Bert Vandecasteele

Author: Bert

  • QuaTro

    So, confession time. When I was an angsty fifteen year-old, I started writing a fantasy manuscript about an angsty fifteen year-old. Over the course of more than a year, it grew into a 200-page, Times New Roman 10 mastodon.

    QuaTro

    That mastodon is currently in my hands. It is filled to the brim with horrible cliches, terrible dialogue and plot twists I stole from random anime series.

    Have a gander:

    „Maarten? Are you awake?“

    Slowly he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Angela, who was looking at him right above his head. In a flash she kissed him.

    Maarten was startled, and got tense. She pulled her lips away again, and look at him full of regret. „Sorry…“

    He looked at her, confused and frightened. „O-okay…“

    She stood up, and reached her hand out to him. He didn’t accept, and got up on his own. „I don’t need your help anymore. I’m perfectly capable of handling things on my own.“ He sounded painfully apathetic.

    Angela looked away. „I understand…“ after that, she looked back into his eyes and laughed.

    „No. No! Don’t say anything. I know what you will say next will be a lie.“

    Angela looked at him confusedly. „What do you mean.“

    „You’re running away Angela. Away from yourself, away from the outside world, just away!“ Maarten turned around and started running into the forest. Away.

    The above scene is a quote from chapter 8, where the two lovers meet again for the first time since chapter 2 (which, in a stroke of artist’s brilliance, is actually the first chapter). They cannot be together because he is a part of a prophecy that will get her killed or something. Also, teenage angst.

    Now the thing is: I cannot let something this gloriously awful go to waste. But what should I do with it? Dramatic reading? Translate the whole thing and look for an editor who’s actively looking for trash?

    P.S.: against all logic, I’m not going to burn it

  • Silly Sign. It’s April.

    Tübingen University, language department.
    Tübingen University, language department.

  • LEGO Movie

    Hey guys! Tired of being grown-up? Sick of hearing about taxes, work and – ick! – responsibilities? Wanna be a kid again? Now you can!

    “But Bert”, you tell me, “I am a cynical adult, surely there is no way back from that!”

    Sure there is. All you have to do is believe!

    …I’m just kidding all you need is money to buy a ticket to the LEGO movie.

    In five minutes, you’ll be a giddy little dude again, on the edge of your seat gasping at yellow brick men dancing to the tunes of a god-awful song called “Everything is awesome!”.

    Side-effects include calling your mom and asking if she kept your old LEGOs and begging her to please please prettyplease get them back from your nephew/niece/whatever so you can play. They’re yours, after all, and they’re precious.

    P.S.: All joking aside, LEGO movie is very entertaining and has some interesting plot twists going for it. Check it out!

  • Shameless

    When you spend your day writing, all of a sudden something weird can happen: You watch fictional people lose babies, limbs or each other and you just shrug it off cynically.

    You start to hate stories.

    My last couple of weeks were riddled by another one of these phases. Quite honestly: They’re destructive towards your work. How can you enjoy your own stuff if you can’t enjoy anything at all?

    Then, I watched Shameless. Like, all of it. In one weekend. I laughed, I cried, I realized there’s nothing quite like this quaint show about lower class people in Chicago trying to make something of their lives, featuring the magnificent William H. Macy and a dozen crazily gifted child actors. It’s deeply hilarious, truly sad and politically correct all over. I loved it. I adored it.

    I wanted to make it.

    Take a look at these two scenes. They are from the same show. How is that even possible!?

    And, just like that, my phase was cured. By realizing that otherwise, I would never be able to make something as magnificent as Shameless.

    So I urge you: Watch this show. It’s truly unique.

  • Bird Jesus

    As witnessed in Derendingen, Tübingen.
    As witnessed in Derendingen, Tübingen.

  • Ms. Mechthild Müller presents (1): Stracciatella Chocolate Muffins

    Hello dearies! Mechthild here, and today I baked wonderful stracciatella chocolate muffins. And because Albrecht isn’t due home for another five hours and I’ve got nothing but this bottle of Bordeaux to keep me company, I’ll show you how it’s done. Don’t worry – even you can do it!

    Ingredients

    • 150g butter
    • 250g flour
    • 2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
    • 150g chocolate
    • 1 package of vanilla sugar
    • 2 eggs
    • 200g crème fraiche
    • 100g sugar
    • Muffin baking form and little muffin paper cups (else you might just bake a cake, dearie!)

    Muffins!

    Here’s how it’s done

    First, you preheat the oven at 160° C. Or 180° C, if you’re one of those who aren’t blessed with an air circulation oven. Then, start with the logistics, those are always first because your hands are still clean. Grease the baking form with butter and a brush, then insert the paper cups. The dough will go into those later on. Now there’s all sorts of shapes and sizes of cups, but you’ll want ones that a) are big enough for your form (I’ve seen everything!) and b) are a bit colourful and cutesy so you can hide the fact that you’ve undoubtedly already soiled them with your dirty greasy butter hands.

    Wonderful! Let’s carry on, shall we?

    Melt the butter. Mix the flour and the baking powder. Chop the chocolate. Now I know what you’re thinking, and yes, Milka chocolate comes in 100g packages, so you’ve got 50 grams left over after you’ve chopping, but let me stop you right there.

    If you don’t want to become a big fat slob and have your husband leave you for a big city hussie, don’t gobble that down like the turkey you are. You gotta impress your man. In fact, dearie, I don’t think you should eat these muffins at all.

    Is everyone with me? That’s great!

    Boy, this Bordeaux really is something else.

    Mix the eggs with the crème fraiche, the sugar, vanilla sugar and the now-melted butter (I hope you didn’t turn the heat up too high and got grease all over your dress, honey!). Add the flour mixture and the chocolate. Stir, stir, stir. If your arm’s getting tired, you’re doing it right. You have to treat your man right. Because once he realizes he can do better, perkier and sexier, he’s out faster than a Christmas tree in January.

    Now this part is where you get to feel glad about yourself. Remember how I told you to prepare the muffin form so you wouldn’t have to do it later? Well it’s done now and you can pour in the dough. Be sure to divide it equally. I know life’s not fair and some of us got more (or less!) than others, but baking is not like life, dearies. Baking is what we tell our children so they can sleep at night. Baking is fair!

    Once you’re done with that, bake it for twenty to twenty-five minutes in your preheated oven. After that, you take them out and let them cool off a bit before taking them out of the form. So if I see blisters on your hand next time we meet, I know you were a gluttonous bimbo and you deserve everything you’ve got.

    Muffins, 2!

    There you go! Your very own stracciatella chocolate muffins for when your Albrecht comes home!

    If Albrecht is ever coming home.

    …Let’s crack open another bottle, shall we!?

  • New Site!

    Hi, I’m Bert and I don’t like change.
    (“Hi Bert”)

    As you may have noticed, this site looks different now. I’ve been wanting to update it for a long time, but I never got around to it. It wasn’t just that there were too many unnecessary projects on it – it was mainly the hosting: Slow as molasses, often offline, generally shit.

    So on a whim, I threw everything out. The shitty hosting, the boring site, the inconveniently named domain. And, not wanting to do any work on it, I created this site!

    It has a little blog so I can entertain you with posts like these. It has the ability to post cellphone pictures of cats, which I will abuse. But it’s also a place to show off some of my writings without completely giving everything away – see the three buttons above you.

    So basically:

    bertvdc.de – The demo to the dude.

    Enjoy!

    P.S.: Mia won the “Film Fun in Bed” award at the Jeugdfilmfestival in Bruges and Antwerp. It’s a prize handed out by a jury of low-mobility children who watch the entries from their beds. I’m so happy and honoured.

    P.P.S:

    Courtesy of my sister.
    Courtesy of my sister.

  • Straße Frei, Kartoffelbrei

    Straße Frei!

  • Her

    So Spike Jonze ist officially my hero now. Skate movies where everyone blows up. A brilliant Maurice Sendak adaptation. One of the most touching and absurd love stories ever. Is there anything the man can’t do?

    Anyway, go see Her, the brilliant love story between a man and his operating system. It’s one of the most heartfelt movies I’ve seen in quite a while, and strikes a perfect balance between earnest emotions and a crazy thought experiment. You won’t regret it!

  • Bioshock Infinite – Burial at Sea

    I just finished Burial at Sea and I’m slightly confused.

    Then again, I was slightly confused with Bioshock Infinite, too. For those who don’t care about spoilers, here’s a little rundown: You’re essentially a guy who sold his baby on a drunken whim. Fifteen years later, you’re off to a floating city to rescue her. The hitch: You sold your baby to an older version of yourself from a different dimension – one who regretted selling his baby and decided to steal yours.

    Now as far as weird plots go, this one takes the cake. It’s remarkably well told for a video game (it should be no secret I’m not entirely enthusiastic about the stories told in games at the moment) – just the right amount of mystery and confusion. It never truly came together, and people were frustrated.

    So in comes the DLC for Bioshock Infinite – Burial at Sea. It takes place in Rapture – the city from the first game. And proceeds to link the first Bioshock to Bioshock Infinite. Amazingly, it actually pulls it off. I still don’t get how (or why), but they do!

    But then you try to get to the emotional core of the story. This time, you’re playing as the girl. She used to have the power to see across dimensions (having been stolen etc). And now she lost it. This makes her mortal. Yaddayadda.

    I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel cheated. Cheated because Bioshock Infinite opened up a spectacular multiverse theory, one that truly boggled my mind. And then they just leave it hanging. Close it off and ignore it just to finish the story.

    And that’s the thing, right? Irrational Games and, at the helm, Ken Levine, knowing full well he’ll never be able to make another game as massive in scope as Bioshock Infinite, so he might aswell just close off all the last threads so no one else touches his game.

    You might call him paranoid, but they’ve done it before with Bioshock 2.

    What a shame, I say. I mean: I get it completely, wanting to protect your story. What drives me up the wall, however, is something else entirely: It’s the complete emotional distance with which he brings his story to a close.

    Burial at Sea is completely unemotional. Just compare it to the main game, which was filled with emotional sucker punches. I mean, just look at the scene that starts at 8:20.

     

    Violence! Character development! And then the immediate follow-up with a silent, emotional moment. Sure, you might call it pulpy, but god damnit, even then: This is brilliant pulp!

    Where are these scenes in Burial at Sea? Where’s the emotion? Why do I get the impression this story was written by a bitter, angry man who wanted nothing more than for it all to end?

    What a shame.