Our Dream Home

I don’t know what sub-genre of thriller Our Dream Home, Room 21, and Her Last Christmas fall into, but they have a formula. The female protagonist is a bit of a bitch with some sort of mental illness or disability. At some point, she tells the reader how she likes to read books on her Kindle. The book ends with her happy, single, complicit in a murder, and prestigious.

Also, every single person in the book is unlikeable. Then again, it’s not outside the norm that I hate everyone adult novels have to offer. The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling, for example, had a large ensemble cast, and I hated everyone. Is this really what adults like to read?

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about Our Dream Home by Jessica Huntley in particular. My most distinguishable thought requires jumping straight to the end where the protagonist Fiona magically inherits a multi-million dollar company and smothers her husband after her son beat in his skull with a replica of Thor’s hammer (remember, this is a Jessica Huntley novel). Fiona then ties her hair back like a boss with a plan, and the book ends. What the hell is she going to do with her dead husband’s body? What is the implication? Is she going to pull a Breaking Bad and dissolve it in acid? Nothing in the book has established that. Nothing in the book established she was capable of running a multi-million dollar company competently either. Fuck it. She’s a strong, independent woman. Ridiculous.

Heroes (Seasons 1-4)

My mom and I had a tradition of watching serial, supernatural dramas together, beginning with Heroes, which originally aired starting in 2006, and proceeding to Manifest, God Friended Me, and Evil. We watched the first three seasons of Heroes, and by the end, the plot had become so convoluted that we no longer understood what was happening.

Heroes, however, remained a major source of inspiration for me. I liked the idea of an ensemble cast of seemingly disconnected characters becoming entangled from a common cause. In 2009, I wrote the first draft of my novel Twelve’s Design from the perspective of twelve characters, who steadily become entwined in paranormal happenings. Previously, this novel had been two novellas, one about an alien abductee and one about a psychic in a mental hospital. The multi-perspective style melded them into an oddly more coherent whole that fed all my desires for experimenting with storytelling and writing. Many things have changed about Twelve’s Design over the years, but the Heroes ensemble-cast-style that inspired its storytelling method has remained.

I forgot how inspirational Heroes was at some point though. I forgot it was the piece of media that inspired Twelve’s Design’s ensemble-cast style, although I knew it had been inspired by something. Maybe it was The Casual Vacancy, that ensemble cast J. K. Rowling novel that otherwise I hated? Maybe it was Manifest or God Friended Me? The timeline didn’t quite fit. Maybe it was nothing in particular.

So when I saw Heroes available on Netflix recently, I took the opportunity to revisit it. I remembered really liking it. I remembered my mom and I had stopped watching it at some point due to its loss of coherence. I wondered if it genuinely became incoherent or if it was trying to tell a complicated story to a distracted audience over dozens of weeks. It turned out, it may have inspired Twelve’s Design in more ways than one… and Season 3 is genuinely incoherent.

Genesis (S1 E1)

I thought it was odd that a prostitute would call her clients perverts. What job do you think you applied for, lady? But then she explained herself as a desperate, somewhat single mom, and it was fine.

My god. This ensemble-cast style and the superhuman abilities has Twelve’s Design inspiration written all over it.

Don’t Look Back (S1 E2)

Claire, the cheerleader is adopted and has regenerative capabilities. That doesn’t exactly match any character in Twelve’s Design today, but it’s close enough that I can 100% believe Claire is in their DNA.

Also, it’s a good thing Claire has regenerative capabilities. She has glass bones and paper skin. She also receives very few consequences for crashing a guy’s car into a wall and punching a girl unconscious. Maybe she’s also immune to prosecution.

Unexpected (S1 E16)

Dr. Suresh and Sylar go to Bozeman, MT!

Four Months Later (S2 E1)

I remembered the whole first season was about “save the cheerleader, save the world” and how that somehow connected to stopping a nuke from exploding in New York. What happens in Season 2?

Because of her regenerative capabilities, Claire argues that she should reveal her abilities in order to donate her organs. Is this where I got the idea for people with regenerative capacities revolutionizing medicine by donating their organs in Twelve’s Design?

The Line (S2 E6)

This Hiro side plot feels like a cheap sci-fi movie that takes place in the woods. The characters have to do everything in the woods because the production can’t afford ancient Japanese architecture.

The Second Coming (S3 E1)

At the time I watched it, the ending of Season 2 seemed rushed and didn’t feel finished before Season 3 started. Among other inciteful incidents, future Peter randomly decides to shoot past Nathan. Sylar cuts Claire’s head off. And did Maya completely stop caring about her dead brother?

In preparation for writing this post, however, I scanned the Heroes Wikipedia for facts. In retrospect, it makes so much sense why the transition between these seasons felt rushed! It turns out, Season 2 happened during the WGA writers’ strike. The second half of the season was canceled, so the start of Season 3 was reshot to quickly tie up all the loose ends.

The Eclipse – Part II (S3 E11)

This eclipse has lasted hours! Across the world!

Was Noah just watching Sylar having sex until he finally decided to shoot him? For a cripple who’s been running around with superhuman speed for months until this eclipse took her powers away, and even for this eclipse lasting hours, Daphne found those leg braces and put them on very fast. Sylar has changed alliances like three times today. And when did Peter stop caring about the Irish girl he met at the beginning of Season 2?

Our Father (S3 E12)

Claire became severely ill and almost died in apparently the multiple hours that the eclipse existed. She was also shot. For how accident prone she is, once again, it’s a good thing she usually has regenerative abilities, or she’d just die immediately.

Claire: You weren’t there. I needed you.
Noah (her dad): There was something I had to do.
Me: He had to slit a man’s throat!

Dual (E3 E13)

Sylar has now changed allegiances like five times in the past day.

Shades of Gray (S3 E19)

I don’t think I’ve seen Season 4 before. My mom and I gave up during some season back when I first watched Heroes. I can believe it was Season 3 because that was awful.

…Wait, never mind. I remember Sylar’s teenage sidekick.

…WAIT, IT’S STILL SEASON 3!? WTF IS THIS NEW PLOT WHERE EVERYONE IS NOW BEING HUNTED!?

Turn and Face the Strange (S3 E22)

Well, of course Matt didn’t kill Jakob’s girlfriend. He didn’t have to. He already made her hate Jakob, so they’re as good as broken up. He’s had his revenge.

Orientation (S4 E1)

Okay. For real, none of this looks familiar.

Is this really how college works? You go to college and then take a test to determine what math class you’re in? Shouldn’t that be determined before the school year starts? Did the writers go to college? What kind of upper-floor dorm room has large, side-hung windows? This is a murder, suicide, or accident waiting to happen.

Ink (S4 E3)

The scenes that take place in Japan are so cheesy that I wonder if the production hired a Japanese studio and director to film them exactly as they would a Japanese drama. Japanese TV is extremely cheesy. Perhaps it merely inspired the production, which is also cool.

Acceptance (S4 E4)

Claire in college makes me oddly nostalgic for college even though nothing particularly good happened to me there. I didn’t make friends. I was quite miserable. It was simpler though. There was routine and interesting things to learn and focus on. I had to do laundry occasionally, but otherwise, there wasn’t cooking, cleaning, animals and plants to take care of, house projects to do, outings and invitations to consider, etc. Also, the University of Montana’s Food Zoo was great!

More relevant to this particular episode, however, lesbian kiss scene. Heroes is going woke in 2009!

Upon This Rock (S4 E13)

This season has been so much more coherent than Season 3. In retrospect, it makes sense. Season 3 had to handle the consequences of thirteen missing episodes from Season 2 while also trying to do whatever it had planned. Season 4 returned to Heroes’ roots of character-driven, ensemble cast storytelling.

Sylar being forced to carry Nathan’s memories, wear his appearance, believe he is Nathan, and live Nathan’s life is also interesting.

The Wall (S4 E18)

Matt trapped his enemy Sylar in a mental hell in his basement and was in the midst of sealing Sylar behind hand laid brick when his ally Peter burst into his house and got trapped in mental hell with Sylar. Matt was very upset about this… so he finished laying the brick and decided to make a sandwich?

Brave New World (S4 E19)

The series ended hinting that more was to come but also fittingly with Claire revealing the existence of people with superhuman abilities to the world.

Wildwood (2026)

Yes, the stop motion animation for Wildwood is indeed as impressive as everyone on YouTube and TikTok says! People spent months animating feathers and leaves flapping in the breeze! I spent a good part of the movie trying to figure out how they animated the murders of crows and flocks of birds.

It was unexpectedly funny, too, and not in an over exaggerated or goofy way.

“Did you just dry heave at me?”

(both swims in and eats from a bowl of venison stew) “Did you want some?”
(cringes) “No, thanks. I… stood in some food earlier.”

“I must be dreaming!”
(slaps her) “Does that feel like a dream?”

I was also oddly impressed by the realism of the baby’s voice throughout the movie. It sounds like someone painstakingly recorded a baby making all kinds of baby sounds to edit into the movie. For a while, I also thought the movie’s mascot rat was voiced by Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist, but alas, it was only Awkwafina.

The final battle scene was also very impressive, but it did contain a moment that completely pulled me out of the story, kind of for the rest of the movie. Tougher farmers, bandits, and coyotes fight most of the battle, but the protagonist Prue and her sidekick Curtis also weave in and out of the action. Prue pursues her baby brother, and Curtis helps fight where he can. In the course of his adventure, Curtis has befriended the mascot rat, who dies in the course of the final battle. The rat death scene is for everyone in the audience who has had a pet rat… BUT Prue has absolutely no reason to witness it! It should have been Curtis’ special moment while Prue was off saving her brother! She didn’t even know who the rat was! Somehow amidst all the action and her own goal, she sees this death happen and stops everything she’s doing to show the audience her sad face.

This somewhat inappropriate moment also drew attention to Prue and Curtis’ relationship, which in the end, felt forced. Prue straight up abandoned Curtis in the middle of the movie! She had evidence her baby brother was dead, not that Curtis was dead! The two of them had mostly separate adventures, so the awkward relationship they had at the start of the movie had little opportunity to grow closer believably.

In response to her praise at the end of the movie, Curtis tells Prue humbly that he didn’t do anything. Prue disagrees and tells him proudly that he did a lot… Well, he might be right that he didn’t do anything. He injected himself into Prue’s adventure to save her brother and had his own mostly inconsequential side quest. Maybe he warmed the bandits toward listening to her plea to fight the final battle, but she had “chosen one” vibes by the time she met them anyway. He introduced the audience to a lot of lore about the world, but he had little purpose in the story to be there. Even if I consider all this “doing a lot,” Prue wasn’t around to witness most of it and has no business telling him that.

Curtis’ apparent lack of purpose made me wonder what his role was supposed to be. If the baby didn’t exist and Prue’s mission was to save Curtis, his role might have made more sense. Curtis could have spent the movie in the witch’s custody while learning about the world and enlisting the bandits to help Prue free him. As it is, the baby has no agency to free itself and its lack of comprehension doesn’t make it a great character for the audience to learn about the world through. Curtis fulfills this role, but he’s not the baby. He’s a redundant, lackluster Prue, who doesn’t care about saving the baby as much as she does.

My analyzing the weaknesses in its story and character development aside, it was a good movie! I liked it a lot.

Room 21

It was obvious that Emily was Kimberley’s mom… except it turned out that she wasn’t her mom. Because nothing in this type of sensationalist thriller is as it seems. Nothing. Even when the alternative twist is insane borderline nonsense.

What attracted me to Room 21 was the name of the author Jessica Huntley. I could imagine what one of my high school friends would be doing today if she still went by “Jessica Huntley” and had become a writer of lurid thrillers. I’ve listened to several of Jessica Huntley’s books now, and I can say she’s batshit crazy.

The protagonist of Room 21 Kimberley is hired as a housekeeper at a rural hotel that serves a particular type of clientele: the family and friends of rich, incestuous murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. Her employer Jennifer argues that it’s safer for society that such criminals work out their desires within the hotel’s walls with the specialty services it offers. Despite knowing all this, Kimberley isn’t trusted with the terrible secret held in Room 21.

Two narrators narrate the book from the perspectives of Kimberley, Jennifer, and a younger, seemingly unknown character. The narrator for Jennifer and the younger character does a good job. I didn’t recognize her as the same person the first time I listened to the book. The younger character describes her time as a pregnant prisoner in a mysterious room. While her situation is desperate, her pathetic-ness and tendency to refer to her baby as “my bump” (or “my bum” as I misheard at first) also makes her sound slightly unhinged. And with good reason.

It turns out Room 21 holds the real Jennifer because the person posing as Jennifer is actually Emily, the unknown character but older and a rape victim turned prisoner of the hotel turned housekeeper turned mastermind doppelganger. With Kimberley’s help, Emily plans to kill everyone in the hotel. Jennifer is also Kimberley’s sister, revealing Kimberly as a relative of this heinous family. Is the secret within Room 21 horrifying to anyone except Kimberley? What was in Room 21 before Emily locked Jennifer in there and stole her identity? Emily hasn’t been impersonating Jennifer for that long, but the staff treat the room like it’s existed for ages. None of them knew their real employer was in there?

Throughout the book, we’re lead to believe that Emily is Kimberley’s mother. Kimberley’s father’s brother has also been Kimberley’s doctor for the past twenty years and giving her drugs that led her to believe she had severe epilepsy and asthma just because he could. Among the last reveals of the book, however, is that a completely unrelated woman Rachel Evans is actually Kimberley’s mother, and Kimberley’s real father was killed in a car crash. The real rape child was hidden somewhere else out in the world by one of the hotel staff.

Still, after helping to murder everyone in the hotel, Kimberley decides to continue working there as a housekeeper. Under the new management of Kimberley and Emily, the hotel becomes a home for victims of rape and murder. And Room 21 becomes a torture chamber for victims to exact their revenge against their attackers.

Yep.

The moral of the story is rich people are evil. Jeffrey Epsteins and worse, all of them!

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson (Seasons 1-3)

My experience with sketch comedy is pretty much Chris Farley and Dave Chappelle skits from decades ago, so I don’t know how much my opinion counts when I say I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson is awful. I watched it because a colleague recommended it, and I’m willing to try new things. In rating it out of five stars, I give it zero for failing as a comedy to be funny.

I Think You Should Leave features cringe comedy. “What if this person who’s obnoxious in this way existed and never stopped being obnoxious?” As my colleague described it, the characters in the skit are basically told without words, “I think you should leave.” There’s also a lot of poop jokes. Apparently, I find this less funny that a fat guy flailing about or a black guy humping a couch.

Still, a couple moments did make me laugh or otherwise intrigued me.

Has This Ever Happened To You? (S1 E1)

Host: “While the judges make their decision, let’s watch our In Memoriam segment.”
Narrator: “…Shirley Cratsworth Shane, 78: car crash.”
Judge: (in disgust) “In memoriams typically don’t include how they died.”
Narrator: “…Little Jeffery Jeremy, 96: throat slashed.”

They Have a Cake Shop There Susan Where the Cakes Look Just Stunning. (S2 E2)

In one skit, Tim Robinson wears a button up shirt where the whole shirt is a still from the 3D pipe screensaver included with Windows 95/2000/XP computers. Holy crap! What an amazing shirt!

Also, the actor for Saul from Breaking Bad appears!

I Can Do Whatever I Want. (S3 E2)

“How long is your ponytail?”
“I just took a picture last night. Here. Take my phone. Look at my photos.”
“It’s all screenshots of cigars.”

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope

The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of interactive horror dramas, each featuring a handful of characters. Players interact with the story through making choices that affect its outcome and which characters survive, reacting to quick time events, moving characters from scene to scene, and exploring the world to unlock additional details or outcomes. Little Hope is the second installment in the series. The latest installment is Directive 8020.

I’ve played Little Hope two and half times. The first was in Movie Night mode with a group of friends. In this co-op mode, two or more players select which characters they want to play as the start of the game and pass the controller accordingly as the story unfolds and the perspective character switches. We played Little Hope shortly after its release in 2020, so I can’t remember exactly, but during my most recent playthrough, I imagined we passed the controller quite a bit during a couple of the fight and chase scenes.

My second playthrough was on PS4. I played it while a friend watched, and we didn’t finish it. We attempted to leave the creepy building where a phone without a cord rang for our characters when the game crashed, and we couldn’t proceed any further. It turned out my PS4 had shut off while in the middle of downloading and installing the game. Still, Dark Pictures games have a reputation of being a little janky. My friend group and I have played them all and have never forgiven The Devil in Me for failing to show a quick time event prompt, resulting in the death of one of our characters. By the time I realized the problem with my Little Hope installation, the friend I was playing for and I had tried so many times to get past the problem doorway where the game crashed that we were wary of trying again.

Until about three years later. This time, I bought the game for PC. Steam didn’t fail me in downloading and installing it properly. The only strangeness is Dark Pictures games on Steam come with a “Friend’s Pass.” This is a second complete installation of the game that automatically downloads and installs alongside the main game installation. For a month after the games initially released, this version could somehow be used by a friend without the game to play with a friend who owned the game in online co-op mode for free. This promotional period expired years ago, but this non-functional addition continues to be included by default.

Still, my friend and I were able to play through the whole game this time. Unfortunately, I played most of it with mouse and keyboard controls. Until then, I’d played all Dark Pictures games on PlayStation. The mouse and keyboard experience is awful. I’d think the mouse would control the camera. It doesn’t. WSAD moved the characters as expected, but I had no control over the camera or flashlight. This frequently resulted in me walking aimlessly into a dark abyss or shin-high bushes I couldn’t see. I also killed Taylor accidently by failing to click exactly in a quick time prompt. By the way, Taylor looks like she has the same base character model as Eisele from Directive 8020. Taylor, however, is a bitch, and Eisele is merely a busybody. Both of them also look like me. O.O

Anyway, about three-fourths of the way into the game, I finally connected my PS5 controller to my PC and played the rest that way. Finally, I could move the camera and aim the flashlight! What a revelation! My friend and I will play House of Ashes on PC next, and needless to say, I will use a controller for the whole game.

Most of Little Hope’s story centers on a handful of creative writing students and their teacher determining if a creepy little girl is the source of evil happenings in the present town of Little Hope and in visions they all share, seemingly of a witch hunt in the distant past town of Little Hope. This distant past Little Hope mirrors a not so distant past Little Hope in which a creepy little girl apparently burned down her house, killing herself and her entire family except for one brother. Adding to the mystery, the present-day characters all have doppelgangers in the distant past and not so distant past versions of Little Hope.

It turns out all three stories take place from the perspective of the house fire survivor. The witch hunt and present day hallucinations represent him reconciling whether his little sister was responsible for the fire. It makes me wonder whether the distant past Little Hope was entirely fabricated or whether the protagonist saw fliers about the town’s witch hunts and proceeded to project his inner turmoil onto real-world people and events.

The story is intriguing and works for the most part. The characters have a tendency to swing wildly between proclaiming the little girl guilty and being uncertain about her though, perhaps because of the choices I made. I remembered from my first playthrough that my friends and I decided the little girl needed to be shown sympathy to get a decent ending, and I acted accordingly on my most recent playthrough. Apparently, forcing all the characters to sympathize with this little girl was the correct choice. One of the character’s Angela told me so, proclaiming the girl innocent and the town priest murderous, despite having little evidence to support such a conclusion. Sure, lady. Hilariously, I also had one of the characters John drink a glass of strong alcohol and then criticize the character who gave it to him not to drink so much.

It’s also kind of weird that the protagonist imagined his brother and sister as being in a relationship. O.o

Speed Racer (2008)

A few years after wrapping The Matrix trilogy, the Wachowskis directed the live action adaptation of the Speed Racer anime. My local theater recently played it for a limited showing, I believe to celebrate the re-release of the movie in 4K. This local theater showing was the first time I’d seen the movie or heard anything about it.

Speed Racer has colorful set designs, exaggerated hairstyles and clothing, and saturated visual effects as if the live-action actors were placed in a cartoon. This cartoon aesthetic was great. Everyone being obsessed with car racing was also great. Even the main character’s name was literally Speed Racer.

The pacing and chaotic video editing style sometimes reminded me of Elysium, but Speed Racer made it clear that this chaos was intentional. The scene demonstrating this best was also great. In it, Speed becomes demoralized as he listens to the antagonist tell him that racing is rigged according to the sponsors. Interspersed with this dramatic conversation are cutaways to Speed’s brother Spritle and their chimpanzee Chim-Chim having a comedic side adventure. It felt like a mockery of ensemble-cast TV shows that cut between multiple, parallel storylines. Speed Racer‘s parody featured only a relatively short, dramatic, continuous moment split into multiple parts by a relatively long, comedic, time-skipping side adventure for no reason! It was so weird, so bizarre, but also so good!

Overall, it was a fun movie.

Retaliation

Usually when I listen to a new mind.in.a.box album, at least one song makes me immediately think, “This is awesome!” My favorites from albums and associated singles look something like this:

  • Lost Alone (2004)
    • Light & Dark
    • Change
  • Dreamweb (2005)
    • Certainty
    • Beyond the World
  • Crossroads (2007)
    • Into the Night
    • Fear
    • One Day
  • R.E.T.R.O. (2010)
    • Whatever Mattered
    • 8 Bits (8.6 Bits Mix)
  • Revelations (2012)
    • Control
  • Memories (2015)
    • Timelessness
  • Broken Legacies (2017)
    • Overwrite
    • World of Promises
  • Black and White (2023)
    • It’s So Good to See You
    • Insurrectionist
    • Just Like You Always Wanted
    • Fire and Lace

I didn’t have that experience with Retaliation though. In fact, when I got to the end of the album, I was mostly confused by what I had heard. Something about every song bothered or bemused me. I did not expect retro synthwave, which made me think of 80s music memes.

I picked out the same drumbeat underplaying multiple songs. Vocal choruses made me think of Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World.” “This song is cheesy as hell,” I thought at some times. “This song is beating me over the head with conservative talking points,” I thought at others. Sometimes I wondered if I was merely repelled by the female singer or occasional high-energy trance music, both of which I rarely listen to and sometimes find irritating. Some songs felt lyrically dense and couldn’t be enjoyed without understanding them.

Still, I knew what I had listened to was conceptually fascinating. Even after more than twenty years of making music and thirteen previous albums, this was unlike any music Stefan Poiss had produced before. He’d never had a backup singer before (aside from one line in Black and White and a couple collaborations with Ray Koefoed). He’d never sung like this before. “I’ve often wondered whether Stefan Poiss has by now tried every conceivable way to electronically distort his voice,” a review amused me. Apparently, he hadn’t because even Retaliation‘s vocal treatments were unlike any he’d done before.

Despite all the differences, Retaliation also felt like a natural progression of mind.in.a.box’s themes and explorations. I wondered at the end of Black and White what it would be like if the characters in mind.in.a.box’s cyberpunk saga had voices other than Stefan’s to speak through. I was pleased to see this idea come to fruition in Retaliation… although Stefan left it strangely open to interpretation as to whether there is in fact a vocalist besides himself. Unlike Black and White, Stefan doesn’t credit anyone, not even himself, as vocalists in the lyric book. One reviewer speculated that the female vocals are merely an extreme distortion of Stefan’s. The male vocals in “Little Miss Vicious” don’t sound like Stefan’s and yet I can’t fathom why it would be someone else. Stefan’s deep, raw voice often makes an appearance in mind.in.a.box albums, but he’s never sung raw falsetto as he does in Retaliation. Both these points add to the plausibility that Stefan has the capability to distort his voice so much that it becomes convincingly feminine. Meanwhile, Discogs claims that the female vocalist is Elizabeth Hourigan, the same who sang one line in Black and White. Stefan’s secretiveness seems by design as solving the mystery of who the vocalists are adds to the album’s intrigue. Is the male in “Little Miss Vicious” actually a distortion of Elizabeth Hourigan’s voice? O.O Regardless, I feel like I’ve gotten to experience the mind.in.a.box story told through a larger cast, even if Stefan is secretly still playing all the characters.

This answer gave me another question though. Does mind.in.a.box exist without Stefan Poiss’ voice? Were the songs that featured the female vocalist lesser because of Stefan’s loss or diminishment? Considering I spent several months studying and writing articles about everything to do with mind.in.a.box except for Stefan Poiss and the music itself — as if the story, themes, and lyrics were what was most important — I found these particularly interesting questions for me to be asking. Similar questions arose among fans when mind.in.a.box’s Revelations album was released. Stefan’s vocals and vocal treatments in Revelations differed from previous albums after he’d spent two years training his voice for live concerts. The increased presence and strength of his natural singing voice confused and irked some fans. While I enjoyed the experiment with another vocalist in Retaliation, I also admit that I had a similar experience in feeling jarred by the change. Over time, Stefan’s honed natural singing voice has become an integral part of mind.in.a.box’s sound. Similarly, while Retaliation has an extremely different approach to vocals from previous albums, it’s likely that it will also become a natural progression in the band’s sound.

Pervading many of mind.in.a.box’s themes is the concept of minds/people escaping their boxes in various ways. Retaliation defies what mind.in.a.box was known to be, allowing the band and Stefan to escape their own box.

Retaliation is unquestionably disappointing in at least one way though. The previous album Black and White opened with these words from The Friend, an ally of the protagonist Mr. Black:

Don’t you worry. As you know, only those with a free mind can use the device to enter the Dreamweb.

In the final dramatic moment ending Black and White, Black makes a shocking discovery about his nemesis Mr. White:

In the plane of the Dreamweb…
White’s face staring back at me…

After all of my endless struggles,
How can this possibly be?
How can this possibly be?

In most albums, White has appeared obsessive and miserable in his search to attain the Dreamweb as if he doesn’t merely want to control those who have escaped to this alternate reality but has a personal need to reach this place. The ending to Black and White suggests that White’s misery, and apparent death at Black’s hands, has finally led him to a revelation about his life or his actions that frees him to access the Dreamweb. It also tells Black that his black and white thinking is incorrect, and White may not be as evil as he perceived. What did White discover? Indeed, how can this possibly be? And what will happen to the Dreamweb now that White has accessed it?

Retaliation‘s supplementary lyric book story wraps up this cliff hanger quite unsatisfyingly. The Dreamweb remains unchanged. We hear nothing of what happens to White while he’s there. He spends several months transforming into a superhuman cyborg while in a coma and then awakens to spread more war and chaos than his lackies did in his absence. What made White interesting in previous albums is replaced with stereotypical bad guy flair. Additionally, war is about the most boring plot to fill in a science fiction or fantasy story. I’m more interested in character interactions and individual battles than political intrigue and masses of faceless people fighting one another. Unfortunately, Retaliation‘s lyric book story and songs tend more toward relating such faceless battles and anti-authoritarian messaging than any conflicting feelings Black, Night, White, and The Friend may have.

Granted, mind.in.a.box’s story has never been amazing. It’s a minimalistic to middling cyberpunk story elevated by the medium and method through which it’s told. The music has always been most important in mind.in.a.box’s philosophy. Still, Retaliation followed Black and White, which contained some of the strongest storytelling in mind.in.a.box’s history. As someone who loved Black and White‘s integration of story and music, I have to think part of what bothered me about Retaliation was that I expected a continuation of that story and was instead mostly serenaded with war songs. Even for its storytelling innovations, Retaliation also felt like a step backward.

Like the album, the lyric book story isn’t all bothersome though. I was expecting the story to handwave away Black’s escape from White’s office, where he left off at the end of Black and White, and begin sometime afterward. Instead, the story began with Black’s escape, which was really cool. I also enjoyed that Night, a character that has spent little time in the spotlight in any album, had a larger role to play.

Having listened to the album a few times now, I still can’t say that I have a favorite song, although “Little Miss Vicious,” “Greatest Glory,” “We’ll Jump Together,” and “Immunity” are competing. It’s the album I’ve found to be most true to Stefan’s philosophy that music is to be savored, not consumed in a hit of dopamine. Retaliation doesn’t have a hard-hitting song that grabbed me immediately, but I’ve found the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate it and the more enjoyable it becomes.

Resident Evil Requiem

Resident Evil Requiem should have been called Resident Evil Ax. You think the Requiem is the most boss weapon in the game. It isn’t. That ax can block standard attacks, giant plant attacks, etc. all while crushing skulls and beheading zombies. Leon only has to sharpen it once in a while.

The ax is featured heavily in one of the coolest fights in the game: Tyrant. Well-timed ax blocks and dodges are required to evade Tyrant’s attacks, including him throwing cars. The fight is slow and strategic rather than fast paced and spammy.

The motorcycle chase sequence is another great moment, very Final Fantasy VII-esque and CGI Resident Evil-like. It even includes Leon riding his motorcycle up the side of a building. His tendency to crash every vehicle he touches doesn’t plague him in this game.

Additional outrageous action includes zombies with chainsaws, guns, and mortars. The flavor of zombies in this game remember elements from their lives, so they can wield weapons. Leon can also distract them by turning on lights that zombies know should not be on.

Interestingly, Resident Evil Requiem has two playable characters, and the play style differs between them. When playing as Grace, the game is more a survival horror where zombies are to be avoided, and health items and storage space are given sparingly. The number of times players can save is also rationed, and there are no auto saves. Leon’s sections operate more as an action horror where zombies are to be destroyed, and the game saves automatically. Storage space and health can be limited, but they’re more forgiving than Grace’s gameplay. I wonder if it’s a common complaint that players prefer one play style or the other?

If players see a particular ending first, they may be led to believe that the creators are finally forcing an end to Resident Evil sequels by killing Leon, but rest assured, he survives. Just make the right choice next time!