Waiting For Raptors
Jurassic Park's Delayed Villain Reveal
Without the end credits, Jurassic Park is almost exactly 2 hours. Just one of the many ways in which it is basically a perfect movie, one of my favourites.
Knowing the run time, how late into the movie do you think you have to wait until you finally see an adult raptor, one of the movie's most famous dinosaurs?
15 Minutes Of Raptors
Jurassic Park saves the first full look at a velociraptor until about the 1 hour and 45 minute mark. The raptors spend the next 15 minutes dominating the movie, terrorizing every human left alive.
It's odd, right? You would think that introducing a new type of dinosaur near the end of the movie and basing the film's climax around them would completely throw off the movie. Shouldn't it be like if Jaws spent the whole movie setting up the shark and then the end was about fighting piranhas? No matter how exciting those piranha scenes played out, that would feel anti-climatic. And yet it not only works in Jurassic Park, it worked well enough to pluck velociraptors out of prehistoric obscurity and move them up to the dinosaur A-list.
But how?
Through masterful foreshadowing.
Raptors Own Act 1
In screen writing, a writer needs to establish the theme, main characters, and stakes in the first 10 pages of a script. This equates to the first 10 minutes of the movie, the first act.
Jurassic Park spends the lion's share of that time on velociraptors.
It starts with the opening scene. A crane lowers a crate containing something, presumably a dinosaur, into position by a pen. A dozen Jurassic Park workers standby, nervous, answering to Recondo-looking Muldoon. Even though he has an air of expertise, he shows more fear than anyone else on site.
That's because he knows better than anyone the threat of what's in the crate. Unfortunately for Jophery the gatekeeper, they're all about to find out.
With the crate in position, Jophery climbs on top to open the door. The dinosaur knocks the crate back, dropping Jophery into the mouth of danger. Coordinated chaos breaks out as Muldoon tries to save his man while the staff jams stun sticks into the crate. The scene ends with Jophery's hand slipping out of Muldoon's, and we're left to imagine how the dozen armed and trained staffers defuse the situation with this killer dinosaur we only ever glimpsed.
Shortly thereafter, we meet our main characters, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler. What are they doing? Excavating a velociraptor skeleton. Grant waxes poetic about what this creature could do. When some kid who is at the dig for some reason throws shade the dinosaur's hunting skills, Grant delivers cinema's greatest exposition. He uses a raptor claw he keeps on him to mime how three raptors would outsmart this kid, slice him open, and eat him alive.
Hammond then arrives and whisks Grant and Sattler off at about the 10 minute mark. Tyrannosaurus Rex gets name dropped, but otherwise the majority the first act that is spent on dinosaurs in a movie all about dinosaurs is invested in velociraptors.
A Constant, Invisible Presence
So if act 1 sets up the raptors, and act 3 delivers on that setup, how does the hour and a half in between survive without any raptors?
Well, like Muldoon, you were so focused on watching for a raptor in front of you, you didn't notice that there were raptors hidden all around you. The movie periodically reminds us that raptors are out there, and they're dangerous.
First, there's the hatchery. I mentioned that we don't see a full adult raptor until the final act. We do, however, see a baby. In an adorable scene, a baby dino breaks out of her egg and into our hearts. Then Grant's face fills with dread when Dr. Wu tells him the species of the dinosaur he's holding in his hands. Grant looks ready to crush its baby dino bones for the sake of humanity.
Shortly thereafter, about 30 minutes into the movie. It's feeding time. A crane lowers a whole, live cow into the raptor pen. We hear, but don't see, the raptors rip her to shreds as Muldoon explains that there would be more raptors if "the big one" hadn't killed all but two of them. More cow for her, I guess.
Another 30 minutes pass. By now Nedry has shut down multiple systems, putting the lives of everyone on the island at risk. Muldoon's one and only question? Did he shut off the raptor fences. He didn't care about the T-Rex, but he knew they were in a world more trouble if the raptors got loose.
Our final hint at the raptors comes 30 minutes after that, when Lex asks Grant what he's going to do for work now that dinosaurs are back. He says he doesn't know, then throws away his raptor claw. It's as much to show his growth as a character (since the last scene with Grant, that claw, and a child played out very differently) as it is to subtly remind us of what we learned about raptors at the beginning of the movie.
15 minutes later, we finally see a raptor. That's when we learn raptors killed Mr Arnold off screen, and then they kill Muldoon, making them the species with the highest human kill count in the movie.
Better Than The Book
I'm specifically crediting the movie for this masterful setup and payoff because the novel handles it differently, The book opens with scenes of procompsognathus, cat-sized dinosaurs that didn't make it into the movie, that have gotten off the island. Then, instead of Grant explaining how raptors hunt, Lex and Tim watch a raptor through an electric fence, musing that it thinks its hidden, only for two other raptors to leap at them and electrocute themselves.
The novel and movie are both excellent, and in fairness to the original, I haven't read it in decades. The movie, on the other hand, I come back to every few years, and it keeps getting better. Last time I watched it, my take away was that the effects still hold up, even on modern high definition screens. This time, it was how the cleverly the raptors were slowly rolled out. I'm looking forward to what I discover on my next watch.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello
Ryan Costello: G.I. JOE Consultant
My Coolest Credit
I've contributed as a writer and project manager to over a dozen G.I. JOE for Renegade Game Studios now, but by far my favourite professional credit is G.I. JOE consultant for Quartermaster's Guide To Gear.
How?
My involvement in the book was a strange situation. By this point Renegade had a lot of faith in my take on G.I. JOE and had me pitching products for the line. They liked my pitch for an equipment book and added Quartermaster's Guide To Gear to the schedule.
However, by then I was working on other Essence20 lines as well. When the time came to assign writing for the book, I was preoccupied with other projects. So I didn't get to write on the book.
The Silver Lining
When the book was ready for development, Renegade brought me on to make sure it was consistent with the G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game tone. Not writing, and not really editing or development. The question became how to credit me for this book I worked on but not in any traditional sense.
Since the closest comparable work I knew of was Chris Chung's pass on the My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook, where he was credited as Equestrian Consultant, I asked for something similar.
My Card...
Now I get to say I am an accredited professional G.I. JOE consultant. Feel free to hit me up for your G.I. JOE consultation needs!
Honestly, I need to add G.I. JOE consultant to my business cards.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello
Getting Into Con Shape
Working On My Keycon Bod
If I expect to keep up with all my responsibilities as a Keycon guest of honour, I need to admit something: I'm out of shape.
A Slow Decline
As someone who makes a living writing about my childhood obsessions, it can be easy to forget that I'm middle aged. 30 is closer to my good old days than my good todays. I may have the same haircut as I do in that picture where I'm lifting a 100 lbs Mjolnir, and I still own that t-shirt, but that was 12 years ago.
On top of being older, I'm less active. In fact, this past winter was my all time low when it comes to fitness. I prefer working from home for all the obvious reasons -I'm more productive, skip the travel time, save money on gas, no need to meal prep ahead of time... this might need to be its own blog post- but one downside is that I'm far less active.
Unless I go out of my way to work out, my day basically goes from bed to desk then desk to dining room and back. When standing while I make my lunch is one of the most active things I do in a day, it's a problem.
Why It's a Problem
On top of the obvious health reasons, being out of shape risks making Keycon harder for me, and a worse experience for attendees. I took for granted how much cardio is involved in my favourite nerdy activities.
I remember when I left Scotty’s Brewhouse one GenCon, the people I was with suggested we take a cab back to the convention center. I scoffed, "It's only 5 blocks". Oh to have the constitution of a con goer who could add a 10 block round trip into my schedule without feeling it in my legs.
Granted, the Hilton Winnipeg Airport Suites isn't as big as the Indiana Convention Center, so I probably won't be walking as much. But I'll definitely be talking.
People who know me for my podcasting might be surprised to hear I don't talk nearly as much when there isn't a microphone nearby. And unfortunately, like a lot of things in my life, I've gradually been podcasting less. The same goes for gaming. What was a weekly+ activity is down to a couple of times a month if nothing gets cancelled. And now that I'm GMing again, I'm finding myself running out of breath.
Considering the majority of my Keycon schedule is either talking or GMing, often back-to-back, I need to do something about it.
What I'm Doing About It
I mentioned my plan to get in better shape for the con and she, rightly, laughed at me.
"For the con in two weeks?"
My timing could be better.
Hopefully better late than never rules apply here.
For the next two weeks, I aim to do something physical every day.
On Monday, I busted out my Wii Fit board and the Everlast rising we bought for it and did a 15 minute step workout. You just have to believe me when I say I worked up a sweat in that time. Honestly, step workouts have done wonders for me in the past. At my fittest, I was stepping for 30 minutes a day while listening to a podcast and playing a wrestling game. Distractions make workouts fly by, and I found time for both podcasts and video games. What more could I ask for?
Later on Monday, I took my girls for a bike ride. My bike is busted so I walked while they rode. It was a long walk and I was almost crawling for the last leg of it. My worry was that I overdid it and I might need Tuesday off. That might not sound bad, but my secondary goal is habit forming. I'd rather gradually ramp up than go hard, take a break, and lose my momentum.
I was happy to wake up Tuesday without noodle legs. I got in a 30 minute walk to pick up an M&M order (the fancy grocer, not the candy).
Today, I went for a 30 minute jog on the treadmill. Worked up another sweat, which is a good sign but has a downside.
I sweat a lot. When I took working out the most seriously, I gave myself migraines. Between the protein I burned and the water and salt I sweat out, my brain screamed at me. Slowly I developed countermeasures to balance being healthy and not ruining the rest of my day.
That's Guest Of Honour Attitude
I've struggled with my weight and health most of my life, but I have to acknowledge that I'm just not moving anymore. Fortunately I'm taking the honour of being invited to Keycon seriously, and it's motivated me to get on top of my health.
If all goes according to play I'll have an energetic and active Keycon 42 then come home motivated to keep working out.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello
My Keycon 42 Panels
Hear me out in Winnipeg, May 15-17
Keycon, Winnipeg, Manitoba's mixed-media fandom convention, invited me to participate as a Guest Of Honour this year. Bonus, it's the 42nd Keycon, my favourite number for obvious Douglas Adams reasons. Even though this will be my first Keycon, the banner's embrace of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy tells me I'm going to have a good time.
The con recently teased this year's panel programming. I don't know exactly when they'll be scheduled, but here are the panels I'm participating in:
Looking For Group Year 15
A New Beginning A Grizzly End
Lar DeSouza and I look at the year we collaborated on LFG, which turned out to be the last consecutive year of the long running webcomic. We look back on our time working together, and our friendship that goes back at least a decade.
More Than Porkchop Sandwiches
G.I. Joe’s Place In Popular Culture
Everyone knows I love G.I. JOE, but a lot of people wonder why. I'm more than happy to remind them that G.I. JOE outlasted every other 80s toy brand, with a groundbreaking cartoon that defined tie-in animation, and a comic that defied tie-in expectations. I don't even know if I'm going to prepare anything for this panel or if I'm just going to show up and start talking.
Writing Your Childhood
I've written over 300k of words on G.I. JOE, Transformers, Power Rangers, and My Little Pony gaming material, and ran the official Voltron socials. This one's for fans of those brands, and writers who want to get licensed work.
Plot Twist: The Adventure
I recently started writing copy for The Story Engine's webstore. In this RPG session with audience participation, everyone in the room gets Story Engine cards that they can use to derail my attempts to run some volunteers through an adventure.
Game Masters Are Thumbs
My favourite way to explain the GM/player dynamic in TTRPGs is that Game Masters are the thumbs of a hand full of players. Everyone at the table grasps the story because the GM opposes the players.
Shoot, that sums up the whole topic. Now I need to turn it into a 60 minute talk...
Finding The Path To Pathfinder Work
How Pathfinder Fans Become Pathfinder Professionals
Thursty Hillman, Jessica Redekop, and I are taking advantage of the fact that we're all attending the con, and we all turned being Pathfinder RPG gamers into TTRPG industry professionals.
This is my first Guest Of Honour appearance, so that's obviously exciting. Let me know if you plan on attending Keycon 42 in Winnipeg, May 15-17. I hope to see you there.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello
COVID-19, The Arts, And Community
What got us through the pandemic
We're in the age of annual once-in-a-generation experiences, so hopefully I'm not sound naive when I say I don't expect to experience another lockdown in my lifetime. Now, six years since it's officially recognized start, my memory of that time has weirdly faded. 2019 feels like it just happened, but 2020 to... I can't remember exactly when lockdown ended, but it's a timeframe I need to actively think about to remember.
When I do reflect on that time, and compare life before it and after it, I get frustrated. The years since lockdown ended, however many it's been, have been cruel to everything that got us through the toughest period in the current population's lives.
"Essential Workers" Was Marketing
The pandemic made us realize what jobs society collapses without. Companies and governments called service workers essential. Unfortunately, essential didn't mean being worth investing in.
Workers weren't paid extra for still coming to work. While others got to stay home and still earn money, if you worked at a grocery story or gas station, you lost government support for leaving a job that normally had high turn around. Companies and governments approached our essential workers with a big stick and no carrots.
No one signs up to work a register and expects to risk their lives. And yet, every shift, our essential workers faced the combination of the parts of the population who had to go out to get something, no matter how they felt, and those who scoffed at safety measures. It was essential that they do so.
As soon as the money didn't need to call these workers heroes, they stopped. Society didn't see how important these jobs were and agreed to pay them more. With costs rising and pay stagnant, essential workers are effectively paid less.
Art Saved Our Sanity, Gets Fed To Plagiarism Machines
Picture the average day of lockdown.
Now imagine you can't watch a series or movie.
You can't read a novel or comic.
You can't play a video game, board game, or roleplaying game.
You can't listen to music or a podcast.
You can't even look at a pretty picture.
We generally take the entertainment industry for granted. We base our personalities around our hobbies, we form bonds over shared interests, and we spend our free time consuming art. And yet there's a stigma around anyone who tries to turn their art skills into a profession. For all the "do what you love and you won't work a day in your life" advice we all hear, artists also hear disbelief in the voice of strangers when we tell them what we do for a living. It's almost immediately followed by "Have you worked on anything I would know?" Because non-artists don't think making a living wage is not enough for an artist, we need to be famous for our work or else we get dismissed.
That attitude normalized the idea that generative A.I. can be trained to copy us, because it's somehow not a job to the general public. It's just a hobby that can lead to fame, apparently. And even though life without art—even mass produced, consumerist entertainment—would have turned the lockdown into solitary confinement, a.k.a. jail for people already in jail, the second entrepreneurs sniffed a way to get around paying artists, they threw billions of dollars into it.
Data And Science Are Suspect
As scientists worked to fight off evolving strains of a super contagious virus, and medical staff worked overtime keeping individuals alive, somehow conspiracies caught on that no they weren't. Now, yes, like the entertainment industry, there are capitalists at the top of health industries profiting off making everything harder for everyone else. Still, nothing is more verifiable than science, as long as you understand how to verify science.
Unfortunately, some people who are as ruthless as the health industry CEOs became rich off convincing people they could be trusted more than test results. They managed to parlay this into political influence, a distrust of actual data, and a worse world for us all.
Communities Near And Far
In addition to art, the thing that made lockdown bearable was the people we were locked in with. In my case, that was my wife and daughters. As much as we bonded as a family, we saw so much of one another that we had to find creative ways to spend time together. Luckily when we ran out of ideas, fellow parents sharing their ideas on the Internet were there for us. We may have only had four people in our bubble, but technology and people looking out for one another overcame social distancing.
It wasn't just families that benefited from communal efforts. We came together on an inconceivable global scale to overcome an obstacle affecting us all.
And now hate mongering political super powers are bombing innocents.
I don't miss lockdown, obviously. I just can't believe that this is the path overcoming the pandemic led us down. Hopefully it's not long before what got us through what should have been the worst time of our lives gets us through this one.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello
I Gave Up On Google
The days of "don't be evil" are done.
I don't swear much. I've never felt the need. But even I appreciate that "enshittification" caught on as the word for the gradual decline of the online experience. It's a word that makes a statement. It doesn't even roll off the tongue, which is that much more impressive that enough people heard it and said "yes!" This is a word that captures the feelings of the moment.
According to Cambridge Dictionary, "Enshittification is a term coined by Cory Doctorow to describe the process of something becoming more and more shit, especially online."
If you feel that nothing on the Internet works right anymore, you're not wrong. Every website asks you to accept cookies every time you visit. We're inundated with AI features that don't work as well as the features they're replacing. Customer service chatbots direct you to an automated customer service phone number that routs you back to the website. Basic services expect you to download an app, hand over personal information, and stay online.
Enshittification isn't the only new word to describe the innovative ways tech companies make the Internet worse, and they're all as satisfying to say.
Slop. The AI hallucinations that kill our environment and art industries for the benefit of creatively bankrupt capitalists.
Sludge. The customer service circles companies make us run in until we give up.
The tech industry thrives on the idea that the customer is always frustrated. These companies embedded themselves in our jobs, hobbies, and social lives. How many of us still have Facebook accounts because the site doubles as our digital photo albums? We stay on these platforms that actively inconvenience us because we're worried leaving them is an even bigger inconvenience.
But I've had enough. Mid-2025, I started moving away from one of the monoliths of the tech industry: Google.
Why Give Up On Google?
Everyone knows Google. It's the search engine that's also the verb for using a search engine. The thing is, as monumental (and, from the company's legal department point of view, problematic) as becoming the generic term is, it actually minimizes Google's reach.
On top of my default search engine, it was my default browser, my default map tool, and it managed all my passwords. Probably a bunch of other default uses I'm forgetting or am not aware of. Many, if not most, people use it for e-mail.
Google isn't just a search engine.
Google is the Internet.
And the Internet has gotten worse.
Obviously Google isn't the source of everything wrong with the Internet. However, of all the online services I use, Google has fallen the furthest.
Not only is every product measurably worse, but the company feels different. Their motto, written into their code of conduct, was once "Don't be evil". It's like they realized that with great power their must also come great responsibility (that's the original quote from Amazing Fantasy issue 15, don't come at me!). According to a Google-produced documentary about Google, if someone proposed something Google had the capacity to implement, but someone else argued "that's evil," the meeting stopped until the ethical implications of the idea were debated.
It was obviously Google patting themselves on the back during a puff piece. However, around the same time that Google dropped the mantra, the company began a decline in quality in the name of short term gains. Not caring enough to have that as a motto anymore reflected the company's evolving outlook.
But Why Only Google?
As Frank tells Spider-Man in Punisher Kills The Marvel Universe, "Somebody had to be first."
Granted, I technically gave up on Twitter first when a transparently evil neo-Nazi bought the sight and used the platform to kill free speech he disagreed with. But I barely used Twitter, so walking away from the dumpster fire it became was a short trip.
Google was the bigger sacrifice.
Even though I've noticed the Internet's decline for years now, I only starting making changes to my Internet habits when Googling stopped working. The Google results page prioritized an unreliable A.I. answer for every query. Since I, y'know, wanted useful information, I had to scroll past it. And Google must have seen on a heat map of user activity that people were avoiding their A.I. answers, because they got bigger.
Of course, the next results weren't useful either. They were sponsored results. And, like the space the A.I. answers took up, it felt like they grew harder to avoid. I reached my breaking point when I scrolled a full screen on my phone and couldn't tell if I was past the paid content yet.
My first instinct was to change my settings. Enough friends felt the same way that I managed to crowdsource what to do. About ten minutes of fiddling in my Chrome settings and my search results looked more like they did in the 2010s again. This new setting felt so right that glancing at Google results on my wife's phone always felt like a shock to my senses.
Things were fine for a while. Then the enshittification continued. Instead of adjusting my settings again, I asked myself how much more effort was I willing to put into undoing the ways a company chips away at my experience with their products?
The thing about Google is that they offer few services that are exclusively theirs. There are other web browsers and search engines and map sites and e-mail providers. The only thing that made Google stand out was that their products were better.
And they decided that didn't matter anymore.
Google Alternatives
I've replaced Chrome with two different browsers: Duck Duck Go on mobile and Vivaldi on desktop.
I made the change on my phone first, because I didn't need as many features on that device. Duck Duck Go came recommended, I gave it a try, and it works. It helps that I like the Duck Duck Go search engine as well.
On desktop, I used more of Chrome's features, so I stuck with it for a little longer. However, a Vivaldi ad on Bluesky caught my attention, and I had a few minutes to give it a try. It's not just a suitable replacement for Chrome, I prefer Vivaldi. I did need to turn off the A.I. features, which wasn't hard. Beyond that, it does everything I used Chrome for with fewer surprises. That's the funny thing about the direction Google's going. The microinconveniences of dealing with every new inferior feature was greater than the projected macroinconvenience of switching the program I used more than any other.
I will say that I didn't care for Vivaldi's default search engine. So, I switched it to Duck Duck Go.
Not Google Free, But Google Freer
I haven't completely moved on from Google, nor am I suggesting a boycott of the company. When I started writing this piece, I forgot that I use Google Docs for the majority of my writing. It still works , so I still use it. Likewise, Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc, owns YouTube, my preferred streaming platform. For now. As long as the Google products I use continue to work, I'm OK using them. However, it's become clear that there's no advantage to staying loyal to a product once it stops serving its purpose. Fortunately, moving on is easier than I expected.
Now you know,
Ryan Costello