._ , , . *|, * _ _ -+--+- _. _|* _ || | (_](_) | | (_] (_]|(/, * ._| , , ._ . . . . . _ . . _ _ -+--+- _. |,. . _.;_/*._ _ |*. , _ _| _ _ _| \_|(_)(_| (_](_) | | (_] | (_|(_.| \|[ )(_] || \/ (/, (_](_)(_)(_] ._| ._| ._| A N O V E L B Y M A R T I E " M U R D S " M O O D ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Outro -- Into the Reprise ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: (6/13/25 4:00 a.m.) "Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain, or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!" -Auron, from Final Fantasy X (2001) (5/4/25 4:00 a.m.) From the heart, just share honesty about how you hope the book springs ideas forth and you explore life through writing. I remember thinking, this George R. R. Martin guy has to be from England or some high-falutin society. The dude is from Bayonne! That's a light-rail stop from me. That's crazy...except not really! The dude just read a fuck-ton of books and histories and practiced writing with a paper and pencil. A.P. introduced me to this guy, so include it: "Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow." -Kurt Vonnegut, in correspondence with a class of high schoolers (2006) And then another from the heart, or the main from the heart: I want to put this in writing -- If you take away anything, take away that a genocide is still taking place in Gaza, an ethnic cleansing campaign is still taking place in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an apartheid state is still defying all international rule of law, and the United States hegemony still wants you to disbelieve your eyes, as if you could forget the sheer inhumanity streamed live for everyone on the planet to see -- by the brave Palestinians enduring this violence and the Zionist perpetrators. Don't get it twisted: Fuck Zionism. Fuck Antisemitism and Islamophobia. To Hell with Joe and Don and the 1%. And free Palestine. We do that by freeing America. If Refaat Alareer and his family have to die needlessly, we must do something. "Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it." -Frantz Fanon Paz ves a con te, hermano. (5/4/25 8:44 a.m.) Sincerely, i am strummerdood or matthew ryan perez or whatever, i don't know (7/3/25 8:26 p.m.) Music Cue: The Left is Right, by Desaparecidos [ ] Live Forever, by Oasis [x] lol Disobedience, by Deerhoof [ ] ******************************************************************************* (3/3/25 8:23 a.m.) EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a transcript of a video NOT edited by Martie "Murds" Mood. Title: Resident Evil 2 -- Unfinished Business Episode 2 -- strummerdood Description: Free Palestine -- OOB and BDS, a mutual aid resource and a nonviolent protest strategy, respectively Visibility: Public Restrictions: Copyright Date: Oct 14, 2012 Views: 3,022 Comments: 51 Like (vs. dislike): 144 (96%) Hey! It's Fall...Okay, it's been Fall, but now it's October, and that's like, prime Fall time, you know what I'm saying? And Resident Evil 6 already came out, and I'm a big fan of the series and I always regretted not finishing the second one, so in lieu of the season, I'm gonna go back and finish that puppy off. It's, um, it's gonna be good. Resident Evil was a bit of an anomaly when I was a kid. It was a series I stayed far, far away from. I really wasn't supposed to play the game or any Mature-rated game for that matter but that didn't stop me from playing Counter-Strike, Phantasmagoria, Mortal Kombat, and TFC whenever my parents weren't home. But Resident Evil was just known to me as this sick, disturbing experience that had a few choice elements that would guarantee I'd piss the bed had I seen them. My brother had played the game before, but it wasn't until '99 when we finally got a PS1 that he owned the game. It was finally then I got to watch the game and see what it was all about. Suffice it to say, I absolutely loved it. We played a bit of the second game, but with a rented copy, we never made it out of the police station. From then on, I was a bit out of touch with the series until the REmake in 2002. I easily fell back in love with the franchise after I stuck a grenade into a zombie's mouth and nailed it with a bullet. It was pretty cool. Since I was a kid, though, all I've heard is that Resident Evil 2 is a top-tier game in the series, even going so far as to challenge the REmake and the fourth as the best in the series. Big sticking point of the older entries is, of course, the cheesy atmosphere and awkward design choices, but personally, I feel the gameplay invokes a feeling of dread and discomfort into the gamer that can compete with a totally atmospheric game with a few jump scares. Those surface level flaws are just that; they're annoying at first but work hand-in-hand to throw the gamer off and creep them out. So, I'm optimistic even though it looks like someone threw up on top of Paulie D's hair. BOARD: Probably because you played on a PS3. Get it? 'Cause it's a jagged, colorful mess. Unhg, that's supposed to be funny...but it's not. FFFFF--yeah! Starting off with Leon and it doesn't take too long to realize that this is a game cut from the same cloth as the original. BIT COP: Sorry, but it looks like your party has been canceled. (Clip of Cartman laughing uncontrollably on the couch.) Alright, alright, the voice acting is actually far less cringe-worthy this time through, and in fact, there are some significant differences between the two. The increased amount of zombies and emphasis on action was the big draw of this sequel 14 years ago. Like I said, I feel as though the minimalism is what makes the original still vital to this day despite the dated atmosphere. You don't get much ammo, not much health, and you don't encounter many enemies. This ratio made those moments where you had to deal with fatal obstacles that much more critical to your overall success. This was emphasized in the REmake when Crimson Heads became a reality. You leave one of those suckers alone and suddenly backtracking becomes terrifying instead of tedious. Every encounter had huge implications because it altered how you approached situations later in the game. So, here we have Resident Evil 2, and right off the bat, you're encountering a much higher rate of enemies, from hordes of zombie cops and drunk sluts to the Licker. And even though they're giving you a decent amount of ammo, it's still a struggle to keep your arsenal fully loaded. But what they do give a lot of is healing items. So, with this ratio among those three elements, you have to run away from enemies instead of expending ammo, but instead of that feeling of dread and panic you might have felt during the first zombie encounter in the original, or seeing the flying dogs for the first time, you simply get used to getting grabbed a bunch and healing, making enemies way less menacing and more of a nuisance if anything. Walking into a room and hearing the gushing footsteps of an undead enemy no longer tense me up. Obviously, they want more action mixed in with the horror tropes, but it cheapens the experience, I mean, seriously, come on: (Ada Wong tries to run through a tunnel but is impeded by cockroaches 14 times. She grunts and stops each time, bewildering Matt. I swear, the editing is good here, I chuckled, like for real. The 22-year-old dood was doing it.) Still, the design instills a level of discomfort that manages to keep me on edge -- like I just saw a bug in the room scurry away before I could kill it. And being Resident Evil, they still got plenty of these... (Licker crashes through a window in an interrogation room and gives 9-year-old dood a heart attack.) ...Which are super cheap, but at least Resident Evil traditionally keeps these jumpscares memorable and fun. Besides, it's pretty easy to do with a character like the Licker. I mean, look at that brain. It's all exposed and stuff. So cool. Other than that, game's been pretty uneventful except, uh, what the hell is this. Blue Herbs. We're in the sewers. Ooh. Oh please no. (A boxy, pixelated tarantula lays waiting around the corner. Matt looks away as if struck by lightning.) MATT: Shinji. Why'd you have to put spiders in the game, Shinji!? ...Hey Frank! (After calling out to his older brother, Matt hands the PlayStation controller off screen to Frank.) MATT: Just get through this part for me, alright? FRANK (O.S.): You're a little baby back bitch. Yup, it's been 14 years, and those spiders still freak me the hell out. But at least now I can move on. Unfortunately, since I'm wary of every room I go into now that the giant spider enemy has been introduced, I've been playing like a constipated Clint Eastwood. This gets especially frustrating since I have to run back-and-forth between the police station and sewers for items I either missed or haven't used just yet. The pacing just hasn't been consistent up to this point. Welp, much like the first, the game runs quickly to the conclusion after departing the initial game space. We get an interesting antagonist with Williams but he really wasn't as well-established as I'd hoped he'd be. Then we see the chief of police was an antagonist through ever present documents but it essentially ends there. Also, just a quick thought: why does everyone in Raccoon City feel the need to journalize everything they do in diaries. Even beefed-up Chris Redfield of all people. (The beat from Eminem's Stan begins playing. Yes, we're doing this. Don't judge me.) BOARD: A reading from Chris' Diary Dear Claire, I really don't wanna see you callin' Umbrella makin' it dangerous as hell, girl, God forbid they catch me jawin' My fellow STARS team, man, they think I got Parkinson's the way my head shakes at 'em Barking up them wrong trees like a dog with wood, and if you could Please don't be followin' me to Umbrella's deadly facility and get involved with Ashford He developed coinciding personalities, dude crazy! Just get the hell out of Raccoon City, and good Lord J.C., why am I even writin' these? Subconsciously, I see you bein' a dumb beetch tryna' find me at the R.C.P.D. Prolly shouldn't be tellin' you they gon come after me We prolly gonna meet in a game called RE:CV Just please stay out of Resident Evil 3, that's my girl's ish Matter fact, right now I'm tryin' to get in Jill's Sandwich Franken-Barry a snitch, though, maybe that's why she hasn't called back Can't have that, she a master with a lock pick, we all know where that's at Damn, she just caught me starin' at that rack, spank a monkey with a jack Whateva, I heard she got clap from ol' Wesker's ass, August da eighf (...anyway, the song ends.) Other than that, we get to the lab, see mad scientist bitch get owned, Ada Wong quote-unquote die, and then we watch the fairly simple final battle that feels unsubstantial before rejoining Claire on a train out of the city. We end up facing about three bosses total during a forgetful romp through three environments which felt at a total disconnect with the gameplay...unlike the first. Have I stressed enough that I like the first, 'cause I do. The second Resident Evil is like the original Assassin's Creed, at least in my mind. You've got this distinct gameplay engine but it's coupled with an environment that, instead of enhancing and challenging its design, hampers it until it's completely void of any immersion factor. MATT: Well, that about wraps that one up. God, all I've heard since the fifth grade was, "Dude, second Resident Evil blows the first out the water." Even my favorite magazine as a kid rated this bad-boy higher than the original, and I'm just not seeing it. My expectations going in were fairly high, and even though I had fun at times, for the most part, it was pretty unbalanced and not as daringly designed as the first. I mean going back doesn't feel -- what the hell is that? (ON SCREEN: 1. ClaireB/00/Scenario 2nd) MATT (cont'd): Oh yeah, completely forgot that you got multiple characters to play as in the older iterations of the series. But from playing Jill and Chris on the original, I'm not expecting too much of a difference between this scenario and Leon's -- minor differences here and there, maybe a different character interaction. Nothing too major that'll totally change my perspective of the entire game. (Matt looks knowingly to the camera as a montage set to Rick Astley begins, showcasing exuberant gaming.) Ooh, didn't expect that. And by that, I mean an insanely satisfying second scenario that parallels and builds off the first instead of simply reworking it slightly. Most of the issues I had with the initial playthrough has been alleviated. That ratio of ammo, health, and enemies has been balanced with this beautiful peacemaker. EDITOR'S NOTE: It's a grenade launcher. Many of the loose ends like the Williams family and chief of police have been fleshed out to greater, more sinister depth. Overall, the flow and pace of the narrative and gameplay is much smoother and far-less frustrating than the first go. And goddammit if we don't get some good old tension from Mr. X here. It's really making up for the early-game shortcomings, but one of the benefits of Capcom's approach here is that, since I pretty much have the map memorized to this point, the developer now has the freedom to experiment with my expectations knowing that I'm familiar with the layout. Like, for example, when I went into this room to complete this pretty uneventful puzzle. You figure out the riddle the same way as before, but then-- (Mr. X smashes through a wall and nearly gives 22-year-old Matt a heart attack.) Jesus Christ, he's like the Kool-Aid Man on bath salts. (The Kool-Aid Man holding both bath salts and a knife burst through the wall.) Now, I may be speaking to a small audience here, but Resident Evil 2 is like the gaming equivalent of the eighth season of 24. The first half is fairly lackluster and maddening, but then the second half rolls around and you get this wave of revelations and twists built up from the earlier section. It's such an unbalanced way to craft a piece of entertainment and definitely could be done better, but, hell, it works in the end. Aw Christ, back in the sewers, though. These spiders are just really killing my flow right now. MATT: Goddammit! Hey Fra--Oh wait. He just left for the weekend. Whatever, it's fine, it's fine, I can do it myself. (Matt can't do it.) MATT: I can't do it. I can't do it! (Matt breaks down, pounding his fist on the carpeted ground.) MATT: Why am I such a pussy!? Why can't I just do the spider part!? Jeff Daniels, you son of a bitch. (Then there's a whole-ass montage set to Ecstasy of Gold, and I crib shots from the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. You can tell I'm toward the end of the goddamn novel 'cause I'm too tired to write out action lines for literally everything. But basically, I got through the spider part by flipping to a different signal on the television and playing the part blind. To check my progress, I'd pause the game, switch over to the game signal, look at my location on the map, switch back to the television signal, and unpause the game. I just mashed the buttons a bunch until I found myself in the subsequent room. Frankly, it's a lot of work to payoff a pretty terrible Clint Eastwood joke earlier in the script. But fuck it, we ball.) Well, that was fun. Conclusion felt more substantial this time through, if only for the homage to Tyrant and the pretty damn disturbing final form of Williams. They're short campaigns but it really is astounding to get two distinct stories in one game. Nowadays, Capcom makes you buy two separate games for the same price. What? Capcom being cheap? No. So, overall, I'm glad I revisited the game to get more perspective on a series near and dear to my heart and to finish off some of my brother's unfinished business. FRANK (O.S.): Still a little baby back bitch, to me. (Matt is sad.) Hey! This is the part where I beg you to like my video and subscribe to my channel and then click on the link to the first Unfinished Business, which is on Final Fantasy X, and it's not bad, it's pretty good. Really, it's not that good. But, you can help me, because I'm scared and I have no money and no direction...help...me. (END.)