#and if midway through your story you decide to abandon it because it truly does not reflect your values anymore

[seraphic-sibyl]

On waiting for the perfect day to create.

Something I've learned--and it's taken me a while to realize what it actually means--that "write it now, edit later" is a real thing. You can always revisit it in a few years if you think it's not strong enough and re-tackle your story with a little more experience under your belt. But the "half-written Word doc" phenomenon is also real; often we start stories and then lose steam halfway through, and that's fine. Creating anything is a good thing.

But if you never start, you won't even have a half-finished Word doc. You might think about that really cool story idea you had and realize you just don't think that way anymore, that you just can't bring yourself to write it anymore. And people change, it's true, and looking back at something you created and realizing it doesn't reflect you anymore is a real thing too. But maybe it would have been really good, even if you can't believe in it anymore, and you kinda wish it existed while you still did.

I dunno. I've been thinking lately about the novel I wanted to write when I was 15, and how so much has changed since then that I don't know if I could write such an optimistic story. I don't know if it would just be tone-deaf at this point. I think the way I view the intended themes is a bit more nuanced. But I wish it existed. I wish I hadn't waited until I had more writing experience and just...put words to a page. Made something, even if it never saw the light of day, just so I can look at the way I used to see things and the product of it.

It may not have been perfect, but I think I would have loved writing it, and I wish I didn't keep waiting for a flash of inspiration to give me the rest of my world, characters, and story. The flash would never come.

Make your stories. If you know you don't like it or you need more experience to do it justice, you'll at least have a framework to come back to. Create the thing.

[aion-rsa]

How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King

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This Malignant article contains spoilers.

Malignant has a twist so wild you need to see it to believe it. Seriously, stop reading right now if you have even the faintest interest in watching James Wan‘s latest horror offering. You really don’t want to spoil this for yourself. Sure, you’ll either really love or absolutely hate the movie’s batshit third act, but the experience of watching the twist for the first time is worth the price of admission.

If you have watched the movie, maybe you left as astonished as I did. After all, the first two thirds of the movie play like a standard giallo-inspired slasher film before things go completely off the rails. You might say that some of the clues were there all along — indeed they are, maybe you saw this coming from a mile away — but when you thought you’d put it all together, did you really expect Wan to go through with something so ridiculous? I certainly said, “No, that can’t be it” to myself midway through the movie when the clues started adding up. It’s a new direction for Wan to be sure…

But Wan’s first trip into a new sub-genre of horror isn’t necessarily without outside influence. There’s a bit of David Cronenberg mixed with hints of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but for the most obvious inspiration you have to look to the King of Horror himself.

Before we talk about Stephen King, you might be wondering what the hell was going on with Gabriel in the first place.

Gabriel Origin Explained

Safari Riot’s cover of the classic Pixies song “Where Is My Mind” seems so out of place when it first blasts through a scene in the movie, an over-the-top accompaniment to what seems like your standard slasher flick, but it’s actually incredibly appropriate — not just for the massive tone shift but the plot itself. (“Where Is My Mind” is also the iconic tune that accompanies the final scene of Fight Club, another tale of split personalities.) Madison’s (Annabelle Wallis) mind has been playing tricks on her (and the audience) the entire time. She thinks her creepy childhood imaginary friend Gabriel has somehow taken corporeal form and started murdering everyone who had a hand in “separating” him from her. But little does Madison know that the separation was much more literal than her simply forgetting a figment of her imagination when her baby sister Syndey (Maddie Hasson) was born.

It’s Sydney who discovers the truth when she goes back to the institution where Madison spent her early childhood before being adopted by their mother Jeanne (Susanna Thompson). In the basement of the abandoned Simion Research Hospital, Sydney finds the harrowing tapes that reveal Madison’s past with her “imaginary friend.”

Madison was born Emily May to a 15-year-old girl named Serena (Jean Louise Kelly as an adult, Madison Wolfe as a teen) who is forced to give her away to the institution by her mother due to Emily’s…medical condition. In a stunningly gruesome sequence of body horror, we learn that Emily was born with a parasitic twin attached to her head and spinal cord, which allows it to control her movements and thoughts. The doctors at Simion at first diagnose Gabriel as a “massive teratoma,” a malignant tumor that can grow with fully developed organs and tissue, but as we see in the movie’s opening sequence, they soon learn that this is something much worse and decide to cut him out off of Emily for good.

But they can’t get rid of Gabriel completely. Because the siblings attached at the brain, the doctors are forced to remove as much of Gabriel as they can, hiding what’s left inside her skull. Of course that means that Gabriel never truly goes away. He continues to speak to Emily, now Madison, from inside her head, at one point almost convincing her to kill Jeanne while pregnant with Sydney.

While Madison eventually forgets her “imaginary friend” as an adult, Gabriel returns after Madison’s piece of shit husband Derek (Jake Abel) brutally slams her head against a wall during an altercation. (Let’s just say I’m glad he’s dead.) The injury reawakens what’s left of Gabriel, who can reemerge through her head wound to control and contort Madison’s body and go on his killing spree. Madison experiences these murders as visions, as she watches her sibling slash his way through all the doctors that tried to destroy him as well as the mother who gave him away in the first place. Madison’s only able to stop him after he’s already massacred a police station full of cops and prisoners and made his way to the hospital to kill Sydney and Serena. Using the mental link she has with Gabriel, Madison manages to lock her sibling away, promising that next time he reemerges, she’ll “be ready for him,” setting up an inevitable sequel and a new horror franchise for Wan.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Gabriel and the Dark Half

Constant Readers will undoubtedly spend the weekend pointing out that Gabriel’s plot to control his sister in order to go on a murder spree is very reminiscent of one of Stephen King’s most famous books and movies, The Dark Half. The book and the movie directed by the late, great George A. Romero tells the story of Thad Beaumont (played by Timothy Hutton in the film), a writer of literary fiction in a bit of a slump by day. But he has a far more successful career by night as the author of dark crime novels under the pen name “George Stark.” Yet, the success of his Stark books feels like a curse to Thad, who is driven to heavy drinking and other vices when “the spell” of Stark’s prose. Now, a recovering alcoholic, Thad wishes to leave Stark behind and just write the literary fiction his agent and editor deem “boring.”

When the truth about Thad’s pen name comes out, the writer sees the perfect way to bury his career as George Stark once and for all — by throwing his pseudonym an actual funeral at the local cemetery. But Mr. Stark doesn’t like that very much. Thad’s pen name inexplicably “rises from the grave” to kill everyone he blames for his death — Thad’s editor, agent, and more.

You’re probably thinking it was Thad all along, but this is more than just another case of split personalities. Like in Wan’s latest, Stark was once actually very real, the sibling Thad absorbed in utero…except for a couple of teeth and an eye living inside of Thad’s brain. The “tumor” is removed from Thad’s head as a child, but he’s somehow unknowingly kept the spirit of his sibling alive through the books he writers, undoubtedly under Stark’s dark influence. It’s the kind of gory, supernatural twist King is best known for, and Wan sets out to celebrate the book with style. Mind you, this obviously isn’t a direct adaptation of King’s work but more like a spiritual successor to the book that pushes the plot much further into the ridiculous than even the writer did in 1989. Leave it to Wan to dream up an action sequence where a backwards (literally), contorting serial killer stabs his way through a building full of people to the sound of shredding guitars.

Even if you think Malignant‘s third act twist is an absolute mess, I’d argue it’s at least an interesting mess, a daring experiment in a corner of the horror genre we’ve not seen enough of in the past few years. Will this experiment lead to a new movement in body horror movies just as Saw for better or worse inspired years of “torture porn” movies and The Conjuring brought us the horror expanded universe? That remains to be seen. At the very least, Malignant is the kind of movie you’ll want to debate about with your friends as you exit the theater, even if it’s just to say you absolutely hated the twist. Aren’t you at least glad you saw it for yourself? The twist just isn’t as good on paper.

Malignant is out now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

The post How Malignant’s Monster Calls Back to Stephen King appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[williamsockner]

John Winchester Saltpile

A short list of John Winchester’s dogshit ways he screwed up his kids. Just from what we see in the first two and a half seasons - we’re not even to the truly horrible stuff yet!

- Routinely leaves children under the age of ten alone in motel rooms for weeks with nothing but canned food, a box of cereal and a shotgun, and instructions to never leave the room.

- Disowns Sam for going to college. Maintains this narrative to the point that Dean adopts the idea that Sam “abandoned” and “rejected” them by going off to get an education.

- Actively prevents Dean from developing any ties by keeping him from having friendships or relationships.

- Never calls his goddamn kids back even when they leave him tearful voicemails about how one of them is dying, sulks when they bitch him out on this point. Seems to think that calling them back basically ever is just not compatible with a hunter’s schedule. Guilt-trips them into believing he just loved them too much to stay in contact, despite sending them into harm’s way frequently.

- Convinces Dean and then tries to convince Sam that the reason he disowned Sam was that he just loved Sam too much.

- Isolates the boys from the extent of the hunter underworld just because he feels guilty around Ellen Harvelle for getting her husband killed, thus ensuring that they have fewer resources to draw on for doing their job and protecting themselves and can’t connect with people who share hunting and road life in common.

- On that note, doesn’t even leave the boys with the journal, just hopes they find it, and honestly does an absolutely terrible job of telling them about hunting techniques and information about demons that would be really, really helpful in hunting said demons.

- Sends the boys after the shtriga so Dean can beat himself up with guilt for all the children the shtriga has killed over the years, instead of being like “hey, kid, you were ten years old and you left a motel room you’d been stuck in for days to play at the arcade for an hour and that was it, it’s not really your fault that the monster got away and killed tens of little kids.”

- Somehow pisses off Bobby to the point that the boys are afraid Bobby won’t help them and don’t see him for years, which keeps them away from the only real source of love and support they have in the world.

- Militarizes Dean enough to be a perfect sharp-shooter at age six.

- Doesn’t provide his children with enough food when he dumps them in motel rooms for weeks, ensuring Dean has to go hungry just to make sure Sam gets enough to eat.

- Decides that the perfect moment to start berating Sam for not making an agonizing split decision is while his other kid is bleeding to death in a stupor in the back of the car.

- Decides to keep Sam “innocent” while grooming Dean for monster-hunting, establishing that his children can’t have an honest relationship with each other growing up.

- Ruins Christmas.

- Apparently figures out the entire demon and angels plotline and yet, rather than providing anyone with this information or writing it down, uses his dying words to tell Dean he might have to put Sam down like a dog, because, you know, fuck actually having a conversation with Sam or anything.

- Somehow ascends to Heaven anyway because he bodyslammed a demon and made sad faces. ):

But honestly the part that annoys me the most about John is that the show itself puts all this stuff out there and then doesn’t actually commit to acknowledging that John’s a maliciously terrible parent and a terrible person (and not just a “troubled” one or one who was “trying his best”) until Season 3. John’s not just a neglectful father who was too invested in a lifestyle that was incompatible with childrearing, John’s an actively manipulative scumbag who consciously sabotages his kids over decades. Miss me with that stuff about how he just wanted to keep them safe, because if he had he wouldn’t have isolated them from critical resources or sent them into harm’s way all the time or pit them against each other so frequently or used guilt to manipulate them into giving him his way or like, disowned Sam and then made the story that it was all Sam’s fault.

The show frequently seems to write a villain but have them serve the narrative purpose of a sympathetic protagonist for John and it’s only midway through S3 that they really start to thread the needle, and even then the show’s stance tends to fall closer to “John was neglectful and unintentionally abusive” rather than “John is actively a consciously abusive parent” - which, you know, if they wanted that, they shouldn’t have put the consciously malicious parenting in there in the first place. The fandom seems to have never gotten the memo and I still see a lot of “well, he was trying! he was just misguided! it’s really debatable if it was abuse!” flying around with regards to John. It’s the apologism - both textual and in fandom - that’s elevated John to one of my least favorite fictional characters ever.

I’d say he should get hit by a truck but he already did. I’m not even through S3 and I know it gets worse.

[storyunrelated]

Cold Hard Hugs #17_Sudden Trips

Do people really do this? Probably not. But that’s stories for you.

“Guess what!” Tillie practically squeaked.She radiated joy and excitement as she came into my room with nary a knock. I could have been doing anything! I was mostly just waiting for her, but the potential for me to be doing anything was there.

“What?” I asked, lunging up from where I’d been sitting on the bed. It sounded like big news, it sounded like the sort of thing I should be standing for.

“I’m going to America!” She announced. That certainly was big. And a surprise. And sort of in need of further explanation. I may have gaped like a fish.

“...right now?” I asked, lacking better options.

“No, like, well, Skaffen was - you see, she - the plan is,” Tillie babbled, words butting up against words and sentences spiralling into bits and pieces even as she started to form them. Once she slowed down a bit something approaching sense started to form and I got a picture of what was happening.

It went something like this, as far as I could tell:

Skaffen had already been planning a trip to America with Johnny, an old friend of hers who was also - coincidentally! - an old friend of Tillie’s as well. This trip was set to coincide with reading week, which was coming up shortly. Next week, in fact. Seeing no reason not to Skaffen had invited Tillie on the spur of the moment. Seeing no reason not to say no, Tillie had said yes. Benefit of a father with means was that you could agree to do these things without much forethought. Apparently.

What suddenness though! Did people really make snap decisions like that? Wasn’t going to America, like, super-expensive? How doting was her father, exactly? Also, hadn’t we planned to do stuff during reading week? Together stuff? Well, we had planned to plan. Not quite the same thing. Presumably Tillie had already considered these issues so there was no use in asking. I was the one with the problem.

I had not been on holiday since I was a tiny child. Not a proper holiday, at least, which I define in my head as leaving the country. Maybe etiquette had changed since then. Maybe deciding to go with no real forethought was the done thing nowadays. Stranger things had happened.

“Wow. Cool!” I said, for what else could I say? Tillie was practically vibrating.

“I know, right?”

“So America, huh?” I said. I knew little of America, or at least I knew about as much as the next person. What if the next person knew a lot about America? Then I would know less than them. Keep going until you found someone with an average understanding of America. That would be me.

On me saying this, Tillie’s aspect changed somewhat. Almost sheepish all in a flash. The quivering with excitement stopped, or at least ebbed enough to be barely noticeable.

“Sorry…”

“No, no, it’s okay, it’s fine. I get it, it’s cool.”

“Are you sure? Because I don’t have to go if-” she started, but I wasn’t going to let her finish that. I took hold of her hands in mine and that did a very good job of stopping her sentence cold.

“It’s fine. You obviously want to go and I’m not going to be the kind of dick who says no. Why would I do that? There are no good reasons to do that. You go, you have fun. This is me bossing you about - you go and you have fun. Okay?”

“As long as you’re okay. I feel like I’m abandoning you. I know you-”

“It probably feels like I keep interrupting you - because I, you know, am - but I’m totally serious. Go. It sounds super fun. A way better way of spending the week then whatever I could have concocted for us.”

Making things better than things I could organise wasn’t exactly a high bar to get over, but still, the point stood. Besides, her glee at the prospect of America was so potent her lights were almost blinding. She bounced in place and squeezed my hands hard enough I’m pretty sure I heard the knuckles creak.

“Thank you!” She squeaked, again, finally releasing my hands. I tried not to make too relieved a sound at this, rubbing some pain out of them and some feeling back in.

“I didn’t do anything, don’t worry about it.”

People thanking me for no reason always confused me. I think it’s an English thing. I do my best to get people to snap out of it, but they never do. The important thing is trying. While my brain was mulling that over my mouth had ideas of its own, and was moving against me. Only as words spewed forth did I truly realise its dark purposes.

“This is probably going to sound like a tactless question but...what does your dad look like? Just out of curiosity?” My mouth asked, without permission. My blood turned to ice.

No! No mouth! You broke my rule! Never ask questions! Not about actual things! Noooooo!

“Well...he’s got a tail like me but he doesn’t use it to move around because he’s got legs that come out his back. His tail’s got like an, uh, pincer thingy on the end he uses to pick stuff up. And arms, he’s got regular arms. Four, actually. And lenses like mine sort of, and all these little manipulator...things underneath them. Like, uh, you know shrimp?”

“Not intimately, but enough to know what you’re driving at.”

“Yeah, like that. But not completely like that. He’s pretty big, too. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

He sounded great.Would he even fit in the house if he came here to question my intentions with his daughter? This was not a thing flesh-and-blood people usually had to worry about, I would expect.

“You’ve never asked about my family before,” Tillie said. Accusingly? Curiously? Or no ‘ly’ at all? I was probably imagining things. Paranoia strangling my joy like a creeping vine! Or something.

“No, I haven’t...remiss of me. Sorry.”

Tillie was moving at this point, and as the conversation was clearly not over yet I moved with her. It was odd actually watching her move down the stairs so I tried not to watch it too closely. She looked more rounded from the back as well, I noticed, or was I also imagining that? It’s hard to keep track of what I remember that’s real and what I remember that I’ve embellished. It’s why it pays to perceive reality as a vague and amorphous blob rather than something set in stone. Maybe? Would go a long way to explaining my academic performance, mind.

“It’s okay. Are you going to be alright here on your own? Why don’t you go back to your parents?” Tillie asked, reaching the bottom of the stairs and heading into her room. I followed.

“I’ll be fine. I already told them I wouldn’t be coming back so I think they have something planned now anyway. It’ll be fine,” I said. This was true. I think they were going on holiday as well, though not America. I could always go back to mooch around the house back home but, really, what’s the difference in mooching between here and there? Not enough to warrant the journey. If I’m going to be home alone I don’t see why I should take a train to do it, you know? It’s fine anyway.

Looking around her room my eyes fell on the nest again. I remembered the cosiness and comfiness of it and found myself smiling without really meaning to. Maybe when I was left on my own I might borrow an element of it - a pillow, a blanket - just to keep me company. Assuming Tillie didn’t lock her room, of course.

“Skaffen is going to stay here. It’s only a day or two until we need to go and it’s closer to the airport here anyway,” Tillie said. I tried not to feel immediately miserable at this news. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I’d want to feel miserable about the idea of having Skaffen around, I just did. Odd.

“She is? Uh, cool. Where? Your room? She can have my bed if she wants but, uh, she probably won’t. Uh…” I had run out of options at this point and my brain stalled.

“She’ll be fine on the sofa. Skaffen likes her own space,” the sofa, of course! How silly of me. Just seemed a rude place to put a guest. But what did I know?

“Cool. I’ll go set her up on the sofa,” I said, turning and leaving. Then I paused.

“Is there anything I should know about setting it up for her? I don’t want to, ah, make a mess of it...and you’d think it would be hard to mess up this, wouldn’t you? I could probably manage it though.”

Tillie giggled, picking up an armful of blankets from the pile in the corner opposite the nest - she really did have a prodigious amount, far more than last time I swear - and thrust them towards me. I took them. Clever idea. I don’t know what I’d been planning to do on my Todd without any blankets or anything, now I thought about it. That would be panic guiding my actions, maybe. Tillie’s hand found one of mine clutching the bundle o’ blankets.

“Don’t worry so much. Just make the sort of sofa you’d enjoy sleeping on,” she said.

The last sofa I slept on - mere days ago, in fact - had been less than ideal for its purpose. I had used cushions instead of a blanket because I, well, had not had a blanket. They hadn’t really worked. I could definitely do better than that now.

“I can manage that,” I said. I didn’t believe it, but Tillie didn’t have to know my misgivings.

Re-entering the lounge I found Skaffen by the window, presumably looking out? It was hard to tell. Wait, no. Impossible to tell, that was the one. Her angle was such she was either looking out or else positioned so she was facing the door waiting for me. Practically this made little difference of course, and she didn’t react to me coming in either way.

“Here to make the sofa up for you,” I said, to no response. Was this room cold or was it just me? The room was always pretty cold, though not quite like this. Both, then. I started fussing with the sofa if only to have something to do. I actually think I did a pretty good job of it, all told, though that’s hardly something worthy of being too impressed by.

Midway through spreading out blankets and shifting cushions I made the rookie mistake of trying to strike up conversation. I was breaking my rules all over the shop today. Like a bull in a, well, china shop. A china shop of rules. So much shop up in here.

“So...did you take the train down?” I asked.

“Do I look like I took the train down?”

“Anyone can take a train. They’re very egalitarian,” I said. In fairness to myself, this was true. Clearly the wrong answer though.

“No. I did not take the train down. I came here under my own power.”

Did that mean she flew? Could she flew? Fly, rather. Not flew. Flying did seem a step above simply being there in mid air like she was right then, but what did I know? I certainly wasn’t going to ask, not at this point. My luck with asking questions seemed to have run out several years ago.

“You know, with all of these folks running around with all of these extraordinary abilities I would have expected more social upheaval,” I said, scratching my chin. From the corner of my eye I could see Skaffen very, very slowly turning on the spot towards me. So she had been facing the window! I could almost feel her scorn searing into my back like the heat of a disdainful, disgusted sun.

“Society has changed massively,” she said levelly.

“Oh. Obviously! Obviously,” I said, saving no face whatsoever as I minutely adjusted where a cushion was.

“Why do you think flesh-and-blood people don’t like us? Why do you think Tillie had no friends all last year? Did you never ask about her life growing up? Her family environment?” Skaffen asked, her tone cold enough to make the hairs on my arms stand up and lower the temperature of the room even more.

“I asked about her father, uh, earlier,” I said in my defense, though it was patently useless.

“Because he came up in conversation today?” Skaffen asked. The answer was so obvious I didn’t need to say it.

”I always figured if she thought it was important she would tell me,” I said.

“You are a stunningly incurious person.”

“Thanks?”

That was a compliment, right?

“That was not meant as a compliment.”

Fuck!

“Still. America, eh? Fun place, I’ve heard,” I said, grasping at straws at this point. A wiser man, having finished the sofa (as I had) would have fled at once and as politely as possible. But I am repeatedly, demonstrably unwise. And so I hung around. I think a part of me was wanting, desperately, to have the conversation end on a high-note. Or at least on a note that didn’t feel quite so hostile.

“Tillie’s always wanted to go to America. Ever since she was little. You didn’t know?” Skaffen asked, gliding over and tilting to examine the sofa. I had a feeling my efforts would not be up to her standards. I had a feeling no amount of effort on my part would be up to Skaffen’s standards.

“I never asked.”

“That’s okay then.”

I had the distinct impression that Skaffen did not like me. Though I had no concrete way of backing this up. Just a gut feeling. A very strong one.

When I was a boy - and not a fully mature, experienced young adult as I was now - I had been reliably informed that aloof, standoffish behaviour on the part of girls was a positive thing. It sort of acted in the converse of ‘boys tugging on girls pigtails’. If a girl was ignoring you or was not really paying you much attention it was merely her shy, coquetteish way of disgusing her hidden affection for you.

I’m not sure who told me this, now I think about it, as running it back through my head it’s plainly cobblers. You would honestly have to be a child to believe a word of it.

But yesh, cobblers. Or more accurately bullshit. As I later learnt if a girl is acting this way towards you (or a boy, or anyone really) it probably just means they’re not that interested in talking to you. If they’re actively cold or distant that it’s far more likely they just straight-up don’t like you rather than hiding anything warm and fuzzy. No amount of persistence will change this. In fact, persistence will likely harden them against you even more. So best not do that.

And of course if they ignore you at a party and then don’t speak to you for three days it’s likely your relationship is nearing its end phase. That’s a very specific scenario I agree but it’s one I can confirm from personal experience. Watch out for that.

The point of all this being I don’t think there was much depth or subtlety to what I could now confidently categorise as Skaffen’s negative attitude towards me. She just didn’t like me. Which is fair enough, she’s under no obligation to like me. It just made conversations tough, because I insisted on having them. Mea culpa. Can’t say I didn’t try.

“Well...that’s your sofa done. Need anything else?” I asked, finally deciding that discretion was probably the better part of valour here. That, and continuing to try and speak to someone who was clearly not enjoying it was a bit of an unpleasant thing for me to be doing. And experiencing.

“No,” she said.

As much as I was curious to see how exactly Skaffen planned on using a sofa with blankets I knew this was not something that was going to happen with me there, so I left. Sticking my head in to Tillie’s room - silently, as she clearly did not notice me doing so - I found her hip-deep in wading through websites about America. I felt it best not to disturb her, so sloped back upstairs to sit on my bed and stare into space, not really knowing of any other, better way to spend the rest of my evening.

Good times. Good times.