Post-partum depression.
I’ve spent the last couple of days just kicking around, not all that interested in doing anything. I’ve drifted through the message boards I frequent without a whole lot of ideas about what I want to talk about. I haven’t even had that much interest in playing with my Xbox 360. I’ve just sort of… been there.
Eventually it came to me, perhaps more slowly than it ought to have: I don’t have anything I’m working on.
By the time I get into the last, we’ll say, third of a manuscript I’m writing at light speed trying to get to the end. I write much more slowly in the first sections, oftentimes hating what I’m producing, but at least I’m writing something. All that urgent energy toward the end drives me forward, but when I reach the finish line I suddenly have nothing to look forward to the next day.
Of course I could immediately plunge into a new project. That would seem to be one way to resolve matters. Take some of that forward momentum and transfer it to something fresh. But it never works that way for me.
I go through two distinct phases after finishing a manuscript. The first is what I call postscript nerves; I am immediately struck with the fear that what I have produced is total crap and will be hated by all and sundry. This phase doesn’t pass until I’ve had one or two people read the book and give their comments, positive or negative. If they’re negative than I know I really have produced something crappy, but if they’re positive or even neutral then I feel much better. Even a middling manuscript can be saved in revision. And it’s to my credit that I haven’t produced something actively bad for quite a while. I guess I’m getting the hang of this.
Cannibal Holocaust, or How Much Horror Can I Get in My Horror Game?
So I was watching Cannibal Holocaust. Yes, that Cannibal Holocaust. It got me thinking about horror roleplaying and how few truly horrible things I’ve experienced as a player and a GM in the games I’ve played.
If you haven’t seen Cannibal Holocaust it’s kind of hard to convey just how horrifying it is. Certainly the initial summary on the film’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t even begin to hint at the level of experience you’ll have while watching this movie:
Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is a controversial exploitation film directed by Ruggero Deodato from a screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici. Filmed in the Amazon rainforest, the movie tells the story of four documentarians who journey deep into the jungle to film indigenous tribes. Two months later, after they fail to return, famous anthropologist Harold Monroe travels on a rescue mission to find the group. Eventually, he recovers and views their lost cans of film, which reveal the missing filmmakers’ fate.
Watching Cannibal Holocaust is kind of like being punched in the nuts. There’s nothing I’ve run across in countless sessions of Call of Cthulhu, with with all its strange cults and madness, that comes close to the sheer level of depravity you get with this movie. Which leads me to ask the question: can a game do this? I mean, is it even possible?
As I say above, I don’t think I’ve ever been truly horrified by anything in a game. There’s been blood and murder and even some torture, but it’s not the kind of thing that made me recoil as if burned. That’s horror and something Cannibal Holocaust renders up in spades.
In a discussion on #playnow (been a while since I plugged that), someone suggested that probably the only way to really emulate this level of horror would be to bring a butcher knife and a live coatimundi to the table. I don’t dispute that this would get the job done, but without the animal cruelty how could it be accomplished? And is it necessary for a GM to scrape the gunk off the darkest recesses of his skull cavity in order to get a suitably horrified reaction from his players?
Now let me be clear: I’m not talking about scariness. I’ve played games that have given me the creeps and I’m sure a lot of you have, as well. I’m talking about horror in its purest, brain-scalding form.
[REVIEW] Mack Bolan: Lethal Tribute
Invisibility cloaks!
Every Mack Bolan novel needs some deliberate suspension of disbelief. They star, after all, an unkillable super-soldier of a man whose adventures span 40 years and 500 books. During the course of any given book Bolan may dispatch a dozen or more bad guys, often with highly precise shots to the head from his ridiculously overpowered Desert Eagle. So you’re talking about hero with a body count well into the thousands still doing his thing, unaging and unstoppable, some four decades after he got started. Yeah, one big order of suspension of disbelief here, please.
Even though these books are meant to be little more than escapist fun, there’s a limit — for me, at least — to how out there the action can become before it gets silly. Lethal Tribute exceeds that limit and then some.
I spoil nothing by revealing that Lethal Tribute’s storyline revolves around the theft of three nuclear warheads by a revived Thuggee cult. And, yes, this is the same cult that played bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So already you’re dealing with something that’s flirting with silliness. But this is a series that has featured more neo-Nazis and ninja and suchlike than you can shake a stick at.
So what I’m saying here is that it isn’t the inclusion of the Thuggee that makes me dislike this book. And I do dislike this book. My first reaction to the plot was a positive one: “Cult stranglers with a nuclear weapon? Sign me up!” It’s a shame that what follows is really substandard even by the already lowered standard established by the series at large.
[REVIEW] Enter the Ninja
I don’t ordinarily do this, but I’d like to point you toward another review of Enter the Ninja before I get into mine. The review appears at Teleport City and is far more complete and informative than any of my reviews ever are. Pretty much all you would want to know about the movie is explicated there. No sense duplicating effort.
When you’re done reading Keith Allison’s excellent review, I’ll tell you what I thought. Go ahead, this review will still be here when you get back.
Anyway, remember when I did a review of American Ninja and I talked a little about how Shô Kosugi may have been the ultimate ninja-playing badass, but he had the double disadvantage (from a certain perspective) of not being able to speak English very well and not being white? Well, some time before Cannon Films grabbed the charisma-free Michael Dudikoff to try and capture the racist/nationalist market share, they tried something similar in Enter the Ninja, only that time they tried out an actor with genuine international appeal, Franco Nero. Though interestingly enough Nero is dubbed into American-accented English to cover up that he’s Italian. Sigh.
Now if you’re of a certain movie-watching bent, you know Franco Nero instantly as the star of the iconic Django. Well, Nero made a lot of junk when he wasn’t making stuff like Camelot and Enter the Ninja definitely falls into the junk category. It’s an attempt to expand upon some ninja-riffic ideas from Chuck Norris’ The Octagon (a movie I need to rewatch), but remains pretty conventional action-wise. Except for the beginning and end of the movie we don’t even see Nero in his trademark ninja outfit, which is kind of a drag, largely because he doesn’t know any martial arts and the only time his stunt double can really cut loose is when he’s appropriately garbed and masked.
The movie actually starts off well, with our hero Cole undergoing his final test as a ninja. Like I say, Nero doesn’t know much about throwing his fists and feet around, but in these opening scenes he’s dressed in the ninja costume and can therefore be doubled safely. It seems like the movie actually would have been a little more interesting if it had been about Cole’s training, because no sooner have we seen him graduate from ninja school than he’s off to the Philippines to meet up with an old army buddy who’s opened what seems to be a coconut plantation, though that remains a little unclear.
