mag3n

So, name a movie which has a computer AI and at which some point an AI doesn't try to kill humans... I couldn't think of one, although I have just wanted a computer AI horror movie.

An aunt gets her niece to stay with her, but since she is channeling Jennifer Carpenter energy, she can't handle being a parent so hands over parenting to a computer doll. Which goes from 0 to creepy in negative time. Not surprising anyone, the creepy doll is creepy and so you know we're going to end on it going on a killing spree.

While this movie has the creepy doll aspect, it also has long stretches of nothing happening, at which point you forget you are watching a horror movie and just watching the clock to see how much movie is left. And when the creepy doll does its creepy doll thing... it's not subtle. We all know why we are here, and this movie is going for that.

Which means this movie is just being obvious. Nothing here to surprise you. I've heard good things about this, but... it's just a standard example of the genre.

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Shadows over Loathing

I don't game often, but when I do... boy I really got into Shadows Over Loathing. This is by the people who do the Kingdom of Loathing online game, and previous stand alone game West of Loathing. I did KoL for a little bit (see below), and played WoL, so got this as soon as I saw it.

This is stick figure people in a weird and shadowy place. (Yes, you can spot the Lovecraft, indeed some explicit references.) It's up to you to track down cursed items and eventually solve the plans of the big bad... or, you know, you could be the big bad, hey this is open world, I'm not telling you how to roll.

There is the main quest, some side missions, and lots of side quests (side quests being the shorter missions of just usually 'go here and sort this out'). You get a few companions and can level them all up (which helps!). And there are lots of places to go.

And it is fun as all heck. I sunk many hours into my first place through, and by first I mean, yes I did other playthroughs. This is one of those games where I had to get all the achievements, and that necessitated four different playthroughs in total (although I may have had external aid to make the later playthroughs a bit easier).

One great thing about this is that there isn't really the feeling of needing to grind. There's always some mission to do, some new place to peek into, that you get a steady increase of XP and items to help out. WoL needed some grinding, and KoL... grinding is why I stopped playing. They've learnt, good on them.

That said... after this, having done a LOT of it... maybe I will look in on KoL again... but maybe after a few other games on my backlog...

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Skinnymadinky

It's a low budget horror movie that went viral when the movie leaked. And it's amazing how low budget it is!

Two kids are at home. Their parents disappear. The doors disappear. Weird things happen. Very slowly. The End.

The camera work is really weird. The shots are either really low or really high, and often quite tight on things. There are very slow pans as if it is a physical panning camera, and at other times it's a child's POV. Which helps the cost (see below) but... it, plus the weird film texture layed on, is just weird. There's no justification for it being real cameras or what. I don't get it.

Looking it up, it's supposed to be about the strangeness of childhood, which goes to explaining the strange slow plot and the weird angles and distorted views and... but I did find that out by looking it up. I don't think it came across in the movie. If you need external information, the movie is missing something.

And it is missing a lot. Actors for example. There are a couple of them, but most everything takes place off camera, with sounds and dialogue. Makes it real easy to film and add things in if you don't actually have anything happening on the screen. The most animated (sic) things are cartoons, and they deliberately call out the cartoons are public domain ones from archive.org! Now that's budget saving!

Another thing missing is a soundtrack. I have the rather unusual opinion that you shouldn't need to lather on music to tell the story, and this makes that point dramatically. Admittedly this is horror and silence helps build the tension, but it does show you can get what you want just from the atmosphere without needing to signal what you fail to convey via sounds like orchestra hits.

(Speaking of hits, there was one successful jump scare.)

This movie is Indie As Fuck, and I can only hope we don't see a splurge of movies coming out emulating this style, because, no sir, I don't like it.

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WereTraitor

There's a new series Traitors, with glorious glamourous host Alan Cumming. This is basically a Werewolf game where there are a group of people, in this case 20 people of whom 3 are the Traitors. Every night, the Traitors kill someone, and every evening, they all banish someone. The aim is to banish all the traitors and win the money. Any remaining traitors will get the money instead.

Clearly, this is an easily set up game, with lots of lovely betrayal for the tv company to feast on, and that aspect is pretty great. I'm halfway through the series, and I can't believe how it is going so far.

However, during the day, they are playing for prize money to add to the pot. Which reminds me of The Mole, in which the duty of the Mole was to stop the people getting the money. But in this game, both sides want to add money to the pot. Therefore there is NO incentive for the traitors to act in any way during the prize money part that isn't in alignment with everyone's interest to get the money. The Mole's point is to undermine the game, but here everyone is on the same side. Is someone acting suspiciously? Why would they? Everyone wants the money!

But that is the only big activity we have outside of people generally chatting and the voting. This game is supposed to be about who you can trust, but the big chunk of the episode, the money mission, doesn't bring that up.

It's just very weirdly disjointed.

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Oggle this

The new DND OGL is causing trouble for lots of people, but now it's personal! By which I mean my friends have been told to stop working on paying projects until they can work out what this all means.

And I've seen a fair few takes on this from actual lawyers. Although, they often make it clear that they are not lawyers for this specific topic, which makes their opinions just that, opinions. Now, they might be educated opinions, but since they might miss some nuance or intricacy, they are just opinions (and if watching Legal Eagle has taught me anything it's that It Depends, and fine points of law are important). Additionally, they don't want to be help responsible for giving out actual legal advice that people act on, so opinion it will stay.

I've seen speculation that big players like Critical Role etc will be given nicer contracts that mean they can still produce their stuff without issue, because WOTC would be fools to restrict the big content makers. While I can see that being the case, it would be nice if the big players did also stand with the indies and not produce content.. but they need to make paychecks too, so while nice, I can also see them taking the nice contract if they are offered. (And as I say, speculation, so no-one one knows yet.)

This is one of them developing situations. I reckon something big will happen to resolve this, but what and when, I'm not holding my breath for.

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