because she knows it’s happening again absolutely sent me) and so many great big ones (everything Max and Lucas do all season). Which brings me to-

Max: Season 4 belongs to Sadie Sink. It’s an understatement to say I was dreading Max’s plot line and thought she was going to end up reduced to a mouth-piece to retcon Billy into A Super Good Guy but I will HAPPILY eat crow. Fucking phenomenal, heartbreaking examination of survivor's guilt and trauma.

And she saves herself with THE POWER OF KATE BUSH AND FRIENDSHIP. The POWER OF FRIENDSHIP IS BACK GUYS.

Eddie: I’ll just keep the ball rolling on things I was wrong about. I honestly thought this character was going to be extraneous at best and eat up time that the show could really use for the main cast. Nope. Absolutely fantastic addition and fantastic character that I missed when he was off screen. Joe Quinn is incredible.

Vecna: I like a spooky tentacle monster that talks to you in your head, drags your mind into another dimension, and breaks you down using visions of your fears and insecurities. Who would have guessed?

The Horror: Between the Crunch of Vecna and Hopper Gerald’s Gaming his foot (twice) there was some great, truly gnarly shit this season. Nice shout outs to Silence of the Lambs and Hellraiser and of course, Nightmare On Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors. Robert Englund is the GOAT as always.

D&D and The Satanic Panic: S3 felt like it was LARPING the 80′s, S4 goes back to actually feeling like it’s set in them. The introduction of the paranoia and general psychosis of Satanic Panic is really welcome and Mini-Patrick Batemen is finally the Unambiguously Sociopathic 80s Yuppie Jock that we deserve (if he gets fangirls I am going to throw myself off of a bridge). For anyone who lived the 80′s/90′s as a weird goth a PTA mob is nearly as scary as Vecna and genuinely uncomfortable to watch.

Speaking of D&D Eddie actually knows how to DM which is a nice change from...whatever it is the kids were doing before.

MK Ultra : Evil U.S. Government Agents are back where they belong on the top of the Villain Pile.

Steve and Robin, Juggling that Brain Cell: God, I love these two. I love that Steve continues to be cautious and genre savvy (”Everyone in this room has almost died like, 100 times so-”) and still rocking his nearly-supernaturally good instincts about when things are Going Wrong until the SECOND he gets the place at the grown-up table and IMMEDIATELY grandstands and nearly gets eaten by the flying motherfuckers from The Mist. A+ Steve-ing.

I’ve heard some complaints about Robin this season, but I thought she was great. Definitely getting some neuroatypical vibes and she just generally seems like the Same Robin but much more comfortable being herself around the people she’s with than S3. Like every character last season I always thought there were times that she was a little TOO acerbic for no reason so definitely not missing that. Let my girl be excited by Nancy’s ridiculously cliche bedroom.

Stancy: I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to shipping but I do like portrayals of the fact that people aren’t static and just because someone wasn’t right for you at one point, doesn’t mean they never will be ( or vise versa; sometimes people just grow apart and that’s okay). So I actually like it fine in concept especially since last season made it pretty clear the writers really don’t know where to go with Nancy and Jonathan and aren’t interested in trying to work it out. Which brings me to-

The Mediocre

Stancy (Again): Can we PLEASE have Nancy actually break up properly with her current boyfriend instead of falling in love with whoever has been fighting evil next to her for more than an hour? This is a straight up habit at this point and it’s a really...questionable character trait. I blame Murray and his shared trauma BS for this.

The Upside Down: Between how relatively easy travel was, and how fast they got out this place is undergoing some serious Eldritch location decay. Also I know they’ve all been read into the secret (and Steve’s been in the tunnels, if not the Upside Down proper) but a few seconds of Existential Angst from everyone but Nancy about the scale of the Hellish Dead World they’re trapped in would have been welcome. But no one’s got time for that ‘cause we gotta get to to-

Russia: Look, it’s better. IT’S WAY better. If S3 was Rocky and Bullwinkle this is fucking Chernobyl in comparison so I don’t hate it- and Dmitri is ANOTHER fantastic new character and David Harbor is bringing it so hard it almost makes be forget what a giant tit Hop was S3 but it still feels like a plot tumor when I just want to get back to plucky teens fighting evil. And speaking of plot tumors-

Joyce and Murray Go To Russia To Fight Russians: *sigh*

That Half-Hug: Mike Wheeler I will rip your face off with my teeth, you little fucker. I could have gone without another Season of the Mike-Will-El Dynamic being the exact same Will Pining, Mike Being Inexplicably Mean to Will, El and Mike Fight. I don’t care who ends up with who but can we like...move this shit along?

The Flash Backs: The director thinks we have retrograde amnesia again. STOP BREAKING UP INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCES WITH POINTLESS FLASHBACKS.

The Weird

Stancy (Again, Again): Okay, writers, what the fuck. Why are we stopping scenes to have characters that barely know them as a couple try to put this relationship over? The first time this happened it was weird, by the third I thought I was having a stroke. Eddie. Baby. You are IN A HELL DIMENSION IS THIS REALLY THE TIME? No it is NOT. STOP MURRAY-ING. They were doing fine with the two of them quietly starting to rekindle the affection they had for each other- stop turning random characters into yentas every time you want Nancy to get some.

California Road Trip Crew : I don’t...even know how to feel about this group. When it first started I thought I had wished for Stoner Jonathan on a monkey’s paw and was ready to go full ‘Look how they massacred my boy’ but everything about it has grown on me and by the time they were burying a federal agent in the desert I just gave up and decided to enjoy... whatever the hell this is. Which is good because boy howdy-

Susie’s House : Does anyone else smell burning toast? Sure, lets do a random 15 minutes of 80′s/90′s Unsupervised Child Comedy. Fuck it. I’m in.

#st s4 spoilers #stranger things s4 spoilers #stranger things s4 #spoilers #s4 spoilers #stranger things spoilers

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