Posted By: 8dognight
Miskatonic - 03/14/13 04:40 PM
If anyone knows the person who made Miskatonic, please, tell him--the name is Jack so likely a guy--that he created a marvelous blend of adventure and humor. It's both homage to and a send-up of Lovecraft. I read one prissy review of Miskatonic that objected to humor in a Lovecraft based story, which sounded like poppycock to me. Jack obviously thought long, hard, and mischievously about what Lovecraft's Miskatonic University administration might have sounded like in campus communications. The old journal, newspaper, and magazine article titles and blurbs are witty, precisely written parodies. For all I know, the one detailing Lovecraft's terror of immigrants may be, in fact, a quote.
Jack--I think he was Jackslawed on the Wintermute forum--apparently decided that real life commitments outweighed finishing Miskatonic and so abandoned it. I feel as if in an altered time stream Terry Prachett decided on just one Discworld novel; or Joseph Heller gave up on Catch-22 after two chapters; or a well meaning friend of Laurence Sterne successfully explained to him how inappropriate the bawdy opening of Tristram Shandy was; or Oscar Wilde piously failed to dissolve into tears of laughter at the death of Little Nell.* I don't want to miss out on more from Jackslawed.
I write this in the hope that Jack is still alive--unlike, for example, John Kennedy O'Toole whose full comic potential as a novelist was never reached--and that some long time reviewer or player who also relished and admired Miskatonic knows Jack and will convince him that his talents for both satire and story telling are rare gifts.
*I use comparisons from literature because I am not familiar with any adventure games that have the same satirical slant and attention to detail as Miskatonic. Are there any?
Jack--I think he was Jackslawed on the Wintermute forum--apparently decided that real life commitments outweighed finishing Miskatonic and so abandoned it. I feel as if in an altered time stream Terry Prachett decided on just one Discworld novel; or Joseph Heller gave up on Catch-22 after two chapters; or a well meaning friend of Laurence Sterne successfully explained to him how inappropriate the bawdy opening of Tristram Shandy was; or Oscar Wilde piously failed to dissolve into tears of laughter at the death of Little Nell.* I don't want to miss out on more from Jackslawed.
I write this in the hope that Jack is still alive--unlike, for example, John Kennedy O'Toole whose full comic potential as a novelist was never reached--and that some long time reviewer or player who also relished and admired Miskatonic knows Jack and will convince him that his talents for both satire and story telling are rare gifts.
*I use comparisons from literature because I am not familiar with any adventure games that have the same satirical slant and attention to detail as Miskatonic. Are there any?
