B04: It's Cold In This House, Pt. II

In this episode:

• The second of four installments of "It's Cold In This House," a short story Ian wrote back in high school.
• Sixteen-year-old Erica and her parents are staying in the home of her childhood friend Kurt while they move into a new house. When Kurt and Erica investigate an open window in the middle of the night, neither of them are prepared for what follows.
• Written, performed, and music by Ian Doherty.
• The whole story:
• Part I
• Part II (this post)
• Part III
• Part IV

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• Yeah, these are probably going to be a Sunday thing from now on.
• In case you didn't see it: Last post Fio was quick to inform me that I was not the only person dressed in Halloween-appropriate garb (as depicted in the header image). My apologies.

 http://archive.org/download/AMOTB04/AMOTB04.mp3

B03: It's Cold In This House, Pt. I

In this episode:

• The first of four installments of "It's Cold In This House," a short story Ian wrote back in high school.
• Sixteen-year-old Erica and her parents are staying in the home of her childhood friend Kurt while they move into a new house. When Kurt and Erica investigate an open window in the middle of the night, neither of them are prepared for what follows.
• Written, performed, and music by Ian Doherty.
• The whole story:
• Part I (this post)
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• Sorry this is so late. Originally there wasn't going to be music, but my brain won't let me half-ass anything, so once I was like "Hey! I could do music for this!", I couldn't not. I think it was worth it, but who am I to judge? 
• Holy flashbacks, Batman.

(Header image: Me, freshman year of college, done up very simply as a character from this story. It was Halloween, and our writing club decided we should dress up as characters from our own fiction. I'm proud to say that, IIRC, I was the only person whose costume was particularly Halloween appropriate.)

http://archive.org/download/AMOTB03/AMOTB03.mp3

052: Sexy Mummies

Mild spoilers for Season 3 of The Walking Dead

In this episode:

• Tonight: Horror Literature. *chamber music starts playing*
• But before that, Ian talks a little bit about his experience at Scare-a-Con. In short: it was fun!
• Isaac Bidwell, the artist Ian mentions. Warning: Some gory/disturbing content.
• Dracula Has Risen in the Polls, the podcast-parody written by Frank Conniff (of MST3K). (It's a very loose adaptation, to be fair.)
• Fio and Ian take on the gigantic topic of horror literature, its origins, and where it has gone in the past three hundred years or so.
• ...and show very quickly that they have done none of the research omg.
• Alternate title for this episode: Vaguely Remembering Books We Read in High School.
• The Dead Authors Podcast
• Ian teases a special addition to the podcast for the month of October, in celebration of Halloween coming up!

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• Correction: The podcast adaptation of Dracula written by MST3K's Frank Conniff is titled "Dracula Has Risen in the Polls."
• I worded it weirdly on the podcast, but what I meant to say was, Jeffrey Combs recommended I watch the DVD version of Re-Animator because it includes stuff that is not in the version on Netflix.
• Also, I can't believe we didn't mention this on the podcast, but if you aren't watching Frankenstein, MD, you really should be (thanks for the reminder, Alina!). Attempts to describe it at the moment are failing me, so just watch it; it's friggin' awesome.
• Again, neither of us were in top form for this podcast, so rest assured, it's likely we'll be touching on at least some of the topics or books mentioned on this episode again in more detail in the future.
• I'll link it here once I have a post of the pictures from Scare-a-Con put together. Watch Tumblr for it.

Music:

• Opening: Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown in Stephen King's It
• Intro music: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
• Outro music: "A Little Priest" - Original Broadway Cast, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | YouTube | iTunes |

(Header image from http://blog.oskoui-oskoui.com/?p=6125)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT052/AMOT052.mp3

051: Pantsless Chaos

SPOILERS FOR P. T.

In this episode:

• Ian's friend Kenny joins us for our discussion of Horror in tabletop RPGs! (NOTE: We do our best to limit or explain jargon for non-players.)
• Before that, though, Ian talks about his experience playing P. T., the PS4-exclusive playable teaser for the upcoming Silent Hill game "Silent Hills" helmed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro. In short: AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.
• If you want to skip the P. T. discussion, our short discussion of the two cons Fio and I attended/would be attending begins at 18:00, and our Horror in RPGs discussion begins shortly after.
• Ian, Fio, and Kenny retell their experiences running horror-themed Dungeons & Dragons adventures and the difficulties and successes they ran into.
• We also talk a little bit about non-D&D tabletop RPGs, including an old Starcraft tabletop game, Call of Cthulhu, CthulhuTech, and the Buffy tabletop RPG.
• We wrap things up with some unsolicited advice on running adventures.
• Kenny joins us from Lag Time Podcast, a podcast dedicated to gaming discussion and local brews. Subscribe on iTunes here, and follow them on Facebook here!
• Also, here's a link to the original Kickstarter for Toe Tag Riot, the comic Fio mentions early on, and how to pre-order the comic.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• I mention on the podcast how I was going to be at Scare-a-Con "this weekend," but it was the weekend after we recorded, and we recorded last Tuesday, so...yeah. Apologies for issuing the invite to talk to me there, after it's already happened. Rest assured, I will be talking about it next episode.
• I still have not played Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm, so I could not nerd out about it with Fio and Kenny. *hangs head in shame*

Music:

• Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
• Outro:"In the Garage" - Weezer | YouTube | iTunes |

(Header image taken from http://shapescapes.blogspot.com/2013/04/human-slaves-of-insect-nation-part-11.html)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT051/AMOT051.mp3

050: PREPARE TO REMINISCE!

I don't care who you are; that's fucking terrifying.

SPOILERS FOR GRAVITY FALLS 2x02 "INTO THE BUNKER" & 2x03 "GOLF WAR," VARIOUS COURAGE THE COWARDLY DOG EPISODES, VARIOUS ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? EPISODES, STEPHEN KING'S IT, THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES 1x12 "OVER THE EDGE," and probably various other things that I'll have to edit into here as I listen back tomorrow.

In this episode:

• It's our 50th episode! We...didn't plan anything particularly special.
• Join us as we venture into the realm of children's horror and a discussion of its importance.
• ...which lasts a few minutes or so, and then we just start listing off our favorite Courage the Cowardly Dog and Are You Afraid of the Dark? episodes.
• We take a quick detour into the land of Tim Burton--specifically, his use of a lot of horror aesthetics without actually making "horror movies," per se.
• Children's horror covered in this episode:
• The Beetlejuice cartoon
• Gravity Falls
• Courage the Cowardly Dog
• Are You Afraid of the Dark?
• Aaahh!!! Real Monsters
• Nickelodeon's Halloween specials
• Batman: The Animated Series
• Neil Gaiman's Coraline
• Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
• The Goosebumps books and TV series
• Hocus Pocus
• They got away with so much shit in the 90s. Like, seriously.
• I couldn't find a particular quote with Neil Gaiman talking about the importance of children's horror, but here's the comment on his journal about whether or not Coraline is appropriate for young children, and how children and adults receive the story.
• Here's the Gammell illustration for Scary Stories that I always think of.
• We hit Twitter at the end of the episode to see what others recalled from their childhoods. Thanks for the responses!

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• I couldn't find a clip to link to for where I got the title of this episode from, so here's a screenshot of the moment. (In all honesty, when is there going to be a better time for me to make this reference?)
• Fio pointed out that when I said "Tia and Tamara Madly," I meant "Tia and Tamara Mowry." The brain does funny things with memory.
• From Fio: If any of our listeners could explain exactly what the fuck was going on in Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, that would just be splendid.
• Also from Fio: Okay, so the JtHM comic comment was a bit of an exaggeration, I think they might have decided to give him the cartoon in the middle of Squee!, so after JtHM.
• More from Fio's timemarks:
• 7:12 - You pronounce “neither” like “naayther” here. So. ‘Sup with that?
• 1:03:00 - Part of the AMoT Drinking Game should be “Take a drink every time Fio goes out of his way to mention Mia Kirshner, Neve Campbell, or Winona Ryder”
• 1:24:10 - I wasn’t quite sure about the timeline here, but there’s definitely a big gap where I wasn’t really reading any horror between Goosebumps and King. I’m pretty sure all of fourth and fifth grade for me were just nothing but Harry Potter.
• OH MY GOD IM PRETTY SURE THE SEAN CONNERY SNOWMAN’S BACKSTORY INVOLVED HIS LOVE INTEREST GETTING FRIDGED
• Comparing Twilight Zone to Are You Afraid of the Dark I’m stumbling around a lot, I think when it comes down to it my point is that one of these shows has Rod Serling and the other one doesn’t.
• Hocus Pocus. That is all.

Music:

• Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
• Outro: "Dreaming" - Bruno Coulais, Coraline Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | YouTube | iTunes |

(Header image from http://courage.wikia.com/wiki/File:Vlcsnap-2013-03-25-11h55m54s206.png)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT050/AMOT050.mp3

049: Prometheus (2012) - The Tragedy of Meredith Vickers, Princess of Weyland Corp.

SPOILERS FOR ALIEN (1979), ALIENS (1986), ALIEN3 (1992), ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997), and PROMETHEUS (2012)

In this episode:

• Cleolinda Jones joins us once again!
• And she's going to be at Dragon Con this year! She'll be on or at several panels, including the Hannibal Fannibals pannibal (say that three times fast) at 1PM on Saturday, August 30th and the Dream Logic and Murder Wizardry panel at 10PM on Sunday, August 1st. And she'll be giving away some awesome stuff--listen for more details!
• Fio and I will also be attending a few upcoming conventions, although in much less professional capacity. Fio will be at Baltimore Comic-Con the weekend of September 6th, and I'll be at Scare-a-Con 2014 on Saturday, September 12th!
• Discussion of the 2012 Ridley Scott film Prometheus, including the good ideas, the bad ideas, the utterly nonsensical ideas, and the all-around wackadoo nature of the film.
• The writer of this movie seemed to be more interested in writing David than anything else, but we all would've liked to see more of the Shaw/David relationship explored.
• For some reason Ridley Scott thinks leaving things out makes more sense.
• Alright, to be perfectly fair, Blade Runner is a million times better without the narration. Did that change burn Ridley so bad that he just wants to make the rest of his movies incomprehensible?
• Pacing. It's a thing.
• Here are links to the deleted scenes Cleo mentioned:
• What the Engineer says
• Deleted scene between Shaw and the Engineer
  
• This brings us to the end of our 2014 Summer Movie Series! Let us know in the comments here or on Tumblr what you'd like to hear us discuss next.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• As of the writing of this post, I am 99% sure I'll be at Scare-a-Con. I waffled a bit on the podcast, but now I'm pretty certain. 
• Wolven's Tumblr is wolvensnothere.tumblr.com, as in "Wolven's not here," not "Wolven's not there," as we say on the podcast. Knot naut naught knawt.
• RE: the comments on how Marc Streitenfeld wrote the music for Prometheus backwards and then reversed the recording: It wasn't the main melodic theme he did that with (which, as it happens, seems to have been written by Harry Gregson-Williams)--I think it was just the score in general, and you can definitely hear it in the moodier music on the soundtrack album. Here's the section of the Wikipedia article on it.

Music:

• Opening: Prometheus Trailer
• Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
• Outro: "Life" - Harry Gregson-Williams, Prometheus Original Soundtrack | YouTube | iTunes |

(Header image taken from http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/gallery/view/img/790)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT049/AMOT049.mp3

048: Alien: Resurrection (1997) - The Research Song

 We've all been there...right?

SPOILERS FOR ALIEN (1979), ALIENS (1986), ALIEN3 (1992), ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997), SILENT HILL (2006), FIREFLY 1x05, Starcraft, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014), and WORLD WAR Z (book and 2013 film).

In this episode:

• Fio's friend Joe joins us for our discussion!
• Discussion of Alien: Resurrection (1997), including Joss Whedon's writing, the interesting (but not altogether well-executed) ideas in the script, weird acting/writing choices, and where this movie rates in our heads against the previous movies.
• Joe sheds light on some of the Alien comics that may have influenced the screenplay for Alien: Resurrection.
• What themes are present in the script? Could they really decide which they wanted to focus on?
• Human vs. construct--was this explored to its fullest extent?
• How 90s is this movie, really?
• Interpretations of how the Alien Queen ended up with a womb in this film and why the Humalien Hybrid kills the queen. The fact that we have to spend a decent chunk of this podcast debating our interpretations of this sequence of events is evidence enough that this film is just really not clear.
• After Joe leaves, Ian gives his non-spoilery thoughts on The Strain, Guillermo del Toro's vampire/epidemic horror TV series currently airing on FX. In short: It's cool! ...But kind of uneven. Also: body horror.
• At some point, we're going to devote an episode or two of the podcast to the Silent Hill movie(s). I mean, if we have to. *heavy breathing*
• Next time: Cleolinda joins us once again for the final movie in our Summer Movie series: Prometheus!

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• Joe had to leave somewhere around the 1 hour mark, but we don't really give any indication for the listener's benefit that he's left at that point. Apologies.
• I think at some point (when we're trying to figure out how long after Alien3 this movie was) I accidentally said Alien3 came out in '93 instead of '92. My mistake.
• Compare Fio's Research song to Data's Scanning for Lifeforms song
• Highlights from Fio's timestamps:
• 6:09 - Based on our sample size thus far, 100% of the people who have seen the Alien movies were too young to see the Alien movies.
• 1:32:22 - “We’ve pretty much exhausted our topics” Oh have we, Fio? Have we? Because there are twENTY FUCKING MINUTES LEFT.
• Anybody who figured we were going to spend a good portion of this Podcast talking about Firefly, Starcraft, X-Men: Days of Future Past, World War Z, a huge diversion on The Strain, and giving a random shout-out to Apt Pupil, you deserve a cookie.
• So I’m getting the feeling that we think Call is the most interesting character in this movie. I don’t think I’m wrong in this. IAN: Definitely the most interesting new character, at the very least. Alien!Ripley's pretty interesting, if written a little vaguely.

Music:

• Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
• Outro: "Human" - The Killers | YouTube | iTunes |

(Screencap taken from http://www.metacafe.com/watch/mv-hRMGg/alien_resurrection_mutation/)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT048/AMOT048.mp3