Every October, I try to do one of those 31-Artworks-in-31-Days Prompt Lists. I started with Inktober, but then I learned about the controversy with that, and I don't need drama, so I have started experimenting with other Prompt Lists. Last year I attempted Witchtober. This year I went with Kick In The Creatives' "Creeptober".
Know how I just said I don't need drama?
Yeah, this prompt list has caused drama.
Not in the ways you may think, though...
See, I'm pretty sure - about 99% certain - that this prompt list is either Cursed or Haunted.
Why?
Well, the first prompt, Dracula? When I sketched it, I created an abomination so terrible, so upsetting, that I couldn't even look at it. I had to give it hair and play around in both Paint.net and Krita to get it to stop scaring me.
It also broke my scanner.
Kind of.
See, my scanner sometimes forgets how to scan, somewhere in between my computer and the machine itself, and when that happens, usually restarting my computer works for resetting it.
Guys, nothing on earth will induce my scanner to put that Dracula drawing on the internet.
My camera phone, meanwhile, is not superstitious, so I snapped a pic of the sketch and sent it to myself.
AND NOW BLOGGER IS REFUSING TO UPLOAD THE PICS TO THE BLOG! What on earth?!?!?!
"Dracula Lineart"; pencil & digital sketch; 2022
What I'm having to do to get this freaky, upsetting image online is switch back & forth between HTML and Compose mode in Blogger, so I'm now 100% convinced this Dracula is haunted.
Here it is in color:
"Dracula"; digital painting; 2022
See? Much less creepy in color.
And yes, I still have no idea how to use Krita effectively, though I'm experimenting, so we'll see how that goes.
The second through 6th prompts are far less problematic, but oh my god this one picture has been running my life. Not ruining, necessarily, but running it. I have been practically glued to my keyboard trying to draw and paint it.
"Ghost" digital Painting; 2022
I'm so proud of this ghost, even if it took me about a dozen tries to get it looking alright. Blending tools are so cool, and I really do like all the brushes available in Krita.
"Hidden"; Digital Painting; 2022
I'm... not impressed with this one, to be honest. Just getting the colors to work together was a bear, and honestly, the tree kinda looks poopy. But I dig the eyes, and... hold on... did I leave the color swatch at the top? Oh no I did! Oh well. I'm leaving it, because that's actually pretty funny. Always check your layers, kids. Always.
After Hidden, I was tired of wrestling with art programs that refused to cooperate and didn't want to tempt fate playing around in my creepy basement scanning, so these are photos of paintings/sketches I did for the rest of this week's prompts (4-6)!
"Pumpkin"; Watercolor on cotton paper; 2022
"Candle"; Watercolor on Cotton Paper; 2022
"Candy Apple" pencil sketch on dot matrix paper; 2022
You read that right, I drew the Candy Apple sketch on dot matrix paper.
It's 2022, and I have a ream of dot matrix paper.
My joints creak.
Honestly, though, this prompt list is a lot of fun, though I'm not sure how I'm going to tackle #31 "Something You're Afraid Of". You're all gonna laugh at me.
And rightfully so. I'm scared of some really silly stuff.
Like a sketch.
It's face down across the room and I'm still creeped out lol!
Anywho, here's the prompt list written out in case you don't want to follow any links:
Dracula (π)
Ghostly (π)
Hiding (π)
Pumpkin (π)
Candle (π)
Toffee Apple (π)
Facepaint
Candy
Cauldron
Witch
Mummy
Under The Bed
In The Dark
Spell
Monster
Horror Film
Festival
Scary Face
Graveyard/Cemetery
Goblin
Punch
Clown
Silhouette
Twilight
Full Moon
Through The Window
Goth
Costume
Party
Trick-or-Treat
Something You're Afraid of
How about you all? Are you doing a prompt list this October? And do you want to influence some of the content of my pictures? If you'd like a say in what I draw/paint/bang my head against in Paint.net or Krita, go ahead and send me a coffee on Ko-Fi with a message telling me what category you'd like me to tackle - Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Location, Word, Dedbert. I can incorporate any of those categories into these prompt challenges!
For the record, the paintings today correspond like this: "Dracula" = Animal (people are animals!), "Ghost" = Animal (dead people were animals?), "Hidden" = Location (it's technically a landscape), "Pumpkin" = Vegetable, "Candle" = Location (It's inside?), and "Candy Apple" = Vegetable. As you can see, I'm... loose with meanings when I'm on my own, but if you want to see what I do with a combination of your tip and the prompt from Creeptober, give it a go!
I hope you're all having a good time out there. Try not to create any Actually Cursed Images, and...
A couple weeks ago, I watched a real-deal, actual-factual Horror Movie - Hereditary.
Yes, everyone already reviewed this movie.
Yes, everyone mispronounces it as "Heredity".
No, I don't care.
We had a choice between Hereditary and Midsommer, but at the last second, we chose Hereditary, and I'm glad we did.
This is a movie where you really do have to sit through the whole thing to even begin to understand it, because every part of the movie is interdependent, and nothing is random (though a lot is left to chance in the plot, but I'll get to that later...). So yeah, if you're gonna watch this movie, you really do need to watch it, or you run the risk of being confused. You're not stupid - it's a complex film. Maybe a little too complex for its own good...
Hereditary starts off as a movie about mourning and coping with loss. A mother of two has lost her own mother, and she tries burying herself in her work (she's an artist who makes miniatures) to cope with her complicated feelings. Her daughter is a bit odd, but she seems like a weird kid who just does stuff her own way. Her husband is supportive and loving and tries to take care of her and their son, who seems, like most teenagers, wrapped up in his own teenage troubles.
Then things start getting weird.
A desecrated grave, an ill-advised party, a tragedy, and an ill-advised support-group friendship drive this story from the grounded-but-strange to the downright bizarre, and, to be honest, if it weren't for the director informing us of his intentions, I would have no idea whether it was a story of a family becoming horrifically unmoored or a straight-up supernatural thriller, which is a nice headspace to be in, to be honest.
Unfortunately, the director has a very set way you're supposed to interpret the film, which I feel kinda... lessens the impact.
It also feels like two almost completely separate movies that got married halfway through, though that doesn't feel too ungainly. It feels like discovery more than disappointment. See, in the first half there's this rich family drama of people who are bad at coping trying to cope with bad stuff, but then it becomes a really well-shot, unsettling horror movie with some spectacular special effects.
I like that the effects, while gory and well-crafted, aren't used to simply shock everyone. The grisly nature of some effects is upsetting enough that they don't have to linger on the effect itself. The knowledge of what has happened is too dire to ignore.
Really, every part of the movie works well together - the sound design is eerie without being exploitative, the lighting gives the feel of the despair a family would feel on the loss of loved ones, warming only when in the presence of fire, fear, or friends, and the music is effective without being overbearing. When the music is loud, it's behaving as the audience's heartbeat, rising with the tension and action before pulling back. It's nice to have a movie where, even though everyone tends to speak quietly, you can still hear what they're saying.
And then there's the plot.
I'm about to get super spoilery, so if you want to watch the movie, stop reading this review and go watch it, then come back so I can complain about walnuts.
Did you watch it? Do you not care about spoilers? Okay, here we go.
After the grandma has been buried, someone desecrates her grave, which we learn about via a phone call to the dad. The daughter character, Charlie, has a nut allergy and may or may not (absolutely is, according to the director) be the temporary earthly vessel for grandma and her secret cult's favorite demon, Paimon. Yes. This is a secret demon cult movie. No, you don't find out for sure until the last act.
Well, in order to get Paimon out of Charlie and into her brother (who has no idea about any of this), poor Charlie has to die. We are asked, by the end of the movie, to believe that the son is invited to a party where the mom knows there will likely be drinking and/or drugs, but she insists that he take Charlie with her. The mom, at this point, knows nothing about the cult and could reasonably get a babysitter for Charlie (if not just leave her alone, she's old enough to take care of herself, it seems), so this is weird because this party? This party kills Charlie.
See, the son takes Charlie to the party, where for some reason, there are people chopping mountains of walnuts, which Charlie's deathly allergic to. The son does not notice at all and goes to smoke some weed with a girl he likes, urging Charlie to eat the cake which he doesn't know has nuts in it. Charlie, of course, has a reaction and goes to get her brother to take her to the hospital. Instead of calling an ambulance. Ambulances, newsflash, don't give a crap about the presence booze or pot when there's an obvious episode of nut-induced anaphylaxis...
So sonny boy takes Charlie to the car and drives outta there like a bat outta heck. Charlie, meanwhile, is suffocating as her throat closes, so she sticks her head out the window to breathe. There's a sudden deer in the road (a carcass, actually), which causes the son to swerve. Charlie's head is then taken off by a telephone pole.
We are, by the end of this movie, expected to believe that this entire sequence was planned by the cult for the express purpose of freeing Paimon from Charlie's body so they can literally scare the son to death and put Paimon in his body.
This is insane, obviously. Also obvious is the link between all this craziness and mental illness. This could absolutely be a story about a fantastically unfortunate family where they all go crazy one-by-one, but no. Demons.
The jump from "Charlie dies horrifically, but completely by accident" to "A crazy cult of nudist geriatrics wanted a genius demon to come into being through a weird girl and her brother" is a bit too much of a leap, for me, but it's still a really cool movie in spite of the twist.
Overall, I think this movie is incredibly worth watching and you should check it out.
Really watch it, though, because yeah... that Paimon stuff is hard to follow if you haven't been paying attention the whole time.
I'm proud of myself for only looking away during the decapitations, guys. Yeah, you read that right. There's multiple decapitations. Five, actually. One's a metaphor, though. The four physical decapitations are: Grandma's Corpse, A Dead Pigeon In A Bush, Charlie, and The Mom Via Possession/Piano Wire. The metaphysical decapitation is when the dad is killed - cutting the head from the family.
First of all - my apologies for being so late with this. I was really getting into the art and... uh... I may have gotten a bit Sharpied. Sorry if I'm also incoherent lol.
But I have wonderful news! I have finished my Halloween Bubble Project!
"Spooky Scary Bubbly Bones"; Sharpie on Art Paper; 2019
As you may have guessed from the name, this piece is based off of the lyrics to the Spooky Scary Skeletons song!
A Closeup
This bubble art project was a lot of fun, but I could really use some new Sharpies - my gold and bronze markers are drying up and I'm running low on some of the purples.
I'm definitely thinking of doing some winter and/or Christmas-related pieces next, since this one is still a little bananas as far as color variation goes. I'm thinking of using only greens and reds for Christmas, and using only blues, silver, and white space for the general winter project.
I should also get another giant art pad (18 x 24) for huge projects like this!
I mean, I could buy posterboard, by that stuff can be a buck a sheet, and I'd rather have 50 sheets for 20 bucks lol. Also, posterboard is a bit too smooth. I need some tooth or else I feel like I'm making fake art. Not 100% sure what's up with that.
All that is to say that: YAY I'M DONE WITH THIS PIECE!
That'll do it from me today. I'm dizzy and tired from fumes, but I feel very accomplished. I'll probably plan out my next piece.
Bread is not spooky. It's delicious. But what if... this is PUMPKIN BREAD?!?!?! SPOOOOOOOOOKYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Or not. Lol.
"DARK" Inktober 2019
Here we see a spooky Jack-O-Lantern! I actually kinda like this one! It looks friendly but still off-putting :)
"COAT" Inktober 2019
Yes, that's a coat with a trio of long bloody gashes down the back. But whose is it? Is it Spencer's? Was he wearing it during the Romania Incident? I don't know!
"RIDE" Inktober 2019
Here we see a strange little creature, something I'll call a Minor Vexation, riding an unwitting victim and causing him distress.
"INJURED" Inktober 2019
Poor Spencer. He's got cuts on his arm, a bandage on his neck, and a six hour flight to Poughkeepsie...
"CATCH" Inktober 2019
Is... is this Reggie or Spencer? I can't tell. I'm not 100% sure who this is, but they're getting menaced by the Negative big-time.
"RIPE" Inktober 2019
This one's a bit obscure. I'm working on some mythologies for the world of Spook Patrol, and one of the locations is an orchard where supposedly a lot of witches were hanged and/or burned. Called the Witch Grove or the Black Orchard, all of the plants that grow there bear black fruit - apples, plums, peaches, pears, pumpkins, corn, everything.
The white snake biting the apple might be a witch's familiar, or it could be a vegan viper. Not sure :P
Remember my bubble art? I had to restart it :| Not getting done before midnight, either :(
Unfortunately for me, the original got kinda... chocolatey. Oops. Shouldn't have left it laying around.
Still, this gave me an opportunity to restart it with a more cohesive pattern/style. I kinda like it more now, even if the phallic imagery is still a bit obvious... ah well. That's what you're going to get when you use Cardinal Directions as your basis...
In Which I Discuss Dehydrated Ganondorf and Other Such Things
It's been four months since E3 and the arrival of the by-now infamous teaser trailer for Breath of the Wild 2.
And I know that the internet is probably oversaturated with people spinning theories. I also know that I don't often talk about games that you'll have to fork out the moolah for. Just... bear with me. I don't think this will end up just being a gross advertisement for a game that's not even close to being out of development.
I think.
Mostly, I've just been thinking about the game a lot and what I'd like to see in it, things I'm worried about, some theories that I think are compelling, stuff like that, and this is a collection of these thoughts.
Because I went looking for Halloween-y games online for free and it's kinda a wasteland. We're talking dozens of bubble shooter reskins, rudimentary escape games, dress up games, etc. And what half-way decent games I could find were either 2 spoopy 4 me ... or they wouldn't run on my computer anymore. Boo.
So without further ado, here are my thoughts and theories on the upcoming sequel to the only Legend of Zelda game I've beaten.
So, by now you've probably watched the trailer. Especially since I've just embedded it right up there ^
Go ahead and watch it now if you haven't, this writing isn't going anywhere lol.
We've got Zelda with a great new haircut (which, judging from her personality in Breath of the Wild's flashbacks, she's been wishing for for a while, since it's hard to science with long hair) exploring some caverns with Link. There's what looks like a water buffalo mixed with a great horned rhinoceros, which Zelda is riding while it carries what looks like everything one would need to set up an archaeological base camp. There's also a heartbeat in the background, slow and steady.
There are some cave paintings of what look to be diabolic people on horseback, one of whom is wielding a trident. There's also a distinctive swirl on the wall, indicating that this complex filled with bright luminous stones and minecart bridges was likely built by the Zonai, a mysterious tribe whose stone architecture is all that remains of them. The Zonai also built the labyrinths and the Typhlo ruins and also the stonework around literally all of the Springs. Interesting.
More interesting is the fact that at the end of the video, we get Dehydrated Ganondorf (let's be real, there's no one else it could be - even a total noob like me got the idea that the mummy dude is Ganondorf) twisted into a very uncomfortably kneeling position, held in place by a glowing hand clad in chunky golden jewelry. This hand is holding him down while ethereal green script spirals out from it towards some suspiciously technological outcroppings on the ceiling of the chamber.
There's a flash where the shadow of Ganondorf appears to be trying to escape the clawed appendage appears on the wall.
When the power from the hand crawls into Link's arm, seeming to join with him, the mummified Gerudo King is released and awakens as the floors collapse under Link and Zelda. He stares directly at Zelda with burning eyes.
We end with a long-distance shot of Hyrule Castle slowly rising up.
It's a lot to unpack, but here are some thoughts from me:
Are Link and Zelda looking for Dehydrated Ganondorf, or is he a complete surprise while they're looking for something else (like more evidence of the past)?
Does the castle rising indicate that it's going to be a floating base we have to somehow get up to, or... are we going back to Skyloft? And what would Skyloft be like after so long? The Loftwings would probably be very different these days...
There is absolutely no evidence of the Sheikah technology we used in Breath of the Wild on the landscape we see at the end there. Does this mean the Sheikah Slate is useless and we won't have the runes or the map?! Oh boy, that could be rough.
Does the beast of burden indicate a Camp mechanic, or is it just something cool to see during the cutscene?
Who the heck was the arm? It has jewelry not unlike that of the Twili from Twilight Princess, but... could that be the arm of a Zonai? If that's the case, though, why do Gerudo words slowly form from the spiraling spirit energy? What... what if this is the Desert Goddess herself? Probably far-fetched.
Uh... what if the Zonai became the Gerudo?
I hope this is part of a trilogy, because here's what I'm thinking:
Breath of the Wild was all about Power - you didn't have enough 100 years ago, now you need to go get more.
This game seems to be about spirit energy (what with it crawling into Link's arm) but whether that means Wisdom or Courage is yet to be seen. It's Link's arm, so probably Courage - you have to prove your courage in this game.
That leaves Wisdom, which is usually one of the two we're given (like with the Oracle games, and I'd argue that Wisdom, since it's often related to Time, is the lead in Ocarina). And that might end up being about rebuilding or forging a new relationship with Hylia and the land, which could be really cool. It'd be nice if it was a game actually starring Zelda, too.
Is the Dehydrated Ganondorf the intelligent Gerudo King, or is it a dusty meat puppet still controlled by Malice? To be honest, I kind of hope that... it's both. I want there to be a Ganondorf who, like in Wind Waker, legitimately just wanted to help his people but went about it all wrong, misguided by Demise's curse from Skyward Sword. What can I say, I like misguided, redeemable villains...
Will we learn more horrible things about Hyrule's past? Will the Arbiter's Grounds feature again?
Where will we explore?!
DUNGEONS?!?!
I'm not an expert at Legend of Zelda lore - I leave that to the PeanutButter Gamers, Zeltiks, and NintendoBlackCrisis types of the world. I have no answers.
I do, however have a list of things that I think might appear in this game:
Exploration Above and Below as well as Overland.
A true Flight mechanic?
A Diving mechanic?
More overland travel with new locations?
Dungeons in interesting locations!
Will we find them on land, under earth, over sky?!
Will they be themed after the Dragons and/or are they the guardians?
Oh crap! What if the Dragons are who takes us up to Skyloft? They disappear into a vortex at the end of their flight!!! What if proving ourselves to the Dragons (who are incarnations of the Golden Goddesses, after all!) is key to getting us where we're going?
What if there's a Fourth Dragon we have all forgotten about and they're key to destroying Demise's curse once and for all?!
More explanations about the Zonai/Gerudo/Sheikah connections
It would make sense! The Zonai representing Courage/Spirit, the Sheikah representing Wisdom/Law, and the Gerudo representing Power/Strength
A more robust and mature post-Victory Tarrey Town?
I mean, it's a pretty well defensible location a goodly distance from any pools of Malice
They were just getting started when we built them up
Could they hold the key to a dungeon - that's a suspicious mesa they're atop, after all!
Exploring more of a recently-recovered Zora City and Death Mountain as the ravages of the Calamity recede?
I'd love to see us exploring more ruins and learning more about their past!
There's a lot I'd love to see, but let me say this right now:
If there is a diving mechanic where we have to go into creepy underwater ruins I will cry. Because I'm terrified of shipwrecks and deep water. The first time Farosh surfaced from Lake Hylia while I was nearby, I nearly threw up I was so freaked out. I'll have to hand the game over to someone else and shiver away while they complete any diving sections. Unless they're not too spooky.
But...
Dehydrated Ganondorf.
It's gonna be spooky.
I will also say this: I'd love to have there be more long-form dungeons. There's certainly enough room for them!
Here's some good spots for dungeons!
Mekar Island would be perfect for an entrance to either a recreation of a Zelda 1 Dungeon or a Wind Temple
Tarrey Town, again, looks like the perfect place for a hidden temple
With the flooding calmed and water no longer gushing out of Zora's Domain, does that mean that the Lanayru Promenade will be far less flooded, allowing us to explore its ruins more easily?
Will the Forgotten Temple be lifted or excavated somewhat, revealing another dungeon, perhaps of Earth?
Could... could there be something more to that Eighth Heroine statue? Could it be guarding the entrance to the old Spirit Temple? And wouldn't the image of the Eighth Heroine's statue coming to life, reclaiming her sword and her old position to Raise the Arbiter's Grounds be an awesome visual?!?!?! It won't happen though. Almost a guarentee.
Speaking of suspicious mesas and callbacks... Spectacle Rock?!
And is there anything underneath the Korok forest?
Wait... if Link is being imbued with Spirit Energy, does this mean that the Lord of the Mountain will now have less fear? What if Satori, Lord of the Mountain, becomes a guide of some sort?!
Sorry, that was off-topic.
Say, there's probably some stuff going on in the ocean, yeah? There's probably a dungeon out there - maybe something leftover from the Flood (Wind Waker). Maybe... maybe a ghost ship as a mini-dungeon taking you to another dungeon, from which you'd be sent into the sky somehow? That would be cool.
With the DLC, it's become less likely that anything more would fit beneath the Great Plateau, sadly.
Boy, the mountains around Kakariko sure look like they could hide some kind of dungeon, don't they?
But none of this is particularly spooky, is it?
What if I were to suggest that, perhaps, with Link now imbued with Spirit energy by the disembodied hand, that this game will be all about hauntings and spirits and the undead? What if one of the mechanics will be to have Link lay his blessed/cursed hand on graves or bones and have them tell him where things are, like the Gossip Stones of old? What if his hand is key to revealing the bloody, miserable history of Hyrule?
Because if you watch the lore videos, read the official documentation, and explore in-game, it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that Hylia's chosen people have been straight up evil at points. The ReDeads? They were basically created by the Sheikah at the behest of the Hylian Royal Family. Zelda's ancestors had corpses reanimated to guard their stuff and palaces. It's pretty obvious, too. And the similarities between Wind Waker's ReDeads and the Sheikah Monks from Breath of the Wild are... perilously close. My theory, however, is that Wind Waker's ReDeads are actually the remains of Gerudo, hence why we never, ever see Gerudo besides Ganondorf...
Besides reanimating the dead, willing or not, the past kings of Hyrule have kind of a thirst for violence. Just look at the Arbiter's Grounds and the Great Coliseum. Just think about what the creation of the Guardian Army implies - that the past kings of Hyrule were a-okay with having a mechanized army incapable of mercy or hesitation.
I might be a bit anti-estblishmentarian, but there's plenty out there to indicate that not every royal family in Hyrule's history has been beloved by all people in the world. Heck, one royal family even decided that their most loyal protectors and defenders, the Sheikah, were no longer to be trusted (which, to be fair, could have been caused by some of Demise's Malice creeping in, especially if a mummified Ganondorf were whispering to them in their sleep...) and nearly wiped out the race. To be honest, if my people had dedicated their entire existence to the defense of the Goddess and her Chosen People, only to be suddenly turned upon by their charges, I'd probably defect to my attacker's worst enemy's side, too...
The Yiga clan probably wouldn't exist if the Royal Family had just kept chill, to be honest.
And if it did still exist, it would've been composed entirely of Gerudo who were furious that their King was missing and must still be alive if no new king was being born.
Which, yeah, I'd be pretty ticked about, too.
So the Hylian Royal Family kinda makes their own enemies through selfishness.
Like any royal family, to be honest.
But still, there's a lot I'd like to see in Breath of the Wild 2 - more spirits and undead, for one! We only see five spirits in BotW: The King, Mipha, Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali. A lot more people died, and it would be ridiculous to think that millions of people dying horrifically the way they did in the Calamity would all be rested and at peace. What if, when we travel, we encounter spirits, good or evil, who either help or hinder us as we journey? What if we have to lay spirits to rest as well as helping the living? Perhaps we'd deliver a message from Dorian's deceased wife in Kakariko to her children. Perhaps we will be a channeler? A voiceless man giving voice to those who have passed?
I like that.
Since I doubt that Link will ever recover more memories than he had done at the end of BotW, I bet that empty space will be perfect for ghosts to show him what they remember. Oh god... what if he gets flashbacks to the way things once were? Sees Lon Lon Ranch before it fell. Sees his family. They recognize him, they beg him to remember them, and he cannot.
Ouch.
One more thing has occurred to me, but after this, I'll have to let you guys go.
The Typhlo Ruin is in constant darkness.
The Zonai built the Typhlo Ruin.
What if... what if the Zonai are related to the Twili, somehow? What if we make contact with them and they take us into the Twilight Realm where a much older Midna recognizes the blade and mourns her old friend? What if there's an Easter Egg where, if you have the Wolf Link Amiibo active, she recognizes him and asks if he can stay with her?
And what if there is one. last. scene with Fi?
Or with a Lost Great Fairy who weeps when she sees you, remembering her Link?
Nintendo has the capacity to break a lot of hearts here.
I've mentioned in the past that I'm a big wimperooni when it comes to scary movies.
So then why did I watch The Witch?!
And yes, the Hare is very important.
There are many other movies I need to talk about in the near future, but the fact that I saw this movie on Monday and I'm still thinking about it should tell you that The Witch is something truly special.
This movie follows a family of Puritans who have been cast out from their plantation and have to make their home on the edge of the woods. We know only that they have been cast out for religious reasons involving the father, and we know that the eldest daughter, Thomasin, is not at all pleased by this. She does her best to obey and be pious, however.
Because, yeah. They're Puritans. They're super duper religious.
This is a family trying their best to hold themselves together completely cut off from civilization. They work, they pray, they beg forgiveness from an apparently utterly disinterested god.
Thomasin seems to be treated the way most eldest girls were in those days - as a backup mother for the rest of the children while the actual mom does her best to work the farm. I think. To be honest, I don't see her doing an awful lot of helping. She mostly seems to just be resentful and angry, but I would be too if my husband got me kicked out of literally the only thing that stood for a town on the continent....
One day, while watching over the baby, Samuel, Thomasin plays peek-a-boo with the baby. And suddenly he's gone. In the span of covering her eyes and uncovering them, Samuel has been spirited away from Thomasin. And if you're thinking that this is left up to your imagination...
You'd be wrong.
And it's incredibly messed up, despite not showing anything violent.
So poor Thomasin is trying to cope, just like the rest of her family, with the sudden loss of baby Samuel. Then her brother Caleb, who is just old enough to be starting puberty, disappears. The family is in utter disarray and Thomasin is accused of witchcraft.
Which is where I kinda get... tetchy.
See, here's my issue: These parents suck.
Their eldest has complained repeatedly that the youngest two spend all their time hanging out with the big black billy goat, Black Phillip, chanting and dancing and neglecting their work. The little girl even claims to be a witch at one point.
The kids are scream-singing that Black Phillip is "Lord of All The Earth" at one time, and literally everything they say relating to this big. black. goat.
is Satanic.
The kids are so obviously bewitched and they'd rather blame Thomasin because how dare she grow boobs and maybe start her period soon.
These turds. These turds ruin everything for Thomasin.
And despite the fact that Thomasin is constantly being emotionally and psychologically abused by literally everyone but Caleb (because she isn't aware that he's confusedly lusting after her, poor doomed boy) and Samuel (who was a flipping baby), she loves her family so much that she'd happily put herself in danger to help them. Repeatedly. She was even going to run away from them and possibly die in the woods just to make things easier for them.
So of course this story ends very, very poorly for this family.
Heck, by the end of it, you're almost rooting for the witch.
Then again, she did murder a baby and turn it into a potion...
I won't spoil the ending, but I will say this: You'll never look at hares, ravens, or big black goats the same way ever again.
This is, in short, the perfect film to watch when you're feeling spooky.
The Bubble Drawing is coming along, but it actually doesn't look like it right now, so I don't have any update photos on that. Suffice to say, it's slow going lol.
Inktober, however, is going really well!
"Misfit"; Inktober 2019
Here we see poor Spencer looking at himself in a dirty mirror while ghosts frolic around him. I kinda like the way the ghosts looked in the sketch better than the ink, but that's just how it goes sometimes :P
"Sling" Inktober 2019
Spencer, post-Romania, is on a bus. Or a plane. Or a train. Not sure. Regardless, he's dealing with a broken arm and bad reception.
"Tread" Inktober 2019
I think this is a post-Negative Scarlet Rose Manor, complete with a little black kitty visiting!
"Treasure" Inktober 2019
The treasures here are the Deed to the Scarlet Rose Manor, some marbles, and a very creepy dagger!
"Ghost" Inktober 2019
Yes, it's another scratched up door. I might have issues with feeling trapped.
The unfortunate ghost curled up inside this dark and airless room is one of the spirits from the Scarlet Rose Manor, an unfortunate servant named Piotr who ended up trapped in the woodshed, which was built specifically to kill anyone trapped in it. The house was designed by a madman, after all...
"Ancient" Inktober 2019
Here we see one of the appendages of the Negative, an entity residing in the Scarlet Rose Manor. No one ever sees the full body of The Negative without losing their mind, so here's just a tiny little limb. Yeah. It's that messed up.
"Dizzy" Inktober 2019
What is Spencer doing? I have no idea. He's sure dizzy, though. I think this is probably before the Romania Incident, too, since there aren't any scars on his face. Maybe this is in college when he first begins to notice that The Negative left a presence with him?
I'm not usually one for the arcade-style games, since I'm just plain garbage at them, but once in a while, I find one that's pretty fun, and this week, I played They Took Our Candy, a game by Rachid1984. I played over on Kongregate, but it's available elsewhere, too.
Because who doesn't want to fight aliens and get candy?
They Took Our Candy is a simple game with a simple premise: You and your pals have to rescue the Halloween candy from voracious, murderous aliens. You have a party of 4 kids, each with their own abilities and weapons, and you march in formation down the street. You use your arrow keys to move around the road and your space bar to activate whatever Special Ability you have. There's no attack button because you're constantly firing projectiles (who gave that kid actual ninja stars, and why is no one freaked out that an 8 year old dressed as a fairy suddenly has access to legit magic?).
It's a pretty little game, too!
With a great 8-bit style that reminds me more of Atari than Nintendo, and fun chiptune music, this is a fun game to listen to and look at as well as play. Yes, at first, you're moving very sluggishly, but that's kinda believable, isn't it? That a bunch of kids would have a very hard time staying in formation and throwing things all at once as they started out?
Of all the things I could've expected, a robust party system was not one of them!
When you start a run, you can select your party. Initially, you have only these four to choose from, but as you go, you unlock new characters, like the Cat (a kid in a cat costume) or other costumes. Each one has their own stats and their own Special.
Enemies come at you from both sides, and as you progress, some begin to use weapons with projectiles against you. I'm pretty trash at these kinds of games, so that's about when I start to die, but hey, I tried!
Overall, this game, which is over seven years old now, is absolutely a charming masterpiece and one of the best times I've ever had playing an arcade-style side-scrolling shooter. I've never made it to the end, but maybe one of you will and you can tell me how it went in the comments?
Back when I was a wee little owlet, huddled deep in the cushy confines of childhood and innocence, I saw some things that maybe a bitty babbie should not have. For instance, my father wanted to watch Indiana Jones when I was in Kindergarten, and so we watched it. I was subtly traumatized by the face-melting scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That wouldn't be the end of it, though (much to my mother's chagrin). See, my dad had his computer office in the basement, and me being a wee little wimpkin, I was terrified of the basement.
It's not even a creepy basement.
Seriously, he had, like, a cute little log cabin style room down there and it smelled like warm wood and safety, especially since there was a door I could shut and keep out anything that scared me. Except for one problem.
My dad like to play video games on his desktop sometimes.
At first, it was dumb stuff like a very old PC version of a Speed Racer game that my very nerdy uncle gave him, but from there we ended up with a rather eclectic segment of early 1990s PC games. Redneck Rampage, Monster Truck Madness, and every Puzz3D game that was published, I think, crossed his screen. Fairly innocuous, right?
Well, then 1993 happened.
And with it came The 7th Guest, and the scarring.
The scarring was real.
And... I don't really get it now?
This FMV game scared me so badly that I still don't like that cellar and it mocks me in my dreams
So what's so spoopy about The 7th Guest?
Everything, when you're a tiny child, to be honest.
It's a big creepy mansion filled with ghosts and disembodied parts from dead people. Of course it freaked me out! And the cellar puzzles were literally impossible. It was basically dumb luck to escape!
You play as the main character, who I didn't know until today was named Tad, and you're stuck in this big house solving puzzles. Please bear in mind that I have literally not played this game since 1994. I don't remember much, and I'm basing this review on what little I can remember about how it messed me up.
It only messed me up a very little bit. Most of the scarring was from the Nazis in Raiders.
Regardless, you, through the eyes of Tad, explore this vast and incomprehensible mansion, encountering FMV clips of ghosts. I did not understand in 1993 what FMV was. To me, it was as though a dozen actual people were stuck in my father's computer and he couldn't help them.
Helplessness is a major theme in this game, I think.
That and really nice 3D environments!
So there are all these ghosts stuck in the house with you, and they're all pretty mad about it, too. You weren't even supposed to be there. I remember them treating me/Tad very shabbily at points. That scared me - I didn't like people being mean to me (I mean, very few people do, and for them, it's probably more of an adult discovery than a thing they liked as kids), and I was very intimidated.
Also, the FMV was super pixellated, so everything had a blurry, half-understood quality
which really was effective, since this was just as my eyes started failing...
You're trying to leave (as Tad), but the scary old man who owns the house and who killed everyone (I think?) has put up a series of really devilish puzzles. They're so tough that I can't remember most of them, though I know that they followed a lot of the same formats as the 1990s Brain Games puzzles I loved like marble solitaire and logic problems.
I remember not understanding how this can puzzle worked at all.
So you find all these puzzles and you try to defeat them, but then there's the basement.
The basement was the worst, and not just because I was in a basement while I played it.
The basement level is a maze.
An unbeatable, nonsensical maze.
More people give up in the maze than at any other point, I understand. And I get it. After the thirtieth time you hear Old Man Stauf (the bad guy) snicker in your ear (and it was even worse with headphones) or ask if you're "Getting... lonely?", you move slowly from fear to rage. It's the easiest game in the world to rage-quit.
I have never, to this day, beaten this game.
I'd like to, though, so until I can buy it off of GOG or Steam or whatever, I'll have to settle for watching other people play it, lol.
Some day, I'd like to record myself or stream myself playing this game so you can all laugh at how silly I was to be terrified of it.
Because as much as it scared the silly little pants off my silly little self (and let's be fair, I was a wee little tot at the time), I also have a strong sense of nostalgia for it.
So you're getting started on your epic Halloween Spoopy Movie playlist for that Halloween Party you've been harping on since August 20th.
And your Aunt Mabel promised she'd show up with her adorable home-made witch costume and those killer Pumpkin Bars she makes that you're obsessed with.
Aunt Mabel cannot do the Big Spoops (Slasher films, gore, intense trauma or otherwise anxious movies).
What do?
She's not, like, a six year old or something. She's got some resistance, but she's not down for the hardcore stuff.
You love Aunt Mabel.
You love those pumpkin bars.
So what can you play when someone is a little delicate but not a vanilla cream puff?
Here's some movies that even this relative weenie in the Blanket Fort can watch with joy! Some even have some real spoops in them!
A BIG LIST OF SPOOPY MOVIES YOU CAN SHOW YOUR AUNTIE (OR ME)
Kiddie
Hocus Pocus
Nightmare
Before Christmas
The Halloween
Tree
Episodes of
Goosebumps
Episodes of
Are You Afraid of the Dark
It’s The
Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
Monster House
Casper
Escape From Witch Mountain (+ sequels)
Adult, but not
the End of the World
Universal
Monsters
Dracula (+
sequels)
The Wolf Man
(+ sequels)
The Invisible
Man
The Creature
From The Black Lagoon (+ sequels)
The Mummy (+
sequels)
Frankenstein
(+ sequels)
Hammer Horror
Flix
Captain
Kronos
Dracula (+
sequels)
The Devil
Rides Out
House 2: The
Second Storey
Monster Squad
(1987)
Episodes of
Svengoolie
Episodes of
Elvira
Episodes of
Monstervision
Some MST3K
Shakma
Birdemic
Psycho
Bedlam
Episodes of
The Twilight Zone (OG)
The Happening
The Shuttered Room
Strays
Proceed With
Caution
Ghostwatch
Evil Dead (+
sequels)
Shaun of the
Dead
Zombieland
Leviathan
Deep Star Six
Uninvited (Not to be confused with "THE Uninvited", which is a ghost story/psychological thriller and not a killer cat movie)
I have watched every single one of these movies or shows from start to finish at least once with only two exceptions: Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. I never finished SotD. I got 2/3 of the way through it and then (spoilers) someone got ripped apart in the fakest, most bloodless way possible, and I had to tap out. I don't know why that was what did it. I just couldn't take it anymore and had to stop. I probably could finish the movie from that point if we literally skipped that guy's death scene, to be honest, but I just never have. I've seen the ending, though.
Since I couldn't finish the silliness that was Shaun of the Dead, I have been unable to watch Zombieland as well. I have seen the trailers and the opening five to ten minutes, but I just... I don't do zombies, guys. I cannot do it. It's a weird squick of mine and I just can't seem to get past it. Pretty much anyone else on earth should be fine with both, though.
Also, confession time, I've got a bunch of absolute garbage mixed in with otherwise good movies on here. There is no universe in which M Night Shayamalan's The Happening is even close to being as good as Bedlam. It's just not even close. It's much closer to Strays and Birdemic. Bedlam, meanwhile, is a fantastic movie from 1946 with Boris Karloff and is a fictionalized story of the actual Bedlam asylum (kind of). It's really good, and you should watch it.
I want to write a bit about each of these films at some point - even the ones I've already blogged about - and that might be next week's Filmic Friday, to be honest :)
That's all from me for today, everyone.
Hope you enjoyed the List Of Films Your Cinnamon Roll Friends and Relatives Can Probably Watch!
So, it's been a long week so far, and I'm already tired, but I shall continue on!
I have finished the first three days of Inktober. I made a book. I did more bubble art. I finally managed to watch the first episode of Dynamite. It's been a good, if very busy, week :)
More bubbles!!!
The bubble project is coming along nicely, and while I'm sorry that I didn't get any better shots of it, I am really pleased that it's so far along. It's just under halfway done!
You know what I did finish this week? I made a sketchbook. I know, I've already bragged about it once this week, but now that I've used it, it bears repeating :P
My tiny, tiny hand for creepy scale...
I made the sketchbook for just one purpose: Holding my Inktober art for 2019.
Yes, I wrote the title in pencil. Yes, I'll ink it later.
And here we see the contents, which indicate three finished drawings! I mean, it's the third, so it stands to reason, but c'mon!
Day 1's prompt was RING, and while I wanted to make every prompt relate to Spook Patrol, I knew that wouldn't work. No one in Spook Patrol really wears rings...
So I designed a ring.
The faces of the skulls would be the same metal as the band, but the eyes would have garnet or obsidian in them and the domes of the skulls would be made from pearls!
Day 2's theme was MINDLESS, and since I didn't have it in me yesterday to draw a zombie, I instead drew something equally mindless:
Mӧth loves Candle...
But today's theme was BAIT, and so I present to you: Bait from the Spook Patrol.
I promise, this all makes sense in context.
There are only supposed to be four people in the photo. There are five. House '93 is an audio recording from a haunted house. The copy of Evangeline, the photo, and the necklace (which is a cowrie shell) all came from the house the recording came from. The only person who could have sent all of these is dead.
Spencer, who received this package and its vaguely sinister note, is thus drawn back to a house he swore he'd never return to. Of the six kids who went in, two are dead, one is missing, one is insane, and one is dying. The last one is Spencer, and even he is not unscathed.
