The Scribner's Hovel

  Well, it is that time in my life. I am a gamer, as are many younger writers. I like games because they are a fun pastime. I usually prefer playing something like Minecraft , role-playing games like Fallout 4 , and Real-Time Strategy games like Age of Empires II (the Definitive Edition), but I sometimes check out games on any sort of platform. What I was always curious about are the YouTube Playables that had begun appearing recently. Are they any good? Well, I checked out a few of them, and it turns out that many of them aren't up to par to what I expect for a video game, but there are still plenty of enjoyable games out there. Let's jump right in. State.io The first of these games I played. It's definitely fun, but after a while, it becomes a grindy game where you can easily overpower your enemies once you know how many are on the map for each level.  Supreme Duelist Stickman Easily the most fun out of all those games. yet it kind of feels devoid in fun little aspects. I...

 Just to know, I haven't been as busy for the last two weeks because I recently resumed school. For the mean time, I will try to post a short review on a number of YouTube Playables I had checked out recently.

  Director: Paul Verhoeven Cast: Casper van Dien, Clancy Brown, Neil Patrick Harris, Michael Ironside Studio(s): TriStar Pictures Release Date: November 7, 1997 MPAA Rating: R I am a fan of Paul Verhoeven's work. He made fun, campy science fiction films like Robocop and Total Recall , which are known for their satirical nature and their intermittent shock-value instances of violence. Verhoeven also made other films, like Basic Instinct  and the stripper film Showgirls  (which I am never going to see). His science fiction films are undeniably the ones he is most known for. The equally campy, nitty-gritty feel of those films give them a memorable tone. Robocop 's blood and gore really take home the idea that it is still a violent crime thriller, despite the inclusion of things like funny in-universe commercials and the very cool design of Robocop himself and the security robots. Total Recall  keeps in the spirit of the surreal Philip K. Dick style mindscrew (which that...

 What I forgot to address is that necessity, or to a more common, realistic extent, pressure from a relative/friend/significant other is another major driver to write. For the lazier folk in the world, it is only pressure from others that they could actually manage to do something useful with themselves. It is this that can cure depression and tiredness, because if you actually try to put your mind to doing something that others would want you to do, it will give you enough of a drive to go work on your craft. Pressure does not have to be forceful. In fact, it often comes from being thrown into different situations where an opportunity to fully understand what you like comes from others playfully challenging, or encouraging you, to strive. After all, Tommy only got out of his childhood funk after one Elton John challenged him to competitive pinball; it revealed that Tommy was a prodigy at that game. As a writer, I always had the knack to write well, but it was not until I met my me...

 Why should I write? This is the question every writer asks.  Is it worth it? Will I get paid for it? Those are highly varied concerns that every writer has when they start out their craft. Not every writer starts their journey early, and there are many writers who only seriously begin writing because that is what they have chosen as a career path. There are many reasons why one would write. Writing for fun is definitely one of the main reasons, especially in the youth or the older generations that were more reared by the written text rather than the TV screen or the virtual text. It is never easy to learn how to write, so it helps those kinds of people to find joy in the writing process before they jump right into the real work. For those who don't always write for enjoyment, or struggle to find time for it, how would I give myself the drive to write when I don't have the time or don't the energy for it? There are plenty of strategies. Setting Goals This is the first major...

 A problem that many aspiring writers deal with is eliminating distractions. This does not only amount to noise, but also other problems like trying to get your mind straight to focus on the task at hand. It is not an easy task; I go through it myself. But I also know that there are tips and techniques that can help a struggling writer get through this. While distractions are not necessarily the same as writer's block, they are one of the key problems a writer has to deal with in the creative process, along with writer's block itself and a lack of motivation.  The first thing to know is that distractions are intermittent problems. They are solvable and easy to overcome with persistence, though the longer-term issue of establishing a regimen is a longer-term commitment.  Distractions are always easy to address. The first thing you need to do is find the sources of distraction. Obviously, the noise problem is omnipresent, but that can  be manageable when you adjust to ...

 Recently, I heard the news that Disney will be investing a billion dollars into OpenAI. This deal will enable for Sora 2 to provide access to 200 Disney characters for users to use in their videos however they like. Let's see, that amounts to Pixar, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Marvel, Star Wars, what else? To some animation pundits bullish about the potential prospects of utilizing this technology, this sounds like a cure for the American animation industry's current creativity crisis.  Jerry Beck, co-founder of Cartoon Brew and a longtime animation affecionado and historian, thinks so. He argues that it is something that Walt Disney, a known tech and art pioneer, would support.  Yet a very quick look at a few samples of what people have made with Sora 2 proves otherwise. As a word of warning, there's a lot of these videos out there. Be prepared to see some truly wild clips in one of these many compilation videos: Let's see: Fat people breaking through floors, anima...

  Sword and Scimitar by Raymond Ibrahim is a fast read, but it is very light on the research that backs the text. It does make use of legitimate secondary scholastic sources, such as Islam and Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or (good book, for those who want to know more about specific aspects of Islamic society), but it suffers from the very modern tendency to reduce the on-again, off-again struggle between Christendom and the Dar-al Islam (Realm of Islam) as one singular, endless war equivalent to the Cold War (which in fact is/was much closer to being a struggle between two powerful states and their supranational spheres of influence), and makes some glaring, if not intentional, fallacies in the general story of Christian-Muslim interactions.  A good enough map, but the parts conquered by Islamic polities in Eastern Europe are not totally accurate. For one thing, the Crimea and the Caucasus should be light gray, being territories once controlled by Islam but later seized by Christi...

  Fairy Tale  by Stephen King isn't a bad book, but it's certainly the weakest book by Stephen King I have read thus far. The literary novel plot at the beginning with Charlie taking care of a dog and an old man is interesting, but it feels so out of place in a book like this. The cover promises a "dark fantasy" kind of fantasy where a child goes into a magical fantasy land, but it just takes too long to get to the interesting part, the gist of the novel promised by the cover. It is a shame because having a darker version of a classic fantasy book like L. Frank Baum's  The Wizard of Oz , but with a German Shepherd in the Toto role, is one of the most interesting ideas. The fact that the German Shepherd kind of disappears after a while, when Charlie gets captured by the Night Soldiers, is a symptom of wasted narrative potential. The actual fantasy part itself isn't that bad--after all, it is traditional weird, marvelous Stephen King manifest as what should have...

  “People hate …. Everyone hates” is the mantra of the new, Godless world man has invented for itself from years of prosperity. The hard work of many millions only gets wasted on the empty goods that spoil every subsequent generation. I once belonged to that generation, firmly following the cancerous way of life that Generation Z and the Millennials before them and Generation Alpha are being poisoned by. For one thing, what we call “art” is never so—Bland art that follows the tritest cookie-cutter formula to make the most money possible. This is where the “franchise” comes in—a borrowing from the fast-food world that our movies, television, and books are now forceto conform to. Instead of enjoying a story by itself, it now has to be part of some big sprawling universe that is meant to sell product. It is called “art” because the masses of loyal consumers these days have never understood what true human passion is like. To them, only the big entertainment oligopolies and the famous ...

  This article was originally written on November 8, 2025, so it will certainly be dated only in regards to when it was written. Otherwise, it's not dated. At the Hanover Book Expo on today November 8, 2025, I sold things for the first time. My trove of Legos, with some pieces dating back over 16 years, was a secluded and largely underutilized sideshow for the authors selling books. I shared the same spot in the VFW where Linda Lyles ran a face painting table. Initially, I had intended to run a Lego building contest for children ages 6 to 12, only to realize that not many of them who had come were interested in building along what sparse rules I had set, or were too young to safely play with Legos (choking hazard, you know). Their parents were also uninterested in whatever I had planned. They were more interested in taking a look at all the shiny, highly varied pieces and whatever miscellaneous knickknacks could be found.          ...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7832263052           A decent guide for those who want to know how Generative AI works, but many caveats abound.      I've never read how generative AI works in depth beyond web articles and YouTube videos, but I do understand the basics of how it works. The part I did not know is how someone could enter a prompt decent enough for the AI to not vomit out weird-looking mongrels made from all the data it sifts through.  Conversing With AI  by ML Brei does show a remarkable amount of research to elaborate on how those programs work.      Yet, I still have very mixed feelings, bordering on negative, over using those programs. It is not that writers using them (even carefully) is a sign of laziness, but it is rather that it could be used to potentially bypass the need to spot and correct grammatical errors manually. I do wonder if it could help a writer with planning a longer book, as ...

The participation that Writing Allows   The funny thing that the summaries on the back of some DVDs and VHSs have is how they always invite the viewers into partaking in the events of the movie: “Join Shrek as you help him retake his swamp” on the back of the oldest Shrek DVDs is funny given that the movie’s plot has already been set in stone, even before it got released.             The assumptions that those summaries unconsciously make that the audience can change such events is funny. The plots of movies are always “set in stone” because it is basically the act of someone writing a history (fictional, nonetheless), which a history cannot be rewritten since we common folk lack the wherewithal to alter such events, but it is history in that it is something a person had written and is available for reading.             Furthermore, this means that the kinds of ...

 Welcome to the Scribner's Hovel! This is a site where I will post my thoughts on life, reviews, and essays I have written on the art of writing. That said, this is not intended as a political blog, or merely a review blog. This is a test on how I could manage a simple site as I work towards being a published author. So far, I am not published, but I have a science-fantasy book that is in the editing stages, and a religious fantasy novel set in the real world I have not finished yet. Otherwise, most of my writing projects are school-related, or short introspective essays I do on my free time. I do many other kinds of writing, but it is mostly notetaking for college or compiling lists of the things I need to do, or the books I read in a single year. To know a little more about me, I am Michael Bourret. I am high on the spectrum, which is why I take a deep interest in history and literature. My life can be hectic when I need to figure out what to do with my life in the long term, but...