#whose interview is very effective horror

[dogencool]

Been slowly reading through Studs Terkel's Working and every time I pick it up and go through a new person's story I tend to get devastated all over again

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #25 – The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

The fact that I put in a hold for this is basically a triumph of marketing. I saw Jackson Bennett doing an AMA to promote it, which reminded me that a) he existed and b) I liked the one book of his I’d read. So 20 people in the hold queue ahead of me latter, I finally got a chance to give it a try. Shockingly, this actually worked out incredibly – this was easily one of the most enjoyable reads I’ve had all year.

The book follows Din, a recently promoted Assistant Investigator mainly notable for the incredible invasive grafts and suffusion that left him with grey skin, dyslexia, and a literally edetic memory. The last bit is the most relevant, as his incredibly eccentric Investigator uses him as combination Watson and CSI, running around collecting all the evidence and conducting most of the interviews so she can make her grand deductions in peace.

The case in question is the murder of an esteemed and well-regarded commander through the unconventional method of a tree sprouting in his chest cavity and growing several feet over the course of as many seconds. As things are wont to, the investigation quickly spirals out of control, dragging the investigators to a logistical hub days from the Seawall protecting the empire from leviathan attacks and implicating true imperial grandees.

So, this is a murder mystery. An extremely high concept one, full of leviathan-blood enhancements and supernatural contagion and a whole society structured and organized around the constant struggle to stave off apocalypse, but ultimately still very much an intentionally tropey murder mystery. Every clue is mentioned as Din notices it, always before it’s relevance to the plot is revealed. There’s an extended reveal where the Investigator just lays out the whole mystery as she’s’ deduced it and baits the villain into doing something stupid. One of the supporting cast is revealed to have been one of the killers all along. The entire thing occurs with a ticking clock meaning the investigation has only days to find an answer. It’s all there.

To be clear, this is not at all a complaint. Maybe it would be if I read more mysteries, but as it is the whole set of tropes is a very rare treat for me, and it’s all executed very well. And I adore a well-done drawing-room reveal scene. Not that I did, but I appreciate that I could have tried to outguess the plot and figure out the whole mystery ahead of time from the clues given (instead of just noticing most of them and having a vague sense of where people were headed – though I def thought the governor’s second paying a weird amount of attention to Din was a threat and not the love interest). The whole thing was just a joy to read, even if the characters were all a bit exaggerated and archtypal, and the ending was a bit too neat and tidy for my tastes.

The setting isn’t exactly novel – creepy quasi-horror rich biopunk settings and horrible kaiju whose corpses warp the world around them being harvested and processed for raw materials became fairly well trod ground at some point – but it’s hardly generic or the expected standard either. It’s very well-executed, and the murder mystery conceit basically requires each new relevant addition to the story being clearly explained as we meet it, which was handled with surprising grace/without devolving into multipages reams of exposition too often.

It was very amusingly obvious (and then confirmed in the acknowledgements!) that the entire subplot about ‘preservation boards’ (bodies to ensure there’s no unintended side effects of growing/processing weird biopunk reagents in a given region) being abused to obstruct and delay vital progress to – literally – raise property values for the landed gentry, was directly inspired by Jackson Bennett having read a lot of articles about malicious abuse of environmental protection legislation in the US.

Politics-wise – I mean it’s a conceit of the whole story that the empire is essentially, if not benevolent, then at least necessary and well-intentioned. Riven with corruption and patronage networks, warped for the interests of the landed elite, full of negligence and despair – but at it’s core a good thing to work for, and receiving awards and mandates from on high is a good thing. The issue is the boyars and not the tsar, all that sort of thing. Which works for the story, but I’ve at this point read enough SF/F that really digs into the whole empire thing that the lack of subversion there took me almost by surprise.

Not that the empire’s all nice – the grafted specialists with superhuman strength or eidetic memory or perfect reasoning skills all die after a decade or two of service, and that’s just the price of keeping things running. A major subplot of the whole book is Din trying to hide the fact that his enhancements misfired slightly to make him functionally dyslexic (an issue, when your main value to be a perfect living archive). Not entirely sure if the series is really going anywhere with the whole disability theme beyond the very basic ‘the empire will only survive if it makes it possible for EVERYONE to contribute what they can’ beat it hit in this book – regardless, the fact that Din spend the entire book wondering what had been done to her boss’s brain that e.g. she spent most conversations blindfolded to help her focus, and while doing so can identify most forms of text on a page by touch, only to find out that no she’s just autistic was very funny to me.

[judasiskariot]

✨Writing Interview Tag Game✨

The 🖤judasiskariot❤ round - thank you lovely delightful @pinkberrytea for the tag 💕🌸

When did you start writing?

Already enjoyed writing creative essays at school. Wrote my first fanfiction (yugioh) as a teenie at an anime/fandom website. Got really into it, with writing fanfiction about a RPG I were playing/writing at the very same time.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

Maybe I read more smut than writing it. Because it seems I always need to put up huge story before smut, so it makes sense, cause the ghost of dumb it is ooc comments are still in my head.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

I guess not. Both ways (I just often say I am a film noir or Tolkien type cause I often get lost in description or heavy in inner monologue. We could be in Mordor....or only went down the hill, same length. So happens with me. (So gods no never ever would I say I can write like Tolkien!!!! I just mean by that, that I do not keep some things sharp and short when maybe needed, as I do prefer in real life)

I am a huge Dante Alighieri and Vergil fan, compare me to them and I will always love you 🤣🤣

I just feel like a bardic soul 💜📜🪶

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Desk is always occupied. Also is there gym, man sleeping medieval storage cave (The Manc Ave, right Terry and Korvo? 😉Dig old bicks)

Hardly wifi connection in there. I have no stationary pc, only cheap small laptop (it is hard to be a bard xD) so writing on the couch.

I have reading and writing candles (my luxury; even I should not)

Love to write in my bard poetry book outside in the nature 🌳🏞️🏕️☀️

What's your most effective way to muster up a muse?

🤷‍♀️

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

DRAMA OVER BLOODY DRAMA

I am the drama queen.

Love some angst and emotional damage; make it harder than it needs to be.

But also horror, gore, love and smut.

Never surprised.

and dumb sassy joking; could write forever funny crosstalks like chat. Would anyone read that? Than I would write all my ideas, ALL! So efficient and quickly. Sooo...I get lost in my Tolkien surroundings 😅🙈

maybe i write more cheesy and theatrically than I thought 🤔

What is your reason for writing?

SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT, RIGHT?🤷‍♀️

😄

No. I am not skilled in any other divine arts and I guess that's the only thing I can call on. I like it. I always liked it. I can create something, that's nice. And I've written so much RPG and FF as a teenager, I messed it up and I hate that I didn't do it for over 10 years now. Why abandon the thing you were good at, had fun with, made progress while practicing? So that all progress seems lost and you have to start from zero?

I'm glad I've started making progress again, maintaining what I once set out to do, and learning to be better.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

I'm incredibly happy with every single comment, even if it's just a smiley.

" You really did read my thing? How great is that!?!?" 😍🤩

But comments with a specific part or a line that they liked or whatever, their specific thoughts on certain parts are incredible. As a writer, I need feedback to know if I'm doing well and if I'm on the right track. Do others know what I wanted to say? Does it come out right? Otherwise I cannot improve.

If someone shares their exact first thoughts, what they thought about certain passages while reading, then the work pays off. 😍😍🤤🤤

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

As someome whose writig is good? 😅🤷‍♀️🙈 someone they can talk to. some nerdie partner in crime.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

I have no clue. No one told me. I guess maybe having drama ideas and writing the inner struggles of characters.

How do you feel about your own writing?

Also here not much confidence in my own writing.

I got the two beasts in me: GOD YES! BEST WRITING EVER. THIS IS SO GOOD! THEY HAVE TO LOVE IT! CAN'T WAIT FOR REACTON TO THIS!🤩

Reread it: what da fuck is this?! 😠 I thought this was good?! I have no clue where I wanted to go with that 🤷‍♀️

BUT I can also be proud, reread it and think "I did this. I created that myself. It may be not the best, just small and silly and cliché, but I created it myself!" Be proud, all of you writers!! 👏🏻🫵🏻💪🏻 We are forgotten so often.

Do people criticize paintings for being ooc? Well..I guess assholes being assholes in every aspect of life 😅😆

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

I do it cause I want to. But of course the external motivation is important. Lack of comments and feedback makes you quit, mean people make you quit. You post cause you want to share your joy with others, hope they enjoy it too. When they do not, it can be bitter.

But still for me I guess. But non the less, I pick up things I think others will like (but not troping or so, writing things I dislike myself cause they are gaining online likes and so on; not in that way never) When I know a certain mutual/friend is reading the thing, I put easter eggs/insiders in it, they should get; things I think they might like and makes them smile. If someone would request some things they would like to happen/read, I would totally pick it up when possible. Shared happyness is happyness doubled.

thanks for the tag lovely

All my muts, please keep tagging me. I just keep forget doing it, when I can't do it right away.

And spinning head prevents me from that. I see what nonsense I write in the DMs and in every lil post a huge amount of spelling mistakes; I can't do it better at the moment; so embarrassing🙈

I've had a hectic time, sorry, but I love things like that and always smile when I get tagged😃😘 (and sometimes I'm a little unsure about telling something about myself. The urge to disappear completely one day and the next day I urge to overshare. Plus bad experiences with some folks😅🙈 )

I tag @nihil-ism @damadisangue

@sorceresssundries

@mercymaker

maybe you guys want to ramble a lil bit

[check out their works (if you like 😘)]

[brokehorrorfan]

Silent Night, Deadly Night Collection will be released on December 13 via Lionsgate. The Blu-ray set includes the third, fourth, and fifth installments in the Christmas horror franchise. It’s the 28th installment in the Vestron Video Collector’s Series. 

1989's Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out! is directed by Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop) and written by Rex Weiner. Richard Beymer, Bill Moseley, Samantha Scully, Eric Da Re, Laura Harring, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Robert Culp star.

1990's Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation is directed by Brian Yuzna (Society) and written by Zeph E. Daniel (Society). Maud Adams, Tommy Hinkley, Allyce Beasley, Clint Howard, and Neith Hunter star.

1991's Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker is directed by Martin Kitrosser (writer of Friday the 13th Parts III and V) from a script he co-wrote with Brian Yuzna (Society). William Thorne, Mickey Rooney, Jane Higginson, Tracy Fraim, and Brian Bremer star.

All three films are presented in high definition with English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. Devon Whitehead designed the cover art. Special features are detailed below.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out special features:

Audio commentary by film historian Jarret Gahan

Interview with actor Bill Moseley

Interview with creative consultant Steven Gaydos

Interview with executive producer Richard Gladstein

Trailer

Still gallery

It’s a very bloody Christmas after Ricky Caldwell, the notorious “Killer Santa Claus,” awakens from a six-year coma with one thing on his mind: murder.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation special features:

Audio commentary by director Brian Yuzna

Our Man Ricky with Clint Howard

Interview with writer Woody Keith

Interview with effects artist Screaming Mad George

Interview with executive producer Richard Gladstein

Trailer

Still Gallery

A reporter’s investigation into a mysterious death leads her into the clutches of a cult that’s chosen her as its new queen.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker special features:

 Audio commentary by director/co-writer Martin Kitrosser

Interview with producer/co-writer Brian Yuzna

Interview with actor Brian Bremer

Interview with effects artist Screaming Mad George

Interview with executive producer Richard Gladstein

Trailer

Still gallery

Mickey Rooney stars as a toy maker whose creations display some very human – and deadly – tendencies.

Pre-order Silent Night, Deadly Night Collection.

[bulkyphrase]

Halloween Fic Recs Part 1: Novel-length Stories

Happy October! Here are some scary and/or supernatural stories for your Halloween reading pleasure! This year the stories will be grouped by length, starting with the longest ones - that way you have plenty of time to read them before the end of the month!

Next week - novella-length

Liberate Tutemet Ex Inferis (Save yourself from hell)

words by Terrenis, art by Queerily_kai (@kaiwrites) (Explicit | James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson | Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death | 55,989 words)

Summary: In the Year 2060, Stark Aeronautics and Space Administration's prestige project, the “Event Horizon”, was on its maiden voyage with the newly developed Arc Reactor Gravity Drive, only to disappear beyond Neptune’s orbit without a trace. Now, seven years later, a transmission from the eighth planet is received, along with a very disturbing audio record. Tony Stark, who not only wants to redeem his reputation, but also needs to know what happened on the ship, goes on a mission with the enhanced Inhuman ragtag crew of the Singularity to salvage his baby. Little do they know that this is literally going to be a trip to hell… Or that totally unnecessary Event Horizon AU that no one asked for. But I’m going to write it anyway.

Dying for a Drink

by tsukinofaerii (Explicit | Steve Rogers/Tony Stark | Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death | 61,836 words)

Summary: Tony takes up an offer that has tragic effects, and Steve is forced to handle the outcome. But Tony's business isn't done yet, and so Steve finds himself struggling with vampire politics and his own sexuality.

Everything else below the cut!

Blood and Other Drugs

by WilmaKins (@wilmakins) (Explicit | Steve Rogers/Tony Stark | No Archive Warnings Apply | 175,010 words)

Summary: Tony Stark disappeared from public life twenty years ago. He exists as a name without a face, the anonymous director of the Avengers and the inventor of the worlds best tech - all done from the workshop that he never leaves. Or so they say.Steve isn't interested in the rumours. He doesn't care why Stark hid himself away. He *only* wants to meet with Stark so that he can get Bucky's arm fixed. Well, until he meets Tony Stark. Then maybe he cares... Vampire!Tony Stark AU.

I haven't been able to read as many long spooky stories this year, so here are some of my favorites from last year

Demon Seed

by SucculentHyena (Mature | James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 92,478 words)

Note: ❤️Sci-fi body horror masterpiece my beloved❤️

Summary: [Transcript 00:11:48] MS: You were with him the most throughout the course of events, both before and after. Your account could shed light on something we may have missed. JB: What difference will that make? MS: It could make all the difference. Captain Rogers’ case is unprecedented, he’s the most intact victim we’ve ever recovered- JB: [laughing] You call that intact? -Excerpt of Interview with Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes regarding the Incident.

For Whose Love I Rise and Fall

by Yeetmeaway (Mature | Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 195,570 words)

Note: ❤️Post-apocalyptic vampire romance novel my beloved❤️

Summary: In 1943 Hydra unleashes a deadly virus in its quest to create a new world order-- one that turns its hosts into vampire-like creatures. 75 years later, humanity is on the brink of extinction, protected only by the hunters of SHIELD. Natasha has already lost so much to this-- they are fighting a losing battle and everyone can feel it. But, for the first time in years SHIELD has hope, the possibility of a cure. What else will she give to bring an end to this nightmare?

Dragging You Down

by AraniaArt, Kamiki (@araniaart, @shipperhipster) (Explicit | James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings | 81,016 words)

Note: ❤️Involuntary demonic transformation my beloved❤️

Summary: In a divergence from the canon storyline, Hydra experiments with occult legends of a more demonic bent. When Bucky is captured at Azzano, something more insidious than a knock-off super soldier serum is done to him, but the full effects take some time to completely set in. Bucky struggles with building impulses and an increased libido while trying to keep his interest in Steve from boiling over and ruining Steve’s chance at the life he deserves.

A Long, Lonely Time

by asktheravens (Mature | Steve Rogers/Tony Stark | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death | 58,567 words)

Note: ❤️Spooky ghost murder mystery my beloved❤️

Summary: Steve returned from the war injured in body and mind- and able to see the dead. At loose ends and desperate to get out of New York City, he accepts a fellowship through the Stark Foundation and retreats to a quiet lake house on the grounds of the Stark Mansion. He's supposed to be there to paint, but he quickly realizes that the house is more than he bargained for. Anthony Stark died here a decade ago, but was it an accident? A suicide? Or a murder? Obadiah Stane still lives in the main house just up the hill, and the past casts a long shadow. When Tony's ghost begins appearing to him, Steve becomes more entwined in the dangerous mystery surrounding his death. Even worse, he finds himself falling for a man who died a decade ago... Features lots of ghosts, murder, secrets, and supernatural revenge. Also Thor and Rhodey.

[ajanik12]

COM-321-A: Blog 3- Director Review

James Wan is a highly recognized director, producer, and screenwriter in the film industry. Wan is a Malaysian-born Australian who was born on February 26, 1977. He has gained most of his prominence for his work in the horror film genre. Wan's directorial debut came with the cult classic Wan’s directing career sparked in 2004 with the release of "Saw", which became a successful film franchise. He mastered his work with horror and gained even more recognition with films like "Insidious" and "The Conjuring," both of which became extremely successful horror franchises. Wan has a history of utilizing skillful story-telling and extreme atmospheric tension throughout his films, all which has earned him an extremely devoted fanbase. Beyond horror, he has also directed action films like "Furious 7" and delved into producing various films of other genres. When it comes to his track record in the supernatural and paranormal aspect of horror films, any James Wan horror film will surely keep you on the edge of your seat.

The following is an interview with James Wan following the release of “The Conjuring 2.” Wan explains that he has a deep love for the horror genre, and makes a shocking statement that he finds horror films much like comedy films. He explains that when he watches the audience of his films, they find themselves screaming at the scary scenes, and then actually laugh at themselves for being so scared. It was very interesting hearing Wan make this connection between horror and comedy.

The following is a review by Chris Coffel on film schools rejects. “Saw isn’t the film that helped coin the term “torture porn,” but it is the film that is often credited with ushering in a new era of extreme horror that eventually led to that lazy label. Saw caught critics of the day off guard. While many appreciated what the film accomplished on a small budget, particularly the special effects, Saw was criticized as a cheap attempt at shock value and a poor imitation of Se7en. The screenplay, frenetic editing choices, and exaggerated performances were also the source of much scorn. The film managed to overcome the mixed critical reception to spawn a franchise that is currently 9-films deep. And the legacy has continued to grow. While the film still has its detractors, it is widely considered a modern masterpiece in horror circles, praised for its use of a single location, inventive death scenes, and stylistic violence” (Coffel, 2021). Overall, this review of Wan explores how he was able to revamp the horror genre and start a successful film franchise.

The following is a review of “Insidious” by Owen Gleiberman on ew.com. Gleiberman says “Insidious is a haunted-house movie that has some of the most shivery and indelible images I’ve seen in any horror film in decades. Yes, it’s that unsettling. Directed by James Wan (Saw) and produced by Oren Peli, the auteur of the Paranormal Activity films, the movie is about a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) whose home is plagued by the usual clanks, growls, and playfully sinister disturbances. Then one of the family’s young sons lapses into a coma. It’s his spirit that’s been hijacked, overtaken by ghosts who have a way of showing their creepy, smiling, old-fashioned nightmare faces at just the right moment to goose you with anxiety. Lin Shaye plays the psychic exorcist who can see into their world, and her fluky cornball intensity lifts the film into a realm of menacing excitement. Wan is better known for severed limbs than subtlety, but here he reaches back to the stately spookiness of the 1962 low-budget classic Carnival of Souls and adds a touch of early David Lynch to conjure up a vision of hell that is terrifying in its dreamlike banality. Like most haunted-house films, Insidious is a contraption, but it’s one that won’t let go of you” Gleiberman, 2011).

Wan has been extremely successful at creating a sense of unease within the audience of his horror films. Wan wants the audience to be on the edge of their seats throughout the entirety of his films. By utilizing these supernatural entities and monsters, Wan has never failed to do. His unique utilization of jump scares, eerie sounds, and dark camera lighting throughout his films really create an aspect of dread and terror, both which are main components of supernatural horror films.

The following is a review of “The Conjuring: The Devil Made me do it” by Alison Willmore from The Vulture. She says “The Devil Made Me Do It isn’t directed by Wan (who did return for the 2016 sequel), but by The Curse of La Llorona’s Michael Chaves, who cribs capably from Wan’s approach to timing and misdirection without coming up with anything good enough to rival Lili Taylor being lured into the basement to play hide-and-clap with a ghost. It’s not Chaves’s takeover that makes this new film feel like it runs off the rails — it’s the choice to shift focus from a haunting to a murder. Possession has always been a part of the Conjuring films, with demon-controlled characters attempting to kill their children or themselves in climactic moments before the Warrens intervene. But in The Devil Made Me Do It, Arne Johnson (Ruairi O’Connor) actually manages to murder the landlord of the apartment he and his girlfriend, Debbie (Sarah Catherine Hook), rent — though, as the film would have it, it’s all due to the demon he absorbed during the exorcism of Debbie’s younger brother, David (Julian Hilliard). The Warrens are too late to stop the killing, but they do approach Arne’s lawyer and offer to help her prove that he’s not guilty by reason of demonic possession” (Willmore, 2021). In this review, we see a reoccurring element of hauntings and ghostly beings in the film. Wan is notorious for having some sort of possessing demon in his horror films.

[drew-pinard]

Blog #5

The film movement I choose to explore for the course of this semester was the Ozploitation film movement. “Ozploitation films are exploitation films – a category of low-budget horror, comedy, sexploitation, and action films – made in Australia after the introduction of the R rating in 1971. The year also marked the beginnings of the Australian.” It’s very much like those films of which were frequently shown in grindhouses. For those who don’t know what grindhouse movies they are are films shot for and screened at grindhouses characteristically contain large amounts of sex, violence, or bizarre subject matter. One featured genre were "roughies" or sexploitation films, a mix of sex, violence, and sadism. Quality varied, but low budget production values and poor print quality were common.

Grindhouse literally got its name from the fact that it consistently is pushing out movie after movie. Grinding them out. So, all and all Ozploitation films are like the Australian version of exploitation films. One of the most well-known directors of that movement and whose films I will focus on discussing in this blog entry is none other than George Miller, who if you don’t know is the director of the Mad Max franchise which has spawned four films since 1978 and with plans for another to be released soon. Filming for the first Mad Max took “place in and around Melbourne. Many of the car chase scenes were filmed near the town of Little River, northeast of Geelong.” The film was also made a mere budget of only 350,000 which is almost nothing. George Miller stated how he called the filming of Mad Max “guerilla filming” kind of like that of guerilla warfare. Miller stated in an interview that “while $350,000 in 1979 is roughly $1.8 million in 2020, it's still a pitifully small amount of money for a feature film. To cut costs it was a case of 'all hands-on deck'. Both Miller and producer Byron Kennedy would personally sweep the debris off the road at the end of the day after a stunt scene.” If you look at the critical response of Mad Max, it was very good.

Mad Max currently holds a 90 percent Tomato meter score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 61 reviews. The audience score is slightly lower at 70 percent, based on over 140,000 ratings. With that said there are still some critics who don’t seem to enjoy it as other have. With some pointing out that the Millers story behind the film is relatively basic, which is very fair. You’re not going into a Mad max film to be awed by amazing dialogue and character development, maybe you are but there are defiantly other better options out there if that is what you’re going for. Overall, it seems that many of the critics of the movie appreciated the dystopian atmosphere for it put a new spin on an action movie that wasn’t very popular at the time. What was amazing to see though, was the critical reception for Mad Max: Fury Road, which is George Millers directorial return to the world and this film visualizes his new approach to the film. This film according to many critics seems to be George Millers best film in the entire Mad Max franchise.

One source noted “the film was praised by critics for its direction, writing, action sequences, musical score, technical aspects, and performances (particularly those of Hardy and Theron). It won Best Film from the National Board of Review and was also named one of the top ten films of 2015 by the American Film Institute.” Fury Road premiered in Los Angeles on 7 May 2015 and was released in Australia on 14 May. It grossed $415.2 million at the worldwide box office, making it the highest-grossing Mad Max film. The Guardian noted how the film was “like Grand Theft Auto revamped by Hieronymus Bosch, with a dab of Robert Rodríguez’s from Dusk till Dawn.”

Another critic noted how From its very first scenes, “Fury Road” vibrates with the energy of a veteran filmmaker working at the top of his game, pushing us forward without the cheap special effects or paper-thin characters that have so often defined the modern summer blockbuster. A prequel, Furiosa is set for release on 24 May 2024, with Miller returning as writer and director. George Miller's response to critics is actually very interesting. Whereas most directors you would assume to try and avoid the critics and just focus on what you have made, Miller appreciates the audience’s response and believes they are the ones who tell you what the movie is about. Stating in one interview how Look, you don’t really know what you’ve got. When you make the film, you know what you hoped to accomplish. It’s audiences who tell you what you’ve got. Sitting in the cinema with paying audiences, feeling their response, then I believe it.

“'Mad Max' Director George Miller: The Audience Tells You 'What Your Film Is'.” NPR, NPR, 8 Feb. 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/02/08/465989808/mad-max-director-george-miller-the-audience-tells-you-what-your-film-is.

“Mad Max: Fury Road Review – Tom Hardy Is a Macho Mr Bean in Brilliantly Pimped Reboot.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 May 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/11/mad-max-fury-road-review-tom-hardy.

Tallerico, Brian. “Mad Max: Fury Road Movie Review (2015): Roger Ebert.” Movie Review (2015) | Roger Ebert, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-max-fury-road-2015.

Thompson, Anne. “George Miller Looks Back on 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' and Forward to More Furiosa.” IndieWire, IndieWire, 23 July 2019, https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/george-miller-mad-max-fury-road-interview-best-action-movie-of-decade-furiosa-sequel-1202156053/.

“Mad Max (1979).” ‎Mad Max (1979) Directed by George Miller • Reviews, Film + Cast • Letterboxd, https://letterboxd.com/film/mad-max/.

[rainyblue]

1/12/23

Here with a couple more thoughts on a couple more books.

Idol, Burning by Rin Usami

This was a short novella about a young Japanese girl whose oshi, which I take to basically have the same meaning as bias in the k-pop fandom, gets sucked into scandal after scandal and the effects that this has on her, as a die-hard fan.

I remember taking a class in college about East Asian pop culture and for my final project, I decided to write a short story illustrating the toxic effects of fandom in k-pop, but I think Usami's done it better in this one. It was pretty crazy reading this novella and recognizing my old self in Akari. In life, she is pretty slow to learning new things and isn't the best at school, but in her fandom, she's something of an authority on her oshi, Masaki. Following updates on his life and his career consumes her to the point that she's unable to focus on her own life, as his trials and tribulations and successes become her own.

I loved the way this book examines the dark side of fandom and how obsessive and toxic these parasocial relationships between fans and idols can become, while at the same time remaining sympathetic toward both. It's unhealthy for anyone to be obsessed with an idol in the capacity that Akari is obsessed with Masaki, but the story also hints that Akari may have a learning disorder of some kind, and she feels isolated, helpless, and abandoned living in a world that doesn't feel designed to help her thrive. When she's fangirling over Masaki and writing blog posts with updates about him, we get to see how perceptive and emotionally intelligent Akari really is. It's the one time she can feel a sense of control and feels the most like herself.

On the other hand, we also get glimpses of Masaki's life as an idol and the object of Akari's and so many others' attention and adoration, and how the scrutiny over his many scandals is slowly crushing him as commentary on the difficult lives of Japanese pop idols.

Interesting, though at times I felt the "plot" meandered a bit. 3.75/5

Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven

I've got some thoughts about this one. I think it'd be best if I laid it out with some bullet points:

What I Liked:

The audiobook narration: This book was meant to be read via audiobook. The way the story is told is in the form of a series of interviews of survivors from the Fantasticland disaster as well as other authorities such as the National Guard, corporate leaders, etc. I think if I were to read this as a physical book, there wouldn't be much to separate the individual characters in my head as there are no physical descriptors and each "voice" for the most part sounds the same. But the narrators really knocked it out of the park here, doing all these different accents and changing up the rhythm and cadence of each characters' voice that made it both easy to distinguish them and the book more fun to listen to. Well done.

Overall, a very interesting concept. Several synopses tout this book as a Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale, and I would say that is pretty accurate in terms of the overall storyline and the level of violence and gore. A bunch of young adult theme park employees get trapped there during a hurricane and, despite having enough food and supplies to last it out, quickly devolve into savagery, forming rival tribes that repeatedly brutalize each other.

The format was interesting. Like I said, it is told in the form of individual interviews, making it kind of like a Blair Witch-esque found footage horror story. Normally, this is not my cup of tea as I find this documentary-style of storytelling to be very simplistic, a little too much "telling" and not enough "showing," interrupts my ability to get immersed. But I gotta give credit here to the narrators, again, as they did a fantastic job of making the interviews feel authentic and engrossing, and eventually the interview format grew on me.

What I Did Not Like:

What social commentary? Repeatedly, the book ponders the questions of how and why these young adults turned on each other so quickly. It's mentioned throughout the book that the park had enough emergency food and supplies to last 400+ employees a month or two in case of an emergency like this, and in this case, apparently there were fewer employees than expected since some didn't show up, meaning that that there was more than enough for all, so trying to survive shouldn't have been a factor influencing the employees' (who are frequently referred to as "kids" even though they are all 18+ and majority adults) descent into savagery. So why all the killing? The author tries to do some social commentary here about how the younger generation is obsessed with social media and technology and how they completely fall apart if you take their phones away, and it just... completely misses the mark? It's such contrived reasoning and reeks of "kids these days with their MyFace and SpaceBook" energy. Having no access to the internet in a world as connected and reliant on online communication as today's society can feel truly isolating and have real consequences, and having no access to the outside world during a natural disaster is even more anxiety-inducing, and the author sidesteps all of that in favor of "kids become savages when they can't check Instagram" commentary.

The plot feels contrived and implausible. There's absolutely no way a theme park (that supposedly has the same prestige and success as Disney World and Universal Studios) would force their employees to stay onsite during a hurricane to "protect the park from looting." Early on in the book, they talk about how if a disaster like a hurricane hit the park and pandemonium broke out, they could lose millions of dollars from looting. So their solution is to *checks notes* make a bunch of college kids stay onsite to fight the looters? Just get your damn popcorn buckets insured against theft and let the employees evacuate normally.

Idk, I just feel like all throughout reading the book, I was waiting for one of the characters to suggest or ponder that maybe there was something supernatural about Hurricane Sadie that made everyone go Mad Max so quickly, but the author still tries to chalk it all up to a bunch of kids going crazy without their phones. Yes, some of it is tried to pin on the villain Brock Hockney being some kind of charismatic psycho who convinced the pirates to kill, but that doesn't explain why the others formed rival gangs too.

Or maybe the book could have benefitted from some stories of what the employees' relationships with each other and management was like before the hurricane hit? Some hints that maybe there was ill will already being sown between employees of the different sections from before the hurricane that just got compounded by the disaster?

Personally for me, the real horror in these kinds of Lord of the Flies type of stories isn't in the blood and gore, but in the psychological aspect of it. It's scary being stuck in an abandoned theme park and not knowing who you can trust or not knowing when someone is going to turn on you, and the slow reveal of that madness is where the true horror lies. But the speed at which the kids turned savage left no room for that slow terror to build, and whatever climax the tension was building up to, it did not pay off.

Still, I like the audiobook narrators. 5/5 for the audio, 2/5 for the story, so let's call it an overall 3/5?

Up next: Infinite Country by Patricia Engel, then Orpheus Girl by Brynne Rebele-Henry.

Also, I had to DNF The Ones We Burn. I was about 50% through and couldn't get through it. Probably because I was in the middle of reading it when my cousin passed away suddenly, and I was listening to it non-stop to keep myself distracted only to find myself too distracted to pay attention to the story. I've decided to set it aside for now and try again once I'm in a better headspace.

[rawnion]

David Breskin and A. Watson’s Cover Story on Tim Burton

In David Breskin and A. Watson’s cover story “Tim Burton” from the Rolling Stone magazine, Breskin introduces and describes Tim Burton to the audience through an article that speaks about Burton’s first noteworthy works, and also sheds light on his personality and childhood through the interview portion of the article. Breskin describes Burton as an oddball, but all the while praises him for shining like “a bright flashlight in a very dark place [that is] the grim factory of Hollywood”, where through his work, it seems that he is “angrily spitting something sweet”. I believe that is a great and accurate description of what Burton does, in less than five words. But before his fame, Burton worked for Disney on the animation assembly line in which he described as ‘traumatic’, hating being glued to the animator’s desk. What he wanted was to pursue directing. Luckily, it was at the same studio that Disney gave him more freedom to direct his first animated short, ‘Vincent’ (1982). Some of his other directed works that followed included ‘Frankenweenie’ (1984), ‘Batman’ (1985), ‘Beetlejuice' (1988), and later on, ‘Edward Scissorhands’ (1990), which was considered one of his best movies by some critics. It was deeply personal film to Burton, as it represented the younger version of himself in his teenage years, not having been able to communicate effectively with others. In the interview, Burton opens up about how difficult and lonely his childhood felt growing up. He shares that he felt out of place and maladjusted to society, and that all throughout his life, he had struggled with depression in one form or another. He had always had edgier tastes; with a fascination for horror, monsters; punk, heavy metal, and gothic music genres; as well as death and tragedy. He believed that embracing “that kind of dark catharsis, … dark, dramatic, depressed, sad, moody thing” was healthier than to be going around society pretending to be well-adjusted all the time.

I chose this article because Burton’s films had always resonated with me, and I wanted to learn more about the artist as an individual, behind his art. And like him, I too, feel drawn to darker and more morbid themes, because I find them stimulating. The article, unfortunately did not touch on his stop-motion film ‘Corpse Bride’ but growing up, that had been my favourite stop-motion film of his. I also liked ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’, and the special effects of the monsters in ‘Beetlejuice’.

I was not familiar with this article until recently. From it, I learned new things about Burton’s childhood and upbringing that I otherwise would not have found out about, had I not discovered this article.

I really liked the interview portion of the article because the transcription gave me a sense of how Burton talked in real life, but I also did not like the fact that the punctuation and grammar was altered. Although I do understand the editor’s choice, whose intention is for readers to understand what he is actually thinking, without his “Veg-O-Matic style of verbalization” getting in the way of his meaning. It was mentioned that he “struggles to make sense of himself, starting four or five sentences for every one he finishes and dicing his words into bits”. But it was put more euphemistically when Breskin says that Burton thinks visually, and how everything “he says[,] carries with it the burden of translation.”

What could be gained for the readers of this article, is that hopefully they could receive some sense of comfort that it is okay to feel our feelings, and to be dark, dramatic, sad, or moody when we have to be. Burton is one to bask in his raw emotions, and I think that is inspiring when we live in a society where we feel pressured to be or act ‘okay’ or happy all the time, and where it is stigmatized to express those emotions. I hope the article encourages people to face those parts of ourselves that we feel the need to hide and cover up, and grow to be more compassionate and accepting of those parts. I think this article definitely sheds some light on the topics of mental health and loneliness.

Links and sources used:

Breskin, David, and A. Watson. “Tim Burton. (Cover Story).” Rolling Stone, no. 634/635, July 1992, p. 38. EBSCOhost, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=9207130071&site=eds-live&scope=site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Burton

[fearlessinger]

I watched the Mark Oshiro interview and noted down the rrverse-relevant passages for y'all

(I would rec watching the vid in its entirety if you have time to kill; Mark is super charming and thoughtful, just like I remembered them from their "Mark Watches" days, and says a lot of interesting stuff abt writing and the publishing industry in general)

– Rick had the full outline ready: major arcs & themes figured out already

– there’s stuff in the outline Rick had been planning for years, he had it sitting for a while

– Rick sought Mark out specifically, then Mark was asked to “audition” by writing the first 3 chapters that would be later seen by various ppl including some of the Disney publishing ppl. Mark decided to tweak/change some stuff. Kept 90% of the outline changed a 10%. They felt they needed to figure out/visualize things that weren’t in Rick’s outline, that were left unspecified there (the way Mark talks abt it, it feels like it’s mainly worldbuilding/lore stuff they are talking abt). Mark says Becky Riordan was very helpful with this, she knows the canon deets better than Rick.

– Rick wanted Mark to write first draft bc even tho the story is Rick’s, he wanted it to be told through an authentically queer perspective, with the nuance and sensibility that he as a straight man doesn’t feel capable of understanding/conveying.

– There’s things in the final draft that Oshiro decided to leave to Rick bc they felt Rick knew the characters better

– Oshiro talks abt the reactions of the ppl who have read the quasi final drafts and how one of the Disney editors said the book was for rrverse fans “like Spiderman No Way Home was for spiderman fans”, meaning this is a book that respects the identity these characters have built through the prev books and the history they have while still managing to take them somewhere new, which is exactly what Mark was trying to accomplish, and which they say “Rick is deeply thoughtful about. He cares a lot.” – Mark wanted to give these characters their due and also (said in a lighthearted but also clearly committed & passionate manner) make the gayest Percy Jackson book ever published

– talks a bit about an upcoming horror YA book of theirs and calls it “the fist dual pov book I’ve written”. The book comes out march 2023, it seems likely Mark’s started working on this before the solangelo book so… probably means nothing re: whose pov solangelo is told from?

– Mark thinks Rick has the ability to inject levity in extremely dark moments without lowering the intensity/stakes, which is essential when writing for middle graders while still wanting to take the story to emotionally challenging places, but very few authors can do it as well and as effectively (I AGREE)

– there’s a scene in the solangelo book where Mark kinda wrote themselves into a corner bc it was too scary and they realized it might not fly for the intended readership “and then I thought of the silliest way to deflate the terror” and they are very proud of that bc they feel they captured the quintessential Riordan tone. Bc the PJO books are great and complex and telling important stories etc but quote: “they’re fucking weird as hell” too.

– Mark actually only started reading the saga in 2018. Read them all in a week and was like the Lady Gaga meme. At the time they feel like they were only missing TON (if this was 2018 they were missing TTT too so either they are misremembering the year they read them in, or that they were missing TTT too). They reread them all when TON came out, and twice again last year.

– “the best time to start reading Percy Jackson is always.”

– They know it’s cheesy but their fave char from the moment he was introduced was Nico, and there’s a big reason for it that Mark can’t talk about bc it’s stuff that is in the solangelo book. It’s plot spoilers. Mark will be free to say it when the press tour for the book starts. (This seems contradictory tbh but it is how Mark explains it)

– They like Annabeth and Grover a lot

– “My favorite surprise character that at the beginning I was like ‘ehhhhh’ and at the end I was like ‘I would die for him’ was Apollo.”

– after reading series 1 Mark was like how are there 10 more of these where can this story possibly go, and then Rick did “a thing” (no spoilers) in series 2 that made the narrative world bigger, and then he did “another thing” in series 3 that concerns the character of Apollo, “and Apollo grew on me so much”, he goes “from the most annoying character on the face of the planet who judges everyone around to ‘all of these demigods are my children and I will murder for them’, it’s just incredible to watch that whole thing happen. Which means I also love Meg, and I love Meg’s growth too”

– there’s another character too that Mark loves and feels deserved the spotlight so they put them in the new book. “We don’t talk abt them enough” (Mark’s kinda joking as they say this, tho the love feels sincere)

– Mark’s godly parent would be Hades whom they liked in the PJ books but also always liked in general and share an aesthetic with

[puttingherinhistory]

“Covid has unleashed the most severe setback to women’s liberation in my lifetime. While watching this happen, I have started to think we are witnessing an outbreak of disaster patriarchy.

Naomi Klein was the first to identify “disaster capitalism”, when capitalists use a disaster to impose measures they couldn’t possibly get away with in normal times, generating more profit for themselves. Disaster patriarchy is a parallel and complementary process, where men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance, and rapidly erase hard-earned women’s rights. (The term “racialized disaster patriarchy” was used by Rachel E Luft in writing about an intersectional model for understanding disaster 10 years after Hurricane Katrina.) All over the world, patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus to reclaim power – on the one hand, escalating the danger and violence to women, and on the other, stepping in as their supposed controller and protector.

I have spent months interviewing activists and grassroots leaders around the world, from Kenya to France to India, to find out how this process is affecting them, and how they are fighting back. In very different contexts, five key factors come up again and again. In disaster patriarchy, women lose their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed on to the frontlines, unprotected, to be sacrificed. 

Part of me hesitates to use the word “patriarchy”, because some people feel confused by it, and others feel it’s archaic. I have tried to imagine a newer, more contemporary phrase for it, but I have watched how we keep changing language, updating and modernising our descriptions in an attempt to meet the horror of the moment. I think, for example, of all the names we have given to the act of women being beaten by their partner. First, it was battery, then domestic violence, then intimate partner violence, and most recently intimate terrorism. We are forever doing the painstaking work of refining and illuminating, rather than insisting the patriarchs work harder to deepen their understanding of a system that is eviscerating the planet. So, I’m sticking with the word. 

In this devastating time of Covid we have seen an explosion of violence towards women, whether they are cisgender or gender-diverse. Intimate terrorism in lockdown has turned the home into a kind of torture chamber for millions of women. We have seen the spread of revenge porn as lockdown has pushed the world online; such digital sexual abuse is now central to domestic violence as intimate partners threaten to share sexually explicit images without victims’ consent. 

The conditions of lockdown – confinement, economic insecurity, fear of illness, excess of alcohol – were a perfect storm for abuse. It is hard to determine what is more disturbing: the fact that in 2021 thousands of men still feel willing and entitled to control, torture and beat their wives, girlfriends and children, or that no government appears to have thought about this in their planning for lockdown. 

In Peru, hundreds of women and girls have gone missing since lockdown was imposed, and are feared dead. According to official figures reported by Al Jazeera, 606 girls and 309 women went missing between 16 March and 30 June last year. Worldwide, the closure of schools has increased the likelihood of various forms of violence. The US Rape Abuse and Incest National Network says its helpline for survivors of sexual assault has never been in such demand in its 26-year history, as children are locked in with abusers with no ability to alert their teachers or friends. In Italy, calls to the national anti-violence toll-free number increased by 73% between 1 March and 16 April 2020, according to the activist Luisa Rizzitelli. In Mexico, emergency call handlers received the highest number of calls in the country’s history, and the number of women who sought domestic violence shelters quadrupled. 

To add outrage to outrage, many governments reduced funding for these shelters at the exact moment they were most needed. This seems to be true throughout Europe. In the UK, providers told Human Rights Watch that the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated a lack of access to services for migrant and Black, Asian and minority ethnic women. The organisations working with these communities say that persistent inequality leads to additional difficulties in accessing services such as education, healthcare and disaster relief remotely. 

In the US, more than 5 million women’s jobs were lost between the start of the pandemic and November 2020. Because much of women’s work requires physical contact with the public – restaurants, stores, childcare, healthcare settings – theirs were some of the first to go. Those who were able to keep their jobs were often frontline workers whose positions have put them in great danger; some 77% of hospital workers and 74% percent of school staff are women. Even then, the lack of childcare options left many women unable to return to their jobs. Having children does not have this effect for men. The rate of unemployment for Black and Latina women was higher before the virus, and now it is even worse. 

The situation is more severe for women in other parts of the world. Shabnam Hashmi, a leading women’s activist from India, tells me that by April 2020 a staggering 39.5% of women there had lost their jobs. “Work from home is very taxing on women as their personal space has disappeared, and workload increased threefold,” Hashmi says. In Italy, existing inequalities have been amplified by the health emergency. Rizzitelli points out that women already face lower employment, poorer salaries and more precarious contracts, and are rarely employed in “safe” corporate roles; they have been the first to suffer the effects of the crisis. “Pre-existing economic, social, racial and gender inequalities have been accentuated, and all of this risks having longer-term consequences than the virus itself,” Rizzitelli says. 

When women are put under greater financial pressure, their rights rapidly erode. With the economic crisis created by Covid, sex- and labour-trafficking are again on the rise. Young women who struggle to pay their rent are being preyed on by landlords, in a process known as “sextortion”. 

I don’t think we can overstate the level of exhaustion, anxiety and fear that women are suffering from taking care of families, with no break or time for themselves. It’s a subtle form of madness. As women take care of the sick, the needy and the dying, who takes care of them? Colani Hlatjwako, an activist leader from the Kingdom of Eswatini, sums it up: “Social norms that put a heavy caregiving burden on women and girls remain likely to make their physical and mental health suffer.” These structures also impede access to education, damage livelihoods, and strip away sources of support.

Unesco estimates that upward of 11 million girls may not return to school once the Covid pandemic subsides. The Malala Fund estimates an even bigger number: 20 million. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, from UN Women, says her organisation has been fighting for girls’ education since the Beijing UN women’s summit in 1995. “Girls make up the majority of the schoolchildren who are not going back,” she says. “We had been making progress – not perfect, but we were keeping them at school for longer. And now, to have these girls just dropping out in one year, is quite devastating.” 

Of all these setbacks, this will be the most significant. When girls are educated, they know their rights, and what to demand. They have the possibility of getting jobs and taking care of their families. When they can’t access education, they become a financial strain to their families and are often forced into early marriages. 

This has particular implications for female genital mutilation (FGM). Often, fathers will accept not subjecting their daughters to this process because their daughters can become breadwinners through being educated. If there is no education, then the traditional practices resume, so that daughters can be sold for dowries. As Agnes Pareyio, chairwoman of the Kenyan Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Board, tells me: “Covid closed our schools and brought our girls back home. No one knew what was going on in the houses. We know that if you educate a girl, FGM will not happen. And now, sadly the reverse is true.” 

In the early months of the pandemic, I had a front-row seat to the situation of nurses in the US, most of whom are women. I worked with National Nurses United, the biggest and most radical nurses’ union, and interviewed many nurses working on the frontline. I watched as for months they worked gruelling 12-hour shifts filled with agonising choices and trauma, acting as midwives to death. On their short lunch breaks, they had to protest over their own lack of personal protective equipment, which put them in even greater danger. In the same way that no one thought what it would mean to lock women and children in houses with abusers, no one thought what it would be like to send nurses into an extremely contagious pandemic without proper PPE. In some US hospitals, nurses were wearing garbage bags instead of gowns, and reusing single-use masks many times. They were being forced to stay on the job even if they had fevers.

The treatment of nurses who were risking their lives to save ours was a shocking kind of violence and disrespect. But there are many other areas of work where women have been left unprotected, from the warehouse workers who are packing and shipping our goods, to women who work in poultry and meat plants who are crammed together in dangerous proximity and forced to stay on the job even when they are sick. One of the more stunning developments has been with “tipped” restaurant workers in the US, already allowed to be paid the shockingly low wage of $2.13 (£1.50) an hour, which has remained the same for the past 22 years. Not only has work declined, tips have also declined greatly for those women, and now a new degradation called “maskular harassment” has emerged, where male customers insist waitresses take off their masks so they can determine if and how much to tip them based on their looks. 

Women farm workers in the US have seen their protections diminished while no one was looking. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, tells me how pressures have increased on campesinas, or female farm workers: “There have been more incidents of pesticides poisonings, sexual abuse and heat stress issues, and there is less monitoring from governmental agencies or law enforcement due to Covid-19.” 

Covid has revealed the fact that we live with two incompatible ideas when it comes to women. The first is that women are essential to every aspect of life and our survival as a species. The second is that women can easily be violated, sacrificed and erased. This is the duality that patriarchy has slashed into the fabric of existence, and that Covid has laid bare. If we are to continue as a species, this contradiction needs to be healed and made whole. 

To be clear, the problem is not the lockdowns, but what the lockdowns, and the pandemic that required them, have made clear. Covid has revealed that patriarchy is alive and well; that it will reassert itself in times of crisis because it has never been truly deconstructed, and like an untreated virus it will return with a vengeance when the conditions are ripe. 

The truth is that unless the culture changes, unless patriarchy is dismantled, we will forever be spinning our wheels. Coming out of Covid, we need to be bold, daring, outrageous and to imagine a more radical way of existing on the Earth. We need to continue to build and spread activist movements. We need progressive grassroots women and women of colour in positions of power. We need a global initiative on the scale of a Marshall Plan or larger, to deconstruct and exorcise patriarchy – which is the root of so many other forms of oppression, from imperialism to racism, from transphobia to the denigration of the Earth. 

There would first be a public acknowledgment, and education, about the nature of patriarchy and an understanding that it is driving us to our end. There would be ongoing education, public forums and processes studying how patriarchy leads to various forms of oppression. Art would help expunge trauma, grief, aggression, sorrow and anger in the culture and help heal and make people whole. We would understand that a culture that has diabolical amnesia and refuses to address its past can only repeat its misfortunes and abuses. Community and religious centres would help members deal with trauma. We would study the high arts of listening and empathy. Reparations and apologies would be done in public forums and in private meetings. Learning the art of apology would be as important as prayer.

The feminist author Gerda Lerner wrote in 1986: “The system of patriarchy in a historic construct has a beginning and it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course. It no longer serves the needs of men and women, and its intractable linkage to militarism, hierarchy and racism has threatened the very existence of life on Earth.”

As powerful as patriarchy is, it’s just a story. As the post-pandemic era unfolds, can we imagine another system, one that is not based on hierarchy, violence, domination, colonialisation and occupation? Do we see the connection between the devaluing, harming and oppression of all women and the destruction of the Earth itself? What if we lived as if we were kin? What if we treated each person as sacred and essential to the unfolding story of humanity? 

What if rather than exploiting, dominating and hurting women and girls during a crisis, we designed a world that valued them, educated them, paid them, listened to them, cared for them and centred them?“

[qm-vox]

So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

[justforbooks]

Anne Rice, who has died aged 80 after a stroke, was one of the foremost writers of supernatural fiction, and the author of more than 30 novels. The best known of them was her debut, Interview With the Vampire, published in 1976, and adapted in 1994 into a film starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst.

Her work became synonymous with deep, romantic portrayals of vampires, witches and revenant mummies and she was one of the first authors to turn the trope of supernatural creatures as monsters to be vanquished on its head, and put them in the role of protagonist, paving the way for later writers such as Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight saga.

Interview With the Vampire introduced Rice’s most enduring character, Lestat de Lioncourt, an 18th-century French nobleman whose story formed the basis of what would become known as The Vampire Chronicles, a series of 13 books, with the most recent, Blood Communion, published in 2018.

To borrow the title of Rice’s third Lestat book (filmed, with Aaliyah in the title role), the writer was indeed the Queen of the Damned, not necessarily turning into heroes the characters who had previously been the villains of horror fiction, but rather giving them a voice, and presenting their stories from the viewpoint of a different morality.

She plumbed the depths of her own grief and terrors to write, saying in a Rolling Stone interview in 1995 that, “I think all my writing has been part of a battle with my fears. When I write I explore my worst fears, and then take my protagonist right into awful situations that I myself am terrified by. And I think that the act of putting all that fear and terror and confusion into an orderly, plotted story has been very therapeutic for me. It definitely helps me to continue through life.”

Rice said that fantasy writing allowed her to talk about her own life whereas writing a “realistic novel” would be too raw. She said, “You can put the most horrible things into a frame, and you can go into that frame safely and talk about those things. You can go into the world of Louis and Lestat and Claudia, and be able to talk about grief or loss or survival, and then come back safely.”

She wrote like a time traveller, layering especially the Lestat novels with astonishingly evocative period detail. And she did not confine herself to vampires. The Mayfair Witches series, beginning with The Witching Hour (1990), set in Rice’s native New Orleans, concerned itself with a trio of occult practitioners and the demon that bedevils them. The two books of the Wolf Gift series are about lycanthropy, while The Mummy (1989) revitalises the classic horror movie staple. A second mummy novel, Ramses the Damned (2017) was written by Rice with her son, Christopher, and a third collaboration– what will be Rice’s last book – is scheduled for 2022.

Born in New Orleans, Rice was the second of five daughters of Kay (nee Allen) and Howard O’Brien. Her father served with the US navy and then for the US postal service, and both parents were of Irish Catholic heritage. She reportedly hated her name, Howard, and changed it to Anne in the first grade at school. Her mother died in 1956, when Anne was 15, from the effects of alcoholism and the family moved into the former home of her maternal grandmother, who had also died with an alcohol problem.

Rice has said that she was inspired to be a writer by her father who, returning from the second world war and realising he barely knew his infant daughters, Anne and her sister, Alice (the novelist Alice Borchardt), wrote a novel, The Impulsive Imp, for them. Anne was educated first at St Joseph’s academy, a private girls’ school in New Orleans, and later at Richardson high school in north Texas, after her father remarried in 1957 and relocated the family.

After completing a year’s higher education at the Texas Women’s University in Denton, and a sophomore year at North Texas State College, Anne dropped out, unable to afford the tuition fees, and moved to San Francisco, where she took night classes and began her nascent writing career.

She had met Stan Rice at Richardson high school and they rekindled their relationship, marrying in 1961. They settled in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, living through the growing hippy counterculture years, though Rice once said she was a “square” who locked herself away to write while everyone around her was “dropping acid and smoking grass”.

Their daughter Michele was born in 1966, and in 1970 was diagnosed with leukaemia – the same year that Rice returned to her studies at San Francisco State University. She graduated with an MA in creative writing in 1972, the year her daughter died. The couple’s second child, Christopher, was born in 1978. Like her mother and grandmother before her, Rice struggled with alcohol and she and her husband made the decision to stop drinking altogether not long after their son was born.

Although she was brought up a Catholic and her books – the Lestat novels especially, as well as two books fictionalising the life of Christ – included strong elements of the Christian mythos, Rice had a complicated relationship with her faith. Not long after her mother died, she disavowed her belief in God, but returned to the Catholic fold in 1998, a decade after going back to New Orleans to live permanently.

However, in 2010 Rice once again renounced Christianity, saying that while she was still a follower of Christ she could not reconcile herself with many of the church’s beliefs – particularly on same-sex marriage, Christopher being a prominent gay rights activist.

Her son said that Rice had always decried fashion and forged her own path. “She always saw herself starkly at odds with whatever the literary trends of the moment were,” he said. “The accomplishment of Interview With the Vampire … was that she had completely flipped the point of view. She had taken what was previously considered to be … the unknowable monster, and she went in to their point of view and she showed us: what does the world look like through the eyes and the heart of the character we have dismissed in these terms?”

Stan died in 2002. Rice is survived by Christopher and by three of her sisters.

🔔 Anne Rice (Howard Allen Frances O’Brien), writer, born 4 October 1941; died 11 December 2021

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[pettyprocrastination]

DEMANDING that you elaborate on these slasher ideas 🔫

MY BABE LEE I LOVE YOU MWUAH MWUAH MWUAH thank you for entertaining my stupid ideas all the time. and now we come forth with MORE stupid ideas!!! not sure what characters to use for these babies but hmu if you have any ideas.

this post can simply be seen as a continuation of "i want to see pedro pascal play a horror villian so goddamn bad."

tagging some of my spooky babes: @thesadvampire @captainsamwlsn @ladyvengeanceisdead @dilf-vader @max--phillips @humanransome-note @luxurybeskar @ficsilike-reblogged

warnings: unhealthy relationships, violence, murder, talk of true crime, talk of medical malpractice.

so the first one is about the usual relationship type you see a lot in shows of like

the bad prisoner x the assigned psychologist who wants to fix them (cough cough first suicide squad movie im looking at you

BUT the roles are switched!

instead of the prisoner being the evil manipulative one, its the psychologist! (if this is a reader insert i imagine the reader as the killer in this, but maybe itll be oc who knows)

one who has been assigned to this killer's case for years most likely. And followed it with a borderline obsessive fascination.

Incredibly protective as well. Monitors what food is brought to you, what nurses give you medication and what doses, everything goes through them and them first.

When "crime junkies" come by to try and interview you? they get almost territorial over you. If a narrative that they don't like is shown they get angry, very condescendingly correcting the two "experts" for true crime website all with a strained smile that doesn't exactly reach their eyes.

If youre silent and stoic, they pride themselves as being the one who truly "understands" you.

Similar to Loomis and Michael Myers, but a dash of dangerous obsessive romance to spice it up.

If you ever "get loose"? Most likely their doing.

If it wasn't? God theyre on a rampage trying to find you, utterly delirious. Sobbing and demanding you be found like a parent whose child is missing.

Don't sympathize with the victims, hardly acknowledge them in fact.

Some nurses will say they notice the doctor watching you with an almost lovestruck look in their eyes late at night.

SECOND IDEA. This one is more inspired by the 2018 Halloween movie and how all the previous events effected Laurie strode and her family.

following two characters!!

two survivors who lived through a rampage when they were young.

When some crazed masked killer went on a rampage way back when and killed countless young teens, of the few who were sought after and survived, two came out of it together.

I think this would be a fun frankie x reader but thats cause I love him

two traumatized teens who bond through this and become incredibly close through the horrors they witnessed.

It creates a tight friendship that the therapists would eventually call unhealthy, but what would your parents do?

The pair of you had just come out of a horrid expeirence that would shape you for the rest of your lives. They wouldn't punish you for finding a friend in it.

But the friendship becomes a relationship, that then becomes a marriage.

Maybe, if were modeling this after Laurie strode, the killer gets out again, another rampage is had, more lives are lost, but you both come out alive once again.

years go on, perhaps a strain in the relationship starts and eventually you both get divorced, branching off to live your separate lives as many recommended you both to do as "being together simply reminds you both of what you went through."

BUt the paranoia doesn't leave. The anxiety doesn't leave. YOu both spend endless nights terrified of the "what-ifs" that may happen. the most horrid is "what if he comes back and I'm not there to keep you safe."

But still, you both move on. you date others, have some flings, entertain some new hobbies, but you still think of eachother.

And when the killer gets out again? The first thing you do is seek eachother out for safety.

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #48 | Anna Obsessed (Martin & Martin, 1977)

Anna Obsessed opens with a pair of images it returns to repeatedly over the course of its runtime: Annette Haven, writhing around in bed as if she were having a nightmare, and a nude woman ascending a set of shadowy stairs. Then we get a car driving in the rain, as moody saxophone music plays over the soundtrack and the opening credits flash on the screen. The car stops outside a house, and the driver, dressed in black, gets out and peeks in through the window. Inside the house, the camera pans from the window to Constance Money and John Leslie, who are doing what people in porno movies tend to do. But as we learn at the end of this scene and the following morning, all is not well in the Money-Leslie household, as Money has been finding Leslie increasingly inattentive as a lover and a husband.

Enter Annette Haven, who seems to hit it off immediately with Money, running into her at the most convenient times and eventually the two of them start an affair. Yet perhaps Leslie has an affair of his own with his secretary, and more troublingly, there seems to be a killer rapist on the loose, who's already claimed four victims, and may have set their sights on Money, and we see them repeatedly obsessing over a polaroid. And we return to those same opening images, of Haven tossing and turning in bed and a nude woman ascending the stairs.

Those recurring images are key to the distinct spell cast by Anna Obsessed, which plays like a dream we're not sure we've awoken from. The sex scenes are shot with intimate, floating camera moves, so that while they provide the usual jollies offered by these movies, also feel like images straight out of the subconscious. Even when we slip into a daydream by another character, the effect is less a break in perspective than an overarching somnambulist atmosphere, where we're not sure whose dreams we're slipping in and out of. The movie's ugliest scene (a brutal rape involving a pistol) seems to rupture this feeling, as if the movie's very reality is in flux. And in that sense, Annette Haven's casting is a masterstroke. More than any other golden age actress, Haven has the aura of a classical movie star, and here her presence plays like she's stepped out of the TV after you dozed off during a noir late at night. It makes sense that Money would fall so easily under her spell: Haven represents a fantasy Money didn't know she had. (The effect is somewhat undone when Haven double dips a breadstick during the climactic scene, where she and Money feed an assortment of snacks to a shirtless Leslie. I believe in Italy they call this la dolce vita.)

This had a heftier script, more preparation time and a bigger budget than usual for an adult film in this era (although some of that is through deferring salary for the crew), and was shot with video assist (a technique pioneered by Jerry Lewis) so the filmmakers wouldn't have to wait to review the dailies. The result is a movie with a distinct, deliberate visual style and a heavy sense of mood. There is arguably a certain incoherence in the finished film, which was the result of the competing visions of the filmmakers, as well as deliberate choices like having screenwriter Piastro Cruiso play the killer, similar to how Dario Argento would step in during the murder scenes in his giallos. (Cruiso gets a scene where Money energetically straddles his face, which I'm sure he enjoyed.) And it's undeniably a bit goofy that the impetus of this psychological horror noir is that the husband is lame in the sack. Yet this incoherence works in the film's favour, as dreams don't always make sense when you try to pick them apart. In an interview with the Rialto Report, Cruiso also recounts that Money had difficulty remembering her lines, so the filmmakers placed them around the set and obscured them with props. I mean, if Marlon Brando did it during The Godfather, I don't see why Constance Money shouldn't, and while she's not as good as Brando, I found her performance empathetic and engaging.

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Okay. So I have a tough question. Considering you have a degree in Psychology. I wanted to ask you.

After everything our characters in ST went through and what they are still going through especially characters like Will, Mike and El. We are in the 80's where growing as a teenager must've been extremely diffucult (though one might say that every generation has a tough time growing up.). We are in a coming of age story very much centered around children and teenagers and whose audience is, for the most part, teenagers or young adults.

I really didn't know how to talk about it as this subject is a very sensitive one and I preferred to chose someone who is, to my knowledge, the most qualified in that field. Sorry if it adds a pressure on you, I really don't want you to have that but I wanted to take it safe as I know it is a difficult subject.

I have wanted the show to go back to it's more mature and raw elements.

Do you think there is a possibilty that Stranger Things might, in season 4 or later, explore the subject of suicide or suicidal tendencies ?

I am sorry, I know it is a tough question but since Stranger Things each season is touching more difficult themes each time. I'd figured that at some point a show like Stranger Things will have to talk about it. Of course it doesn't have to but it's the most logical thing for me. (Also Gaten in an interview said that the characters will deal with more mature subjects.) Especially since a lot of characters do a lot of self-sacrificing actions but it's never really touched upon except maybe Hopper and Billy.

Warning: This post contains discussion of suicide. This is a deep topic, but one worth discussing. I won't pretend to be some all-knowing expert on the topic of suicide, but, as a school counselor, it is something I have to be ready for. I am trained to spot the warning signs and to screen for the need for intervention. I've also personally grappled with this myself. I went through a period where I honestly felt like it was the only thing I could do.

I wish to start by speaking plainly and directly. If you have ever felt like you may wish to take your own life, or know someone who does, please get any available help.

Dealing with a topic like suicide on TV is an extremely delicate undertaking. It's noble to want to address a very real problem, but the last thing that needs to be done is for it to be romanticized. At the same time, it also can't be demonized. Real people grapple with this. It's a real danger to show heartfelt mourning after a suicide, as someone grappling with it may see it as a reason to go ahead with it. "Look how much people will miss me!" At the same time, treating it like some cardinal sin will only make people less likely to share suicidal thoughts with those who may be able to help.

I've written before that Will may consider suicide during the course of Stranger Things, so that’s who I will use for this hypothetical. It could just as easily be another character. The question is how can a fantastical sci-fi show like Stranger Things handle such a real life issue in an appropriate fashion?

I do feel like the show has so far done a very good job working reality into this sort of fantasy story. I can see it working out so long as they are careful to avoid either romanticizing or condemning it.

In my conceptualization, it will be a result of him discovering that he unknowingly created the Upside Down. Will would essentially blame himself for everything that has happened. To him, suicide would be the way to stop it all.

In real life, suicide has been found to have some common elements. I won’t go into an exhaustive list, but these commonalities include enduring psychological pain, looking for a solution to a problem (the solution being suicide), a desire to cease consciousness, and a sense of hopelessness or despair. Essentially, a psychologically tortured individual seeks a solution to their problems, and, since it seems so utterly hopeless, they decide that ending their life is the best solution. Granted, it gets a bit nuanced, but this is what it looks like from a general perspective. In most cases, it’s something an individual has put some thought into. Those thoughts are distorted, though, as an individual will almost tunnel visioned to the point that alternate solutions aren’t even considered, and it becomes more of a necessity than a desire to follow through with it.

In Stranger Things, it’s possible to map these same elements to the story being told. Many fans, such as myself, already see Stranger Things as using the sci-fi and horror elements of the show to illustrate psychological trauma. The threat of the Upside Down has steadily become more insidious and pervasive, growing from a solitary monster threatening the real world, to a possessed child commanding an army of monsters, to many townspeople being used as murderous puppets and parts of a grotesque amalgamation. It’s slowly taking over Hawkins, only ever being temporarily subdued until some new trauma brings it back worse than before. Suppressed trauma is manifesting as a consuming darkness (the Upside Down), which can be seen as a metaphor for depression. Imagine Will finding out it’s all connected to him, a result of him subconsciously trying to bottle up his trauma.

He already has the psychological pain, as it is (in my conceptualization) what’s manifesting all the supernatural horrors his family and friends have to deal with year and year. He’ll want a solution to it, and, in his moment of despair, will think that the only solution is to stop it at the source. Too many people have already died, and he’ll blame himself for all of them. He’ll decide that he needs to die in order to make it all go away. It’s not so much a desire as it is a necessity.

Now, I don’t think they’ll actually kill Will off. That would be an incredibly depressing ending, and it would more or less affirm that suicide is the only answer. I think he may attempt it, and it would take the love of his family and friends, as it always does, to save him. Ultimately, though, I feel it would be far more effective to use the narrative to show Will facing, accepting, and overcoming his past trauma. In doing so, Will would be able to end the threat of the Upside Down by making peace with it, with the help of his loved ones and professional treatment. 

In short, Will might see suicide as the only viable solution to an overwhelming darkness that just keeps getting worse. In the end, though, he’d be able to confront and make peace with that darkness, instead. How the Duffers would go about showing that is a better question for experienced writers.

I must have written and re-written this answer ten times. I’m still not overly thrilled with it, but I can’t keep stressing it. I hope it meets your expectations. This has been a touchy topic, and I tried to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. I hope the care I put into writing it comes across to those who read it.

If anyone out there reading this is currently facing their own darkness, please don’t try to bottle it up or take it on alone. It has a way of making you think you don’t have options, but you do. You just sometimes need other people to remind you of it and help you shine a light again.