Things going on in my head | The Modern Hidalgo

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as I try to write this while listening to the Spongebob walk cycle.
THE MODERN HIDALGO: Entry_096.
Written: Monday. April 27, 2020.

So it’s been two days since I last wrote a journal entry. Saturday was for The Omnivault, and Sunday was for my mental stability. I always keep Sunday a non-work/writing/productivity day. I started re-watching Riverdale since Saturday. I never really got into watching season 2-onward, so… that’s that. I binged a couple of episodes yesterday — cause it’s a Sunday.

My hands are kinda shaky right now. I just finished a workout set awhile ago. That may be the reason for my weak arm-strength right now. Literally can’t type in words as easily as I should be able to.

Anyway, yeah, I’ve been re-watching Riverdale. Yesterday’s binge session wasn’t really something I did before. Not that I haven’t tried binge-watching. I just rarely do that, cause it takes away the fun of watching something, and I don’t get to remember shit that well, cause it’s basically like skimming something.

The last time I binge-watched something was season 3 of Stranger Things. I was up all night trying to watch that season, since it only had like 8 episodes in total. Now I can’t remember much of what actually happened in that season. I remember that they had to fight a Terminator-rip off Russian character in some mall. That’s about the gist of what I could remember. And I guess the mind-flayer becoming a physical entity.

I’m a bit out of sorts, cause I’m really reaching at the bottom of the barrel for things I did recently.

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I watched The Wailing. It’s a 2016 South-Korean Horror Thriller movie. I got interested in watching it cause of this channel called In Praise of Shadows. He’s got one video on “why you should watch The Wailing”. And after I watched that, I was hooked on getting a copy of it on the internet — as one would do — and I sort of forgotten about it, until the dice rolled in favor of me watching that movie last night.

I roll a dice whenever I’m about to watch a movie. The movie folder that I have in my laptop has about 20+ movies inside. I have a D20 dice. “But what about the 21-onward movies?” I was like, fuck it, let’s just roll the dice and see where it lands. The list’ll eventually get back to a maximum of 20 or less if I watch a movie per day.


I’m listening to a 10 hour loop of the Spongebob Walk Cycle. The one where Patchy the Pirate finds a lost episode of Spongebob, and it turns out to just be a lousy walk cycle. But the background music is dope. Although, it is starting to get boring. Imma change it.


Going back to The Wailing, I don’t really watch a lot of international movies, other than American or English movies. So watching a Korean movie is new territory, and one that is quite interesting to see. The Wailing was good. It’s more than good, it’s like a Christopher Nolan movie if he ever decided to direct a horror movie — which he hasn’t, for some reason. He’s more into grander scale ideas; much more terrifying.

That’s not to say that The Wailing doesn’t offer big ideas. The reason why I mentioned Nolan, cause the way The Wailing presents its story is close to how Nolan presents a story. It’s got very subtle hints laced throughout the film, that you just have to be laser focused on remembering or taking note of some particular scenes or objects in the frame. it’s almost also how Dennis Villeneuve presents a story. Both Nolan and Villeneuve present a non-linear structure to their stories. The Wailing presents something just like that. It presents us with a story that unfolds itself to you while you least expect it. That’s why you have to pay attention to detail, cause when you get to the end, you’re sort of now trying to figure out what’s going on, or what’s actually happening, or what’s real. Who’s telling the truth, who’s telling lies? That sort of shit.

My only mistake was that I watched this movie at night. Which is perfectly normal for this movie. I think it even adds a level of scare when you’re gonna watch it at night time. But for me, personally, it’s a mistake for me, cause my mind will obviously try to overthink things like this. My brain’s a dangerous place to be in when it comes to Horror.

I like Horror, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that when I absorb a certain amount of it, it starts to really creep into my subconscious. I start seeing things, or believing that things are there in the shadows, when there really isn’t. It’s my mind trying to fuck with me.



Have I mentioned that I’ve been doing sessions of reading articles about Philippine Mythology? If I haven’t yet, then there you go. I’ve been doing it for a few days now. Why? Cause it’s in preparation for my quest to write an Epic Fantasy based or inspired by the endless mythology we have in this country. No one’s ever really attempted to do something as big as a Lord of the Rings-level type of Fantasy series about Philippine Mythology. Well, there’s Moymoy Lulumboy and Janus Silang, and Trese. But I’m talking about like Epic Fantasy not catered for children, or at least not dumbed-down to an easy level of understanding. I haven’t tried reading Trese, though I’ve seen a few pages from it. It’s got this noir-esque feel going on with it, where the enkantos are hiding in plain sight in a modern world-type setting. And that’s not really what I wanna capture in my take of the Philippine Mythos.

I wanna do something that’s inspired by it. Meaning, similar elements, but the names are different, and there’d be more background and history in each race or faction introduced in the story. And I want it to be in a different world, not a fictional version of what we see today. I want it to make sense that Kapres and Duwendes and Manananggals walk around in different parts of the world as if it were natural for them to do so.

That they were subjects of gossip around the villages, not for the sense of entertainment one would get from listening to a Lola Bashang trying to tell little ones of the times when this or that happened. I want a world where their stories are told because its a precaution. That people listen to them because they know that these creatures exist in the world. They may as well be living their lives with some of them…

Welp, that’s just some of the things going on in my head right now.


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