Sleepaway Camp

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There are few entries in the 80s slasher genre with quite the reputation that Sleepaway Camp has. Not because it’s an especially good movie, but almost entirely because of a twist ending that’s gone down as one of the most infamous in horror history. I decided to watch it, and I have a lot of thoughts, so here we go. As always, these are simply the opinions of one person, and there will be spoilers.

To start with, I’ll state I don’t believe it to be nearly as bad as some insist. Yes, the acting is highly variable, the clothes could hardly be more 80s, and there’s little to speak of in the way of a plot, but honestly, that’s a lot of the distinctive charm of a micro-budget 80s slasher. If you can work with all that, you’ll be rewarded, and in some unexpected ways.

The strongest aspect is the kills. They’re all really well executed, gnarly without being over-the-top, just the right amount of grue to give them impact, and not a splatter more. They also highlight the direction, which is agreeably simple and clean for the most part, but able to throw in some arresting images when the killer strikes: a sharp cut from a stool being tugged to the chef standing on it bracing his hands; the back of a head surging up out of water; a small snake slithering out of a corpse’s mouth; the killer washing blood from a knife in a shower, then turning it off.

The pacing’s good, too. It’s thirty minutes before the first attack, and then things mount up steadily, the kills coming quicker and quicker, building really well to the madness of That Ending ™. That gives the setting and characters room to breathe, and allows the film to generate a pretty decent atmosphere. All right, the characters aren’t especially deep, but at least they’re fractionally more than the usual vapid, sexy murder fodder.

Speaking of sexy, this film largely isn’t, a marked subversion of the usual slasher routine. There’s not a bouncing breast to be seen, but a lot of males in tight and skimpy clothing, and some male nudity. For a film that on the face of it seems to be a Friday the 13th knockoff, it actually isn’t. It’s actively upending a lot of the expectations that brings. Less grue, no sex, no female nudity, steadier pace, more realistic setting.

It even does that narratively. The opening sequence, of the boating outing of a father and his two children going tragically wrong, seems to be setting up a classic revenge scenario. Camping teens carelessly cause two deaths, someone sets out to extract bloody retribution. But that’s not what we get. Instead, we have killings in response to poor treatment of withdrawn Angela, and a few possibilities for who’s committing them. Is it the overprotective cousin? The father’s male partner? Or Angela?

True, it’s fairly clear Angela’s the prime candidate, but even then, the film has one hell of a rug pull up its sleeve. A big reason That Ending ™ hits so hard is how the film plays things building up to it, not least that there are hints, and not always subtle ones. You’re kept guessing, and it doesn’t truly come out of nowhere.

As to That Ending ™, yes, on the one hand it’s undoubtedly exploitative, designed to shock, and playing into the hurtful trope of gender-bending-equals-deranged-killer Psycho did more than most to popularise, though even with that film a lot of it is interpretation. It’s the same, here, too, as there are some highly ambiguous details, not least the two flashbacks. The siblings giggling as they watch their father and his male partner canoodle in bed. A quite surreal sequence of the two siblings sitting in bed facing each other, Peter topless and pointing at Angela, getting closer each time the revolving camera cuts further in. It’s impossible to know for sure what the intent was, particularly since writer/director Robert Hiltzik isn’t telling.

This is my tentative interpretation. The giggling is simply the kids thinking their Dad silly for kissing and cuddling another man, or just kissing and cuddling full stop, a real memory of innocent reactions. The kids in the bed, though, I think, isn’t real. It’s symbolic, hence the spinning camera in contrast to the more naturalistic shots of the first clip. It’s the divide and conflict in Angela visualised, flared up by the kiss, and that’s why Angela hurries away.

That’s the kicker with That Ending ™. It manages to be both exploitative, and surprisingly deep. There’s layers to Angela’s trauma. First seeing father and sibling die in the accident. Then being forced into a different gender identity. And, something I’ve not seen picked up in all of the reviews and commentary I’ve read, being forced to use the name of the sibling seen dying. With all of that clearly internalised, is it any wonder the myriad pains of Camp Arawak – sleazy chef, bullies, teasing, the romantic advances Angela has no idea how to handle – cause it all to boil over, and escalate, and eventually result in a feral state? It tracks. It makes sense. It has weight. How many slasher films can you say that about?

The dichotomy of the film, that it manages to be a sleazy 80s slasher, a subversion of them, and something more, is the fascination with it, for me. It’s not a bad film; it’s not an especially good one, either; but it’s certainly interesting, not least in how much it doesn’t say. That, I think, is its greatest trick. It hits you with that reveal, giving you only the basics, then just ends, and you’re left trying to understand it. It makes an impact, makes you think, and if a film can do that, it surely has some worth.

Sonic 3 Movie Speculation

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The first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 just dropped, and fair to say it made an impact. It’s a stunner, not least in how spectacular a job they look to have done with Shadow. He’s formidable, he’s tragic, he’s cool, he has his bike and jet shoes and chaos control, he’s voiced by Keanu Reeves; the only missing detail is him calling Sonic “faker”. This film is shaping up to be a real event, an increasingly rare thing these days.

There have been concerns that the trailer shows too much, which seem perfectly fair, as we get a pretty clear idea of the story and main beats as well as a pretty big character sting, but I don’t think they’ve revealed everything, yet. It’s very likely they’ll have saved one or two things for a second trailer, at the least, and I believe there’s at least one actor whose role has yet to be announced.

Naturally, the first question to leap to mind is: are there any other Sonic characters in this film? The two most commonly predicted are Amy and Rouge, the former as she’s one of the most prominent of the Sonic cast, certainly the most prominent female, and the latter because of her close ties to Shadow. That the actor whose role remains a mystery is female lends fuel to those fires. Personally, though, I don’t think it likely we’re going to see either, in this film or any future ones, or indeed any female Sonic characters.

Why? Well, if you went for Amy, which Amy? Rosy the Rascal? The manic, fangirling pantsu delivery system with the hair-trigger temper from the Adventure era? Sonic X Amy? Boom Amy (my personal favourite)? I know she’s evolved somewhat in recent games, but also seems to have been pushed to the background more. Feels like it’s been a while since she was a playable character in a Sonic game, for example. As for Rouge, she’s a shapely flirt in a tight-fitting bodysuit, a “one for the Dads” character in many ways, which doesn’t really fit with the firmly family friendly, in the US mould, films.

Put it another way: for me, Amy and Rouge, when originally conceived, weren’t so much characters as stereotypes, and neither has yet managed to fully grow beyond those roots. They are, in my opinion, the two most prominent examples of the mishandling of female characters in much of the Sonic universe, and as such are potential banana skins for the films. True, you could look at the films as an opportunity to reimagine one or both of them, really evolve and flesh them out, which would be welcome, but…would Sega allow it? I’m doubtful.

There’s also the lesser, if still niggling, detail of clothing. As in, boys can run around in just shoes and gloves, but girls have to be fully dressed, a double-standard that’s almost become a running joke in the Sonic fandom. A prime example of how absurd it can be is the character creator in Sonic Forces, where males start in the fur, but females wear an awkward body sleeve, despite their cartoony Mobian bodies being pretty much identical. The difference is purely because of gender stereotypes, and that’s a can of worms I really don’t think the films want to risk opening.

The most obvious way they’d approach this, if they did add female characters to the films, is Sega business as usual, boys nude, girls clothed, no addressing of it whatsoever, which would be underwhelming, not least as there are ways you could make character beats out of it. Amy could arrive dressed the same as the boys, just shoes and gloves, notice how uncomfortable it makes us hung-up humans – a chance for some gentle satire, there, perhaps – and start wearing a red dress, illustrating several possible character traits, from being considerate to a need to fit in. Rouge could realise the potential power over people it gives her, and thus makes use of it via a bodysuit that flaunts her curves, demonstrating her resource, and willingness to use almost anything to get what she wants. There are definite possibilities.

Unfortunately, this is a confluence of two of the most risk-averse creative industries out there, movies and games, which is the biggest reason of all I think these films will play it as safe as possible and remain largely a boys club. Yes, the redesign of Sonic and the spectacular job done with Shadow shows the people actually making the movies care, but that’s unlikely to count for much against executive pressure, even in the wake of the Ugly Sonic debacle. I could be wrong, I hope I’m wrong, but I fear I’m not. At most, we’ll get an Amy reworked into another stereotype, a spunky, capable but largely agency-free supporting character & potential cutesy love interest.

What character do I think might actually appear? Silver. He’d be the obvious choice for an end credits sting, arriving from the future intent on eliminating Sonic as he believes the latter is the catalyst for a cataclysm that wrecks the world. It doesn’t have to be full “Iblis Trigger”, probably better it isn’t, as who wants to remember Sonic 2006, but the basic concept is one that feels very Hollywood, very movie-ready, and thus very likely.

My ideal character appearance? It’s never, ever going to happen, but it’s fun to imagine the meltdowns that would result if Sally Acorn were to show up, especially if it was classic, SATAM Sally, not the unimaginative Archie redesign. I for one would most certainly lose my tiny little mind. The ultimate curveball.

I’m undoubtedly being a little cynical, here, but I find it hard not to be with the movie industry. I just don’t hold out much hope at all we’ll get female Sonic characters in the movies, let alone good ones, but I’ll be the first to celebrate if I’m proven wrong.

The Cassidy Question

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Usual disclaimer, that arguably applies more than ever here: these are only the thoughts and opinions of one person, not facts, nor evidence of anything.

The Cassidy in question is Cassidy Civet, centre of the latest outbreak of Furry Drama(tm). I honestly struggle to know what to think of the whole situation, and at the heart of that is a dichotomy. How do I reconcile the Cassidy Civet I’ve seen in so many furry convention videos – fursuit dance competitions, variety shows, one of her own concerts – who is a good singer, a good dancer, a good performer, writes enjoyable music, and seems thoroughly likeable, with the Cassidy Civet who believes it acceptable to use and misuse the name of one of the most beloved figures in the furry fandom, who very recently passed away, to try and score points in a Twitter spat?

Is the stage Cassidy just an act? A mask of personality as well as the physical one of the fursuit? Or is it more of a Jekyll and Hyde situation, that she’s perfectly capable of being a nice person, but you rile her up, or prick her pride, and out comes Hyde, swinging with no holds barred to win? How much of it is purely her, and how much is prompted by outside influences?

Well, from her tweets, she comes across as self-centred, very keen to justify and push herself, with no apparent acknowledgement of other points of view, which does suggest a quite sizeable narcissistic streak, and yet none of that, at least to me, is apparent in the convention videos. Many of the tweets about her reference her as being a persistent trouble-maker, yet never cite any clear examples, any solid evidence. Other tweets are mocking her, and those, to me, are the most pertinent.

For one, I greatly dislike mocking behaviour, regardless of how worthy of it the target seems to be. It’s always counter-productive, and always demeaning to those doing it. I mean, yes, what your target has done is bad, but you’re not exactly being great yourself, are you? If your only reaction is to mock, what does that say about you? And have you ever stopped to consider that mocking is only ever likely to make the target’s objectionable behaviour even worse?

Put it this way. There are two people in my life that arguably possess narcissistic streaks, one markedly more so than the other. Their behaviour, especially the latter’s, can be very reminiscent of Cassidy’s Twitter attitude, and one particular common trait stands out in the context of this post: if you catch them out, prove them to be wrong, show them to be lying, the immediate reaction is not to admit it, let alone address it, but to double-down on it. You frequently see that behaviour when a politician gets caught lying; they just stack more lies on top, usually becoming belligerent, confrontational. Mocking, to me, will generate the same response, possibly more so because its hostile, demeaning, making nasty fun of someone. In short, one reason Cassidy got so bad is the attitudes of other people toward her, which is actually kind of ironic, in that you’re helping to create and maintain the very thing you’re taking aim at.

For all that, I do believe the mockers have hit on something valid, even if they’re not being entirely fair about it. The biggest single event that caused Cassidy to escalate was her appearance on Canada’s Got Talent. She says she’s proud of it, but I really struggle to see how that experience can be anything other than painful. To me, shows like that are cynical, contrived, exploitative. They’re not out to celebrate talent, they’re out to find a face and a voice that can sell a few records, and generate as much ad revenue as they can in the process. Things they can get a reaction from, that will get people talking and most of all watching, will do the latter, so when Cassidy pitched up in full fursuit, how could they possibly resist?

After all, one of the biggest cliches of these shows is the contestant whose arrogance far outstrips their abilities, because that’s always gonna get a great reaction from the audience, and give the judges something to really sink their teeth into, especially that other big talent show cliche, the Nasty Judge. A furry contestant, that sub-culture the mainstream media just loves to mock and demean and scaremonger about, with an attitude problem, who’s actually wearing one of those silly costumes many of the fandom persist in prancing about in? Potential goldmine.

One small catch: Cassidy can actually sing. We are firmly in the realm of conjecture already, and especially so here, but the fact that she barely got to sing a word – the clip on her Youtube channel is barely half a minute long, and the one I saw on Twitter just 7 seconds – before getting the buzzers makes me wonder if she purposely wasn’t allowed to, as that would rather undermine things. Of course, it’s just as likely, even more likely, that the judges simply saw the fursuit and immediately checked out. “Furry? Ugh. NEXT.”

Either way, as I said, I cannot believe an experience like that, basically being reduced to a throwaway joke on national television, didn’t hurt. That experience happening to someone with as strong a narcissistic streak as Cassidy would have had one hell of a knock-on effect, the doubling-down times a thousand, and that, coupled with the exacerbating factors already detailed, ultimately led us to the point Cassidy Civet is exploiting the name of a dead person in one of the pettiest, most self-serving ways imaginable.

To be clear: none of this is to make excuses for Cassidy. She showed extremely poor judgement, acted like a bully in putting someone else down to big herself up, tried to gatekeep – a rather toxic behaviour in and of itself – a fandom that takes great pride in being open, inclusive and diverse, and did so using the name of someone who was instrumental in making it that way. She is unquestionably a villain, here. However, villains don’t usually arise in a vacuum, there are always external factors at play – something I tried to explore with Cinnamon antagonist Eric, the parallels with which is another reason this is playing on my mind so much – and I believe we need to be aware of them when dealing with and reacting to situations like this, especially if we want to stop them from recurring.

Political Ponderings

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Have a lot of political thoughts rattling around in my head, so figured I may as well pour them into a blog, see if I can shape them into anything coherent. You have been warned! Also, the usual caveat about these being purely the opinions of one person obviously applies.

I’m not sure the UK has ever been in a more parlous situation than it currently is, politically. The Tories have spent almost fourteen years trashing the country, & now seem to have adopted a full scorched-earth policy. Keir Starmer has “transformed” Labour into a vacuous near-clone of the Tories whose entire purpose seems to be…well, no-one really knows, least of all, apparently, Starmer. The LibDems are practically invisible, a wishy-washy mishmash of nothing in particular. The Reform Party (formerly UKIP) refuse to go away, despite having no MPs and few to no councillors. The only ray of light is the Green Party, not perfect, but still light years better than the rest, and enjoying something of a surge, lately.

The big question, prompted by the knowledge that next year, 2024, will almost certainly be an election year, is how all this will shake out in a General Election. The prevailing prediction in the media, backed up by opinion polls, suggest the Tories being practically decimated, a huge margin of victory for Labour, and everyone else doing about the same as normal. The thing is, I’m really not sure that’s how it’ll actually pan out, and there’s a few reasons for that.

One: the 2024 election will undoubtedly, in my opinion, be subject to a lot of tampering, just like the 2017 and especially 2019 ones were, mostly focused on the postal votes. Two: I subscribe to the belief that opinion polls are much more about influencing public opinion than reflecting it. Three: results in local and by-elections have not reflected the predictions, with both the Tories and Labour doing poorly, and Greens and independent candidates doing well. Four: the mentioned surge for the Greens and other progressive candidates. Five: recent and ongoing world events have had a profound effect on our perceptions of politicians and the media.

A few of these, I want to go into more detail about. Going back to last year’s – 2023 – local elections, The Tories were indeed decimated, but Labour, overall, barely gained at all. The real big gains were made by the Greens, the LibDems, and independent candidates. Of particular note was that in seats where Starmer forcibly replaced the candidates, the originals stood as independents, and mostly won, handsomely. That’s a tactic Starmer loves, backfiring dramatically. The pattern has, as far as I can see, mostly held true in the various by-elections since.

Speaking of Starmer, he’s the next factor to consider. He’s not winning over the electorate; quite the reverse, in fact. He’s proven himself a serious liability to the party, a plastic posturer with no substance, no principles, a weather vane always in motion, reneging on promise after pledge after promise, and nodding obediently along with all the worst impulses of the Tories. He proclaims his party the change Britain needs, yet offers nothing at all different. He’s so visibly, nakedly a fraud it borders on farcical, and it’s negatively impacting Labour’s electoral results.

Starmer’s incompetence is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the Green surge, but there’s also the latter’s latest co-leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, to consider. They, Denyer especially, are leagues better than previous leaders, more alert, more pointed, more proactive, more present, more tactically astute, more willing to actively and clearly and constructively oppose the Tories, in sharp contrast to Labour and the LibDems, and are having an impact as a result. Enough of one, in fact, that Labour figures have reportedly lashed out at them, always a sign of fear, and formerly Labour-blinkered high-profile left Twitter accounts, like Tory Fibs, The Agitator and Wolfie, are now supporting them, pushing them as a viable alternative. The Greens have real momentum, and it’s still building.

And then there are the ongoing world events: Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine, and the ever-increasing fallout of that. It’s hard to overstate the impact it’s having, that Sunak and Starmer’s support of it, is having in the UK. It feels like a serious shift is taking place, and never have the two main parties felt so vulnerable, and they only have themselves to blame for it. This, and how it all ultimately plays out, is arguably the biggest factor in determining the shape of the next General Election.

My guess, my instinct, is we’ll end up with a hung Parliament. Labour will win the most seats, but not enough to form a Government by themselves. This leads to the question of coalitions, and raises the frankly terrifying spectre of a Labour-Tory coalition. The only consistent thing about Keir Starmer is his desire for power by any means, and if a pact with the Tories is needed, I don’t think he’d hesitate even for a second. The LibDems, if they win enough seats, may well consider a coalition with Labour, if only to try and salvage some shred of relevance after Nick Clegg so thoroughly trashed them. The Greens, I feel, would be highly unlikely to consider one. If no coalitions are possible, then I’ve no idea what happens.

Of course, a lot depends on just how much momentum the Greens and independents can gain. A Green or Green-independent coalition Government doesn’t feel impossible to me, just very unlikely, and how much meaningul change they’d be able to implement with a Lords stuffed with Labour and Tory peers liable to be hostile to them is a whole other question.

And on top of all that, there’s the matter of which high-profiles MPs might lose their seats, and what effect that could have. It is difficult to see, especially in the wake of Gaza, anything other than a clearout of Tory cabinet MPs, potentially including Sunak himself, and that would be a very heavy blow for that party to deal with. Equally, top Labour MPs could also fall, including Starmer and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, not least since progressive candidates and campaigns are being prepared against them. If Labour did win overall, but Starmer lost his seat, what then? How could he be PM when he’s not even an MP?

There are a lot of potential permutations, a confusing amount, in fact, but one, at least to my mind, near-certainty. The 2024 UK General Election is going to be a dramatic, even seismic one. One way or another, it’s going to have a profound effect on the country, and I can only hope it’s one for the better.

Dealing With Darkness

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As in, how to handle darker elements in your narrative works, and how difficult that can be. These are, as always, just the opinions of one person, and inevitably more than a little subjective.

Darker elements certainly have a place, a vital place, in storytelling. The villain to defeat, the conflict to work through, the obstacles to overcome, and texture and contrast to help give your worlds greater life. For me, though, they have to be treated carefully, for they can all too easily create an imbalance in the narrative, or the tone, and negatively affect the story experience as a result.

A crude but hopefully illustrative example: a group of kids investigate some odd goings-on in their neighbourhood. It’s a little spooky, there’s mild scares, and mild threat, dangerous situations gotten into and out of. Then, one of the kids is captured and beaten to death. Even if you play it really carefully, just allude to it happening off-screen, with no actual detail, it’s a big shift in tone, and the narrative cannot be the same afterwards. The moment has an impact, a heavy one, potentially a jarring one given it’s so much darker than anything before it, and that’s what can derail things, and why I believe great care is needed.

Thomas K Dye’s Newshounds was a webcomic I loved, and still have a lot of affection for, to the point it was a major inspiration in creating my Cinnamon series of stories. Smart, thoughtful, extremely funny, and keeping the darker elements subtle, it worked wonderfully; Alistair, Nigel, their relationship, & the former’s middle-of-the-street epiphany about the latter, and what they really mean to him, are elements and moments I hold especial fondness for. The follow-up, a graphic novel, increases the darkness, dramatically, and that’s where things, for me, go wrong.

It goes too dark, up to and including repeated threats of sexual assault, a shift from the original webcomic so pronounced I found it off-putting. It might not have been so bad if it had all been toward a satisfying narrative end, but it wasn’t. If anything, it all got hand-waved away. Arguably the hardest part of telling a story is the ending, sticking the landing, drawing all the elements together for a resolution that feels right, hits the proper notes of emotional release. Narrative is an emotional journey, and without a release, a catharsis of some kind at the climax, it ends up feeling hollow, and in my opinion, the darker you go, the harder it becomes to get that catharsis. Balance is needed, and for me, it wasn’t to be found here.

It’s also not to be found in Dye’s current webcomic project, Projection Edge. That’s partly because, at this point, character seems to matter markedly less to him than densely complicated plotting, Big Ideas and heavy drama, so the characters are getting lost amongst all the rest, you never really have a chance to get to know them, connect with them, care about them. It’s also partly because, again, he’s gone too dark. I speak mostly of a sequence in which a main character relates, with accompanying flashback images, a harrowing moment from his childhood, in which his misguided actions cause an already unbalanced religious zealot to snap, and results in the latter burning the main character’s two brothers alive in a pair of pottery kilns.

Now, that’s, at least to me, extremely dark, really, really heavy. Yes, the tone of the comic was already on the darker side, but two children being killed in horrifying fashion is still a massive tonal shift, even if nothing graphic is shown. It needs to be justified, to carry all its due weight, and I’m not convinced Dye is willing or able to do that. Even in the reveal he wasn’t, the character’s reactions muted, because they themselves are muted, leaving it feeling like a shock-value plot device.

Let me put it another way. The narrative point of that moment is clear, as it explains the main character’s difficulties, and puts him squarely at odds with the apparent villains, with their heavy religious overtones, but was it truly necessary to go to such an extreme to achieve those ends? I don’t believe it was, it could have been achieved without the killing, just it almost happening, or even the threat of it happening, but Dye chose to go that far, and now he has the imposing, and quite possibly insoluble, problem of how to deliver a catharsis to match. If the Newshounds graphic novel is any guide, he probably won’t even try.

To push things further, to an example of a moment of darkness that was utterly mishandled in every way, and one I likely made mention of in a prior blog, we turn to Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. One of the characters is introduced behind a wall of desks and cabinets, a literal and not very subtle – but then, AoS never is – barrier between her and the world. She doesn’t want to go back into the field, but after she’s convinced to, has no problem dropping bodies left and right, often in brutal fashion – the show practically revels in blood and guts – which prompts a question: what happened that was so bad even an arguable sociopath like her couldn’t deal with it?

The answer came pretty quickly to me, because it seemed the only possible one: she killed a child. Early in season two, a flashback episode confirms this, with the character out to stop a series of deaths centred around a mother and daughter. She assumes it’s the mother, not least because the mother wants her to, and shoots them dead. In front of the child. When said child then turns out, in the most hokily b-grade horror movie way, to be the actual killer, she shoots them, too. Then has a meltdown.

Not a single aspect of this works, not character, not narrative, not tone, not anything. It’s a complete mess, and I cannot fathom what the writers were trying to achieve. It put me off so much that was the last episode I watched. A friend watched more, and reported a classic “what if” scenario, in which they show what would have happened if the character hadn’t killed the girl: she’d have been taken to a secure facility, and pretty quickly massacred everyone there. I mean, I think I can see what they’re going for, another twist on the increasingly wearying trope of “the ends justifies the means”, but it’s so ham-fisted it fails utterly. That the little girl was a horror cliche, and not in any way a meaningful character, suggests even they knew it was a bad idea, but they went with it anyway, because visceral reaction is more important than character and narrative coherence.

Speaking of visceral, it’s important to note that I am very sensitive, reacting to things more, and more strongly, than most people generally would. That ratchets up considerably where violence toward children is concerned, meaning a game like Limbo or a film like Clown is something I couldn’t even begin to handle. This is undoubtedly colouring my thoughts and feelings, which I why I stress again, all the points and views here are subjective.

It’s also important I note examples of darkness handled well. Neil Gaiman is a master of the art, as seen in Neverwhere, a dark fantasy that’s not afraid to embrace the light and is beautifully restrained with the darkness – horrible things happen, but they’re not dwelt upon, and they all matter – and the resultant depth and contrast helps create a world so vivid it leaps off the page, grabs you, and drags you in. Roald Dahl is one of my greatest creative heroes largely because of his phenomenal ability to be exactly dark, and grisly, and gruesome enough to make his point, but not one iota more, not least through his use of heightened worlds and tones and characters. The miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s It is a fantastic example of how violence toward children can be handled, its tone perfectly set and maintained, King’s excess of gore exchanged for adroit restraint that really lets the emotional weight of it all register, not least in how Georgie’s death affected, continues to affect, and will always affect Bill. It can be done.

Just as important is to demonstrate how I handle darker elements in my work, for which I’ll focus on my big, ongoing fantasy project Moonglade. A mild example is a scene between a trio who barely escaped a situation gone badly wrong, and an older, matriarchal character who is forever haunted by the bloody results of a situation that went even more wrong, and that she blames herself for. That guilt drives her to chastise one of the three, her son, harshly for the mistakes he made, and he becomes greatly distressed as a result. I am currently revising the work, checking everything, and it occured to me she was too harsh, giving an impression of her I didn’t want, so I toned it down, had her realise what she was doing, stop, and apologise, and her son not react as strongly, and it not only achieves the original intent, but a little more besides, in illustrating their relationship.

A second, heavier example also involves the son character, dealing not only with his sister suffering a grievous injury, losing a limb, but that even with all the magic at their disposal said limb can’t be reattached. He loses it, to the degree he drops an f-bomb, the only one in the whole story, and hits a girl he thinks of as a daughter, and who looks at him as a father. Again, going over it, it’s too much, more than is needed, damaging him like the prior scene damaged his mother, so I’m going to remove the f-bomb and have him stop himself just before hitting the girl, echoing what happened with his mother, and enabling a better segue into the following part of their narrative.

A last example revolves around a character riding out to a meeting in another village, taking a longer route via a third because the shorter road was blocked by storm damage. In that third village, she encounters a group of thugs, and a brutal vigilante type intent on taking them out, with no regard for anyone else who happens to be in the way. This is vividly demonstrated in a sequence of him on horseback, firing arrows at the heavies in the middle of a street, killing several, and a bystander one tries to use as a living shield, until the protagonist of the chapter stops him. Afterwards, she lingers at an isolated beach to try and compose herself, and then tries to find ways to distract herself, stop herself dwelling. It affected her, continues to affect her, and will keep affecting her in future, not disappear and reappear to suit the plot. The one tweak I might make is the bystander killing; is an actual death required, or is the strong implication of the vigilante’s disregard for collateral damage, say the bystander is only injured, enough?

The lesson Gaiman and Dahl taught me, of only having as much darkness as is truly necessary, and not one iota more, maintaining a balance for the good of the story, and more importantly the characters, is one I intend to keep following, and I heartily recommend others do, too.

The Talos Principle Review

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I love puzzles, and puzzle games, and count Portal and Portal 2 among my absolute favourites, considering the latter in particular a solid-gold masterpiece, so didn’t hesitate to take advantage of The Talos Principle being on sale, not least since I’d watched a stream VOD of a favourite Youtuber playing it, and it looked good. Unfortunately, it turned out to be, well, a bit of a mess.

Right from the off this game leans hard on spiritual and philosophical themes, with a portentous voice referring to you as their child, and terminals with snippets of philosophical treatises, and to be fair, those are themes I’ve no interest in, and in fact find offputting, which undoubtedly coloured my impressions. To me, it felt heavy-handed, especially when you find yourself debating the nature of consciousness with a capricious intelligence that seems to inhabit the library system the terminals can connect to. I thought all of it was, the debates especially, distracting, frustrating and annoying. Still, if the puzzles were good, the gameplay engaging enough, I could live with it.

Key to being a good puzzler, for me, is having a strong core concept. The Portal games have one of the strongest ever conceived of. Superliminal has a great one, that is dazzling and confounding and delightful in equal measure, even if it can’t maintain it’s momentum throughout the game, petering out somewhat at the end. Talos Principle…doesn’t really have one. It has a framework, get through a maze to collect a sigil, and a range of mechanics and devices, the latter unlocked one by one over the course of the game, but nothing that could be called a core concept, and nothing that truly compels. While it has its moments, some genuinely clever and satisfying puzzles, it mostly ranges from solid, to repetitive, to annoyingly obtuse. There are two main reasons for this.

One: poor communication of those mechanics and devices. Superliminal and the Portal games do a fantastic job of setting up their concepts, showing you how they work, what you have to do. There’s a clear, intelligent progression at play that means you’re never lost, you always know the parameters and goals. Talos Principle starts solidly, with a prologue introducing the basic goals and the first device, but after that it’s fuzzy. There’s fairly clearly an order you’re meant to tackle the puzzles of a given level in, but it’s not communicated, except maybe on signs in the hub world, which are easily overlooked. Thus I more than once found myself tackling a complicated puzzle involving a freshly unlocked device, only to then enter a simpler one obviously meant to introduce that device. The functions of the devices aren’t fully put across, either; for example, it took me an aggravatingly long time to realise the connector could connect more than two things.

Two: it’s overly familiar, and even derivative. The “navigate a maze to collect an item” routine is one of the oldest in video games, and for all its gloss, Talos Principle doesn’t do nearly enough to make that routine its own. Worse, its clearly aping better games, and even comes dangerously close to stealing. One of the commonest mechanics is directing lasers from emitters to receivers, which is straight out of Portal 2, except not done nearly as well. The recorder, a device that lets you record a series of actions, which then play back, so you can essentially co-operate with yourself to solve a puzzle, is a basic version of the puzzle mechanic in the Clank sections of Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time. That’s two elements that are basically half-hearted copies of ones from other, superior games, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more.

This undercooked feel extends to the graphics and environments and denizens of the world. The worlds are mostly pretty, lush recreations of Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, and Medieval Europe (the unengaging, generic future-industrial style of the hub world the exception) but sterile, no life or personality in them at all. There’s a hollowness to them, only made more so when you realise that under the superficial gloss, they’re structurally identical, something the game even highlights when a puzzle in the Egypt world is glitched to look like Greece, before it’s corrected. The player “character”, and every other “character” you meet in the game, are androids, robots, AI constructs even more generic than the hub world’s architecture. It all lacks spark, identity, individuality, personality.

Now, true, the game takes place in a digital, entirely artificial world, but given the themes of life, and what it means, it seems distinctly self-defeating for that world to have no life of its own. That, I think, is the crux of the issue. The game has Big Ideas, is straining to Mean Something, Something Deep And Important, and unfortunately, that overpowers pretty much everything else. Themes and ideas should come out of the characters and the story, organically, be a product of those, whereas in Talos Principle, the themes and Big Ideas are what everything else is in service of, compromising all of them, to the game’s serious detriment. That those Big Ideas, of philosophy and spirituality, are delivered, as alluded to earlier, almost entirely through documents on terminals, reams of often dense reading, a seriously clunky approach, only heightens the issue.

I don’t honestly think a single aspect of The Talos Principle truly works. It’s all flawed to one degree or another, leaving the game feeling misjudged and misguided, a haphazard, ironically soulless, ham-fisted misfire that wearies and frustrates far more than it stimulates or engages. Fixating on Big Ideas to the extent all the other elements come across as neglected, like they weren’t really cared about, from the shallow environments to the often clumsy and frequently ill-defined puzzle mechanics to basic names for the devices to the cribbing from other games, does not make for a worthwhile experience.

It makes for a dispiritingly erratic one that left me wanting, one I just can’t recommend.

Photography Sample

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Inspired by the superb work of my friend Rose LaCroix, and needing to post something to the blog I’m criminally neglecting, have a sample of my wildlife and scenic photography, taken on the day of posting. First, the original version. with no editing.

A close-up photo of a female hornet mimic hoverfly feeding on cow parsley.

Second, a version with auto-levelling applied in paint.net.

A close-up photo of a female hornet mimic hoverfly feeding on cow parsley, with auto-levelling applied.

The subject is a female hornet mimic hoverfly, the UK’s largest hoverfly, increasingly common to see, and, it turns out, a wonderfully obliging photographic subject. Still stunned at how good a picture I got, considering I’m using a 13-year-old Fujifilm Finepix S4000 that’s become a little cranky and erratic and has traditionally always struggled with overcast, low-light conditions like this pic was taken in. Old camera clearly still has its moments!

Let me know if you like. If so, I’ll post more. I’ve quite the library at this point.

Discussing Disney’s “Wilderness Years”

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The seventies and eighties are commonly seen as something of a low period for Disney feature animation, the films created during it regarded as a distinct step down from the triumphs under Walt. I’ve never subscribed to that opinion, and this blog will detail why, as well as touch on a new thought I’ve had about how the “Wilderness Years” became a thing to begin with. As always, these are merely the opinions of one person.

The first thing that’s always confused me about the “Wilderness Years” is that no-one seems able to agree exactly when they started. Some say it was the first film fully made after Walt died, The Aristocats (1970), others say it was The Jungle Book (1967), and I’ve even heard assertions it was as far back as 101 Dalmatians (1961) or The Sword in the Stone (1963). The only consistent element is the belief that every film in the 70s, and all but one film in the eighties, were of lesser quality, not up to the standards expected of Disney. The last film generally agreed to be proper Disney Quality ™ was Sleeping Beauty (1959), and that is worth taking note of.

You see, Princess movies have become a trademark of Disney, one of the things they’re most known for, which is a little curious given only three were actually made in the Golden Age of Walt, and most of the truly revered movies – Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Peter Pan (1953), to name four – weren’t in that category. Sleeping Beauty was the last one for three decades, the next not arriving until 1989’s The Little Mermaid, which is seen as the start of the “Renaissance”, when they are widely accepted to have found their magic again.

Think about that a moment. The “Wilderness Years” started after a Princess movie, and the “Renaissance” was kicked off by the next one. The realisation certainly set my mental gears whirring. Whisper it, but I’ve never actually liked the Princess movies, mostly because their core theme is a lonely, lost girl finding salvation in the arms of a handsome Prince, something that doesn’t appeal at all to me, and has come in for some criticism over how shallow it is; it’s certainly more a male-driven fantasy than a female-driven one. I gravitate to the different Disney films, and the ones of the 70s and 80s were certainly that, even if they didn’t always seem so on the surface. Let’s take a look at them.

The Aristocats: often dismissed as just a rehash of Lady and the Tramp (1955) with cats, but in actuality follows its own hep beat. Great music – just try getting Everybody Wants To Be A Cat out of your head after hearing it – a snappy line in slapstick, engaging cast of characters, and a female lead in Duchess with a little more about her than previous Disney ladies, a resourcefulness and character and spark not seen in the Princesses, at least part in thanks to the fabulous Eva Gabor (more of her later). It’s a whole lot of fun, and subtly breaks the Disney mould.

Robin Hood (1973): I’ve gushed about this one before, in an underrated films blog, but it’s worth reiterating just how much this subverts and averts not just Disney tropes, but wider Hollywood ones: Robin is not at all your average male hero, Marian has more to her than the usual love interest, their romance has a depth arguably unrivalled in all of Disney, the songs aren’t as prominent an element as normal, It’s an irresistible delight.

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) is one I can’t comment on, as I haven’t seen it, other than to note it’s a compilation of earlier short films, and given the enduring popularity of the Disney take on Pooh, it clearly wasn’t a failure.

The Rescuers (1977): not so much criticised as overlooked, and for me shamefully so, as it’s a lovely film, with gorgeous songs and some impressive animation, that is actually gently subversive, with subtle depths. Here, we have a quiet, unassuming, self-conscious male character brought out of himself, helped to discover his inner strength, by an assured, capable, beautiful female character; it’s pretty close to the reverse of the Princess movie formula. That said female character is voiced by Eva Gabor is the icing on the cake.

The Fox and the Hound (1981): A charming film, but admittedly a little slight. It looks good, has a solid premise, certainly has its moments, but never fully gels. The first film of the “Wilderness Years” I’d agree is a little below-par, but it’s by no means bad. Some have criticised it for veering too far from the source novel, but given how unrelentingly bleak the latter is, I’d counter that’s not actually a bad thing.

The Black Cauldron (1985): Now things get interesting. I class this as a noble failure. It tries something very different, in setting and tone, and succeeds in some ways, like atmosphere and striking animation, but falters in the basics, with flat characters and a pretty generic plot. The experimentation came at the expense of the storytelling. As close to bad as a Disney film ever gets, but certainly not without value.

The Great Mouse Detective (1986): In stark contrast, this is an exhilarating rush of a film, soaring on every level, from animation – including Disney’s first use of CG, which holds up far better than that of the later, and more lauded, Aladdin (1992) – to Henry Mancini’s glorious music to sparkling voice acting, not least from the master of the macabre, Vincent Price. Easily the best Disney film of the 80s, and for me, up there with their very best.

Oliver and Company (1988): A bit of a curiosity, with it’s contemporary 80s setting – until recently, Disney hardly ever went contemporary – and pop-powered zing. Undoubtedly a lot of fun, not least in the songs and Billy Joel’s Dodger, and features more early, quality CG work, but has some tonal issues, especially toward the end, and the little cat isn’t the strongest incarnation of Dickens’ hero.

So, out of eight films, only two, maybe three, can be, at least for me, considered below-par. The rest are all delightful. It’s also very noticeable that they’re all very different, each time Disney trying something else, an experimental spirit fully in tune with the man who made Fantasia (1940). A couple of experiments didn’t quite work, but most succeeded beautifully. In contrast, the film that started the “Renaissance”, Little Mermaid, is very much in the older mould, a true Princess movie. Tempting to think that for some, the “Wilderness Years” weren’t so much a loss of quality, but a loss of the things that, to them, made a Disney movie. Mermaid restored those things, and thus Disney entered its second “Golden Age”.

There are a few other factors to consider, too. In 1979, Don Bluth, Gary Goldman and others made a pretty high-profile exit from Disney, Bluth reported as stating they did so because Disney had lost their way. How was never, as far as I can tell, specified, and Wikipedia states it was to do with the internal politics of the studio rather than strictly creative issues. Interestingly, the first, fantastic, film Bluth and Goldman released, The Secret of NIMH (1982), is arguably even less like classic Disney than the latter’s movies of the time. This loss of staff would undoubtedly have contributed to the dip in the first half of the eighties, but that’s as close as that period got to true “Wilderness Years”.

Another factor is The Rescuers Down Under (1990), which followed Mermaid, preceded Beauty and the Beast (1991), and is, weirdly, almost completely overlooked. I say weirdly because, other than a couple of niggles, like CG that’s dated as badly as Aladdin‘s and a dull character in Cody – it’s a great film, easily as good as the original Rescuers and, for me, better than Mermaid. If there was a “Renaissance”, it was Down Under that kick-started it, at least in a creative sense, not Mermaid. The latter is a good film, sometimes really good, but not as good, in my opinion, as it’s often touted to be.

A last one is that the “Renaissance” was actually pretty short. Two great films – Beast and The Lion King (1994), two really good ones – Rescuers 2 and Aladdin, the latter elevated by Robin William’s legendary performance as the Genie – and one good film – Mermaid. Between Lion King and Tangled (2010), at least in my opinion, is the period that can most justifiably be termed “Wilderness Years”. There were good films, but nothing truly standout, and a lot of unmemorable ones, until Tangled took the first steps to reimagining the Princess movie. Not coincidentally, it’s the first of the category I genuinely enjoy. Since then, it’s been pretty solidly really good to great, and guess what? Not one of them fits the classic Disney mould.

Of course, money can’t be ignored. The 70s and 80s films weren’t great box office successes, until Mermaid, and Down Under was a dip before Beast started the climb towards the megabucks Disney animated films now consistently make. The thing is, as has been demonstrated countless times in the century of cinema’s existence, box office success and creative success are not mutually exclusive. Far from it. In monetary terms, the 70s and 80s were a “Wilderness” of sorts, but barring the odd misstep, not remotely so creatively. The late 90s and 2000s were a creative “Wilderness”, and towards the end a financial one. 2010 onwards, they’re achieving both to a spectacular degree, a true second “Golden Age” that’s showing no signs of ending.

Disney have had their times in the wilderness, but have always found a way through, never stopped experimenting, never stopped growing, and are now about as strong as they’ve ever been. True, they’ve succumbed to the sequel bug, and the live-action remakes are pretty pointless, but as long as they keep pushing and growing and exploring alongside it all, I can live with that, and honestly, I can’t wait to see where they go next.

Learning From the Mistakes of Others

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I have a number of books in my collection I either fell out of love with, or didn’t enjoy in the first place. I keep hold of them as, for me, they still have value, as examples of things to avoid, mistakes not to make, routes not to take. These are the most notable of an anthropomorphic bent, and as always, these are simply the opinions of one person, and there will be spoilers.

The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques

Feels a little weird to be including this series, considering reading Mossflower stoked the smouldering embers of my love for anthropomorphism into a full-blown fire, but I have to acknowledge they have problems For one, the simplistic characterisations of each species, that aren’t even consistently maintained; for example, when a hare is the hero in The Long Patrol, the what-ho gluttony that defined the species is nowhere to be seen, just a cookie-cutter earnest Jacques protagonist who merely happens to be a hare. There’s a persistent tonal issue in that he’s writing big battles in books for children, so has to sanitise the detail, resulting in priceless lines like “made a rat into two half-rats with his sword”, and yet there are still violent moments, like the time a pike is treated as a Jaws-style shark, complete with an enemy going down screaming as the water foams red. The biggest issue, though, is that the further I got into the series, the more I came to realise how formulaic the books are, to the point it felt like Jacques was checking items off on a list, which goes some way to explaining how he was reportedly able to write a three to four hundred page book every summer. That is ultimately why I fell out of love with Redwall, and didn’t complete the set; there didn’t seem a point to just collecting mild variations on an increasingly well-worn formula, and the books I have are a constant reminder not to slip into box-ticking myself.

The Deptford Mice Trilogies by Robin Jarvis

At the time of their release these books were marketed as spooky fun, but that was decidedly misleading, for while they are spooky, they aren’t really fun, because they’re actually tragedies in which hardly anything ends well, and things get quite a bit darker than you’d expect of kids’ books, “peeling” – skinning alive with a peeler, never seen but strongly hinted to several times – being the prime example of that. Jarvis’ one great strength is his characters, always vivid and engaging, and he’s certainly capable of exciting and moving the reader, but it’s all undone by the simple fact you always know it’ll end badly. The main Deptford trilogy lays the misery on with a trowel come the conclusion, with only one leavening aspect, which feels like a token gesture potentially mandated by agent or publisher. The second book of the Histories, The Oaken Throne, peaks in both his strengths and his flaws; with a fantastic moment of a battle stopped by a kiss between the heroes, than a frustrating moment of one of said heroes being poisoned to death in the ensuing feast, because of course someone has to die. The final prequel book, Thomas, I only read the first chapter of, as the knowledge that only one of the half-dozen great characters introduced was likely to survive put me off it completely. The operative word here is “predictable”, no surprises, no reason to invest when you know how it’ll turn out, especially if it’s a downer, and it’s definitely something to avoid.

The Volle Series by Kyell Gold

Getting much more specifically furry, this short run of erotic novels by fandom literary darling Gold is about as clear an example as you could wish for of the problem with crutches. To define, I mean an element the writer keeps coming back to, keeps leaning on to support the story. In the case of these books, unsurprisingly, it’s sex, as Gold can’t seem to go more than three chapters without throwing in something explicit, whether it makes sense or not. The frustrating thing is that the first book starts quite well, each encounter tailored to the character Volle is dallying with, and even managing to be charming in his patient, gentle wooing of a young male, but then a new character pops out of nowhere, commits public sex acts on Volle and his closest ally for no reason other than they felt like it, and everything derails. The young male vanishes without a trace, Volle fixates on the new arrival with only the flimsiest of prior setup or justification for it, and the already lightweight plot melts almost completely. The subsequent books, focusing on Volle then his near-indistinguishable son, just repeat the formula. Leaning so much on the crutch of sex, to the detriment of character and plot, means these don’t even really work as erotic fluff, because the explicit bits are too repetitive and arbitrary to work, and there’s nothing else to engage, either. In storytelling terms, at least, crutches tend to do more harm than good. To be fair to Gold, though, he has discarded his in at least one story, and I’d be interested to know if his writing improved as a result.

A Whisper of Wings and Fangs of Kaath by Paul Kidd

Another furry-specific entry, and quite a meaty one, at that. In my opinion, there are more problems with Kidd’s work than there are positives, and they mostly stem from his apparent belief that gushing hyperbole is an adequate substitute for hard graft. Both these books overflow with purple prose, to the point I was able to skim read Kaath without missing anything, including the fact that it and Wings share the same basic plot structure, down to the main antagonist having a second in command of the same gender who’s not-so-secretly in love with them, and who they entirely ignore. This latter is an example of some questionable aspects, others including the fact both “strong female leads” are transformed by having sex with a male – which notably has no such effect on said males – the male in Wings ends up in the care of an adolescent he eventually marries, and a supporting female character in Kaath ends up as a second wife to the new Rajah rather than deepening the bond she already had with another member of the old Rajah’s harem. It all has a faintly distasteful feel of heterosexual male self-indulgence, and overall these books ring pretty hollow. I’ve always believed hard graft, spade work, putting in the effort to earn your moments, matters greatly, as otherwise they just won’t satisfy, and these books only serve to reinforce that conviction.

Franky Furbo by William Wharton

Saving the worst, and weirdest, for last, with a book I fully expect no-one reading this to have heard of. Wharton was always a niche author, and this is easily his most niche work, a true curate’s egg that raises the brows so high they vanish into your hairline. It starts well, with two soldiers escaping the horrors of the battlefield into what proves to be a literal foxhole, home to the titular Franky. He’s charming, warm, friendly, eminently likeable, and when one of those soldiers, after the war, decides to try to learn more about Franky by talking with people with stories to tell of the fox, you’re right with him. Unfortunately, this is where it starts going off the rails. The first related tale starts with a vixen arriving at Franky’s home, triggering a dramatic change in personality and, I kid you not, twenty pages of foreplay building up to a classic fade-out as the sex finally begins, fade-back-in afterwards scenario. It’s confounding in many ways, not least in wondering how the tale-teller knew all this in the first place, but it’s only a taster of the real madness. It’s revealed towards the end that the soldier searching for Franky…is Franky. Let that sink in a moment. It seems he lost his memory, and all this was him recovering it, piece by piece, and I don’t recall how the foxhole scene at the start fits in with that. Revelation two: in the future, the humans are gone, and the Earth is ruled by anthro foxes, and in order to try and ensure that scenario comes about, two foxes are sent back in time, one being Franky, the other being the vixen, his mate, with the intention of having kids, who will have kids of their own with each other, and so on and so on until suddenly, vulpine master race. That inbreeding, and the resultant tiny gene pool, could only end in failure doesn’t occur to them, or Wharton; if this was an attempt at satire or subversion or something along those lines, it doesn’t work. At all. And, for one last dollop of crazy on top of the loony cake, they decide to obliquely warn the humans, through a seemingly fictional book, to be written by…William Wharton. This book is dizzying in its lunk-headed lunacy, and it all stems from a level of unrestrained self-indulgence rivalled only by Stephen King’s It. Writing is inherently self-indulgent, pandering to the urge to create, to tell tales, but taking it to this extent, indulging in every whim no matter how wild, can only lead to disaster, and this book stands as grandly deranged testament to that folly.