[DreamerM]

That's a killer argument: if you no likey what I likey then you no count.

"Other people may disagree with this statement, but they are wrong."

I didn't say your views didn't count. I said I can't take them seriously. You're free to be wrong if you want to: your standards as they stand are silly.

Although I really liked this short story, I had the same feeling, that is, meshing comedy with drama has an odd effect.

I have to disagree: I think comedy and drama used in tandem, well, can each increase the strength of the other. If you have JUST comedy then you end up with something like Family Guy, which only has enough story to move from joke to joke. Yeah, jokes are fine, ha ha, but sooner or later you should take the story somewhere or I'm going to walk away feeling like you've just been wasting my time.

Likewise, unending, unrelenting, merciless DRAMA leaves me kinda wanting to jump off of a roof. Not to say plenty of utterly miserable books haven't become classics, but they're no fun, at all, to read.

[Chyld]

The only person who I can compare Yahtzee is Oscar Wilde (yes, I've said this so many time before).

There is only one thing worse than being obsessed with Silent Hill, and that is not being obsessed with Silent Hill.

?

[Game Over]

There is only one thing worse than being obsessed with Silent Hill, and that is not being obsessed with Silent Hill.

?

Are you referring to my Avatar?

I kind of feel that Yahtzee is right. SH5 may not be as good as we might expect (which explains why he made had vowed to eat his "own ass" in case SH5 succeeds).

[DreamerM]

I think you missed some of it...

I sure hope not, I read it a few times...

We enjoyed the story, it was a good read, but Yahtzee falls at a few common hurdles. For a start, the ghost - however realistic - was a weak character. The ghost was like Yahtzee desperately wanting to cause those stereotypical nerds some harm, for being stereotypical nerds.

I've known guys like Greg, professional victims who are happiest when the world is out to get them. He was a weak character, yes, but he was supposed to be: and he was perfectly believable for what he was. He wasn't weak "because" he was a nerd, he was weak because he was addicted to his own unhappiness and would take no steps whatsoever to improve his own life, prefering just to whine and mope and make other people feel sorry for him. It was that willful helplessness that was his damning trait, not his identification with nerd culture.

We didn't want "more funny" we wanted his style to be more clear cut. He tends to try and make it a comedy and a drama, which doesn't work well, so he should either go all out humour, or be more subtle about it.

I don't know what you mean. Subtle how?

String jokes together and call that a story? It wouldn't be. And the thing that makes Trilby (and by extension Yahtzee's) voice worth reading is it's dry wit.

Abbreviations are bad! MoO? No, write Ministry of Occultism in full, or invent some kind of nickname to put in for it. We didn't like "MSN" at all either, it made it too real. We were snapped out of the story and into reality, which interrupts the story and some of the magic of being lost in the story's world is lost.

If I know what MoO stands for, I don't see why I should read it more times then I have to, and likewise, if a character WAS on MSN then say so and lets move on. A story world can contain real things, even instant messaging programs and Ministries with awkward abriviations. Google "moo" sometime and you'll see it's actually a pretty common anagram.

His writing's a little too predictable too. Then we started talking about how Zero Punctuation won't last forever, we will eventually tire of it, so hopefully Yahtzee will get another job and stop at the end of its peak. Don't keep milking the cow after its dry!

I hope Yahtzee keeps doing Zero Punctuation for as long as they keep paying him for it. I was a bit worried that all the reviewing all the time would wither his other talents, but he's clearly guarding against that by doing things like writing this short story.

When journalists switch from covering games to creating them it doesn't tend to end well (see DMC2 for evidence) but Yahtzee was making games himself long before he was reviewing them, plus he seems to actually give a crap about his work being good. I think he'll be alright. He's one hell of a smart guy.

[DreamerM]

SH5 may not be as good as we might expect.

The player character is a marine. Well, former marine, but still. There's going to be more combat. Next thing you know, they'll be shifting to first person and moving the Town to some space station in space....

[Game Over]

The player character is a marine. Well, former marine, but still. There's going to be more combat. Next thing you know, they'll be shifting to first person and moving the Town to some space station in space....

Well, since the Silent Hill forum members are emotional and probably don't know how to swing a bat properly, would continuesly whine about why the character is even a soldier and keep saying "no, the tradition of the SH is that character should be a normal troubled person in a dark world" or "too buff. what is this, Rambo?"
or some other comments such as "team silent isn't making this, Desu? NOooooo. Americans ruin everything. Only Japanese know how to make horror" which is quite ironic because America started all the horror movie stuff and team Silent themselves were trying to do an american style horror.

Apparently, Akira Yamaoka is also getting old and a bit watered down, but at least has some taste(not that anybody cares about the soundtrack, much...I do, of course adore it):

http://video.aol.com...aoka/1018540409
This is supposed to be the opening theme piece.

[David-kyo]

Only Japanese know how to make horror" which is quite ironic because America started all the horror movie stuff

Perhaps, but the Japs have grown a lot more proficient in it, amongst other things. This has been their universal tactic: see what the other people are good at, learn it well and one-up them. I can't think of any recent American horror film that was actually any good.

[Plainclothesman]

"Other people may disagree with this statement, but they are wrong."

I didn't say your views didn't count. I said I can't take them seriously. You're free to be wrong if you want to: your standards as they stand are silly.

We're discussing art here, not hard facts. There isn't really a wrong answer. Certainly it's just as silly a standard to dismiss someone's opinion purely because they dislike Rowling.

Nobody's saying the story was bad or that Yahtzee shouldn't write more. All anyone did was explain where the story fell short for them - it's called constructive criticism, and every creative endeavour needs it. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with that criticism, but trying to argue that someone is wrong about how they felt about a work of art is not only futile, it's counter-intuitive to Yahtzee's growth as a writer. Although I'm sure he doesn't need us to tell him which advice to take and which to ignore.

Likewise, unending, unrelenting, merciless DRAMA leaves me kinda wanting to jump off of a roof. Not to say plenty of utterly miserable books haven't become classics, but they're no fun, at all, to read.

Speak for yourself, please.

And while I do agree that drama meshed with comedy can work really well, I'm not sure anyone was saying it couldn't. I think it's more that Yahtzee's particular attempt at blending them here didn't work as well as it could have.

[joshofalltrades]

To be honest, the story was pretty mediocre as far as I'm concerned, but since I haven't written anything in the past few years my voice as a critic could be easily silenced.

I just don't think the writing was up to Yahtzee's usual high standard, but that's okay. I'm just glad that he's writing again, and it reminds me of something a really hot girl (and an excellent songwriter) told me while I was fumbling around trying to write a halfway decent song: "Even if you've written masterpieces, you still have to write the 'just okay' songs to get the great songs out."

So, keep going, Yahtzee. I, for one, would like to see more.

[AdamM]

Hai guise I rote a story

"Tribly & a ghost"

tehre was a ghost
tilby saw teh ghost
trilby said "aaaarg"

the end

do u like my story im also tryin to rite a book

[joshofalltrades]

I'd like to withdraw my previous assessment in light of AdamM's new masterpiece. Bravo, my friend, bravo.

[Game Over]

Perhaps, but the Japs have grown a lot more proficient in it, amongst other things. This has been their universal tactic: see what the other people are good at, learn it well and one-up them. I can't think of any recent American horror film that was actually any good.

They have this strategy. They analyze and evaluate so the object would fit their hands.

Anime came from Disney.
Horror came from America.
etc etc.

[joshofalltrades]

I can't think of any recent American horror film that was actually any good.

This is because recent American horror filmmakers think more gore equals better horror movie. They need to look at what made the horror classics (like Alien, for instance) great: they didn't show you everything and it was left up to your imagination to fill in the blank slate of "something horrible just happened to X person". I'm much more nervous when there's an unknown factor and the movie (and therefore what will happen to the victims/survivors) is much less predictable as a result, ergo it's a scarier movie.

Gore/slasher films have their place, but calling them "horror" is like calling the Nash-pop crap that plays on the radio "country music". Which I hate.

This post has been edited by joshofalltrades: 10 March 2008 - 12:27 PM

[Jenx]

Seriously, slasher films have their charms but they can hardly be considered horror.

Most horrors are scary because you DON'T know everything that's going on or is going to happen. With movies like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and so on, it's pretty easy.

Enter teens.
Teens have sex.
Enter baddie.
Baddie slashes up teens in horrible ways.
One or several teens pull a dumb stunt and 'defeat' baddie.
End of movie, baddie shows up he's not quite dead.
Sequel.

Not much to scare you in this really.

[Sylv]

It reminded me a lot of Charle's Stross' Atrocity Archives. Are we still using spoiler bars? Just in case...

It just struck me as a fun, lightweight comeback piece and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. My biggest problem was the exposition-to-story ratio. It felt like there was too much time spent on explanations of how the mind-body-soul trinity or how the Ministry functioned compared to how much story we had. I understand that Yahtzee might want to set the stage for readers new to the universe but at the same time it sacrificed narrative flow. I'm not saying they should be cut entirely but economizing info-dumps is crucial in a story of this size. In a shorter piece of fiction, it's better to concentrate on hitting character notes and pacing and to use exposition only when necessary.

Speaking of character notes, I loved Claire and her interaction with everyone else. She was a treat, and I hope we'll see more of her. Greg was utterly one dimensional but I think that worked in the story's context because he was a perfectly fine foil. (I thought one reason for that shallowness might be that Greg wasn't really Greg, just whatever bits of Greg were strong enough not to be sloughed off into the ether. It seems like that would smooth out some nuances in anyone's character)

Anyhow, I like this the concept of more stories in Trilby's universe and I hope we see more of 'em.