A few nights back, I was on YouTube looking for some old GTA machinimas. You know the kind with cringy dialogue, terrible storytelling. I was getting nostalgic waiting for GTA6. I did find some good stuff, but got bored after a while and was about to exit when I stumbled upon a video called Rest in Pieces.
The thumbnail was kinda ambiguous. The title didn’t reveal much. But it was billed as a GTA machinima, so I clicked.
Rest in Pieces is short, creepy, snarky, and kinda offbeatly funny in that deadpan, dead tone. Like, it’s clearly horror, but it doesn’t take the machinima itself very seriously at the same time. There are puns concealed, visual humor that doesn’t draw attention to itself, and small easter eggs that made me rewind and pause more than a few times. I don’t even know how to describe the style exactly, it’s like if Freddy’s Nightmares, Salad Fingers, and Adult Swim had a baby in Los Santos.
Of course, I clicked on the channel. Alvin Soprano owns it. Never heard of her. Hell, at first, I thought she was a guy, but I quickly figured out that this wasn’t her first rodeo. She’s been doing this for years. Since the beginning of YouTube. Unfortunately, a lot of her older work is gone. Deleted channels. Archived projects. I felt like I missed an entire era.
But what stays online looks like her new work, which felt great to view. There are three other machinimas on her channel, all done using The Sims 4. Not gonna lie, I never played The Sims, not even once. I watched gameplays, I know the game, but that’s all. But still, I like what she did. Even the graphics did not look like The Sims. I have no idea how she did it. But she did.
I’ve seen the first one, which was Drained. It’s short, pouty, and sort of silly. It’s all sarcasm, and the actors always appear about to blow up into tacky ’90s adult film stereotypes.
And then there’s Bone-Skinny, which I didn’t expect to slap me the way it did. Underneath all the surreal editing and askew dialogue, it’s actually saying something. I don’t want to spoil it, but there’s a clear message there. And it resonates if you have body image issues.
And finally, Goodbye Mommy. It’s creepy in all the right ways. I thought of all those cursed VHS-style analog horror vids, but handled by The Sims. It does something wrong, and it feels right.
I adore that none of them feel like they’re overstaying their welcome. There is not that soul-scouring “like and subscribe” feel. Just short films, made in games, with style, wit, and plenty of odd sense. I’ve watched a lot of machinimas before GTA ones, Skyrim, even Minecraft, but these were a whole different cup of tea. Somehow makes me regret not having found her sooner, when all the older vids were still up. But oh well, better late than never.
If you’re into that sorta thing, check Soprano Productions out on YouTube and thank me later!
