Recently I finished watching the series Murder Drones by Liam Vickers.
The series fascinated me, initially for the story, but when the quality of that somewhat declined, moreso for the asthetic and charecter design. It really spoke to me, the way that the team had managed to depict facial features through a fully maliable face and vector graphics. It was a seductively enticing series for the artist in me, one that stuck in my mind for the months it took to finish the full series with my close friend.
First I looked into Kevin Turner, whose art i've loved for a long, long time and was most captivated by his animation in tADC, but soon after I heard of the existence of another project by Liam Vickers. Cliff side and Internecion cube. Funnily enough, I never watched these. Who knows why, but it was like the time wasn't right for it is the best I can explain. I guess I wanted to save them for after the murder drones series was finished.
At the same time I heard of a more hidden, forgotten channel of Liam's. This too I completely ignored after taking a look at the home page and seeing that he'd posted a "going away" video..
This was around the time I'd finished In Stars and Time and become thoroughly obsessed with it. I'd always wanted to make an RPG, but my ideas kept getting away from me and swelling in scope before I'd even started. It was that, or i'd decide my art wasn't good enough to make anything with.
After i'd made some fanwork for the series that i've only shown to a friend of mine, I once more broke free of it just in time to finish Murder Drones and suffer the multi week long miasma of meaningless that finishing a good series brings.
I had two choices: Endure it with fan works and time, or see the rest of his stuff, knowing that he had moved past it, and intensify that ennui but also my understanding of the author. The series had a large number of problems you can find with a basic google search (including "reddit" as a keyword of course) but I needed to see how his style of writing worked at a deeper level. And so my choice was clear, I had afterall not been enjoying MD fanworks given the ever growing gap between myself and those who are want to produce such fanworks. It was much simpler in the days of Hollow knight, back then I was in highschool and so I could far more easily enjoy work made by people a few years younger then me. Now theres practically a decade between me and the majority of AO3 authors. How I miss those days, and how I wish I could link you to my old work dear viewer, even if I loathe to ever read it again.
So there I was, ready to suffer, but deluding myself into thinking I'd wait for my friend to be availible to watch Cliffside when I stumbled upon a series of Shorts on SSTWL's Design. Now here was something strange and mystical. There was talk of a half dozen series, reoccuring charecters, something called "Puppet Game" which bound it all together, and even a Visual Novel. This was a step past anything I had ever expected, and it had my attention utterly. A day later, I re-entered Scary Story Time With Liam with fresh new eyes of wonder, hungry to consume this whale one bite at a time.
And what a whale it was. Design alone is 13 hours, thats staggering! All of it slightly animated, with visuals throughout that match and music that builds quite exceptional atmosphere.
I tried to start chronologically, but that quickly broke down, and instead I went to that pillar of centrality at the community's suggestion, (Join the Discord! They're still active as of january 2025!) Design
Design was interesting. I already knew about the first great reveal through those shorts I talked about, but yet I was entrenched the entire first season, completing it in two days along with a few episodes of season 2... but then... I just stopped. I'd seen enough, and I knew from whispered hints in other conversations and posts that the series was dead, and that John had a rather uninteresting to me story... and dear god the julie story was impossible to sit through. You are allowed to beat me in the head if I ever repeat a conversation more then twice, I assume you guys we don't need to hear 4 times that a girl is hiding bruises and the MC thinks they're being abused, and has taken action to try and solve it.
... Something feels wrong writing all of this, you know?
Complaint, complaint, complaint, when the actual series filled me with inspiration and motivation to make fan works and immitate the story. It's so unfortunate that all dozen of the ideas I had have been lost behind the surface level "17 year old Liam Vickers wasn't the absolute best at writing", when I myself am actually jelous of his writing skill at the time. As uncanny as they behave, each of his "John Matthews" charecters represent similar traits in a very interesting way. John is clearly insane himself, having absolutely no regard for the harms others inflict and a burning attachment to those who hurt him. But it's always because he has nothing else left, so often you can say that he is merely making the best of a bad situation, attempting to ignore what was lost in hopes of helping someone else now that he has nothing.
I mean jesus, just look at A Cold Love Story! He finds out his parents, friends, aquaintences, and bus driver have all been murdered and crammed into his house, and his immediate thought is that there must be good left in the person who did all of this, and he needs to coddle and help the murderer.
Thats completely unreal, and the way he speaks of things barely portrays it such that its more of a fan theory then anything... But this is nearly universal with Liam's work, almost ever john has a scenario that ends up like this in different contexts, so I can't help but say its intentional.
If you're still reading and didn't give up after seeing the HTML5 website, and the wall of text above, then you probably know why were here. I want to explore how I interact with media, and I want to record how it is that I pick apart authors stories. I spend hours and hours going through people's things, and then do nothing at all with it. If I'm going to have this weirdly wasteful hobby, might as well make an accounting of it, like an AAR for imposter syndrome.
i'll try not to let the Liam humor take over my life
So, from there it was more and more SSTWL. And it was one after another unfinished series. Yellow halogen, black dogs, the creepypasta, alaska, I stepped foot in all of them. But I couldn't stay for long. Despite my enjoyment of charecters suffering, there was something about Liam's work that attracted and repulsed me. Much like how in his 10k subs video he said that he started making stories out of being upset with how emotional media made him, I too had found myself unable to bear to face the horrors and tragedy's of this mans youth. There were writing problems with them as well of course, Sarah being a rape baby, and the repetitive nature of scenes, but these didn't really hurt my enjoyment. It was almost entirely that I've found im not actually a fan of reading the suffering, only writing it?
It's strange isin't it, just how much I love horror and tragedy, but also how little tolerance for it I have. How much I love long stories and abhor time skips, but lose patience so fast.
Theres an obvious solution to figure this mystery out. Make my own stories.
First I'd wanted to immitate Liam, make my own stories and narrate them online. Some dour minds might fear that the age of that has moved past, that being a narrator was a thing of a different younger era of youtube, and while that could be true I don't think we should be so hasty. Sure you're unlikely to ever succeed, but how many narrators who write their own material ever really made it out of SSTWL's era anyways? I think that the channel dieing and Liam moving on was inevitable, it's popularity a result of the man's skill and passion and not market forces or timing. Of course he was lucky, anyone who makes it big is, but I dont think luck is the only reason he's made it this far.
What im going to do is make a visual novel called Puppet Dance.
The goal of this is to made the most of the next ten days, starting 1/10/2025, and create as close to a finished visual novel as I can. I want it horror themed, based on the parts of Design that swayed me the most, and I want it messy. Enough worrying about quality, that can suck an egg. It's time to make something and have files to post places and say that I've created complete, start to finish fiction.
The first version of the story was messy and over scoped, so I just chopped it down to fit. Good enough!
Betrayal: Ever since SMEN I've loved the idea of betrayal and obsession, so this story will have both.
Charecter interactions: I want these people to feel alive and for the setting to serve them, not for them to be expository sources for the setting
Briskness: I want this to be short and sweet, but for your actions to meaningfully change things. And I want it to move smooth enough that you never feel aimless or that you're just spam clicking to get somewhere important
Yeah you ready all of this for those four lines, thanks for your time
You really shouldn't be this deep into a random website, friend, but just for you ill write a bit more of my thoughts, since you've heard me out for so very long.
Link to be inserted later lol