No Dark Ages: Surprise Power Outage

This was a picture I took of lighting a brand new candle in the dark, one I had planned to use for meditation. I took another photo of the candle in the light, when the power came back on. It brought me to mind of all the children's shows that claim that one can entertain in the dark, and find things to do when there is no power. Those shows emphasized the value of one's imagination.

Our neighbors next door have been building a new house, ideally to sell on the real estate market. They asked my mom in December if they could build a wall instead of a fence, and if they could take down our fence. She thought it was just going to be a small matter and agreed. If we had known what would ensue, she would have stood her ground and refused. As it turns out, they not only took down the fence without batting an eye, but also cut off our yard water, our Internet and phone for a couple of hours, and a few square feet off our property. Each time these incidents happened, my mom filed a report with the neighborhood committee, since they were quite a nuisance. The foreman seemed genuinely apologetic, but one incident after another occurred despite the apologies and our dwindling patience. We hoped the Internet would be an indicator that we wouldn't accept such nuisances.

Image source:https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TJSzuXsaGBI/hqdefault.jpg

A few weeks ago, while I was driving to a job interview in the morning, I got a phone call form my mom. It was nine in the morning, and the power was out in our house. She couldn't make coffee, or my younger brother's breakfast. Fortunately we had extra coffee in the fridge, and we had a propane stove for hurricane emergencies. She was able to make him breakfast, and heat up his lunch.

Thinking it was a power outage caused by the recent cold front, I called an FPL repairman, who came about six hours later, two hours after I arrived home. FPL is Florida Power and Light. The repairman had to call four more trucks, and they worked for about two hours to get a temporary cable up. That's right: temporary. No power outage had occurred. The construction workers next door had cut through our power lines while digging a trench for a wall. Such repairs would take at least two weeks, and in the meantime we have a long cable snaking around one side of the yard that covers our power. The foreman next door apologized, again, and he promised that the repair costs would be covered by them, but my mom and I don't trust him. This was the fourth time that such an incident had happened, all because my mom gave permission for them to build a wall on the property line.

This was the other photo I took, of when the lights came back on

Not having power for a day is awful in this day and age, not just because we lose the "entertainment" that comes from television and video games, but also because you lose the electricity needed for cooking, maintaining the house, and running the schedule. My younger brother has severe allergies, so my mom has to cook all of his food from scratch; cooking on a propane stove was more laborious for her given it's smaller than our electric stove and could have burned her. I wouldn't be able to send our my stories to magazines, share them with friends, or email my resume to potential recruiters. We had to cancel a cleaning service that was supposed to come and put off evening activities such as running laps around the driveway. Because of the cable, we cannot mow our lawn and have to take care not to step on it or drove on it. A power outage from a storm is one thing; that sort of event has a risk of happening. A neighbor cutting off your power and not realizing until you leave a voicemail detailing the situation could have taken more care.

I am certainly more appreciate of power in my life after every outage, because it's a necessity for our household. Certainly I have learned from this that when someone tries to make a cagey deal and starts creating disturbances to face them head on and refuse to accept their nonsense. My mom deserved better than this.

Image source: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4061/4573678142_4b0aa216ce_z.jpg

Trips to the Museum: A Slice of Nostalgia

Happy New Year, everyone!I hope that you all had a wonderful end to 2015, and we start with 2016 on a fresh note.

On a Sunday in the fall, a Miami institution closed its old building. A new building for the Miami Museum of Science has been undergoing construction downtown, taking place as a giant dome and a large aquarium. The Wildlife Center is still going to rescue injured birds, an important necessity, but we who live about thirty minutes away will not be able to visit the large white buildings next to Vizcaya except for "pop-up events". We're not sure if we can park in the huge lot either.

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Coco_Grove_FL_MoSaSTP04.jpg

I have many fond memories of the Museum of Science. As a kid I attended the summer camp for several years, trying out many activities; at the camp I discovered that I loved the stage and performing, and that sailing is a nightmare for someone like me that fears boats capsizing. Before I went to camp there, my elementary school class went on a field trip, complete with a terrifying demonstration of electricity and how a current can pass through the human body.

The exhibits were also quite memorable: one year the main corridor had animatronic dinosaurs, which included a bunch of carnivorous dinosaurs feeding on a live herbivore, and another year they had live snapping turtles that showed off their beaks if you wiggled your fingers. One show featured a giant animatronic sloth behind a curtain, and a time machine; another displayed stage magic and great escapes. You could see videos of boys receiving heart surgery, climb a plastic rock wall that was relatively easy, and go head-to-head with a VR basketball player and try to break the record of baskets shot. Often a lot of kids would stand in line for the last one and don the glove; I enjoyed that exhibit a lot.

These weren't the same turtles, but you still don't want to put your fingers near your mouths.

 The summer camps also helped me to refine what I liked and didn't like. As mentioned before, sailing sessions were a nightmare for someone that prefers for a boat to not go vertical and has a phobia of drowning, but writing film scripts and seeing your words acted out brought a wonderful story. Criminology showed us how to dust for fingerprints with talcum powder, long before talcum powder was determined a health hazard, and photography involved hours in a darkroom showing how precisely one could render images in black and white, including dead fish. We also took long walks around the neighborhood to nearby Alice Wainwright Park, where we learned how to identify poison oak and various banyans.

The Museum was also the last place where I did singing and dancing on stage on a regular basis, as well as stage magic. One of the benefits of summer camp was that if you signed up for musical theater one week, you couldn't be cut out of the show; you got a part, even if you were a stage extra, and you had fun with it. When I entered middle and high school, however, I learned the hard way that if you wanted to earn a part onstage, you had to be taking drama classes and attend auditions regularly. You couldn't participate in a play for the fun of it, or to get better. That was sobering, though I still adore musical theater and kept up choir for the next seven years. At the same time, I kept writing, and attended screenwriting classes in undergrad, which gave me lots of practice with the cinema.

 The museum also emphasizes another important point, both in the camps and in the exhibits: science can be fun. More importantly, nature can be fun if you learn how to find the adventure in it. My parents still recall that I knew more animal facts than most kids my age. These days, I know more about author's lives and writing techniques, but at the time dogs, elephants and endangered species were my passion.

The older I got, the less I remembered how fun science could be. I forgot how fun science could be when studying it academically, given that you have to memorize facts and processes,compete to get proper college credit, and survive numerous exams. It got to the point where I switched my major twice in college because the environmental science and biology programs didn't suit my interests and I had no idea what I would do with the degree. Rewatching shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Magic Schoolbus briefly reminded me of that potential path, but I think I prefer the museum approach in learning for the sake of learning.

When I was younger I had a phobia of snakes. These days I find the knowledge fascinating.

We last went to the museum about a year ago, in the spring of 2015. Plenty of new exhibits replaced the old ones: there were displays on Hurricane Andrew and how storm chasers go after natural disasters to measure them, a functional beehive that connected to a garden near the Raptor Rescue, and a three-dimensional printer in the museum's computer lab. A larger archaeological exhibit replaced the medical videos and the VR game with basketball players. The only things that remained the same were the Raptor Rescue, with the various owls that have been loaned for Carl Hiaasen movies and the planetarium, with a show about the myth of Perseus. The show revealed that, far from putting the adults to sleep, that it could show humor through animation of a hero armed with a sword and a tennis racket.

When we got to the Museum next time, it will be downtown, in a larger facility. We passed by the construction site and saw the planetarium and globe structures. The commute will be longer, and the parking possibly more difficult, but the facilities will be updated and the aquarium will have more space. Science will still be fun there, for me and for a new generation.

My first 3D printer up close.

Farewell, old Miami Museum of Science. I wish you well in your new home, though I hope that I don't lose memories of the good, fun, and wild times.

A Christmas Special for A Generation: Nostalgic Thoughts on Elmo Saves Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone! We may not have chestnuts roasting on a fire here in Miami, and the Charlie Brown Christmas special has already aired, but the date is upon us. People are happier despite the crowded stores, and the radio has started to play classic carols. Thus it feels fitting to dive into some nostalgia into what I think about the holiday, regarding a classic PBS show that has been on the air for more than forty years.

Image source: http://assets.fontsinuse.com/static/use-media-items/25/24455/full-1412x1433/56701c58/sesamestreetchristmas.jpeg?resolution=0

A lot of changes have come to Sesame Street over the past few years. The original puppeteer for the Count, Jerry Nelson, passed away, and the actress Sonia Manzano, who plays FixIt repair-woman Maria, has decided to leave the show, and HBO has recently purchased the Sesame Street franchise, slashing the episode times from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. These changes may be for the best, but at the moment they feel murky and stab at my heart. I didn't lear n everything I knew from Sesame Street, but I learned quite a bit. I remember learning a sobering lesson about Christmas from the show, via a rather unusual holiday special.

Elmo Saves Christmas was a special that aired for a few years during the late 1990s, when Christmas in Miami means the sun shining on the green grass for a couple of days before blasting cold would come in. Kevin Clash was still performing for Elmo, and gave the character's voice an endearing scratchiness that sounded monster-like. Another special has since replaced it, so that you can only find several of the songs online. It featured Maya Angelou narrating how Elmo, after rescuing Santa from a stuck chimney, received a snowglobe that can grant three wishes. Elmo decides to wish that it were Christmas every day, so that everyone will be happy all the time.

Image source: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060311195440/muppet/images/0/09/Elmo_Saves_Christmas-_Holiday_Favorites_(CD).jpeg


At the time, such a wish didn't sound like a bad idea. Christmas to me simply meant one day of the year when one could receive presents, enjoy good weather, and bask in a warm glow of holiday cheer. Santa during the special then sends Elmo out with a time-traveling reindeer, to show him what happens if Christmas happens every day, keeping people out of school, out of work, unable to send mail, and obligated to buy presents. Elmo's friends seem fine in the spring, slowly start to stress during the summer, and completely crack by winter. Having a holiday everyday nibbles away at the novelty, until what's left is a hollow shell of a celebration.

The special did a good job in not hammering in the message that "Christmas every day is bad" and instead reflecting the childlike naivety. In fact, several characters, like Santa's elves, point out that Santa shares part of the blame in giving a childlike Muppet such power, and imply that similar disasters have emerged from other users of the wish-granting snow globe. Santa seems to admit this in part, especially when his morose song "Everyday Can't Be Christmas" doesn't convince Elmo at first, and he has a rather alarmed expression when Elmo uses his first wish to request a glass of water. He also takes the time to come to Sesame Street, warn Elmo, and give him a way to see what will happen. When Elmo gets a second chance to choose either the snow-globe or an ordinary toy at the special's conclusion, he chooses the ordinary toy but Santa offers him something far more extraordinary that won't cause temporal anomalies. Many questions arise from the fact that despite having given the snow-globe before, he hasn't thought to take it out of production, and one wonders what the previous gift recipients did with their wishes.

Image source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgDlMHEuQZ0/hqdefault.jpg

The other important thing about this special was that it showed rather than told the consequences, and used concrete imagery to convey these devastating actions. As mentioned in my previous Christmas post, it irked me in Mickey's Christmas Carol how it hammered so much at Scrooge being a miser would condemn him, so that you couldn't sit back and enjoy thirty minutes of animation. In contrast, Sesame Street knew how children thought, that is with visuals instead of words. Elmo can't comprehend consequences in the long term that emerge from too much of a good thing, especially when everyone appears happy on hearing the news. Neither could the viewers at the time, including myself, who came along for the ride. I was quite shocked to see Sesame Street as deserted, and not even Grover trying to sell Christmas trees could add enough humor to quell the blow.

The third thing was that this special showed one Muppet making a series of mistakes, and despite the increasing consequences manages to amend for them. Elmo wishing for Christmas every day is somewhat forgivable, again because he is a child with a childlike mentality. He makes the mistake of not taking Santa's concern seriously, which is again understandable since he cannot visualize the consequences that the man in the red suit brings. The farther Elmo travels into the future, however, the more he realizes that people aren't happy, especially his friends and loved one, but he keeps going forward, hoping that "real Christmas" will recapture the joy that he meant to spread across the year. His final mistake in what happens when he realizes that he has a way to undo Christmas everyday-- with his last wish-- and takes too long to do so, instead of fixing the problem straightaway.  Despite those mistakes, Elmo finds a way to undo his wish, and save everyone from constant holidays.

Image source: http://cdn.madman.com.au/images/screenshots/screenshot_2_1112.jpg
 For those reasons, I do hope that Sesame Street starts airing Elmo Saves Christmas again, with its memorable songs that can make one laugh and also sober up instantly. It isn't often that we have a Christmas special with such mood swings and strong plot to show the consequences of our actions, It's A Wonderful Life notwithstanding, and makes us feel like little kids again. For the moment, as we all do with Christmas, I'll keep the hour-long special with me through the year, with my memories of childhood Sesame Street.

 Image source: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/6/6b/ESCKeep.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121222025729

Undertale's Moral Dilemma: Love and Experience

 During finals,  while writing two take-homes, I came across a playthrough of the game Undertale. The game made for some interesting white noise as I typed discussions on topics on international business and marketing. The game stirred a lot of feelings in me -- anxiety, anticipation, heartbreak, and disbelief. What stirred the biggest disbelief is that people would consider being cruel in it.

Undertale follows the adventures of a child that falls into an underground world full of monsters and human remains. Monsters tend to hunt down humans out of fear, and the player character has to decide if they want to fight back or attempt to spare their attackers. One can either be a pacifist, a self-defending neutral character, or a serial murderer. A heartbreaking past haunts your playthrough, and all your past actions come into play if you decide to reset.

 

Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/664/22406836197_e8219bc729_o_d.jpg

I had previously seen Undertale fanart of Sans, Papyrus and Frisk on my Tumblr, mainly involving bad puns and shipping with the game's goat-mom, Toriel. Aside from some character designs, I had no idea what the game was about. I started watching Markiplier's playthrough, got scared by Flowey, and started reading up on the details, including who the characters were. Then I started editing the Undertale page on TVTropes. The game gripped me, to the point where I wished that our class case studies involved the game since I could justify my disorganized thoughts. Obsession with the game's potential for violence grabbed me, especially as I watched the true pacifist run and dramatic boss fights.

Unlike most games, Undertale asks how much responsibility a player character has for taking another life. In a traditional game like Super Mario Bros., you have to kill the tortoises and Goombas because otherwise they will kill you, and in an RPG, as Flowey callously puts it, "It's kill or be killed". You have a choice to spare the monsters, and to even hear them out. On a Pacifist Run one can bond with all the characters, the way Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender or Wander from Wander Over Yonder does. You get to make them happy, to cheer up sad ghosts and imbue shy scientists with confidence about their crushes. You get to comfort those who believe they're beyond comforting. Markiplier during his run asks, "Why would anyone want to kill these monsters? They're cute!"

Image source: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5691/22963006849_899560c75b_z_d.jpg

That question makes me agonize over the more violent runs of the game. The genocide run is the run where you, the player character, decide to kill all the monsters, regardless of their threat level, and its existence freaks me out. Cuteness of the monsters aside, by logic you get a happier ending if you don't fight.

Why does it scare me? First, the fact that the game assumes that a player would be that callous. As mentioned before, one could technically do a similar run in Pokemon, counter-intuitive as it would be to make every wild Pokemon faint and not capture any, but the game wouldn't call you out for it, any more than Minecraft would call you out for hunting down digital spiders and octopi. Jacksepticeye as of now is doing a genocide run, undoing the happy ending he's provided for his characters, since his viewers have requested such a thing. I cannot believe that so many people would ask that, to disassociate from these three-dimensional characters that have to fight tooth and nail for their happiness.

The ghost on the right is always sad but you can cheer him up.

Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/621/23302619036_259bcbe8dc_z_d.jpg
Second, the acknowledgement that players can be so violent calls too much to the real world. I prefer to play games and read stories that have an escapist sense, where we can be someone else and while we might learn something like history, mathematics, character development or logic -- I grew up on edutainment gaming like Jump Start and Carmen Sandiego-- we don't get severe wake up calls or tragic endings. Oftentimes the player has to resort to violence out of necessity, say in Minecraft if archers shoot and zombies walk, but in edutainment games the worst that one could do was blow up an asteroid aimed at a satellite, or feed a hungry plant monster a chemical sedative. When I read the news, actions have consequences. Our hateful words echo across the Internet and television far more strongly than our positive words do, and our more extreme sentiments can lead to massive tragedies. Children often suffer in the crossfire, and people often reduce victims to statements, or to blemishes on a seemingly perfect landscape. Seeing these attitudes reflected in a fantasy world, where we have more free agency to act as a human being, for better or for worse, hits too close to home.

Third, the varying endings that resort from the player characters' choices unsettle me, in their degree of happiness or tragedy. Most of the edutainment games that I played, unless they were for kindergarten for first grade, had a very linear progression, in that one has to complete a set of activities to get the rest of the story and cannot deviate from the set path. When you have critical choices in a game, as you do in life, choices become paralyzing, more so when one sees the consequences of bad ones. Undertale's player character if he or she wants to progress cannot stay with goat-mom Toriel and eat butterscotch pie with her, any more than one can stay in Mettaton's hotel or in the Temmie village. Yet to go forward comes with its risks, of defying Toriel to leave her, of finding yourself with monster blood on your hands, or dust as it were. You can either break a lot of hearts, or kill a lot of monsters.

When you want a scene to break your heart . . .

 Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/762/23080868053_f2a402a280_z_d.jpg

Undertale is phenomenal  and yet devastating in how it asks gamers, atypical or not, to shed typical gaming behavior. A game had to ask those questions at some point, at what a person would do if they have the option to play without fighting. I hope that if I do play a game, however, that watching a Pacifist run will not hinder me from diving into a new world, to gain  more experience.

"But I Don't Want to Say Goodbye to Gravity Falls"

I have to confess something: I'm a huge Gravity Falls fan. Gravity Falls is a traditionally animated show on the Disney Channel about two twins, Dipper and Mabel, who spend the summer with their charlatan great-uncle and discover strange creatures in his tourist trap town. At first starting with slice of life episodes, in which the twins encounter ghosts, gnomes, mermaids, and even a cherub, the series has taken a darker turn with new characters in the second season. Currently the season two finale has been taking place over second episodes, in which the show's world has turned upside down.

Several weeks ago the show creator, Alex Hirsch has announced that after the season two finale, Gravity Falls will end. Within the show, summer will come to an end, and Dipper and Mabel Pines will have grown up. This came as a shock, as the season finale has pretty much destroyed the world so far and pushed the main characters to their limits, raising the physical and emotional stakes. We have a vast amount of questions that require answers, as well as multiple unresolved plot-lines. Hirsch has three episodes to handle a vast amount of material, while not telling us how the world will change from a near apocalypse.

 Image source: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3697/11764975265_92a79e4354_z_d.jpg

Before Gravity Falls, the best Disney show on the air was Phineas and Ferb. While the show is brilliant with the references and storytelling, it relies on a rather straightforward and almost predictable formula. In addition, it operates on strange logic at times, has animation that at one point is lampooned as MC Escher-derived and romanticizes the notion that one can do so much during summer and winter vacation. The format feels very limited, and the best characters were the ones who didn't speak. It takes one a long while to get used to that show, and to its zany sense of adventure.

When it comes to animated shows, Disney's Golden Age from the 1990s spoiled me; the humor and fluid animation from shows like Chip 'N Dale, DuckTales, Darkwing Duck, Bonkers, and others had me accept high standards for their successors. A new show would have to wow me with an awesome opening or preview. I caught one or two episodes of Gravity Falls, and they seemed to be heavy-handed in telling morals: don't change an aspect of yourself just because others are making fun of it, and don't cheat at mini-golf even if your opponent is nasty.

Image source: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2849/9000760849_4d2e385e0b_z_d.jpg

Then I saw the season one finale; it won me over with an epic fight scene and important character development. Tumblr also screen-capped some of the show's best moments, including a deconstruction of the "friend zone". I started to watch more season two episodes, including one that hit very close to home for someone with an introverted personality, and I started watching episodes on the days that they premiered. Slowly, with each standalone story-line, I got into the show, and started working out to it. A few fanfiction pieces are even saved on my digital clouds.

When the first big hiatus ended in the spring, Gravity Falls no longer became a weird slice of life series with a big mystery; it became a large tragedy. The episode that changed this dynamic, "A Tale of Two Stans," introduced a character who understands how the weird Gravity Falls logic works, and has even found possible explanations for it. We also see a family torn apart, a sobering reality in this day and age, and fears of the past repeating itself with future generations. This character has made the world of Gravity Falls bigger, more complicated, more fascinating, and more dangerous. He talks about the future, or the lack of one.

Image source: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2815/9000750181_03cdf7643b_z_d.jpg

With all of that material, that emotional investment, that fanbase that can be delightfully divisive when debating over the main characters' selfishness or morality, just how can we say goodbye? It feels like we've only gotten started. A lot of Chekhov's Guns have gone unused, and the characters have to figure out how they've changed now that the world has ended.  Yet we have to accept that the story ends with summer, and with quite a few ramifications. 

Good shows do have endings; Avatar's two series had wonderful finales. The fact that Alex Hirsch announced this right as season two is ending, however, feels like a shot to the heart. It would have been one thing if he had told us at the season premiere, so that we could brace ourselves to say goodbye, the way we prepare to say goodbye when a dear friend or family member moves away. Instead we have gotten the announcement that a friend has to leave on an emergency red eye, and we can't even see him off at the airport.

Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/549/18859415488_fa603d8d9e_z_d.jpg

With that said, I cannot thank Alex Hirsch enough for the ride. He restored my faith in the Disney animation block, so that I've discovered other shows like Wander Over Yonder and Star Vs. the Forces of Evil. He wrote a good story, and one that has been rewarding thus far. Thank you for your imagination, brains, and willingness to relive childhood.

Brief Thanksgiving Post

Image source: https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1022/5189263412_fe6342191f_z_d.jpg


Happy Thanksgiving! Just wanted to make a quick list of all the things I'm grateful for:

1) My family coming into town and cooking for the holiday. Looking forward to a Indian-style version of a Thanskgiving meal!

2) The lovely November weather. We got a cold front in on Sunday.

3) Having the week off to relax, catch up on schoolwork and job work.

4) Having one of the best summer internships ever, working for a corporation with high values. 

5) All my beta readers, those who read the rough drafts in progress and gently guide me towards revisions.

6) All the editors who allow me to revise, and who believe a story can be bigger.

7) Silvia Moreno-Garcia for publishing "The Opera Singer" this year.

8) Everyone who has purchased a copy of Carousel, my first novella.

9) Soundtrack playlists that help me write.

10) Having a stack of library books to read, and the card renewed.

Image source: https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8198/8204914127_50f3a2ba0e_z_d.jpg

Nanowrimo Start (Or Lack Thereof) and The Loose Threads Peeve

I hope that everyone had a good start to November, which started with All Saints Day or Dia de los Muertos for those who have Mexican roots or have seen The Book of Life. It’s Nanowrimo season, but I’m taking a long story break due to having worked on a ten thousand word short story for an anthology. I’ll be plotting out works this month and writing on themes, so that when winter break rolls around I can hit the ground running by writing.

Last year, in August,  I saw an article about the Rock A Fire Animatronics, a robot band that used to perform in Chuck E Cheese franchises but had moved on to perform as a solo act in Orlando. Then I confused the article with some posts I had seen on a place called “Freddy's Pizzeria”, and googled Five Nights at Freddy's. That was stupid.

Image source: http://images.gameskinny.com/gameskinny/548e083ed4f62a16810595a27096da6a.jpg

Five Nights At Freddy’s is a game that features a fictional pizzeria, though a lot of people have claimed that it reminds them of Chuck E. Cheese. It's also a horror game where you play a security guard trapped in a room, having to keep the doors closed against walking, haunted animatronics, but you probably know all this, since it’s become quite the online phenomenon. I made the mistake of watching the trailer at night, and reading up on the gameplay. I was scared of the dark for several months, up until I saw Markiplier playing the game and was able to laugh at his frustration.

Five Nights has since become a multi-game franchise that has sparked a rather controversial and excited fanbase, with the creator Scott Cawthon having released four in total plus a Halloween edition of the fourth game, and even some talk about it becoming a movie. Each succeeding game seemed to add a bit more to the story, making the animatronics seem more tragic than monstrous while showing the utmost cruelty and kindness of human beings. Then Game Four came out, which undid the satisfaction that the viewers got from the third game, and left us with a few ambiguous situations and even more unanswered questions, turning what had seemed like an ostensible “happy” ending into a tragic beginning.

Image source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7794/17491422135_a4fbe31a6e_z_d.jpg

This past Fall 2015, Scott has revealed that he knows all the answers to the questions he has kept under wraps, that he plans to make no more games in that original storyline, and that his latest game will be a different story entirely. In addition, he showed a locked box that supposedly held the answers to the game, and told us he wasn’t going to open it. This felt like a huge middle finger to the fans, and to the people like me who weren’t diehard fans but were nonetheless lured in like innocent insects to a sticky mosquito trap.

A Five Nights at Freddy’s clone ended, or rather disappeared, in a similar fashion. Five Nights at Treasure Island took the same game mechanic setup and transplanted it to the Bahamas, at the abandoned Disney World resort “Treasure Island”, complete with haunted Mickey, Donald, and Goofy “suits” plus several unknown figures. After two demos, one of which merged several Disney Creepypastas, the game creator and his successors decided to pull the plug on the project. Five Nights at Treasure Island is on indefinite hiatus, with none of their questions answered either.

Image source: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/five-nights-at-treasure-island/images/8/80/A_message_by_anart1996-d89mmcq.png/revision/latest?cb=20141220122523

Why do I find these actions frustrating? Because the games triggered in me a fear of the dark, but their story helped to alleviate it; I was able to focus on the backstory that fueled the tragedies that had occurred before and during the games. We got the Purple Man, a monstrous human whose true features we never saw, and we saw the fate that befell him when karma caught up to him. Then we see another heinous crime occur, without his involvement on screen, and the viewer becomes unsatisfied. We never see what happens to that perpetrator, and we can’t even place the event on a definitive timeline. Five Nights at Treasure Island is just as bad because while we may have some opinions on how Disney’s business executives skirt across lines and ethical boundaries, the supernatural mystery is quite alluring, more so that if you know that Treasure Island is real, albeit not haunted.

I would call these endings “cliffhangers” precisely because they leave the sensation of what the original cliffhanger, as Charles Dickens put it, must have felt like to the readers either listening to an epic saga, but at least cliffhangers are typically resolved. Instead we have loose threads to two different stories that provoke obsessions, with the creators deliberately withholding the answers. It’s one thing if the creators plan to create a huge reveal in the story, the way Alex Hirsch has done with multiple plotlines in his show Gravity Falls or J.K. Rowling did with Harry Potter, but it’s quite another if he or she plans to never tell that tale. The reader deserves some common courtesy when the creator promises to add more to the story with each installment.

Image source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Perilsofpauline.jpg

If you’re going to write a story with multiple parts, with each succeeding part building on the previous one, you have to promise to answer most of the questions that you set out in a long work. Not answering these questions will lead to frustrated readers, and they will let you know if you missed a spot. Deliberately and openly withholding the stories will provoke anger from the fans, since they have devoted their time to reading. Speaking as a reader and a writer who has been on both sides of the equation, with stories that have made people ask questions and I’ve frustrated them by not answering them, I understand that answering the big questions is the important part. Writers and readers exchange words, and those words must have a current of common courtesy. I know that if I make that mistake, my lovely beta readers will let me know and express their frustration openly.

On that note, I am going to resume my storytelling break and return to detailing themes for the month, and story plotting. For those doing Nanowrimo, good luck and I hope that you meet your 50,000 word goal!