It is indeed dangerous and foolhardy to draw more attention to Ryan Veeder, for in this way you draw the attention of Ryan Veeder to yourself, and his keen eye for rhetoric grants no mercy to even the bowingest and scrapingest of puff pieces. It is with sincere regret that I am forced to issue an epic takedown of “MathBrush’s” latest author highlight.
*** WARNING: EPIC TAKEDOWN BEGINS BELOW ***
Background:
In the first section, “MathBrush” neglects to note that I also won Ectocomp one time. Since then, I’ve released a few different noncompetitive spooky games around Halloween, which is a bad idea, since there are two different competitions going on then and nobody pays attention to any other stuff coming out. It is telling that these games are omitted from this analysis.
Selected Works:
It is telling that “MathBrush” omits the excellent “Dial C for Cupcakes,” the celebrated “Ascent of the Gothic Tower,” and also “Wrenlaw” from this analysis, apparently cherry-picking examples to support his thesis that my style in story is magical realism. He goes on to ignore my port of “Crocodracula: What Happened to Calvin” (which only has four ratings on IFDB), despite its undeniable influence on IF culture worldwide.
Taco Fiction (2011)
I find it very hard to believe that I ever said I “build a very specific world,” a turn of phrase as meaningless as it is amateurish—bordering on cringe-inducing. I wave this claim aside with a theatrically hasty gesture.
Robin & Orchid (2013)
The correct styling of the title uses an ampersand. Furthermore, it takes place in a church, not a school. Also furthermore, I don’t know where in the game Casey is established as a love interest. It is clear that “MathBrush” has composed this analysis based on half-remembered reviews he read five years ago and may never have played the game himself in his life, likely due to a crippling fear of ghosts.
Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder (2013)
This part is essentially correct so we will move on.
Winter Storm Draco (2015)
I assume I am the first to point out that the cover art is not a blank white square, but in fact consists of the game’s title writ in large attractive Roman letters. I believe the font used is the same one used by the popular crime franchise “Law & Order,” another title that is properly styled with an ampersand.
An Evening at the Ransom Woodingdean Museum House (2016)
“MathBrush” once again proudly flaunts his ignorance, as a fishwife proudly flaunts her wheelbarrow full of delicious fish, by characterizing this as “[o]ne of [my] first forays into [the genre of] horror.” I had written in the genre of horror for many years prior, beginning with my 2012 volume “MOTORCYCLUS” and Other Extremely Scary Stories, currently available as a PDF & EPUB download for the very reasonable price of $5 USD. Also, I thought The Statue Got Me High qualified as a horror game—but I guess somebody didn’t.
The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening (2018)
Sure.
Themes
I deserve a chance to respond to the narrative, concocted by Emily Short and parroted by her cronies, of my implementing only the bare minimum of scenery in my games. Everyone seems to be having a good chuckle as they say I incited a movement of laziness-motivated IF authors, clicking & clacking away at their keyboards until their games are almost done and tarrying no longer before shipping them off, bereft of bells, whistles, sidequests, Easter eggs, et cetera. I refuse to take responsibility for these shiftless authors and their malnourished games, for my games have oodles of unnecessary elements. To name a few:
- You can bury the skull in Reference and Representation: An Approach to First-Order Semantics.
- In The Lurking Horror II: The Lurkening, you can combine certain spells to learn certain characters’ secret backstories.
- There’s a lot of art described in The Roscovian Palladium that could easily have been omitted.
- There’s a really cool trick in An Evening at the Ransom Woodingdean Museum House that most players don’t get to see and probably lots of people don’t notice if they do.
- Also the bus in Winter Storm Draco.
I grant that most of these examples do not directly address the claims about how much scenery I implement, but one of them does, and so my point stands.
Conclusion
I wish to thank “MathBrush,” if that is his name, for contributing to the discourse surrounding my body of work, well-merited by that body’s statuesque and attractive figure. The unfortunate fact is that, although we now have a rough outline to fill in, much research remains to be done in the field of Veedrian studies. When at long last the critics have exhausted the analytic possibilities my work affords, I will let you know.
*** END OF EPIC TAKEDOWN ***