Welcome To The SubStick
Where all your dreams come true.
Stick starts typing onto the page.
STICK
Every SubStick is going to start
with an excerpt from a script I've
written, formatted just like this.
Most of the time it will be chosen
at random. It is not likely to be
related to the main topic at hand.
There is no reason for doing this.
He sits back, satisfied with his work. This is such a great idea.
Hello. Good morning, or afternoon, or evening. It might be different for everyone. How about good day? Or maybe you’re reading this at night. It all depends on your perspective. I could technically tell you to have a good morning at any time of day, because there’s always going to be another morning. But also, who am I to tell you what to do? Maybe you want to have a terrible day. I know some people like that. They have spouses and children.
I’m not assuming this is going to be a very fun read for you because you likely know next to nothing about me. How on Earth are you even here? What information is there to glean from my incessant ramblings? Well, that’s the point of this article, isn’t it? To sell you on staying a while? Don’t worry, I’ll be brief for this iteration1.
My name is, by all metrics, Stick. It’s short for “stickman”. I also occasionally go by pen names such as Mark Dawson or Paul Robinson, and an additional secret moniker. My age is a classified number sitting somewhere between 15 and 35. I am reportedly a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I suffer from various manufactured physical and psychological conditions. I have little-to-no body fat and consume an average of 1500 calories a day2. Career-wise I am a biology technician, but my real work happens in places like this, infectious software designed for typing up lines and paragraphs while being poisoned by blue light exposure. I wrote a whole movie about that once.
I’ve written regular narrative stories before. It’s all I did in school and my work has even been featured in a book; of course I refer to my most-prideful status as the writer of the short story “Dogwhistle” that appears in Passage Prize II: Rewilding. But my main interest is the film business. There’s a lot of fun stories to be told about my growing amount of experience in that realm, but I think I should keep things simple for now. I write scripts. I’ve been writing them “professionally” for almost a decade. And I’ve been writing them “casually” since I was 8.
But I like to have a little variety, and it’s not as smart of a business decision to regularly post a 90-page screenplay on Twitter/X for viewers to read. I figured I might as well start a blog instead, because allowing my uncensored thoughts on various topics to be placed somewhere public is better than keeping them to myself. What? What do you mean it isn’t? That’s just your opinion, man. The SubStick is happening whether you like it or not.
But what IS the SubStick?
If it’s a stick, what does the “sub” part mean? Am I referring to a submarine? Or a substitute? A subscription? Subway? It’s also a prefix, indicating “at, to, or from a lower level of position”. In simpler terms, it means inferior. So if I’m the “Stick”, what is the “SubStick”? Well, it’s also me. Bear with me on this.
See, we all experience a thing called consciousness. It’s what makes us “awake”, or aware of where we are and what we’re doing at any given moment. I am conscious, and so are you (allegedly). But, we also simultaneously have a “subconscious” part of the mind, the part that isn’t fully aware but still influences actions and emotions. In a similar manner, I simultaneously make up what “Stick” is as well as what the “SubStick” is. If I am conscious of myself, then the “sub” prefix could certainly mean it’s an inferior version.
And it works. As a representation of my mental or psychological way of thinking, writing things down into a blog post is certainly an inferior way of experiencing direct thought compared to somehow existing directly inside the mind. The blog exists to be an abridged representation of my train of thought.
I can talk about anything here. I have a whole list of topics and stories to tell that I put in my notes just in case I get writer’s block later down the line. But “anything” is rather vague. So I’ll put it in simpler terms.
On the SubStick I will be discussing personal (albeit altered) anecdotes, current events in politics and discourse in as unbiased a manner as I can, as well as reviewing pieces of media I have consumed. More on that later. Theoretical stuff, stupid stream of consciousness rants, the whole buffet.
If it’s not your schtick (see what I did there?) don’t worry, it won’t be very often. At this current stage I’m still figuring out Substack. So things are a bit flimsy. I’ll probably go with a biweekly schedule, every Monday morning. This might change in the future depending on my work ethic. But, hey, if somebody really likes what I do here, I think I can speed things up a little. I care about the little guy.
Blogger Is Our Word
This is not my first blog. I’ve made several in the past. None of them were with Substack; this is a new platform for me. No, no, all of the others were made using a classic tool called Blogger. It’s basically a service that lets you have a custom domain (complete with a .blogspot.com subdomain). As far as I know, it’s just a blogging tool. Maybe you can make more complex websites with it. Google hosts it. I don’t know much else.
In spite of the fact I used it to make several websites.
If you’re hoping for a link, I’ve got some bad news. I’ve pretty much erased all traces of these old blogs from existence. That is not a challenge to go looking. You know nothing about me anyway.
It started when I was 7 or 8. My mother used to make scrapbooks, as a way to catalogue the early lives of her first few children. That habit slowly wavered over the years as she acquired full-time employment and additional kids, but the urge must’ve stuck because she evolved that practice into a Blogger domain. From what flimsy memories I have, she would post monthly and did so for a few years, basically cataloging the experiences of her family. Plenty of old pictures of me could be found there. The decline in her usage of the blog coincided with the rise of Facebook. In a way, I guess she never stopped. I think I would’ve preferred the scrapbooks, though. I can still read those. The website is long gone.
Then there were my relatives. My mother must’ve gotten the whole “digital scrapbook” idea from one of my aunts, who had similarly used her own Blogger website to create an actual internet web show. She basically took the form of a pop culture gossip girl, discussing new music and books she liked, or interesting news from where she lived. I don’t think it got popular in any major form; it was mostly shared among friends and neighbors. I mention this because I would end up featuring in it. And I wanted in on the viral marketplace.
Both me and my brother ended up making our own blogs. Technically I created my brother’s as well (I was always good at the computers). He stopped after a few months, but I carried on for years. There was nothing sensible or logical about the things I posted on that first blog. I mostly rambled about new Wii games that were coming out, and episodes of cartoons that I loved to rewatch. I hate to use the term “hyperfixation”, but it’s one way of describing some of the content. But that was just one half of it. The other was my own web show. Unlike my aunt’s, which featured her sitting down and discussing specific topics, episodes of my show consisted of me basically messing with the webcam of my house’s computer. Sometimes I would play music, or even do a funny little dance. I’d show the audience new toys I got for my birthday or Christmas. I even managed to convince my aunt to do a crossover episode with her show, where we did all of the above. A very nostalgic memory of mine. I was doing all of this in tandem with the YouTube channels I was handling. That’s a story for another time.
Eventually I got older and developed self-awareness. Once I revisited the blog and experienced what one could only describe as a wave of “cringe”, I made it private and made an internal agreement never to speak of it again. Wait a second—
But the story doesn’t end there. At the start of my teens my family thought it would be a good idea to convince me to dive into the realm of film criticism. So I made another Blogger domain and put on the semi-ironic front of an immensely-judgemental movie critic. My reviews were several paragraphs of essentially-parroted language from random reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I gave Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a 6/10 and Star Wars: The Last Jedi a 9/10. In hindight, I don’t really know why I made being judgmental the whole modus operandi of the blog. In reality, I hated being mean-spirited.
As the years went by I realized I could no longer trust my teenage self’s opinions on movies, so I also made it private and moved over to the social media service Letterboxd where I could justifably make one-sentence reviews without being criticized for it. My father still asks me if I’m writing reviews sometimes.
Now I’m here. And I am most certainly going to review movies.
The Four Media Types
I’ll review everything, really. I like seeing all the numbers on a spreadsheet. But, these days, I go more off “vibes”. Therapeutic questions like “how did it make me feel?” I apply this to everything, not just movies. Everything I watch or read or listen to or play.
I’m not a shut-in. At least, by my standards I’m not. I don’t sit in a basement and play video games all day or binge television shows. In fact, I hardly watch TV. I interact with what I consider to be the four main forms of media.
Visual Media — Film and television.
Audio Media — Music, specifically albums. Podcasts or audiobooks could count, too.
Written Media — Books, articles, essays, etc.
Interactive Media — Video games.
I really consider these four equal pieces of a pie. It’s why I’m not necessarily keen on criticizing individuals who spend time playing games in comparison to something like reading books. I guess many games have a specific addictive aspect to them, but if you’re interacting with them for other reasons, I don’t see much of a difference. I don’t play games for the purpose of assisting positive chemical reactions. Okay, maybe sometimes, I like to have fun. But it’s really just because I have a big backlog of everything.
So I watch new movies constantly because there are a lot of them I want to see and it’s good for my writing to get as many examples as possible. The same goes for books. I read ten pages a day because my bookshelf is growing. It helps my ability to focus as well. I follow over a hundred musical artists. I’m listening to a new album every day. I’m trying my best to get through three games every month. I do not like to waste time. If I can’t complete them by the end of the month, or if I just don’t like it, I move on.
This makes me a rather ravenous consumer of pop culture. But the purpose of a backlog is that it mostly consists of old stuff. I’ll probably talk about what I’ve watched, or read, or played, or listened to on here if I’m ever in the mood. Maybe I can discuss the filmography of director M. Night Shyalaman. I just finished Peter Watts’ Blindsight, which I am too stupid to fully comprehend. In a few weeks I’m going to a concert for folk band The Arcadian Wild, whose recent deluxe album Welcome was one of my favorite of the year. Or I can discuss my history with and opinion of The Legend of Zelda. I’m not really one to consider myself a major conossieur of stuff like this, but I do like to think about how I interact with it. I can’t lose my grip on reality nonetheless.
StickStack
Why do I call myself Stick anyways? My profile picture isn’t even of a stick. It’s of an animated dog, from the first Toy Story. I think his name is Spike. I picked it because I thought it looked funny. I came up with the name itself in high school, and I think it was to make fun of my BMI. I think it’s unique enough, and it makes for two good puns.
I’m working on a feature screenplay right now that I can probably expand upon some other time (big disaster ensemble horror with lots of Outer Darkness religious symbolism). I got jury duty this month, but every time I call they say some other numbers need to show up. It’s hot as literal Hell outside. This took me like three hours to write. I should probably plan things out better. I’ll have more pictures in the next one, I promise.
This is what my article template currently says:
Say some words to close things out. Then, put a funny picture. You can have more than one picture in the article but it helps to close out with something.
Until next time. Maybe two weeks. Give me a minute to think about it.
I’ve written more bad scripts than good ones. But don’t worry, those excerpts at the top won’t be that long.
I would like to apologize
This statement is currently under review by the Stick Council.