#OF COURSE STEPHEN KING LIKED THIS. FUCK ASS

[canwehavehextonite]

started listening to the deep by nick cutter. i dont like it.

[gojuo]

Maybe I don't have text interpretation skills, but I never understand when people say that F&B is a book biased in favor of the greens. For the love of God, on the contrary, every time I read it, it's as if the author was inducing the reader to root for the blacks

Daemon is described more as a hero than anything. Not a hero who saves people like Superman, but the badass Greek hero who kills the monster

Gyldayn says that Jacaerys is a worthy heir to the throne, even though he insinuates all the time that he is a bastard

GRRM put the fandom's favorite houses on Rhaenyra's side

Baela e Rhaenys badass

Mushroom has a sympathy and affection for Rhaenyra that Eustace doesn't have for any of the Greens, he even calls Aemond a kinslayer

And this becomes more obvious when you think it's a medieval war of succession based on a fucking medieval succession and Rhaenyra had more allies, when that's completely unrealistic! No king would choose his daughter above his son! The Anarchy was between Matilda and Stephen, they were not brothers, Mathilda's brother died and that's why she became heiress! After all, a king would still prefer a daughter to a nephew!

The only thing we have is Aegon& Sunfyre bond being so strong and their will to survive and win

but that's going to be ruined in this shitty show that only makes what was bad worse

At this point, if anyone calls anything in F&B Green propaganda I'm just going to assume that 1. they have never read a single page of Fire & Blood, or 2. they're a Targ Stan so the worth of their opinions or critical analyses of the text amounts to a total of absolutely nothing before all else. GRRM did not sit there and write a 700-page lore book with no truth to it in any corner. If you have even a basic understanding of his themes and quirks, it's easy enough to figure out what he was going for in F&B. And yes, he leaves enough room in the text to leave the details hanging in the air for readers to make up their own canon, but he's not writing an outline of the story and its beats that's false. Because what is the point of wasting time and effort to write F&B then in the first place?

Even when you look at F&B in-universe ... Rhaenyra's son becomes king and her other son Hand for the next 40 or so years. Why would a historian risk their career by writing about how the king's late mother (whose death was a huge source of trauma to him) sucked major ass? It's more likely that accounts sympathetic to the Blacks survived rather than those that weren't. We even hear about Baelor burning Mushroom's Testimony (was probably Viserys who ordered it though) for revealing a lot of the things Rhaenyra did, like Brothel Queens. Gyldayn in the text often dismisses Mushroom's writings because they weren't repeated in or by other sources, but who is to say that those other sources weren't burned? There could have been dozens of other accounts confirming Mushroom's writings about the Blacks and Rhaenyra but just weren't lucky enough to survive Baelor's purge. Or you can rationalize it away by understanding that those accounts were either never written by authors or kept/maintained by lords because they were too afraid of the king's wrath. For every pro-Green Septon Eustace account there might as well have been multiple other pro-Green authors who weren't protected by the organization of the Faith and couldn't get off scot-free for talking shit about the king's mother.

Even as I say all that, it's important to remember that the main source for the Dance was written by a guy literally held in a dungeon cell by the Blacks awaiting trial. It's only logical to me that he thought being most favorable towards Rhaenyra and her cause would mean leniency. So if anyone thinks that Orwyle was biased against Team Black and was writing down some mad shit about Rhaenyra, then like I said, they've never read a single page of F&B in their life.

People often repeat the idiotic "Maesters wrote F&B so of course it's pro-Hightower Greens!" lie but this take is so braindead that it could only be the crazed utterings of a worthless Targ stan whose opinions one should never take seriously anyways. If the Citadel wanted to slander Rhaenyra so bad according to these Targ stans, then Gyldayn would have had a ton of material to work with. Instead, he has to rely on one High Septon, one captive held in the dungeons by the Blacks, and a sex-crazed literal court jester who was Rhaenyra's #1 fanboy. Where are these so-called sources written by Archmaester Greenyle, Archmaester Fuckblacks and Archmaester ThreesomeswithMushroomwascanonys then? The Hightowers during the Dance were pro-Green, but eventually they all died and Lyonel became lord, who is explicitly said to be under the influence of his pro-Black wife Samantha Tarly. Lyonel made peace with the Blacks and was approving of Aegon 3 ascending the throne. So if any maesters wanted to talk mad shit about Rhaenyra (the sitting king's MOTHER), pro-Black Samantha Tarly would have just told Lyonel to stop sending money to the Citadel, which would have scared them off because they'd know this would happen.

Gyldayn himself wrote F&B during Robert "Kill All Targaryens" Baratheon's reign. It makes the most sense to me that he isn't pro-Green or pro-Black in any way, rather he's just anti Targaryen.

[posallys]

all right here is my word vomit live watch

IMMEDIATELY i am slapped in the face by toby stephens as poseidon i am FERAL

THE LUKE AND PERCY PARALLEL “LOOK, YOU DIDN’T WANT TO BE A HALFBLOOD” OH MY FUCKING GOD

THE MISSING LUKE AND PERCY TRAINING SCENES OH DEAR LORD THANK YOU THANK YOU

“When am i ever going to use this” percy i LOVE YOU

“So you can use them against your opponent” OH BOY

Finally some action i love a good sword fight

But where's annabeths necklace imma kill people

Ooh some god strength okay okay tasty

HELL YEAH POSEIDON POWERS FUCK HIS SHIT UPPPPPP 

“I WARNED YOU. IF YOU'RE NOT CAREFUL, YOU'LL FIND OUT WHO I AM” OH I LOVE THE ENERGY YESSSS FUCK YEAH

GO OFFF PERCY 

“AND YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A KID”

Ares didn't curse him i hate it here

OH WHAT IS THAT VOICE

OH MY GOD THE CABIN SOMEBODY SEDATE ME

this can go one of two ways

“Violent seismic activity” MMM YUMMY

UH HULLO THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED ALECTO!???

I lied there was a secret 3rd way this could have gone and it happened 

OOP THERE’S THE NECKLACE

“Where's the glory in that” wow tell me you don't understand Percy's character without telling me you don't understand Percy's character 

“I don't have an appointment” THATS SO FUCKING ICONIC OF HIM

Wait i kind of fuck with this olympus i was picture all white and pristine but this FUCKS

“SHOULDN'T THEY BE JUST AS AFRAID OF US AS WE ARE OF THEM” OH MY FUCKING GOD. OH MY GOD. HOLY SHIT 

“you're learning fast” OH MY GODDDDDDDDD

“Things that are small and scary….” BROOOOOOOOOOOO

the show has rights for the luke and percy content and posally and percabeth and that's IT

LANCE REDDICK ❤️❤️❤️ greatest of all time rest in peace ❤️ (you'll always be Cedric daniels to me)

Ohhh king he does a bad ass zeus

Where's poseidon though DONT TAKE HIM FROM ME 😭😭😭

Lance ily

Lance reddick zeus you're perfect to ME

OHHHHH YES GOOD SHIT

percy jackson king of audacity 

AGHHHHHJJJDHH POSEIDON I LOVE YOU BRIAN BROMEN OH FUCK YES IM. SNKDKKWKWJFKMQ3LI4HRND IM VIBRATING NRJNW OHMYGID

IM THROWING UP OH MY GOD

“I SURRENDER” OH BROTHER DO I HAVE THOUGHTS THOUGHTS TOO MANY THOUGHTS FUCKKKKK

OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDD IM GOING TO PUKE

TOBY STEPHENS LOVE OF MY LIFE

I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE UNWELL IN MY ENTIRE LIFE

SHUT UP NOBODY TOUCH ME

“OBEDIENCE DOESNT COME NATURALLY TO YOU DOES IT” ohhhhhhhh brother call me an ambulance 

“I must take some of the blame i suppose” so you CAN read the books you just chose not to for the other 7 episodes….

THE SEA DOES NOT LIKE TO BE RESTRAINED FUCK YEAHHHHHB BROTHER

HIM ONLY UNDERSTANDING THE WORD FATHER IM GOING TO KILL MYSELF IM SOBBING 

POSEIDON SMILE IM DYING 

I DIDN'T LEARN IT FROM CHIRON AND THEN POSEIDONS FACE OH FUCK IM PUKING SHAKING CRYING

IM SO SO SO UNWELL IM LITERALLY INCOHERENT 

“Ares is a moron, as you noticed” STOP I LOVE HIM THERES THAT ASSHAT POSEIDON ENERGY IM LOOKING FOR

“of course we dream, why do you ask” “DO YOU EVER DREAM ABOUT MOM” I AM DEAD I DIED I ASCENDED IM FLOATING LEVITATING FLYING OH DEAR LORD OH MY GOD IM SO SO SO ILL

TOBY STEPHENS THE MAN THAT YOU ARE POSEIDON THE MAN THAT YOU ARE OH MY GOD HIM GOLDING PERCYS HEA DIM VIMITING SHITING MYSELF KILLING DYING DEAD DJFICJJWOKDKDJN FUCK ME FUCK FICK

TOBY TOBY TOBY YOURE PERFECTVTHE PAIN THE FACIAL EXPTESSUINNS IM DYING DEAD

THE PEARL KILL KILL KJAJDJWKKDJJDJDUEJJ2NH3H

I AM HYPERVENTILATING 

Not to be greedy BUT WHERE IS THE QUEEN AMING WOMEN WHERE THE FUCK WAS IT YOU CANNOT GIVE ME ALL OF THAT AND THEN NOT GIVE ME THE MOST FUCKING ICONIC LINE OF ALL TIME WHAT THE ACTUAL ABSOLUTE FUCK I AM GOING THROUGH SO MANY EMOTIONS WHATBTHEFUCK

there's still 20 minutes left taylor breathe it can still happen 

PERCABETH HUG MY RELIGION

annabeth luke percy trio is SOOOOO interesting to me

I hate percy knowing :( ur a bit too perceptive buddy but it's okay 

“I DIDN'T THINK YOU'D GIVE THEM TO GROVER TO WEAR” SHOOT ME IT WOULD PROBABLY FEEL ABOUT THE SAME

THE GODS ARE MY ENEMY, YOU IM HERE TO RECRUIT OHHHHH BROTHER

OH HELLO BACKBITER LORE OKAY

LUKE I GET YOU I UNDERSTAND

I MET YOUR DAD *SLASH* OH THEY GOT HIM THEY GOT HIM GOOD

LUKE PERCY FIGHT MY EYES HAVE BEEN BLESSED IN THIS DAY

PERCY APOLOGIZING HONEY UR TOO SWEET

ANNABETH OH FUCK OH HELLO

So tell me what are the plans for ttc now lol

I HEARD EVERYTHING ANNABETH HONEY COME HERE I NEED TO HUG YOU

I must ask….where the FUCK was this energy the rest of the season this episode is literally so insane it almost makes up for the rest of everything

“How does she feel abt all of this” ooh yummy i like the foreshadowing 

“I imagine she's thrilled” WRONG thalia would stomp freddy chases head in if given the chance

LEAH UR BRAIDS ARE GORGEOUS

stop percy had HEART EYES 24/7 FOR HER IM GOING TO COMBUST

“JUST BE A KID” IM SOBBING

THE SEARCHERS LICENSE IM CRYING SOBBING UR PERFECT GROVER 

“I'LL FIND YOU” FORESHADDDDDDDOWWWINGGGGGGGG

“NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS WE MEET BACK HERE NEXT YEAR”, OH I LOVE THEM IM CRYING SOBBING OH MY BABIES

MONTAUK IM GOING TO KILL MYSELF FUCK DUDE U CANT DO THIS 

i want poseidon to be there i know he wont be but i NEED it

Stop honey percy ilyyyyy you're such a sweetheart im kissing ur forehead and tucking u in

OH HELLO “IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP” WOOOOAHHHHHHHH OKAY

“WE'RE STILL DOING THIS” LMFAOOOOO

“TURNS OUT IM PRETTY GOOD AT THIS….COME FIND ME” CRAZY 

……MOTHERFUCKER if they dont show gabe dying im gonna riot

WHERE WAS THE REST OF MY POSALLY 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 YOU CAN'T GIVE ME SOME AND THEN TAKE AWAY THE LITTLE FROM THE BOOKS

WHERE IS SALLY MURDERING GABE HELLO

AHHH END SCENE LOL AH THE BOX

THE IMPLICATION THAT IT WAS ALL POSEIDON……..WHAT IF I DIE OH MY GOD

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Trying listening to audiobooks for the first time because college life has sucked all the time and energy from me and I can only seem to read fanfic or academic writing nowadays, so I thought, maybe I could listen to A Game Of Thrones while I draw instead of rewatching schaffrillas' disney movie rankings, do something useful with my brain. I found this one on youtube, and I find myself surprised by how fast it goes by. Of course, I suppose that's the nature of audiobooks, but I got curious and I looked up the wordcount, and I inevitably also found the wordcount of other books, and this feels like a stab to my chest because there's no war A Wizard of Earthsea has been kicking my ass all year when it's only 56k. There's no way I can't seem to re-read Northern Lights when it's 112k. A Game of Thrones is only like 300k. Apparently The Hobbit is 95k and I've been putting it off for years?? I read such long fanfics in a much shorter time... all of The Arcanist Marcy Wu is roughly 500k so far. The entire We're Just Human series is around 600k. Both took me around two to three weeks to finish (insane how awiw feels longer than wjh somehow... despite being 100k shorter... how... how does this work... also why does cmto feel shorter than ibybf... why does awiw and aaa feel the same length when aaa is almost twice as long...). It took me less than a month to devour them yet... I can't... seem... to finish... fucking Earthsea 😭 I read all of The Great Marcanne Divorce last night! And it wS 25k! Half as long as Earthsea. I could have finished Earthsea in two days! Why can't I read books anymore? I used to read each Eragon book in less than a month. Hell, I read Stephen King's IT in a month when I was 14, and it's over 600k! What happened to me? Is is the damn phone?? Will I never be able to read books with my eyes again? 😭😭😭

[it-one-line-at-a-time]

ALSO hi sorry you're the only one that knows what im talking about when i rant about It

i think its really a thing that bevs fear is different. its not wearwolves or mummys its blood

and while that doesn't feel a lot different shes a girl right at the age of having a period for the first time

HAVING YOUR FIRST PERIOD IS FULCONG SCARY

coufh cpugh bev and carrie are literally both stephen king characters whos main arc is being scared of having a period?? he does this intentionally?? cough

they nod to this in the movie when the boys go into the store to get stuff to help ben and shes buying tampons and unsure of what to do. she hides the tampons to cause shes embarrassed

AND HER DAD i could go on for hourssssssss her dad literally says "are you not my little girl anymore?" LIKE whatttttttttt the fuck. and no one but her and the boys can see the blood. while yeah this is because the adults dont see it but do we know WHY the adults dont see it? ITS BECAUSE THIS ENTIRE STORY IS LITERALLY ABOUT KIDS WHO ARE AFRAID. AFRAID OF PEOPLE BRUSHING THEIR FEARS ASIDE AND AFRAID OF BECOMING SOMEONE WHO DOES THAT.

HER FEAR IS FUCKING GROWING UP AND THE MAIN VILLAIN AGAINST HER IS A CLOWN THAT ONLY KILLS PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT GROWN UP AND IM SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL ABOUT THAT

i love bev she needs a hug and a warm blanket and raspberry leaf tea and a good movie and to be loved

Don't you dare be sorry! I'm having the time of my life answering these things, I swear to God.

I think Bev's fear of blood has sooo many layers. It's more explicitly stated in the book, just because it's easier in terms of description of internal monologues, but the film does definitely, as you say, give a few nods. There's obviously the scene in the shop where she is struggling to pick out tampons (honestly same, girl, I hate sanitary shopping more than I can say), which shows how new to this she is, and then she hides it behind her back from the boys, because she's scared and embarrassed to let it be known that she's growing up.

Of course she's also scared of her dad, and fucking fair enough?? The man is awful. During the scene in the book after she's met and dealt with Mrs. Kersh and Pennywise approaches her in the guise of her father and says some shit that genuinely made me nearly cry both times I read it, it's confirmed that she was scared shitless of her father, and what he might do to her. Touched upon in the movie when she first stands up to him - in a scene that had me in a stressed-out, terrified chokehold when I watched it for the first time - this fear is definitely only enhanced when she starts her period, which is why she froze in fear when he first came across the tampons. Because in her eyes, she's now being forced to grow up at the speed of light, and her dad hits her with the "Tell me you're still my little girl", so she's forced between wanting to grow up and out of his reach, and wanting to stay a kid so she doesn't have to face the hellhole of adulthood.

Long story short, she should NOT EVER have been put through that shit, nor should anyone. Like, even the idea of being afraid of growing up whilst simultaneously having to in order to escape your predatory-ass father is so fucking awful and I'd never even thought about it too hard before this, so I appreciate this ask for making me consider how fucking awful it must've been for her.

Anyway Bev is my gorgeous girl who I would rather die for than have her suffer yay <3

[arcanearcherayz]

People I'd like to know better

Thanks for the tag @senualothbrok I love sharing things about me but I always feel weird when I try to unpromted.

Last song: The Eye Colour Ballad by Naethan Apollo. I found it watching art video shorts on YouTube. The opening part reminds me of Gale. Favourite line: "Your eyes are like dirt," (Ayz would comment something like this to make him irritated😂)

Last book: Still working through The Dome by Stephen King. I started reading this thick ass of a book last year and I'm finally 2/3 of the way finished.

Last movie: Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I had a movie night with friends. I got so excited hearing the names of places cause of Baldur's Gate 3. Got even more excited when they mentioned Waterdeep

Last show: The Legend of Vox Machina. I'm slowly going through season 3. Very slowly cause I heard things and I'm not ready for emotional damage...

Last thing I searched: Satyr vs Faun. I need to figure out which to use for my Gale fic cause technically they're the same but are names from different lore...?

Favourite colour: candy apple red, and Periwinkle purple as of late. Can you tell I'm an artist?

Sweet/savoury/spicy: always savoury. I have the hardest time eating sweet. I'll only eat two cookies out of a sleeve and my friends think I'm crazy lol.

Relationship status: Married to Gale Dekarios... I'm single as fuck and very annoyed about it. But at least I can kiss my pixel husband.

Looking forward to: posting the first part of my fanfic of Gale and Ayz. I haven't written fanfiction since 2011 in high school so it's been exciting to get back to writing again.

Current obsession: Gale of course, and writing my fic. And maybe a little obsessed with tumblr again. It's been years since I've been here and so many people have told me it's dead. Nah man, Tumblr be thriving.

Tagging: @serenaoffaerun @thecurlyginger @evverest @ejoym @funniestbitchinfaerun @waterdeepwife

[firecrackerhh]

I had got the stupidest ask in my inbox the other day. For context I have a side blog that mostly dead until I can find out what I want to do with it for now. Wendigo-Radio I got told basically that if I treat the wendigo like a myth it will come and get me. And I was appropriating Native American culture by saying the word wendigo. And the entire time there is a Wendigo tag, supernatural still has fans, and 2,740 fic results on AO3. Not to mention that Stephen King's pet cemetery has a wendigo in the book and YouTube has like million videos.

Native American women are going missing with out a trace it barley talked about in the news but if telling people not to say wendigo is the best use of their time who am I to judge. (Sorry about my rant that really grinds my gears)

Nah I getcha.

Look, I don’t exactly have a right to talk shit about anyones religious practices or culture or whatever else, but from my understanding, the wendigo is just…a mythological creature meant to represent famine, greed, starvation, something along those lines, it’s a myth.

And like any myth, it’s gonna get warped and twisted around by other cultures, it’s just how stories work.

I frankly refuse to believe that the majority of Algonquin people give a rats ass enough about it to make a fuss, and the people who ARE making a fuss and making Viv and others out to be disrespectful heathens who will fear the mighty wrath of the dreaded wendigo…nah man, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Your beliefs aren’t worth shit, you sound like a clown, be serious for a second.

What’s funny tho? I swear to god dude, every person I’ve ever seen bitch about it? They aren’t even native themselves! Or at least, if they are native, they ain’t Algonquin.

And I’m just keeping it real when I tell you that seeing those motherfuckers do that fucking censor bullshit to the word is so…ridiculous? Like look, y’all can do what you want, but I don’t think it’s healthy to live your life in fear under the possibility of reprisal of a being that isn’t fucking real.

Like I’ll see bitches do the same thing with the word God. Like…dude, I don’t think He cares if you type out the word…I imagine God has soooo many other things to give a flying fuck about, like famine, war, those shitty evangelical preachers who use His name for their own selfish ends, I think He has better shit to worry about! It’s not like you’re using His name in vain, chill out.

…sorry back on a more relevant topic, of course there’s certainly far more pressing issues the Native American community has to worry about than someone using a mythological creature in a cartoon or movie or whatever, I just think people latch onto tiny not-really-a-problem problems because the actual problems are more complicated, or at least, they’re issues most people outside of that community don’t give a fuck about (such as disappearing native women) because of the racist society the native Americans have had to suffer from for centuries.

Hell, I would argue those people who wear war bonnets when they haven’t actually earned one is significantly more fucking disrespectful than anyone making or watching wendigo depictions in media.

It is also from my understanding that Native reservations are uh…bad. Like, everyone is poor, the American government sure af aren’t helping them out, like I’m no expert on literally any of this so y’all can do your own research if you want, I just know the situation isn’t good.

I get people focus on the small shit mainly because they can’t really do anything about the bigger, more important shit, but like…I dunno man, you gotta learn to pick and choose your battles, and the wendigo one isn’t really worth it imo.

I think sometimes people just like making things out to be a problem when it’s just…not? Like cmon man, is doing all this bullshit really helping anyone? Or do you just want an excuse to be self righteous?

You aren’t helping anyone by defending the honor of a mythological creature or whatever, you’re honestly no better than those Christians who say everyone else is gonna go to hell for whatever arbitrary reason, just cuz your beliefs aren’t as widespread as the Abrahamic religions doesn’t make that kind of behavior fucking acceptable, please find an actual important problem to bitch about. You have plenty of options.

🔥🧨~Firecracker out~🧨🔥

[strangestcase]

house of leaves thought of the day: it’s so fucked up that zampano’s article on the navidson record (as a lot of the in-universe fictional (?) pieces on it that he cites) treats the record as if it’s fictional. it constantly says it’s a documentary, that everything happened, that it’s real, and yet it discusses the people in it like they’re fictional characters with motivations and arcs, it cites their real life like it’s some sort of cultural background, talks about the house like it’s not a fucking real life house that was built and has people in it, it analyzes the record as if assuming it’s somehow lying? … and that mixes up with Johnny Truant living a Stephen King ass nightmare that feels like he’s haunted by a fictional creature out of the movie (which is, again, really a documentary)

and on some level this makes sense because the record allegedly doesn’t exist irl, zampano wrote a long ass article on a documentary that isn’t real and yet he took the choice to discuss that documentary like he would a piece of fiction; why not talk about an unreal fantasy novel then? but of course the events that Truant undergoes (and what kills zampano) point at the Record being real in-universe. or maybe it actually isn’t, the house isn’t real, and Truant is being hunted down by a doubly fictional entity. which ties with the novels themes of how fiction impacts us and the stories we tell + what haunted house stories are really about

idk I’m still on chapter 7 of the record so . I might be wrong

[marypsue]

hi mary! do you have any book recommendations for fans of the indian lake trilogy and/or horror books in general? i love your writing (followed way back for your gf fics lol) and would love to hear if theres anything in particular you'd recommend ^^

Oh hello hello hello! You've activated my trap card.

Honestly, I read less horror than I let on, and have started reading it more recently than not, so this may be a rather short list. But yeah I absolutely have some recommendations! If you enjoyed My Heart Is A Chainsaw (I really have to read the sequel) and you like my writing, I think our aesthetic and narrative sensibilities should be pretty similar, so hopefully these will be books you'll also enjoy.

First on the list and most obvious is of course My Best Friend's Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix. It's perfect companion reading for My Heart Is A Chainsaw, also being about two teenage girls navigating a difficult period in their friendship, complicated by the fact that something supernatural may or may not be trying to kill them and everyone around them, and may or may not, in fact, exist. Abby and Gretchen and their friendship are so wonderfully drawn, the absurd humour only underlines the helpless horror of their situation, and the climax made me bawl like a fucking infant. 11/10 no notes.

I'd also recommend We Sold Our Souls, also by Grady Hendrix, for some of the same and some slightly different reasons. If you were drawn in by Jade's girl-alone-against-the-world situation and her punky, horror-movie-obsessed alternative vibe, you'll like Kris Pulaski and her heavy metal quest to get her life and her music back. Another one that made me cry, and it's only getting more timely and relevant with every passing year.

I really liked Nick Medina's Sisters of the Lost Nation, about an older sister looking for her younger sister after the latter disappears from their reservation after a secret rendezvous at the recently-constructed casino. Anna and Jade share a certain 'nobody else is going to fix this, so it's up to me' sensibility, the way the author pulls together ancient mythology and modern horrors is well-crafted and spooky, and there's a deeply intentional queer thread running through this one from start to finish. Warning, though, this is a deeply, deeply sad book.

In terms of meta horror about horror, Riley Sager's Final Girls surprised me with how good and gripping it was. I picked it up expecting easy-reading paperback fluff, and got sucked right in. If you crossed over Halloween: H20 with Twin Peaks, you might get something like this book. I never see anybody talking about it anywhere ever and I have to strongly recommend it. (Unfortunately, it didn't focus as closely on the relationships between the 'final girls' as I wanted it to, but I still wasn't disappointed.)

Joe Hill's N0S48U kicked my ass and made me say 'thank you'. This one's pretty tragic, so maybe give it a miss if you don't want to read about bad things happening to characters you like, but, well, this is horror. Notable because the antagonist is Christmas-themed, and honestly, I've never seen anyone else so effectively harness the crawling feeling of Wrongness that seeing Christmas shit in July gives me.

And, going wayyyy back, one of the first horror novels I actually read all the way through (on the advice of a friend), Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. If you were a My Side Of The Mountain / Hatchet kind of kid, this is the book for you. And if for some obscure reason you haven't read Carrie yet, what are you waiting for.

I also read Paul Tremblay's The Pallbearers' Club, which somehow didn't quite manage to deliver on what I was hoping for, but which you might enjoy if you liked some of the other books on this list. If you like punk music and/or characters who like punk music, meta conceits, and New England folklore, give it a shot. (I think I knew a little too much about the subject matter going in for some of the big ~surprises~ to actually surprise me.)

I've also got on my TBR list Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids, Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians, Jessica Johns' Bad Cree, and Riley Sager's The House Across The Lake and Survive the Night. I can't speak for any of them yet, though.

(And tossing a movie onto this list, you might really enjoy Netflix's The Final Girls. It's a lot fluffier than My Heart Is A Chainsaw, but for a fun meta slasher horror-mostly-comedy, it was a solid good time. With an ambush sequence that was pretty clearly inspired by Joel Schumacher's The Lost Boys!)

[onlymethateverwas]

Another year, another hundred million things goin on. One thing’s for sure, the years start comin and they don't stop comin 😂😂😂

This year, I didn't go in with any special reading goals. It was only as I was heading towards summer that I found out that one of my favorite comic book superhero teams got a revival. And so, after nearly ten years of not looking at mainstream Big Two books, I finally picked up a DC mainliner a couple of years old. One thing lead to another, and I decided to reread old comics I enjoyed pre-2012, bringing me to the conclusion that motherfuckers did not lie when they said you a Big Two comic book nerd for life no matter how long of a break you take. I was literally reading every other comic book in the world except Big Two for the last ten years, and now I have a spreadsheet tracking when I gotta pick up my 2024 Zods and Lors. It's atrocious. I love it.

I also made my grand return to reading Stephen King books, which I've been off longer than Big Two comics! I, of course, went with the fattest, most interesting one I could find, and that's how I ate The Outsider in less than a week. It was really that good, I highly recommend.

I also read my fair share of popcorn horror written by Grady Hendrix, Darcy Coates, and Paul Tremblay. Got played by the homoerotic lesbianism in another Rachel Harrison that didn't have any real gay. Maybe she enjoys gaslighting me. Continued my adventures with M.R. Carey and Camilla Sten because those motherfucker can write. Read some adapted-by-Hollywood horror novels I've been avoiding for years like Lovecraft Country and Bird Box, both which got sequels I have to read now.

I veered into the weird this year to get more used to the surrealist side of horror. "The Devil Takes You Home," "My Sister, The Serial Killer," and "Tender is the Flesh" did not disappoint. Meta horror like "Curse of the Reaper" was also enjoyable. I also found a book in the tradition of Poppy Z. Brite. "Gone to the See the River Man" was a nasty thriller but one that reads like one fucked up ass poem. Threw in some short stories and novellas. Read one poetry anthology, and opened up sci-fi novels because I wanted to see if my brain could handle googling physics and mathematics every five minutes to see if I could handle books based on real-world science. Turns out I CAN handle physics, geometry, and planetary motion. Read Liu Cixin's "Remembrance of Earth's Past" novels, I guarantee you'll eat multiple hats.

Overall, a wonderful year of reading. I might get laid off from my job, but I still got my library card and my wits.

[kimmimaru]

Ok, so I love horror. I'm obsessed with it. I honestly don't know why I don't actually write much of it though, I think its because I don't think I'm very good at it lol. One of my fave authors is Stephen King, the man is a genius but he churns out books so fast I can't keep up and only have so much shelf space, sadly lol. Has anyone else read Doctor Sleep? That shit was brilliant, my fave is IT but Doctor Sleep is defo a close second. Very long, nonsensical ramble under the cut about Hojo, Vincent and Lucrecia:

But anyways, I'm doing a couple of little horror fics for Halloween, they're doing alright I suppose. Not particularly ground breaking or anything but they're ok. The fics are, of course, FF7 fics and both revolve somewhat around Hojo. I don't know, I find him one of the scariest characters. He's terrifying, especially in the OG. Not exactly sure what it is about him specifically that scares me more than other characters, because like, Sephiroth is the main 'bad guy' in the story but Hojo's just creepy. Like if I met someone like him irl he would be giving off all the red flags. You know there's just some people who just give you the creeps, even if they're a total stranger? Like every cell in your body is just telling you RED ALERT? That's Hojo for me lol. Maybe its because Sephiroth's motivations are somewhat understandable, he loses his mind because he finds out he's not human and his entire life probably wasn't good. I can understand that, I too sometimes look at all the horrific shit humanity has done and wonder if its even worth keeping us around you know? But Hojo, at least as far as I'm aware, isn't really given any other motivations other than 'because I can' or 'I want to see what happens' and to me that's creepy. Not to mention that in the OG he does kind of try to make Aerith...do stuff...with Red 13...which uh...no. No absolutely not. Lol. Also...why the fuck is he considered so attractive in the OG? He doesn't just manage to lure Lucrecia away from Vincent 'my ass looks great in leather' (just trust me and pause AC at the moment Vincent crouches before jumping into the air to attack Bahamut SIN and try and tell me it doesn't lol) Valentine but also somehow manages to attract a whole gaggle of bikini-clad women on the beach in Costa Del Sol. HOW?? Ok, so I can sort of see how Lucrecia could have agreed to carry Hojo's baby, its probably because she's a scientist too and was also interested in the results or whatever...but still, lady...please wtf were you thinking? At least the beach-goers have the excuse of not knowing Hojo, Lucrecia does not have that lol. How can she spend god knows how long around Hojo and not think; this man is a creep? Honestly I would kind of be interested in seeing something about how all that happened, was he acting different around her? Was she just blinded by the curiosity of the experiment? Was it simply due to the fact that he was the only other man in the mansion when she freaked out about Vincent and her history with his father?

I think maybe that's why I don't write anything much about Lucrecia, I just can't get into her head. I don't understand her at all. To me, not a lot of her choices make any sense. Her actions feel weird and illogical and I'm not sure if its just me being autistic about it, or if I'm missing something in the story or what. But going from 'I love Vincent Valentine' to 'oh no I feel guilty because of Vincent's father's death therefore I must dump him and go with Mr Creeps over here'. Because that's not going to make him feel a billion times worse than just...I don't know, explaining why you're worried and talking shit out? And then sticking the monster that actively killed his father INSIDE him. Its fucking weird. (and then you have Vincent's own weird ass guilt, its non-sensical to blame himself for HER decisions. The whole story is just a giant shit show lol). Does this make any sense? I don't know. I had some Thoughts and needed to write them down. Ugh.

[skarsgardsnark]

OK all the A talk - hate rn is getting boring. Thought maybe we could focus on our Gorgeous Swede Giant for a bit instead 🥰

Would love to hear everyone's answers to 4 basic questions:

How did you first find-discover Bill?

Fave role-character?

What made you fall for him? (Doesn't necessarily have to be like a fall in love romantically-could be what made you become a fan)

Fave feature of Bill's

** For me:

Love Stephen King and HAD to watch Castle Rock of course.

2. The Kid (his adorable face and creepy ass everything else lol He was incredible!)

3. The scene in Castle Rock where he sorta breaks out of the cell and he stops and slowly turns to look up into the security camera and right into my fucking soul 🥵😈🖤😏

4. Don't judge (you can giggle though) but my favorite feature is his head. I'm in love and properly obsessed with the shape of his head 😍

1) Second season of Hemlock Grove. I was bored and it was a shit show but I thought he was cute, so I kept watching 😅

2) Sven in Burn all my letters. He played jealous, controlling, angry husband so well. 🥵

3) There wasn't much on him in the beginning but I thought he was really chill when he was promoting Allegiant. And I completely fell for him during his IT promo.

4) His nose! I love that honker of his

Feel free to answer these questions too!

[officerwhitmore]

‘Then let’s eat.’

Vincent’s sheepish smile turned into a hearty chuckle as he cast a grin up at Tony, the man’s three simple words evoking a memory of a phrase he hadn’t thought of since before June could walk. “In the words of my father, who, let’s be honest, probably stole it from Stephen King,” he said, “‘good food, good meat, good god, let’s eat!’” He laughed a little, returning his eyes to the flimsy table, where his invisible circles had somehow turned into hearts. “That was the prayer he used every time mom forced him to say grace. Of course, she fucking hated it, but I found it hilarious. It was pretty much the only time he had a sense of humor.”

Vince looked up when he heard Tony reach into a cabinet to pull out two plates. They didn’t match, which unfortunately didn’t come to Vince as much of a surprise. He didn’t get to look long, but the cabinet itself was fairly empty, with very few bowls and drinking glasses, the top shelf almost entirely populated with plastic cups that appeared to have been collected over time from cheap restaurants, though Vince somehow doubted Tony could afford to visit the restaurants and get them himself. Those, like the rest of his belongings, seemed to have been acquired secondhand.

There was a joke to be made about ‘works of art’ that Vince would also be incredibly interested in tasting, but he didn’t want to come off too pushy or eager even if less than twenty minutes ago, he’d shoved his hand down the man’s pants and told him all about how badly he wanted to choke on his cock. In exchange for keeping his mouth shut, he let himself enjoy the sight of Tony’s ass as he shook thick blue tortilla chips onto their plates and scooped copious amounts of topping all over them, the melty cheese and steaming meat somehow paling in comparison to Tony’s own visual deliciousness. Maybe Vince was a cannibal. There wasn’t a single part of the man he didn’t yearn to taste.

Vincent’s mood darkened upon Tony returning the conversation to his marriage, the smile on his face crumbling to dust. Placing both feet on the ground, he turned in his chair to face the table properly, pulling in a breath and attempting to focus on the music playing on the counter a few feet behind him. Some hip-hop/R&B hybrid that was good on the ears, though, strangely, the artist seemed to be comparing her love interest to a new pair of shoes. Back in Chicago, before she quit her career to become a stay-at-home mother, Stella had collected shoes. She liked the heeled kind — elegant boots and strappy sandals, all in various muted colors that complimented the nice jeans she’d wear in the winter or the dresses she’d wear when the weather was right. Dresses he’d loved to sneak his hand underneath in the back of the movie theater or, one time, during Thanksgiving at her parents’ place, which had led to a quickie against the dryer in the laundry room as her sister’s cat stared at them with bland disapproval from atop a pile of unwashed towels.

The plate Tony sat in front of him was glorious enough to pull Vincent out of the memory, his attention immediately drawn to the mountain of chips piled with cheese, veggies, and perfectly-seasoned meat, the entire meal a beautiful, multicolored mess of flavor he couldn’t wait to consume. His stomach growled and twisted, mouth watering almost immediately, but he placed his hands in his lap and forced himself to wait as Tony set down his own plate and retrieved the water bottles Vince had forgotten about right around the time Tony stepped into his space. He set the bottles down along with a small stack of napkins that he’d clearly gotten on clearance. They were left over from the 4th of July, proudly emblazoned with the vivid colors of the American flag. Vince nearly snorted at the randomness of it, but by the grace of baby Jesus, he bit his tongue just in time.

Tony sat down across from him on what appeared to be a foldable camping chair, the poor thing squeaking under his considerable weight. It made Vince wonder how it would feel to be crushed by Tony’s weight as he fucked him from behind, pinning Vince to the mattress so tight, he could hardly breathe. He only stopped staring at Tony’s hands — which, endearingly, were neatly folding the ‘Murica napkins like this was the fucking Cheesecake Factory — when the man declared that he didn’t judge Vince for ‘any of this.’ The flirting while married. The kissing while married. The fucking while married. In a word, the adultery. It should’ve given Vince some relief. Instead, it only made him wonder what exactly Tony had witnessed to make him feel like Vince couldn’t be blamed. It slowly occurred to Vince that it had to have been the scratches on his cheek during the traffic stop. Vince hadn’t explicitly confirmed his wife had done it, but Tony seemed to have come to that conclusion given the fact that he immediately attempted to commiserate by showing Vincent the bruise on his arm that had come from his ex. Vincent glanced at the arm in question, quick, furtive, and saw that the bruise had mostly faded, reduced to a subtle patch of green. He still wondered about the story behind it. Still itched to ask, still ached for justice. But in the end, he wouldn’t be seeing this guy again, and he wouldn’t be alive much longer anyway. There wasn’t much use in spending much more of their first and last hookup dwelling on what couldn’t be undone.

Vincent offered Tony a brief hum of acknowledgement and kept his eyes to himself, folding a napkin for no reason other than to kill time until the man gave some indication that it wouldn’t be rude to start eating. He was just beginning to think the topic was over when Tony implied he was about to be ‘totally honest,’ which indicated that Vince would be forced to suffer more of it. Vince’s sour disposition immediately cracked, however, when Tony boldly declared that he hadn’t been sure what Vince’s ‘deal’ was, and wasn’t about to ask. Vince barked a wheezy laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he completed the third fold of his work-in-progress origami crane.

“My deal?” he asked, the mirth still rich in his voice. He glanced up at Tony for a moment, completing another fold without looking. “You mean why I came on to you, right? Well, to be honest, it’s a bit more complicated than you might think.” He turned the ‘Murica napkin at a 90 angle and made a smaller fold that would become the left wing, still grinning in amusement. “I could give you some ridiculous cover story like, 'I'd rather eat Trump's ass than remain celibate for the rest of my life,' but I guess now’s as good a time as any to confess that this was all just an elaborate plot to get you to join the Church of Scientology.” Tsk-ing his lips, he gave a quick shake of his head, feigning disappointment. “Unfortunately, as soon as I got my hand on your cock, I realized I forgot to bring the thousand-year contract I was gonna have you sign. Which is honestly a huge fucking bummer because now I'm not gonna get the movie deal they promised me.”

Chuckling, he looked up at Tony with a grin, making another fold as he watched him take a drink of water. “But really. I appreciate your… everything.” Vince looked back down at the unfinished crane, something tingling in his chest. "Thanks.”

When Tony cleared his throat, an obvious signal that he was moving swiftly on, Vincent released a particularly loud sigh of relief, too hungry and anxious to feel embarrassed over it. He rubbed his hands together and looked down at the nachos, breathing a laugh when Tony joked about liking it spicy. The man’s teasing wink went straight to Vince’s cock, and suddenly he didn’t feel quite so uncomfortable anymore, a bit of the tension bleeding out of his tight shoulders as he pushed the unfinished crane to the side.

"What are you talking about? Of course it's gonna be good,” Vince said, grinning with playfully furrowed brows. “So far, everything I’ve tasted of yours is fucking amazing — and I’m not just saying that ‘cuz I want you to touch my dick again,” he said with a playful laugh. Spying the jalapenos Tony had put on the side of the plate, Vincent lowered his voice a little, speaking quickly. “But I’m not gonna lie, I’m also kinda thinking about that right now too.”

Vince hovered his hand over the pile of jalapenos for a long moment, wiggling his fingers in indecision. Tony would want him to eat a jalapeno. It would help him save face if he ate a jalapeno. If the guy was of Latin descent, which Vince suspected, then it would be suicide if Vincent chose not to eat a jalapeno. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Resisting the urge to glance up at Tony, Vince picked up the smallest slice of jalapeno he could find. Halfway to placing the jalapeno on top of a well-loaded chip, he huffed a breath, shook his head, and put it back, immediately grabbing and wiping his fingers off on a fresh napkin. “Nope. Nope, nope, I’m sorry, I can’t, they’re just—” Vincent looked up at Tony, shaking his head and laughing at his own patheticness. “I tried, I really did. I’m just too weak for it, man.”

Still laughing a little, he picked up a chip loaded with cheesy goodness, holding it up for a second just to admire its beauty as the glossy cheddar cheese pulled up from the plate in thin strings. He ate it in one large bite, the combination of flavors electrifying his tongue as he chewed with wide, mind-blown eyes. As soon as he swallowed, he tilted his head at Tony, mouth open in amazement. “Holy shit, Tony, these nachos are bitchin’,” he said, so impressed with the food, he forgot to cringe at his own frat-boy vocabulary.

“Like, fucking insane.” He picked up the napkin, wiped his mouth, and immediately sat it back down. “You know, they used to have this restaurant in the Chicago Loop back in, I dunno, ‘98? They’d give us these huge fuckin’ plates. I mean, just one was big enough for me and my mom, and I swear to god, it was just a fucking mountain of toppings, and the cheese was just out of this world, dude,” he said, gesturing wildly. “It was white cheese, though. I dunno what kind exactly, but I remember thinking it kinda looked like jizz. Anyway, it was fucking delicious. And to be honest?” He pointed down at the plate, smiling big and wide. “These are the only nachos I've had that come anywhere close.”

Vince picked up another chip, this time dipping it into the glob of sour cream Tony had placed in the middle, shaking his head down at the food in amazement. “How the hell did you get so good at cooking? Did you just pull the recipe out of your head, no Google or anything?”

Admittedly, it put Tony on edge the way Vince seemed to close up on himself - arms crossed, then hands in his pockets, looking away at anything other than him. All the hallmarks of someone terribly uncomfortable with the situation and wanting to get away fast. Tony’s mind reeled for reasons - though he wasn’t sure why he did that. Did he just need to identify a reason that had nothing to do with him as a person?

Was it the shitty apartment that was too off-putting? Did he secretly hate the idea of sharing a meal with him? Had he really pushed Vince too far, too fast? Or, God forbid, did he go so fast that he was pushy and Vince felt like that wasn’t actually something he consented to? A lump formed in Tony’s throat; the last thing he needed was some small-town cop accusing him of an assault like that. The FBI would drop his ass so fast he’d still be spinning when they threw him in a cell.

Except… He was perfect? And somehow, it wasn’t his fault, even if he apologized first. Tony swallowed hard, trying to push his tense fear away. Vince’s compliment about being real easy to get lost in brought a sheepish smile to his face. He lowered his head a bit, not sure if he wanted Vince to see the smile that brought when he was still so uncomfortable.

To hear Vince say it outloud - that he was married - did something odd to his stomach. He knew, of course he knew, he saw the ring. He saw his wife - who he had named That Blonde Bitch in his head - and how she was a pretty blonde even if she had murder and disdain on her face every time she looked in Vince’s direction. So it wasn’t surprise, it wasn’t shock. It wasn’t even guilt or regret, really, though maybe there was some of that. It was… sympathy? Pity? And maybe a bit of righteous anger. Not at Vince, but for Vince. Maybe for both of them. They both deserved better than this, but they’d also dug their own graves, so who did they really have to blame?

Tony chewed his bottom lip, staring out the window above the kitchen sink. The blinds were drawn down, but one of the slats was broken off and a bit of afternoon sunlight filtered through. That felt fitting. When he looked back, he swore he saw a single tear slide down the man’s face that Vince quickly wiped away. His brows furrowed with concern.

This was all a lot more complicated than he anticipated, but maybe he was an idiot for not anticipating it. It didn’t make him want to run, though.

Now came the thing that really did shock him - Vince changing his mind and declaring he’d stay. His first impulse was to ask Vince if he was sure, but it felt like if he asked Vince would change his mind again and be out that door, never to return. Watching Vince pull out one of those shitty, flimsy, mis-matched chairs at this shitty, flimsy card table that served as a dining table was almost surreal. Certainly this guy had a nice home, with real actual furniture, he could be at. Instead, he was here.

Because here was better than home.

Here, with a stranger Vince knew nothing about, on the shittiest side of town, in an apartment that was falling apart and locked tight with a deadbolt, where he’d be eating a meal he bought the ingredients for, on chairs that Tony was convinced would break under his mass someday.

Somehow, this was still better than home, and by God Tony had never wanted to offer his hand to pull someone out of their personal hell more than he wanted to pull Vince out right now. He knew damn well what it was like to reach for even the dimmest light nearby because it was better than the darkness you were currently in.

“Then let’s eat.” He offered Vince a smile and a nod of his head, pushing himself off the counter. He was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if there was some confusion behind that smile of his.

“Promise taken back, then. Hands later, after you taste this work of art here.” Reaching up to one of his cabinets, he took out two plates - mismatched entirely, of course, and set about scooping nacho mix onto chips. He was careful not to break the chips as he prepared their plates, using the spatula to make sure each chip was as covered as he could make them. Jalapenos were arranged on the side - he wasn’t sure if it would be too spicy for Vince or not. None of that ‘dump chips on a plate and put a splat of nacho-goop on top and call it a day’ like some places did.

He felt like he should acknowledge Vince’s comment about being married, but it took him a bit to find words that would be coherent. He kept his back partially to Vince as he worked on the food, making sure it looked as appetizing as it was going to taste.

“And yeah. I know you are.” He didn’t even want to say the word married outloud. It was like cancer: if you don’t say it, don’t acknowledge it, you can pretend the other person doesn’t have it. At least for a while. The plates looked perfect, though he nudged a few chips around just to prolong him standing there for a moment longer before he picked up the plates and carried them over to the table. He sat one down in front of Vince first, then one in his spot, then stepped over to grab the bottles of water and napkins and brought those over as he took a seat. He sat down carefully, never quite trusting these chairs. The one he sat on squeaked.

“I don’t judge you for any of this.” He unfolded a napkin and smoothed it across his lap, the way someone does in a fancy restaurant with actual white linen napkins, not generic-brand slightly-crunchy-thin paper napkins. Another napkin, folded once, was tucked next to his plate. No forks for this meal - nachos were meant to be eaten with fingers and chips as utensils.

“If I can be totally honest? I wasn’t sure what your deal was, and I was not about to ask. It felt like none of my business. No judgment, not from me.” That bruise on his arm that was so fresh and visible the night he got pulled over was fading away well - still slightly visible, but mostly gone now. By this time next week, it’d be gone. Tony reached for his bottle of water and unscrewed the cap, taking a swig before replacing the cap.

“Anyway,” Tony cleared his throat, moving on because he didn’t want to make Vince more uncomfortable than he already might be. Maybe he’d pick the man’s brain more later, or they’d have a discussion about it. He had opinions but they didn’t need to be shared.

“Dig in, and let me know if you think this is good. If it is, I might start doing something similar at the diner. God knows that place needs some taste added to the menu. If it’s too spicy, I can tone it down some for the diner. But… I think you can tell I like it spicy.” He smirked at Vince, giving him a wink, hoping to lighten the mood.

This man was a rollercoaster, but he was enjoying the ride so far.

[dove-tears]

huagh

had the random urge to add onto my previous isaac hcs, prev.

-Steven acts almost as Isaac's "tulpa" in a way(?), and would occasionally communicate with him through thoughts, multiple Stevens from multiple timelines may speak different opinions and thoughts to him. Even if his presence was out of nowhere Isaac wouldn't question him or find his company off-putting as he always felt familiarity and connection with him (gee I sure do wonder why!) and would just treat him as another one of his imaginary friends.

-Isaac finds comfort in darkness and is the type to prefer being in a dark, albeit dimly lit room. Of course it depends on the environment, as in some cases it scares him to death and can even be a trauma trigger for him, but he also hates brightness as it's sensitive on his vision and is headache prone.

-If he wasn't in a hardcore christian household, he'd definitely be into novels like Warrior Cats or Percy Jackson. He'd also probably be into Stephen King novels as well.

-Isaac has a hyperfixation of just thoroughly reading and rereading through anything that has words, whether that be through books, pamphlets, or even just the nutritional labels on a cereal box, to the point where he becomes completely engrossed in it and can shut out everything else around him.

-Isaac's dream is to be a doctor when he grows up, specifically in the practice of medicine, and likes reading through/fixating on anything medical related. Which is an explanation for items in the game such as PhD and why he's so knowledgeable in different diseases, illnesses, syndromes and other various medical terms.

-Isaac is/was growth hormone deficient, and was put on HGH therapy at one point in his life. (Which is also why he has such a small stature for his age)

-A reasoning for why drug use seems to be so prominent in game is because Isaac KNOWS what drug use feels like. He was prescribed Percocets/painkillers when on HGH therapy, he's curiously popped his mother's pills once when he wasn't supervised, he knows what being addicted or what a bad trip is because he's experienced it all before, it all fucked him up BAD and played a major role in Isaac's delirium and overall mental decline/seemingly fucked up imagination for his age. (Top it off with the abuse and indoctrination his mother put on him and you can see why his suicidal ideation got as bad as it did)

-Isaac's favorite food is sausage, especially in slices. His favorite dessert is anything with chocolate in it, but he can't have it often due to IBS. (I saw oreo sprinkled popcorn at the store once and he'd probably unironically love that kinda stuff HDJKDHGKFH)

-Like Edmund irl, Isaac loves card games, and will pretty much consume anything card game related. (don't underestimate this 5 year old he is a M:TG expert and he can and will kick ur ass)

-Isaac gets frequent nosebleeds due to poor living conditions, which explains that one AB+ trailer, and why there's blood everywhere on the post-it notes in-game.

-Isaac yearns to have a sibling, and it's why so many of his imaginary friends are fetuses/babies or referred to as brothers and sisters.

-Guppy had been around before Isaac was born and had been bonded to him since the day he was. For the duration Guppy was alive they were practically destined to be the bestest of friends.

-The D6 is Isaac's comfort object.

-Besides emotionally, Isaac is a pretty sensitive individual overall, he gets easily irritated around bright lights, loud noises, certain smells and touches, etc. It's a major reason for wanting to keep to himself most of the time. Of course that just made him more of a target to get picked on unfortunately.

[wahbegan]

On H.P. Lovecraft

After reading two of Leslie Klinger’s fabulous Complete Annotated Works of Lovecraft, various fragments from several of his own letters, and several of the kind of articles debating his merit or lack thereof in light of his flagrant racism and xenophobia that always crop up around the time any new adaptation comes out, I feel like I could write a fucking essay with sources and shit psychoanalyzing the scope and nature of this sad bastard’s damage.

I even thought about it, but I’m gonna try to keep it brief because this is fucking tumblr, not a scholarly journal. What I will say is this: I was afraid of Lovecraft as a child. Not his writing, but the man himself. After seeing his creations and reading his weird-ass fucking name at 8 years old, I paused in wonder at what kind of abyss-eyed fucking lunatic he must be. Google image Alan Moore and then imagine him built like a brick shithouse and racially ambiguous and with even scarier eyes and that’s basically what i pictured.

This was as a kid, of course, before I knew that horror writers were very rarely frightening people themselves and, by and large, tended to fall into two camps: the utterly ordinary (your Stephen Kings) and the anxious, phobic, neuroses-plagued wrecks that could barely step outside without having a panic attack (that would be your Poes)

Lovecraft, of course, falls in the latter camp. 

Later, I learned that he of course was frightening for much different, more mundane reasons. Violent racism, a hatred towards most ethnicities on the globe (apart from, of course, Anglo-Saxon as well as a few hand-picked ones from around the globe he believed to be worth a shit, but still felt should stay far the fuck away from him) a lukewarm “well they’re ridiculous and going too far, but their hearts are in the right place” shrug of the shoulders towards the burgeoning nazi party in Germany, a sigh and shake of the head, with a “well, it’s unfortunate, but what do you expect these people to do?” towards lynchings in America, and a eugenicist attitude that wasn’t out of place at the turn of the century, but was noticeably more pronounced in Lovecraft than the average American citizen.

Lovecraft is often called “fair for his time”, but it’s a phrase I find disingenuous, unspecific, and unhelpful. A thoroughly unforgivable monster by today’s standards, he would at the standards of the time, be...roughly the equivalent of an alt-righter, tottering right on the line between socially acceptable prejudice to the more standard bigots and what was, even then, considered fringe lunacy. He may not have been the kind to storm the Capitol, but he would be the one only  reluctantly and mildly condemning their actions and violently railing against any intimation of Trump’s involvement. That’s about where he would fall on today’s spectrum, roughly.

But the more I’ve learned about him recently, the more I realize he was, beyond his obvious and untreated mental illness, a deeply pathetic human being, with a racism and xenophobia founded mostly in an absolutely broken view of the world and his relation to it.

Of course can he be frightening in his hatred, his voice a weapon despite his personal squeamishness about violence? Of course. You can be pathetic and frightening at the same time. It’s remarkable, in fact, how often those traits coincide.

But I am able to take some comfort in it. 

Now this is the part where I would back this up with a bunch of fragments of his writings and letters but I can’t be arsed so just do me a solid and give me the benefit of the doubt, but two things become clear from studying the man’s correspondences and his dream-cycle stories.

First, that he could see absolutely no unifying human condition, no allegiance to the species as a whole, no such concept as a brotherhood of man or a global community or anything of that nature. The goal of life, he stated in no uncertain terms, was to do your best to preserve the lifespan of your own kind, people just like you, your personal culture and way of life. There was nothing else. That was the way to make your mark on the world. Even when he admired other cultures, he felt the best thing they could do was keep away from HIS culture, preserve THEIR traditions, and refrain at all costs from intermixing THEIR blood with lesser ethnicities, a practice he said ruined both India and Egypt. 

The second, that becomes evident once you read enough of his dream stories in a row, is that the man was fucking obsessed with reclaiming his childhood. I don’t know what kind of trauma this guy endured exactly eehhh i mean his dad going insane and dying of syphilis and his mother following suit for unrelated reasons probably had something to do with it, but anyway. Whatever his damage, it clearly left him, his whole life, so profoundly nostalgic for a time of innocence in his childhood that he could never recover and possibly never even existed that it bordered on an obsession. 

The man died at 46 living with his Aunt in the same town he was born in. And that wasn’t because of circumstances of poverty, that was by choice. Desperate to recapture a ghost, grabbing at the smoke of some feeling he only thought existed because that’s what memory does to people.

We take these ideas, we mix them with his clear fear of the unknown and his anxieties of insignificance, and a clear picture of the psychology of his hatred can be ascertained. 

He was a boy who never grew up. A terrified child, running from a world so much bigger than him, a world he felt insignificant and worthless in, a world that scared and confused him in its noise and chaos and change. All he wanted was the safety of his (privileged, sheltered, very very anglo-saxon) childhood back. And in his fear, he clung to white supremacy for dear fucking life, shrieking obscenities about the lower life-forms around him because if his genes weren’t special, if his race wasn’t special, if his culture didn’t deserve to be preserved....what was there? What was the point of being alive at all? The point of living, after all, was to preserve your kind, your name, your culture. Yet he moved to New York and was surrounded by people from a thousand other places and a thousand other cultures and none of them cared and he wasn’t special at all. 

Like I said, it’s kinda pathetic.

And yet...he has endured. Not because of the racism he thought would save him, but in spite of it. Because the world is full of better and more forgiving people than him, people of different cultures and races who are willing to overlook his stupid, his pathetic bullshit and see the potential that is there.

The almost universally celebrated Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro makes absolutely no mystery about how much he adores Lovecraft and often cites him as an influence. The Japanese Junji Ito, whose horror manga’s images i guaranteed are seared into your brain even if you don’t know his name, has cited him as well, and of course there’s Victor Lavalle. Victor Lavalle, the black author who won the Shirley Jackson Award undertaking the fucking Herculean task of salvaging a decent story out of  the spectacularly racist and simply quite bad short “The Horror at Red Hook”, a labor I, and I imagine most critics, would have dismissed as a waste of time. 

A black author. Black folks being, of course, one of his most violently maligned races. And a black author turned one of his shittiest, most racist works into a worthwhile story and, for his efforts, was asked to write a forward for one of the definitive anthologies of his work, ripping him a new asshole even as it praised him.

And that’s the beauty of the thing. The final cosmic joke played on Howard Philips. 

Lovecraft’s work enduring in so many styles, with so many people of different racial and cultural backgrounds, is in and of itself testament to how wrong he was. The more his stories are adapted or used as jumping off points by black or Latino or Asian (or Dutch, Irish, Polish, etc.) creators, the more they are not only saved from obscurity but improved by the addition of different voices, the more tiny and pathetic and childish his worldview of keeping himself safe by isolating to his Anglo-Saxon little corner of New England seems.

Some people feel Lovecraft is vindicated by his posthumous fame and growing global legacy. Personally, I feel like it spits in the face of everything he stood for. Lovecraft, in his way, was perfectly content to let his horror be weird and fringe and read and defended only by his friends, to die feeling like he was a misunderstood outsider.

He was proud of his race and his racism, proud of his lineage and xenophobia and embarrassed of his stories. 

Now his work is celebrated by people all around the world who he would have fucking HATED, even as he is relentlessly posthumously bullied (in no small part by me) for his horrific worldview. 

Every time Guillermo del Toro takes Lovecraftian influence and makes a fable about tolerance, he rolls in his grave again. And I find that kind of funny.

[postmoderntongues]

Of course I check my lolcow thread y’all are talking about me like I’m some kind of celebrity you’re lavishing my BPD ass with attention I can’t help myself also yes I’m lying about being autistic that’s why I literally get disability for it I’m actually not disabled at all and scammed my way through disability accommodations all through late college and spent hundreds of hours in therapists offices for funzies also just because something isn’t an “official” diagnosis doesn’t mean it’s not a term therapists use to describe certain phenomena (like PD NOES cluster b subtype or atypical anorexia) I’m actually a 40 year old single man on the sex offender registry living in my mother’s basement pretending to be an unhinged young woman as a grand fetish larp. You got me. Everything I write I write with my dick in my hand and I’ve never experienced any sexual trauma or have any interest in horror art (which is why my writing focuses so heavily on emotion and so little on the act especially when dealing with minors, people writing that stuff to jack off will usually fade-to-black the actual act because emotional trauma and unhealthy relationships are just so hot that who needs the sex scene that’s how porn works right) I’m also a major druggie and boof a brick of heroin every morning before I go to work after shooting meth into my jugular. I’ve killed before and I’ll kill again. Every weekend me as the other teachers gather at a Taco Joe’s and sacrifice a toddler to Satan in the parking lot. I’m also Sams dad/Sorens ex pimp and personally ran the babyfuck factory. Im not just some broke mentally ill fat chick who is a little too into horror I’m actually a super interesting global criminal with millions of CP dollars and they will make Netflix documentaries about my crimes. Not like the only illegal thing I do is sometimes share pills with my dad and the occasional bump of wedding-coke I’m actually a psycho pedo killer and so is Stephen King. Not like people who write horror write about things that horrify is it’s all just porn because if u don’t understand it it must be porn fucking smoothbrains