The WELLSPRING of IDEAS!

What a month.

After hijacking the IMAGE stress test party — don't ask, it was both necessary and deeply satisfying — I put IMAGE development on pause and turned my full attention to Dismayland. Not a refresh. A resurrection. Six plus years of continuous development, and this season has added more layers of calculated misery than any before it.

Eight roller coasters. Four tours. Countless sideshow attractions ranging from one-prim click games that will make you question your life choices, all the way up to fully scripted NPC theatrical productions running on a loop whether you like it or not. The rides alone would fill a park. Dismayland is not just a park.

Countless new machines line the midway, each one designed to confuse, humiliate, or disorient guests while maintaining what I generously call technical elegance. 

Watching the real-life political theater playing out across OpenSimWorld gave me an idea. When the grandstanding dies down and you sift through the vitriol, that place is a genuine wellspring of inspiration.

So Dismayland got an election. Miser Glutnee versus Auntie Helga Hasop for Mayor of Greedy Creek. The campaign posters are everywhere. The voting machines scold you for fraud. The receipt tells you Helga wins regardless because the machines were always rigged. Then it tells you — good, you voted, pat yourself on the back, now when things go wrong you have cause to bitch about it. 

What the guests do not know — and what I will say here because this blog is the only place it can be said — is that Helga is The Architect. She has been pulling the strings all along. Miser suspects something. He called her a clown. He has no idea. Neither do the voters. Neither does WackenKlutz, who is filing incident reports about the election while Helga approves them from her control room at the back of Auntie Helga's Therapeutics.

Every theme park needs a theatre. Dismayland now has one. The Lamenticon — outdoor, built from salvaged ride bases, hazard stripe trim, Giant display screens so you can see the show through the fog of THE DIM, and seats that are not handcuffed because we showed some restraint — opens with its first production:

Les Shits'ables. An Odius MetaMedia experience in DismayVision 3D. Bring Your Own AR-VR lenses. Don't cheap out on us! It's worth it!

All NPC shows run on a on loop. Guests arrive mid-performance. The characters have been doing this scene long enough that nobody remembers who built the props or why. The 1968 Perpetual Amusement Provision keeps them there. Governor Bumm DeGassy signed something he did not read. They are all reading it forever.

The Lamenticon's sideshow — CATS: The Grinding — features 'Chef Lo Miao' of the 'Peking Moon', 'Bustopher Jones' as the inside man luring his own kind to the Wok, and the Kittens who know exactly what the menu says and come anyway because the treats are YUMMY. It is the darkest thing in the park, performed with complete sincerity.

Don't laugh. It might be better than the crap on streaming. I plan on fracturing more Broadway shows and lord knows what else this twisted mind creates!

If you have not seen Dismayland yet, YOU ARE MISSING OUT! http://xoaox.de:7000/Dismayland.