Creepypasta

I like reading creepypasta. It's sort of like reading a horror story in a very short format. Anyway, I was looking through the Creepypasta thread on SlenderNation when I found this one:

Man, that is a good one. Better than the "Please wake up" one that creeped me out before.

Twin Peaks

So last time, I wrote about the ontological mystery and The Prisoner. But what is the spiritual successor to The Prisoner? Is it Persons Unknown? No, that was kind of stupid. Is it the Prisoner remake? No, aside from Ian McKellen, I heard it wasn't that good.

No, the spiritual successor to The Prisoner in my opinion was a television show from 1990-91 called Twin Peaks. And yet it was not an ontological mystery.

Twin Peaks: it's filled with secrets.

Why are the connected? How are they similar?

Well, that's easy enough to explain: both are Mind Screws where the show's identity is completely tied to its location. With The Prisoner, the location and the mystery were one and the same: where is the Village? How do you escape? With Twin Peaks, the location and the mystery are two different things, but they are intrinsically tied together. If Laura Palmer had not lived in Twin Peaks, would she have died? What was it about Twin Peaks that made it such a hotbed of danger?

Perhaps I should explain what Twin Peaks was about first. In the first episode, the body of Laura Palmer, prom queen, is found wrapped in plastic. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is quickly tasked with finding out who killed her, especially since he believes that this is the work of a serial killer. The show was directed by David Lynch and written by Lynch and Mark Frost, so it had Lynch's trademark quirkiness mixed with intense creepiness.

However, the central mystery of Twin Peaks is not what Twin Peaks is about. No, only part of each episode focused on Dale Cooper's investigation. The rest? The rest was about the citizens of the town. Each episode had multiple subplots focusing on affairs, secrets, and the like, including the ever popular Log Lady. (She carries a log around with her.)

Her log knows many things.

And then there was the magical realism aspect. You see up there where I said this show was a Mind Screw? Well, so far, all I've described has been a quirky murder mystery show. And yet, that's like saying The Prisoner was about a guy trying to get away from a village. It's just not right: while The Prisoner had increasingly dreamlike elements (culminating in the almost incomprehensible series finale), Twin Peaks isn't just dreamlike: it's nightmarish.

An example: in the Pilot, Laura Palmer's mother receives a vision of a man at the foot of her bed. This man turns out to be BOB (which stands for Beware of BOB), a malevolent spirit. BOB is the creepiest motherfucker you will ever meet ("Catch you with my death bag! You may think I've gone, but I will kill again!"). And then there is the other touches of strangeness that surround the town of Twin Peaks. In the second episode, Cooper has a dream that involves the Man From Another Place and a woman identical to Laura Palmer ("She's filled with secrets!"). One character's father is affiliated with Project Blue Book and tells Agent Cooper that he has received a message for him: THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.

And there's the other connection to The Prisoner: the unexplained. Certain things are never explained in either show. In The Prisoner, the only thing that is explained at the end is who Number One is (well, sort of).

Not even what this gesture and "Be seeing you" meant.

And though on Twin Peaks, we did eventually learn who killed Laura Palmer, most of the other mysteries went unexplained. In fact, the end of season two ended on a huge cliffhanger, which was never resolved. (There was a movie that was supposed to clear it up, but it ended up being more of a prequel to the series and adding even more questions.)

Twin Peaks was another huge influence on my writing. From my love of dreams to my love of Mind Screws, this is where it came from.

And, so, to conclude:

Through the darkness of future past,
the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds...
fire, walk with me.

The Ontological Mystery

Some of you may know that I wrote the blog Ontological (and if you don't, now you do). This came about from my deep-seated desire to write an ontological mystery. And what is an ontological mystery, I hear you ask?

Easy: an ontological mystery is where the main character(s) finds themselves in an unknown place and they have to figure out why they are there and how to get out. Ontology is the study of existence, reality itself. An ontological mystery is a story where the mystery is tied into the reality of the world around the characters.

Here's a famous example: The Prisoner. The main character, who doesn't even have a name, just a number to designate who he is, is trapped in the Village. Where is the Village? Why is it there? Who runs the Village? How do you escape it? These are all questions that Number Six has to figure out.

I watched a lot of The Prisoner when I was a kid. My dad had the VHS tapes of the "important" episodes - the pilot, "The Chimes of Big Ben," even "Living in Harmony." The one episode I didn't watch until I was much older, however, was the very last episode, "Fall Out." That may have been because my dad didn't have it or it may have been because it was balls out insane.

Seriously: if you haven't seen the show, you should. It is one of the best shows ever and it contributed a lot my taste in fiction and my love of Mind Screws. It's one of the few shows that could make a weather balloon into something completely terrifying.

Meet Rover.

You can see aspects of The Prisoner in Ontological. For one thing, I knew I wanted to make a Mind Screw. I didn't want things to be easily explained. I didn't want to tie things up in a neat bow. Was Martin a Nightlander all along? Did the City turn him into a Nightlander and then the Nightlanders made him believe he had always been a Nightlander? One of the last posts is called Eikasia - which is Platonic concept. It means an inability to perceive a dream or memory or reflection is not the real thing. How does Martin now he is real? How does he know that he is not?

And here's another question you may not have consider: at the end, the Nightlanders rearrange a person's mind to their liking. What makes you think they didn't do this with Martin? All we have is Martin's word that he was always a Nightlander.

And if you have any questions, I shall direct you to this sign from the Village:

Review: The Complete Annotated Oz Squad

So on Sunday I picked up The Complete Annotated Oz Squad by Steve Ahlquist. I've always been interesting in Oz, ever since I was very young and read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  and found it to be much more interesting and gruesome than the movie ever was.

The Oz Squad was a ten-issue comic book series that dealt with Dorothy Gale and her attempt to reconcile Oz with Earth. The "Gale Force" (consisting of an older Dorothy, a more Terminator-ish Tin Woodsman, a more emo Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion) were tasked with investigating magical or Fortean events and, if Ozian people or artifacts were involved, to bring them back to Oz.

The first issue was actually fascinating (and why I picked it up): the Tik-Tok Man, newly arrived on Earth, has gone beserk. Dorothy and the others have to figure out a way to bring him down, while also figuring out why he went insane.

The first three issues of The Oz Squad are actually very good and feature some really interesting world building. There are references to events we don't know of yet (I also love a Cryptic Background Reference) interspersed with some great action scenes.

And then it goes off the rails. It's still well written (even though the artwork suffers), but there is one major flaw with the later issues: it never slows down. It goes "Here's something new" and then moves on. For example: in one very jumbled issue, we are presented with an interesting fact about the JFK assassination: apparently, God was not watching at that moment in time and without God's infallible eye, the events of that date are left to human eyes. And since people's accounts are contradictory, so is reality: every single theory about what happened is true, all the conspiracy theories, all the potential assassins are competing to be the actual assassin. And so even though everyone has their ideas about what happened on that day, nobody can know.

And what does this have to do with the Oz Squad? Well, Dorothy was friends with JFK. We are shown on flashback with them. And then...nothing else. All of what I wrote right there? It would have been super-fascinating to see, to show the consequences of an event that can never be known, but it's never mentioned again.

Another example: in one issue, the Tik-Tok Man becomes a crime boss. I thought "Okay, here's a nice storyarc. They can't just leave him to be a crime boss forever. They have to come back and stop him." But they don't. They make one attempt and then the story moves along, forgetting all about the Tik-Tok Man.

Even with these problems, there are interesting stories. The last issues are concerned with the present Dorothy received for her 100th birthday: a Time Train. We are given accounts of what happened to various character did when they were thrown out of the Time Train and into various time periods. Except it still has the same problems as before: these momentous plots that could sustain a comic book for entire arcs are condensed to one issue and never mentioned or brought up again.

So, would I recommend this book? To those who like reading about Oz, yes. It's a fascinating take, even though it does take some liberties, and it has a lot of great ideas (most of which, however, it leaves by the wayside). To those who aren't interesting in Oz: Fables would be a better read. The same type of concept (fairy tale characters try to live in the real world), but with better plotting and art.

This Is My OOG Blog

Where I shall review books, movies, television shows, and other various and sundry things.

Thank you.