I’m not a fan of Horror Comedies, mainly because most of them come from a place of contempt and distain for the genre. Club Dread, I think, is a fine example of the subgenre, as is Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Bloodbath at the House of Death, however, is not. Outside the giggle of hearing Vincent Price curse, there’s nothing about it I found funny. In fact I left it more than a little irritated. Not Scary Movie irritated–oh God why did I watch that film–but irritated.
Bear in mind it’s been decades since I watched it. Closest I’ve come to a revisit is watching the scene the above image is from. Price’s speech there is amusing.
That said, this flick does have a special place in my heart. I watched it in my early days of film watching and, as stated, didn’t care for it at all. I thus came up with one of Cullen’s Bad Movie Rules: If you’re watching a film for a particular actor and that actor’s character dies, it’s okay to stop watching the flick.
The next movie I rented after Bloodbath at the House of Death?
Howling 2.
I spent the last half of that flick going, “Christopher Lee’s character is dead now, right? They’re going to find his corpse any minute now. Any minute. Now. Right?”
Of course, had I stopped watching I’d have never seen the music video at the end of the flick, and that would have been a loss.
Some deaths are a wee bit too important to me to let pass by. Gerry Conway’s is one of them.
From creating characters like the Punisher and Jason Todd (the second Robin in Batman) to writing stories such as The Night Gwen Stacy Died (which I hate), Conway has had an undeniable influence on the comics scene. He has also had an effect in a more mobile medium, like being one of the writers on the classic Sword and Sorcery flick Fire & Ice. Much of what I read and enjoyed about Spider-man he had a hand in.
That is not why I have to mention his passing.
The true reason is that he created Power Girl. And for some reason she’s my favorite Super Heroine.
Just… just not for the reasons you think. Really.
Anyways. Sad tidings. Conway, like Lee, Ditko, and Kirby, will live on through his works.
Out of curiosity, I went out to find just how many Kickstarters I’ve backed.
Turns out seven. Here they are in order, with how they turned out for me:
Surprise! Four Secret Novels by Brandon Sanderson: I spent forty bucks on four E-Books and got them! Complete Success!
Armed Fantasia & Penny Blood: I spent ¥11,000.00/$80ish. These are video games done by two different companies. I was to get both digitally. There have been problems. Armed Fantasia seems to be getting towards the finish line. Penny Blood… not so much. The former is what I was really pulling for, so not too disappointed. Hope the Penny Blood guys can turn things around, but not expecting them to at this point.
Choose Cthulhu – Solitaire Gamebooks by Steve Jackson Games: I spent $48 on some good sized books. All are PDFs based on actual works of H. P. Lovecraft. Got them all. Haven’t read them all, but got them. Well done stuff. Complete Success!
Acquisitions Incorporated: The Series 2: A video series of people playing a RPG. Typical Cullen purchase. $26 spent. Might have the promised free novella. They seem to be having problems, too. These are the breaks.
Advanced Fighting Fantasy – Adventure Creation System: I spent £22.00/$29ish on rules to play Advanced Fighting Fantasy, a game I have, solo. I can’t make hide nor hare of anything while reading it. Must be getting old. Still, Complete Success!
Runa – turn-based fantasy game inspired by JRPG classics: Now these guys… these guys seem to have their act together. €45/$53ish and the game should come out this year. Constant updates. Very nice. Very professional.
Peasant: These are the guys that failed me. €35/$40ish down the drain. Some murmuring about it being a honest to goodness scam. Yikers! Failed, Failed, Failed.
So 3/7 out and out success, 2.5/7 still in the running (counting Penny Blood out, sorry guys), and 1.5/7 a disappointment. That doesn’t strike me as too bad.
One more year under the belt, and again, very little to show for it. Blogging ain’t the art it used to be, and with AI it’s only getting worse.
But this should be a place for me to practice said art.
So let’s change things up.
Every day (ish) I intend to look up a Writing Prompt. It could be from WordPress’s offerings. It could be me asking Grok or such like for an idea. It could be from one of the Writing Prompt Books I have. Any where, anything. I’ll take it and write let’s say 8,000 words.
Who knows. Maybe I’ll even get better at writing.
It’ll definitely make this more of a writing journal.
Posting two days in a row? I know, who would have thought it?
Anyways.
Yesterday I had a notion. I’d give some various AI programs the various prompt–Anime image of a yandere–and see what it came up with. The AI programs I chose for this experiment were ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Bing AI Creations and WordPress’s own AI.
Now for those who don’t know what a yandere is, it’s a form of anime character. Always female, always in love, and always crazier than a sh*t house rat. The image should look something like the following:
They seems nice.
Anyways, here are the results, from worst to best.
Microsoft Bing AI Creations
I think someone didn’t understand the assignment.
Grok
In fairness, I had to work to get the picture this good. Grok seemed to think I wanted Goth. One of the pictures it gave me wasn’t even anime.
Outside of that, not bad.
Speaking of fairness, when Microsoft Bing AI Creations wants to do it’s job, it does the best Anime slop.
WordPress
I went through two tries, because the first one was so close, but really not on the money.
This is closer to the crazy look the character should have. Really fine.
ChatGPT
Now remember, the prompt said, and I quote “Anime image of a yandere”. Nothing about a weapon, or blood. Just the character type.
That’s dead on perfect.
I’ve found I like Microsoft Bing AI Creations’ anime images the best. When, of course, it deigns to give me an anime image. ChatGPT, though (and to a degree Grok) give me what I want with fewer issues.
Anyways, very interesting. Might be worth doing again next year, see if there’s improvements.
So, anyone got a guess what Microsoft Bing AI Creations was thinking when it made its image?
[Note: The header image is AI generated by this site.]
Everything is probably a cheap answer, but it’s true. I enjoy the thinking about what to convey. I enjoy seeing black letters mar white background until the thoughts become words, the words sentences, the sentences paragraphs, and the paragraphs completed works. I enjoy editing, improving until I get it right. I enjoy reading what I’ve wrote, more if there’s been space between the process and the reading. I enjoy other people’s opinions of what I wrote.
Writing when I finish off an essay, a review, a story, and so on is the best.
I really should do it more often. Especially with this blog….
I discovered today something shocking. This classic and ever so important post has not been restored to this site after the reboot. As you can see, I’ve strove to correct this gross state of affairs by reposting it now. I have also planned an equally important and vital follow-up for, say, tomorrow. Or so.
I’d heard of “symmetrical docking” before. Even seen an example of it. Such as this, below:
I thought I’d post this image a second time, but after drawing arrows to fully describe the “symmetrical docking”. So everyone could see and understand just where I was coming from. Maybe even blow up the proper section of the image. Deleting everything else. Save the “symmetrical docking”. And the arrows.
Then I remembered I wasn’t thirteen.
Really. This has been a problem of late.
In essence, symmetrical docking describes two anime females (or just plain ole females) standing so close that their boobs are smooshed together. As above.
Aren’t you glad you now know this? Isn’t your life more fulfilled?
Maybe if you’re thirteen…
Knowing the term, I began wondering just where it came from.
Because I’m that way.
The quickest to do this, I felt, was heading over to TV Trope. What with it being a veritable fount of useless knowledge, I figured I’d find it’s page in no time.
Actually it took a little more than that, but this silly little essay is already almost 200 words long, and that’s about 200x longer than it should be. To summarize, here’s what I learned, via this quote:
A phrase commonly used to describe a picture of two girls standing so close together their breasts are squished against each other. Originated from a Super Robot Wars Alpha 2Yonkoma [4 panel comic] where, instead of showing Cho Ryu Jin’s [a giant robot’s] Symmetrical Docking Transformation Sequence, a picture of original characters (with huge breasts) Kushua Mizuha and Seolla Schweitzer are shown in [said] position.
Which looks like this:
It’s the “squish” onomatopoeia in the second panel that really sells this strip.
Anyways, that’s what I learned today. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Or a few cells of memory in your head that you’ll never use for important facts.
Honestly, I don’t see why I should be the only one to suffer.
Since rebooting this blog (a process, I must say, that has been much simpler than rebooting the Sister Site) I have notice a few old standby posts that have fallen to the wayside. One of which is the The Hell… ?!, in which I rant about the crazy things I have seen or have happen to me. I’ve done only two of them since starting over.
Perhaps this is understandable. I was so much younger and slightly (very slightly) less handsome back when I started things here at Welltun Cares Presents. Not a lot shocks and outrages me any more. I may even have become jaded.
Other things that have dropped away are less understandable. For instance, ranting about how stupid Green Arrow is. This never grows old for me. As well as it shouldn’t, as it’s an ever fresh topic. Everyone should rant about how stupid Green Arrow is. At length. With passion.
It’s shocking more people don’t.
WHAAAA?!
In between these two points of obvious understanding and bewildering disbelief sits a third topic: My love for the comic book character Power Girl.
Talking about her wasn’t necessarily a big part of this blog. It’s not like I’m her biggest fan, after all. I have no action figures. I own one collection of her comics, which, I should add, was given to me as a birthday present. While I know a healthy chunk about her history, I can’t point to individual stories featuring her. In fact, calling myself a fan might not be wholly accurate. I might just like the concept.
That said, unlike with the The Hell… ?! series, where I debated not rebooting, I always considered going back to the Other Maid from Krypton. My problem was that for a while there was so very little new pictures going around. It seemed like DC was avoiding using the character.
Looking at the character over to the right, I can see two reasons why this might be. These days it seems the bigger the reasons, the less likely the character is used. And that’s a damn shame, considering how “tolerant” the world is supposedly getting with diversity.
Today, though, Constant Reader henrybrennan has solved two problems for me. He’s given me another The Hell… !? post AND a blessed reason to talk about Power Girl.
I give you this headline.
Really.
Really.
Let’s look at the new costume.
Now let’s look at the classic Power Girl costume again:
Huh.
Huh.
Now let’s look at Supergirl.
And again, Classic Power Girl.
And, again, that new costume.
Yeeeeeeeeyeah. Not really anything different there, is there?
Portrait of a man on the verge of losing a finger. Among other things.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s probably the best costume… oh God, as I’m typing this, I realized something. They’ve recently changed Power Girl’s secret identify to Paige, and I didn’t get why until just now. It was originally Karen, and now Karen has a nasty stigma to it.
Wow am I dense.
Anyway, nice costume. Not sure about the face, as it doesn’t seem to capture the attitude Power Girl has been known to have (should be more like the right, frankly). Though I do like it.
What I can’t see is how it’s any different a change from what she’s been known to wear. The character was already quite distinctive. And not just because of the usual two reasons.
I dunno. Maybe it’s me. Maybe if I was a paid journalist, I could see how the new costume does anything the old costume doesn’t.
Or, as I have admitted, I am dense. Maybe that’s it. Maybe if I studied both characters really hard, maybe then I’ll see and know better.
Yes! Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. An in depth analysis of the two characters.
So. The Winnie the Pooh slasher movie made enough money for a sequel. BUT! The Banana Splits horror movie did not. What does that tell us? Beside the fact that some people are so desperate for ideas they’ll try anything?
The Writer Journal (and So Much More!) of Cullen M. M. Waters
