The most dramatic game of Werewolf ever played, part 1: a Werewolf primer
I must tell an an epic tale of deception, of security guards, of teenagers, of drunkenness, of meltdowns, of suspicion, of betrayal, of murder, of mystery. I must tell the tale of the most dramatic game of Werewolf I have ever played.
I feel that it is extremely important to communicate my exact feelings about Werewolf in order to help you fully comprehend the gravity of the drama that transpired during this legendary game, so I have broken up this tale into two parts; this, the first, shall focus on the mechanics of the game as I perceive them:
Werewolf, which you may know as Mafia, is the best party game ever invented (yes, even better than Cards Against Humanity). The rules are simple: a bunch of people sit in a circle, and they’re all villagers. But 1-3 of them are secretly werewolves. A “caller,” who runs the game, narrates when the village sleeps at night (closes their eyes) and announces whom the werewolves have decided to kill each morning, once the villagers have opened their eyes and risen from their slumber. The object of the game is for the villagers to deduce, through various methods, which of their neighbors are the werewolves… before they are all eaten.
Archive footage of a Werewolf game at Gen-Con 2011
Actual advice for writing poetry, plus a poem that utilizes none of it
First off, you’re welcome for the ABSOLUTELY FREE NOTES I’m about to give you from my Very Professional Public High School Education. It’s your (or your parents’) tax dollars that paid for this, and I’m nothing if not completely willing to help you maximize your return on investment. Read and learn, then be completely befuddled by whatever may follow:
It’s like I just assumed my teacher wasn’t going to read this
This post is kinda sorta the direct sequel to a real cliffhanger of a post, but while I’m sure you’re chomping at the bit to get to today’s (re: ~12 years ago’s) poetry, I’d like to first hastily explain what is about to happen in the three poems below:
- The first “poem” is total garbage. It’s a reluctant apology for doing something I did not consider wrong; I don’t know exactly what it was, but I am clearly just being whiny.
- The second “poem” is a continuation of the first, mostly because we’d just learned about Emily Dickinson, and apparently my major takeaways were “she capitalized seemingly random words” and “she used dashes seemingly at random,” leading my parodic slant to what we’ve got here (other than failure to communicate).
- The third poem was probably something I wrote in 2 minutes to show to Brynn, my awesome/hilarious friend who sat by me in class and laughed at most of the things I said/did, which is a thing that made her (and frankly anyone else) worthy of my attention, as I was (am) a charismatic young teenager who was always fond of a little extra ego boost.
Hopefully that introduction will alleviate somewhat the horror art you are about to experience:
Poetry about enigmatic smiles and offending everyone
This one’s gonna be a doozy.
You see, back on March 26, 2003, I apparently offended someone. This officially puts me Ahead of My Time, as these days, literally everyone is constantly offended all the time always, forever. In fact, I’m ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE that the previous sentence just offended someone. And my use of caps lock very likely triggered at least half a dozen people, who will now go blog about it on Tumblr and talk about how I oppressed them by thinking independent thoughts. Ha ha, just kidding—both you and I know that fewer than half a dozen people will ever actually read this.
To be clear, I was actually not even being that hyperbolic in the previous paragraph: in the image you are about to see below, I had to actually crop out half of my “apology,” because even MY APOLOGY would be too offensive for people in a hyper-politically-correct 2015, where Internet Peoples’ skin is about as thick as a sheet of tissue paper wrapped tightly around a blazing pile of firewood.
That having been said, here is the latter half of my apology, followed by a poem about… well, you’ll see (that’s what we call a “tease” in THE BIZ):
That time I felt the need to explain the concept and use of satire to my Creative Writing teacher, because High Schoolers
Why I’m not going to see the new Godzilla movie
The new Godzilla movie is fine or whatever. I guess a bunch of people are going to see it or have already seen it, but I am not one of those people.
See, a lot of kids these days forget that TriStar Pictures released a Godzilla movie in 1998. A lot of people in general also seem to forget that TriStar Pictures is a thing that exists. In fact, I didn’t know that fact until I looked it up on Wikipedia, but that’s beside the point.
The 1998 Godzilla movie had something that this Godzilla movie does NOT have, and I think we all know exactly what I’m talking about:
One year later: a codygough.com retrospective (of sorts)
It’s been a while, hasn’t it?
I’ve been hesitant to write anything here for a long time now because I’m frankly a better speaker than I am a writer. I’ve always been the kind of guy who wants to exclusively present his “best” work. In college, I had a journalism class where we had to write one article every week; I wrote six over the course of the fifteen-week semester (for those keeping track: six is not fifteen). On the weeks when I didn’t submit an article, it wasn’t out of apathy or laziness – it was out of the knowledge that I didn’t have anything great to write about. So why do it?
Regardless, here I am, and here’s why: this is the one-year anniversary of my web site existing. Hurray! My first and last name, plus a dot com. Now there’s something exciting. The email I received informing me of my auto-renewal of this domain inspired me to actually, well, use it, so here we are. And for the record, I really hate how often I’m using Italics, but I’m going to soldier on and keep writing anyway. For you.
My “big idea” for this site was the 10-year Idea Reunion, which I thought was a great idea. I loved it. I got excited about doing it. I talked to people about it. But then… well, I’m not going to blame anyone, but someone very close to me actively discouraged the project, apparently thinking it was stupid. I let that person get to me, and the project sadly kinda died.
I was also going to host my “secondary” podcast here. I host the Unqualified Gamers podcast with my life-long friend Jon, and that’s been a blast. However, I also used to co-host this other, far inferior podcast, and this site was to be the main hub for all that podcast’s content. I’m frankly glad it went away, but that left a bit of a hole here.
So for the last several months, my titular domain name (did I use that correctly?) has essentially been home to Unqualified Gamers, and that’s about it.
But! 2014!
I want to resume the 10-year reunion, even if it isn’t technically 10 years old anymore. I hope to begin posting my old writings once a week, on Thursdays, specifically so I can shamelessly utilize #ThrowbackThursdays in my hashtags. I also want to start embedding YouTube videos here, now that I live alone and have a setup that will allow me to shoot my own vlogs or whatever you want to call them. So, there’s that.
And in terms of less “regular” content, I want to finally feature a section that serves the secondary purpose of being a talent page. I do have an IMDB profile, but it’s sparse at best, and I don’t feel like ponying up $15 for a month of IMDB Pro just so I can add a freaking picture of myself (which is supposedly a free feature anyway, by the way).
In the mean time, of course, you can visit my Facebook fan page for pretty much all that I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, but I’d like to get a completed acting resume on here, since I do happen to have one.
So there you go. Mostly useless information, but I wanted to say, I dunno, SOMETHING about this site. Who pays for his own web site and then just sits around not really touching it? Not me, anymore. I hope.
I know it’s only November, but here’s to 2014. I’ll talk to you again soon. Maybe.
Viet-Mom
Welcome to CodyGough.com! This may be your first visit, because it’s my birthday, and I’m using the powers of Facebook to trick people into visiting promote my web site. Welcome, and enjoy. I host episodes of Unqualified: A Video Game Podcast here, as well as post stories and poems that are ten years old. I will eventually do more stuff, but I wanted to start simple in 2013.
With that out of the way: exactly 10 years ago, I had an idea. Inspiration like you would never expect. In addition to incredibly artistic drawings of characters from Super Smash Brothers: Melee, I came up with the premise to a story of epic proportions. Observe!
A CHILLING TALE INDEED.
Transcript:
VIET-MOM
The chilling tale of one Asian woman who bore an entire nation, only to one day be betrayed by her own uterus. Witness the gripping re-enactment of one pedophiliac cannibal’s quest for her “golden children” through the exotic jungles of such countries that start with the letter “T” as Tahiti, Tijuana, and Taiwan. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll cry some more, as the journey takes you through four hundred years of tragedy, comedy, romance, and satire.
A few things:
- Yes, I know I didn’t originally write “Asian,” but the word I DID use wasn’t politically incorrect yet when I wrote it. So sue my 10-years-ago-self. I actually am sorry if that offended you, though… just keep in mind, this was written by a high schooler in a different time. That’s all.
- I’m pretty sure that tragedy, comedy, romance and satire were like, the 4 types of stories we studied in English class. We had also watched Apocalypse Now in class, which I’m sure inspired this entire poem.
- I have no idea where Tahiti is. And I hate myself for ending the previous sentence in a preposition. But at least now I’ve shown that I did learn something in school, so I’ll call that a win.
Look, I never said that none of my stuff would be offensive (DAMN YOU, DOUBLE NEGATIVES), so please keep in mind that a high schooler wrote this stuff and that the “big picture” of my entire 10-year project is to entertain. Sometimes that includes shaking your head in my general direction. Other times, that means seeing my INCREDIBLY ARTISTIC ARTISTRY, especially applied to video games.
Anyway, I went on a kind of sabbatical from my web site in March, but you can look forward to seeing a lot more of my high school genius in April. Thanks for visiting! I hope you enjoy my little project and decide to check out other parts of my site, and more importantly, I hope I can entertain you again soon, because I honestly think making people smile is why I was put on God’s Green Earth®… even if only because I have no other real skills.
Speaking of earth, I like how on my Apple keyboard, I can simply type Option+R to make the ® symbol, but on my Windows 8 laptop, I have to type Alt+0174. HOW DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Poem: The Konami Code
If you want to test someone to find out if (s)he is a “real” gamer, then ask about the Konami Code. It’s a cheat code used in several Konami games, but for whatever reason, it became so iconic that other video games also started to utilize it, and has become so prevalent in pop culture that ESPN, Facebook, and Google have featured it in Easter Eggs on their web sites. It’s kind of a big deal.
The Konami Code, by the way, is up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, usually followed by start or select and then start. I did that from memory. Be impressed… or don’t, since I just talked about how familiar every gamer should be with it.
Anyway, I wrote a poem about it. Please enjoy it.
I only had to use three continues before finishing this poem!! … which… doesn’t even make sense
Transcript:
Look at you!
Look at me
Look at you
Looking at nothing
BECAUSE IT DOESN’T EXIST?
What’s it to you,
Super nerd?
I don’t think so—
Not this time—
So let me look around,
Look inside,
Pretend I believe in your fictional lies!
I’m gonna flip,
Iron Will;
Shoot to thrill, play to kill!
Stolen line just like the rest,
Unoriginality’s always been the best,
So do it sideways, up,
Up, down, down,
Left, right, left, right,
B, A, B, A,
Start the fight
Cause I’m gonna win,
Your chance was gone when I turned you on,
And now you’re gone, worse off than Pong,
Made obsolete by myself the 1337,
And when you scream I flip the switch
And live to fight another day.
Game Over, bitch.
Analysis:
- This is awful.
- Yes, I realize it’s not really about Konami. Or the Konami Code. Or anything.
- “1337” is pronounced “leet” (like “elite,” but without the “e”), in case you aren’t nerdy enough to immediately realize that.
- “And live to fight another day” is what the major bad guys (Bebop, Rocksteady, The Shredder, Krang) yelled all the time in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series. So yes, that’s stolen, too.
- This… wow, this is awful.
I hope you were mildly entertained by this. Just remember: you can write better poetry than me. Sometimes I write decent stuff, but with this, I have officially set the bar so low, you can’t possibly do much worse. I’m gonna go punch the Konami Code into a controller for a while now.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
A poem I can’t really explain
Fair warning: I have no idea what motivated this poem. It includes a lot of vocabulary words and is kind of emo, at least for me. So good luck getting through it:
Holy vocabulary, Batman
Transcript:
I cry, enraged;
Interneccine, intractable, intolerable
Living a lie because the truth hurts
The truth, just as myself:
Intangible, impractible, intolerable
Just as hard to reach as
An echo in a cave
But deep within they lie
Investigate, intrude after all
Invincible You, Invidious You,
Inviolate Me, Invisible Me;
Interjected by hope.
By love – But for Whom?
Insanity for me
As if I could even tell
It interrupts the thoughts I can’t understand
They intrude, they intrude,
But into nothing at all.
People want me,
People need me,
But they don’t see me
So do they use me?
Symbiotic
People use people
And in the end, enraged,
I cry.
A few things:
- The second line roughly translates to “murderous, obstinate, intolerable.” Later on, “impractible” isn’t a real word, “invidious” means “hateful,” and “inviolate” means “unharmed.”
- I think the tone of the poem is too dark for me to have been simply messing around with alliteration, as I’ve done in previous poems, unless I was simply too angry while writing this angry poem to heed the English language.
- “An echo in a cave” refers directly to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, although I don’t necessarily understand the context.
I must have had a bad day or something when I wrote this. Do you see any universal truths in this poem? Any statements about human nature? It’s hard for me to look at any of my old poetry objectively and try to read it out of context, which is both problematic for presenting my old works to the general public, and frustrating because maybe that’s now really the point.
This poem really sticks out to me because it isn’t sarcastic or irreverent, but it’s also really abstract compared to a lot of my other stuff. Like, generally, I see something and think to myself “okay, I get where that came from,” but this one is just like… totally out of left field. I hope you find some enjoyment out of it, because I can’t find much value in terms of poetry or reminiscence.
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
A poem starring forced alliteration, excessive prepositions, and Super Smash Brothers: Melee
I don’t know what exactly our teacher could have possibly said to inspire me to write this poem. Seriously, here is what must have happened that day:
Teacher: Okay class, you all have to write a poem today, the subject of which must be something you are passionate about.
Me: Does that include video games?
Teacher: Why yes, Cody, it certainly does! And be sure to include at least one writing technique, such as alliteration, in the poem.
Me: How about I include alliteration, but instead of giving it any context whatsoever, I just write a bunch of words in a row that start with the same letter but lack any coherent or logical flow?
Teacher: That sounds splendid! Please also do that with a part of speech as well, such as prepositions or linking verbs.
Me: I will do so happily, and then gallivant into the sunset!
Teacher: You didn’t even use that word correctly, but who cares? Go write your terrible poem!
That basically is what must have happened, because Science®. Anyway, here’s the result of this conversation:
A poem featuring forced alliteration, excessive prepositions, and Super Smash Brothers: Melee
Transcript:
Characters all around
25 all around,
Colorful characters quite abound
Every few and every pair
Have some sort of reason to be fighting there
Cartoonish they seem, yet I don’t quite care
It keeps things clean—for the Kids.
Contacts cascading, namecalling renaming
The therapeutic Theremin of Thespian thinking
A thing-in-itself
Which no-one seems to be seeing
Smelling the sweat, the substance of strife
Illiterate critics, illegitimate gimmicks,
Sucking the life out of
Into out of around near far abound
Train of thought
Derailed to hell
Away from the housetop,
Away from the roof
Now dash away, dash away…
Dash away all.
Ten years after writing this poem, I can explain almost every thought that went through my head. I have no specific recollection of writing it, but here’s how each part of this happened:
- I started writing about Smash Brothers. “25 characters” are in Smash Brothers: Melee, and the violence in the game is irrefutably “cartoonish” to maintain a K-A rating (Kids to Adult), which is the video game equivalent of being rated PG.
- I must have heard the word “theremin” somewhere and couldn’t think of anything else to write in Line 9, so I just grabbed a Thesaurus (or used any “th” words I could recall) and stuck them together incoherently, very likely thinking “I can get away with anything, it’s poetry” at the time.
- Line 13, “Illiterate critics, illegitimate gimmicks” undoubtedly refers to video game critics who invent facts to further their own political agendas (i.e. Jack Thompson, who at the time was sadly receiving media coverage) as I start to “zoom out” from Smash Brothers itself and start to examine the overall perception of it, and gaming.
- After writing Line 14, “Sucking the life out of,” I couldn’t think of what to write, so I just wrote a chain of prepositions, which were HUGE in the Latin class I was also taking at the time. I directly admit this in Line 16 when I say “Train of thought,” and concede that I couldn’t think of a coherent follow-up in Line 17: “Derailed to hell.”
- Lines 18 through the end are self-explanatory.
Is it frightening that I can deconstruct my own ten-year-old poem as specifically as I did? Honestly, you tell me. I like to think that some things never change, and that I don’t think that’s a bad thing. My writing was also pretty transparent, at least at the time, and at least to me.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this completely ridiculous poem! Looking ahead, it appears that I won’t have a great deal of notes/poems/stories for the next 10 days, but please stay tuned and there will be plenty more for you to analyze, criticize, or ignore soon!
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This post is part of Cody’s “10-Year Idea Reunion” series, in which Cody revisits his creative writing class assignments exactly 10 years after writing them. Learn more about Cody’s Idea Reunion and follow him on WordPress to follow along!
Cody Gough (dot com) 