Penpal, by Dathan Auerbach

Has anybody here read this? I just finished it yesterday, and want to talk about it a little. It's very short, but it took me three or four days anyway, just because I kept getting distracted.

Spoilers coming up. Go somewhere else if you don't want to read them.

I think the story was some kind of Creepypasta or Reddit thread that evolved over time, or was built incrementally somehow. I'm seing people say different things online, about that, soooo I'm still sorting it out.

Spoilers coming now. Really.

I read almost the entire thing before I really understood what kind of horror story it is. I had it in my mind that it would end up being something like The Institute or Tommyknockers, both by Stephen King. Or possibly something supernatural. Maybe something along the lines of the Mothman... I hought of that possibility several times, especially regarding the Polaroids. There are things going on that are just a little beyond the narrator's circle of awareness... the narrator is supposed to be remembering himself as a child, depicted at various ages. He describes things happen that he doesn't understand at the time, but tries to come up with explanations to help himself understand, usually wrongly. He is supposed to be remembering all the events in the story from some future point. The events are told out of linear order... it's like he's just trying to sort out his own memories, and doesn't know exactly where to start, or how to proceed. You can tell that someone or something is observing or stalking him, but you can't tell who or what it might be. As I said, I had it in my brain for some reason that he was being cultivated or "groomed" by some nefarious organization, for purposes that we may or may not ever learn.

One question I have that isn't a total spoiler, exactly... if you have read it, do you think the person with the bandaged face who co-inhabited Veronica's hospital room was, um, the bad guy? That would make some sense, but I'm not 100% sure.

Another question: do you think the bad guy could have been the narrator's father?!? Is that possible?

What else, what else... um... people generally seem to really like the story, in the comments section under YouTube videos about it, and in Reddits and probably Quora threads. But, I get the sense that a lot of people reading it are kids, or people in their early 20s. I did not understand that, when I started reading it. I had just vaguely heard that it was a good story. What I'm saying is that I can see how people that age would find it particularly powerful and gripping, but all of us here are so desensitized to all kinds of horror that we mostly just kind of take it in stride. The kind of horror that it is is kind of a real world horror, like, it is something that basically could probably happen to someone. People reacting to it in comments threads are probably fairly average, normal people, having an authentically horrified reaction, not hardcore gorehounds or horror fans at all, particularly. So, yah, just think about it in that way, if you have yet to read it.

I'm still mulling the story over. It is certainly disturbing, and horrifying for any empathetic human being, but it isn't exactly what we here might think of when we hear the word horror.

Anybody have any thoughts on any of this?

The conspiracy thread

Instead of polluting the main shoutbox we can chuck it all here

Challenge schedule 2024

Here is a list of all the challenges coming up in 2024 and when to mark them down in your diaries. I've also nominated hosts for the challenges, so if you don't want to do it then... nominate someone else!:

January: Break
February: Documentary challenge - hosted by Markus
March: Trash challenge - hosted by Troma
April: Animation challenge - hosted by Ballz
May: Crime challenge - hosted by Box
June: The "different genre every week challenge" (Comedy/Action/War/Western)• - hosted by Markus
July: World Cinema challenge - hosted by zed
August: A-Z challenge - hosted by Zombie
September: Sci-Fi & Fantasy challenge - hosted by Ballz
October: October challenge - hosted by Markus
November: Turkey challenge - hosted by Zombie
December: Christmas movie challenge - hosted by Box

Also, if you don't intend to compete in any of them then... •beep• you!

Free Guy

Any big fans of Free Guy here? I am right in the middle of watching it for the first time. I had vaguely heard about it when they were filming it in Boston, but this is the first time I've seen it.

So far, my verdict is.... not bad at all. They make a huge deal about sunglasses being the key to a realm of higher awareness, which is clearly borrowed at least a little from They Live. But the overall plot, at least so far reminds me mostly of the "Everything is Awesome" scene from The Lego Movie. Just that whole idea of a lowly but cheerful worker drone dude in a cutthroat world, who begins to get a clue.

It also reminds me, at times, of Tron, and of Ready Player One. Not hard to see why. Anyway, I'm right in the middle of it, but so far I like it.

The Exorcist: Believer

The trailer for the movie looked terribly underwhelming. They wanted to market this as a straight-up horror film, but if you think about it, the original Exorcist was more of a psychological drama for most of the movie. This movie goes for that approach too, meaning that its trailer isn't showing you the movie you end up getting.

What you get is actually a pretty simple story. Two young girls go missing, and their respective families experience some bizarre shenanigans. It takes the legacy sequel approach by bringing back a familiar face or two, but the main idea is pretty concise. I wouldn't say it's very scary, but it is well made. That's what I say about the original, too. It has a few decent creepy moments, and I think it was trying to channel Hereditary a bit, especially by casting Hereditary actress Ann Dowd in yet another spiritual horror character role. I also liked the ending. It's a bit of a twist, both bittersweet and still quite bleak.

For anyone wondering about continuity, nothing in the movie negates the events of Exorcist 2 and 3, and the director confirms that. So none of that garbage where it's a sequel only to the first film, though the first film of course will be the only film they reference, because even I don't remember part 2, and modern audiences shouldn't have to relieve that mess either.

Not a bad flick like I was expecting, but poor box office and reviews tell us we probably wont be getting this turned into a trilogy like they planned. I wasn't terribly attached to that idea anyway. As a stand alone legacy sequel, it works just fine.

#Review

Excellent potential for a meme

Pause this clip at 1:37 or 1:38, and just look at the expression on Rev. Sayers' face. What a great meme that could make. I don't know exactly what you could use it for... just the expression on his face is awesome. Like, maybe you could post it on some thread, right after the person posting before you said something that reveals he is out of his mind, or is a complete idiot.

The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis

This https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3858519 is a short story by Clark Ashton Smith, published in 1932. C.A.S. is mostly known today through his connection with H.P. Lovecraft, but I have been beginning to appreciate him in his own right. I discovered him... early in the pandemic, 2020 or 2021. Well, I had vaguely known that he had existed, before then, but, whatever.

I just wanted to mention this story, because I came across some discussions online, speculating that it might have been a big inspiration for Alien. Yes, THAT Alien, the 1979 classic.

I am not sure if I agree with this or not. It is an intriguing possibility, though. It is possible to describe the story in such a way as to make people prone to say "Of COURSE it was the inspiration for Alien, you idiot! How could anyone possibly even question this?!? Why is this the first time I am hearing about this?!? Jesus Christ!"

OK, here is how I would describe it, if I were trying to see the idea that it inspired Alien.

A group of explorers in the future are on another planet. While exploring, they find a passage into some kind of large, underground complex, built by aliens who have long since died out, or have gone to some other unknown end. While exploring the complex, one of the explorers is abruptly surprised by a small alien creature that doesn't LOOK too threatening at first glance, but which pounces on him and attaches itself to his head and (upper) face. It seems to be comandeering his body for unknown, but clearly nefarious, purposes of its own. Very soon, all the other explorers are in great peril from... well, not from the exact same alien, or from a spawn of that alien, but from other, identical creatures which were also concealed in the depths of the underground complex. One by one, the explorers are subjected to extremely yucky attacks, until they are all severely yuckified except one solitary explorer, who through a combination of quick thinking and luck avoids the fate of... well, of HIS, not her, comrades. Does that lone explorer survive all the way until the end of the story? ead the story, and you'll see. (Or just ask me, I'll tell you if you want).

So, yeah, when I describe the story like that, it really sounds like it could be the inspiration for Alien.

But... well, I won't wreck the story anymore than I already have, but lots of the common ground the story has with Alien are actually pretty common sci-fi tropes. I'm not a hundred percent convinced.

One thing I'll say, and I don't think this wrecks too much of the suspense: the story takes place on Mars, not some heretofor undiscovered planet way the hell out there in the cosmos. For me, that radically changes the whole feel of the story from Alien. Part of the mystery of Alien was that not only was that planet unknown, but also we had no idea where the alien spaceship was from, at least until the recent sequels. For me, that added a lot to the mysteriousness of the setting. I guess it is possible that that was just an improvement that Ridley Scott thought up.

Another thing is that there is nothing in the short story about The Company, which for some people was one of the main scary things about Alien, maybe even THE scariest thing.

Anyway, I can see this one going either way.

By the way, I have mentioned this author here before, in some thread. He wrote another story that I DO think was probably a big inspiration for Land of the Lost, the 70s Saturday morning TV show. I'm pretty convinced about that.

Anyway. Yah. Had to share. Any thoughts?

Marvel's Echo

Hulu and Disney+ premiered all 5 episodes of this today. Marvel is such crap these days, but I was optimistic because of the TV-MA rating, honing in on the Netflix vibes of Marvel's greatest era. Either way, this is still a Disney production, so it must suck, right? Especially since this is a cultural/fem-centric show that nobody asked for, which I've been saying from the get-go would suck.

Overall, I didn't hate it. It has it's moments, but it's definitely pandering to the native American scene. They shoehorn that shit in hard, and when they do, the show suffers from it. Not because embracing the heritage is bad, but because they do it in that generic magic/superhero way that always leaves me rolling my eyes. Fortunately, that garbage is minimal, and it's a mostly grounded series with enough violence to keep me from calling it some lame tame BS.

The main character does an okay job, but I'm really only watching it for Vincent D'Onofrio. He's still fantastic as the Kingpin, stealing every scene he's in. Anyone expecting Daredevil, know that he's only in it for one scene, but I had to hold back tears of joy as it reminded me of the good old days. And for anyone wondering about continuity, the character of Echo first appeared in the Hawkeye show, which was pretty lousy, but all of her and Kingpin's main points are recapped in episode 1.

A lot of Marvel's best stuff comes when they're not trying to embrace the superhero angle, but rather when they keep things real and gritty. Keep the CGI usage minimal and this is a direction that Marvel should stick with if they want to get me excited again.

#Review

Happy 2024, Hope it doesn't SUCK!

New year, same old shit. I try to be optimistic and set goals. I totally failed on last year's resolution to make a new video, but time has a way of slipping past me so fluidly. My new resolution will be more vague, such as eating better. Less sugar. Maybe get some more sunlight and try to be more active in the daytime, instead of wasting my life on this here computer, working on nothing important and watching tv and jerking off.

Some Site Stuff

Speaking of working on lame garbage that nobody cares about, I have a few things I'm still brainstorming on for TE. As a programmer, I haven't gotten to explore the glories of a thing called WebSockets yet, but I'm hoping I can weasel my way into that this year. It's a real-time connection from browser to server, so it would improve the shoutbox, tracker, and casino stuff immensely, as well as provide stuff like facetiming, and dare I think so far ahead... maybe even multiplayer video games.

I was also considering perhaps automating user viewings. Maybe on the home page, there would be a text input field for what you want to log as a viewing, so you can type it in real quick (title, year, some brief comment) and then submit it to update some user list. If you were to log everything you watch (autofill titles would be pulled from site's DB and maybe even from imdb, if I don't get blocked), then it could auto add you to applicable challenges, if that type of data could be figured out. Hard to say since challenge rules vary.

I'm not sure on that last one, but I've wanted to update the shitty outdated 'lists' feature for a while now, and while I still might do that to some extent, I'm not sure I should bother if nobody cares to use it. Also, I'd understand if it's not wanted because it would kill some of the merit of a traditional sticky post with comments. Just pitching ideas here.

I'll still dabble in various random side projects, because when the ideas hit, they hit hard. So hopefully, 2024 will be an okay year. We'll probably get at least a few decent movies, but...

Election Year?!

Ah FUCK. This year is the presidential election. If it's anything like last time, it'll be a complete travesty with both sides slandering the other and it'll cause more social divides. I like to say I washed my hands of this stupid rigged two-party rigmarole, but I'm sure some extreme liberal stupidity will set me off eventually, but until then... stay tuned.

Anniversary

Did you know that 2024 will mark 10 years of TRASH EPICS? Yeah, that's right. We've been ruining lives since 2014. We used to ruin a lot more lives, but those pansies bailed out on some infinite potential here. Of course, without the userbase, I haven't been able to optimize things as quickly as I would have done had I more urgency to do so, but I still think this site is more competent and robust than those IMDb spin-off boards I quit looking at years ago. Now my webhost? That's a different story. When the site goes down for like a day or so, that's their fault. Never my fault. Maybe once or twice. Five times, tops.

I am upset that we lost basically 90% of our users over the years, but I'm also very incredibly lazy and gave up on trying to bring in new users, so I'll take some responsibility for why we're such a barren wasteland most of the time. Maybe TE hasn't found its niche yet. Maybe I'll figure it out in another 10 years.

Thoughts?

So what does everything think of 2024? Yay or nay?

Neal McDonough

Would you consider him to be an "A List" actor? I'm not even sure exactly what that means, or if anyone has ever really defined it... I was just thinking, he is probably one of the most famous people that I can think of who I can really relate to, in terms of his background.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_McDonough

He grew up in and around Boston, in places I know, and is of Irish descent, like me. We probably had a lot of the same reference points, growing up. We probably even know a few people in common, although I do not know who they are.

I probably noticed him for the first time in Minority Report, or right around that time. Wikipedia mentions that he has been fired from at least one acting job because he is so Catholic, and so deovted to his wife, that he wouldn't do love scenes. Yeesh. Imagine that, being offered to share intimate moments with hot actresses and just saying "nah, no thanks, not for me." Jesus. In a way, that reminds me of the scene in the 1978 Dawn of the Dead where Ken Foree's character Peter sees an expensive gun in a gun store in that mall, and says "Ain't it a crime." David Emge's character Flyboy asks him what he means, and he replies "The only person who could ever miss with this gun would be the sucker with the bread to buy it."

Anyway, I was just thinking about this. Nothing to do with anything. Had to share.