Mothers of Monsters

 

Welcome back! Today we talk about the found footage film, Mothers of Monsters  

Back when I ran the Burning Wheel game "The Undertow" with Lena, I came up with the darkest NPC I may ever come up with: Krakeru. Krakeru was the escaped "stud" of a crazed elf cult, tortured and bred to try and create an Anti-Christ type figure, who would be used to summon the eldritch Nameless, thus destroying the world. Krakeru was wrong, in every sense of the word. He took delight in pain in a way that was part innocence and malice and trauma. Right when you thought you had him in a corner he would flip the conversation into something that revealed just how broken a person he was. He was a rapist, a murderer, a torturer, and a channeler of the blackest of sorceries, repeating every awful thing ever done to him with a flair and creativity that spoke of owning the evil, not just repeating it. Krakeru was a constant topic between Lena and me. One afternoon, she turned to me and stated, like she was ordering a burger: "Well, you know you like Krakeru.' You identify with him. Strongly."

And I had absolutely no other recourse than to shrug and admit it. 

Lena would have known I was lying anyways. Hell, anyone who's read this blog would have known I was lying. One of the things that most GMs don't cop to is that their NPCs are frequently an extension of them. If you make a good dude, you are projecting what you think of as socially acceptable and good. You are making a value claim by making a good NPC. But the same goes double for the evil NPCs. What you think is evil and might be shareable is a confession. Always.

So when I say that when I saw Jacob's eyes in the opening minutes of this movie, and found a part of me was laughing... take a second and absorb that.

The rest of the movie was more or less the process I had taken with this part of me, years ago... and it had about the same results.

In the movie, Abbey (the mom) wires her house with cameras, mirroring her son's camera use. When faced with something she couldn't control, she did what her son did: make an environment where she felt she was on top. There's a dark humor to that. "My son may be a psychopath", but ultimately the only thing really differentiating Abbey and Jacob is he's better at the game than she is. Yes, Abbey is afraid, but there's a serious case to be made that Jacob is even more scared. If he can't feel anything but rage and fear... what else is there for him to do than inflict it on others? Sit in ambiguity?

Please. 

Most haters of TLJ still think Luke tried to kill his nephew. People suck at ambiguity.

Jacob ain't that different from the rest of us. Deal with it.

Abbey's reaction is fundamentally the same as Jacob's, she just has more tools before she goes down the rabbit hole. And don't you think for one second any of us are any different.

Oh, that part of me was cackling when the cameras were found. He found every frame of this movie funny. He found the electricity delicious, and he didn't believe the ending video. At all. "HE WON!" that part of me crowed. "Ha! See? My way works." "There is no way anyone that good at faking emotion was being sincere there. No. Fucking. Way."

And that had me floored for a second. I mean, I have gotten comfortable with  but I bounced back a lot faster than I thought I would. "If this is what you think is winning, I hope I lose, forever." That, of course, hit a nerve. "You don't mean that! You can't! I won, that's why I'm still here."

"No, you're still here because I realized that, if I give you enough time, you will become me, not the other way around. Time is on my side. Go ahead. Test it. Push. The blood you will get out of me will just change you, buddy. I know that now, kiddo. Your move. I'm always here, when you're ready to come home. I still love you."

For once, that asshole shut up.

And, suddenly, I realized that I could feel Sam smiling. And I knew I had actually won. Possibly for the first time in my life. And all it took was a mom looking a rope and considering hanging herself. Life's strange.

If we do meet again, I do not blame you. It is no easy road. 

The Dragon's Fire: Book 3, Chapter 5

By this point I was getting used to the rhythm. 

Sononn 17-28

Sota City

Legion manages to take over a number of the prostitutes, who throw themselves into the gigantic pit into the Below City, said to lead to the Apocalypse Ship. They fall without a sound. The soldiers managed to stop many of them, but were forced to kill some when they suddenly grew claws and lunged. A few of the soldiers proposed to their favorite whores... and somehow it worked?  At least for the ones who say "Yes!" They're married by the priests, quickly and then those soldiers were released from duty for the rest of the week. 

Raphael

Raphael watches it all with his jaw tight and his patience thinner by the second.

He leans on his spear, eyes flicking from the pit to the soldiers to the weddings, brows knitting. "I leave the city alone for five minutes," he mutters, voice dry as dust, "And Legion starts throwing brides and demons into the same problem."

When one of the possessed lunges and gets put down, Raphael exhales through his nose- annoyed, not surprised. But then he noticed the copules actually working, preists scramling, rings slapped on fingers, he tilts curiously. "... that shouldn't work," he says, flatly. A beat. "I mean, good for them but still. That's not how possession usually responds to romance.

He straightens, rolling his shoulders, eyes narrowing at the pit. "Alright, Legion," he calls out under this breath, sassy edge creeping in. "But if you think I'm letting this turn into a city-wide speed-marriage apocalypse, you're about to be very disappointed."

The Undermaze, Sota Cluster

The remaining bulls go out to fight the queenslings, who now have an army again. They have to bring the Solidified Flame in to break holds over the bulls who haven't died.  That kills many of them, just outright. The queenslings are driven away, but the losses are bad.

Alistair

The best offence is a good defense. I work wit hthe minotaur leadership to set up a heated "funnel". Because of the size and inreasing frequency of attacks, we strategized   a plan to collapse tunnels and set up murder holes  to redirect and slow attacks as best we can. We will clog the labyrinth with their corpses- if we must.

The Undermaze Proper

King Melny is... adopted.. by a large insectoid thing, who won't let him leave, but won't let anyone else harm him. For those two weeks the thing feeds Melny, regurgitating stuff full of squirming... somethings... into Melny's mouth. Is Melny hallucinating that? Who knows? But he has to eat something.

The insectoid thing loses its head to a mate. And she chases King Melny further into the depths.

King Melny

Mel would continue to find his way out. After escaping the last creature, he would carefully trace his way through the caverns. I would at times try and see if Junior (a creature King Melny had summoned and has a mystical connection with)  could be contacted through our bond to see if I could trace my way up.

He never comes.

Chapter 5, Kaksusa 1

Cal's internet was still out, and Jesse was MIA (turns out he accidentally fell asleep), so we ran with Tasha again! And it was awesome!

Reflections

There's cracks showing up for me, but I can't put my finger on them. This is fine, but there's a spark missing, and I don't know what it is yet. Time to wait and see it play out some more!

Shadowdark

 

Welcome back! Today I am writing about choosing a game, particularly Shadowdark. 

I think one of the hardest things to admit when you're looking at games is that they are meant to address desires and logistical needs. As a designer, I frequently forget that my games are built to address my needs. This is a very difficult thing to remember, because as you design you start to view the object as its own thing, and start to modify it to address needs other than yours, while you use it to continue to satisfy your own. There's a difference between liking the design of an object and actually having it address your desires and needs.

So, here's what my desires and logistical needs are.

My desire is to have two kinds of games running, one to satisfy and synthesize two competing urges into the same setting. 

1. To have game with a ton of emotional depth, where it is safe to do so. This would be a small, somewhat insular group. 

2. A large living world table, ala Noonan’s living campaign model. This would allow me to run for whomever was around, without any fear of people not being able to commit. 

Crescendo satisfies the first desire quite admirably. I mean, I designed it to. Burning Wheel MIGHT do, but Crescendo is far more flexible, by several orders of magnitude. Its inherently chaotic sessions also create natural shake ups that could ripple into the larger table. Overall, Crescendo does well as a “beating heart of the setting” sorta a game. 

But what about the second?

See, that’s what has been tripping me up. Instead of simply listing out what I logistically need and being ruthless about it, I have engaged in mooning over how cool all these games are, which lightens my wallet considerably, but doesn’t actually accomplish a stable table. 

Here’s what I need:

- Something familiar enough to my 3.5 days so that I can just skate by. I do all my innovation in Crescendo. I have no interest in bending particularly far for the other game. I paid my dues to originality and then some.

- A game with extremely low entry. Literally fifteen minutes of character creation at most, and then off to the races. 

- Emergent depth. As the game progresses, people who stick with it find there’s actually mechanics to sink their teeth into. It doesn’t have to be super deep, but as time goes on people can naturally develop new goals and their personal narrative evolves. 

- Worldbuilding and mechanics I can adapt Crescendo to without spending tons and tons and tons of time in order to produce for both tables. 

- Something that encourages the kind of loud, over-the-top, party attitude I actually enjoy quite a bit. 

Once I lay that all out, it’s just obviously Shadowdark. 

Familiar but well-done rules. So some reading required, but not really. Dionne's work isn't revolutionary. That's fine by me. I don't want revolutionary, I want something that I can intuit enough to where I can just run it and be surprised a few time and then readjust fire.

I also found that I could hack Shadowdark's basic stuff to fit my setting really easily. It took me a half hour to write my own setting’s level 0 character funnel table. Not even that. And if anything I made mine faster than what’s in the core book. People can just walk up to the table, shrug and say “what the hell”, and start playing. 

Shadowdark has some surprising spots for depth down the road, especially if you adapt Living Campaign/BROSR principles, like 1:1 time and Braunsteins. You can use the pieces to do some really impressive stuff, if you know what to aim for. The fact that there’s a bunch of 3rd party stuff that fleshes this out (which I was literally given) doesn’t hurt. 

Is it perfect? Nah. No system is. The lethality can scare off the wrong newcomer, and if someone really wants narrative-heavy zero-to-hero arcs with minimal risk, they'll bounce. But for what I need—a reliable, low-friction engine that supports a big, breathing world while leaving room for Crescendo to be the emotional heartbeat—it's damn near ideal.

So if you've been staring at your shelf (or your itch.io cart) wondering why none of the "cool" games quite fit your actual life and table, try doing what I finally did: write the ruthless list first. Then see what matches.

For me, it was Shadowdark.

And here I pause. If you do not show up next week, I don’t blame you. It is no easy road. 

Angel Sketch 2/25/26

 

Awhile back I bought George Kordis's "Icon as Communion". It's a bit of a hard read, but I did my best... and then put it down.

Today I understood what he was saying.

Byzantine aesthetics assumes that the image is coming off the surface, at you, the viewer. And the way it comes off the surface has to be uniform, in a way that's pleasing. In other words, it has to have a rhythm.

This is the sketch where I finally understood that.

Although anyone who pretends that I mastered it or even do it well is lying.

The Elephant in the Room: A Conclusive Holding Pattern

So, for whatever reason, I will meet this black-haired girl at some point in the future. Some will read that and think “Oh, that must be nice, thinking you know the future.” They think the experience of knowing the future is like sneaking a peek ahead in a book… assuming they’re not hopelessly deluded. But, if I am correct, it is an experience you simply cannot just outright imagine. If knowing the future is like looking further on into a book, then the pages are under your feet. To turn them is to invite perpetual motion. To turn them is to realize that time is self-committed. And nobody actually wants to think that through  

We think of the present self as “me”. This is not true. You are always you, time is  just a necessary sorting creature, who helps you come to grips with who you are in digestible chunks. Father Time is a kindly shepherd, helping you get as much of the full picture as you can stand. 

Few things are as painful as leaving the good Father. 

For, you see, gravity still exists in the spiritual realm. And you have jumped off the cliff. 

It is a long. Long. Long. Way down. 

You hurtle through utter chaos. This isn’t half as cute as it sounds. Time gives you space to sort everything safely. Now you don’t have that. That’s when you realize that chaos is an ocean, and what you thought was you is a thimble, and nobody is there to pull you out as you sink.

And boy, do you. 

It doesn’t take long to realize that I lied about falling. Saying gravity exists is simply modern cope. Silly modern, there is only relationship! And relationship has a funny habit of stripping your ego away, of forcing you to let go of all the petty things you thought you were. But if this is relationship… who am I relating to, in all this chaos?

Look down. 

Someone’s down there. It’s so infinitely large it’s hard to comprehend, but it’s there. In the bright darkness. Looking at you. 

And suddenly you understand why none of your thoughts are linear: one second you are two the next eighty-two. You look around and it all seems familiar, in the way a chair looks familiar if you’re looking at it in a funhouse mirror. 

Down below, you open your eyes. And you find yourself smiling at you, even as you are drawn towards you. 

And it is entirely too much. What we are is entirely different than what we can handle. Self is not an idea of yourself, but something so much greater that attempting to describe it is necessary deception.

And all that’s nice. But. 

You still have to get up in the morning. 

You still have a wife and children who need you to go to work and focus on all the incoming calls. You still have a PTSD-riddled body which makes thinking actively laborious. So you reach out, into the void… and the exact right thing just… comes. Right then and there. The thought doesn’t seem to come right now. But, I mean, who cares? It worked! Who cares why? Or how? The fact that wisdom that I didn’t know I had (because I don’t, not right now) just came out of my mouth is irrelevant, because I helped. Doesn’t stop me from wondering, however.

But the exact mechanics of what happened aren’t made clear until my wife walks into the room. There’s a moment where it all comes out jumbled at her. How could it not? Everything is excited to see her. Touch her. To feel her soul, pulsing in my hands. 

And suddenly, I am one again. Young and old. All is together. Loving her. It’s grown better with Father Time. Somehow I do understand her better. There is some form of progression in life, and it’s the most wonderful surprise I could imagine. 

So there is this moment, sometime in the future, where the black-haired girl and I will meet. I know this because I remember it as happening… however long… from “now”. A truly reverse memory. A memory that forces me to confront the self-deception I thought was identity. 

Why is this person in this reverse memory? It’s a lot to take in. I keep trying to understand why. And that’s natural. The mind has to wonder about such things, on some level. Mine doesn't shut up all that well, and it creates loops where I wonder why I am falling towards this moment in time. It's not exactly a comfortable experience, and wanting to know why she's involved is natural. And yes, I know that it only stops when the moment happens. So, it's extremely natural to want to know how to end such a deeply uncomfortable experience. 

It is also natural that I wonder about this person. Is she okay? Why has shown she up so prominently in my dreams? Why am I hurtling through chaos on account of this? Is there something I am missing?

But I have no power over this. I cannot contact her. It isn’t possible, and that’s that. Painful as it is to admit, I have no ability to change what is happening to me for the moment. Kindness, right here and in the next moment, is the only way I win. Kindness always wins. Always. It’s not perfect, but it will do as a way to hold the course. Even if this never ends, I know that it is better to die wondering what happened to her than try and obsess. That may sound extreme… but read the above again and try to grasp what I am saying here.

And besides, there is one more place I can find refuge: in the Now. And there is one way I have found that I can reliably get into the Now.

It starts the moment my wife wraps her arms around me. One infinity presses against another. 

And in that timeless time Maria does more than Father Time ever could. 

A Half-Hearted Attempt at a Conclusion

There are a few people who will wonder why I went out of my way to write four blog posts about a series of dreams that's really nobody's business but my own. There may be one person particularly who stumbles upon this, who will probably have a ton of questions, the bigggest one what the solitary fuck made me think I should put this up.

Let me clarify.

This blog exists because if I have to write it.

I don't have a plan. Every time I try to make a plan for this blog, I can't keep to it. I sit down, and whatever comes up, I write. That's how this works. And, for the last two years, every time I have sat down to write on this blog, the stories in these four posts have come up. Over. And over. And over. And for two years I have resisted the urge to write these four posts. It drained my ability to write here, and I need to write here. It's something that must be done, for whatever reason.

If these posts helped you, great. If they hurt you, I apologize. If they shocked you... well... how do I think I feel, writing them?

But the  blog most go on. So the posts are up. I invite questions, comments, concerns, etc, but understand that this is the most restrained and ethical way I could think to write about this extremely private and weird issue of mine.

I  do believe the black-haired girl is a real person, living in the world, right now. I hope if she finds these, she will see that I have attempted to the best of my ability to keep certain things private.  There are many things I could have said, that I did not. Will not. I have attempted to just keep to my side of the story. I know a good deal more than I let on, even here. This is the bare minimum I could write and continue the blog.

Anything more than that is just emotive posturing. So we cut it here. Onwards!

An Additional Note

My wife and I purchased this fine volume 

As I began to read it, a good many things clicked into place for me. The first few pages of this book clarified a hole in my philosophy of life, and thus everything I have ever touched. Including this blog post. Rather than smooth it out, I have elected to keep the messiness here, so that my evolution can be tracked for what it is. Expect some additional posts inspired by this book sooner or later. 

The thing that is relevant to this post and all four posts in the Elephant series, is this: a Christian is supposed to see the world not just in terms of symbols, but types: people who resemble a chief archetype (don’t think the repetition an accident). 

What I see in this eternal free-fall is merely the archetype of what falls. And, for whatever reason, I have been allowed a glimpse at what I already am… for I am being pulled to me. 

We all are like this. 

But if I did not see the process, in all its achingly beautiful glory, I wouldn’t have the strength to go on. I must know what I am in the orbit of. Explicitly. 

And that, my friends, is all that prophecy is: revealing to broken souls they still have a chance. And I am that, very much so do. 

The Warmth

Yes, this is written mere hours before this post publishes. Extrapolate what may happen past that, and let the reader be discerning. The biggest thing that tripped me up about the vision is that it is a total bodily experience. I experienced the event as my future self. The body that is mine in the future feels so different that it’s almost traumatic, just on its own. My body then is so much lighter! Warmer! I don’t recognize me! 

Yesterday, my wife was reading Mother Siluana to me about enfleshing the prayer in your currently felt feelings. You don’t avoid or fight what you feel. You let it become the feelings become the center of your prayer. Something in me whispered I had allowed this by accident before, and I knew of what she spoke. 

The prayer came, but this time for the black-haired girl. And a warmth came through me, out of me chest, culminating into my fingers. I was full of warmth. I was light. I was free. 

It was the same light and warmth I felt in my body as my baseline, when I meet the black-haired girl in the future. It’s not constant now like it is then. 

But there is a new beginning. Right now. The morning before I publish this. All the things in creation are for our good, even silly blog posts like mine!

Understand that, five minutes after this is published, things will be different. And you will not know. If you stick around and read the blog, welcome! If you don’t, hopefully some bit of this helped. I continue on, regardless, towards that fixed anchor I know for my own good. Onward!

Demons' Blues: Book 1, Chapter 4

Demons' Blues: Book 1, Chapter 3