#this was originally about my slasher novel because a lot of it has a LOT of deeper meaning and themes and ngl i love doing it srry

[avianurges]

if i randomly say some like. serious shit here and there would anyone listen lol. like i know im all about being haha funny clown but i have like. commentary on real life shit that i deem important to me,

i want to create more art with actual substantial meaning regardless of if there's an audience for it i've just been inspired by a couple things lol

the more I learn about media literacy and how to actually understand the media i consume,—like a LOT of people right now—the more harmful propaganda, covert commercials, or slot-reel like attacks on our dopamine receptors i find inOH MY GOD I WAS SO VUSY TYPING MY SERIOUS SHIT I FORGOT I QAS MAKING TEA ON MY STOVE AND STARTED A TEENSY TINY FIRE LITERALLY THREE FUCKING FEET AWAY FROM ME

OBVIOUSLY I HAVE MORE LEARNING TO DO IN LIFE IM GOING TO GO DO THAT NOW SRRY MY SOAPBOX WAS MADE OF SOGGY CARDBOARD IG MY B

[finalgirlminamurray]

i have liked most of grady hendrix's books that i've read - i liked the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires, i really liked my best friend's exorcism, and i loved how to sell a haunted house (probably my favorite of his work so far). i'm hoping to read horrorstör and maybe also we sold our souls sometime soon. paperbacks from hell was a great and very enjoyable nonfiction read too.

i don't like to judge whether i'll like an author's work based on one book - if i did that after i read the final girl support group i probably wouldn't have read any of hendrix's other novels. i happened to read that one first because it was the only one available at the library and i felt like most of the reviews i'd heard from people whose opinions i usually agreed with were positive, but i was just disappointed by that one, idk. after i finished reading it i found myself basically drafting a whole bullet-pointed list of everything i liked and disliked about it and my criticisms ended up far outnumbering the good points. prime example of a book that could have been good but left me wanting to a frustrating degree. i was really mulling over why it didn't work for me for a while.

didn't help that right afterwards i read my heart is a chainsaw, to which fgsg seriously suffered in comparison. maybe it's not really fair to compare them since the only thing they really have in common is that they're meta-slasher novels released around the same time written by popular modern horror authors, but since i flew through both books in quick succession it was hard not to. the main difference for me is that my heart is a chainsaw is clearly written by someone who loves slasher movies just as much as its main character, and - not to presume anything about the author, but the final girl support group honestly feels like it was written by someone who was interested in deconstructing the genre without really liking it all that much before. hendrix definitely did some research - there are quite a number of name-drop references that you'll get if you've seen a lot of slashers and know a lot of trivia - but i wouldn't be surprised if it was just for that book. when i started reading it i felt like despite not really being a big slasher fan myself i did know enough about the genre to appreciate it, but by the time i finished i was thinking...maybe i actually know too much about the genre to appreciate this.

this ties back to what i was saying earlier about cabin in the woods. this also has the same problem as the scream sequels where it takes place in a world where popular horror movies - in this case, all slasher movies - are directly based on real-life murders, which presents a fundamentally different view of the genre than what it actually is in real life. it makes the story feel like it's trying to be about horror movies and true crime at the same time, and maybe i just have an instinctive hostile response to anything conflating the two in real life but...maybe you should commit to one or the other. in fact, this book really felt like it was trying to be about a lot of different things at once and i don't think it all came together that well.

also not sure the conceit of having all the characters be obvious analogues for specific classic slasher final girls, to the point of most of them being named after the actresses who originally played those characters, worked for me. i think i found it more distracting than anything, probably because i know the movies so well. i would rather have read a novel with original in-universe slasher franchises that maybe fit the archetypes (the supernatural slasher, the rural/backwoods slasher, the summer camp slasher, the meta-slasher, the holiday-themed slasher...) but aren't obviously based on specific real movies. those are fun to come up with. plus, the coexistence of obvious expies of real movies and actual real movies (and even some real filmmakers) made it even harder to tell what the book was trying to do exactly.

(also, because there were so many characters in the titular support group, it inevitably ends up that some of them feel underserved in a book that's supposed to be about solidarity among all these women. don't get me started on the...interesting choice to kill off only one of them, before the main events of the story even begin and before we've properly "met" that character in person, and have that character be the only woman of color in the group. maybe it's meant to comment on the "black guy dies first" trope, but like - if it is, you can't just do that and have it go unremarked upon, right?)

there was some stuff i did like - i think dani (the laurie strode expy) had the most interesting backstory, with her being deeply conflicted over whether she did the right thing in killing her brother or if he was just a heavily drugged mentally ill kid with no idea where he even was, who might not even have been the killer. that's like, an actual take with actual commentary on the movie it's inspired by. wish more of them were like that. also she is a butch lesbian version of laurie strode, that's cool in and of itself. and the main character turning out to specifically be a take on linnea quigley's character from silent night deadly night - she was supposed to be just another victim with a memorable death setpiece, the girl who gets naked/has sex and dies gruesomely, but she happened to survive and is a final girl by technicality. that's cool! that's an unexpected pull!

(if we are going to have a christmas-themed slasher in the lineup, though...why oh why does black christmas never get its fucking due. why does no one ever acknowledge it as one of the classic slashers. it's arguably the most influential since halloween was probably directly inspired by it. carol clover shockingly doesn't mention it once in her book - maybe canadian horror just wasn't as available in the us then? where is the british-canadian girl named olivia who fought off a killer in her sorority house who might have been her anti-choice boyfriend but might still be out there?)

i could go on but at some point most of my criticisms would just feel like nitpicks or me reaching for reasons to dislike it further. i think i just didn't like this book even though a lot of other people did and that's fine. it's been a couple years since i read it. i've said before that murder mysteries and whodunit slashers really aren't my thing most of the time so that could be part of it. if i were to do a more comprehensive review i'd probably have to read it again which...i don't feel like doing. i've got other books to read that i'll probably enjoy more, including some by the same author. he definitely seems to actually like the other subgenres he's written in - vampires, possession, haunted houses - so i do look forward to reading more of his horror fiction. i'm just glad this one didn't turn me off of it

[partnersatfazbear]

Last minute predictions, some art, my spoiler tags for the film

So I'm going to see the FNAF Movie in a few hours!! I will be marking my review with #FNAFmovie #FNAFmoviespoilers #spoilers so make sure you MUTE those tags for a bit!

I will be seeing the movie at least once in the theatre and on streaming, so I'll write my review once I've watched both (especially twice) and I'll type up a short like 'first impressions' before that, all in the same post.

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

This is my outfit for the movie! I was SO HAPPY my wife got me this Springtrap shirt because I LOVE this artist so much and I got to support them. I'll also be sporting my purple bunny ear bow, hopefully carrying Spring Bonnie, and my Tamagotchi Pix Party (purple, with Mametchi in his FNAF themed room! Of course I will have it on silent / in my wife's purse for the film itself. Remember movie etiquette people, don't be an asshole) I also have my plaid face mask but I shouldn't need it.. lol Also my wife put some of my Willry art on one of those phone pop holders! I needed a new one for my crappy phone that is more busted than Springtrap lol...

So my predictions, what you came here for...

I think the movie is gonna be fairly easy going and similar to the novels in the terms of the first batch of kids meeting their happiest day/being freed. I think a lot of the film will be Michael trying to keep Abby/Elizabeth in line as he tries to work his 6 hours. I imagine this trouble will summon Vanessa or Vanessa will be Michael's boss. I think we will get flashback footage to Fredbear's Family Diner but it will be minimal. I have been staying spoiler free, but I think Hank/(Maybe?Henry) will be more present than he has been in previous material, but not by much. Perhaps as Uncle Hank he took care over for Michael and Abby after William's disappearance. Who knows? My biggest fears for the film are my perception of William changing a lot... I have a very counter-fan view of him but I also think the sociopath fans make him is inaccurate. Scott's William is very much a madscientist with a flamboyaunt streak and that's what I wanna see! (I mean, he's still a serial killer, so he will be creepy, but I think in a very fun camp way ala 90's slashers, perhaps something closer to a 70's sci-fi mad scientist if we see more of Scott's personal influence) All in all, I think the first 30 minutes will focus on the status quo of the Diner, Fazbear's backstory, and Michael and Abby's relationship leading up to the night shift. The night shift itself will be a slow build for another twenty to thirty minutes, probably prolonged by Vanessa's inclusion and her explaining more about the history (from what I heard in the trailers) after the animatronics start to move. We'll get an action sequence kind of like Aliens where they learn how to animatronics work / attack and avoid them, Abby will probably be a huge PITA and get seperated, possibly running into Spring Bonnie and the dead kids. Michael and Vanessa try to rescue her, ultimately leading to a confrontation with William/Spring Bonnie that will tie into FNAF 2 (and based on what my wife told me about Bazz, this will be where we see the original 4 kids set free--I can't say how active Golden Freddy will be... I imagine if he IS Michael's brother, we will get splashes of him through the film and I don't think he will be freed at the end). The post-credits scene will show Springtrap and maybe a hint of the Toys for FNAF Movie 2. That's my prediction!! :)

[agentgrange]

What is some fiction outside of the mythos or DG that you look to for inspiration?

Excellent, fun question. I've been on a narrowboat trip through the countryside and hadn't had a lot of time to get my thoughts out so this is a great way to get back in the headspace actually. This isn't going to be the most coherent answer in the world but off the top of my head here's some ideas and recommendations in no particular order.

Philip K Dick-- I've talked about his work a bit before, less because of his works themselves (there's a lot there that's problematic and can be cut) and more because he really channels that bridge between Lovecraft's historic paranoia and a modern contemporary setting

Basically any works by Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Grant Morrison-- I feel like I don't need to say a lot about these authors, they really are the triarchy that serve as the prime example of how to distill complex occult principles into media. They really paved the way for how to take an abstract idea and shape it into fiction as a way to sort of upload an idea into another person's brain.

Rawhead Rex by Clive Barker and Les Edwards-- this graphic novel really was my gateway into horror as something more complex than the slasher / torture porn that was en vogue when I was growing up which had previously turned me off of the genre.

Strangehaven by Gary Spencer Millidge-- beautiful and inspiring labor of love about a small town subject to extraordinary circumstances

Mononoke & Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales-- Beautiful stories that give a window into how another culture expresses the same ideas as a lot of the works above

Satoshi Kon's movies to me really tap into the same energy as Philip K Dick but without a lot of the ugliness and much more beauty. Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are my two favorites to the point that I honestly get emotional just thinking about them.

I don't need to tell you about Akira, but I will absolutely recommend you don't discount it's more low brow contemporaries like Urotsukidoji and Wicked City for some fucked up exploitation anime.

Possession (1981) is genuinely my all time favorite work of surrealist horror and a cornerstone for a lot of my ideas

Society (1989) what if Possession was even more fucked up & grind house but also silly? :3c

Obviously X-Files, Twin Peaks, and True Detective are giant influences but I'd like to recommend a fourth "weird cop" show-- FX's Fargo. The original movie was already a true crime classic but the show really takes it to 11. Season 2 is probably my favorite for reasons that will be apparent for anyone who's watched it.

Lastly the bulk of media I regularly consume is usually actually non-fiction. History, particularly US history, is fucked up and clown shoes enough that it has all the inspiration you might need if you just have a good source that can present it as an interesting narrative. Last Podcast on the Left is a good gateway into this but there's plenty of other more "serious" sources that can still be just as entertaining like the podcast Blowback. Once you're able to put history into a narrative you can be entertained by and feel invested in it becomes a lot more interesting to read books from authoritative sources that help feed into that interest because you have an emotional connection to it instead of it just being a series of context-less names and dates.

[inkillable]

some thoughts re: laurie, allyson, and michael myers' overall character and existence being directly connected to The Final Girl™

i'm compliant with halloween 2018 & kills - so michael and laurie are not brother/sister for me. he simply saw her one day and became obsessed with her on first sight, which is the only thing draws him out of his house in 1978 and after her. and for me, this didn't happen because she was reminiscent of judith - it's because she was the opposite.

i think a lot about my heart is a chainsaw, and how it goes at length to speak of how the slasher cannot exist without the final girl, and that the slasher helps her transform into her complete, fully realized self. michael pursues laurie and draws her to act in violence against him because he knows they're equals - it's not a predator hunting prey. it's a dance. when he sees her in the window, he immediately recognizes that fact. the fact that he went home and was immediately drawn out of it because of laurie? yeah. why else would he have continued? likewise re: allyson.

and i think without having this Object of Obsession (lmao) michael has no standing as a character for me. it's what made halloween kills, beyond reading heavily into it re: michael possibly feeling the same level of obsession toward allyson hence not killing her on the 3-4 occasions in which he could have, feel extremely pointless and empty to me. not a huge fan of the idea of michael killing Just Because He's Evil, yk. like yes. he IS evil incarnate, but he's obsessive and an unstoppable force once he's dedicated to something - or someone. to what purpose? who knows.

the 2018 novelization implies he saw allyson running on halloween morning on lampkin lane and subsequently felt watched throughout the day. michael slowly picked off her friends, then killed her father, then her boyfriend, then her mother. it's all very, very intentional, and the cycle continuing albeit in a much more brutal manner because he's been lying in wait for 40 years. he's angry, repressed, and more violent and powerful than he was in 1978.

and so this is why allyson specifically is extremely important to my interpretation of michael and why i was heavily disappointed by ends. the only thing i really take from it is that michael was willing to work with corey to find allyson until he led him to where she is, which made him disposable to michael (hence why he killed him immediately).

all of this being said, i truly do think michael spent the 40 years he was incarcerated thinking about laurie. which is why, in the 2018 novelization, he still thinks of himself as a 21-year-old and laurie as 17, and the passage of time means nothing to him because he hasn't developed cognitively whatsoever. the only times in which he's truly been lucid ---- between the extremes of loomis drugging him into a catatonic state vs. sartain most likely not medicating him at all and endlessly enabling him ---- has been in pursuit of laurie.

considering it's been over 50 years since he killed judith--and he was literally in kindergarten when it happened--i don't even know if michael remembers killing judith at all. i don't even think 6-year-olds understand the meaning or permanence of death. so yes, i do definitely think by 2018, michael would not remember judith's death much if at all and is likely returning home (again) to look for her and look out her window (the compulsive need to look out her window, it's the mental illness innit love) vs. his original intent on recreating his first murder in 1978 with laurie's friends ---- but by that point, i think he returned home both to return to judith's room and also to lure allyson or laurie to him at that point.

[themovieblogonline]

"Evil Dead Rise" Premieres at SXSW to Mixed Reactions

Evil Dead Rise held its premiere at the SXSW 2023 Film Festival. The first film of the trilogy, The Evil Dead, as well as its 2013 remake, were so horrifically gory that they were actually banned in various countries including Finland, Ukraine, and Singapore. That should have been my first clue that I would hate this movie. Eight months, one Covid lockdown, and 6,500 liters of fake blood went into making the latest in the Sam Raimi “Evil Dead” series, this one entitled “Evil Dead Rise” and shot in New Zealand. Its Irish director, Lee Cronin, earned a Saturn award nomination for Breakthrough Director at Sundance, after all. I was game to sit through “Evil Dead Rise”. I'm a former active voting member of HWA (Horror Writers’ Association) and the author of three novels some might call “horror". This should be right up the alley of “The Color of Evil” author. Wrong, Snore-Snout. If 80% of a film’s success is casting, this one started out wobbly. Evil Dead Rise features a freakishly tall and extensively tattooed leading lady, Alyssa Sutherland. The tattoos may not have been real and the Australian actress/model’s height is listed as five feet eleven inches. I will ask you to take those comments about the film with a grain of salt. The synopsis read: “A twisted tale of two estranged sisters whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.” I reviewed films through the eighties when slasher films were all the rage. After about twenty in a row, I swore off the entire series of films that attempt to entertain you by thrusting a knife into someone’s throat (Kevin Bacon in one memorable cabin scene) or tried to gross you out by having projectile vomiting. This film has taken the worst of those gross-out concepts and amplified them. If that’s your thing, as it seemed to be for the man next to me who was laughing his ass off and thoroughly enjoying this movie, then go for it. If he hadn’t been very large (and blocking the aisle to exit) I would have probably left long before the end, but, thanks to Mr. Laugh-A-Lot, I couldn’t escape. Watching an eyeball fly across the room because of a severed head and someone else inadvertently swallowing it: gross. Buckets of blood in an elevator that bursts forth? Derivative of “The Shining” but with much less plot justification. During the Q&A for the film, Bruce Campbell was brought onstage, the original Ash of the first films, who raised $350,000 for the very first film that Stephen King championed and ended up playing a lead in subsequent films (but not this one.) As Campbell (“Ash”) was speaking, an apparently inebriated male theater-goer in the audience shouted out, loudly, “This movie effing sucks” (profanity euphemism inserted). Campbell demanded that the man be removed from the Paramount Theater, and he was. (It made all the papers.) You’ve been warned.       Read the full article

[graveyardbard]

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately so heres my reviews on the books I’ve been into;

Fangirl

I finished the first graphic novel for Fangirl. I have never related so much to a female protag. I feel for Cath, I really want to finish it! Maybe I’ll grab the novel from the library. I did say on twitter that I would like to purchase the books for my bookshelf but now I’m even more sold on it since it’ll cost me roughly $40 US. I think it’s kind of added a fire to my drive for writing again. I hope to get back to haunted and maybe post some original stories as well.

Blood Like Magic

I... Yall... I’m trying so hard with this one. I’m not even a full 3 chapters in and I feel like I’ve been socked in the jaw repeatedly. Now if yall don’t know this is a book about a black witch and her family, and their search for a missing friend and blah blah blah. SO up to the point that I’ve read has been. “I’m black, I’m very black, blackity black black.” Like every few sentences are about HOW black the mc is rather than it being a passive factoid. It feels somewhat devoid of concept right now because its focusing so heavy on the blackness. This is coming from a black person btw i’m not just pulling this out of my ass. I truly hope it gets better because I only have a few more days to read it.

I’m gonna throw the Libby app on my laptop and read it from there.

Next up to read;

My Brothers Husband

The Poet and The Flea

Carry On (I need to finish this one lol)

Tastes Like Candy (on order from the library its not in yet but its a horror/slasher novel)

[brightbeautifulthings]

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

"Men die because they make mistakes. Women? We die because we're female."

Year Read: 2022

Rating: 3/5

About: Lynnette Tarkington is a final girl. After surviving a gruesome holiday attack in which the rest of her family were victims, she's grown up a paranoid and over-cautious shut-in whose only contact with the outside world is a support group with other final girls, survivors of their own harrowing mass murders. When the other girls begin to go missing or turn up dead, Lynnette is convinced that they're being targeted by a new killer-- but even her fellow final girls don't believe her. Trigger warnings: character death (graphic, on-page), spouse death (on-page), parent/sibling death, cancer, hospitals, blood/gore, fires, violence, guns, abduction, needles/drugging, alcoholism/drug addiction, trauma, sexism.

Thoughts: I'm a longtime fan of Grady Hendrix, but I found this really underwhelming. In theory, I love the idea of final girls meeting together to support each other and kick some ass. In reality, it's a group of catty women who barely like each other, in-fighting and treating trauma victims like they're crazy. Generally, I like Hendrix's brand of tough, resilient female main characters, but this was not his characterization at its best. I didn't like any of the girls, and my favorite character was Fine, short for Final Plant. I did enjoy it more when they started to come together as a team, but it happens late in the book, and the end message falls a little flat.

There's usually some element of found footage in his books, in this case mostly articles and online commentary about the murder sprees and the film franchises that have sprung up around them, and I found that underwhelming here as well. A lot of it reads like a Fight Club brodude spouting bullshit theories about women and killers and what it all means (one of my only margin notes is, in fact, on one of these pages and says exactly that: "B.S."). I did enjoy Hendrix's acknowledgement section formatted as credits for a horror film though. Cute touch.

Given Lynnette's totally erratic behavior, the plot is all over the place. She doesn't have a plan for most of the book, and the majority of her decisions could charitably be considered Bad Ideas. There's an abundance of pointless travel scenes and an utterly weird detour into the death by cancer of one of the girls' wives, which feels at odds with everything else that's going on (not to mention completely out of place in a story about slashers). The only time I ever wanted more on any of the characters was when the Dream King was brought up. It's obviously a nod to Freddy Kreuger, and it seems to be kept purposely vague here, as the novel is otherwise placed in a realistic world.

This brings me to the most off-kilter thing about this novel. Hendrix has loosely based each final girl on a classic horror film (Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, A Nightmare on Elm Street, what looks like some mashup of Christmas horror movies like Black Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night, and I want to say... Leprechaun?). This makes for really fun backstories for any horror fan, but it's at odds with the running critique in this novel about how final girls are treated in real life. People have an unhealthy obsession with the survivors, the girls are often targeted again by people who worship the original killers, and there's a whole black market catered to things from their crime scenes.

I just can't figure out what Hendrix is trying to do with this. If it's a critique aimed at the way true crime is handled in popular culture, that's apropos; I wouldn't doubt a lot of that is true about horrific tragedies like the Manson murders. If it's a critique about the way slasher killers are taken up by popular culture, that's where I get confused because the stories his characters are based on are not real. Sure, fiction can and does influence reality, but we enjoy all kinds of things in fiction we wouldn't tolerate in real life. Half the time, I felt like I should be apologizing for liking (completely fake?) horror movies, and that's alienating for what I'm assuming is the target audience of this book: horror fans. Wrong audience for that particular message-- assuming that there is an over-arching message to this novel, and I'm not convinced. It comes over mostly as a lot of half-baked moralizing with an end theme that's unsupported by the rest of the events.

[dragonmuse]

so we already know how lucius' house feels abt horror movies but id love to know who else are horror haters vs horror enjoyers? and for the enjoyers which is their favorite subgenre

Ooooh fun. So you know my baseline, I love reading horror, like watching some kinds of it. Haunting of Hill House, both the original book, the black and white movie and the fucking amazing Netflix series are very much my jam. I'm meh on Stephen King, but absolutely love Clive Barker.

Lucius- No horror, no thanks, except that he does on occasion watch a slasher film because it's on. Not because he likes them, you understand. Sometimes things just fall in front of your eyes. He does read horror novels occasionally. It's his travel genre and lately he's been digging into Joe Hill's earlier work.

Pete- Loves them! All kinds of horror films. He likes other kinds of movies too. Sometimes if they get really really gory he might take a step back, but of course they never really scare him. Pete doesn't get scared! He might get a little more cautions. That's all.

John- Also loves them! But is very easily spooked. He can only watch them with other people and definitely prefers jump-scare style churned out sequels. He has seen a ton of slashers. More art house kind of horror actually scares him even more. Midsommer took about a week off his life.

Frenchie- No. Nope. Not interested, not even a little, thanks. Aliens and ghosts are real and you do not fuck with that shit. He will not hear that some horror movies are not about about those things, it's a blanket no. He has, however, seen all of Hannibal and really loves it. Will not accept that it's technically horror.

Jim- They would never admit it in a million years, but they saw Sixth Sense as a kid and it gave them nightmares for weeks. They absolutely will not watch a horror movie if they can figure a way out of it.

Oluwande- Not his thing. He will if other people want to see it and be okay with it, but he's not looking for it. He does like campfire ghost stories and urban legends though. When he was a kid, he read a ton of R.L. Stine. He and Roach have an inside joke about Mothman.

Stede- Loves a creature feature, the more vintage the better (he did get Alma started on them after all). Always had a soft spot for Swamp Thing. He saw the Ed Wood biopic several times. Many times. Let's not dissect that. He has a low tolerance for anything bloody, will not watch anything with torture in it. He's the Shirley Jackson fan of the bunch, but his favorite is We Have Always Lived in a Castle.

Eddy- Omnivore movie watcher thanks to years of insomnia in hotel rooms, so they've seen a lot of horror along with everything else. She comes in on the more 'no thanks' side these days. Once they bought Pan's Labyrinth on pay-per-view without knowing what it was and wound up watching it all the way through twice. They still think about it sometimes and aren't sure why. Maybe it's the eyeballs in the hands thing.

Alma- Has and will watch anything she can get her hands on. She especially loves monster movies because those are her roots, but she has branched out and is not deterred by subtitles. Vampire movies are probably her all time favorite and even though it's not really horror, her all time fave vampire flick is Only Lovers Left Alive.

Roach- Eh. It doesn't scare him, but he doesn't much like it either. Does absolutely love a cryptid though. He doesn't think they're real, but...what if they were, you know?

Izzy- He likes mysteries which can sometimes verge into horror territory. Also he likes Hitchcock a lot. He's got a black and white film sensibility all the way around. A lot of the mystery series he reads verge into pretty graphic horror like territory too, especially the serial killer stuff. He really liked the Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell series by Chelsea Cain.

Charlie- Cannot watch even a single minute, but can read the absolute goriest stuff imaginable. The book he mentions to Izzy in the latest chapter is real by the way. Dan Wells 'I Hunt Killers' series is supernatural Dexter for teens and it's great and Charlie loves it.

Buttons- Never watches them, but was once an extra in a zombie movie and they let him keep his costume so he has that in his closet. Also, he was once mistakenly spotted and reported as cryptid on a reddit forum.

[squadron-of-damned]

Is Ace Attorney a good series to play? Which entries do you recommend?

It depends on your definition of good. Also I am hardly an expert, because I've cleared only the first two games in the series.

Ace Attorney is humorous and absurd. It's also dated back to 2001, so expect the old games not to be keeping up with the times as far as the themes go; it can be casually cruel to you. It haphazardly mixes anime and video-game logic with impactful real life parallels. Just when you think you have figured it out and are prepared for the next gag joke about the power of police and how it controls everything without being able to find its own arse even when they have a detailed map and an anatomical atlas a guy literally named Dick Gumshoe punches you in the emotional gut by having a meltdown and crisis of what his own worth to the world is. And then he turns around and goes "But I'm the world's best chef, I can make instant ramen like no one!"

Be prepared to get frustrated over "that is in no way obvious or logical!" prepare to have a favourite character who is an ultimate idiot. (It doesn't matter who will be your favourite, everyone is an idiot.) Prepare for an interactive visual novel where you aren't given choices to actually influence the outcome. Prepare to shout "WHAT? HOW?" a lot. Really really a lot. There will be a point where you will ask yourself "Can this shit-show be any more of a circus?" and the game will turn around and show you that yes, yes it can. (Turnabout Big Top might not be the most amazing episode, but it has impeccable timing.)

It's not a bad game and it is, in my opinion, a highly enjoyable game. Alternatively if you don't want to take a part in the absurd clusterfuck of a roller coaster.

I personally can’t play it for long in one sitting; I get emotionally charged and need to walk the charge off. I’ve walked many many kilometres to get through Farewell My Turnabout and Turnabout Goodbyes. At least I stay fit. But with mindless hack-and-slashers or puzzle games or strategy games I don’t have this problem. For the same reason I’m also stuck on Disco Elysium (objectively a great game, also very depressing). On the plus side AA is mostly character driven, which is something I am very much into.

My suggestion is that you play/watch a let's play chronologically in order of release. At least the first three games (Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Justice For All and Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations) rely on each other that you know what happened in the previous installments. It also doesn't make much sense to play Ace Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney when you don't know who is that depressed guy in a beanie and what he's been up to previously. Ace Attorney Investigations will land flat when you didn't want to strangle its protagonist Miles Edgeworth with your bare hands for that autopsy bullshit he's pulled, not to mention meeting young Franziska. The Great Ace Attorney, which are set in 19th century are going to have you so lost without knowing the main series.

Start with the original trilogy of AA:PW, AA:JFA and AA:T&T, see how it goes. On Steam there are several good walkthrougs that spoiler the minimum of the story. Hug Wendy Oldbag for me, girl has shit luck. Also hug Maya. Dear gods, hug Maya.

[randomingoftherandomness]

What I am hoping for from Winner is King ( 烽火流金)

Okay, so at this point, let’s just be reals here, Word of Honor has kinda set the bar for me in terms of standards to expect from the slew of danmei adaptations this year. Granted, I know that there are some who think the way it was adapted was not up to their standards and that it could have been done better, please don’t bring it on this post because this is not the post for it.

In this post, I’m going to talk about  Winner is King (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑

Now, Sha Po Lang, the original novel, is for me one of the best things that I have read in a very long while. As such, I can be rather precious about what I am hoping to see come alive on the show and what I am hoping will be present in the portrayals I see. I know there are some concerns regarding the script and behind the scenes stuff - and they are very valid concerns that I feel too! - and with the recent announcement that instead of 45 episodes, we are only getting 40, I can foresee that there could be some rushed handlings of the very plotty nature of the source material and perhaps a sense that style can trump substance.

But as the actual show isn’t beaming right into our eyeballs just yet, here are some things I am looking forward to seeing in Winner is King and some things that I am crossing my fingers will make the final cut! 

Warning for some novel spoilers ahead. I’ll keep it under the read more.

Tagging @zhongwans because I said I would haha...

Things I am looking forward to:

The Changgu dynamic. I think it goes without saying that if the chemistry between your leads is a dud, the show doesn’t need to even pass Go, it can just shuffle itself off the board because it will be dead in the water. The Changgu dynamic has to be nailed; I need to see that self-doubt, that caring for the other but coming at it from the wrong way, that awkwardness that comes with trying to hold back the burden of your love and care because you don’t want to overwhelm the other... 

I need Gu Yun to be shamelessly sweet with his words and his coaxing of his Yan Wang from a sulk. I need Changgu saying “I hate you to death, Gu Yun” (pining)

Hu Ge Er. Let me just be clear here, I will cheer when she dies, but I hope that how they handle her characterisation will do her justice. There is no excusing the level of horrible that she is, but I hope that she isn’t written as a single dimension abusive piece of shit. Nuance, is what I am looking for. I need her to be the villain and the reason for Chang Geng.

I. NEED. THE. WOLF. ATTACK. SCENE. OUTSIDE. OF. YANHUI. TOWN. aka The First Time They Meet

There is legit no excuse for them to fuck this up, but the Steampunk elements. I would not know what else to say if they fuck this one thing up that is so integral and basic to the love of this IP. They cannot fuck this up. I am very sure I will join people in rioting if they do.

I need to see my Red Kites, my Heavy and Light Armours, my Dragons... I need to see the steam powered lamps, the iron puppets... I need them to get the Wind Slashers right. I need them to get this world-building right ok? I need to be dropped into this show and just swoon over just how accurate to imagination everything looks. Tencent does have the blessed ability to make very good looking productions, so on this note, I am assured. 

I need them to get the human element right; I need to understand why Gu Yun is the way he is, I need to know why the members of the Lin Yuan Pavillion will back Chang Geng and why they won’t. I need to know why Liao Chi would betray the Emperor. I need them to make me feel; I want them to make my heart hurt when Chang Geng’s heart is hurting, I want them to make me cry when Gu Yun is at his lowest and feels like he can’t go on. I want them to make me laugh, I want to feel for Shen Yi and Miss Chen’s awkward courting. 

On that note, I hope they get the Shen Yi and Gu Yun dynamic right too! These two are bros ok? Life and death, ride or die, best bros forever and I need, need them to nail just how integral these are to each other and how much they chose each other as family. I need the bickering, I need the protectiveness, I need the banter. 

I also need Chang Geng conspiring to marry Shen Yi off quickly so that he can have Gu Yun all to himself lol but lbr here if we can get an ending for this show from Tencent that even breathes the same atmosphere of air as satisfactory I will praise the heavens

The Bone of Impurity. I don’t know to what extent they will cover this or if they would do it the way the book does it, but this being an element that is integral to Chang Geng, I would be surprised if they dropped it entirely. So yeah, I am looking forward to seeing Chang Geng fretting and worrying and getting Bone of Impurity attacks.

Just the way that Gu Yun allows himself to be cared for my Chang Geng and how Chang Geng lets Gu Yun care for him

I want one acupuncture hedgehog scene please and thank you

I do want to see how they handle Chang Geng and his elder half-brother; how that dynamic unfolds will be something to pay some attention to, I think

Oh! That moment when Chang Geng kneels down in front of his brother and tells him to please bury any talk of his marriage and revealing to his brother the scars that he carries from his time living under Hu Ge Er’s roof (this is one brand of Whump that I promise you will hurt you very badly and it will be very good)

The argument at Jiangnan is something I really think will also make the final cut. It wouldn’t make sense to drop it seeing as this is a pivotal shift in their relationship where Chang Geng is finally holding his ground and not bending over backwards and believing everything his Yi Fu says. And this was the catalyst for their four year separation so yeah. I hope they do this justice.

I am not a betting person, but I high key bet that the scene between Gu Yun and the previous Emperor where he tells the man, “If you go, then I won’t have anyone left” and this being the moment that softens the dying fucker’s heart enough to give him a bracelet of beads that will be a major plot point towards the end

THE. BATTLE. SCENES.

Things I am hoping will happen:

At this point, speculation is that the point that tripped Winner Is King up for a recheck was the politics. This year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in China and rumour has it that shit be sieving thick and so a lot of shows are erring on the side of caution. 

Politics is the highest likelihood of a recheck but I am hoping that it won’t be dumbed down or watered down too much because the politics and the way things played out in the book was absolutely divine and I really want to see that court intrigue and scheming and interplay unfold.

I’ve mentioned in my most recent podcast episode that I am banking on this show to scratch my itch for a Nirvana in Fire level of plottiness and infinite craftiness of the characters and I am crossing all fingers and toes for that to happen because All! The! Characters! Hold! Their! Own! And I need to see that play out please I am not asking for much...

The final sea battle with the Pope. I wouldn’t even know where they would even begin to shoot that scene but this is something I would love to see happen.

The Bone of Impurity attack after Gu Yun sneakily left the capital. That was the scene that caught me and hooked, lined and sinkered me for Chang Geng as a character. Listening to this scene be brought to life in the audio drama has really hammered it home that if they make this bit into the show, I will watch and weep if it is done right. 

Cao Niangzi being Cao Niangzi. I am thinking it might not happen the way I want, but I just need them to get them right.

Ge Chen peeing on the enemy’s face. Please. I laughed so hard. I need this. It will be a balm to my soul.

Please, I need Gu Yun’s soul crushing flute playing like I need Gong Jun to always be absolutely horrible at singing because baby this is your niche and this is your charm own it work it

I also need Gu Yun stealing a bamboo flute from a 10 year old because he got jealous please and thank you

Any flashback of Chang Geng and Hu Ge Er before Yanhui Town

I want to see that moment that Gu Yun hears first hand from someone who had knowledge of what Hu Ge Er would do to a baby Chang Geng and the horrible abuse she inflicted on him, because up to that point, he only knew that something went on, but never to the extent that revelation wrought unto him

Any of the Bone of Impurity moments; any mention of it, any visual representation of it... Gosh, just the idea of having the Bone of Impurity made visual is just... Ugh. Yes. Please. The suffering.

[bonus] Things I wish will happen but will probably not:

The hot spring scene or a version of it

An implication that baby cannibalism was involved in the making of a Bone of Impurity

The scene where they get to the goddess doll (the description of it in the book was so bone chilling and if they do this I will have nightmares, I’m just warning you)

I really, really want a scene where, after being crowned Emperor, Chang Geng goes to the frontlines to reclaim the South and upon hearing that he was there, Gu Yun immediately panicked like he was about to be caught with his pants down doing something illegal when all he did was ordered his subordinates to keep news of his injuries from being reported back to the capital

Any flashback of Chang Geng and Hu Ge Er before Yanhui Town; especially when they were with the Barbarians

I want to see some version of Hu Ge Er realising what she has done to her own child and to Chang Geng

Okay this got super long but what are you guys looking forward to seeing when Winner is King hits our screens? I’m looking forward to creating content for this fandom when it hits ೕ(˃̵ᴗ˂̵ ๑) In the meantime, sound off on what you’re expecting and what you’re maybe wary about!

[shewholovestoread]

Fear Street Trilogy Review

Beware, spoilers ahead.

I love horror movies but good horror movies are so hard to come by. Fear Street grabbed my attention as soon as they released the first trailer, it looked like a call-back to the slasher films of old, back when they were still good. And the best part was the apparent presence of lesbians, count me in!

Fear Street is based on the books by the same name by R. L. Stine, a lot of us remember Stine for another horror classic, Goosebumps. The Fear Street novels were aimed at older audiences and were way more bloody than Goosebumps- lots of teenagers dying. The films don’t adapt any particular book but rather the tone and rough setting and I think that works to its advantage.

The Setting:

Fear Street is based on the fictional town of Shadyside, the poorer and more unfortunate twin of its sister-town Sunnyside. Sunnyside is sunny, wealthy and where nothing bad ever happens. Shadyside in contrast is poorer, the homes more run-down and where, every few years, some resident snaps and goes on a murderous rampage, killing their own friends, family or whoever they can get their hands on. There are those who believe that Shadyside is cursed by Sarah Fier, a witch who was hanged in the 1600s when she cut off her hand and used it to curse the town.

Fear Street Part 1:

1994 functions like the introduction and set-up for the trilogy. It introduces us to the characters, Deena (Kiana Madeira), Sam (Olivia Scott Welch), Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.), Kate (Julia Rehwald) and Simon (Fred Hechinger). They unwittingly trigger the curse when they stumble across the bones of Sarah Fiers, soon killers are chasing them, killing-machines powered by the curse and who can’t be killed. Deena, Sam, Josh, Kate and Simon have to put aside their differences and work together to survive the night.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978

1978 opens with the survivors of 1994 going to C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), the lone survivor of the Camp Nightwing massacre. It provides insight into the massacre that saw dozens of Shadyside kids being killed. 1978 takes us back to the day leading up to the bloody night. We meet the Berman sisters, Ziggy and Cindy (Sadie Sink and Emily Rudd respectively), Alice (Ryan Simpkins) and Tommy (McCabe Syle) When an axe-wielding murderer starts butchering the camp residents, Cindy and Alice, while trying to escape, stumble into the cave system that runs under the camp and discover Sarah’s hand and that the only way to break the curse is to reunite the hand with her body. However, they are unable to break the curse when they realise that the body is not buried where they thought it would be. Alice, Cindy and Ziggy are killed by the cursed murderers with only Ziggy being revived thus being labeled the lone survivor. In the present day, Deena and Josh dig out the hand from where Ziggy and Cindy left it, when Deena reunites the hand with the body, she sees visions of Sarah Fiers, leading us into the third and final film.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666

1666, the year it all started. We see the events play out leading up to the hanging. Deena is inside Sarah’s body, seeing and experiencing her life as if it were own. We learn that it was never Sarah’s curse, but in fact it was the Goodes who had made a deal with the devil, securing power for themselves (their descendants are the mayor and sheriff in 1994) Sarah Fiers was just the scapegoat. Every time someone saw a vision of Sarah, she was trying to show them the truth and un-dead killers hunted them to keep them from exposing it.

The films work individually but their impact really hits home once you’ve watched all 3. Leigh Janiak crafts such an intricate story and links 3 time periods, weaving them through each other seamlessly. With 3 films, she also has the time to invest in these different time periods and the characters that inhabit them.

The story, both in terms of individual films as well as the trilogy as a whole, is engaging and engrossing. It keeps the audience on their toes and the edge of their seats, waiting and dreading as the bodies pile up. Janiak also grounds the story so that it feels real even as the characters are fighting off un-dead killers, adding to the nail-biting tension.

There’s plenty to admire for a horror film buff, from the Scream reference in 1994, to Friday the 13th in 1978 and The Witch (or VVitch) in 1666. There’s also a good amount of gore to be found along with some really inventive ways of killing, who knew bread cutters/slicers could be so menacing.

There’s so much attention to detail in terms of costume and production design that you really feel like you’re in 1994, 1978 or even 1666. All of these work to draw you in as the viewer, adding to the authenticity on screen. The clothes and places feel lived-in. The song choices are amazing with popular hits from 1994 and 1978, the soundtrack definitely elevates the visuals. The original score in 1666 was absolutely gorgeous, especially Deena and Sam’s theme.

The sequence of the films with 1994 being the first, followed by 1978 and finally 1666 was a great choice with each film revealing a little more of the puzzle till all the pieces are revealed in 1666. It keeps the tension alive and keeps the characters and the audience constantly guessing. It also allows Janiak to sprinkle just enough subtle clues that become apparent when rewatching the films.

The characters are one of the best things in the trilogy, they are so well written, and I mean that for almost all of the main cast which is rare. One of the best things that Janiak does is repeat actors, especially the principle cast. For instance, a lot of actors we see in 1994 and 1978 appear in 1666 playing different roles but with a similar dynamic. It helps tell the story without worrying about too many new faces and worrying about whether or not the audience will be able to keep track of them. The return of old faces also ensures that the audience is already a little invested in them and their well-being.

Small side-note: I really appreciated that there was no sexual violence. It always worries me when I start a horror show/film and it was such a relief that they did not go that route. There is a lot of violence and a lot of people and kids die but it’s always just slightly campy enough that keeps it from being genuinely disturbing.

One of the things that always irk me with slasher films (especially the old ones) are how white they were, no characters of colour and if there were any, they always died. There were also no queer characters. Fear Street undoes that beautifully, all of our main characters are outsiders, they are people of colour, they are queer. In another film, they would have been nameless characters, among the first to die. Here they are the heroes. I loved all of them and I hated that Alice, Kate and Simon died, to be honest, I expected the core group to survive, Kate especially.

Fear Street is also unapologetically feminist and Janiak does this without it being too obvious. The central conflicts in the story are between women (sister/ friends/ ex-girlfriends) but they also band together and fight for each other. It’s worth noting that most of the core relationships are between women (Deena-Sam, Ziggy-Cindy-Alice, Sarah-Hannah) and those are not coincidences.

I loved how gay this trilogy was, Deena and Sam’s love for each other was the driving force and was at the heart of the story. Even in 1666, Sarah’s crime was not so much witchcraft as it was daring to love someone you’re not supposed to and fighting back against the proprietary nature of the men who sought to control them. Sarah and Hannah loved each other fiercely and we see that same love reflected hundreds of years later in Deena and Sam who fight for each other relentlessly. I also appreciated that Deena and Sam were exes instead of a new relationship. It meant that they already had history, they shared a familiarity and comfort with each other that a new relationship would have had to build onscreen.

The Fear Street Trilogy is one of the best horror trilogies I’ve seen in a while, each film is consistently great and delivers gore and violence coupled with immense heart. It has one of the best queer relationships I’ve seen on screen and spoiler alert, they get a happy ending. I’m sick and tired of lesbian women dying or separating because of realism. Damn realism, give me happy women loving women and who live through their traumatic ordeal. Watch Fear Street for them if for nothing else. Now excuse me as I prepare to rewatch the trilogy.

[nitrateglow]

Halloween marathon 2021: 5-7

See No Evil

See No Evil is about a newly blinded woman named Sarah (Mia Farrow) staying with relatives in their remote English estate. Through a chance encounter, Sarah’s uncle unwittingly insults the dignity of a mysterious psychopath, who proceeds to butcher Sarah’s entire family while she’s on a date. Sarah returns home to a house of bodies she cannot see and before long, the killer comes back as well, intent on collecting incriminating evidence from the lonely house. Once she senses danger, Sarah tries to run for help, only to find herself wandering a hostile landscape without her proper bearings.

I always say you’ve never really seen a movie until you’ve at least seen it twice. On a cold viewing, you experience the story and on rewatch, you can better appreciate the tools used to contribute to a project’s success or failure. The second time around, I better appreciated See No Evil’s visuals, which are certainly effective in linking the (sighted) audience with the blind protagonist’s horrible predicament.

The camera is often kept low to the ground, almost as though it’s cowering in a corner, nervously observing the proceedings. The filmmakers also opt to shoot Farrow from the front and in close-up when she’s on the move, preventing the audience from seeing where she’s going, thus intimately linking us with her fear and disorientation.

Unfortunately, the cinematography is about all I have a greater appreciation for. My old problems with this movie remain: Sarah is an underwritten, reactive character and the movie is so sadistic in piling indignities and torments upon her that it ceases to be enjoyable. There is no reversal where she turns the tables and fights back “final girl” style, and her moments of resourcefulness are scant. Because her character remains a static victim, the movie also becomes pretty tedious, little more than a 90-minute catalog of misery.

As a mystery-thriller, the script is at least twisty, cleverly incorporating clues to the killer’s identity throughout. The scenario is slow-going—it takes about fifty minutes before the central chase gets underway—but at the very least, the atmosphere is strong throughout, emphasizing isolation and autumnal gloom. I suppose what makes this movie so frustrating is how skillful it is. The camerawork, atmosphere, and mystery are all compelling. Just something vital is missing...

Au Secours!

Directed by the legendary Abel Gance and starring comedian Max Linder, Au Secours is best described as a French surrealist riff on Buster Keaton’s The Haunted House. Linder bets that he can handle an hour in a notorious haunted house—should he call for help before the allotted time, he loses. Novel camera tricks and bizarre characters assail Linder at every turn, but he takes them all in stride. For the most part, this is amusing in a 1920s surrealist way.

And then things get weird. Like uncomfortable weird.

Linder gets a call from his wife, who’s being menaced by a grotesque thug in her bed. The viewer is pressed with tight, harrowing close-ups of Linder’s panicked and tear-stained face, stuff that looks like it should be in a horror movie. For real, it does NOT come off as comedic overreaction, it’s weirdly unnerving, especially since the film has been so frothy up to this point. I won’t spoil the final twist, but it’s just—what the hell??

It really has to be seen to be believed.

Black Christmas

This was a rewatch. I went from liking this movie to loving it. Black Christmas (the 1974 original-- I refuse to watch either remake) is about a group of sorority girls stalked by a killer during the holidays. Despite being an early slasher movie, the focus is less on gore and more on old-fashioned suspense. The film only benefits and remains quite intense.

I love a thousand things about this film, but what I appreciate most is how the filmmakers went out of their way to make sure you care about the characters before they start getting picked off. So many slashers just present you with generic dumb teens as the victims, but Black Christmas makes them all human and funny. In fact, the abundant comedy throughout the movie only augments the horror, making it more effective when characters are put in danger.

In fact, this movie differs from later slashers in other key ways too, like in the characterization of protagonist Jess (played by Olivia Hussey). Jess is the “final girl,” but she breaks the mold in clearly not being a virgin-- in fact, she’s pregnant out of wedlock. She is not an outsider among her peers but one of the leaders, taking on an almost maternal role when needed (in fact, there’s a lot of mother-based imagery associated with the character, such as the pieta-style position she takes on with idiot boyfriend Peter in her arms towards the end of the film).

Despite not being explicitly significant to the plot, the Christmas atmosphere adds a lot to the movie as well. The majority of the action takes place at night, lit only by the soft, colorful glow of Christmas lights.The wintry chill is palpable (especially when poor Jess is at the door, shivering while she listens to carolers), emphasizing the isolation of the characters in later scenes. Along with The Nightmare Before Christmas, this is a film you could watch during Halloween or Christmas, and it would not feel out of place.

One more thing-- the killer Billy is creepy as hell. He was creepier on rewatch than the first time, mainly because I started paying more attention to his ramblings about “Agnes.” They are so, so disturbing and imply a lot of horrible things about Billy. I like that the film opts to keep him mysterious, never sharing some tragic backstory to explain his behavior. As a result, the last scene is as chilling as Halloween’s, making Billy appear like a boogeyman figure, a personification of never-dying evil.

[olderthannetfic]

Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it. 

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

[theshapeofhorror]

Comparing and contrasting Halloween 2′s Michael Myers to Halloween 1978′s

After re-reading this: warning. Snark about / towards Halloween 2 ahead.

Halloween 2′s portrayal of Michael is an oddity to me. I constantly see other sequels trashed for their portrayal of Michael, yet never this one - even though, from a writing point of view, this is really where the train started to derail from its tracks. The writing of Halloween 2 is an absolute mess and Michael is no exception to that - don’t get me wrong, I have crazy amounts of nostalgia for this movie and I love Dick Warlock as Michael Myers, but if I’m being honest, this portrayal fails to capture any of the original movie’s fascination and quite simply doesn’t work as a good continuation of Halloween 1978′s Michael.

(There is one scene I’d call an exception to that, but it can’t carry the rest of the writing / portrayal / movie on its own.)

Let’s get into it.

1. The good - The costume

One major reason why I think this portrayal is quite well-liked amongst fans is that, unlike a lot of the other sequels, it got Michael’s looks right. It’s honestly super wild to me that I have to cite this as a positive - this is a character who doesn’t talk and gets defined by his looks and body language. Insane that for most of the sequels they failed to get this basic yet crucial aspect of the character right. But anyway... 

All snark aside, Michael does look pretty great in this movie. I chose that screenshot of a side-view specifically to highlight the following: they actually had someone play the character whose physique and height fit Nick Castle’s from the original movie. The mask is the same, if grittier/dirtier (which works, considering he rolled around in the grass after getting shot and all), and also big points for continuity - you can actually see the bloody holes in the coveralls where Loomis shot Michael at the end of Halloween / start of this movie. The coverall looks good, too. 

Based on looks alone this portrayal doesn’t disappoint and actually happens to be one of my favourite in the whole franchise. (I’m especially partial to that scene where Michael stabs Laurie’s empty bed.)

This movie, quite different than Halloween 1978, isn’t afraid to give the viewer full-on frontal shots of Michael, starting right from before his first kill less than ten minutes into the runtime all the way up to the end. In a way I feel this detracts from the tension, but I can see why they did it - they probably thought “Hell, the viewers know what he looks like anyway if they saw the first movie, might as well”. 

2. The good p.2 - Throwbacks to Halloween 1978

I don’t consider this a necessity, but some easter eggs / throwbacks are always appreciated (by me). Halloween 2 in parts does a pretty good job of capturing and recreating some of those iconic moments.

The first 15-ish minutes of this movie in general are, thematically, almost a 1:1 of Halloween’s intro scene; we get a long POV shot of Michael lurking around and watching Loomis (Judith), then Michael picks up his weapon of choice, then the first kill (stabbing with a knife). Though this is also where Halloween 2 quite diverges from the beaten path in some ways, in giving us a full-frontal of Michael and the mask and a close-up of his eyes.

3. The bad - Different way of killing

Objectively, if I strictly view this movie as a slasher, this isn’t a negative, and I think most people don’t take it as such. I sort of don’t either - the kills in Halloween 2 are visually impressive, creative, and have some nice gore. (I love the syringe kill, for example - the lighting / visual ambience in that scene is awesome.)

However... they don’t fit the character of Michael as established in Halloween 1978. In that movie Michael kills for gratification, because he gets something out of it. The kills are drawn-out, have long build-up with extended stalking, and all relate to choking the victim in some way or form. Michael only chokes one character in the entirety of Halloween 2, and that guy doesn’t even die from it. There are no vocalizations either. That’s not to say that Michael can’t change his motivations for killing or change his character - but Halloween 2 takes place during the same night as the original movie.

It’s simply unbelievable that Michael, who, at the end of Halloween 1978, still tried to go for choking Laurie despite her having escaped and injured him, would suddenly throw all of that out the window and stab Alice’s throat mere minutes after the end of the first movie. Unless...

4. The bad p.2 - Different motivation for killing

... they went back and changed his whole motivation for killing.

Which they did. And it’s flimsy writing at best.

So, Michael’s motivation for killing in this movie is getting to Laurie. He’s somehow connected to the idea / spirit of Samhain now and wants to end his family line, or so the movie (and later sequels) make it seem. Most of the other victims kick the bucket because they might end up between him and her in the hospital. As for why he kills Alice and some of the others that technically wouldn’t have? No idea. I guess maybe he still enjoys killing, but really, I only assume that because of the context of Halloween 1978. This movie doesn’t do anything to prove / hint that he does, aside from the hot tub scene which feels almost out of character compared to the rest of the portrayal.

5. The bad p.3 - Don’t fix a thing that isn’t broken

A rule that Halloween 2 doesn’t give a damn about. This movie doesn’t even try to continue Halloween 1978 in this regard. Michael was after Laurie from the start because they’re siblings now, even if neither him nor Laurie ever even interact with that tidbit. It might as well not be in Halloween 2, but it changes a lot for the original movie. You get a certain sense of retcon when you look too closely, something I have never enjoyed in any form of media.

Though it has to be said that I neither hate the idea of a more supernatural Michael nor the sibling plotline itself. Some other entries to the franchise explored the second one to decent / great effect (RZ1, H20) and the Thorn trilogy (Halloween 4-6) is my absolute guilty pleasure among slasher movies.

6. The bad p.4 - Robo / Zombie Michael

This isn’t a knock on Dick Warlock as an actor at all. Some of the earlier Michael scenes of this movie show that he can give a convincing portrayal of the character.

He has the stiff spine and lack of shoulder movement.

The confidence.

And the fluidity. (I like the oddly fitting description of Michael from the otherwise questionable ‘78 novelization: his gait was quick and graceful for a big man)

Really, what happens mostly in the last act of the movie is something I personally think should be blamed on direction and writing - Michael chasing Laurie through the hospital at a snail’s speed isn’t only based on acting. The script determines that he walk over very slowly and swing at her legs when she climbs up the pipes, the script determines he swing like a zombie at empty air after Laurie shoots his eyes. 

Nevertheless, and whoever is to blame, Halloween 2 features zombie!Michael.

As well as robo!MIchael. (Despite how good he might look in that scene)

And it just doesn’t fit anything we saw in that first movie.

7. In conclusion

Michael Myers in Halloween 2 is a very, very different character than we saw in Halloween 1978. He has different motivations, kills for different reasons, no longer threads the line between human and supernatural but instead full-on crosses it; he moves differently, kills differently. He fails to be a continuation of the original Michael; he’s more his own character than anything else.

Halloween 2, apart from the hot tub scene, doesn’t manage to capture the fascinating “evil, fucked up psychopath threading into supernatural territory at times but still displays decidedly human behavior and quirks” nature of the character of Michael Myers; it feels empty and flat compared to the original movie, and it paved the way for the absolute mess that some of those later sequels / portrayals of Michael would turn out to be.

However... it is a portrayal that’s easy to simp / thirst for, as Dick Warlock happens to be a very attractive man who looks great in the Michael Myers costume. And, also, the hot tub scene exists. :)

[that0negayslytherin]

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

i was tagged by the lovely @aziraphalescrowley, thank you so much ;-; <33

[rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!]

I’ll be focusing mostly on my Venji fics, but also talking a little bit about my original work at the end! For those of you who don’t know I’m currently in my first year of an MFA program for creative writing, so this has been a HUGE year in writing for me!! :D (Also I did more than 5 sorry hehe <3)

Good Things Fall Apart

If you have followed me for any amount of time you’ve probably seen me yell about this fic at some point!! This is my biggest LV WIP and one of the largest writing projects I’ve undergone in my life. It started as my take on S2 as many multi-chap fics did immediately following S1, but I feel like it’s really grown into something more distinct from that. It’s heavy on themes of reconciling sexuality with faith as well as self-forgiveness and learning to let the people in your life help you. There’s Lorde, there’s summer vibes, there’s Mothman, there are perhaps too many subplots. Only 2 chapters remain to be written and posted, so check it out if you’re looking for a big ol WIP to keep you occupied!

Fresh Hell

This was written as part of a Halloween-themed fic fest and is one of my favorite things I’ve written this year, fic and otherwise. It’s a Love Victor slasher AU that’s loosely based on the vibes and dark humor of the show Scream Queens, and while it was supposed to be multiple parts but fairly short, it ended up reaching pretty solid novella length. If you like college-aged Venji, thrills and gore, and a relationship tested by a psychotic serial killer, this one’s for you.

if we make it through december

Another fic fest entry, this time for Christmas/the Winter holidays. In this one, Benji and Victor are both in their mid-twenties; Benji own a struggling bakery and Victor is trying to climb the ranks at the accounting firm where he works, and a chance encounter leads to a couple of not-so-chance encounters and so much holiday fluff. It’s your pretty typical Hallmark-esque bakery AU so if that’s your jam I highly recommend this one!!

A Brief History of Benji Campbell and Birthdays

While this is technically a spin-off from GTFA, it can be read completely on its own as well! This is a oneshot I wrote for Benji’s birthday that chronicles a few of his notable birthdays through the years. Something we’ve felt as a fandom is that Benji was lacking in backstory in canon, so this was my attempt at writing some for him! A bit sad throughout but a fairly quick read with a happy and Venji-heavy ending <3

Starved, Sanguine, Smitten

Another fic I wrote for Halloween, this is a vampire!Benji AU. Honestly, I feel like I could leave it at that because what more could you want?? OK but actually this one is Vic/Benji dual-POV and has a dark but comedic tone (think Teen Wolf vibes); I’m also planning on eventually writing a follow-up!

Burned/TPQ

Burned is the name of my first ever completed novel, which has technically been in the works for about 10 years now! It’s the first in a planned series called The Psych Quartet and it’s basically about a gay amnesiac superhuman who’s trying to solve the mystery of his mother’s death. It features a school that’s hiding secrets, a gay love triangle, and the other main characters include a disaster bisexual plant dad, a lesbian TA who loves gossip and astrology, a hardass loner chick who carries around a sword, and a misguided orphan sadboi. You can read more about it here, and also follow me on my writeblr (@wordsbynathan​​) if you’re interested in more of my original writing!!

Short Fiction!

Speaking of original writing, I also got much more into short fiction this year, which is very new for me! I wrote a couple of really fun stories, my two favorites being Honeysuckle and Smoke and Black Squirrel, which again you can read about on my writeblr. I’ve sort of fallen in love with the form and will definitely be writing more short stories in the future as well <3

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OK that was a lot but I love talking about writing so much ;-; I am going to tag @comradesalazar​ @benjislatteart​ @lovelyvictor​ @ducklingcabal​ and @callmevenji​ with absolutely no pressure <3