On Survival Horror And Spicy Food

Let me ask you a question: Do you like spicy foods?

A lot of people love that kind of stuff, and will eat it up at any culinary opportunity. Bury their barbecue with buffalo sauce, sprinkle some sriracha on their sweet potatoes, confidently chew on a Carolina Reaper. Good for them, I say, enjoy your bold spicy flavor. I, on the other hand, have a low spice tolerance and can hardly muster anything hotter than a spicy Dorito. I remember a few months back, I was on a vacation with family and we went out for dinner on Friday night to a sports bar and grill. I ordered a nice burger with a side of sweet potato fries, but one family member went and ordered some extra spicy wings. When I asked him how in the world he could eat such spicy stuff, he said that it really wasn't that bad, like a 2 out of 10, and that I should try one. So I did. 

I made it one bite in before going "oh fuck no" and spending the next 10 minutes nursing my mouth burn with iced tea. That shit was so hot that a little got on the corner of my mouth and actively burned there too. It was not a pleasant time. Later, just to prove that this man's spice tolerance ratings scale is off the charts compared to my own, he showed off his 10 million Scoville scale lollipop and took a taste. He was relatively fine, just saying it kind of tasted like shit. That terrifies me. On the other hand, spice didn't make the night a total bust: my sweet potato fries came with a side of spicy mayo, and that stuff was actually quite pleasant. Its creaminess with a little teensy kick made for a nice flavor contrast with the sweetness of the fries. 

Let me ask you another question: Do you like survival horror games?

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: May 2023 Trip Report

(TW: brief discussion of actual murder, suicide)

You know the drill by now, I hope. Another month done, and another handful of cinematic hors d'oeuvres with eclectic tastes and vibes for my sampling and horizon-broadening. Where were we? Ah yes, last month we went on a little silent kick, ending off with a bit of gothic horror in black and white. That was wild, but what can we follow that up with? Let's find out.

The Impossible Dream Of A Walking Fire (Twin Peaks: Part 4) [Twin Peaks: The Return]

(Before we begin, a quick little bit of self-promotion. I was a guest on Whowatch 16, with my friend Sean Dillon and his friend David Mann, to talk about the latter half of Series 8 of Doctor Who. You know, Peter Capaldi's first and where I got my start on Doctor Who critique. These two let me talk about Clara Oswald for an Amount Of Time, and I enjoyed the discussion with them and hope you do too. Now, then. Let's finish this journey.)

So far, 2023 on the blog has been a completely unexpected surprise of creativity and invigoration for me. I honestly thought I'd be recapping musical anime and talking about anxiety and my own inferiority complex. We very well might do some form of that someday, but instead a beautiful thing happened. I encountered Twin Peaks, and my inability to write about it in a way that explained it forced me into a new and exciting form of writing, a form that I love. I found my brevity again, and found a new and better way to talk about media. As I write this, it's the 6th of April. I'm currently a little under the weather, which is annoying because I want to bang this entire thing out, but I must take a slow recovery from this cold and pace myself carefully. I at least want to bang out the intro here, while I have enough energy. 

2023 is a quarter of the way through, and what I am about to tell you may very well be the lynchpin of it for my creative era on the blog. It echoes back to what I wrote before, and echoes forward to what I will write after we put Twin Peaks to bed in this (probably massive) blog post. Let me set the stage for you. Let me tell you a story. I already told you, in part 1 of this impromptu project, how I became aware of Twin Peaks. How I found a secret diary and read it, and how that later got me to tape a TV airing of Fire Walk With Me. I know I taped it, but remember very little of it beyond that. The tape was lost to time, probably taped over long since. Ah well. I forged new memories of the show, the diary, and the movie. I moved on to pace out the gap between Fire Walk With Me and The Return with more of David Lynch's filmography. During that time, other things happened beyond me watching movies. Sometimes you can't just sit on your butt to watch movies or write about them. Sometimes you have to do errands.

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: April 2023 Trip Report

Welcome back, my friends, to the cinema which never ends! It's the Criterion Challenge and it is April, which means it's time to start another month of cinematic adventure. Last time was a bit of an eclectic selection, so let's see what April can have in store for us. We left off on the quite moving and depressing Mishima, a film which I could have said more about if I hadn't been miserable with a cold at the time. Well, no more cold, so now I can afford to be a little more detailed as we dive into our next film... and let's.

From The Secret Vaults: Frezno Ranks The Mainline Metroid Games

Hiya. So, I have a lot of stuff that I need to be writing about. Unfortunately, I spent almost a week on vacation in the city and managed to come back with a cold that kicked my ass for the better part of a week, so progress has been slow on that. The post on Twin Peaks: The Return is coming, but there's a lot to talk about and I need to be at full strength to talk about it. Another funny thing happened on my vacation. A secret members-only forum, which had existed for 19 years and I'd been a part of for 15 of them, unexpectedly shut down. It's real end of an era stuff, and a little part of my internal landscape that I mourn, but so it goes. Then, just this morning, I remembered a thing I did on that forum. In late September 2021, just before the release of Metroid Dread, I made a thread and ranked every mainline Metroid game. I always meant to archive and repost that ranking here sometime, but the timing never worked out. Well, now that the forum is about to erode to dust, I suppose it's now or never. The style of writing is a little different than usual. Not only are we looking at words from my past self of late 2021, but it's being written on a completely different forum. The way I carry myself in writing may feel a little different, and there's some justifying for myself in a way that I probably wouldn't do if I just wrote this on the blog originally. Metroid Dread was also brand new when I wrote what I wrote about it, after all the other entries on the list, and I'd only beaten it one time. I also spoil the shit out of it, so if you've not gotten to it in that year and a half, be wary. I've still only beaten it one time, so keep all that in mind. Alright. Take it away, past me.

Frezno's Criterion Challenge: March 2023 Trip Report

Sorry this was late, I was out of town when the month ended. I also have a cold, so before I flop back onto the couch as a sniffling mess... Welcome back to the third iteration of this thing, in which I watch a bunch of movies for the Criterion Challenge. Last time was... Well, it really ended on a dour and depressing note. Not that I don't mind getting real sometimes, but it has to be said that last film was a real downer. We might hit more of those in March, but the beauty of picking from 40-odd movies is that you can set the tone as you please. So, to kick off another month of the Criterion Challenge, it's a palate cleanser as we begin with...

You Should Buy Shadow Of The Gallifreyan, Book One

This is going to be a short one, so short in fact that I'm actually just typing it up in Blogger as opposed to my word editing suite of choice. I will keep things quick and to the point: Altrix Books has just released Shadow of the Gallifreyan, Book One and I am suggesting that you spend your money on a copy. Before I give my reasons why, what is this book? This is a Doctor Who flash fiction anthology book, featuring something like 170 very short stories (we're talking within the realm of 1000 words here) focusing on supporting characters in the Doctor Who universe, and how they and their lives and worlds were affected by the titular time traveller. They run the gamut from historical figures, to ordinary humans, to aliens and all other sorts of beings all across time and space. Even with such a small canvas of just a few words, the authors of these stories flesh out the answer to the hypothetical "what happens next for these people, after the Doctor Who story ends?" in brilliant and creative ways.

Here are just a few reasons why you should buy a copy of this book, if you have any interest in the blue phone box franchise. First of all, it's a charity project. All sales of the book will go to Shelter, a UK charity focused on giving aid to homeless children. Already that's a good cause, and worth your money. This book will be making a real difference to people, and it genuinely warms my heart to think of that. In addition to that, of the 65 authors with stories in this book, some of them happen to be very good friends of mine who share a love of Doctor Who. Critics and authors like Christa Mactire, Sean Dillon, and Brent O'Shea are in this book, and it's enriched by their voices. This is not to diminish the other authors in this book, but I know the three I've mentioned and am very happy to see their work represented in the book. Of course I'm going to recommend supporting a book like this with my friends in it, but that's not the whole story. Of the remaining 62 authors who have collaborated for the book, there's a very special one in particular who I am asking you to support by getting a copy. Who is this mystery author who I'd like you to support? 

It's me.

That's right, all. I have been sitting on this news for a year and a half, and now that the book has been released I can shout it from the rooftops. I, Frezno Inferno, have two stories in this anthology! My words are in this book! I wrote "The Praesidium vs. Sirius Conglomerate" and "Revolution Day", and they're in the published book right now and you can read them. The past year and a half has been a hazy dream, from Altrix Books accepting my pitches to me writing the stories to them coming back with minor edits and me incorporating them into the second draft... to here, where they've been published! My work's been published, in the company of both friends and critics who I respect and 60 other incredibly talented authors whose stories I enjoyed reading, and all of it for a charity cause making a real material difference in the world. I couldn't be happier sitting here thinking about it. It's a dream come true, and with full disclosure I humbly ask that you not only support Shelter, my author friends, and 61 other authors in this book... but me, the raving ranter with a dream that became reality.

You can find all the info and purchasing links here, on the Altrix Books blog post announcing the anthology. So, please. For the homeless kids of the UK, for the talented authors I both know and don't know... and for me. Buy a copy of this book.