Concept THIRD RAIL: A CONCEPT

[The Coconut Kid]

16 hours ago, slimeball supreme said:

vote for whatever you like the most. and also let me know why you like it in the replies to whatever one you pick. i like to know if people are taking anything away from it or reading the chapters at all. i like it when people notice something or share their anticipation or care about the story i am telling. if you don't like it, directly post so we can justify. don't mince words. you don't get something, ask. you do and you notice the cute little reference or like the prose or idfk, say.

 

I will be voting for Third Rail.

I will be doing so for a number of reasons that far exceed your dedication. I know the two of you will already be familiar with them.

I've been thinking I should base my vote on where I've spent most of my readership.

Initially I thought this would be Red Triangle or Red Line. Both took shape while I have been absent and there has been a lot to catch up on.

By comparison, Third Rail has three chapters. I have spent time with you going over the first two. I'm yet to be able to fully appreciate the third but I have said it's your best yet.

But it's managed to grab my readership more than the rest of your work. How?

You have characters and exchanges that need to be read three or four times to figure out every single angle you're covering. Everyone is complex. Everyone is conspiring.

Your attention to detail on the background locations and environment is incessant. You've crawled through that 80sNYC streetview. I know you have! The streets, the social clubs, and how they're mixed into this sandbox of yours is very rewarding when you know the origin.

You provoke me to question things and go away and research the themes you're writing about. This is a statement, a manifesto, a deeply personal project and you put everything into it. To have to get to know the content is to have to learn where you're coming from.

And there's so much more. Your faith to the game world. The original characters, their movements, their habits and their language...

 

But I have to keep this brief and just leaving a comment is the right thing to do.

Keep doing what you both do. Take it home for Dukes baby.

 

And for f*ck's sake, feed your campaign manager to Hal Noto. Thousands of words of praise is the endorsement you're looking for.

[Cebra]

On 3/7/2022 at 10:17 AM, The Coconut Kid said:

You provoke me to question things and go away and research the themes you're writing about. This is a statement, a manifesto, a deeply personal project and you put everything into it. To have to get to know the content is to have to learn where you're coming from.

And there's so much more. Your faith to the game world. The original characters, their movements, their habits and their language...

 

But I have to keep this brief and just leaving a comment is the right thing to do.

Keep doing what you both do. Take it home for Dukes baby.

I think this really strikes at the heart of what we both hope people take from our projects. I really appreciate your continued support here as well as casting a vote TR's way for the reasons slimeball already mentioned in the Lounge and you've also acknowledged again here - that it's deeply personal more so than anything else we've done individually or otherwise. The density of character and worldbuilding is something I try to cast across all our projects now (even B&B retroactively when it comes to the mob!) and even though it's still relatively young I'm really glad it feels the way it was intended here. This iteration of LC has been a didactic process to create and as you've also said, has become a manifesto of sorts both in terms of the overtly political in-world but also as a sort of prototype of what a concept can be. This is all stuff you've heard from me before so I feel like I'm jerking myself off but again, thank you lol. With this spike in concept activity (when's the last time we had 7 on the first f*cking page of Series?) I've been thinking of your proposals in the Lounge and how they also tie into this philosophy so I'll shoot a longer message over there in a bit

[The Coconut Kid]

11 hours ago, Cebra said:

The density of character and worldbuilding is something I try to cast across all our projects now (even B&B retroactively when it comes to the mob!) and even though it's still relatively young I'm really glad it feels the way it was intended here.

The fact you've been able to do this is massive!

I remember when you started out on B&B. I saw all these familiar names. Gravelli. Cangelosi. Boccino. There were times I thought, could this be someone else? What're these guys from LC doing here? Are they lost?

It's taken a lot of time for the project to fully take shape. I had no idea, in the early days, that the collaboration would span from the 1960s to the 1990s and those links would carry such significance. I recall looking at B&B and thinking, "1960s progressing through the 1970s? This is ambitious."

It makes me wonder, when B&B draws to its conclusion in 1975, how much events in Las Venturas and San Fierro will influence what we're seeing here in Third Rail. Seven years isn't a huge gap. Events will be fresh in minds and there's the huge crossover in characters. I suppose this will be the big pay off of all those familiar names.

This reminds me. I have this really extensive social photobook complied by Mario Puzo of Las Vegas in the 1970s. I've also begun to store a cache of old 1960s and 1970s Vegas pictures with the intent of sharing both on B&B. You've probably already seen them! But I'll drop all of this stuff on you over there soon and we'll have a chat about it.

 

11 hours ago, Cebra said:

This iteration of LC has been a didactic process to create and as you've also said, has become a manifesto of sorts both in terms of the overtly political in-world but also as a sort of prototype of what a concept can be.

 

This is one of the things that makes me marvel at the commitment here.

This topic is going on two years old now. You're three chapters in (hopefully more soon!) It is a manifesto, and a way of pushing the concept format as far as it can go, but I also get the feeling the minds behind it are constantly evolving -- taking in, processing, and using new information.

How do you stay committed to the same vision without wanting to constantly change everything? I know this is something I struggle with.

 

11 hours ago, Cebra said:

With this spike in concept activity (when's the last time we had 7 on the first f*cking page of Series?) I've been thinking of your proposals in the Lounge and how they also tie into this philosophy so I'll shoot a longer message over there in a bit

 

We'll be cracking into double figures soon. @Datalvarezguy @Jeansowaty and @donnits are each posting their work. There are a couple others I know I need to visit. It's a good time to be getting things done.

 

I look forward to your thoughts. I want you two on board!

[slimeball supreme]

On 3/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, The Coconut Kid said:

This topic is going on two years old now. You're three chapters in (hopefully more soon!)

we are maybe halfway into our next mission of TR; which is a pleasure to write, and very much about what derrick and co. really care about. its the part we've really wanted to get to, the part that really shoots the idea this is just about wiseguys in the head, and the part we've never really seen fictionalized and interrogated - or at least not in ways we've found interesting or true to the ideological underpinnings - in nearly anything else.

 

i wish we had more, but 20k words after a year break (prior to nearly canning it) ain't bad baby. right now my personal focus is getting the last couple chapters of red triangle out, and then its split between this and finishing i rode mine (also dangerously close to completion).

 

On 3/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, The Coconut Kid said:

How do you stay committed to the same vision without wanting to constantly change everything? I know this is something I struggle with.

we've changed details here and there but i think we have a very strong and personal idea for what we are trying to tell. i can say for myself the idea of derrick - the sellout radical - is something very personal to me. the fear of believing something and not doing enough for it, of betraying your ideals, of living inside a vulgar system.

 

in a lot of ways the vision is very concrete. there is the sociological network of gangsterism and its ties to power and its own infighting - nobody ever asks about the literal internal politics of the mafia in favor of fast living and violence, but it is so utterly important - and america at large. the death of radicalism in the midst of reaganism and the teeming beginnings of perestroika. liberty as the modern day rome of the american empire. it is utterly materialist in the themes we're trying to demonstrate. the game that never could be, the rebuttal to a lot of posts going 'i wish this were a real game'. it cant and maybe shouldnt be

 

even the 'satire' is reframed. think of it this way: third rail is set in an alternate universe where the soviets lost the cold war. this is a guiding philosophy of writing our take on gta's america

 

On 3/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, The Coconut Kid said:

I had no idea, in the early days, that the collaboration would span from the 1960s to the 1990s and those links would carry such significance. I recall looking at B&B and thinking, "1960s progressing through the 1970s? This is ambitious."

if you include rode mine and red triangle - both integral parts of realizing that history i feel - this stretches all the way to essentially the present day. 2015, probably the last moment before the reality of the modern information age set in. everywhere there are references to the twisting family trees and ongoing politics

 

On 3/11/2022 at 9:07 AM, The Coconut Kid said:

It makes me wonder, when B&B draws to its conclusion in 1975, how much events in Las Venturas and San Fierro will influence what we're seeing here in Third Rail. Seven years isn't a huge gap. Events will be fresh in minds and there's the huge crossover in characters. I suppose this will be the big pay off of all those familiar names.

this is also a strong and true observation for more ways than one.

 

in the world of gangsterdom this is indisputable. jon gravelli's legacy is partly influenced by the mess the east coast left pulling out of venturas for the midwest to pick apart. the incarceration of the great don sonny cangelosi lays in the architecture, the mafiosi relationship to drug trafficking, the ancelotti dynasty, and the hit 1972 film The Denouement.

 

but. san fierro. san francisco is the 20th century battleground where baby boomer politics left their legacy. it was a period of counterculture followed by an upheaval. san fierro looms hardest for people like derrick because of the fallout from Leon's Leopards. the ARC is headed by dropout followers of the Leopards, the ones favoring more direct action. communism and cointelpro are apart of the american gangster legacy as much as any mafiosi

Edited March 12 by slimeball supreme

[Cebra]

On 3/10/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

It's taken a lot of time for the project to fully take shape. I had no idea, in the early days, that the collaboration would span from the 1960s to the 1990s and those links would carry such significance. I recall looking at B&B and thinking, "1960s progressing through the 1970s? This is ambitious."

 

It makes me wonder, when B&B draws to its conclusion in 1975, how much events in Las Venturas and San Fierro will influence what we're seeing here in Third Rail. Seven years isn't a huge gap. Events will be fresh in minds and there's the huge crossover in characters. I suppose this will be the big pay off of all those familiar names.

slime already responded to this more succinctly than I ever could, but I wanted to frame it in situ with a couple of examples where certain themes and repercussions carry across space and time even where there's no direct intersection. like he mentioned there's no escaping the very material consequences of the East Coast's Venturas ventures (wink) and the ripples they cause decades down the line, especially when it comes to the reputations of every family with a stake out west as well as very definite changes in power dynamics following the incapacitations of Sonny Cangelosi and Pax Ancelotti alike.

 

but it goes beyond that. i guess the best way to describe my approach to the Angleverse is - and i think slime has used this term before too - the importance of maintaining a sprawling mythology of scumf*cks. and myth, here, entails more than the notoriety of the people themselves - it's also the attitudes, the responses to social phenomena and change. in 1968, Leon King - face of the underground Black Power movement at the height of counterculture - asks Julius Cole his thoughts on Standard Engines. Jules knows his audience, says he's not a fan - but Leon calls his bluff and knows he doesn't really give a damn about strikebreakers back in Carcer. then the oil embargo happens, and two fuel crises between '73 and '79, and the auto unions are forced to drop nearly every advance they'd made over the past century, and a victorious GM - SE - plies itself in half to maintain its market share. in 1985, right past the grip of the malaise era, Derrick is gifted the same 1986 Willard he still drives at the time of IV in exchange for his services to the mob. does he love the car? yes, enough to keep it in storage while he's in Ireland for the better part of two decades. does he also feel like a sellout - driving a Standard Engines luxury car as a reward for his decidedly non-ideological thuggery? yes. hopefully the question raised by Leon King reverberates decades past.

 

it's this unconscious web of connections that manifests in many ways - in '82, in our intro, Tony the C*nt thinks telling a pair of communists they'd love it if they could dig to China is about the wittiest riposte anyone could come up with. in Red Triangle, 2016, it's Phil Donovan parroting a joke Latrell told him about Cuban commie weddings and expecting his mobster buddies to yak it up. it's attitudes and world views and biases and idiocy across the board in the face of encroaching capitalist rot, long-form from 1968 to 2016. and at the crux; protagonists grappling with their identities, trying to negotiate this obscene system.

 

On 3/10/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

This reminds me. I have this really extensive social photobook complied by Mario Puzo of Las Vegas in the 1970s. I've also begun to store a cache of old 1960s and 1970s Vegas pictures with the intent of sharing both on B&B. You've probably already seen them! But I'll drop all of this stuff on you over there soon and we'll have a chat about it.

really extensive is exciting - I do have my own catalogue of photos I've referred to over the years but i look forward to this!

Edited March 13 by Cebra

[slimeball supreme]

while we're talking about the story at large, i want to give a sneak peek at the many faces of liberty city. we're working with a huge network of a cast: many of them are peripheral, many aren't. but we've been working strongly on developing this broad ensemble of liberty's underworld.

 

here's a big slice

 

 

many of these characters have been referenced in red line, b&b, and red triangle. we hope they'll get their time of day in third rail. feel free to point out any that fancy your interest or look as absurd as they likely are

Edited March 30 by slimeball supreme

[The Coconut Kid]

This was supposed to drop for St. Patrick's Day but I'm a little late...

 

On 3/13/2022 at 6:29 AM, slimeball supreme said:

we are maybe halfway into our next mission of TR; which is a pleasure to write, and very much about what derrick and co. really care about. its the part we've really wanted to get to, the part that really shoots the idea this is just about wiseguys in the head, and the part we've never really seen fictionalized and interrogated - or at least not in ways we've found interesting or true to the ideological underpinnings - in nearly anything else.

 

Hands down this is the most rewarding experience you can have writing this kind of fiction. I love this platform we have to interrogate the things that so often go unsaid.

 

It's been extremely bold of you both to go this route within the GTA universe. This is now a series which often takes for granted its roots are in crime, let alone the ideological underpinnings of its characters. Third Rail stands for more than concept writing. It's a call to arms.

 

On 3/13/2022 at 6:29 AM, slimeball supreme said:

i wish we had more, but 20k words after a year break (prior to nearly canning it) ain't bad baby. right now my personal focus is getting the last couple chapters of red triangle out, and then its split between this and finishing i rode mine (also dangerously close to completion).

 

I honestly would've guessed double or triple of this!

 

You know I read these on the iPad. They go for pages and pages. I can't paste in the graphics or the hyperlinks, which has the strange effect of making this read even more like a novel.

 

This does lend to the temptation to sit on this for a while and wait for a run of new chapters. I have found that to fully understand this world, you've got to actually commit to it for a while, if that makes sense. It's too powerful to dip in and out of.

 

Still. 20K is no mean feat. Over three chapters it's pretty damn exhaustive.

 

On 3/13/2022 at 6:29 AM, slimeball supreme said:

if you include rode mine and red triangle - both integral parts of realizing that history i feel - this stretches all the way to essentially the present day. 2015, probably the last moment before the reality of the modern information age set in. everywhere there are references to the twisting family trees and ongoing politics

 

Oh definitely. You've got characters in Red Triangle looking up names from Third Rail and Red Line on Eyefind. You've got characters fistfighting over family histories. So many references.

 

On 3/13/2022 at 8:26 PM, Cebra said:

i guess the best way to describe my approach to the Angleverse is - and i think slime has used this term before too - the importance of maintaining a sprawling mythology of scumf*cks. and myth, here, entails more than the notoriety of the people themselves - it's also the attitudes, the responses to social phenomena and change.

 

It's interesting to look at scumf*ckery in the context of the Angleverse.

 

When I first think our first encounter with a scumf*ck, it's Freddy Peters. And as we move through your timeline, they become progressively scumf*ckier - to the point where we're literally chopping someone up in an introduction and it's a scene so heavy it drives our protagonist to the needle.

 

On 3/13/2022 at 8:26 PM, Cebra said:

in 1985, right past the grip of the malaise era, Derrick is gifted the same 1986 Willard he still drives at the time of IV in exchange for his services to the mob. does he love the car? yes, enough to keep it in storage while he's in Ireland for the better part of two decades. does he also feel like a sellout - driving a Standard Engines luxury car as a reward for his decidedly non-ideological thuggery? yes. hopefully the question raised by Leon King reverberates decades past.

 

Derrick drives a Willard?

 

How did I not know this??

 

I'm getting some serious Mickey Donovan returning to his pristine Cad vibes here.

 

But I also appreciate the point you're making. There's hypocrisy in everything. Great work on your attention to detail, even in the overlooked things!

 

19 hours ago, slimeball supreme said:

while we're talking about the story at large, i want to give a sneak peek at the many faces of liberty city. we're working with a huge network of a cast: many of them are peripheral, many aren't. but we've been working strongly on developing this broad ensemble of liberty's underworld.

 

This is timely!

 

I was looking to ask about a map of the areas you've covered in the Angleverse. Couria etc. There are so many I often lose track. It would be a very helpful point of reference.

 

This isn't my first time seeing The Many Faces of Liberty City either. But by God, you've added more to them.

 

Only gripe - very small gripe. The stroke around the profiles could be larger. Help me see who's who without squinting. It's your point of reference though, so what works for you.

 

There are so many unique choices here. What's it going to take to get you to give up how you get 'em?

 

I know @Claude4Catalina has been talking about reusing the entire Sopranos cast for their Carcer City project. These really stand out as something different. How much B-movie mob flicks did you have to plow through to find these?

[slimeball supreme]

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

Only gripe - very small gripe. The stroke around the profiles could be larger. Help me see who's who without squinting. It's your point of reference though, so what works for you.

i'll start with this - i always try to keep ipad viewers in mind, least of all because i was stuck using one for a while when i first started using the site. the reason the strokes are so thin is that they are just the typical mugshot inserts we work with pasted onto this really broad canvas. which looks fine by itself on tablet. like this

 

 

looks good on tablet. its not a big picture. the 2k x 1k image of the many faces probably not so much. on pc you just gotta click it twice and you see the full image. on tablet i think its easiest just to pinch and zoom into it, if not save the image and zoom using ur camera roll. ive done this a bunch of times

 

accessibility is something we try to factor in. the outlines are a little extra touch for affiliation but you dont even need to be able to see them to see the face, and u dont even really need them since theyre often described in the prose. just an extra little visual flourish which really makes the character casting shine

 

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

It's been extremely bold of you both to go this route within the GTA universe. This is now a series which often takes for granted its roots are in crime, let alone the ideological underpinnings of its characters. Third Rail stands for more than concept writing. It's a call to arms.

i think this is the recognition ive always sort of chased, because it is integral to my view of how the things we've written have come to be. this isnt a series that really grapples with ideology specifically. not many pieces of american fiction do - we dont typically see people who believe in something specific, as much as symbols of belief that dont get tied to ideology. "i care about doing good." means nothing.

 

in gta you see a lot of snake oil merchants and grifters who believe nothing theyre actually saying. or are only saying something as an excuse for their own corruption. i personally see that as somewhere between ignorance and cowardice - maybe a result of never having believed anything your whole life. you see a lot of disingenuous believers everywhere in fiction. not as often; the people who really believe in something, who speak an ideological language. who betray their beliefs, or contradict them, or who make serious arguments for controversial or even bad things. these people are as common, if not more common, than the man who never believed anything at all. direct action is often portrayed as the worst possible thing for an activist to do, but we never see the perspective of people who believe it is the only thing that can affect genuine change. the red army fraction absolutely had a concrete ideology, and one you could argue with. you can see the crimes they did as crimes. they didn't. but they were not crazy, they were motivated not by contradiction, but by a cogent academic philosophy

 

this is probably a problem with western writing in general. you see a lot of people who don't want writing to be 'political'. this is because in capitalism you are often alienated from the product of your labor, and thus the ability to interact in the political system that governs everything. politics and belief becomes a distraction you dont want to see, and not inherent to everything. this is not true and never has been. to not engage with it is missing a major part of the picture, and in turn a political statement in itself.

 

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

I was looking to ask about a map of the areas you've covered in the Angleverse. Couria etc. There are so many I often lose track. It would be a very helpful point of reference.

we sort of have one i was thinking of putting at the end of i rode mine. nationwide and a little rough:
 

Spoiler

the completely green states are renamed ones. san andreas, robada, delisle, the yanktons, liberty, alderney and quinnebaug are the ones we've renamed, where every city in turn is renamed as well. the red ones are those in real states but have been renamed. the entire vice langhorne county area gets this treatment, and its all a little subject to change. maybe more will be renamed, maybe la brecha (el paso) wont get the renaming treatment at all. most of these places are nexuses for criminal activity in some way or another, which is the central priority for renaming

 

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

There are so many unique choices here. What's it going to take to get you to give up how you get 'em?

ask and ye shall receive baby

 

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

I know @Claude4Catalina has been talking about reusing the entire Sopranos cast for their Carcer City project. These really stand out as something different. How much B-movie mob flicks did you have to plow through to find these?

in general since i started working on b&b and red line we accumulated a big list of actors in files and have worked through a variety of films and tv. consider this the Gangster Cinematic Universe but actually good - a variety of named crooks given reference and character actors. you can ultimately just completely dismiss this aspect and work on them as guys in your imagination, but we wanted to push the actor reference idea as far as we could take it.

 

On 3/19/2022 at 2:35 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

I'm getting some serious Mickey Donovan returning to his pristine Cad vibes here.

important thing to consider here btw: imagine the exact opposite.

 

ive always considered derrick a direct parallel to niko. he is a broken man, who once had potential but now can do nothing else, and has come to liberty city partly for his own sake and partly to condemn past demons to the history books (florian and darko / bucky and aiden). consider this period of time equivalent to niko's time in the war. Organized crime is where the old and bitter trick the young and naive into killing each other. the difference being that derrick will be the one that wrongs his comrades in the end.

 

the willard will be a gift in 1985, and will be a prize that also is built by union breakers and has been bought by gangsters squeezing union men dry. when he leaves the city, he will come back with bucky and aiden in the mid-90s, now completely jaded fighters, working solely as stickup men and gangster adjacent hoodlums. he will unlock the garage where he keeps that willard, that gasoline green thing covered in dust, and it will be a thousand bad memories. when he leaves again after giving sealed testimony against his partners and counterculture figures, he will leave the willard in liberty once again.

 

in 2008, when he returns, that car will be waiting there for him, and it will be a scar worse than any trackmark. a symbol of all the money he made betraying himself. it will probably outlive him.

 

not bad for a car you see if you fail the mission. but i failed that mission a lot when i first played it. i f*cking hate the boat missions.

Edited March 20 by slimeball supreme

[The Coconut Kid]

On 3/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, slimeball supreme said:

i'll start with this - i always try to keep ipad viewers in mind, least of all because i was stuck using one for a while when i first started using the site. the reason the strokes are so thin is that they are just the typical mugshot inserts we work with pasted onto this really broad canvas. which looks fine by itself on tablet. like this

Now I see where I'm going wrong.

 

I'll just browse the posts from the tablet instead of putting them onto the tablet as text files.

 

On 3/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, slimeball supreme said:

we sort of have one i was thinking of putting at the end of i rode mine. nationwide and a little rough:

This is terrific! And exactly what I was looking for.

 

I can look back and pay this reference whenever I'm feeling lost by the sheer scale of your world.

 

On 3/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, slimeball supreme said:

ive always considered derrick a direct parallel to niko. he is a broken man, who once had potential but now can do nothing else, and has come to liberty city partly for his own sake and partly to condemn past demons to the history books (florian and darko / bucky and aiden). consider this period of time equivalent to niko's time in the war. Organized crime is where the old and bitter trick the young and naive into killing each other. the difference being that derrick will be the one that wrongs his comrades in the end.

I love this idea.

 

I always felt this is what Rockstar themselves were going for. I forget the mission, but I remember the scene:

 

I went into a situation full of optimism, full of naivete... I got burnt. Look at me... like smack on a f*cking spoon.

 

There's a moment, I'm not sure if it's in the same mission, where Niko can't even look at Derrick. Derrick is begging and pleading with him. It always stuck with me this is because he sees so much of himself in Derrick (and Derrick in Niko).

 

This is just pure curiosity on my part... but I love speculating on this stuff. Assume Niko wasn't in the picture. Derrick arrives back in LC to bury his demons. How does he handle Aiden and Bucky? Would he do it himself? Who would he turn to? Does it end up being a Packie and Gordon job?

 

On 3/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, slimeball supreme said:

the willard will be a gift in 1985, and will be a prize that also is built by union breakers and has been bought by gangsters squeezing union men dry. when he leaves the city, he will come back with bucky and aiden in the mid-90s, now completely jaded fighters, working solely as stickup men and gangster adjacent hoodlums. he will unlock the garage where he keeps that willard, that gasoline green thing covered in dust, and it will be a thousand bad memories. when he leaves again after giving sealed testimony against his partners and counterculture figures, he will leave the willard in liberty once again.

I also want to bring this up because it's always confused the f*ck out of me... how did you two nail down Derrick's timeline?

 

I know GTA Wiki has Derrick down as leaving for Ireland in the late 1980s as fact, but I know that's bullsh*t.

 

I also remember a mention of Derrick being in England. This is where he grassed - and then went into hiding for years. I linked back to it when I placed him in London.

 

What's your take on it? And will there ever be a massive epilogue to tie up all of these loose ends when we get to the conclusion of Third Rail?

 

On 3/20/2022 at 6:41 PM, slimeball supreme said:

not bad for a car you see if you fail the mission. but i failed that mission a lot when i first played it. i f*cking hate the boat missions.

See, I'm the opposite. I'm good with boat missions but I'm f*cking shocking on a bike.

 

I passed Babysitting first try, but failed I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots and Your Motorcycle multiple times.

 

This is where we both stumble upon something interesting - post mission failure dialogues.

 

I got the phone calls from Gerald. And then, because I found them so interesting, I went back, started a new game and failed every mission I could! I wanted to hear every bit of content in this game.

 

I ended up recording them all from my TV up until around the Ray Boccino missions. I actually still have them. But there has to be an easier way to track them down?

 

Either way. To get all of the above from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cutscene is fantastic. Great stuff.

[slimeball supreme]

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

See, I'm the opposite. I'm good with boat missions but I'm f*cking shocking on a bike.

 

I passed Babysitting first try, but failed I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots and Your Motorcycle multiple times.

believe it or not - same f*cking thing with the bike missions also! i hated i need your clothes boots and movie reference. i hated no way on the subway, i actually groaned during the cutscene where niko jogged over to the chase bike. id try to cut them off at the entrance to the subway but theyd rubber band so fast into me one time i got knocked off the bike. meanwhile babysitting frustrated me so much that i held a grudge against derrick my first playthrough and shot him without hesitation.

 

how's that for a moral quandary. so much for the nuances of characterization.

 

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

This is where we both stumble upon something interesting - post mission failure dialogues.

roman i shouldve never read your f*cking emails and stayed away.

 

i always loved those little cutscenes and have since mourned their removal in games made after. some of them seemed like they could plausibly work with a 'repeat' of the mission you just botched. others almost seemed like hypothetical deviations from the story - a character threatening to kill you, or calmly asking to come see them for what is all likelihood an ambush. one of the cute ones from tlad were failing museum piece and having ray mourn niko as an idiot who did jobs for cheap. che peccat', he says.

 

here's an easy way to track all of them down btw

 

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

I went into a situation full of optimism, full of naivete... I got burnt. Look at me... like smack on a f*cking spoon.

 

There's a moment, I'm not sure if it's in the same mission, where Niko can't even look at Derrick. Derrick is begging and pleading with him. It always stuck with me this is because he sees so much of himself in Derrick (and Derrick in Niko).

the same mission. and a case in point of exactly the kind of thing we're trying to draw attention to - we're the same, you and me. the same. just like dwayne, niko sympathizes with broken men because he is a broken man. dwayne has little left but self pity, derrick has little left but the needle and bad memories. niko decides to right dwayne's wrongs without being coerced, always doing it to try and help. derrick needs help, and is driven by self-delusion. they are both lorded over by men from their past with great personal success, their own little ray bulgarins.

 

important to note that dwayne refuses to look at niko when niko opts to help him. derrick pleads and niko refuses to look at him. both broken facets of niko: the man broken by money, and the man broken by vengeance. the man who's too proud to beg, and the man who isn't proud but will beg anyway. if niko lives past the end of IV, it's not hard to look at that mirror and see what he'd likely become

 

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

This is just pure curiosity on my part... but I love speculating on this stuff. Assume Niko wasn't in the picture. Derrick arrives back in LC to bury his demons. How does he handle Aiden and Bucky? Would he do it himself? Who would he turn to? Does it end up being a Packie and Gordon job?

the way i saw packie enlist niko was something between shifting responsibility and sympathy for the old bastard. kate and packie wouldve been very young when derrick was in his prime, and upon his first return to LC seen only a glimpse of a much more withdrawn and sad person.

 

derrick probably wouldnt have come to the conclusion of vanquishing his foes from a very rational place. a lot of his anger is self delusion and paranoia - the running idea we've been working with is that bucky has not been threatening "derrick's family". he's largely moved on, the florian to derrick's niko. but there's a hate and fear and self loathing in trying to get back at a foe not worth getting back at

 

one thing we want to get across with TR is that derrick is not a great fighter even in his prime. hence really emphasizing a realistic and brutal idea of combat where guns are worth limited use and firefights are hectic and messy. a lot of the big setpieces here will be assisting in larger crews: he could hardly do the job of taking out these guys by himself. derrick's weapon is a glock, the other boys with automatic weapons. shows his priorities. something you can drop

 

in 2008 derrick is barely keeping himself together: drinking, borrowing money to pay for his habits, getting his brothers to help. packie is probably already 'babysitting'. niko is enlisted because he "can hack into a police computer", he's a swiss army knife of a man, and i doubt packie wants to get involved just yet. without niko, the only route would be the street - packie probably reluctant to indulge in it at all, and the end result being knocking skulls until they can track down bucky's burglary crew themselves. that's a messier firefight.

 

but aiden? if derrick didn't have niko, id say the opportunity would be too big to pass up. packie would come, gordo certainly wouldnt risk his neck on a jail break, and derrick would put himself in the firing line

 

he probably wouldnt survive it

 

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

I also want to bring this up because it's always confused the f*ck out of me... how did you two nail down Derrick's timeline?

we pegged the dates down as best we could among the three of them. derrick's last charge is in 1985 for possession of explosives. bucky in 1986 for grand larceny. after that, none of them have any charges in the database until the 1990s.

 

the running logic is this: the three of them will leave the country in 1986. the big chinatown dinner with frankie. they will be fugitives from the law in ireland until the ceasefire in 1994. this will be the bad time. the three will return to liberty the same year: haggard, weary, broken. and very quickly, things will turn very bad. unbeknownst to the two of them, derrick was an informant in ireland. he will continue this pattern of behavior as soon as things go upside down.

 

confidential testimony. aiden goes away. bucky gets out. derrick, once again, flees the country. he would be in liberty city for a year. two at most.

 

derrick and co. would be jumping all across the isles in that period between 1986 and 1994 - heavily armed fighting in the six counties, incognito work with other cells elsewhere. in the 90s and 2000s, after fleeing america a second time, derrick would be a mercenary. back in the clutches of organized crime. working with gangsters from dublin to limerick to london to even malaga, helping the north korean government's counterfeiting of superdollars, "i dont give a sh*t as long as it keeps me in brown." this is nasty work. if anything is ideological, it is not the main priority anymore, and the money being wired to the cause is out of a mix of guilt and admiration. this is a man with a lot of experience, but a whole lot of demons to be not-so-honest about. all the while, he's in glorified hiding. the knowledge of him as an informant chasing him as rumor and hearsay or vendetta

 

the database then says that derrick has 'recently' been arrested in ireland. this is his main motivator for jumping ship back to america. niko's little 'american dream', the money on his head thanks to bulgarin. derrick is a man who loves to run from the law. and, of course, to settle old scores.

 

On 3/25/2022 at 5:07 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

And will there ever be a massive epilogue to tie up all of these loose ends when we get to the conclusion of Third Rail?

this is a beautiful idea. we've considered it a lot. we are not entirely certain. rdr2 has certainly opened up the idea of a big epilogue a decent period after the greater story. we'll try not to bite off more than we can chew, but we've got all sorts of ideas.

Edited March 26 by slimeball supreme

[Cebra]

every radio station in Third Rail has now been afforded a Spotify playlist for your eager ears, except for Whinny which would appear to be too avant-garde for the tastes of Spotify execs. feel free to find those individually on youtube, make a bootleg - like the good old days!

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

[The Coconut Kid]

On 4/5/2022 at 5:33 PM, Cebra said:

every radio station in Third Rail has now been afforded a Spotify playlist for your eager ears, except for Whinny which would appear to be too avant-garde for the tastes of Spotify execs. feel free to find those individually on youtube, make a bootleg - like the good old days!

 

One bootleg... some old resourceful bastard decided to have a crack

 

This is a very basic mix. I'm surprised how good the station actually sounds! Avant Garde Jazz isn't my area but you've got some fantastic picks. I can literally imagine Derrick progressing to The Journey years later.

 

I'd be happy to stick the raw mp3 files in a Zippyshare and let you have your own bash. You could even follow Sabitsuki's tutorial and mix in some early 1980s commercials or political advertisements.

 

And slime... I need to thank you for the run down on Derrick's timeline. You've sent me down a very interesting rabbit hole. Thanks also for the Mission Fail calls - I'll be listening to them all evening.

 

Finally, congratulations to both of you on being awarded Best Concept! Thoroughly deserved.

[slimeball supreme]

On 4/29/2022 at 4:44 PM, The Coconut Kid said:

Finally, congratulations to both of you on being awarded Best Concept! Thoroughly deserved.

thank you heaps for being among the first to publicly congratulate us! will not lie that there's a very vindicating element to it even if we're one of the few who put any value in the award lol. it means a lot to get recognition, at least in this capacity, and especially considering there was a strong possibility we would move on from this project before even writing a second mission. that little award and the praise of a few people is notice enough that would've been the wrong move. we're gonna wear that best writing award proud.

 

thank you for the mix! we put a lot of care into the music selection and wanted to set a number of very unique tracklists and genres. still very keen on a spoken word station and one or two other ideas come to mind for future expansions to that department, but we're very proud of what we have.

 

wish i could know what rabbit holes you've fallen into, but i think the name of the game is all about complexity. in all of our angleverse stuff we've strived to really push what an interconnected universe of criminality would mean, and it is complexity. it is a thousand holes and a thousand men and a thousand ties. nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and everything is political. politics. everywhere politics.

 

we've been working on the latest mission and already put out the penultimate chapter of red triangle. this third rail mission features as sort of an introduction to a lot of different elements of derrick's life, and like we've said: is the part we haven't seen properly depicted in other media, and the part derrick cares the most about. a short sneak peek at mission four:

 

 

Quote

 

You stop by the table, with Ibada Mapinduzi, fella with the receded afro. He pipes up: “Heard you’re good with a bomb.”

 

Shrug back. “Eh.”

 

Bucky’s back - got a bottle of rum. “Eh?”

 

“Bucky–”

 

“You maniac. That’s just an eh? You’re a f*ckin’ whiz, you read the Cookbook back-to-front - we used to go to the protests at Vespucci,” he’s talking to Boniface now, “he made tear gas in my garage.”

 

“I know,” he says.

 

“We went to the army surplus together, we got these gas masks. I was 14 years old, I had no idea what the hell he was doin’, we go to the thing and we throw it at the f*ckin’ pigs, they’re f*ckin’ chokin’.”

 

“It’s fair game. Pigs use mace in Holland.”

 

“That’s what I been sayin’!”

 

Derrick grabs a glass off the table, empty, doesn’t wait for Bucky to pour anything in. “Look, I don’t like to brag about none of this stuff. I say this to my P.O., I’m goin’ back upstate. But y’know. I just picked up things, here and there, I thought things was worth pickin’ up. And it was fun n’ games, brother, fun n’ games; we’d go to novelty stores and pick up bullsh*t.”

 

“Like pepper gas.”

 

“Sure.” Smiles. “Or the goofy glasses with the nose and mustache.”