Gamer Girls

I know EXACTLY where Gnome Cave went off the rails, no pun intended. It was when the four of them were trapped on that mine cart. The chapter ended on this cliffhanger. But at the start of the next chapter…they just wriggled out of it.

This was one of several examples of the book where James introduces something, you think it’s going to be significant, but then…NOTHING HAPPENS. Then why bring it up? Why did they get stuck? Was the bar just malfunctioning?

What CLEARLY should have happened when they got stuck in the mine cart is that the bar didn’t release because of some some supernatural force. And the ride should have started. And the gnomes and whatever should have come to life, doing their thing. And everybody should have been freaking out. But they’re trapped so they can’t get out. This isn’t me being creative, this is just the common sense thing that should have happened. This is what I thought he was setting up. This is what ANYBODY would have thought.

I appreciate doing something different than what’s expected but James’ idea MADE NO SENSE. Why did Dante kill his friends? Toward the end of the book, James tries to give some shitty theories:

She never could figure out what made him flip. He was always an awkward kind of guy. But the way he went full psycho was such an extreme switch. Was it possible that there was something else in the cave that could not be explained by ordinary logic? Could it be that Dante’s memories and attachment to that location were so strong, they became a lightning rod for all his mental energy? Did it draw his spirit in like a magnet, hold him there, distort his perceptions? Did it truly bring him back to that magical frightful time he remembered? Did it turn his greatest fear, and desire, against him?

Even those half-assed theories don’t make sense.

So forget all of that shit. Everything after them getting trapped in the mine cart should be entirely scrapped. But then what do we replace it with? I’ve been wracking my brain over possible endings to Gnome Cave all day.

I thought maybe they’re trapped in the cart, the ride starts, the gnomes start moving, the whole thing. The gnomes and the backgrounds and shit gradually start looking new as opposed to the dilapidated appearance that they start with. Give a hint that they’re going back in time. That was sort of the point of coming here, after all. To recapture the past.

But then they chicken out. And they again take the safe track. And when they exit, they go back in time but not to what you’d expect (the 1990s) but rather…let’s say 1925. When the park was new. And there are guys with handlebar moustaches and straw hats and shit. There’s a steeple chase ride. Shit like this. And everybody is pissed off at Dante. It dawns on them that everybody they know hasn’t even been born yet. So it draws parallels to death.

Then you can flesh out the characters a little more, something that was desperately needed much earlier in the book. Maybe Adam, who was the nerdy guy, becomes a tycoon by short-selling stocks shortly before the Great Depression. Dante (the truck driver) gets a job as a mechanic, perhaps with a small organised crime syndicate in Philadelphia. Bruce (the office worker) gets a job as a bookkeeper or something. Cait gets work as a secretary and perhaps ends up in a sanitorium, unable to deal with the stress of time travel and the reality that everybody she knows is gone.

Then they all meet up a second time, maybe five years later, and you can go through the same bullshit. But that’s just rehashing the same story that we just went through. It would be a way to pad out the page length. Give some depth to the characters. And you can get into some philosophical musings, something that James clumsily attempted. You can make some observation about death being no different than what life was like before you were born. And if you didn’t fear life before you were born why would you fear death? It would tie in with the time travel. How they went so far back, everybody was gone. It wouldn’t just be random musings out of nowhere on the high tax rate in California. It would be set up.

But that still leaves that stupid fucking dragon. The dragon has to be in the story. They have to see it.

There’s maybe one paragraph of supernatural stuff in Gnome Cave. There’s a paragraph where the dragon comes to life, which can only be explained through supernatural means. I find this peculiar. One of many things that I find peculiar about the book.

I was expecting some convuluted bullshit that doesn’t make any sense like James is so fond of doing. Think of the long monologue in the AVGN Movie where they give the backstory of that big monster thing and it had something to do with hotdogs or something. I don’t think that I ever managed to get to that point in the movie but I must have seen a clip on Youtube or something. It’s bullshit, it’s stupid, it makes no sense, it’s a retard trying to be clever, but at least it’s something.

We got nothing in Gnome Cave. We don’t even know how Dante died. He just saw the dragon, it has pointy teeth, the chapter ends, and the next chapter begins with Cait finding him dead.

If there was some grand message in any of this, if it was tied up in any way, that would be one thing. But it’s nothing. Like so much in the book, it goes nowhere.

There has to be a way to end this story in a satisfactory manner. And I don’t think that anybody has to die. Make it a psychological horror. It’s easy and unimaginitive to just kill people off, especially the way James did it. There was nothing clever about it. He killed all of the characters off, one paragraph each. No struggle. No explanation.

So the four of them are trapped on that cart. Forget my earlier time travel idea. The cart is going ahead. They’re arguing. They’re blaming Dante. And as they get to the dragon, maybe there’s a scuffle. But Dante manages to pull the lever in the direction of the dragon.

The dragon has to be something. It can’t just be the mural. Because in my version, this cart and the ride and everything are moving in a supernatural fashion. I don’t think it’s possible to make the dragon anything scary. Especially not with the previous 75 pages looking like a C- school assignment. So it has to be something clever. What clever ending can there be? A callback to something? But a callback to what? There’s so little to build on. How can there be some twist, Twillight Zone type ending?

The animatronic dragon…that’s shit. That’s not going to work. But a real dragon wouldn’t work either. I guess an animatronic dragon at least fits the theme. But…so they meet a living animatronic dragon. Who cares? Either the dragon kills them or they kill the dragon. That’s not satisfying.

Something about covid? Something about his mother?

Was this all a dream? Was the smoke from the dragon some of that “dope smoke” and this is some kind of drug-fueled thing? Did they die on the ride twenty years ago? But then how do you explain the last twenty years?

Maybe only Dante died and the last twenty years was his version of Hell. Or he’s stuck in some kind of limbo. And facing the dragon is the only way to stop the torment that is his life. The basic premise has been done a billion times but it still beats James’ complete nonsense ending.

I don’t know. There’s got to be something clever that can be done.

Maybe we need Newt Wallen to punch things up a bit.

There he is tweeting about dead people again. Back on the death train. Riding around and around Newt Cave. A never ending cycle of torment.

And, of course, the Ideas Man makes it all about himself. “When all of the other big famous Youtubers abandoned me for whole plagiarism, Billy stuck with me.”

Well…okay. Great. Doesn’t tell me much about Billy, though.

I never watched Game Chasers so I don’t know anything about him. I think that I’ve heard of the show. Having VERY quickly skimmed an episode just now, I do not want to watch this.

But condolences to Billy’s friends and family. But not asshole Newt.

Oh, Mr Wright Way. I forgot all about that guy. He did a video about Billy, which is how I rediscovered his channel just now. But there’s a video from last month where he’s with Destiny Fomo aka Madam Fomo.

She has a foot of cleavage showing, as usual.

Gnome Cave is on a circular track. We should be able to do something with that. It’s circular, let’s say, UNLESS you take the dragon exit. The dragon exit is the only way to break the cycle. The cycle of what? The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: suffering exists, desire is the cause of suffering, ending desire ends suffering, the Eightfold Path is the way to Enlightenment.

The dragon as a metaphor for the Fourth Noble Truth. *Nostalgia*. Collecting old video games. Hanging out with prostitutes like Destiny Fomo. Trying to reclaim what you’ve lost. These are all paths to unhappiness.

Stoicism. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”

“You are afraid of dying? But how is this life of yours anything but death?”

The dragon. Dante’s obsession with *nostalgia*. He has to come to a revelation that he’s wasted his life with that. By killing the dragon, he somehow breaks the cycle. Facing his fears? Too corny and not on point. How does facing the dragon give him any insight?

If he goes there realising that he’s going to die and that he wasted his life, it’s too negative. There’s no message. Nothing was learned. He has to go in, changed.

Whore Fomo. Mr Wright Way. Newt Wallen. James Rolfe. These are people who have wasted their lives. But it could all end if they realised the futility of desire. “To fear death is to misunderstand the nature of life itself—it is not an interruption but a continuation.”

Tao Te Ching: “To realize that all things change is to be awake. To think in terms of birth and death is to remain asleep.”

So you have this asshole Dante. He assembled his friends to go to Gnome Cave. Why? What was he hoping to achieve? Who gives a shit about the fucking dragon? Were his friends just humoring him? They didn’t even remember the park. Did they just have nothing better to do on the weekend?

Is that the message? ALL of them were wasting their lives? Not just Dante? By confronting the dragon, they’re living their lives to the fullest, something they should have done twenty years ago. We’re on to something. It’s better than that bullshit that Rolfe came up with. So by confronting the dragon, whatever it is, they’re saying to themselves that they don’t fear death, just like they don’t fear the non-being state that they were in before they were born. Whatever happens with the dragon, they’re going to move forward and live life in the present, to the fullest. No more “no time”, no more, “my muse doesn’t talk to me any more”, no more, “hey, get a load of this prostitute I’m hanging out with.”

There’s your story. Fuck the dragon. You don’t even have to show him. End the story with them going in to face the dragon, unafraid, with this profound revelation, and leave it ambiguous as to what the dragon is or if it exists at all.

There’s your ending. I think it beats the whole, “Cait inexplicably thinks that she’s going to get charged with murder so tries to wipe her fingerprints from everything” ending. That one doesn’t even make sense.

If you want to avoid the homoeroticism of Reddit, I’ve pre-ordered the book and will be discussing it here. Apart from this introductory paragraph, everything will be done in reverse chronological order so my oldest comments will be at the bottom and my newest comments at the top. Hopefully, this will all make sense. I’ll time stamp my comments using rural Pennsylvania time aka Eastern Standard Time.

Edit. I’ve now finished. You have to read this in reverse chronological order for it to make sense. Maybe I’ll write a review of the book another time but…what’s the point? I think that I’ve summed everything up. It’s complete and utter shit.

Edit 2: I’ve reordered everything so it’s chronological now.

12:36 pm – I’m currently waiting for the book to drop. I assume that it should be around midnight EST but who knows with those buffoons at Screenwave. The book is being published by Retroware, which is what Screenwave is called now.

It’s only 98 pages. And I notice that there’s an illustrator so this is perhaps illustrated, which brings the page count in terms of written material even lower. The illustrator is listed as Marieke Douma. Here’s her…art page.

https://www.artstation.com/mkdouma6

It says that she’s from Canada. I am…not digging this. I don’t want to be needlessly critical but…maybe it’s just the type of work that she seems to do. It’s…I don’t know. Science fiction? Gore? It’s not for me.

Why did James get this woman to do the work? Why didn’t he get his wife to do it? She’s an artist, right? She even illustrated books, as I recall.

Or why didn’t he get fucking Mike Matei? It seems a natural.

It couldn’t have been about money because presumably this woman was paid. And if it was about money, surely his wife and possibly Mike would have done it for free (although I like to think that Mike wouldn’t have done it for free). It just doesn’t make any sense. He got this weird gore artist to do it instead.

And the editor is Robyn Schelenz. Her only other credit is James Rolfe’s biography and we know what a bang up job she did on that.

GET A PROFESSIONAL. Who is this woman?

https://robynschelenz.com/about

This has got to be her. She’s from rural Pennsylvania and her work is “forthcoming.” So she has nothing.

She has some poems that you can read online. This is a LONG DEAD medium. I’ve skimmed some of her “work” and it’s exactly as pretentious and shit as you would imagine. I won’t even sully the blog by reprinting any of it.

Apparently, she’s currently in California as an “MFA student”. Whatever that is. Let’s look it up.

Master of Fine Arts. Fine. Presumably writing. Let’s see what kind of prestigious school Saint Mary’s College is.

Remarkably, not prestigious enough for Wikipedia.

81% acceptance rate. Well, that’s actually lower than I expected. And presumably the graduate school has an even lower acceptance? 1,400 undergraduates, 94 graduate students.

It’s just another degree mill. And what the fuck is she going to do with this degree anyway? You can either write or you can’t. There’s no such thing as applying for a job as a novelist. Or a poet. Nobody is demanding a degree. Nobody cares if you have a degree or not. Did Ernest Hemmingway had a degree? Let’s look this up.

No. Never set foot in college. Nobody cares.

Mark Twain? No. Finished school at age 12.

But let’s not go too far back. What about Stephen King? Bachelor’s Degree in English.

Did it help, though? Maybe his writing improved. I don’t know what kind of classes he had. But for the amount of money this woman must be paying…let me look at the tuition. $31,690 a year. She better start cranking those poems out at Newt Wallen levels if she ever wants to get out of debt. She needs to shoot for fifty poems a day.

Here’s her BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/robynschelenz.bsky.social

Likes:

• Being gay
• American football
• Rural Pennsylvania

Dislikes:

• Donald Trump

THIS is the person who’s editing the book? What the fuck are her qualifications? I assume that it’s just somebody who he knows personally or his wife knows or somebody at Screenwave knows. Why didn’t they shell out for an ACTUAL editor? It can’t cost that much to get an actual editor. And surely, an actual editor would be worth it because they’d be able to IMPROVE what is surely a giant piece of shit of a book.

The book is like three dollars, by the way. Kindle only.

7:02 pm – Fuck yes! Gnome Cave time! I think I got it early. What a scoop. It’s apparently released based on YOUR local time. It just turned midnight for me. Time to kick back with some great literature.

7:05 pm – I’m not seeing any illustrations other than the cover. So…it’s just the cover. He paid for that abomination?

7:09 pm – Page three gives the credits. Written by James Rolfe. And then “help” by some other people. Proofreading by William J Burkhardt. Copy Editor is Robyn Schelenz. Legal by Ian Friedman. Has to be the first time I’ve seen a “legal” credit in a book. Cover illustration by Marieke Douma. Formatting & Design by ilovemycover dot com. So just some free program, presumably. Publishing Manager is Justin Silverman. Copyright 2024 so perhaps they were sitting on this one for a while. Published by the good people at Retroware aka Screenwave Media Inc.

7:15 pm – Unbelieveable. He starts the book by talking about what a massive let down it is to write a book. He literally talks about how he would rather make a movie because that’s the ultimate craft but he doesn’t have the time because he has children. I’m not making this up.

When is he going to stop with this? You don’t have time because you’re a father. We don’t fucking care.

And I’m supposed to read this fucking thing that he’s advertising as something less than a movie? What about propping up a novel as its own independent, worthwhile medium? It’s not like books are a fad. They’ve been entertaining people since the dawn of civilisation. Fucking asshole. Fuck this guy.

And this is how he starts the book. I’m already annoyed with this whiny bitch.

7:21 pm – Many years ago, I would have thought the written word would be very limiting to the visuals I wish to portray. But I have total faith that you, as the reader, will see it. You will dress the actors, light the sets and maybe even compose the music all in your mind. If you picked up this book, I’m sure that already means you’re already a creative person.

Go fuck yourself. YOU’RE the one who’s supposed to add all of these details. NOT the reader. He wants the READER to do all of the work. No. James. YOU’RE the one writing the book. MAKE IT GOOD, ASSHOLE.

And then he has the nerve to try to sweet talk us. “Oh, if you’re picking up this book, you be a creative person.” By saying this, he’s suggesting that HE’S creative. BUT HE ISN’T. HE’S SHIT! This is just him stroking his own ego. It’s what he does. James thinks that he’s the greatest person ever.

7:24 pm – Writing a book has given me a refreshing sense of freedom. With every line, I didn’t have to worry about logistics. Words are free. And there’s less of a chance for things to go wrong. The worst thing that could happen is I write a shitty story, but then who cares?

WHO CARES? I CARE! I JUST PAID THREE BUCKS FOR THIS!

He’s telling you in the INTRODUCTION that the book is probably going to be shitty. And it will be, let’s be clear on that. BUT THEN WHY RELEASE THE BOOK? Why take money for something that you KNOW is shit?

7:27 pm – I enjoy the social aspect of working with other people but there is something more efficient about just sitting here by myself, writing it alone. It went straight from my brain to the page, without any outside interference. No compromise. This is me in my purest form. I’m giving myself to you.

Umm…this is making me uncomfortable. I do not want James Rolfe in his purest form. James…listen…I’m sure you’re a nice guy but I don’t want this. Don’t give yourself to me.

And the book will be shit. Total shit. So he’s right that this is his work but…the work is bad. He’s bad. He’s a bad writer. He’s a big dummy. He spent seven and a half years in special education. His autobiography was PAINFULLY bad.

7:30 pm – And remember, it can STILL be a film. The book supports it. It doesn’t take anything away. Perhaps someone will read this and want to help get the film made.

I’ve never seen a lazier person. Not only does he want you to write the book for him, dress the characters, write the music, et cetera, but now he wants you to make the film adaptation too. And again, he’s at pains to label the book, SOMETHING THAT I JUST BOUGHT, as something stale and boring and in no way superior to a movie.

7:36 pm – So FINALLY we start. The protagonist is called Dante. Here’s an original idea. Hell. Dante. Get it? That one’s for the scholars out there.

I just finished chapter one. It was THREE PAGES. Two and a half, really. What the fuck? It was just fucking Dante and his three homosexual friends about to embark on this…amusement park ride. Whatever it is.

And the grammar in this thing…I’m trying not to focus on all of the changes that I would make in terms of punctuation and whatnot because who really gives a shit and people do things differently. Although, I’m pretty sure that a lot of what he’s doing here is objectively incorrect. But just…the words. The weird syntax. It’s unnatural and hard to read. This is the product of a straight up, no fooling retard.

Here’s an example from chapter 2: “That’s how Dante pictured him, at least, but he was awaiting his own moment to shine.”

Believe me, it doesn’t make much more sense when you read it in context. It’s not even a sentence. And “he was awaiting his own moment to shine?” “He was WAITING for his moment to shine”, I could get behind. But not whatever the fuck that was.

I don’t want to focus on the terrible grammar because that’s boring and who cares. But I’m just stating here that the grammar is terrible and the result of James Rolfe being mentally challenged.

7:48 pm – Chapter two. It goes back in time now to when Dante and his three friends: Bruce, Cait, and somebody else are in high school or something. They go to this amusement park in New Jersey. There’s the smell of “dope smoke” in this amusement park. Unbelievable. “Dope smoke.”

But they talk about this fucking Gnome Cave ride and how there’s a dragon at the end of the ride and it’s super scary. So at some point, over the years, the ride operator installed a lever on each car of this ride to allow you to bypass the dragon if you were too scared. Dante and his friends asked some kids what the dragon was like and the kids said that they didn’t see it because they were too scared.

Then there’s discussion about how scary the dragon could actually be. Somebody in Dante’s group talks about some rumour of somebody dying as a result of this dragon.

I’m on fucking tenterhooks here. THIS IS AWFUL!

7:56 pm – Chapter three. They’re riding along this ride. A LOT of BORING detail about the ride. It’s just the Small World ride from Disney World or where ever. And almost NO dialogue. What little dialogue there is in the book is TERRIBLE and PAINFULLY unnatural.

Also, if you’re looking for character development, forget it. I don’t know anything about these characters other than Cait is a girl and Bruce (I think) is large. I still don’t know the fourth guy’s name.

So they go through this ride and they reach the point where you have to choose to go to the dragon or not. After maybe a paragraph of hype about how “scary” this dragon is, they choose…not to go. Then the ride ends. Well, great.

8:00 pm – Chapter four. Now we’re back in the present. Dante is a truck driver. He drives his truck and then he goes to a rest stop and eats a sandwich. THAT’S THE CHAPTER!

8:08 pm – Chapter five. Look at this “natural” dialogue from TRUCK DRIVER Dante:

• ““Mother, how are you feeling?”
• “Have you eaten anything today?”
• “I got you some organic veggie soup. Figured you wouldn’t mind it. It’s gluten free. There’s no peas, because I know you don’t like those. Low sodium. It’s healthy.”

TRUCK DRIVER. Now, I don’t want to say that there aren’t any homosexual truck drivers but even gay truck drivers are not talking like this. Fucking ridiculous.

And his mother is a giant bitch for no reason. And she got sick over covid, one of James Rolfe’s biggest fears.

Then the mother just dies. No explanation given other than covid. Just in one sentence (or at least what James to be a sentence), she’s dead. And then the chapter ends with more moaning about how awful covid was.

8:12 – Chapter six. Dante is going through his dead mother’s stuff and finds a picture from the amusement park that was taken with his friends Bruce, Cait and Adam. The fourth guy is Adam. And…that’s it. That’s the chapter.

8:19 – Chapter seven. Bruce is working in a boring office job. And James CLEARLY has no idea what working in an office is like. This is PAINFULLY naive. It’s just a retard’s idea of what a boring office job would be like. James HATES actual jobs. He hates the PEOPLE who do actual jobs.

Adam seems to be an unemployed loser who plays Dungeons & Dragons all day. This guy represents what James thinks his fanbase is like.

Cait is blatantly unemployed.

So the three of them just somehow get letters from Dante asking to meet up again to go to Gnome Cave. How did Dante track them down? They’ve not been in touch for twenty years. It’s not explained. Maybe he found them on Facebook or something.

8:33 pm – Chapter eight. Dante is at his mother’s burial, alone, when Adam, Bruce, and Cait miraculously all appear at the same time, in separate cars. Why would they meet at the cemetary? And they were late. All of them were late and yet arrived at the same time. It’s a good thing that Dante didn’t already leave. What would have happened then? I mean, everybody else apparently left. The priest and whatever relatives.

Then they go to a diner. James wants you to know what each of them ordered. He thought that this was an important detail.

Then after some INCREDIBLY stilted, unnatural dialogue like “Ever have an Irish coffee?” asked Adam. Bruce lit up, “You mean with the booze in it? No, but that sounds like a plan” we get…no. I can’t gloss this over. You’re telling me that men in their 40s don’t know what “Irish coffee” means? It’s JAMES who doesn’t know what this means. That’s why he put it in. This is all new to retard James Rolfe.

So anyway, they’re in the diner and this diner inexplicably serves alcohol. Figure that one out. They have some awkward, unnatural dialogue and then Cait basically says, “Well, sorry about your dead mom. I have to go home now even though I don’t have a job or a family.” None of these four people seem have families and only two of them have jobs.

But that’s when Dante suggests that they go to this amusement park. Cait is surprised by this DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE NOTE THAT DANTE GAVE HER SAID TO MEET UP TO GO TO THE AMUSEMENT PARK.

Who proofread any of this?

Also weird, none of these people, including Dante, seem to have much of a memory of even going to this amusement park. They remember NOTHING about it. This is perhaps a window into the hazy mind of James Rolfe. He has no recollection of doing anything, apparently.

8:46 pm – Chapter nine. – They’re back at the amusement park. Even though they seem not to remember ANYTHING about the park, they do remember that it was the first amusement park that Dante’s mother dropped them off at. So…you’d think it might be memorable. No.

And despite the fact that Dante’s mother dropped them off, she apparently didn’t check that everybody had money. Because they snuck in. Didn’t at least Dante have money? Wouldn’t the mother have made sure that Dante had money to pay for the fucking ticket? No. They snuck in.

And inexplicably, adult Dante gets a sickle out and starts hacking weeds and shit as they try to find the hole in the fence that they snuck in from. WHY did he have a sickle with him? Why would he assume that the overgrowth would be so bad that he’d need a sickle? And how did he even remember how they snuck in? Because they don’t seem to remember ANYTHING about this amusement park, except when they suddenly do.

So they find the hole again, they sneak in. James goes into boring detail about the various rides. It’s totally irrelvant, just like his obsession with their food at the diner. And then they find a castle ride which I guess was built later on top of the gnome ride. So…here’s another thing that they didn’t remember but now suddenly remember. Because these people didn’t even fucking remember the gnome ride just two fucking short chapters ago.

8:55 pm – Chapter ten – Dante, inexplicably, knows that the entrance to Gnome Cave is behind some boarded up door in this castle ride. HOW? He barely even remembered that the amusement park EXISTED. How does he suddenly know the CURRENT logistics of this HIDDEN ride which is within a ride that was built AFTER they were there?

But, of course, Dante is right. He pulls back some board with a crowbar that he magically had with him. Pulled it out of his ass and put the sickle up there. They even make the joke the SECOND time something like, “You really came prepared” because this is all preposterous. Why would Dante know all of this? Why would he know that he would need all of this equipment? For an amusement park that he seemingly has NO MEMORY OF. NOBODY remembers this fucking amusement park. So why are they even there to begin with? What’s the appeal? They have *nostalgia* for something that they DON’T REMEMBER?

Well, I suppose that Erin is the same way.

9:09 pm – Chapter eleven.

“Gnomes are usually shorter,” remarked Adam. “Is there an actual height?” asked Dante, intrigued. “Well, it depends,” Adam explained. “In Warcraft, gnomes are about three feet tall. But the traditional garden gnomes are much tinier. Come to think of it, I think these are all supposed to be dwarves.” “So even the name of the ride is wrong?” asked Cait. “Oh, who cares? It’s still great,” said Bruce. “Dwarves are usually depicted as miners and blacksmiths,” continued Adam. “Like in Snow White?” asked Dante.“Sure, but that’s an exception where they’re spelled ‘dwarfs’ with an F, instead of VE,” clarified Adam. “Yeah. Yeah. That’s all very cool,” said Bruce. “Anyway, look over there!”

Somebody on Reddit posted a James & Mike Mondays from probably TEN YEARS AGO where James had largely this same boring monologue.

So the quartet of personality blackholes are wandering through the Gnome Cave when they find one of the carts that you’d sit in for the ride. The safety bar locks them in and won’t unlock. Then we get this great bit of dialogue:

“Okay, nobody fart, please,” joked Bruce.”

IT MAKES NO SENSE. Straight up retard. They’re stuck on a cart. Spooky stuff, I guess, is going to start happening. So Bruce is concerned about flatulence all of a sudden? WHY? FUCK YOU, RETARD ROLFE!

But anyway, despite the fact that they’re now TRAPPED IN THE CART, Dante is super excited because he’s finally back to this childhood memory THAT HE DOESN’T EVEN REMEMBER of being in the cart with his friends. And even though the entrance that they just went through has now suddenly collapsed, he’s still really jazzed about what’s happening.

Has anybody farted? I don’t know. I guess that James wants the reader to fill these important details in for themselves. So…I’ll say no. There was no breaking of wind. But Cait queefed. This is all crucial to the story.

9:19 pm – Chapter twelve. You know how in chapter eleven they were trapped in the carts? Well, they just wriggled out of it. So much for that. Then Bruce started trying to clear debris from the collapsed entrance but it was decided that it would take too long. So Dante suggests that they journey forward. He reminds them that the ride circles around and will lead to an exit. But…if it circles around, wouldn’t it just lead back to where they are? Well, whatever. Who cares at this point?

Nobody wants to go except for Dante but then Dante reminds Adam that fighting the dragon will be just like Adam’s fondess for Dungeons & Dragons. And Adam, like a retard, is convinced by this. Adam then compares the four of them to a party of Dungeons & Dragons characters. And then…they just start wandering ahead as Dante, inexplicably, is convinced that there’s going to be an exit up ahead. And he’s very maudlin when interacting with these elf statues and shit despite the fact that he doesn’t seem to remember the fucking ride. Except when he does.

9:28 pm – Chapter thirteen. I…guess that everybody went their separate ways. Then everybody gets killed. Separately. No build up. Just…somebody walks over and kills everybody. Except for Dante. And the chapter ends with Dante holding a bloody sickle.

So I’m super invested in these characters that have little to no backstory now. Well, they’re dead now but this is surely just a dream sequence or something. No, Rolfe wouldn’t be that lazy. This is surely going to be some convoluted bullshit that doesn’t make any sense like the AVGN Movie, Wizard of Oz 3: Dororthy Goes to Hell, that Board James shit that was full of nonsensical lore, et cetera.

9:36 pm – Chapter fourteen. Dante loads his corpse friends into the cart and starts pushing it. He’s happy to see them in the cart, just like when they were kids. But…they were all willing to continue. Why kill them? It makes no sense. They ALL AGREED TO CONTINUE THE FUCKING RIDE.

Calm down. We’re talking about James Rolfe here. Master film maker. Master story teller. I’m sure that all will be explained.

The chapter ends with Dante pushing his cart of inexplicably killed friends towards the track that leads to the dragon.

9:45 pm – Chapter fifteen. Cait suddenly wakes up, having merely been hit on the head with a giant mallet while Bruce and Adam were stabbed. She fights with Dante but can’t escape the bar of the cart, despite the fact that they just squirmed out of it earlier.

Dante then explains that he had to kill them because getting older is no good because you get dementia and shit just like his mother.

Then Cait manages to wriggle out (again) and runs off towards the non-dragon exit. But…the exit is blocked. So she just decides to chill and let Dante go to the dragon side.

I’m sure she’s fine. I mean, she got his in the head with a giant mallet and was assumed dead for what I’m guessing is at least fifteen minutes. She also flopped around lifelessly during that time. But she seemed to just shake it off so whatever.

9:51 pm – Chapter sixteen. Dante meets the dragon but it turns out to just be a cartoon mural of a dragon. Dante then has some deep, philosophical insight about…I don’t even know. It’s just James Rolfe complaining about the high taxes and pollution in California, a result of his abortion of a movie.

Whoa, double fake out. Then suddenly, Dante comes face to face with a big, imposing metal, animatronic dragon with sharp teeth and everything. Oops. I just peed myself.

9:58 pm – Chapter seventeen. Cait hears Dante screaming and after a while decides to take a stroll into this dragon path that presumably killed Dante. Or maybe Dante is waiting to kill her. But she’s convinced that it’s the only way out, despite the fact that Bruce was making serious headways with the debris at the entrance and was almost out when Dante inexplicably killed him. Although, I guess Cait wasn’t there for that. But she was there when Bruce said that it was possible to remove the debris, it would just take time.

But anyway, plothole number ten billion notwithstanding, she goes to the dragon part of the ride and finds Dante dead, seemingly of fright. There’s no dragon in sight other than the cartoon depiction on the mural. So…she doesn’t know what killed Dante but…who knows what ANY of this is. I still don’t know why Dante attacked anybody in the first place.

10:14 pm – Chapter eighteen. I had to read this chapter twice to figure out what was going on. Cait leaves. But then she’s concerned because she doesn’t want to get accused of murder. She thinks that that’s something that would have happened because she’s the sole survivor.

So she goes back inside, takes Dante’s shirt off, and wraps it around her head. She has a head wound from getting hit with a giant mallet, remember. It’s been dripping blood all over the place.

Then she puts Dante into the cart along with Bruce and Adam. She takes their cell phones and the keys to Dante’s car. I guess that Adam and Bruce didn’t have their car keys with them. Or maybe she just didn’t want them. I don’t know why she wants their phones.

Then she tries to remove all traces of herself from the scene. So she goes back and wipes her fingerprints from the bar of the cart and she removes her footprints and shit like this. She also dripped a lot of blood but she thinks that just stomping on it will get rid of it.

It takes until sunset before she’s convinced that she’s done a good enough job hiding her tracks. I mean…what the fuck? Has James never heard of DNA? Plus, she’s in the fucking picture that she left with them. And her blood is ALL OVER THE PLACE. You can’t just smash it into the ground. And how the fuck did she get rid of all of her footprints? And she must have touched LOADS of stuff other than the bar of the cart. She wiped all of that down too?

TOTAL NONSENSE. This is 100% RETARD think. HOW was the book released with THIS PREPOSTEROUS ending?

Well. Just hold on. It’s not quite the ending. We still have 11 pages. James can still pull this off. I have faith.

10:29 pm – Chapter nineteen. It’s just more nonsense. Cait returns to the diner, in Dante’s car (that’s how they got to the amusement park) and then wipes her fingerprints from the car as best she could. I’m sure that works well. Adam and Bruce’s cars are still in the diner so…I don’t know. That’s mentioned for some reason.

Then she suddenly remembers that she still has Dante’s bloody shirt wrapped around her head. It’s been there for probably…oh…maybe twelve hours at this point. But she only now remembers it, having driven around town with it on.

So she starts driving home in her own car, still with the shirt on her head. The police start chasing her. But then it turns out that it was nothing. More great story-telling from the Rolfe man. So she gets home, throws the shirt away, resets their phones, and throws the phones away too. You might want to dispose of this stuff somewhere other than your own trash can but…I mean…there is NO WAY that she did anywhere NEAR a thorough enough job for this.

But this is all pointless anyway because WHY WOULD ANYBODY BLAME HER FOR THE MURDERS IN THE FIRST PLACE?

How would anybody even FIND THE BODIES? They’re in that amusement park that’s been abandoned for THIRTY YEARS in a long-forgotten attraction hidden WITHIN a long forgotten attraction and the entrance to this attraction is collapsed and hidden. WHO IS GOING TO FIND THIS?

Then the chapter ends with Cait shitting herself because she remembered that she paid for the food at the diner with a credit card. Cait…what the fuck…NONE of this makes sense. James is building all of this up on a foundation of excrement. There is no logical motivation for Cait to do ANY of this. And even if Cait was concerned about getting blamed for the murder, NOTHING she did would help. Her DNA is all over the fucking place. She’s been leaving a trail of blood from the amusement park to the diner and now back to her home.

10:36 pm – Chapter twenty. The police briefly interrogate her and inexplicably find no evidence of her being involved in the disappearance of the three men.

Also, why the fuck did she just leave their bodies in the cart? If she was so concerned, why didn’t she bury them? Or chop them up into a billion pieces and throw them in the lake? It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

Everybody in this story behaves like a straight up, no fooling, mentally retarded person. Because JAMES is mentally retarded. All of these characters are him.

The rest of the chapter is just Cait trying to make sense of what happened in Gnome Cave AND trying to make sense of her own INEXPLICABLE actions. So James is even acknowledging that NONE of this made sense. But he’s too fucking retarded to write a story that DOES make sense so he resorts to his old, tired, “Hehe…it was SUPPOSED to be bad” defence.

10:54 pm – Chapter twenty-one. Now we get the epilogue. Hoo boy. Get ready for some crap.

Cait goes back to the park like three years later and it’s all been bulldozed.

Then she goes back at the twenty year anniversary of their inexplicable deaths. She’s in her 60s now. It’s never revealed if she got a job but she’s living with her sister.

Now, this is like 2045, I guess. The future. And the location of Gnome Cave has been developed. It’s now a SHOPPING MALL.

This is James Rolfe’s idea of the future. He thinks that shopping malls are going to make a comeback.

But here’s the one glimpse of James’ futurology predictions. He says that on the site of Gnome Cave, which Cait inexplicably was able to locate, there now sits a combination Starbucks/Chinese restaurant. So…is he saying that in the future, Starbucks will merge with a chain Chinese restaurant like you have combination Taco Bell/KFCs? Or did the Chinese purchase Starbucks? OR, is this some situation where the Chinese have invaded the US and taken over all of the businesses by force and required them to serve Chinese food?

Also, by the way, Cait pays for her coffee using cash. TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW. But maybe it was with yuan. But…I think people in China today rarely pay with cash either. Well, whatever.

It’s all a build up to the chilling ending: Cait sees a Chinese dragon in the Chinese restaurant. You know…dragons being a popular motif in Chinese establishments. And…Cait finds this somehow significant.

TERRIBLE. THE WORST BOOK I’VE EVER READ. I PAID THREE DOLLARS FOR THIS?

HE THINKS THAT SOMEBODY IS GOING TO WANT TO MAKE A MOVIE OUT OF THIS TRASH? IT’S STRAIGHT UP RETARD SHIT.

I’m pumped for this. A haunted amusement park. How could you not love it? We all like Scooby Doo, right? This is the plot every third Scooby Doo episode.

Is the background greenscreen? He had those books in the background of a previous video because I remember that book with the moon on it. Anyway, very intellectual background. That’s what you want to see for serious discussion like a book about a haunted amusement park. This is like Masterpiece Theater stuff.

Whatever happened to Masterpiece Theater?

There’s the intro. Oh, it’s still ongoing. Started in 1971. Good for them.

So let’s check out some Scooby Doo episodes to try to figure out what Gnome Cave might be about. It’s got to be somewhere in these episodes.

https://scoobydoo.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Cases_set_at_theme_parks

There are 30 listed but that’s not even all of them. There’s no Foul Play in Funland, for example. Eigth epidode of the first season of Scooby Doo Where Are You, the very first incarnation of the show. Before they had guest stars.

https://scoobydoo.fandom.com/wiki/The_Haunted_Carnival

Here’s The Haunted Carnival. The final episode of The New Scooby Doo Mysteries. Dick Van Dyke helps the gang solve this particular mystery.

Oh, that list of 30 items includes video game levels and comic books. That’s interesting. They even have the 1999 book also called The Haunted Carnival but this one features Scrappy Doo as well.

https://scoobydoo.fandom.com/wiki/Scooby-Doo!The_Haunted_Carnival(Golden_Books)

The cartoon episode of the same name features Dick Van Dyke and it’s revealed that the carnival Strongman was the ghost. But the book seems totally unrelated to the episode.

That woman does a reading. Badly. I don’t even think she’s familiar with the show. Right at the start, she misreads the Shaggy quote, “Like, let’s investivate” as “Let’s, like, investigate”. Shaggy, of course, known for starting his sentences with “like.”

Her inflections are all wrong and unnatural. She gets her words muddled up. She does voices but they don’t match the characters AT ALL. It’s just jarring.

2:15 – Whoa. Check out Mrs Gullet, the sword swallower. This has to be intentional. I don’t mean the lame pun but why make the character have such giant tits?

2:45 – Just listen to that awful Scrappy Doo impression.

And this book makes NO SENSE. It just immediately switches to new scenes every time you turn the page. There’s no logical progression. On one page, they’re popping balloons in a carnival game, the next page has them meeting the Phantom of the Carnival, the next page has them in a hall of mirrors. What is this? Is any of this going to be resolved satisfactorily?

No. All that happens is the Phantom of the Carnival TRIPS OVER SCOOBY DOO. Then that top-heavy sword swallower unmasks him and it’s…some guy who named Scotty who wanted to buy the carnival. He was haunting the carnival hoping to lower the property value and thereby get a deal. It’s preposterous. And what was he even doing to haunt the place? Putting paint in the balloon games? Who cares?

And that woman reads the final page TERRIBLY. She doesn’t know the characters. Doesn’t know their catchphrases. So she stumbles over everything.

Nevertheless, I still think that this book will be better than Gnome Cave. I mean, come on. A haunted amusement park? The man is nearly 50 years old.

And that autobiography…it was the worst thing I’ve ever read. This guy has no business writing anything.

Speaking of people who have no business writing anything, Newt “The Ideas Man” Wallen shit out another incomprehensible script.