It’s November! And the Christmas decorations are already going up! What the hell is wrong with people?! It’s a dead horse joke at this point, but I refuse to let anyone think that this is normal…
In terms of art, not much to say this week; the Fifth Ace Showcase may still be a while in coming due to outside factors, but I might start throwing up some filler art here and there if I have to. If I can’t get to the stories, I can at least draw stuff that is fun to look at. I’m not going to dwell on this lest I sound like a broken record, so let me talk about something else that happened this past week.
Last Friday, my fiance and I scored a couple of free tickets for the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, in exchange for her dressing up in her Foxy animatronic outfit and doing some on-site advertising before the show. As always, she was a huge hit, frightened the pants off several people and got quite a few photo ops in the process; I had a massive smile on my face watching from the sidelines as she was in her element, it’s always a joy to see. The movie itself was a lot of fun; I can’t really judge it as a horror movie, since they aren’t my preferred genre of film, but it was filled with references and easter eggs for the fans of the games, which I count myself among even if I’ll never play one of them myself (Let’s Plays and lore videos are more my speed). Horror in general isn’t something I usually gravitate towards, which made the whole experience very unique for me.
One of the big things that I’ve noticed changing through the years is the level of audience engagement in the cinema. Growing up, I was always told to quietly enjoy the movie and not interrupt anyone else’s experience; there would be the occasional group laugh at something funny and maybe some applause at the end, but that was about it. I know cinemas tend to get more rowdy in some other countries, but it’s not something that usually happens here; this is something that seems to have evolved over time. I saw it first when I watched Avengers: Endgame on the opening weekend; the cinema was packed, and every big reveal and dramatic moment was accompanied by cheers and screams, and some of them I freely participated in (you can’t blame me for whooping out loud when Captain America picked up that hammer). I figured, “Okay, that’s to be expected, it’s a story that’s been building for twenty three films, of course people will be excited.” But it’s something I noticed in FNAF as well, and I don’t think I can put it all down to fan excitement; there were certainly people laughing and cheering for fun references and cameos, but there’s something overall different about watching a horror movie in the cinema.
There’s that stereotype of people watching horror films and yelling advice to the characters on screen, all the “don’t go in there!” or “don’t touch that, nonono!” going on as they stumble into the deathtraps. Guess what? Stereotypes exist for a reason: that actually happens. I was so worried that we might be making too much noise, or speaking over other people’s experience, but it’s actually sort of expected in that setting; literally everyone was doing it, because part of the experience was the freedom to do so. We all know something terrible is going to happen to the characters, we can feel the tension building and we see the deathtrap looming, and by vocalising it, we connect with everyone else feeling the same thing. Watching a horror movie in the cinema is a surprisingly community-minded process, which I didn’t expect at all; whenever I notice easter eggs in a movie, I tend to chuckle quietly to myself and roll with it, but in a horror movie, if you don’t wince and go “ooooooooh!” out loud in unison when someone gets bitten in half by a murderous animatronic, you’re doing it wrong. I doubt that this will turn me into a horror-aficionado, but I had a good time; again, I don’t know how to judge FNAF as a horror film, but as a fan experience, it was a lot of fun.
That’s all I really have for this one; our D&D game that was set for tomorrow got pushed back a week, so I’m going to keep brainstorming characters for that; for some reason, all the ones I’ve been coming up with have low intelligence scores. Maybe I’m just tired of trying to be smart in-game, let me be a doofus for a change.
Ciao for now.