Don't Wear Us Out, Josh

Last week I talked about the new Umbral Intentions fiction blog starring and written by Josh Rhoads. There was a couple of spoilers, one worse than the other. Just check back, I won't mention the worst one again if you want to know about it. There was a different discussion about the project over at Inchoate Ascendant titled "Don't Jump the Gun, Pants Kicker" about the actual name of the blog. Since I may want to reference it here today you get to be the first to learn that the blog will be titled "On Dark Rhoads" and not Umbral Intentions--to confuse things worse, as also mentioned last week, the blog is for the This Mental Eventide RPG. Now with that out of the way...

The topic of merit today--and this is the lesser spoiler from last time repeated--is pacing the haunting, or how to parcel out the ghostly events. Being a blog places constraints on the story I will be telling that have less to do with the story that they do with how blogging works. This is of course only on some levels. On others it doesn't impact the story itself. Here again I'm giving things away prematurely. The first order of business is setting up Josh. Who is he on the blog? This is something different than who he is in actuality. He could just jump right in with details on the haunting. That doesn't exactly establish him as someone the blog reading public should believe. So, he begins with an introduction followed by a couple normal slice of life style posts. From there he begins to tell his past encounters and then get into posting about them shortly after the fact.

This second stage of story telling is where the issues begin to crop up. First, the blog is scheduled for Saturdays. Obviously all of the haunting incidents will not happen on just Friday or Saturday. This brings about issues of immediacy, and plays into tension. This is a matter intrinsic to blogging versus real-time interactions like Twitter and Facebook streams. It's just like news reporting where you chose an in-depth look versus greater timeliness. The length of each blog post is a further limit--they tend toward the shorter, especially shorter than full scenes in a short story or novel. There is a certain concision and economy. Another issue is that not every post should be about the haunting. This is important to avoid overload or desensitisation to the creepy goings-on. It also plays into the other important factor.

There is also the matter of pacing the haunting itself. It will progress, it will get worse, and more harrowing as time passes. The haunting must escalate. It will have its highs and its lows as far as the amount of activity. It may be cyclical, or it may be dependant on outside factors such as witnesses. Both will be true actually. Then at the same time the lows will be less frequent and less of a reprieve. Likewise the high activity occasions will be more frequent and more extreme.

The idea that witnesses impact the haunting is typical of real cases, especially when said witnesses are intrusive paranormal investigators who come along and disrupt the haunting either with their equipment, their presence, and most often because the entities responsible for the haunting are shy and do not wish to perform for strangers. There are however different new witnesses who can be brought into the situation who have no detrimental effect on the haunting and in fact encourage it as much or more as the original target. That's all I'll say for now.

Mood: teasing.
Music: Catcher In The Rye by Guns N' Roses and Ghost of Perdition by Opeth.

Or get MP3s.

Buy these at Amazon.com Click Images to Buy CDs

Or get MP3s.

It's Not What They Think, Josh

If you didn’t know already I’ve been gearing up to unleash a fiction blog. Not just any fiction blog, but one tied to a work in progress role-playing game. There are several issues involved in creating this blog on many levels. The issue I am interested in discussing now has to do with going against expectation. I can't help but spoiler some things. Sorry. Let me start with the basic premise behind the role-playing game. The game is called "This Mental Eventide" and revolves around the emergence of a large number of psychics. A man named Joshua Gavin Rhoads is the author of the blog. He initially hints that he has a secret that he wants to tell everyone but has to build up to it. The secret is the haunting. From there he begins to detail the various happenings. Here's the catch--and the worst spoiler of all. Josh is not haunted. Rather he is being plagued by his own burgeoning psychic abilities.

One of the elements to this setting is that there are no ghosts or earthbound spirits. There are hauntings sure enough, but they are residual hauntings--those are the echoes or events repeating on a loop--or the work of psychics. All in all this makes for a protracted scenario in which nothing is what it seems. There is the possibility that an abrupt turn of face would be off-putting to some. The haunting has to fall within the extent of Josh's psychic abilities. Since he is the cause of all of the phenomena it has to have some meaning to him or otherwise be in character for him. The incidents must be something he subconsciously wants or they happen in reaction to what he feels toward different people and events. Some will be very obvious, but others may seem particularly inexplicable, or at least unfathomable at first blush.

At this stage only one power is evident. Josh must have telekinesis. It covers a myriad of ghostly phenomena that are poltergeist-like in nature. I have an inkling of one of his other powers, but I won't mention it. The development of the game is incomplete so I do not know how many psychic abilities he should manifest, when they will do so, and what if any progression there is between them. Likewise Josh is a bit of a blank canvas. I have certain traits squarely in mind and the rest is open. I do not even know what his profession is yet. One of the keys to a setting like this, and especially these kinds of scenarios involving adults, is that these people have real lives first before the emergence of the fantastical or the horrific. These unanswered questions play into the next topic I want to write about with regard to this project.

Mood: secretive.
Music: Can't Stop Rockin' by ZZ Top and Black Dragon by Luca Turilli.

Or get MP3s.

Buy these at Amazon.com Click Images to Buy CDs

Or get MP3s.

A Mass of Awesome

Today I am going to talk a number of spoilers for a number of movies. If you don't want to know nitty-gritty details about "The Blair Witch Project", "The Mangler", "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)", "Paranormal Activity", "The St. Francisville Experiment", "Dead & Buried", "The Devil's Rejects" "Hatchet", "The Amityville Horror (2005)", "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" or "Silent Night, Deadly Night", then you had better stop reading and join me again next week for the final Horror on Hump Day of 2010. You're safe until the end of this paragraph while I outline what I want to cover about these movies. I make it no secret that I like a number of things and movies that others do not care for or outright deride. I thought in keeping with the upbeat trend I've been on that I would tell you about some of these today. I'm sorry for excluding some people from the fun, but now and then it's fun to talk about these spoilers.

Let's start with my favourite little story about "The Blair Witch Project" in the theatre. I went with a friend. Afterward we both agreed the following happened. As the film progressed we got colder and colder. The instant the credits rolled the cold was gone. There was no way it was anything other than psychological. I'm in a very tiny minority as a huge fan of "The Mangler". I just love it to bits, except for the incessant screaming of the girl at the end. Speaking of screaming, the first time I saw "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)" was on a really bad VHS. It was a poor experience when a large bit of the movie was a pair of white shorts running through pitch darkness--with nothing else visible--screaming, to the sound of a chain saw. I still think there is a bit too much screaming, though I'm sure there are some people who scream incessantly until they can scream no longer.

I thought "Paranormal Activity" was pretty good despite that it was in some ways a pretty tame haunting. It's all a matter of pacing, and successfully directing the kind of expectation the audience should have. The guy hurtling toward the camera made me jump, and I even like the demon-face morph. "The St. Francisville Experiment" gets a bad rep as a Blair Witch rip-off sight unseen, when really it's like an investigation of "Ghost Hunters" or "Sightings" in movie format--yes the ending's a bit Blair Witch. The ghost throwing the chair was really cool and the weird doll scene was a great bit of suspense. One of the freak-nastiest things I've seen is the burned man hanging upside down in the car in "Dead & Buried". There are a lot shots of him in the extras on the DVD box I have too. I call him Ham-head to mitigate some of the ick-factor, but really it makes it worse.

Stay with me, I'm going extra long today. Now for those moments where I hoped the movie would do something and did. That was awesome in "The Devil's Rejects" when he made her wear her boyfriend's face and then she chases after the maid and turns into a massive road smear. Or how about in "Hatchet" when he sticks the shovel in the ground and then uses it to spear his next victim? The best part of "The Amityville Horror (2005)" was when the ghost girl made the babysitter stick her finger in the bullet wound in her forehead. Then there is the movie where you wonder will it get to the horror goods and then--BAM--"Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon" turns from documentary making into horror movie when the real survivor girl is revealed. Finally, since it's the season, I must talk about the "Carrie" of slasher films, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" and the world's creepiest grandfather. I love that movie, and dislike none of it. The creepy Christmas carols and songs rock too. That's it. See you next week.

Mood: rebellious.
Music: Callin' The Shots by Quiet Riot and Where Eagles Dare by Iron Maiden.

Or get MP3s.

Buy these at Amazon.com Click Images to Buy CDs

Or get MP3s.