#perhaps ''gross games about flesh and stuff.'' perhaps ''four short games about pain.''

[stickystarspectrumtroll-ocs]

Was rewatching Jacob Geller’s video essay about big things underwater and couldn’t help thinking “man. Allets would love this.”

[briangroth27]

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Review

I really enjoyed Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark! While I preferred Goosebumps as a kid, the three Scary Stories books were also an ever-present part of my childhood and I can vividly remember reading them by flashlight with the lights off. The vast majority of my early knowledge of urban legends came from the stories in those books and they certainly helped build my love of spooky things in general as well as the “kids encounter the supernatural” sub-genre of horror/sci-fi specifically. I haven’t read the books in years (though I still have them), but this movie made me want to revisit them because it’s so good!  

Full Spoilers…

Scary Stories is anchored by very strong performances from its teen cast. The main kids do really well with the material they’re given, crafting protagonists that touch on standard teen archetypes but that are also fleshed out, especially Zoe Margaret Colletti (Stella) and Michael Garza (Ramon). Stella is the most well-rounded and explored character in the film, and Colletti displays a huge range of emotion! She capably led the movie and she clearly has a bright career ahead of her. I liked that Stella was the most into horror and nerdy things among her friends, but no one treated that as weird even in this film’s era (girls have always been into nerdy stuff too!). The one thing I wanted more of in terms of her character was why “everyone said” it was her fault that her mother left. Feeling responsible for the absence of a parent is a common childhood misconception, but it seemed weird to frame it as something the whole town would be telling her without also giving a reason for it (though it did give her a connection to Sarah’s own persecution by the entire town, even if only in Stella’s mind). It was really cool of the movie to draw Ramon as the mysterious outsider kid rather than some troubled/tough white kid. That lent the movie a fresh feel while also touching on the racism of the period (which is still in full force today; one of many grounded horrors the movie dabbles in that are very much as relevant now as they were in the film’s 1968 setting). Garza brought an effortless coolness to Ramon that felt appropriately period while also acting as a great mask for his fears. Ramon and Stella’s budding romance was sweet and cute too.

Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) were no slouches either, providing most of the film’s comic relief while also capably playing real terror and friendship. The two of them and Stella felt extremely natural as friends since childhood and Ramon also effortlessly blended into the group; these four kids’ chemistry was fantastic! At first I wished we'd gotten more personal connections between Chuck and especially Auggie’s fears and their personalities: most victims here face stories pulled from their established fears and anxieties, but Chuck and Auggie’s initially felt more random. A personalized connection to the stories the book used against them after “reading them” would enhance the scares and illuminate their characters, and after thinking about it more I think I may have an idea of what they're going for. I could buy Auggie as a hypochondriac, so eating a toe would be horrifying, and he seems to be the most afraid of spooky things among his circle of friends, so maybe his story is attuned to him, but just felt generic because of the more generalized nature of his fears. Chuck’s story is based on a recurring nightmare he has, but I think it’s more personal than that. The Pale Lady (Mark Steger) could be punishment for Chuck’s objectification of women via his pen, but I’m wondering if perhaps that pen is a front (given how quick to show it off he is, to prove his interest in it) and he’s secretly gay. He scoffs at Auggie’s attraction to Ruth (Natalie Ganzhorn), he’s attacked by the book in a mental hospital (homosexuality was classified as a mental illness in 1968), and his nightmare calls its red room (which turns out to be the entire building when the alarm lights come on) “an evil place” (conversion therapy is torture). I think the Pale Lady is a manifestation of conformity and traditional relationships being forced onto him (or rather, forcing him into their narrow definitions by literally absorbing him): she’s everywhere and he can’t outrun or escape her.

Chuck’s sister Ruth also got some solid depth: though initially introduced as a stuck-up and cliché popular teen, they quickly had her stand up for her brother. The fact that both of them annoyed one another but they still raced to help each other made their relationship feel very real. That she’s helping continue the search for him at the end of the film instead of being condemned to insanity forever or something is awesome too! Tommy (Austin Abrams) was the only teen character that was really written as one-note, but it was a frightening note, both because of the violence and racism he exuded and the fact that he could easily be a modern radicalized teen, filled with all the same kinds of hate, rage, and eagerness to go off and kill people in a pointless war that you can find online nowadays. Now that I think about it, Chief Turner (Gil Bellows) was also written fairly single-mindedly and he was also a villain. I wonder if that’s intentional: these human villains don’t have redeeming qualities or sympathetic backstories, so their racism and ugliness is fully on them. Of course, continuing to embrace racism is always fully on the racist, but this film isn’t even trying to make excuses for why they might be like that. I think the movie’s saying there really isn’t anything more to people who are this consumed by hate and ignorance. There’s no point in trying to reason with them because they’re exactly what they present to the world (except they’re not strong like they pretend: they’re just scared straw men). 

The movie’s main villain, Sara Bellows (Kathleen Pollard), does have more layers to her than these human ghouls: despite being “evil,” she’s presented as (initially) being a victim whose only crime was trying to warn the town about mercury poisoning in the water. After taking her revenge on her family for committing and torturing her, Sarah’s decline into unfocused rage parallels Stella’s inability to let go of her feeling that she drove her mother away nicely. I wonder if part of Sarah’s reason for attacking the kids just for finding and taking her book was because she thought they’d lie about her too; it’s when Stella promises to write and tell her story faithfully that she relents, after all. Skimming through the books again after seeing the movie, I realized I’d forgotten they were written to help you scare the people you were reading to, so I liked that Sarah telling stories tailored to her victims was her method of vengeance and that Stella had to help tell her story to end the terror. Those are cool ways to honor the structure of the books.

The film has a great mix of jump scares (some of which did work on me), gross-out imagery (Auggie and that toe, man!), body horror (Tommy’s fate was brutal and painful-looking!), and real-life terror (Ramon running from the draft resonated with me a lot; even as a kid growing up in the 90s, being drafted to go die in some war was a major fear of mine). It was sobering to see just how many of the societal problems of the late 60s (racism, pollution, white boy rage/toxic masculinity, useless wars, the wealthy screwing over everyone for profit, no one listening to women, etc.) still haven’t been solved today. I do wish the movie were a little scarier, but the overall tone is wonderfully spooky (and decidedly “fall,” which was great), while the comic relief breaks up the tension nicely. The design of the monsters is very cool, with some of them looking like they walked right out of the books. The pacing is brisk, the directing, writing, and score are all solid, and the actors all bring their A-game. Sarah Bellows’ book was a good way to weave the original series’ stories together and I really liked that our heroes don’t just forget or ignore what they’ve been through and walk away from the terror at the end of the movie. Instead, Stella, her father (Dean Norris), and Ruth are actively headed off to rescue Chuck and Auggie. I love that, like in the real world, you can’t just let evil fester: you’ve got to stand up and protect each other. Ramon also goes off to face his fears, enlisting in the army, but that was a lot more somber: I didn’t get the sense that he’ll be coming back (though I hope he will!).

I’d definitely watch More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and hope we get another movie (and a third one, if they want to go that far)! I love this spooky 90s literature renaissance that’s going on and I’d like to see it continue (please give me Goosebumps 3 and a show about The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids while we’re at it!). In the meantime, get your Halloween season started early, because these Scary Stories are definitely worth a trip to the theater!

 Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

[bornfromscarletcords]

A Wolf Story

Like many societies this one had its legends, though absolutes were a far cry from the typical suspicion or superstition of the masses. It was generally agreed that four great lords were responsible for the shaping or reshaping of their world, but as to who these lords were or why they appeared there was as much dispute as there was doubt. There was little information as to what existence was like before their intervention, if there was a before outside of folklore and old childhood stories, but supposedly humans were a more dominant species in those times or at the very least a more encounterable. As things were, the terrain we will sort of monitor was dominated primarily by werewolves. There were rumors that near the beginning vampires may have held regional supremacy, but none were precisely sure just how the first werewolves were connected to the species. They could have been subjugated by the night peoples, or their curses may have left them both mutually and grudgingly tied to the fate of one another, and still some believed that they simply shared a similar ancestor, possibly in one of the great four lords, who may have been something like a hybrid or proto species. Who’s to say, it was a long time ago. As things were the vampires were a pretty rare lot to encounter in this era, there were no great courts to speak of as they had long since fallen, the vampires were generally uncooperative and the werewolves broke up any large gatherings they found in the region. Still vampires were pretty powerful as far as individual creatures of magic went, but the werewolves were organized and individually strong in their own right.  

A companion species was developed alongside the werewolves after the need for more violent solutions to regional territory disputes diminished. Some simply called themselves dog-shifters, but others claimed what was perhaps a more tribal or cultural monicker of “hunding”. Most were pretty sure the hunding were descended from the werewolves in some way, possibly due to their generally congenial relation to one another; werewolves rarely got along with any type of outsider, yet most didn’t mind their doggish neighbors one bit. Although it should be clear that anything can be felled or killed under the right circumstances or even with a great amount of determination or energetic momentum, the werewolves were commonly considered much more deadly than the hunding. An analogy might explain things better. The werewolves were like samurai compared to the general population of hunding who were like your modern japanese. They shared much of the same genetic structure and even some heritage but their focus of survival was often extremely deviated. Werewolves, in general came from a “we could die at any moment and existence is mostly agony paired with perverse carnal sweetness” type of mindset and cultural education whereas the hunding operated on a “carpe diem, isn’t it amazing just to be here” type of mentality. In many ways it had something to do with their difference in shifting. Werewolves could change from beast to more “human-like” visages with awkward painful, grotesque spasms which could last up to twenty minutes, maybe more on a bad day. The hunding shifted more or less instantaneously with little to no pain. This may also explain the difference in potency of their magic as werewolves seemed to operate, rather bizarrely on a sustained critical threat level of meditation which could boost their effectiveness to strange extremes. The hunding had a similar range of magic and biological prowess, super strength, speed, senses, healing and a capacity to connect with one another through an exchange of energies centered around a pack like structure, but these traits often emerged in a diluted fashion and far less frequently as far as population concentration went. On the other hand, where werewolves sexually reproduced rarely and with much discomfort (not that sex was uncomfortable but navigating violent changes with a fetus inside of you was difficult at the best of times; mostly impossible) the hunding did so with great ease. Some werewolves even looked to the hunding as a source for viable reproductive partners, which mostly worked, though it could create many tensions between the species.    

The werewolves, do to the violence needed to change humans into one of their kind, and the trouble of reproducing amongst their own people, were generally somewhat small in population size which was not exactly a bad thing as even in lower numbers they could devastate neighboring communities to gross extremes. Still this sort of biological isolation could call them to take on apprentices from their own ranks or the hunding. It was not uncommon for a family of wolves or some of their more influential pack members to form ceremonial ties with hunding lineages who more or less managed their estates or served as their honored guards. Some went so far as to claim something of a death bond with their companions sharing in eachother’s energies, powers and strength though also risking to take on eachothers pain and demise should one or the other fall in battle. It was some real gangster stuff.

There were of course other creatures of interest in this land but if they want their story told they can tell it themselves, though we suppose it doesn’t hurt to mention that every now and then a band or lone wanderer fashioning themselves in the manner of coyotes would pass by, often causing more trouble than they stopped mind you. Our focus will instead shift to a somewhat humorous member of the community, a werewolf named Daniel Blackwood. Daniel was something like four hundred years old though most mistook him for a newly made wolf due to his general avoidance of responsibility, his possibly artificially constructed aura of immaturity, and his habit of drifting into somewhat risky bestial behaviors. The last one was common for the newly turned due to their unfamiliar relationship with their wolves, but many suspected that Daniel had always been more wolf than man anyway, though his mastery of puppy dog eyes and pining could often tempt them to forget it. His great grandmother, who was also a werewolf, more or less ran his surviving family, and when she wasn’t busy marching them around like a psuedo army, she was trying to make him into a more respectable member of the community, which often meant trying to make him challenge one of the alphas or advance in position in the local pack. As things were he was content to make comic books, and tutor some of the remnants of his brother’s dojo which had been left in his care after he died. He was not surprised, though thoroughly annoyed when his great grandmother had took it upon herself to revive an alliance of sorts with one of the hunding families and so, after abandoning his brothers estate to the dog shifters who had cared for it for years, as, he was quoted saying “it was more theirs than mine anyway” he was still shackled to some of the more questionable traditions of his family.  

The hunding he was paired with was a female named Bethany, and she was “pretty hot” as he said it, with nice curly brown hair, a healthy ruddy complexion, “A great rack” as he also said, and strong form trained for fighting. His grandmother explained that she was to be his guard, his sword, shield, and companion through war and peace. Though what she meant was “put a baby in her so that I can raise cute children and finally get some use out of you.” Daniel was tempted by the allure of her...hot flesh, but interacting with others was not his strong suit, and the prospect of creating life was disturbing to him at the best of times. Although werewolves would mostly live until they were killed, either in combat, or by each other, stuck in a state of fit youthful adulthood, the hunding had slightly more conventional deathspans. They could survive for a while, often reaching the end of their adolescents within their first ten years of breathing, and from their aging at about a tenth the rate of most humans, and though few did it was not impossible to see some, a bit grey haired and wrinkly, who survived to about a thousand years. So one of the plans Daniel was relying on involved more or less outliving his new companion. She was supposedly something like two hundred years old but Daniel was as patient as he was unorthodoxly cunning.       

Daniel played a game called Cardinal Beasts or something like that. It mostly dealt with a strange balancing of cosmic energies using alchemic elements as well as primal world knowledge. In theory it could be used for anything as a player could just as simply build a row of stone buildings as they could a band of shape shifting hunters. Daniel’s style was focused around the grooming of chaos with his signature formula dealing with the sacrifice/hunting of foxes. Oddly enough, amongst his people, he was known as one of the best fox trackers and enders in the terrain as the creatures were fond of drifting too close to the affairs of werewolves, so perhaps he was a man of oddly sturdy positioning. His weapon of choice in both cards and flesh was typically a crossbow though his method relied very much on the subtle rearranging of his opponents terrain under the cover of an array of invisibility. This “cloak” of sorts was made of many cards both offensive and defensive though it’s effectiveness was boosted to extraordinary extremes by a perverse sense of timing which was one of Daniel’s more mysterious talents.

There was another person who was almost as quality a player as Daniel, another werewolf named Louis. People weren’t exactly sure just how old or young Louis was as he had a habit of feeding people to their own perceptions or assumptions and so was often as old, as young, as tall, as short, as beautiful or as ugly as people wanted or needed him to be. All he required was for them to witness. Louis had a slightly different style though it was no less effective in it’s own right. Louis was known for his ability to destroy other werewolves, both in cards and in flesh. He had a tendency to make a pack eat or run down his target which was often one of their own, or pulling those powerful within their terrains out of said those terrains often of their own volition. The latter method was often simpler to explain away if too much questioning dialogue was drawn or crafted. He could occasionally disguise himself as one of the packmembers, no one in particular, just a passing face they had no reason not to recognize. This allowed him to kill from the inside out. If he was destroying a whole pack he could utilize a band of crafty huntsmen or the local army encampment, or a strange spell he could summon but would not hold due to his natural suspicion about magic. You could say that he was cloaked in his own way as well.

Though both well armored and well armed, instead of being annoyed by the presence of the other they seemed to be more or less entertained by the other’s existence as well as eager to test their skills against the other’s hand. Some outsiders would even host bets on who would best who on which day or turn, and if we’re being honest, it was a vaguely lucrative source of fun, if slightly tragic.

Occasionally When Daniel Went hunting, he would invite Louis to accompany him. Of course Bethany was there as well, which often put Louis on edge because he did not entirely trust the hunding or anyone for that matter. It seemed that a partner in cards to him was much different from the bodyguard of your packmember. Louis was often curious about observing Daniel’s patterns in the flesh, and though Daniel’s prey was often more vulpine, Louis returned the favor by occasionally inviting him to observe him bring justice to a wolf who had broken a few too many laws. Daniel was never entirely sure if these had been official jobs, as Louis was a member of the local system of enforcement, but he tried not to forget that some people were always looking for a golden opportunity to fell something which was most likely already teetering downward. Louis might say something like “accelerating the inevitable”.

They took horses with them for this mission. There had been reports of bandits near one of the villages hugging some of the common roads for cargo transport. The fox-changers or the Vulpine-Exchange as some of the more organized gatherings called themselves were generally opportunistic. Most were foolish though resourceful, but a rare few actually had a degree of genuine cleverness to them. Most were dangerous for one reason or another but the latter breed could apply this danger to a wide assembly of profits, or concentrated and long lasting societal/cultural wounds. Humans wished they were so effective, and though they could be annoying for different reasons, generally speaking they were more or less buffers for the cosmic forces of true greatness. It was for this reason Daniel didn’t mind routing out some rogues or highwaymen, but having to squash a couple of humans was boring work, and a sign that his senses had been keen but not keen enough to capture the great prey he had been tracking. They were pretty quick these foxes, and flexible, like cats but with greater familiarity to more lupine or canine mannerisms. If curiosity killed the cat, hilarity killed the fox.

The three dismounted and killed the first of the bandits patrolling their choke points. They were mostly human but Daniel managed to land a killing blow on one of the foxes in disguise. He wasn’t exactly sure what fueled their transformations, they had a habit of disrupting rules rather than adhering to them, though one had once suggested that they each paid subtly differing tithes to allow themselves the shifting of shape. This was a slight relief to daniel as he feared they were simply dumb witches or skinwalkers with too much time on their hands but it seemed they actually did have some culture and art to claim. He’d even read somewhere that certain lineages held special skills. They tracked around for a while, picking off  foxy stragglers, before a taste of their blood revealed the location of their primary den which was, more or less an oddly contorted dimensional cave.

Daniel was more or less entertained though Louis seemed disturbed and Bethany was busy keeping her sword at the ready and trying to be less irked by her wolf’s peculiar disinterest in her. She believed herself quite interesting and though she’d been weird she’d been liked well enough. Well, in truth most people believed her to be something of a pariah and pretty bitchy at times but those who had sat down and actually talked to her knew that her bitchiness was a pretty smart survival tactic. Daniel didn’t seem to care either way though, he just seemed to like killing things and drawing, often drifting into maniacal laughter with both hobbies. The fox-changers put up a pretty good fight, but they’d stumbled on them during their meal time, which meant they were mostly unprepared, but gods were their traps as peculiar as they were plentiful. Much of Louis confusion came from the fact that, you could say, he was used to having more honorable prey, though honor didn’t always make for a useful person. Having to deal with so much lawlessness and blatant perversion of anything resembling stability, was a little too much for his usual sensibilities.

They killed the chief fox-changer, and were going to leave things there; well Daniel wanted to take his head as a confirmation of completion but Bethany told him his habits were too disgusting sometimes, so he rolled his eyes and relented. Instead though they were confronted with a conundrum of sorts. There were three foxes left which they had missed in the carnage. One looked something like an adult perhaps the mother or an older sister, as she still looked young enough. The second girl seemed smack dab in the middle of adolescence, while the boy seemed to be just teetering towards its edge. He had sandy hair, the oldest long dark waves, and the middle a short fiery crown with freckles. They were all pale of skin as opposed to Louis and Daniels very dark almost smoky complexions. The oldest more or less pleaded for their lives, saying that they had been abducted by this band who had terrible plans in mind for their persons before the lupine intervention liberated them. She said she’d do anything if they took them in, which got some of the more devilish ideas in Daniel’s mind cooking, but Louis stated that the pack would frown on inviting strangers into their domain. Then the woman, who was sister to the younger two, said that she would even sell herself into slavery if they’d provide for the other two. It was at this point that Daniel felt a little uneasy about it all, as if all at once he was becoming too much the bad guy in this particular cosmic play, and though he could play a mean archvillain, this was all much too petty for his tastes. He said he’d hire them as his servants if that would stop her from disgracing herself so damn much. It was depressing as he put it.

At this Bethany gave him a mildly horrified expression, looking a little sad as if he was going to replace her. He rolled her eyes and assured her that he doubted those sorry sacks would be as good in a brawl as she was. This seemed to put a little more fire back into her bearing, but Daniel was still disturbed by the quality execution of her puppy dog eyes. He almost started petting her. That would have been awkward. Louis was still weary of the “cargo” they had to escort home, though Daniel made it clear that he had done far more questionable deeds in his own right so he had no reason to complain, plus they could confirm that they had, in fact accomplished their mission.

The young boy was short tempered but witty, the middle sister was competitive but contemplative, and the oldest sister was creative but clearly manipulative. Daniel found it hard to explain to strangers why he found keeping what many would consider his mortal enemies as household fellows so thrilling. He told them it was purely an educational experience, but he couldn’t help remarking the sexiness of the females, the hot feuds which rose up between Bethany and the dark haired fox woman as they vied for his acknowledgement of their prowess, and the potential the younger ones presented of being able to train viable apprentices. It seemed their own kind had treated them just as bad as anyone else had, so they had few problems learning a few tricks to tracking  down their kin and running them through.

The boy’s name was Sean, the middle girl Charlotte, and the oldest girl Margot. Apparently the life spans of their kind varied as much as their skillset and lineage traits, with some being as ancient as the first stones, and others capping at seventeen years of age. Charlotte suggested that their time shifted based on who they surrounded themselves with, and harkened it back to something their dead parents told them about the company you keep. Sean was about 12, Charlotte was something like 16, and Margot was 19. Of course this was all in fox years so Daniel had no absolute idea how it translated into wolf logic.

Margot seemed to like trying to tempt Daniel to allow her into his bed, and she almost had him a couple of times but he was a crafty man himself. Still in his dreams he all but unhinged using her and his desires as he pleased. When he foiled her schemes she seemed to like trying to make him jealous by flirting up visitors, but Daniel had long since given up on romantic ideals, except in stories of course, so many of her actions were wasted. Still this did not stop him from occasionally requiring Bethany to share his sleeping quarters because “he had a bad feeling that night” or him inquiring about Charlotte's occasional “nightmares” and how she might want someone warm to hold her while she slept. It was not a surprise to anyone except maybe sean that these rather hot nights directly corresponded to Margot’s lack of restraint in her affections. .