Toxically Positive

Concept Development

Narrative Design

Spatial Design

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Production Design

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Concept Development

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For Notch's 2024 Hellcrest, we built an intricate dystopian world, blending deep lore, character arcs, and a 20-minute live play. The venue was completely transformed, with new rooms and reimagined spaces. Guests engaged in a VR game where positive affirmations defeated enemies and explored an in-world newspaper expanding the lore. Dystopia has never felt so positive.

You should be happy,
you deserve to be happy.

The concept with this years Hellcrest was to create a fully original world that didn’t lean on common Halloween tropes like vampires, aliens, hell or skeletons etc. In fact, no one was allowed to be scary at all. The fear is built up by our guests’ own expectation of a scare that never truly comes.

To do this we created a dystopian world called Positropolis where all of the inhabitants are just so so so unsettlingly happy. And so “beautiful” that they don't quite look human, but you can't really put your finger on it. This is what happens when men are men and women are women. It should be very obvious who’s who because that’s the rules.



Some truly nightmarish stuff is happening all around but everyone is ignoring it with a smile because they really need to try to get you to buy something. There are advertisements or product placements everywhere, digital billboards, flyers, posters, videos all trying to sell you something, though you're not sure what it is, annnnd they also might want to make you the product? Is that what happens downstairs?



Oh yeah guess what, that’s it. You're the product, the product’s been people all along. Enjoy!

This world shows evidence of generations of corporate dominance. Long ago, one company won capitalism and now owns everything. That company is sort of unknown having become something of a religious management class that makes nothing except slowly pushing out esoteric occult administrative philosophic policy to it’s 8 subsidiary companies. It is cosmically richer than the rest.

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worldbuilding

a person in a blue dress standing in a room with a projector

To build this world, we created 9 companies as the ground that everything grew from. The products, the advertisements, the characters, the news, the play and the spatial design.

These are the 9 companies and their products.

Psyche Interactive

SuperEgo Combat UvU - Headshot your Trauma!
These are the 9 companies and their products.

Karmic Intergenerational

Returnal Uth - Your Children Have Youth to Spare.

Sousveillance Solutions

Ident-Away - Product Your Identity! Even From Yourself!

National Farms

Various Human Meat Based Products - Made with YOU in mind!

Vibe Control Technologies

Positivity Collars - Does it spark joy? It does!

Euclidean Biotherapeutics

Flatzempic - Women love a 1-dimensional man, what if you had two?

Mandatory Pharmaceuticals Inc

Hollowheart Sweets - A bite of the care you need.

The Human Resources Mining Company

Human Slaves - Mining an infinite resource, you!

YES! Infinity Holdings

Every other company - When You say YES! to life, life says YES! back to you!

a man dressed in blue with large teeth and eyes

Tonny Sob

Priest CEO a la Tony Robbins. Pinstripe Suit. Pastor’s Collar. Priest’s stole with the YES logo embroidered on it in a religious style. He will cry while reciting the YES! Affirmations with you.

A woman dressed as a nurse holding a syringe

Suxan/Suxie Mason

Super nurse. She is always scared and always popping some pills that counteract the fear for like 10 seconds. If she stops, she goes into psychotic withdrawals. A Jekyll and Hyde situation.

A man wearing a white cowboy hat and yellow shirt.

Rarthur Smith

The most doll-like beautiful cowboy you’ve ever seen. He doesn’t carry a gun or lasso but he carries a butcher’s knife and a roll of those meat packing labels. Still has a jawline that can cut glass though. He wants to show you their high-quality product in person, should you follow him? Sometimes he just starts dry heaving and crying.

A woman sitting on a red chair holding a doll.

Slizerbeth and Venobeer
Fairchildren

Girlboss Lawyer who proclaims she can do everything and look beautiful doing it. The geriatric 4-year old in her arms would differ if they didn’t have dementia.

A couple of women standing next to each other holding masks.

Benjamina and
Benjamima Boton

Their parents took their youth and died anyway. They wear positivity collars voluntarily to keep the sadness at bay. They’re still sad but now no one can tell right?They use crazy makeup to hide their wrinkles.

A woman in a costume holding a beer.

Flow Binch

Flow was this >< close to getting “hired” by the HRMC.

Her debt almost took her, but she scored when her competition to be the Spokesperson for Flatzempics mysteriously died.

Did she dump their body in the national farms meat pile? We’ll never know. She happily sells flatzempic with 0 remorse.

A man in a white shirt holding his hands up.

Mike and Ike REDACTED

Mike and Ike, two friends/brothers who have lost all sense of their identity and forgot who they are but proclaim a false sense of security and try to sell people on Ident-away. Blur Masks. Blur Suits.

They try to sell you on sousveillance solutions to give you a mask. If you don't want to buy the product they give you censorship glasses to protect you.

A man with a bald head holding a broom

HRMC Worker

A bunch of people with HRMC branded onto their foreheads. They will be working all over to keep the city clean. They will also be rocking the positivity collars.

A woman in a blue dress standing in front of a wall with advertisements on it.

Unnamed Mannequin Dancer

She used to be a person
But she must not be anymore
Sometimes she can’t help but move

A woman in a red dress sitting next to a man in a white suit.

Mrs. Johnson

The perfect housewife.

A man in a yellow suit and black shirt.

Mr. Johnson

The perfect  husband.

a couple looking into a lighted mirrora person getting prosthetic makeup put on them a woman performing on stage a counter with cups of dentures on them A man getting his hair cut by a mannequin.

Positivity rehabilitation

Our world showed evidence of generations of corporate dominance. Long ago, one company won capitalism and now owns everything. That company is sort of unknown having become something of a religious management class that makes nothing except slowly pushing out esoteric occult administrative philosophic policy to it’s 8 subsidiary companies. It is cosmically richer than the rest.

The 8 subsidiaries each make some product that represents some aspect of our social order. Each product somehow also undermines this aspect of our society. These 8 companies vye for their own dominance of capital and aim to usurp their parent company through some mass corp-icide. 

The themes of the overall story were....

gamification of health
debt slavery
life energy as currency
corporate governance
drugs as a coping mechanism
cannibalism of the weak.

A group of people sitting around a white table.

THE PLAY

The story of the world was experienced by guests through physical corporate storefronts selling their products with advertisements and character reps throughout the party. This story culminates with a look into the everyday life of the citizens with a play we called The YES! Holdings Positivity Rehabilitation Demo. 



This play showcased how the world of Positropolis effects its citizens as they try to go about their daily lives.

Check the script here.

Directed by Justin Zsebe

Actors

Mrs. Johnson

Mr. Johnson
Orderly 1
Orderly 2
Tonny Sob

Summary

While a couple tries to uphold their oppressive reality, the wife experiences an emotional breakdown that is definitely not legal resulting in corrective measures.

A woman in a red dress standing in front of a group of people.A man standing next to a woman in front of a poster.A group of people standing and sitting around a table.A television screen with a picture of a man on it.

Corporate lore

A collage of old movie posters with a woman looking at a man.

ADVERTISEMENTS

The city of Positropolis was littered with ads for their drug-peddling and predatory products.

A black and white photo of a man and a woman.A woman smoking a cigarette with the caption light up the moment, not your.A poster of a man surrounded by puppies.A picture of two children's faces on a coup sheet.
A book laying in the grass on the ground.An open book with a black and white cover.A brochure with a bunch of pictures on it.

PLAYBILL

In theme with the play, we created a playbill styled zine detailing all the elements of the party.

A woman in a costume holding a newspaper.A newspaper with a bunch of pictures on it.The front and back pages of a magazine.

NEWSPAPER

The newspaper was a deep dive into the world behind Positropolis. Every story informed people of the nightmarish reality of what was happening but told it in a hyper-friendly and PR puff-piece style of writing.

A model of a house with a green light.A room that has a bunch of graffiti on the walls.A couple of men standing next to each other.

Back Alleys

The guest experience begins with their journey through the back alleys, a grungy barely maintained area that exposes guests to cleaning and happy HRMC workers as well as the Souveillance Solutions Representatives, Mike and Ike who’ve had their identities protected so much that they have no idea who they are anymore. They try to speak to attendees but their muffled tones rarely get anything across.

A lucky few guests would be taken from their groups and brought down through the sewers by desperately helpful HRMC workers trying to decrease their chances of being used as National Farms meat by receiving good reviews from guests.

A person standing in a dark room with a neon light.
A room filled with a display case filled with items.

Downtown

This was the central location of the party meant to represent a bustling city area complete with storefronts for the coporations to store their wares.

A man walking through a dark room with neon lights.

Psyche VR

Guests were able to slip inside this store and play a real VR-game we created called SuperEgo Combat UvU.

National Farms

National Farms
Here was a meat market with 100% ethically sourced human meat. Guests could meet Rarthur Smith, the Farms’ cowboy and maybe get a chance to follow him to see how their products were made.

A display case in a store filled with meat.A wall with a lot of posters on it.

Karmic Intergenerational

A small boutique store front with an (in)human mannequin and a wall of eyes to test their products on. Jars of Returnal Uth abound. Regular Uth user, the beautiful Slizerbeth Fairchildren hung out there with her 60 year old baby to sell you on Karmic’s product line.

Mandatory Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The place for every citizens mandatory drug needs. Here guests could be administered an upside-down child’s blood shot by nurse Suxie Mason and Billiam Childeater.

A room with a counter and neon lights.A painting of a woman is being painted on a wall.

Euclidean Biotherapeutics

Guests could sample Euclidean’s premiere product - FLATZEMPIC and Sales Rep Flow Binch list all the great details of their product that helped them lose weight by removign a full dimentsion from their physical form. Very healthy, very safe.

The positivity rehabilitation center

This is where guests could learn the ways of Positropolis through a correction demo on an unsuspecting couple. The demo was a 20 minute long performance with pre-recorded video, sound and lighting effects.

There were no ins or outs during the insane performance, it was equal parts funny, dramatic, unsettling and scary.

A woman in a red dress standing next to a man in a yellow jacket.A group of people sitting around a table in a dark room.A television screen with a picture of a man's face on it.

The minimum mood

For the first time ever we didn’t have a DJ upstairs. We created a dark and loungey den inspired by the black lodge from Twin Peaks.

Throughout the night we had vibey live performances from Alann8h, ElkDarling and Eartheater.

A man with a guitar standing in front of a window.

The sewers

Downstairs at the venue was the city sewers abandoned in disrepair where a few lost souls wandered about.

We turned the sewers into a club where X, X, X, and X performed througout the night until 6am.

A woman in a black dress is dancing in a dimly lit room.A green light shines on the floor of a building.A dimly lit room with a green light coming from the ceiling.

City outskirts

The back of the venue put guests in the city outskirts, where they could hang out, eat food and take a photo of them grinding themselves up in the National Farms Meat grinder.

A red light is shining on a wall.A dark hallway with a red light on the floor.A group of people standing next to each other.

Prop hunt & vr game

A young man wearing a blindfold and looking up.

Exploring the Digital Plane

One of the themes of the world was the gamification of health, we expressed that with a VR-game we made in house that allowed users to perform gesture controls to blast negative personalities away with the power of the positive affirmations.

The game world was created with Unreal and Blender by 3Dsteven and Jose Felix Lucia using sprite animations illustrated by Noha Manfredi.

A group of people standing on top of a green floor.A green sign with a yellow arrow on it.
A couple of people that are in a room.

In The Physical Plane

Gimlet-eyed players who spotted QR-codes hidden inside some of the hundreds of advertisements were brought through a series of riddles and challenges that ended with a 20 person high-intensity dance off in the middle of the night. After 15 sweaty minutes, the one remaining dancer was gifted our custom designed necklace by the one and only Holy YES! Eminence, Tonny Sob.

The back cover of a book with a green background.A picture of a brain in a frying pan.A bag of meat sitting on top of a wooden table.
diamond necklace of a head

scenic design

A man standing in front of a poster holding a plunger.

We aimed to create a world that felt aged and lived in with the “consumer” facing areas feeling new and maintained and the “worker” facing areas aged and rundown. For example in the downtown area, everything was new and shiny and advertisements were placed with care while in the back alley entrance the walls were falling apart and the advertisements were layered and aging to create a feeling of history.

Also hidden throughout were narrative pieces that gave curious guests lore about how the world operated. Everything came together to build an unsettling mood.

A couple of people that are standing in front of a refrigerator.A man standing in front of a purple light.A room that has a large screen on the wall.A dog is sitting in a glass case.A dark room with a sign that says positropolis.
Two men standing next to a pile of food.

graphic design

A wall of posters with a picture of a man on it.A man standing in front of a projection screen.A group of posters hanging on a wall.

downtown design

A display case in a dark room with a neon sign above it.A group of people standing in a hallway next to lockers.A display case in a store filled with meat.A flat screen tv sitting on top of a tv stand.A man is painting a mural on a wall.

minumum mood lounge

A group of people sitting in a dark room.
A man standing on a stage in front of a red curtain.A group of people standing around a living room.A room with a ladder and other items on the floor.

additional scenic props

A stack of canned food items sitting on top of a table.A shelf filled with lots of different types of medicine.A wall covered in lots of different colored eyeshades.
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