True Fortress Ameritrash Confessions

I always think QPCloudy's avatar looks like Tim Tebow doing a poolside impression of The Shadow.

I spend far more time pimping/improving/organizing my games than actually playing.

I don't understand the hyperbolic praise that the novel Dune gets. I like it well enough, I guess, but I wasn't blown away.

I just let my 9 year-old son watch 3 age-inappropriate AT movies because I did the same thing when I was a child and I thought he could handle it.

I have several OOP AT games that I haven't played yet/much and would like to get to the table (including Space Crusade w/ expansions), but the weekly game group that meets at our FLGS plays mostly Euros and I'm too timid to show up with my AT stuff.

What were the movies, Seb?

/legitimately interested

They were: Alien, Aliens, and Predator. I kept the mood light during the chestburster scene in Alien; I explained how the actress who screamed when she was hit by the blood was legitimately freaked out because she had no idea it was going to happen, etc. He was scared during the movie but not overly so, I kept a close eye on him since I was using the movie as a barometer to see if I'd let him watch Aliens.

He wasn't disturbed at all by Aliens and I think it was his favorite of the three.

The only thing I censored was muting the dirty jokes in Predator. I didn't feel like trying to explain to my son the concept of vaginal acoustics as it pertains to joke-telling. FWIW, we watched the first half hour and got interrupted and had to start it up again, and he specifically requested to rewatch the scene where Billy finds Hopper & company's skinned bodies.

SebastianBludd wrote: They were: Alien, Aliens, and Predator.

Alien seems like it would be the toughest one. I remember when it came out on VHS and all the adults in the house were sitting down to watch it and I had to go to bed. I was probably about 8 or so (it came out in theaters when I was 6 or 7 so I'm guessing here). I begged and begged my dad to let me watch it. I had heard about it from the older kids and really wanted to see this thing. My Dad tried to convince me that I would get too scared, that I would get nightmares, I swore upside down and sideways that that would never happen. I was a big boy and I'd be fine.

So he agreed... whoooppppeeee!!!!

They put the movie on, I sit down next to Dad, the movie starts. I see some people in space suits, a giant alien statue like thing, and then the title comes on the screen. Just that word: "Alien" in green letters.

I just about shit my pants and ran upstairs to my room. Explaining as I ran away "Yeah, I'm actually pretty tired guys, maybe I'll watch it later, good night."

I could still hear them laughing downstairs as I tossed and turned. Nothing even happened, the mood was just so well done that I was immediately terrified.

ubarose wrote: This is really dumb, but I feel hurt when I find out that F:ATies were at a Con I was at, and they found other F:ATies and played games with them, but they didn't take a moment to identify themselves to me and say hello, especially when I stopped by their table to say hello to the F:ATies I knew or recognized, or they were sitting just a table or two over from me. I know it is totally self centered, but I always feel like I'm pretty identifiable as I'm usually the only short, ginger female in the room. I know gamers are subject to tunnel vision when playing, but what do I have do? Wear long white gloves and walk up to every table of potential F:ATies and say "Hello everybody! My name is Shellie Rose. What's yours?"

Don't make me tell my story again!

S.

JonJacob wrote: Alien seems like it would be the toughest one.

Mazian (that's another confession right there: I named my eldest son after a C.J. Cherryh character because we were convinced he was going to be a girl and we didn't even have a boy's name picked out) is a terrible talker during movies. As in, he will miss clues and plot points because he was talking over dialogue that would answer his subsequent questions. It's a constant battle, but I relaxed that rule for these movies for the express purpose of breaking immersion in the hope that his chatter would defuse any of his anxiety.

My 3 older siblings are 8, 10, and 12 years older than I am, so I was just up and exposed to movies I wasn't ready for (it also didn't help that our household was an early adopter of HBO). But my motivation with Mazy wasn't to scar him, it was more that one of my fondest memories growing up was watching Conan the Barbarian for the first time with my father when it was on HBO.

Jesus, Seb, when you said you let your kid watch movies, I was secretly saying to myself, "geez, I hope it's not Alien or Aliens, I watched both WAY before I should have and had nightmares on top of nightmares"

It's so weird, and very American, to hear how the cursing needs to be censored but the absolute insane violence is totally fine. Those are the only times that American culture feels foreign to me.

Aliens is my favourite movie of all time and I think Alien is the scariest or one of the scariest movies of all time. I watched Aliens when I was 12 or 13 and didn't sleep for an entire summer. My dad watched Alien in movie theatres (when it came out in 78/79) and I'm told didn't sleep for two nights. I heard this story when I was a kid and became obsessed with seeing it. No one would let me. Everytime we'd walk into a video store (remember those?!) I'd walk to the sci-fi section (why wasn't it in the horror section??) and look at the back of the box. There was a shot of John Hurt looking into the egg. Because I'm a kid with an active imagination, i had to connect the dots. Whatever the finished image was of that connected imagined design, the result was terrifying. I had no idea what the movie was about. I knew there was a scary smokey green egg on the cover and some dude looking into the egg on that back cover. The front cover also read, "No one in space can hear you scream" and now young Barney, you have to figure out what happens in this movie your mom says you can't watch. Holy shit. I was so, so scared.

Finally when I was 12-13, i talked a babysitter into renting Aliens and man was I scared.

Anyway today's kids are tougher so your kid will hopefully be better off than I was. Him asking to rewatch the scene of the skinned corpses.... I dunno.


JJ's story also happened to me exactly like that but the adults were watching The Howling.

I saw Night of the Living Dead in 1980, when I was 5. I'll never forget it. I was scared shitless, and had nightmares for 10 years.

Fucking awesome.

SebastianBludd wrote: But my motivation with Mazy wasn't to scar him

I hope you don't think I was criticizing. Yes, I was scared from by that Alien experience, but I clearly loved every minute of it. I mean I've told that story for years, that story is over 30 years old now. I tell so much because it was such a memorable experience, in a positive way.

I had real life scary shit happen to me when I was a little kid so movies were always rather tame by comparison. And by scary I mean an actual maniac broke into our house when just me and my sister were home and threatened to kill us. We hid in a closet and called the police (as did a neighbor).

JonJacob wrote: I hope you don't think I was criticizing. Yes, I was scared from by that Alien experience, but I clearly loved every minute of it. I mean I've told that story for years, that story is over 30 years old now. I tell so much because it was such a memorable experience, in a positive way.

I understand you weren't being critical, I was just clarifying so it was understood that it was more about bonding with my son over watching something we both knew he "shouldn't" be watching rather than an attempt to vicariously revisit my childhood traumas.

@Barney: My objection to the jokes in Predator wasn't the language so much as the fact that I didn't want to have to have a sex talk in the middle of a sci-fi/horror movie. Explaining fantasy violence to a 9 year-old is much easier than trying to explain a dirty joke. He heard all of the swearing in all 3 movies and, while he hears the occasional swear word from his parents, he knows where the lines are.

As for the skinned bodies in Predator, I could tell from his reaction that he was revulsed and fascinated at the same time, much as I was when Ponda Baba had his arm cut off in Star Wars or any of the uber-violent stuff happened in Conan. It wasn't a case where he wanted to freeze frame it and make notes and sketches before he went upstairs to torture the cats.

hehe, the cat torture doesn't come until later anyway. You start by lighting insects on fire and go from there.

What's 'fantasy violence' exactly? To me fantasy violence is bloodless and implied. Like one of Daenerys Targaryen's newly hatched dragons burning Pyat Pree and Kraznys mo Nakloz alive. That's fantasy violence. You see a person, then a bunch of fire and maybe some screaming and then no one is there.

Adult males were passing out and vomiting during the first screenings of Alien.

Newt's 9-yr old brother, Timmy, was presumably cocooned just like the rest and could very well have been the kid wearing the running shoe that was juxtiposed from the ceiling. What happened to him? Wait another 15 minutes and we'll show you.

I remember watching Predator with my younger stepbrother and the quick passing shot of Texas who has his torso chunneled totally messed him up. He was a disaster for a week (but he was soft, I have to admit).

I know times are different but is the violence sensitivity of a adult male in the 70s probably nowadays close to a 9-yr old boy in today's society? My little girl is 3 years old and my wife and i often talk about where the limits are and so far, like you, we've mostly been making them on language. Like I can play Call of Duty in front of her as long as I'm not swearing. Nevermind that I'm cutting through digital men and women (who look real enough) like I was cutting through cake. As long as I'm not swearing. No Howard Stern either.

I'm not judging, I'm actually interesting in talking about it and you've gone ahead and made decisions which interest me. That's where I'm coming from, Seb. So don't think I'm attacking or anything, I'm actually really interested.

I wanted my dad to come upstairs and bring me down to watch The Howling with him and his friends drinking beer SO BADLY. Would it have been so bad? I have NO IDEA.

jeb wrote: Will died?

Spoiler guidelines: popwatch.ew.com/2014/02/20/spoiler-rules-entertainment-geekly/

I have low self-esteem, I desperately crave validation, and secretly yearn for Thank Yous. (The site does handle them crappily, in my opinion. I always use CTRL-clicks to "open them in a new tab" to not disturb my current reading.)

That ctrl-click suggestion is a great idea. Of course, you just revealed yourself as an armchair socialist mac user.