#nineth enby ramblings

[thegayestofagendas]

A major thing I love about creature features is how they never age badly imo. They are very often low budget movies, so when I see terrible costume and puppets and (for more recent films) CGI, I just get so joyful. Like "hell yeah you made do with what you had and you did a great job with it"

I was first initiated to creature features with sharknado if I recall correctly. And of course it's a comedic creature feature definitely not the best way to enter the genre, maybe even an insult to it (I don't think any shark features are great for it although you'll never hear me dis The Meg) and I think it had marginally more budget than most creature features. Jurassic Park is a good entry, but i think most people who aren't creature feature fans don't really see it as a creature feature. Before I was into horror, I didn't really capture that Jurassic Park was horror to begin with, it was just a kinda scary action film in my mind.

But then I watched older creature features that had to skirt around the Hays code. I personally think that Hays code era creature features are probably one of the best introduction to the genre, not because the Hays code was good, it wasn't, but because monsters were just a great medium to address otherness, oppression, and xenophobia without tripping those wires. Old creature features really are what made me a proper fan of the genre. Horror didn't get a lot of budget so a lot of the costumes and practical effects are somewhat funny looking for our modern eyes, but entering with that expectation makes it a non-issue. They are just fun, they get some cheers out, often they aren't necessarily scary, but they bring a feeling of anticipation that something terrible will happen.

I love shitty looking creature features. They get low ratings and even I, notoriously generous with my ratings, won't go so far as giving them more than 3/5 stars usually. But they lift my spirit.

I thank the universe for silly creature features, for scary creature features, for cheap creature features, for expensive creature features, for mindless creature features, for philosophical creature features. I thank the universe for creature features.

[thegayestofagendas]

You know, I watch a lot of video essays from people with *expertises* on youtube (as in degrees or having done a lot of research in scientific papers) and it rarely crosses my mind that some/many of these people are younger than me.

I remember as a young person, people the age that I am now dismissing anything I might have to say from a place of gathered knowledge and experience on account of my age. Like it didn't matter if I had done research in actual academic sources, anything I had to say had reduced value because I wasn't 30 years old and instead of encouraging me to nurture a passion for research, it was constantly suggested that I could never know more than people older than me who didn't care for the subjects.

Even now, as a grown ass adult who is consulted on inclusive language and accessible design in context of Diversity and Inclusion in my workplace and as a professional in my actual field of gamedev, will regularly get the information I provide to people who are older than me and who don't know anything about either subjects dismissed just because they think that I'm too young to know.

and of course reducing this to generations is, well, reductionist to an extreme and I don't want to do that, however, it does feel like there is a new respect from younger parents towards their kids' ability to gather information and form legitimate opinions, in my experience.

I'm not going anywhere in particular with this other than to say that honestly, I am so happy to see people younger than me having experienced the kind of nurture that I didn't, and like I couldn't imagine dismissing their knowledge and expertise based on their age the way I (and many others I presume) was dismissed. And of course, I have nothing to do with their success and the nurture they've experienced, but I am so proud of them, and we need to keep working to give them and the future generations the world they deserve.