Books I done did read

I zoomed through The Erotic Engine by Patchen Barss, it was an interesting read - I had no idea as to the prevalence of (to use time-appropriate vernacular) netsex in the days of MUDs, and the amount of pornography traded around on Usenet. For anyone interested in the history of porn and of technology, this is good read; it’s also an interesting artifact of its publication date - 2010, it’s capped off before OnlyFans and VR. It has its other limitations, but it covers wide swath of both history and technology - and it introduced me to the term teledildonics for which I am eternally grateful.

I started The Golden Naginata by Jessica Amanda Salmonson after finishing the first of the Tomoe Gozen books, and it has been a fun read but I have had some hiccups with it - the romance of the first book has so far been thrown to the winds in favour of a somewhat stilted hetero pairing that I’m not a fan of. I still need to finish it, so we’ll see where things go. Still a fun adventure, another venture into the underworld (a different underworld this time), and magical weapons, all the fun stuff.

Games that I did played

Vital Shell

Vital Shell is a game by MarvinWizard that was released in January. It is one of many survivor-likes that follows in the wake of, among others, Brotato’s innovations on the style. This rendition of the ubiquitous gameplay loop features chunky mechs fighting through hordes of strange creatures, all rendered in a lovingly nostalgic PS!-style vibe. The music follows suit - simple but effective DnB beats, the sort of soundtrack you’d get in a dream after falling asleep while playing Ridge Racer. For fans of the genre, it comes highly recommended, the content scope is fairly small (this is an indie release after all), but it’s aesthetic is polished wonderfully and the gameplay fun.

Look Outside

Look Outside was a gift from an old friend who I hadn’t spoken to in a while. They bought it as an ice breaker and because it seemed like my sort of thing - and they were right! Look Outside is made in RPG Maker but don’t be swayed away if that sounds like something you don’t like, it really utilises the engine and doesn’t compromise on much, especially in terms of art. Echoing tales such as The Color Out of Space by H. P. Lovecraft, you are one of many living in an apartment building when a mysterious, astral-cum-eldritch creature ‘The Visitor’ passes by earth, and anyone that looks at the light from outside is mutated in bizarre and gruesome ways. This game has lots of choices, options and ways to complete it - my way was to get what I think is the rarest ending achievement which is to fail to complete the final ritual (only 4.6% of players!). I may wait a while before returning, I have a previous save that might let me go back and do more before ending it, but I’ve been trying to not be obsessed with seeing all content in a game, and appreciating what my playthrough was or is - that’s not that I won’t replay games, or do runs, but I need to space that out a bit.

Look Outside is full of wonderful pixel art and body horror, there’s thought and story added to the horror, real tragedy to the mutations of the unwitting souls who dared to look outside their windows. I highly recommend!

The Hole

This was a rough one - it dealt with some heavy subject matter, but was a good game overall. It claims to be based on true events/stories, which makes the whole story feel much, much sadder than it would have otherwise. The chunky PSX style is something I simply love stylistically, there is simply no better way to render disrepair. I am loathed to use the term, but The Hole is what would be considered a walking simulator but manages to avoid the trappings of the post-Layers of Fear world. The incessantly over-used repeating corridor is used once, and only once, there are no first person chase sequences (although there is a third-person chase section that I don’t think really counts - if you play it you’ll see what I mean), and the game makes good on its promise of ‘no cheap scares’. It’s short, but doesn’t outstay it’s welcome - overall I recommend, as long as your comfortable with what it tackles.

Dead Estate

This was my impulse buy of the month - a roguelike game that take clear inspiration from both The Binding of Isaac, and Enter the Gungeon. I’m not a fan of the latter, but am of the former - luckily for me the game feels more like TBOI than ENG. It’s fun, but I don’t know if I necessarily recommend - I probably need to play more to get a better opinion, so you’ll need to check it out at your own discretion.

Mewgenics

This game’s been a long time coming; I’ve been waiting for this game’s release since Edmund McMillan reveal it as a project - so expectations are high! Initially I wasn’t sure the game was for me, despite looking forward to it, it seemed a like it might have some of the same drawbacks I found with The Legend of Bumbo - Edmund Mcmillan’s last game, a spin-off of The Binding of Isaac which was a bit too difficult, ran horribly, and seemed to lack much in the way of content. Despite my early reservations, the game started to open up, I started to learn and acquire more items and unlocks that made things easier - and I’m now loving it! It was worth the wait, and having parties of cats I’ve bred charge into the dungeon-like sewers, scrapyard and semetary has become a real favourite adventure this month. Edmund’s style and humor continues from his previous work, full of poop jokes and weirdness that still feels very indie.

No Man’s Sky

I heard that No Man’s Sky was receiving further updates and new ship building - and jumped in to check it out as it was something I felt was missing from the last time I played. This game is well remembered for its initial backlash - something I I heard about, not something I experienced as I bought this game long after - but it is more and more, day by day, being reappraised following a consistent stream of free updates that have added so much to the game. I’ve always enjoyed the space-sim travelling and exploring - there were parts I felt were tough climbs with little reward, but a lot of that has been reworked, and I have enjoyed jumping back into things (Also, multiplayer works on Linux now!).

Berry Bury Berry

Picked this up after seeing a YouTube video of the first 20 minutes, I’m a sucker for an incremental game - and the retro stylings of Berry Bury Berry caught my attention. You feed berries into a hole and buy upgrades that make doing that easier or more profitable. Simple game loop, simple fun. There’s a horror-esque story too, no jumpscares or nonsense - it’s a simple plot that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. If you too like incremental games were number go up - then I very much recommend.

Films I all went and watched

Blood Cult (1985)

dir Christopher Lewis

Blood Cult is a low-budget slasher that was shot-on- and direct-to- video. It’s fairly bad, although not offensively so - it just lacks any suspense or excitement. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some violence and some gruesome props and fun effects - but what holds them together is bland. Corny as it is, Blood Cult had some notoriety as ‘The first Horror film shot exclusively for the home video market’, or so is claimed.

Forgotten Gialli Volume 8

The following three films are those included in Vinegar Syndrome’s 8th installment of their Forgotten Gialli series.

A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services (1978)

dir Demofilo Fidani

A fairly good Giallo that was an enjoyable watch for those into the genre. A story of a young prostitute and murder - I can’t help but think the greater themes and ideas this one had were stymied by something; lots of things felt rushed and the film created a claustrophobic vibe with it’s tight camera work, but unfortunately this also made many scenes feel too run-on from each other, despite a couple of really great transitions, the film stuck to one focal length and that was it. I don’t know if the main character was flat, or if her lack of personality was a part of the wider theme of men’s control over women - and I mean that sincerely, no snark intended. Also, a fun fact: the director, Demofilo Fidani, was a medium 🔮.

At the end of the film, as the credits begin, they play a song that got under my skin before it had finished and I quickly scrolled back to see what it was and who had performed it. These credits were, of course, in Italian, so it took a while to properly identify it - “Circus Mind” performed by Mack Porter*. As far as I can find, there is no other recording of this online or possibly even released - Mack Porter was a Ghanaian musician, son of the former queen of Ghana Affipong II, who came to Italy to complete his university studies he was able to release a few singles and an album, Peace On You in 1972. HE retired from music mid-70’s and went into the fashion industry, after that I couldn’t find anything - I assume researching him in Italian would probably wield more information, but alas I am restricted to a machine-translated Italian Wikipedia page. So this song, (written by ‘Larici Descnidado’) doesn’t appear to exist anywhere but within this film. So I’ve uploaded both the ending of the film, and the song on its own - you may notice that there is some car noises near the start, unfortunately the audio editing know-how to remove that is beyond me.

Red Rings of Fear (1978)

dir Alberto Negrin

Red Rings of Fear is one of three films that are together referred to as the Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy. I have seen the second of these, What have they done to Your Daughters? and found it a tough watch, but my memory is that it dealt with teenage prostitution with seriousness and weight if not necessarily tact. Now Red Rings of Fear is focused on the death of sexually active 17 year olds and it follows plenty of well-trod beats, including the twist. If you take out a troubling shower scene and the baffling decision of our protagonist at the very end, the film is a serviceable Giallo - but I would recommend A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services (1978) over this.

Reflections in Black (1975)

dir Tano Cimarosa

This one had some good visuals, I can’t tell if I felt much character in anyone, but I was maybe a little distracted when watching. There’s some homophobia in this one, or at least in the attitudes of some characters if I felt like being kind to the film.

The Stepford Wives (1975)

dir Bryan Forbes

Notable for being Drew’s favourite film, I watched this with friends-of-the-site Ghosty, Wing and Drew himself; fantastic build up and scene setting - tension and intrigue abound, the film pays off and frankly its message is, disturbingly, still relevant. There’s not too much I have to stay about this film, it gets a high rating - I’d rather not spoil any of the story, and, well - it just rocks.

*Originally I was going to complain about not being able to identify the song through the translation, but after checking my work I was able to both translate the music credits in their entirety and see that it clearly has both the song’s and Mack Porter’s name in all caps… Although the existence of the band ‘Circus Mind’ did make things difficult.

Cockney is what is called a ‘demonym’, an identity tied to a place. It is an accent, a dialect and, vanishingly, a culture. What makes one person a Cockney and another not, has been used to denote both ‘true Londoners’ and Cockneys over many years. To be born a Cockney, you must be born within earshot of Bow Bells. An old and historied church, St. Mary-le-Bow, still stands today, in the 1800’s it’s bells could be heard from as far as Leyton, Stratford, and Bromley in the city of London. But today, according to a 2012 Study; it only get’s as far as Shoreditch:

Cockney is better known for Cockney Rhyming Slang - but it also has an interesting and jumbled dialect that combines Yiddish and Romani words. Any one who has watched Only Fools and Horses may be familiar with these, such as ‘Cushty’, ‘Shtum” and ’Wonga’. If you look at the Wikipedia page for Cockney Rhyming slang, there is a fun triple rhyme for ‘arse’ - it started with ‘bottle’ (bottle and glass - arse) then ‘Aristotle’ (Aristotle - bottle) which would be shortened to ‘Aris’, and became ‘plaster’ (plaster of paris - Aris). Madness. I love it.

I was also excited to learn the origin of some Britishisms; such as ‘to blow a raspberry’ originating from raspberry tart - fart or ‘taking the Mick/Mickey’ from Mickey Bliss - taking the piss. In fact ‘take the piss’ has it’s own interesting origins. Then there’s ‘berk’, which comes from the famous fox hunt, Berkley Hunt, to rhyme with, well - you can take a guess at that one…

Now, I am a mockney - my family come from the Cockney diaspora, I am a fraud. But, for this post, I’d like to share something that, although considered ‘Cockney’, is enjoyed across all of London and Essex. I would like to introduce you to Pie and Mash:

Now, before you look at me strangely - yes I can see what it looks like, and this is something I absolutely love about Pie and Mash, it is categorically impossible to photograph the dish well. Nowhere online, in the real or even in rumors have I seen a good photo of Pie and Mash. This isn’t a hugely important thing to the dish itself, but I love it’s consistency in remaining unappealing.

So what is it? Minced beef pie in shortcrust pastry, mashed potato, liquor (a parsley sauce made with fish stock), and malt vinegar. Because this originated in the docks of London, it can also be an eel pie, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone to prefer an eel pie over minced beef these days. What separates Pie and Mash from simply being a pie and some mash is the vinegar and liquor, it doesn’t make the dish particularly exotic, or wild, its a rather small difference - but to be fair, it is just called ‘pie and mash’ so it’s not like you’d expect something that different.

I love Pie and Mash, it’s comfort food, it’s a meal I always enjoy, it reminds me of family, my late uncle, the stories I was told in my youth, and my working class roots. I can’t give much of a passioned call to try it, it is simple working class food that could easily be dismissed, it doesn’t hold the cultural cache of Cornish Pasties, the Bakewell tart or a Gregg’s sausage roll, but it has importance to me. If you feel like trying it, there’s not too many places serving it, let alone good ones; so if you want to try it at home make sure to use a recipe that uses fish stock for the liquor and shortcrust for the pastry.

To cap off, here is the beautiful stained glass window from St. Mary-le-Bow by Tony Hisgett:

Online, she had found her fans were far more interested in her as a person than she had thought - and saw similar trends with the fans of other models. So, when her husband showed her his company’s new website, she had an idea. If fans were hungry for her then why not create her own website with what they wanted? It could be a better way to sell videos too - and importantly, she would have control over how she was presented, and no flaky agents or scummy club owner’s to deal with.

This was Danni Ashe. A self proclaimed “geek with big breasts” who was “obsessed with the computer”, Ashe hired two seperate programmers to realise her vision, but they both failed to create what she wanted. So, realising that no one but her could do it, she took a copy of The HTML Manual of Style and Being Digital to the beach and learnt how to build the whole thing herself. Initially her site only featured pictures of her, and the ability to buy physical videos, and she would upload and quickly remove the images (fearing she’d chew up too much bandwidth). However, the fleeting content wasn’t enough for fans, who quickly told Ashe that they would happily pay a monthly fee for the images to remain up - the online subscription was born.

When she went to get hosting, she warned the provider that her expected traffic would likely need it’s own server, and placing her site, Danni’s Hard Drive, on a shared public server wouldn’t be enough. The provider waved her concerns away and assured her that she didn’t, and that she was getting ahead of herself - that was until imediately after launch, the traffic to her site overwhelmed their server and forced them to do what Ashe had suggested in the first place.

Ashe was a fierce innovator, and saw through tech fads and all the rage that was fledgling e-solutions. In terms of business, it’s no wonder her company thrived - they saw the mess that was video online, and built DanniVision - an actual web player that just worked without the hassle of managing multiple plugins (a problem of the time). Her company developed ways of processing credit cards that protected them from chargebacks and fraud before anyone else, before the smartphone she had a mobile site, and her hosted videos were better quality than big media outlets like NBC and CNN.

Beyond this, Ashe notably approached her site in a way unlike so many before and since - she really wanted to create a fan club environment and not just a sleazy content portal. She described her sight as well-lit and fun, a place that didn’t leave you feeling ashamed or guilty for visiting - embracing the fantasy of fans over the simply explicit presentation of nudity. At the center was the models, the people behind the photos - Ashe gave them the opportunity to represent themselves as they wanted to*, with authenticity and humanity, sex-positive rather than (s)exploitative. Ashe was also articulate (even when her interviewers were not) when discussing her nuanced opinion on violent and distasteful pornography:

Ashe drew firm lines on what her site would and would not host, but was not in favour of censorship generally. Ashe wanted the women in her industry to be at the center of the decisions made for and about them - and audiences preferred it; having a bio written by a horny magazine editor pales in comparison to the lady’s own words. Ashe understood what locked fans in, what made them return, not just what was eye-catching.

I think Ashe was fantastic, teaching herself HTML and building a website where strippers, porn stars and models actually had some control over their presentation. I generally avoid indulging in girlboss feminism, but I have to hand it to Ashe for one-upping the boys so massively, and doing it for the girls.

In the mid 2000s Danni Ashe sold her site and disappeared from the public eye. A once-hinted-at autobiography never materialised, and Danni.com (a.k.a Danni’s Hard Drive) traded hands a couple more times, filed for bankruptcy, and now ‘survives’ with a similar subscription model. Although the performers are no longer the heart of the site, there doesn’t appear to be any free content, and the site’s design is bland, joyless and uninviting.

It’s not unusual for women to be forgotten in history, those in porn and tech especially so. With that in mind, I wanted to quickly celebrate Danni Ashe, for being a geek, for trying to build a performer-first corner of the industry, and for doing more for the internet than a lot of more famous names in tech have even come close to.

* Today, many ex- and current porn stars have websites in their name that they have zero control over, and make either no money or a pittance while the companies that seduced them into setting them up rake dividends.

Bibliography

• Dent, M. (2025). The stripper who ushered in the modern subscription-based internet. [online] Thehustle.co. Available at: https://thehustle.co/originals/the-stripper-who-ushered-in-the-modern-subscription-based-internet.
• Lewis, E. (2001). Danni Ashe: Danni’s drive to Net profits | The Independent. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/danni-ashe-danni-s-drive-to-net-profits-5547114.html [Accessed 30 Jan. 2026].
• Marsh, T. (2014). The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen. Open Road Media.
• Mclauchun, J. (2001). The Most Downloaded Women on the Net. Forbidden Internet, pp.60–65.
• Patchen Barss (2011). The Erotic Engine. Toronto: Anchor Canada.
• Pbs.org. (2002). Interviews - Danni Ashe | American Porn | FRONTLINE |PBS. [online] doi:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/interviews/ashe.html.
• Porter, S. (2001). The Facts of Life from the Web’s Sexiest CEO. netmedia, Apr., pp.37–41, 84–86.

Books I done did read

First up is The Disfavored Hero the first book in the Tomoe Gozen Saga by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. This was a gentle start, as I was already over half way through this one after having been ‘reading’ it for the last year (this is only a 400 page paperback). I had decided to seek out some sword and sorcery books to read, and after having bounced off the first Conan story years prior, I did what I tend to do and looked for female authors (in a male dominated world the quality tends to be higher, and the risk of misogyny and racism a lot lower). I found Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s name and that she had written a saga based on a female Samurai in a fictionalised feudal Japan, where the legends and shinto teachings of the country were concretely real. Our hero, Tomoe Gozen is technically based on a real person, however what we know about her is not much beyond her name and that she was a samurai, but this bears little consequence on the quality of the work.

Salmonson weaves a fantastic tale that lives and breathes sword and sorcery in wonderful ways, avoiding the sort of tropes I’ve seen in the first chapters of male writers (our hero gracefully resists the urge to sexually assault a young woman in this contrived scenario, where we describe the woman’s helpless nubile body just a bit - a bit too much). There is violence, magic, a search for honor after digrace, themes of apathy, love and bravery - and it’s all very enjoyable to read.

I remember telling my mum about the book and saying there was some blatantly strong lesbian sub-text between two characters, before returning to the book after, wherein the two characters proceeded to make love and made me feel a fool. But I enjoyed the romance and thought the representation of two in love rather than simply lurid lovers (sorry, throwing shade at male writers again) was touching and engaging. Although there exists a power dynamic between the two that calls into question how equal the relationship could ever be - I felt by the end that the devout love between the two may in fact rise above this, hopefully its two sequels will make good on this.

I loved this book, a good female character is something I’ve always personally enjoyed, thanks mostly to Terry Pratchett’s female leads I think; the setting and world of Shinto-made-real somewhat echoed Greek- or Nordic- pantheon-made-real fiction, but with more respect and tact (important given the author is not from Japan). Where western religions have been ‘fantasy-fictionalised’ there tends to be a Gaiman- or Ennis- esque style reinterpretation of legend, but here Salmonson takes the premise of ‘what if it were simply real?’ and weaves a quasi-historical tapestry that doesn’t try to reinvent Thor or Loki or whoever as an edgy modern man, but creates something that could have sprung from then-contemporary stories of old, a legend itself.

I actually enjoyed the first book so much, and discovered some old US cover designs that I thought looked amazing - and imported second hand copies of them:

Cover art of the third book was by Kinuko Craft, the first two are uncredited inside the book, although stylistically I assume the second book was done by Kinuko Craft also - I’ve managed to identify the first cover as being a piece by Robert Florczak.

Second up is another book I had already started - The Giallo Canvas: Art, Excess and Horror Cinema by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Giallo is a film genre/style of Italian produced thriller/horrors that is best described as ‘a thing I am into’. Fully going into the definition of the genre and its elements is probably one for a post on its own, so to both crudely but still accurately summarize with the words of Wikipedia*:

In Italian cinema, giallo (Italian: [ˈdʒallo]; pl.: gialli; from giallo, lit. ‘yellow’) is a genre that often contains slasher, thriller, psychological horror, psychological thriller, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements.

Heller-Nicholas explores the use of, connections to, and reverence for, art in Giallo films - particularly paintings. A fascinating analysis, delving into aspects of these films that I had often dismissed as simply a part of the baroque scenery, meaningless even if beautiful and aesthetically engaging. Understanding the histories Giallo filmmakers have with art and their attitudes towards it was enlightening - this book is highly recommended for fans of this cinematic niche; I will be revisiting some classic Giallo with new eyes thanks to Heller-Nicholas, and look forward to reading the work she drew from and cites alongside her analysis.

From left to right: Deep Red (Profondo Rosso, 1975) and Tenebre (1982) dir. Dario Argento; Stage Fright (Deliria, 1987) dir. Michael Soavi; Sweets from a Stranger (Caramelle da uno sconosciuto, 1987) dir. Franco Ferrini

The next book, which I have already started today, is The Erotic Engine by Patchen Barss. A history of pornography and erotica and it’s influence on technology and communications from prehistory to today. I’ll go into it a bit more in Febuary’s in review, but I actually chose to read this one next as part of research into another post I want to write. Afterwards, I’m not sure - I may go to the second Tomoe Gozen book, The Golden Naginata or crack into House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I have many titles on my list so who knows where fancy will take me.

Notes

• The title of the first Tomoe Gozen story was originally titled ‘Tomoe Gozen’ (as pictured above), but was retroactively renamed as ‘The Disfavored Hero’.

My initial assumption was that these recordings were created like one particular boss in Super Meat Boy, which was the first instance of this sort of thing that I heard about. In one level, Brownie is a boss that behaves exactly like Super Meat Boy and is simply the recorded run of developer Edmund McMillan completing the level, your goal is just to beat him, you don’t interact with him, he is simply a series of inputs that completes the level.

But, on reflection, DOOM couldn’t work like that, could it? There’s enemies, they interact with the world, navigating and attacking, their actions informed by reaction and RNG - there’s just no accounting for the random decision making of the AI, and both your damage and the monsters are effected by RNG. You can’t only record the player - surely you’d have to record everything?

But here’s the interesting part: it’s not actually RNG, at least not in the literal sense. RNG stands for ‘Random Number Generator’ - the general understanding peopl have is that the game just randomly decides something, and although the deck may be stacked this way or t’other, it’s basically a dice roll that happens under the hood.

Now, what the DOOM engine does, is make a call to an array every time it needs a ‘random’ number, incrementing the index each call. To break that down, the engine has a list of numbers (stored in an array), and when, for example, an Imp tries to kill the player it asks for a number from the ‘random’ list, it’s given one and depending on what it is, they either shoot a fireball or try getting closer first. Then, immediately after, another Imp is making its own decision about what to do. But when they ask, the index has increased by one, moving to the next number in the array, this number might result in the same Imp behaviour, or something different.

Now if that makes sense, I want you to expand that to everything that has any random variation. Everything. Shotgun spread patterns, damage, every bit of the monsters’ behaviour - all asking the list of numbers for a value that determines their behaviour, one after the other, each and every time the index goes up by one until the list ends and it starts back at the first value again. When a level starts, the list of numbers starts at index 0 (this is the first number, arrays are just like that), the only thing that changes what asks the list for a number and for what, is the player! The list does not change, so if the player does the exact same thing at the exact same time, the game will always play out the same way!. So it actually is like Brownie from Super Meat Boy - all you need is to have a script of player inputs and - bam! A perfect in-engine replay. Even the sounds match up. the plasma rifle makes calls to this array to determine the change in pitch of each shot - so when you replay a demo, it maintains everything!

What’s also cool about this is you can make your own. Just start DOOM with ‘-record <filename>’ in DoS - and you’re recording, and the engine can just as simply play it back with ‘-playdemo <filename>’! Since the engine’s just reading keyboard and mouse input, the files (which were called lumps**) were far smaller than a direct video recording, but infinitely better in quality, as the replay is a complete recreation of the game during the recording.

When I found out about this, something that had puzzled me about another game suddenly made sense. In Halo 3 there was a ‘Theatre Mode’ where you could save game sessions (either multiplayer or campaign level) then replay them with an unlocked free camera - you basically had a Braindance. You could then record clips from any players’ perspective, or as a camera moving freely as the game replayed around you. What confused me, was that if I recorded a short video the file size was huge compared to the full recording - which now makes total sense, it was all just player inputs!

Back in the 1990s, the small file size meant that it was even possible to send people your DOOM runs - if you got an insane speedrun time, you could prove it to your friends across the globe with a file leagues smaller, and infinitely higher in quality. Today, we’re spoiled by video, and video hosting. You can simply sign up to YouTube and upload a video in minutes et viola - now it’s available to anyone to watch, and hosted for free. It’s also easy to record videos of our computer screen, we’re far beyond even the days of HyperCam, Fraps, and Bandicam, let alone before them. Back then DOOM lumps were the only way to share your gameplay with someone else. Well, almost.

The Let’s Play is something that is often seen as a child of YouTube, and the era of widespread access to online video. However, it existed long before in forum posts, blogs, and usenet groups. Of course what I am talking about is the written Let’s Play, or the screenshot play along, or any number of variations. It’s generally agreed that the Let’s Play started, as many things do, on the Something Awful forums - but all we know is that a user created a post with a screenshot playthrough of The Oregon Trail in 2005, and the thread has long since been deleted.

But it is 2026 now, and the idea of creating a written Let’s Play seems a bit needlessly archaic, and esoteric. The expected format is video, and even strategy guides and walkthroughs are predominantly video now - of course GameFAQs holds on, but I worry the writing is on the wall. In many cases video is a better representation of the game, it technically falls short of a ‘demo’, but it’s the closest you can get. Not to mention the connection between audience and writer can be stronger in video, you might even see their face, and they can joke and react in real-time; and, hey, let’s face it - liking video games and wanting to share that doesn’t mean that you are a good writer. Many written Let’s Plays were full of gamerisms the likes you would expect in early 2000’s GameFAQ guides written poorly by edgy 13 year olds.

That said, I think there’s an essence of deliberation and reflection in written Let’s Plays that you don’t get in their modern incarnation. You have to think, put words to a page and communicate something far more than if you just sit in front of a camera to scream at Freddy Fazbear. You also don’t substitute a playthrough so your audience doesn’t feel like trying the game themselves***. I think a written let’s play is a more intimate way of sharing, in a video there is a concrete, strong translation of the game through the bits and bytes of video; but in writing the Let’s Player has to translate their experience, they have to actively convey something. It’s the difference between sharing the beauty of a landscape with a photo, and sharing it with a painting****.

I have more that I want to say regarding media-about-media of the internet in general, but for this post I’ll leave it at that. Originally this was going to be the opener to my own written Let’s Play - but I haven’t got around to playing the game I was planning on writing about, so - uh, maybe next time?

Until then, I hope this was at least a little interesting, and thank you for reading.

*These don’t appear when using a source port like GZDoom, so you may have not seen this if you never launched via DOS…

**Lumps were actually a file type for various bits of data, not only demos. Just to be clear.

***There isn’t anything necessarily wrong with this, but the experience of playing a game, is generally going to be more rewarding and enriching. Of course there are games that are interesting to watch, but not fun to play, and blah blah Pathologic blah blah… It’s multifaceted - you get it. Whatever.

Notes

• A video that goes over the RNG in the DOOM engine, and where I learnt most of this: Doom’s RNG - decino.
• The name of this post comes from the two moons of Mars, Deimos & Phobos; both of which are referenced in DOOM’s level names.

Looking at this somewhat bizarre face one might be confused as to why this was the poster design for the 1953 sci-fi film; and that’s because it’s not the poster for that film at all. It’s the poster for Piotr Szulkin’s 1981 Polish film The War of the Worlds: Next Century, or Wojna światów - następne stulecii, by Andrzej Pągowski. In fact this poster’s artwork isn’t even the original Polish language version; the English title makes it much more likely that this is the promo for the foreign release. The Polish version (also by Andrzej Pągowski) looked like this:

i

I’m being quite specific by calling these Polish posters rather than Soviet, as the other posters the post shared were all specifically polish too, but properly identified as to what film they were for:

First and Last: Alien (1979), and Weekend at Bernie’s (1989) by Jakub Erol. Middle: Apocalypse Now (1979) by Waldemar Swierzy.

The reason I’m being so specific about their Polish origins, is that these were not what film posters looked like across the USSR and it’s satellite states - these are very much unique to Poland, and to the Polish School of Posters.

At the end of the 19th century, Poland was divided amongst Russia, Austria and Prussia. In Kraków, the Młoda Polska movement, comprising of artists of various mediums, worked to revitalise Polish art, and preserve the national culture and identity with a modernistic approach - preserving the Polish identity even when the maps of the day had nowhere by that name. Like many in Europe, these artists were inspired by the dazzling French chromolithography of Jules Chéret - whose work became what we know as the modern poster. It soon became the preferred medium to express their artistic aims, and when Poland gained it’s independence in 1918, there was a mixture of influences that all contributed to the continued development of the poster in Poland. Rapid industrialization, tourism, and new trade networks demanded posters-as-advertisements, while socialist influences inspired the style of social realism amongst artists, connecting the Młoda Polska’s interest in their nation’s folk art with the community-driven, drive to honor the workers and peasants.

After the devastation of the Second World War, Poland, now a Soviet satellite state, introduced a strict style of Socialist Realism for any state sponsored posters - which was now the only way a poster could be produced. Artists were therefore unable to make money through other styles, and were economically restricted from expression. However, they were highly sought after; giving them the difficult task of reconciling their artistic aims with the reality of the state’s needs. Despite this conflict of purpose, and how some commentators wax poetic about the dreary life of Communist rule; there was a lot of hope and excitement in artistic circles, especially in architecture; there was a sense that the rebuilding of cities such as Warsaw, were a blank slate for new and different designers. Even before the ‘Polish Thaw’, and the end of Poland’s adherence to Stalinist Socialist Realism, the state shared their excitement and founded the Office for the Supervision of Aesthetic Production without any political or ideological aims, instead focusing on the profession of aesthetic design and production. Even the panels of censors that are often cited by those writing on this topic, are misrepresentations of reality; the panels were in fact manned by the artist’s peers, and their job was not to censor, but assure the quality of the work. This was especially important, given that the posters of Poland were a source of pride for the Soviet union, and something revered internationally.

The 1950s and 60s are often seen as the golden age of Polish poster art. During this time both Film Polski and Centrala Wynajmu Filmow (Movie Rentals Central or CWF) commissioned artists rather than graphic designers to produce posters for film releases. In the mid 1950s, after the ‘Polish Thaw’ and the lifting of stylistic expectations, the field blossomed; with artists working outside of commercial constraints, there was no need to juggle profits and ticket sales along artistic expression. The poster was artist-driven, with complete disregard for the demands of the film studios. Posters became personal and deductive, interpretive and freely expressive.

Some bemoan the following decades of the 1970s and 80s as a great decline of the Polish poster - but I myself love the works of this period as much as those prior. I’m not alone, either, as the post that inspired me to write this shows - thanks mostly to the nostalgia for the cinema of the two decades, I’m sure.

In 1989, when film distribution was privatized, and state sponsorships ended - the poster hegemonised with the west, and with the marketing world now in charge of their design and distribution, there was no space for the public art of the Polish poster. Even those who try and continue the legacy create limited runs, hidden in galleries and far from the streets they once decorated.

Not a lot have people have seen The War of the Worlds: Next Century compared to the 1953 American film, so I bemoan no one from outside of 1980s Poland for not recognising the poster. In fact even the Vinegar Syndrome 2-disc Blu-ray collection of Piotr Szulkin’s apocalyptic films doesn’t have this artwork anywhere on the cover. Originally all I wanted to do was write a quick correction, a little tid-bit about a lesser-known film, but I thought a bit of history might be a bit more interesting.

Edit Thu 22 Jan: Although the Vinegar Syndrome release that included War of The Worlds: Next Century did not have the Andrzej Pągowski artwork, the Radience limited edition does.

Bibliography

• Austoni, A. (2010). The Legacy Of Polish Posters. [online] Smashing Magazine. Available at: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/the-legacy-of-polish-poster-design/ [Accessed 12 Jan. 2026].
• Boczar, D.A. (1984). The Polish Poster. Art Journal, 44(1), pp.16–27. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.1984.10792515.
• Crowley, D. (1994). Building the World Anew: Design in Stalinist and Post-Stalinist Poland. Journal of Design History, 7(3), pp.187–203. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/7.3.187.
• Czestochowski, J.S., Fijałkowska, J. and Muzeum Plakatu W Wilanowie (1979). Contemporary Polish posters in full color. New York: Dover Publications.
• Kuznar, T. (2025). Classic Polish Film Posters. [online] Cinemaposter.com. Available at: http://www.cinemaposter.com/ [Accessed 12 Jan. 2026].
• Schneider, F. (2015). Reflecting the Soul of a Nation: Polish Poster Art - Illustration History. [online] www.illustrationhistory.org. Available at: https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/reflecting-the-soul-of-a-nation-polish-poster-art [Accessed 11 Jan. 2026].
• Sedia, G. (2021). Polish Film Posters. [online] Kino Mania. Available at: https://kino-mania.net/polish-film-posters [Accessed 11 Jan. 2026].