Rolling

Castles in the Air, Episode Three:

Bird of Passage

Castles in the Air is a bi-weekly horror anthology series in the vein of The Twilight Zone. The podcast is created and owned by Will Donelson.

A strange man visits an isolated Trucker's Diner along the open road. He hasn't slept in days, and can't bring himself to eat. After some coercion, the patrons get him to reveal what troubles him; nihilistic and disturbing visions, brought on by the appearance of an ethereal crow that flies beside him as he drives.

Written, directed and edited by Will Donelson

Listen and Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/castles-in-the-air/id1191981068

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This episode features voicework by Deejay Montez, Paul Brion, Austin Nebbia, Sam Leigh and Vianka Ayala.

Opening theme is "Consumed by Love" by Giles Appleton. This episode also features music by Wren.

Closing theme is “Dark Bargain with the Antlered King” by Elves and Dwarves

Episode art by A. Rehman.

Castles in the Air is owned by Will Donelson

If you like what you heard, please subscribe to us on iTunes! I would also appreciate any ratings/reviews on iTunes as it helps boost the shows visibility.

Once again, thank you to everyone for being so supportive and sending so many nice messages and the like. Next episode in two weeks!

Looking around online, I found a LOT of people were left stumped by the ending of the film Personal Shopper. I get that - it’s a weird one! In this video, I examine the film as a whole, and try to find out what exactly we can gleam from those perplexing final seconds.

If you enjoy my video, please feel free to subscribe, or follow me on Twitter here https://twitter.com/The_Infranaut

Mountains Crack the Clouds

If i were able, I would tell you; “be careful what it is you want to know.”

Impossible as it may be to implement, i can think of no greater advice to give.

Our own secret pessimism is betrayed by our eagerness to look to leave the Earth. How terrifying the concept of being alone is. How horrific, the notion that all there is to discover is in each other.

I don't say this sarcastically or mockingly – it's true. Since I first began my cosmological research I found the notion that this planet (and by association, this culture) is an outlier utterly repellant. Individuality is the worst thing that could happen to us as a race. To find that we are the only thinkers in a stagnant universe. To be completely alone except for the company of other men. God, how we fear being alone - how we flee the thought of isolation... but for me, personally? For the individual? That's something entirely different. There are no lonely echoes in this ship. I don't float down the halls longing for another to share the burden. That's why I'm here.

Being away from people is a blessing.

I mean, logically speaking, it's impossible we're alone, isn't it? Science does not like the idea of there being outliers, or one-off's. The universe is just too big - it just doesn't make sense that there would only be one species in the entire infinite goddamn universe that can make it into space, let alone exist. There must be – the math wouldn't fail me. I can't just have home to go back to. I'm a pioneer. I'm going to discover amazing things. That's why I'm out here – to make contact.

I won't lie and say that I don't find myself overtaken by boredom from time to time. The universe is big, but my comprehension of it is small, as is my capacity for wonder. Maybe it was a mistake to make me an astronaut – I get used to everything. To space, to cities, to people... My God, I am used to people. There has to be something more interesting out here – there just has to be.

I wasn't always interested in the idea of intelligence foreign to Earth. Back home, I studied the sun, of all things. I remembered reading how, long ago, they thought that there was life on there. That the sunspots where mountains, poking through the clouds... Given what we know now, that's an even more beautiful thought, I think. Standing atop a dark mountain, looking over a sheet of nimbus clouds with the firey intensity of a septillion atom bombs.

Sunspots are interesting things. They're around two thousand degrees kelvin cooler than the rest of the sun, and though they look almost black, that's only in comparison to the brilliant intensity of the rest of the photosphere. Also interesting is that no one really understood that much about them until recently – we knew that they could release powerful solar flares if given time. We also knew they were caused by disturbances in the sun's magnetic field – but still, we didn't know why.

I put forward a theory; that the Sun's magnetic poles, much like our Earth's, were about to flip. The sunspots we see are not actually all too common in young stars that still have a while before their poles switch places. As the magnetic flip draws closer, we begin to see more and more sunspots.

Of course, that was all just theory. Preamble to my real cause of looking for alien life. I've sat up here for almost three years, now. Just... listening for radiowaves. Letting these machines look for... Anything. I haven't found anything yet, of course, but there's hope. We can shoot out data at lightspeed now, surely we are not the only ones doing that? Surely, in this infinite universe, there must be those more advanced than even us? Of course there are, it only makes sense. In an infinite universe, this simply has to be the case. There have to be people who have been around longer than we have,

Many consider this position a punishment, and in a way I suppose it was meant as one. They couldn't fire me for what I did – they couldn't even keep me out of space. Apparently I'm too valuable to keep grounded for the rest of my life but expendable enough I can be sent on what they perceive as a dead-end mission. It doesn't matter; I'm up here, and I'm going to make history for a planet I never want to go back to.

People think their differences are precious. They think that what separates them is important or – even more ridiculously – demands respect. I'm from here, I believe this, I’m owed this.

Events come and go, and people happen to each other. Differences aren't things to be deified– people are difficult enough already. No man has the right to be surprised when others seek to rectify their problems.

God, don't send me back to Earth. Someone, please. Take me somewhere else.

I said that, time and time and time again, until I heard the good news. I was told that my theory had just been proven – that the sun's poles where about to switch, and that the increase in sunspots over the last thousand years was indeed build-up. It was going to happen, eventually. Not for another few thousand years.

The thing is, I realised what that meant. I saw the terrible implication of it.

If sunspots are caused by magnetic disturbances, and the sun's entire magnetic system was about to get flipped upside down, that would mean... Well, an enormous increase in sunspots, the likes of which we had never seen before. Perhaps even enough to cover the entire body.

What I'm curious to is if the Earth could handle the sun's overall temperature (or even just enough of it) decreasing by 2000 degrees kelvin. If by some miracle it could, there is no chance it would survive the gargantuan solar flares that would follow. Our planet’s life expectancy had just been cut drastically short.

This didn't bother me. What bothered me was my understanding of space, and life. Every planet that can support life needs to orbit a star – to have a sun of their own.

And if every civilisation needs a sun, and every sun goes through this magnetic switch, it means that

every single sun is a time bomb, waiting to kill the planets that orbit them.

The assumption we had been working under was that we would have to make contact with a more advanced species, but,

no sun will allow a civilisation to get that far.

Universe-over, they are snuffed out right before they can.

we are not alone in the universe – we can't be, but

we may as well be,

and all I have is Earth.

Whatever Happens

In what we would consider a long dead universe, the last quark hangs in existence. Really, it cannot be said to hang or float, or be described with verbs at all.

There is nothing outside the quark. There is nothing beyond it. When we imagine this, we may imagine an expanse. A white void that stretches into infinity. This is incorrect. Outside the quark, there is nothing. There is no void, no expanse. The lack of existence is not something the quark inhabits; it is a force pressing down on it from all sides. The quark, in this sense, is all existence. The Quark is now everything.

This is what he would imagine, if he could. Never shutting his eyes, he watches Seychelles disappear beneath the bow as the ocean gently lifts and releases the ship. “It’s a small thing”, he thinks without knowing exactly what the thought refers to. To Seychelles, his ship was indeed small. To his home country of Somalia, however, Seychelles was perhaps even smaller. He continued on like this in his head as he watched the crown of the archipelago blink in and out of existence over the waves. To France, Somalia must seem small. He wasn’t sure, he assumed it must be so.

When someone does wrong, scale can be very comforting. He avoids eye contact with his fellows, and instead finally turns his gaze to the other ship. So much larger, so many more people. He takes comfort knowing that, to the sea, they are both small. I his mind, he moves up. Up to where the two boats are dwarfed by the ribbon of islands, up still to nothing but the ocean, up still until he can no longer picture the map. If he could have imagined that quark, he would have felt very comforted. To what hadron was it once attached, he might wonder. What he does consider is that there will eventually be something that will be the last thing to exist.

It could only take him so far, though. There is a hungry pain and a looming fear that disturbs the serenity of scale.

It is a mistake to think Nihilism comes easy. It would have been a great comfort for him to picture that quark at this moment, and felt the embrace of insignificance. To imagine his own cells, on the microscopic level, and travel back a quarter of a million years with them. To imagine the light from the very same moon hitting Mitochondrial Eve‘s eyes for the first same. To picture the Old Mother when she herself was new, before her genes branched off into a million directions, one artery of which lead him here, to this ship, on this night, holding this gun. How would any of this unease matter to him then?

You can be hungry, but you can’t steal. You can steal, but you can’t hurt anyone. You can hurt people, but you can’t kill them. How far back from that print do you have to stand before you can’t read it anymore? What could be done that Eve or the Quark would ever know?

He knows what it is that he has to do whilst feeling what he is told he has to feel. “It would be a blessing”, he might think, “to be small and to know it.”

Instead, he imagines the ship, sliding across a granite sea. He moves back until it disappears into the glint of the moon on the waves, and then further back until the light itself is gone. He could do anything.

Mario Odyssey does a lot of cool, strange things, but none as cool or strange as letting you dress the most iconic character in all of videogames as a topless cowboy. 

In this video I talk about character design and theory, as well as why Mario has stuck around as long as he has. Any likes, comments, shares or subscriptions will go a long way!

!!!NEW Teen Sexting codes that !!YOU!! should know!!!

HELLO fellow parents. Over the last three (3) months I have been analysing my teens Texting and Sexting texts and have discovered a veritable SWATHE of new sex text code that I will share with you NOW. Simply scroll down to see the codes. Warning: some of these are quite unpalatable. 

🏃🏻 - I ran into an old friend who I had sex with

💀 🍆 💀 - I am infertile, let us engage in risk-free intercourse

g2g - Good to go (for sex)

Can’t talk, SAD! - Can’t talk, Sucking A Dick!

✂️ 🍆 - My recent adult circumcision has left me prepared and eager for sex

Code Blart - My parents are watching Paul Blart Mall Cop, come over for quiet sex as their riotous laughter will conceal our sinful animalistic grunting 

BCARWPBKFHRITPHS💀LUMUACHLACAMHPTS - Beloved character actor Ray Wise, perhaps best know for his role in Twin Peaks, has sadly passed away. Let us meet up and celebrate his life and career, and mourn his passing through sex

✈️🌫👎 🍆✖️ - Chemtrails have damaged my libido and left me unprepared for sex today

POPS - Prime ovulation, peak sex

3.14159 - The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter 

👉👌📹👀 - Let’s have sex in the blind spot of my parent’s security camera rig

lol - come on guys, surely we all know this one (face palm)

AM - I have no mouth and I must cum

🏅- come look at my Sex Medals

💀 💀 💀 🍆 - My family has died, come over for sex (note: number of skulls equal to number of dead family members your teen has)

Emoji - Term for small images used to depict sex acts

🍑 🍑 - Put a peach in my butt

cu46 - Have yet to crack this one. Any other parents out there able to illuminate this?

SCRIPT DOCTOR! Hereditary has AMNESIA

In a potentially new series, you get to look at my slack-jawed mug as I bloviate about film scripts and the changes I'd make to them. If you have any films y...

Hello all! I just started a video series on screenwriting and editing. I’ll hopefully be going over some general advice, common mistakes and even sharing some stories from my time in script editing.

Also, this is my ugly mug.

If there’s anything you’d like me to talk about, let me know! The first episode is on the film Hereditary, and sacrificing thematic value for story.

Here’s a video about Arrested Development! And editing! And the magic of both!

He could never shake the calamity of time from his face, nor the persisting ache of life from his demeanor. Without knowing a thing about the man, you would look at him and think "My God... he survived all that?"

Stage notes from "Lilytooth”, a work in progress

Happy Halloween y'all. This is my low budget Gravelord Nito costume. Or, I’m “skeletons”.