Today, I’m trying something a little different. We are going to be reviewing two films today, as the start of a new monthly series on the site I call “Review Time”. In this series, there will be multiple films and shows reviewed in each episode, some new, some old, all depending on what I’ve seen recently.
Something new I’m trying with this series is letting YOU- the reader- decide what I review! Comment your suggestions, and I will do my best to put them into an episode.
Today, we are going to start with a sci-fi movie from 2016, titled “Arrival”. That’s right- the one with the infamous whiteboard scene. In this movie, A linguist works with the military to communicate with alien lifeforms after twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world. I love how every seemingly abstract element of this film ties together. From the revelation at the end that the main character can see into the future, and the whole opening scene was yet to happen after the events to the film, to the language spoken by the aliens, it is all very creative in terms of design and storytelling. I recommend this to anyone who’s into sci-fi, but also wants a touch of psychological drama, because this film had me thinking and pondering throughout.
Overall, I give that film a 9/10, and let’s move on.
So the finale of the first Marvel Disney+ series, “Wandavision”, aired Friday, and as completely disappointed as I was with the ending, I figured I’d still talk about it.
I’ll refrain from spoilers, because I know a lot of people may not have seen it, but the premise of this show is that after the events of “Avengers: Endgame”, Wanda Maximoff and Vision are living an idyllic suburban life in the town of Westview, New Jersey, trying to conceal their true natures. As they begin to enter new decades and encounter television tropes, the couple suspects that things are not as they seem. I thought this show took a very clever approach in not only covering the origins of Wanda, but expanding her powers and overall, serving as an insane character arc. I’ll do a post next week that takes a deeper dive into this show, but for any Marvel fans who haven’t seen this, know that it introduces a LOT of major topics from the comics, and is definitely worth the watch.
That was the first episode of Review Time! I hope you enjoyed, and remember to leave your suggestions for future episodes in the comments, and as always, stay safe and stay cool.
Our patient waiting has finally paid off, everyone. A couple days ago on the Playstation 5 Showcase, we finally got the coveted gameplay trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach, and after seeing it, I am super hyped. So today, I’ll be looking at the trailer, pointing out details you all may have missed and starting to speculate on this new information. I won’t be doing any full blown theories, because there is a lot to cover here, but that could be in another post.
As the trailer opens, we see Vanny’s mask, and a voiceover that says “When I first found you, you were nothing. You were small… pathetic. But now, you are more. Are you ready? I am 100% confident this is Glitchtrap talking to Vanny about when he took control of her. We see this is Vanny’s mask from Help Wanted, and not the most recent version. Also, this sounds like William Afton’s voice, and we all know Glitchtrap is Afton’s soul.
We then get a terrifying shot of Vanny skipping down a dark, red-lit hallway, and our first look at the security guard. Some people are saying she’s good, some say she’s Vanny in disguise, and I’m sort of leaning towards the latter. In this shot, she is staring at us as we go down an elevator. I’m pretty sure that at this point, we are playing as the child Gregory.
Here’s where things get interesting. Text appears, and die-hard FNAF fans will immediately recognize this as the same text that appeared in the trailers for the first two FNAF games. If you pause at the right time, you can catch a couple glimpses of Vanny hiding in the background, and I swear to God, I didn’t think she’d be as creepy as she turned out to be.
The text says “When fear takes hold and reality fails, the stage is set… and insanity prevails.” In between the text, we get our first official look at the Glamrock animatronics in the game. They are revealed on their stage, one by one in a true “Sister Location” style. Speaking of “Sister Location”, here’s a detail I never expected to find. Listen to the music that plays as the animatronics are revealed. It’s the exact melody as Ballora’s Music Box theme in “Sister Location”. This could be a fun easter egg, but knowing how Scott Cawthon makes seemingly miniscule details some of the most important pieces of his lore, this has GOT to mean something.
We get a look at Gregory, who is standing amongst a large control room. We still don’t know too much about this character (I think he could be Greg from the Fazbear Frights book “Fetch”), but some people have noticed the shirt he’s wearing is similar to the outfit of the Crying Child (aka. the Bite Victim of ’87) . I think it’s a stretch to say this is him, because we know he’s dead. It is an interesting similarity, however, and I’d like to see where this goes.
If you look at the control board in that shot, one thing should stand out- the telephone. In a trailer full of advanced technology and advanced futuristic robotics, there is still a telephone in use. Do I need to say anything else? I think it’s possible that Phone Guy could potentially return.
We see a beautiful shot of Monty’s Golf Course, an attraction inside the Pizzaplex, which really shows off the new environments in this game. We then see a shot of our character hiding as the security guard walks around, searching. Why are we hiding from her? Maybe she’s protecting us. Maybe we know she’s secretly Vanny and we’re trying to survive. Here’s something that I don’t believe enough people are bringing up, though. If you look closely in the background, next to Roxanne Wolf’s statue, you can see a pirate ship, with some red figure on it. We know Roxanne is the replacement for Foxy in this game, so could that be our Pirate Boi right there?
We then get a couple more shots of a children’s play area and the underground section of the Plex, and then what appears to be a display area for the animatronics. They each have their own booths, and one thing that caught my eye and almost made me jump out of my seat was hiding in a glass display case outside Chica’s area. The freaking cupcake’s here. There are relics from old Freddy’s restaurants in this new location. We see that each booth has an arcade machine. Could these be minigames we can interact with? More lore reveals?
I then proceeded to pass out as our next shot is of Gregory sliding into a ball pit. A BALL PIT. You would not see the need to show this in this trailer, unless to know of another Fazbear’s Frights story, “Into the Pit”. Coincidence? I think not.
We hear a new voice say the following: “You will do as I say. You will bring me what I want. And if you fail me, and you will, both of you burn!” I think this could be Glitchtrap talking through the Monty animatronic. We know what Glamrock Freddy sounds like, and it’s definitely not Chica or Roxy, so I think Afton is threatening Gregory and the guard to follow his orders. I think it’s interesting that he says they will burn, since we know from past games this guy’s been set on fire twice and sent to literal H-E- double hockey sticks.
We get more scenery shots, but more importantly, our first full look at the Sun and Moon animatronics- or Sunrise and Moondrop, as people are calling them. I’m at a loss for these two. I have no idea what purpose they serve, and while I think the Moon one looks cool and creepy, the Sun guy looks kind of weird, so I’m going to point out they only show up in the play area of the Plex and move on.
We get a clip pumped full of nightmare fuel as Vanny creeps out from behind a doorway labeled CAUTION- S.T.A.F.F. ONLY. Why exactly is “staff” spelled like an abbreviation?
We see our title “Security Breach”, and hear who I presume to be the guard say “there is more going on here than you realize”. The trailer smacks us in the face with one more clip of a mutilated purple hand reach out inside what looks to be the storage area. We can tell right away from the fact that this thing is purple that it has something to do with Afton. The hand looks a lot like the hand design of the Nightmare Animatronics from FNAF 4. Perhaps Afton has hacked into some physical animatronic form? Maybe this is an old animatronic, or an amalgamation of multiple old ones. We saw the cupcake was recovered- maybe something else was, too.
Anyway, that’s my look at the trailer. I’m super excited for this game, and I think it looks amazing. As always, stay safe, and stay cool.
About an hour ago, I released what is probably my favorite song out of everything I’ve ever made, “Speechless”. I wanted to talk about this song, because a lot went into it, and I forgot to post yesterday and I don’t want this site to die. So here we go.
I wrote this song as part of my school’s music club. Basically how this club works is at the beginning of each month, we are given a theme and we have the whole month to write a song, and then we have a listening party at the end of the month where we listen to all of the submissions. I was so confident the theme for February would be something around the lines of love, so I actually started writing this song a week early. The prompt wasn’t a love theme…. but I was too emotionally invested in this piece by that point to turn back.
“Speechless” is essentially a song that delves into the mindset of someone who struggles with social anxiety and has fallen in love. Their own fear keeps them from talking to whoever this person might be, and this degrading lack of confidence and overthinking is demonstrated in the lyrics to make them depressed and keep them alone, as they silently grow angry at themselves. That anger, in my opinion, comes out at the end of the breakdown. So the word “speechless” refers to how they feel around whoever their love interest is, but also literally not being able to talk.
Usually when I finish writing a song, I’ll start to recognize different elements from different songs I’ve listened to, and my inspiration behind that particular element becomes more clear. “Speechless” was different in the sense that I knew exactly what I wanted when I was writing, and almost had a whole playlist of songs I was listening to that I kind of just smashed together to make this thing. If you want a sense of what I was aiming for, this song was meant to be a mix of “Popular Monster” by Falling in Reverse, “My Demons” by Fight the Fury, “Lions” by Skillet and “I Am Above” by In Flames.
I came across a couple challenges whilst making this. I actually ended up recording the lyrics about ten times, because for some reason, my internet kept turning off in the middle of me working, so I’d lose have of my progress, and while it tested my patience, it did give me a chance to improve some of the vocals. So it was a blessing in disguise, I guess.
In the end, I’m really happy with how “Speechless” turned out. I think it’s one of my personal favorites, and in my opinion, it’s one of my best in terms of vocals and composition. Hope you enjoyed this little “Inner Thoughts” post, and if you want to hear the song, it’s on Bandlab and Soundcloud. And, as always, stay safe and stay cool.
After what’s felt like a lifetime, we’re finally talking about our good old inky boi again. Bendy is back, not for a new game just yet, but for a new book. I took one look at this thing, and realized that I’ll have a lot of work to do when it releases.
This book is titled “The Illusion of Living”, and die hard fans know that this book shows up in the first Bendy game. It is one of the items we have to collect to turn on the Ink Machine. More importantly, it is a memoir written by Joey Drew himself. So I am 100% sure that this book will tell us a lot about Joey’s backstory, perhaps the origins of the studio, and maybe even some new lore reveals. My hope is that it will give us at least a couple hints towards “Dark Revival”, because I think we’d all like to at least know the person behind that creepy voice that’s been haunting us in teasers and games since April of 2019.
I think, just based on the title, that we will hear Joey’s personal views on life and death, and his reasoning for wanting to create new life via the Machine. There are a lot of potential things this book could confirm, and I’m really excited to see what’s in store. I know the book is out, and I haven’t picked it up yet. But I promise that as soon as I am finished reading it, I will cover the whole thing here, breaking it down, analyzing the details and theorizing. Until then, as always, stay safe and stay cool.
Today, I wanted to talk about making music, with some more recently released projects and more well under way. What’s special about these songs is that I’m not doing them alone- I’m in a spot where I get work alongside some good friends of mine at school and in the music community.
I mentioned yesterday that I released two songs that I had made with my friend Cristian Farmiga, who is a great musician who makes some insanely complex melodies and does a lot of Bossa style grooves. Our songs weren’t extremely deep in meaning, and it was more about the collaboration process. The first one was “We Come Down”, which mixed an ethereal space theme with heavy rock, and was about aliens exacting revenge on Earth after we confined one of their kind inside Area 51. The second one was “Lost in a Dream”, which was much lighter, and focused on what it’s like to dream for the first time after a long case of insomnia. Both of these can be found on Bandlab and Soundcloud.
I’m excited to say that Cristian and I are teaming up for another song, along with Barrabeats, a great beatmaker on Soundcloud. This project is still in it’s early stages, and we’ve yet to figure out the theme, style and all that good stuff.
There is one more project that is getting close to complete, and has actually been in the making for about two months now. I’ve been working with an insanely talented vocalist and songwriter in my class (name revealed at a later time) on a banger of a song titled “Castle Walls Burn”. I was originally going to do this one alone and put it on the VIRUS album, but I really wanted to start learning to work with others on music, and this was the perfect way to do that. The instrumental is basically done, but some changes could be made, and we really just need to record vocals. We’re really excited about this one, and I’m hyped for everything coming in the future.
I’ve seen myself on a steady climb in terms of improvement and the quality in my music, and I think a major part of that is due to getting the opportunity to collaborate and receive feedback from like-minded people, so massive thanks to everyone I’ve mentioned today.
So that’s what’s going to be happening, in terms of music. The album is still in the works, and I can probably expect all of these collab songs to come out throughout the next few months. I have some links for Barrabeat’s Soundcloud and a preview for “Castle Walls”. And, as always, stay safe and stay cool.
Before we begin diving into this topic, I wanted to let you all know that two new songs have been released on Bandlab and Soundcloud! They are both projects I’ve done with a good friend of mine, Cristian Farmiga, who is a great composer and producer. I’m actually in the midst of a lot of collaboration projects, but we can talk about those at a later time.
Today, we continue theorizing about the Jurassic World franchise, and with the recent release of “Camp Cretaceous” season 2, you can bet there’s a bit to unpack.
Throughout the show, we hear the mysterious name “E750” multiple times. It’s some secret project Dr. Henry Wu is working on. We first hear about when we see a file with that name labeling it in season 1. It is then mentioned by Eddy, a scientist at Jurassic World, who obviously has some sort of beef with Wu, saying “he’s to blame for all of this”, and everyone working for the park is “clueless about what’s really going on here”. This has to be referring to E750. It can’t be the Indominus rex, because that was a public project. Simon Masrani himself knew about it.
We don’t get anything else from Eddy, as the Indominus shows up and most certainly kills him. It’s a kid’s show, so this isn’t said outright, but that dude’s totally dead.
Anyway, in season 2, we see a LOT more. In one episode, some of the kids sneak into Wu’s secret office, and find a picture of him and Eddy together. They speculate that Eddy could be working for Mantah Corp, a rivaling company we’ve talked about in a previous post. What’s even more striking is that they find an envelope with a series of cards. These cards show sequences of the four letters T,A,G and C. If you paid attention in Biology class, you know that these are the four nucleotide bases in a strand of DNA- Thymine, Adenine, Guanine, and Cytosine. I’m in AP bio right now, so it’s nice to have a use for that knowledge.
So these are clearly genetic codes for E750, whatever dinosaur, or hybrid of dinosaurs, that might be. I say hybrid because there are multiple cards seen, so these could be A: the gene composition of all the dinosaurs that make up E750, or B: different attempts to get the gene codes right. The cards are in a numerical order, from 1310, 1311 and so on.
Later in the show, Kenji (one of the kids stuck on the island) is in a control room, randomly spamming a button without knowing what it does. You know, because he’s a man-child. We are taken to a dark room with a large, mysterious tank, filled with ice and the faint silhouette of some creature. The button-mashing overheats the wiring, and the power goes out, as we hear the sound of cracking ice, followed by a security camera shot of a door labeled, you guessed it- “E750”.
As cheesy and ridiculous as this show tends to be, I have to admit, this plotline is quite compelling, and I look forward to season three just to find out what this new dinosaur actually is. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have some theories already.
In season one, episode two, one of these little idiots (you can begin to see how much I dislike these characters) is poking around in Wu’s office, and this is where we see that computer file of E750. She opens the file, and we see diagrams of the skeletons of four dinosaurs we know very well from the main five “Jurassic Park” movies- Spinosaurus, Carnotaurus, Velociraptor, and T. Rex. Could these be the dinosaurs used to create E750? I certainly think so. We know that three of these were used to make the Indominus, but Spinosaurus wasn’t part of that.
If you don’t know what Spinosaurus is, or were just smart enough to not watch “Jurassic Park 3”, it was a large predator that closely resembled a Baryonyx, except for it’s distinctive large sail that ran down it’s spine. Recent studies show that in real life, Spinosaurus looked very different than in movies. To put it in scientific terms, it was pretty pathetic.
“Jurassic Park” depictionReality
If we look really closely at the creature in the tank, we see a spiked tail similar to that of the Indominus. I followed the spinal structure, and found something rather interesting- a part of what I thought to be the creature’s back jutting out in the shape of a Spinosaurus fin.
So we could expect E750 to be of high intelligence like a Raptor, as dangerous and powerful as a Carnotaurus and T rex, and now, with it’s Spinosaurus features, be able to SWIM.
So these are my thoughts and theories on the mysterious E750. Hope you’re as excited as I am for Jurassic World’s future, stay safe and stay cool.
Hey, all! Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, I was busy. I was finishing up a demo instrumental for a song, and that’s coming along really well, but I kind of ran out of time to do anything over here.
Speaking of music, let’s talk about what’s happening with Will Ryan’s IRIS project. I went on to his latest stream on his solo youtube channel, and he confirmed that the basic edition of the upcoming album “Dawn of the Demetrix” is basically done. However, the deluxe edition apparently still needs work, and the album won’t be released without it. There are also individual pieces of artwork being made for certain songs, lyric videos still need making, and some other things.
What surprised me is that, apparently, the album will not have a confirmed release date. It’s just to be released out of the blue, which is actually an interesting business strategy that could build up the hype for the album. However, I’d probably guess that we’ll finally see DOTD somewhere in the next few months.
But you’ve all seen the title- that’s not what we’re here to talk about. I recently took a week to attempt to draw one of the most elaborate monsters we’ve seen in IRIS- the Mothohive. Here’s my progress.
I’m really happy with the final product, and I posted it on the dusty old “My Bad Art” page. Remember that? Me neither. I wasn’t really trying to make it completely accurate- the real version has a darker color scheme, with a more shadowy presence, while I made mine more fluorescent, especially in the wings.
Anyway, I hope you like this new fanart of mine. Again, it can be found in the “My Bad Art” page. Stay safe, and stay cool!
Earlier today, Warner Bros. dropped a trailer for a movie we’ve been anticipating for a WHILE, that being “Godzilla Vs. Kong”- the movie that will decide which icon in the Monsterverse will reign supreme once and for all.
The trailer really brought up the hype, and we see multiple shots of Godzilla and Kong in battle, and I have to say, I think when this movie finally releases in March, it will have been worth the wait.
As far as what this trailer can tell us, apparently Godzilla has gone on a rampage. We hear one character say “Godzilla is hurting people and we don’t know why”. I dunno- maybe because you nuked him when he was trying to sleep in the last movie? Anyway, humanity seems to be on Kong’s side, and they need him to fight and kill Godzilla in a battle between, as the teasers say, God and King.
I found a couple details that may crack the plot of the movie wide open, and I’m not the first to report it. In the first few seconds of the trailer, we see a scene of destruction in a city, and if you look in the upper right corner at exactly 5 seconds in, you’ll see Godzilla looming overhead- or is it?
We only see him for a split second, and the shape of his head seems more basic in shape. There are also red lights shining before him in a semi-uniform pattern. This is leading people, myself included, to wonder whether the main villain in this movie isn’t Godzilla, rather his robotic counterpart MechaGodzilla. I truly believe so, especially because of one shot at the 1:41 mark in the trailer. We see a screen with schematics saying “Fully Charged”. Underneath, you can make out two reptilian feet.
MechaGodzilla, in past movies, was made by the Japanese military to defend against giant monsters, and he became one of Godzilla’s arch enemies. Bringing him into this movie makes perfect sense, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Kong and Godzilla team up at some point to take down this greater threat.
If not, though, my money’s on the lizard. I’ve always loved Godzilla, and even though Kong has a knockoff Stormbreaker now, the well-named “King of the Monsters” has already defeated a literal extinction event in the form of a giant three-headed alien dragon. It’s gonna be a close match.
Anyway, that was my 50 cents on the new trailer. Stay safe, and stay cool!
In the last JW post, I talked about what we know about the upcoming film “Dominion”. I did leave out one major plot point, however, saying I found an important detail where I never would have expected. Today, we talk about the new villain in the “Jurassic World” series.
Back in September of 2020, Netflix aired an animated show for Jurassic World titled “Camp Cretaceous”. And for about a week, I paid no mind to it, and wrote it off as a simple kid’s show to tide younger audiences over until “Dominion” came out. NOT A SMART THING TO DO.
Yeah, remember the FNAF security logbook? I’m having flashbacks to it. The point is, there is more to this show. I sat through so many cringy jokes, and so many accurate stereotypes of today’s pre-teen generation that I managed to find the name of the next company to rival Masrani Global- Mantah Corp. I also found that I’ve been spelling the name wrong, and didn’t know the correct spelling until after I made the banner for this post. Super.
I know season two is out, and I guess I’ll have to go through that one too, but let me just sum up what you need to know about season 1 to understand the whole Mantah Corp thing, because it really isn’t much.
A few kids attend an adventure camp on Isla Nublar, the island where the Jurassic World theme park is located- this takes place during the events of 2015’s “Jurassic World”. One of the kids, named Sammy, is actually an undercover agent who agreed to go to Isla Nublar to collect DNA samples from the dinosaurs on the island. Who did she make a deal with? Mantah Corp, as confirmed by Sammy herself.
Here’s where things get interesting- bits and pieces of the plot for “Dominion” have been revealed, the most striking being that a global corporation is running a dinosaur habitat, with dinosaurs being made by a company named Biosyn. It doesn’t take a genius to know that Mantah Corp is the one overseeing everything here. They’re the ones who made the first feathered dinosaur in this series possible- yeah, I know. There’s scientifically accurate dinosaurs in this new movie. Crazy, right?
So we now know the name of Jurassic World’s next big villain. The current plot of the movie also states that Maisie, the cloned girl from “Fallen Kingdom”, gets abducted by this company, so the movie is going to be part rescue story, part dinosaur apocalypse, part rivalry story, and possibly more. I don’t know if you’re as hyped for the future of Jurassic World as I am, but it all looks really promising. So, I’ll keep my ear to the ground, and you all stay safe, and stay cool!
