The History of Funeratic (New)

Rushed

August 20, 2001: When Scott sees a "help wanted" notice in the student newspaper of his university, he offers his services as a movie critic. After initially being assigned to cover a school baseball game on little notice when the sports writer is unavailable, despite zero experience reporting on sports and almost zero knowledge of the game, Scott is finally assigned two movies to review: Planet of the Apes and Rush Hour 2. He writes a pair of reviews, doing his best to adjust his writing style to the short-paragraph and detail-dense format of a newspaper. The fun ends in an degrading phone call with his abrasive student editors, who bully him into criticizing racist slurs in Rush Hour 2 that he himself didn't notice, reminding him that journalism is a field notorious for verbal abuse. Scott loses interest in the project and declines to write more. Still, after he receives his payment of $5 for each of the two reviews, he can claim that technically speaking, he was once employed as a movie critic, a credential that he jokingly employs whenever possible in Thorough Movie Reviews from then on.

Towering

June 16, 2006: Erik Bates is in downtown Chicago for a professional conference, while Scott is visiting for the wedding of site member and college friend Jackie Mason, both arriving from other states and happening by chance to have the same afternoon free. They decide to meet in person to hang out, the first time that Scott has met anyone because of the site with whom he did not have some kind of offline connection, and the first time that Erik has met anyone from the site at all. They take an open-air bus tour of the city, marveling at icons of architecture like the Sears Tower, but they find a lot more to discuss in their personal interests and the various affairs of the website. Although Scott would regret not inviting more members in the area to join them, he's glad that this brief connection with Erik becomes an important step in the evolution of their friendship.

Foul

April 29, 2016: A foul ball triggers a quandary of etiquette: Scott brings Kelly to a baseball game with his work crew and achieves a lifelong dream of catching a ball, but his happiness is short-lived when a young girl attending with one of the co-workers asks to examine the ball and becomes attached to it. Pressured by Kelly and the staring co-workers to comply with the social norm of giving the ball to a kid, Scott reluctantly tells her that she can keep it, but he stews over this all night and blogs about his dissatisfaction. Over the coming months, the co-worker keeps thanking Scott warmly and profusely, but one day a year later, he suddenly puts the ball on Scott's desk and makes a curt apology for letting the girl "take" it. This abrupt about-face makes Scott realize that his co-workers are reading his blog. Now Scott feels lousy about depriving the girl of what might have been a treasured relic of her youth (reminding him of the times his own childhood things went "missing"), and he also regrets assuming in writing that the girl was the co-worker's granddaughter, possibly aging him in front of collagues. Scott keeps the ball to avoid a further escalation and eventually places it in a case on his shelf, a reminder not just of the catch but that he needs to be careful who might later read his words.

Bored

June 1, 2020: Sheltering inside during the COVID-19 pandemic alters a lot of people's hobbies in 2020, and board game enthusiasts are included. Although some popular games have online versions, Scott's local friends keep expressing how much they miss the favorite board game played by their group, a strategy game based on Marvel super-heroes, which allows for endless new combinations of heroes, villains, and stories in a way that keeps the game feeling fresh and challenging every time. Needing a project to stave off boredom and depression, Scott spends a few months coding a web-based version of the game for his friends to play. Rejecting his initial idea to incorporate it into Funeratic, Scott spins it off as a separate web site, launches it in the summer, and meets virtually with friends a few times each week to play. Several Funeratic members try it, but the one who sticks around longest is Erik Bates.

Buffet

November 22, 2024: When Funeratic members made group Zoom calls to cheer each up while sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Erik Bates and Matthew Preston had their first conversation and hit it off immediately. Several people remarked at how easily they got along, since each of them had a talent for free-flowing conversation and putting other people at ease. Later, Scott remembers this connection when discussing with Erik how fun it would be to meet in person to play their favorite Marvel board game instead of just playing it virtually, and they hatch an idea to get Matthew to join them for a three-day weekend of gaming and good company. Scott rents an AirBNB and plans a series of games to recreate Marvel movies and TV shows, made possible by the endlessly reconfigurable options. After a hurricane delay, they finally gather and have a weekend full of laughter. Although their time is dominated by the game, they do take breaks such as dining in local restaurants with Kelly and a Chinese buffet with fellow Marvel player Carl Van Leeuwen, and develop an assortment of in-jokes that long outlive the weekend in an ongoing group chat.