#another horror themed poll for october ^_^

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[scotfraweek]

It’s here guys! The long awaited list for ScotFra Week! Thank you to those of you who voted on the poll/form

I hope you guys like the list I created. I had to really think this through and really decide how I wanted to organize the Themes/Prompts in a way that would not only make sense but that would be interesting and bring out your creative and imaginative ideas to the event.

Now without any further ado, here they are

🌹Day 1 - October 20

Soulmates / Reincarnation

“Maybe we make it in another universe/life”

“Have we met before?”

High School Sweethearts

Differences Attract

❤️Day 2 - October 21

Humanverse VS Fantasy

“We can build something new, for us.”

“Have you ever wondered, of what could’ve been?”

Long-Distance Relationship

🌹Day 3 - October 22

A/B/O or Pirates/Merfolk

“I was here first!”

“Is this what you want?”

Unplanned Pregnancy

Jealousy

❤️Day 4 - October 23

✨F R E E D A Y✨

Anniversary

🌹Day 5 - October 24

Horror / Supernatural (In honor of Halloween)

“Why is there so much blood?!”

“So everything you said was a lie?”

There was only one bed

Serial Killer/ Haunted House

❤️Day 6 - October 25

Artist/Fan or Detectives

“There was a slight miscommunication”

“You’ve never done this before, have you?”

Love = Weakness

Rivalry

🌹 Last Day - October 26

Angst/Hurt or Post Apocalypse

“Do you remember when…?”

“I trusted you!”

Character Death/Still Alive

The End of the World

🌹 Of course if you guys would like, you can mix and match. If a prompt from a different day fits your idea for one of the Themes, you are more than welcome to use it. You also can use more than one prompt if you wish as well!

❤️ Art, fics/one-shots and moodboards are all welcomed. Anything that you can use to express your imagination and creativity

✨How to submit your works✨

Just tag the account @scotfraweek as well as the #/ScotFraWeek2024 with your submission/post

✨R U L E S✨

Yes, there are rules guys… please follow them

I will not tolerate any bashing of other Hetalia Characters even if it is for the sake of your idea. Please be respectful of the other characters, I don’t want any fan-wars bc someone’s blorbo was bashed

Try to keep politics and actual life events to a minimum, no need for there to also be any actual hate/fighting during the event amongst participants.

I will say this only once, please to not use other artist’s/writer’s work to enter the event. All work must be solely yours. If someone calls you out for plagiarism, I will NOT be defending you, you’re on your own for that

Please, please, PLEASE, and I can NOT stress this enough, but absolutely no AI can be used for your submissions. Once again, all works must be unique and original. If your work requires AI, then it is NOT original. I will not reblog your work if i get the slightest hint of AI work, and believe me, I can tell

Please keep comments on other participants work friendly. Respect the other participant’s submissions for the event. If you do not like someone’s work for whatever reason — Block the user. I will not stand for any hate/bullying in other people’s post because their work did not meet your expectations. This also goes for spectators who will not be submitting work of their own.

Finally, have fun! This event is about showing love and creativity for the french bastard and his ginger himbo hubby. Bring out your creativity and your best suit!

Late submissions will still be accepted up to 3 days after the event is over!

‼️If you feel like another participant’s work is breaking the rules or is offensive towards you or anyone else, be sure to let me know so proper actions will be taken

📫The account’s inbox will be open for any questions or even ideas that you have in regards of the event!

💔I genuinely do apologize, I had truly intended to have this out a few days ago, but … things happen. I hope you are not too mad or upset with me

🤍 Can’t wait to see all your guy’s works next month, see you then!

@hetaliacalendar if you wouldn’t mind reblogging for a little signal boost pls 😭

[3dlove]

BOOTING UP 3DLOVE . . . BIRTHDAY EDITION !

Hello and welcome all, it's that wonderful, scare-filled time of the year! A month-long birthday event won the poll, so here we all are, except this isn't a month long anymore because life Really didn't want me making this event. I cannot be stopped, though! This event consists of two concepts: Inbox trick or treating, as well as prompts with rewards for completing them as a little bonus for my birthday coming up! Extra event info under the cut, it's party time! ;D ☆

Trick or treatin' season ^_^

Inspired by a few other blogs I've seen doing similar concepts, this part of the event is quite simple. Send a 🎃 and a character (+ a theme, optionally) into my inbox and I'll spin a wheel to decide if you get a trick (joke/experimental edit) or treat (genuine edit with that good ol aqua 3dlove editing style™) and spin another wheel to see what type of edit you get.

If you decide to knock on my door with the intent of getting an edit, please keep in mind my blacklist when choosing what character you want to get something of, and please specify if there are any Halloween themes you do not want in your edit (ex; blood overlays, knives, medical stuff, etc)

The rotation of the Aqua around the sun 👍

I've survived another year of being alive, wow! For this joyous occasion, I've also prepared some prompts for the 20th of October until the 31st. Prompts can be submitted until the 3rd of November, just in case anyone needs to catch up! I went with Halloween themes, mostly, but also some stuff I thought would be fun and stuff I personally like. Because. Birthday! Me! Yay :D

Tag me in whatever you make for these prompts so I can see what you make, and optionally use the tag #aquaday2024 . If you complete the entire event (all 12 days) you get 6 edits from yours truly. If you complete half of the event (6-11 days) you get 3! Please keep in mind my blacklist when claiming rewards :)

20th: Edit something involving horror media. Any kind, whether it's a game, movie, show, anything.

21st: An edit featuring a character you love and a character you dislike/hate.

22nd: An edit using fall colors or motifs associated with fall (orange, brown, leaves, pumpkins, whatever you associate with autumn)

23rd: Edit something themed after vampires. Vampire themes, vampire characters, whatever you want!

24th: An edit themed after water, the ocean, aquatic life, characters who are related to these things, whatever you want :D

25th: Free day. Either take a break, or edit whatever you want!

26th: Edit something while trying to balance out creepy and cute aesthetics!

27th: Use this random aesthetic generator and try to make an edit based off of what the website generates.

28th: Edit something while trying to make it the opposite of your typical editing style. Usually use bright colors? Desaturate em! Use a lot of clipping masks? Try to use none, or as few as possible. If your style is complex, try doing something simple, etc.

29th: Planning to wear a costume on the 31st? Edit something based on it, or otherwise inspired by it! If you aren't dressing up, edit something based on your favorite Halloween scary thing (monsters, spiders, masked slashers, etc)

30th: It's my birthday, wow! Another free day, although if you do want to edit something, it's encouraged to edit something that reminds you of me, wink. No pressure, of course, as this day can also just be a little break before Halloween ^_^

31st: Go all out with Halloween related stuff, I dare you. Be as obnoxious as possible with things you associate with the holiday!

The scariest part of all..

Now that that's all out of the way, time for me to ask oh so nicely for some promo! No pressure if I've tagged you, as always ^_^

@rookmeo @xoxobyte @lovesick-level-up @ipcventurine @rwuffles @winecovered @gur0hana

[limepigeon]

Fallen Hero Fanzine 2024 - Info and Theme Poll

All info is under the cut since I don't want to clutter your dash too much! EDIT: Tumblr hates multiple choices for Polls apparently, you can vote but also write in replies (or send anonymous through dm, but please don't send multiple of the same option to get what you want, let's keep it fair!) if you want to vote for more than one option! (Sorry for the inconvenience!)

Hi everyone!

Since I got the feedback on the interest check for a possible Fallen Hero Fanzine it seems like we have some interest and I’ve been looking into various ways we could do this. As I’m big on collaboration and everyone getting a say, I was thinking that deciding on a theme for the zine could be our first collaborative step.

I’ve made a poll (found further down in this post) with 7 options for you to vote on. Descriptions/explanations are found right below the poll so make sure to read those before casting your vote. We’re keeping this first zine sfw, please keep that in mind if suggesting themes of your own. Voting doesn’t tie you to contributing to the zine.

Jumping into something headfirst without knowing what you’ll find on the other side is scary, that’s why I’ve written a short list of what I have in mind for this zine.

The zine will be 100% free and non-profit, this also means no compensation for the contributors. Theme: TBD through majority vote Number of contributors: Max 30 (I would love to have more but, unless someone can help me with admin stuff, I think that’s my limit for how much organising and planning I can do on my own). Rating: SFW. Innuendos, cursing, violence and the like is okay but not straight up sex. Format: Digital/e-zine, with permission to print at home for personal use only. I will put together a bonus version made for easy to print at home, with instructions for how to assemble it. Media types allowed: Any visual media suited for print as long as it’s your own (e.g. illustrations, sketches, photography, collages, short comics, cosplay etc). Keep in mind that if you make a collage or mood board, all pictures must be your own (or have the rights to). Any writing as long as it’s your own (e.g. short stories, poetry, analyses, personal anecdotes etc). Pages in zine per contributor: 2. Time frame and deadlines: TBD but I plan on us having it finished around September/October of 2024, with some reservations.

I hope this has been informative so far, if you have questions you can either reply to this post (so everyone else can see the question and reply), or dm me if you want to be anonymous.

Now, let’s get to voting on a theme! Descriptions for themes under the poll.

Nemesis - More action focused, showdowns, heroes and villains battling it out in their suits! Some softer moments could fit in here as well but if too many opt towards it I might steer some of the submissions to make sure the zine in whole stays on theme. Coming Home - New beginnings, finding your place. It could be sweet and cozy, finding friends, or stepping into your own skin for the first time. Interpret as you like, but the main focus should be on the concept of “home”, whatever that means to you or the characters you choose to portray. Los Diablos - Snippets and snapshots from the city and lives you are sworn to protect or destroy. HG’s lair, Herald’s apartment, or a sewer (sorry, secret base), as well as the people found in these places. Nightmares - The bad vibes (tm) one. The Heartbreak Incident, decanting, paranoia, all the nasty bits you don’t want people to find. This one is open to more possible body horror than the other themes. Ship specific - Pick this one if you want a more romance focused theme, and specify in replies which characters you’d want in centre. Please write Ship Theme before the characters in your reply. I have another idea! - Got an idea for a theme that isn’t in the poll? Pick this one and specify in replies what it is! Please specify even if someone has the same idea, or close to, as you. Please write Theme Suggestion before the theme in your reply. No theme - Don’t feel like sticking to a theme? Want to create an amalgamation of everyone’s mind stuff without any limits or guidelines? This choice is for you.

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

Update on Evil Gonta Week Survey

(If you don't know what I'm talking about here's the survey)

It seems like there's some preference for around june-october for the gonta crimes week but judging by the graph plus the fact as the person running it I would want a month that works best for me it would either be June or August. Although currently July is winning, July unfortunately is also art fight month and as fun as it would be to run it on the week of my birthday, art fight go brrrrr and that's going to be my main focus.

Shipping is definitely going to have a mild focus it seems from current results, people do want their toxic ougoku but there is also a good number of people who just want to focus on the Crime, I wasn't expecting to make it ship heavy but it's good to know exactly where the line between "ship tease prompts" and "just straight up shipping prompts" is for this.

There also seems to be a wide support for an alternative tag for more adult based content during the week, and I agree that a separate tag that is made available and known is a good way to balance "kids will get involved no matter what" with "this is an adult game, with a lot of adult fans, with a more horror themed week, who may want to interact with adult themes" I get why other people just ban it outright as it can be a logistical hazard and no shade to that, but I feel like with an event based around "character doing bad things" it's better to just have a tag that can be filtered for anything more extreme whether it be smut or gore because the line between teen horror and adult horror can be a bit nebulous, especially in regards of like themes of abuse and gore.

A lot of people seem to like the name "Gonta Gets Cancelled" but I've also had a lot of VERY good alternative suggestions like "Gonta Gokuhara Callout" "Gonta Do War Crimes" "Gonta's Unapology Tour" so the name isn't set in stone and I might do another poll later to get other people's opinions on them.

People are getting genuinely excited about it so while this was originally just me testing the waters, it seems like its very likely going to be happening, I'm not going to make a blog for it yet I would prefer to have a better grasp on the final name before hand. I am going to start workshopping prompts and the like though.

Likely unless something happens I will be running the technical and logistics of the week mostly solo, because it's unlikely I'll need extra support on the like management moderation side of things and as such just one person prevents things from getting needlessly complicated, but if for some reason this becomes a lot bigger then expected or I become too busy to do it alone I may pull in a few more people to help.

I'm not closing the survey any time soon don't worry, and I fully encourage you to share it around to get more opinions and takes, I also double encourage you to send me more bug facts with said survey I like bugs I love learning that cockroaches are pollinators that shit slaps

We also have a playlist now because I am the ultimate playlist maker and that is what I do, there isn't an icon for it yet, but it does have a shit ton of songs

[pikespendragon67]

AND NOW, Time for Another Pikes Check-In Update Thingamajig!!!

Basically this is just where I post current interests/events in life to see if other people are currently sharing the same interest, or if people just wanna catch up on things.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO:

What I'm Watching

Seasonal anime: Summer season's just starting so of the ones that caught my interest at the moment are the following

Might see if Helck is good when it airs

I'm getting tempted to reactivate my Netflix account for My Happy Marriage but ehhh maybe when Beastars airs again. I do like stories where characters go through absolute shit but get better lives and heal from their experiences

Undead Murder Farce: I really like the character designs, and I love the snark of the protagonists. Hopefully it's like Appare Ranman but with Victorian England instead of 1910s-1930s America

Jujustu Kaisen season 2: Sucks that the airing schedule seems to be whack (first 5 episodes will be normal, but then it's gonna be on hiatus until like. October) but I love the OP, ED, character interactions, and the Digimon joke.

Bleach TYBW: Bleach was my choice of shounen as a youth and it's got me in an iron grip of nostalgia. Is the writing terrible at times? Yes! Do I still love it? Yes...for certain characters nowadays

Apparently Nier Automata's making a comeback? Hope so. It was hinting at big stuff when it last got hiatus'ed

MAL says Dungeon Meshi is gonna air this season but I doubt that

I'm also gonna watch the new Superman cartoon since a friend's letting me borrow another friend's Max account (I COULD technically reactive my account, but I hate how WB cut most of their projects & library for tax write-offs). And I'm 2 episodes away from finishing Iruma season 3, so once I'm done with that, it's onto Saiki K to watch during my lunch breaks when there isn't a seasonal anime to watch. ...Though I'm kinda wondering if I should swap it for Nanbaka now... Eh I already had the poll, so might as well stick to the poll until I finish Big O

What I'm Playing:

Just finished the 2nd labyrinth of Persona Q. I'm not really looking forward to replaying the 3rd labyrinth since it's horror themed. (Plus this was around the time I actually had to start playing with a guide because of a few FOE puzzles. Gonna be distracting to do so as I play). That being said I love that this combines EO dungeon exploration with Persona combat. Makes me wonder if I should try to get back to EO4 or see if I should get EO3 on modern consoles

Other potential interests: Ghost Trick (got the special edition right when I was in the middle of my Persona Q replay), 999 on Vita (solves the issue of not being able to play the updated version at work), possibly get back to Personas 2-5 (after I read the manga for the first game; keep forgetting to do that), maybe explore my Steam library since I have a few games there now thanks to the summer sale, maybe get back to playing Fantasy Life until I get to Al Majiik (though I forgot how tedious it is to grind for jobs). Just man. While I'm sad there's no FEMC for the P3 remake, I'm still super excited for it

Though with that being said it feels weird to buy games I already own just on different consoles. It'd be one thing if there were remakes/reboots, but nah. I just have Nier on both PS4 and Steam now. Game collecting's a weird hobby, but one I enjoy nonetheless

Other Stuff:

Anxiety spiked a bit today after seeing discourse start to pop up here again & cringing at past mistakes I've made, hence the checkup post you see now

While I'm cool with my job, I don't like how it consumes so much of my free time/energy. If I can get paid enough to work 4 days without me having to do 10 hour work days, that'd be pretty neat

Barbie movie's in a few weeks oh boy

Another con's happening at the end of the month, but it will be like 3 hours away. Gonna go with a friend then but hopefully my car sickness doesn't kill me.

Then the next con I definitely want to go to is in September

And after that I'm gonna see Hadestown with another friend

Not sure what to do for a Halloween shindig with friends. And it might be the brainrot talking but I kinda wanna go as Shinjiro from Persona 3? Though I also want my coworkers to recognize my costume, so I might need to start looking for Vampire Hunter D attire now.

THUS ENDS THE CHECKUP!

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

Ahh you got me all excited when I saw your poll about sh2 music bc I literally just gave a lecture about it last week. So pls let me yap a lil about it.

I was subbing for a musical interpretation class (that’s the literal translation, idk if it’s called another way in English) and the whole objective of the subject is to sensitize the students on how music can tell whole stories without the need of lyrics, only sounds and silences.

I used the tracks of Magdalene and Magdalene’s elusive lament (the one from the remake) as an exercise for the students. Long story short I made them listen to them in class and had a conversation about what it made them feel. The majority felt a sense of anxiety with the one from the og while the one from the remake made them feel a little more at ease even though they’re kinda similar. Magdalene just has this sense of rushing and discomfort even though the notes played are not that dissonant.

Also I love that in Magdalene’s elusive lament at the last part of the track there’s a shift in the key of the piano, it’s playing the same motif on a higher key along with follow ups of the lower key the track has been using throughout the whole song. It almost feels like a conversation. In my mind it’s like a conversation in between Mary and James and it evokes in me kinda nostalgia yet tension, a lot of yearning too. Only for it to end with the higher keys in a repetition being cut off by a slightly more dissonant chord by the lower key. Like James abruptly ending Mary…

It really is beautiful and a reason why I’m so in love with Akira Yamaoka work. The amount of story telling and emotions he captures in his songs is incredible. Like I feel like a big reason why the theme of Laura track is a favorite is bc it feels nostalgic even if you haven’t heard it before. I just love it.

Enough yapping, I’ll stop right here bc I can keep going for paragraphs and paragraphs. sorry for this long ass ask

i had to go listen to each of them twice and i'm still thinking about it! this is so cool! i can tell that the two songs are different but i couldn't tell why (i wasn't a music major or anything), and now hearing it w this context it's like oooooo ! like at first i just noticed that the piano sounds way more prominent/clearer in magdalene's elusive lament and it feels the notes drag into each other in a different way?? if that makes sense?? but your comment about the higher notes being mary and the lower notes being james in conversation is so like, i can totally see it !! amazing!! i'm in love with this and i wish i could've been in this class. i only discovered silent hill w the remake of 2 (and have gone back and played 1-3 og since), so i've only been a fan since october (but akira yamaoka was still my top artist for 2024 lol)

and theme of laura is my favorite too and you're so right about it feeling nostalgic. i really like promise as well, but i actually think i like the new version of that one better than the og bc of that one part around 2:55 that goes heavy on the guitar (i've decided that i think i like og theme of laura tho). i feel like both songs sound nostalgic for me.

there's something about silent hill theme that just gives me like 10 different emotions, like i'm in a horror movie and a spa simultaneously - idk if you have any thoughts on that one, but i'm so mad that album isn't on spotify

anyway, thank you so much for sharing!! this was so interesting and fun to read!! i'm prob going to show my friend who is a music teacher these songs and ask her about them!!

[nexttrickanvils]

October (and by extension August and September) are less than half a year away~

So hey it doesn't hurt to plan out the traditional Hallo-Hype streams right?

Unlike the last poll, this is less a "what one game will I play next" and more a "what are you interested in?" So like if one game got five votes and another game got three, I'll play them both but probably play the five vote one first.

Parasite Eve II

Parasite Eve II is set three years after the events in the original game. In her new adventure, Aya Brea is pulled into a new battle in the American southwest against the NMC creatures she battled in the Manhattan Incident. While fighting these advanced NMCs, Aya discovers a conspiracy that seeks to replace humans as the dominant species on Earth.

Pros: Return of Aya Brea and get to see her story continue and end (Third Birthday does not exist in my world.)

Cons: Gameplay is changed from the last game, no other returning characters (sorry to my fellow Daniel stans),

Echo Night

The story revolves around Richard Osmond, the game's protagonist, and his journey to find out what happened to the ship Orpheus, which mysteriously disappeared from the sea. The story also uncovers the mystery of two stones that contain some kind of supernatural power.

Pros: Point-&-click like gameplay

Cons: Some obscure puzzles and goals

Haunting Ground

The story follows Fiona Belli, a young woman who wakes up in the dungeon of a castle after being involved in a car accident. She quickly befriends a White Shepherd, Hewie, and begins to explore the castle with his aid to seek a means of escape and unravel the mysteries of it and its inhabitants.

Pros: Hewie one of the goodest boys in gaming.

Con: Jumpscares ahoy from chaser gameplay

Also not a pro or con but the game's story deals with some dark and messed up themes and imagery so there will be content warnings!

My Friendly Neighborhood (Full game)

Something scary is happening with everyone's favorite Saturday morning puppet show, The Friendly Neighborhood! Play as Gordon, a repairman sent to get to the bottom of this disturbing dilemma. Fend off puppets and solve puzzles in this survival horror adventure.

Pros: Played the demo so I somewhat know what to expect

Cons: Ya'll saw me screaming on that demo stream. Also I need to actually buy the game in between now and Halloween season.

[tdcloud]

Spooky Scary Vampires (upcoming IP teaser) (blog#8)

Happy July! The thick of summer is upon us and everything feels like it’s ramping up in terms of heat, workload, and travel. After so many years of just not doing much or going anywhere, I feel a bit out of practice with the hustle! As of right now, I’m now in a lull between conventions. Thank god, really. After two conventions and nearly a month of being sick as a dog, I feel like I need the break to get caught back up on things. But that’s not what you guys are here for, right? I’ll save my bellyaching for another time and get us onto the topic of this month’s author blog. Namely, another teaser to an upcoming project!

Now, some of you may be aware that at any given moment I’ve got like, at least three or more irons in the fire. I do my best to finish projects entirely before moving onto new ones (Hiraeth is a big exception to that rule, but in my defense, I am working on it and the world as a whole sought to waylay the project OTL) but I’ve found that interspersing larger projects with short ones can help keep up momentum on both. Humans are suckers for instant gratification, and anyone who’s ever tried to write a book before can tell you that it’s not an easy or short process. It’s easy to get burnt out or worn down by the slog of working your way through a 500+ page story. At some points, it doesn’t feel like making progress at all. Taking a month or two to divert focus to write an 80 page novella, though, is a much faster prospect. Five chapters feels a hell of a lot more doable than 28, and switching between both builds up momentum that’ll help get through each a lot quicker than if I’d kept them independent. 

It’s because of all of that that I’ve really been grateful for Patreon as an avenue to creating short content alongside my longer stuff. The yearly short story event lets me carve out a portion of the year to dedicate to hammering out something to completion all at once and the monthly patron pick poll rotation helps me put out a constant, steady stream of progress on a variety of novellas. Without the monthly rotation, getting through the three vigilante novellas wouldn’t have been nearly as easy, and this way, I get to dabble in a bunch of disparate ideas that keep my brain fresh and inspiration juicy. That goes for genres too. A lot of my current long-project work involves heavy lore, intense plot, and characters of a very specific persuasion. Novellas let me write comedy when all I’m surrounded by is serious drama, horror when I’m drowning in fluffy romance, and adventure when the political intrigue becomes stifling. In essence, I get to write movies instead of epics, and I really, really enjoy that change of pace when I can fit it in.

But I digress. So, what’s the new IP, T.D.? 

Well, as I described it on Patreon during the lead up to last year’s October novella event, survival horror but make it horny!

-cue the sound of cheers, jeers, and final girl screams-

As you may have gathered, this story, Ossuary, is solidly in the category of movie when it comes to my dichotomy of project types. To be perfectly honest, I originally conceptualized Ossuary as my attempt at writing a slasher movie in the form of a novella. By “slasher” though, I’m being a bit general. This story is much more of The Descent than it is Scream or Halloween. Turns out it’s hard to keep to the slasher genres surface level/shallow character trope when you’re literally in their heads in a fixed pov novel format XD Still, I’m a huge horror fan and, while some of my work certainly has horror elements or themes at times, I’ve never gotten the chance to write what I’d consider a horror book before. Thankfully, my patrons last year were really receptive to letting me have the chance to do just that! It was a lovely surprise when that option won the overall poll. Sometimes I operate under the assumption that the whole world prefers soft, fluffy things and I’m the only one aching for blood and fear and complete party-wipes in my fiction, so every time my patrons prove me wrong I gain another twenty lifepoints. 

The summary for Ossuary is as follows:

Work as a Curse Breaker is anything but glamorous. It’s difficult, gruesome at times, and it takes Curse Breaker Thierry Pryor to places better left untouched. The Paris Catacombs were once a symbol of French identity, the true sign of death making all equal in the end, but after centuries of layered spell work, ancient hexes, and more than one hastily patched protective charm, the resulting magical amalgam has begun to break down, tainting the surrounding land. It’s up to Thierry and his team to figure out the source of the miasma and quell it before it begins having an effect on those living above the city of the dead.

But unlike the jobs before, there’s something at work in the catacombs much more sinister than some moldering family curse. Sometimes the dead sleep more soundly than the living, but then again, maybe some of the dead don’t sleep willingly at all..

Surprising absolutely nobody, this novella combines a lot of my favorite things: a sad, beleaguered and alienated protagonist, a yandere vampire half-out of his mind with loss, thirst, and obsession, and a dynamic that toes the line of off-putting and intriguing. If you guys haven’t gathered by now that I have an eternal hard on for vampires, I don’t know what to do at this point. A lot of the vampire things I’ve been working on for the DVerse (which will probably get its own blog post—or six—later on this year) are more mystery oriented than outright horror. Ossuary gave me a vampiric outlet that satisfied my need for something DIFFERENT, something fucked up! It’s not much of a romance. Maybe if you squint? But if you like high stakes situations, life-or-death decision making, corruption of the protagonist, and destruction of the self in preservation of staying “alive”... You may just like it too!

I’ve had this premise cooking for… at least three years? Something like that. I remember wanting to write something involving a witch with an affinity for dark magic and curses living and working in a magical world that maligns that. I don’t normally write up story notes by hand—my handwriting is atrocious and I’m so much faster at typing than writing that it just doesn’t work well for me as a medium for recording my thoughts—but for a time I did dedicate some effort towards working out of notebooks in the vain hope of improving my out of practice penmanship. I’d driven to the next city over to meet with a seamstress I knew in order to get some measurements taken for a Hua Cheng cosplay XD and arrived a bit too early to meet her. To kill time, I drove to the library in town. Once there, I found myself a table to sit at and pulled out my hedgehog notebook and proceeded to write up the very first story notes on the premise that would, in time, become Ossuary.

They weren’t detailed notes. They were largely just basic aesthetic ideas involving how Thierry would look, some of his family history, and the dynamic I wanted to achieve between him and his… to call the vampire a love interest seems mean XD The highlights are kind of fun though.

Aesthetically, Thierry and the vampire are modeled off of Ferdinand and Hubert from Fire Emblem, namely in the long red hair/wavy dark hair dynamic, and in the vampire having Hubert’s facial bone structure. Those cheekbones had a hold of me big time.

Character trait-wise, I used Draco Malfoy as a base when it came to extrapolating Thierry’s backstory/reputation within the magical world. Fuck the terf-who-must-not-be-named, but Draco’s always been a criminally underutilized and under-explored character in my mind ever since I was a kid, and I wanted to take some of those bones and do something More with them. 

Since this was meant to be a slasher movie, I wrote the surrounding cast as if they were common character trope types within a horror movie, so there’s an “asshole jock”, a “red shirt”, and “a mediator.” Each has a lot more going on with them than those wide brushstrokes, but at their core, they’re there to serve those purposes.

The plot specifics themselves didn’t come until later on, and they went through a lot of revision and tweaking as I sorted out what sort of story I wanted to tell. I’m a huge fan of the idea of “hero corruption,” and initially, I wasn’t going to let Thierry be a hero. I wanted him to be a “burn the world that’s always burned me” sort of character, but as the story unfolded, it did not end up being that at all XD To be honest, I blame myself and my predilections for that. I have a terrible habit of always sculpting my protagonists to be outcasts in some way. Thieves, freaks, rejects, bastards… Either they are born that way or are made that way through bad luck and fickle turns of fate, and Thierry, the poor thing, is an unfortunate combination of both. He comes from a family of magic users who were, once upon a time, renowned for their ability to use dark magic to hunt down monsters. While their dark magic served a purpose and protected the innocent from a common threat, they were lauded as heroes, but after perceptions shifted and the monsters they hunted were found to be more cognizant than first assumed, their luck shifted. Their dark magic became the new threat. The monsters became victims. The Pryors bloody deeds, once viewed as heroic, simply became bloody, and Thierry? Thierry just became the latest link in a sordid chain that society no longer trusts or respects.

He could’ve easy turned his back on things and let it all burn at his feet, but the truth of what actually happens isn’t nearly so cathartic—life as a whole, and the horrors he encounters and confronts in the catacombs, refuse to let it be, and while I once again failed to achieve my long-held goal to write a proper corruption arc… I achieved a very fun story of a different kind with Ossuary, and let’s be honest… there’s always next time XD

At it's core, Ossuary is what the summary implies. It's a story about Thierry just trying to do his job the best he can and society refusing to see him as anything but what rumor and generational stigma wants him to be. He is incredibly gifted but never valued or treated better for his skill set, even among his own peers--something we see in lurid display as he and his team move through the Catacombs in search of the source of malignant, broken curses poisoning the watershed up above. The truth of his family history is never far from him, and positive first impressions corrupt faster than the groundwater when fanned by the flames of those who already hate him. Thierry always thought he understood what his family had done to earn such negative associations. The fun thing about this book--fun for us, I should say. It's never fun for Thierry--is that his family truly was that bad. In fact, they were worse, and the vampire slumbering so unwillingly beneath the earth proves it in time, and certainly in his own way.

What can I tell you about the vampire... Not a lot, unfortunately. So much of who he is and what he's about is tied into the myriad twists of this story. What I can tell you is that this is a take on vampires I've never tried writing before. It's a very unique study on vampires as a different species from humans. No human can be turned into a vampire. No vampire ever used to be human--at least, none that any are aware of. They are not human. They do not have human sentiments, morality, or compunctions. There was a reason they used to be hunted, even if Thierry's generation refuses to acknowledge it. They can be dangerous beings with immeasurably long memories.

In fact, if there's one thing you can count on when it comes to this vampire, it's that he remembers everything.

So, he's an antagonist. He's a love interest--though to Thierry, he's likely just a nightmare. He's our Frankenstein's Monster and our bloodthirsty Lord Ruthven all at once. This story leans towards the Victorian in terms of Romance with a capital R, so I can't in good conscience call it even a dark romance. It's animal obsession, animal fear, and a testament that no good deed goes unpunished, and every choice we make comes with a pound of flesh that must be paid. It's probably some of the darkest stuff I've written and will likely have to have some warnings tacked onto every sales page it graces, but if you're like me and into subversive dynamics, fear as a motivating device, and "survival horror but make it horny," you may be into it too.

Ahh, I love getting to tease upcoming stories but I hate how limited I am in what I can say without giving too much away. Ossuary is, unfortunately, the sort of read that really does benefit from the reader being kept in the dark as much as possible beforehand, to the point where I really only feel comfortable discussing Thierry and not his… love interest? Antagonist? Worst nightmare? I’m the sort of person who will gleefully tell anyone the entire plot of a book if given half a chance. I’m not really the kind of person who minds spoilers, but I know that’s a minority opinion. With any luck I’ve given you guys enough to whet your appetites! And if I haven’t, you can always leave a comment and let me know your burning questions <3

I’ve really fallen for this story and the characters. You’ll understand more once you’ve read it, but it’s the sort of story that has a lot more that goes unsaid at the end than can be tied up neatly in a blood-spattered bow. This is a story with no good ending but an open one, and that means that it’s the sort of story that can, in theory, keep going long past the point of closing the book. Because of that, I’ve been tinkering around with a sequel of sorts. I don’t know if I’ll ever bother publishing it—it really depends on if I decide to end that one or carry on in the vein of letting things end ambiguous and openly—but it’s been a ton of fun to toy with when I’m craving a certain kind of buzz. I’ve always really enjoyed premises that have no satisfactory End. No “happy” ever. Sometimes, I’ve found, the only happy ending—or the happiest we’re capable of achieving—is one in which we never encounter the end. This is all sounding very vague XD but I promise, it’ll all make abundant sense once you’ve read Ossuary yourself.

This story is currently on the active editing block and will maybe be out at the end of this year? I don’t have an artist lined up for it just yet, so that makes it a little harder to predict on that front. With any luck, my editor and I will get through the last of the edits before we hit August. If it sounds like something you’d like to check out now, though, the first draft is available on my Patreon for all tiers. We’ve already voted this year on what I’ll be writing for everyone this upcoming October, so it’s a great time to pledge, catch up on the backlog, and buckle in for the next novella on the docket. It’s a rewrite of an ancient piece of original fiction I wrote back when I was 16 involving a misanthropic goth who enjoys long walks in cemeteries at 3am, an archdemon simp with more fixations than common sense, and a trip to Hell redolent of Carnival. I’m really excited to begin work on it. 

That’s it for this month! I hope you guys are amped for Ossuary and the other fun things I’ve got cooking in the background. I may have a publication announcement (?) to share with you guys soon as well, so if there’s another blog update between now and next month, don’t be too surprised! Keep your fingers crossed and, as always, until next time!

T.D. Cloud

[zinebash]

one more poll! (if you don't use twitter, please do let me know your preference here by replying or sending a message)

"maritime history" won the last theme poll and "october/november" won the schedule poll, but since "horror/monsters" and "i'm all booked til 2023" were close behind, i wanted to do a follow-up.

based on the earlier format poll, we're going to have a posting period (all through november probably) in which everyone posts their own zines at their leisure. at the end i'll still gather all the printable files and make them available to download, and put up another gallery page here. a new resource list and prompt generator will go up in october, but as soon as the next theme is decided you are of course welcome to start working on your zines!

(stumbled across this post and not sure wtf it is? here's the info post for the first zinebash and the gallery of mini zines made for it)

[morguenjewel]

The Texas Frightmare Weekend Official Group on Facebook isn’t just a place for attendees to talk about the convention, but a place where the Texas Frightmare family can be themselves.

I have been a lifelong horror fan, and that love of horror was inherited by my mom. We have always loved watching scary movies, and going all out for Halloween. Around my junior or senior year of high school, one of my mom’s coworkers told her about a local horror convention, Texas Frightmare Weekend. Texas Frightmare is an annual horror convention held in Dallas, Texas during the first weekend of May. Before learning of this convention, I didn’t really know much of anything about conventions, and what happens at them. When we found out about Texas Frightmare we started following their Facebook page to learn more about the event. Texas Frightmare, and other pop culture conventions, usually involve celebrity guests that sign autographs and have photo ops, as well as vendors that sell all sorts of merch aimed toward whatever type of pop culture the convention is for, so in this case, horror. In 2013, we decided to go to our first Texas Frightmare Weekend with a couple of our friends and soon found out that the convention sphere is much more than what it looks like it is online, it’s a world of its own. 

We ended up having a blast at the convention. The atmosphere was very fun and inviting, unlike any other event or place we've been to before. None of us had ever been so close to so many other people who loved the horror genre as we did. After attending Texas Frightmare that year, we started following them more closely online and really threw ourselves into that world. People would share their photos from the convention, stories, questions, and their dream guests/requests for who they wish would attend the following year onto Texas Frightmare’s Facebook wall, and this continued to happen year-round, not just immediately prior to and after the convention. It was clear that Texas Frightmare attendees loved the company of each other, and making new friends, I even made one of my best friends through Texas Frightmare’s Facebook page! Really, the community considered each other more than friends, they’re a family. 

Finally, in 2017, the showrunner of Texas Frightmare, Loyd Cryer, decided to create a Facebook group for the Texas Frightmare family to join and post in. The group made it much easier to communicate with the fellow attendees/family members that you didn’t. Instead of going to Texas Frightmare’s Facebook page and having conversations on their posts, or going to the visitor posts tab to see other people’s posts on the page, or make your own, all you had to do was go to the Texas Frightmare Weekend Official Group. 

Like every group, online or not, this group had rules, both written and unspoken. There are six written rules of the Texas Frightmare Weekend Official Group that were written by the admins. One, “Please no guest requests here… in an effort to keep the page clear for important info that will help attendees navigate the event”. At first, they were allowed, but due to them consuming the group, this rule was made and all posts have to be reviewed and approved by an admin before they are actually posted. Two, “search the group before posting anything”, ie: questions, and concerns that may have already been answered in another post. Three, ‘No posts about ticket or hotel sales or transfers”. Four, “Be Kind and Courteous”. This rule goes beyond the written rules, and into the unspoken ones as well. The admins just want everyone to be respectful of each other, but as I’ve said before, the group takes it to the next level by treating everyone like family, even if you’ve never talked to them before. I find this to be that in mainstream society, horror lovers are largely viewed as “freaks” and “outcasts” and put down by others, so we want to make the community extra welcoming, and not add on to this by berating each other further. I believe that the group taking place on Facebook, which is a social platform that is very personal and lacks anonymity also contributes to the increase of kind behavior between the members. The fifth rule is “no promotions or spam/no for sale posts”. The sixth and final rule is “no posts or comments about other events”, you wouldn’t go into a Denny’s and spend your whole time there talking about IHOP, would you?

Historically, society views the horror genre as something mainly for the boys, so most people assume that there are more male horror fans than there are female ones. The site I write for, The Horror Syndicate’s Facebook statistics supports this, showing that our followers are 64% male, and 36% female. However, data from Movio in 2017 showed that 53% of horror fans are female, so clearly the numbers can vary. With the Texas Frightmare Official Facebook Group, if you scroll through the list of members, it appears that most of them are male, however, most of the people who are actually posting in the group are female. Other statistics on horror fans from Nielson’s 2015 data say that the average consumer of horror tends to be between the ages of 35 and 44. Through my participation in the Texas Frightmare Facebook group, it seems like the people within this group are also within this age range, but extends to people in their 20s, like myself, as well.

 As far as the economic class of the members of the Texas Frightmare facebook group goes, there are pretty much people from every class, ranging from upper lower class to the upper class. Since the biggest common factor everyone in the group has is that they attend Texas Frightmare, this is the first thing I took into consideration when determining the class makeup of the members. The convention itself is fairly cheap to attend. Passes start as low as $20 depending on how early you buy them, and how many days of the convention you want to attend, so low-income families, like my own and friends I’ve gone with, can afford to attend. Even most of the merchandise sold by vendors are reasonably priced, but it starts to get pricey when you add up the autographs and photo ops from the guests that can cost hundreds of dollars each. While we typically go and only buy a few things from a couple of vendors, or save up over the year in order to afford a picture with one of our favorite horror actors, many people go to the convention and spend hundreds, or even thousands on VIP passes, hotel rooms, and collectibles. Some people even travel from other countries to attend Texas Frightmare.

I’ve been a member of the Texas Frightmare Official Facebook Group since the day it was made in October of 2017, but I seldom post or even browse it, simply because I just don’t use Facebook in general very often. The few times I have posted in it, prior to the past month, was either when the convention was around the corner or the day of the convention. A year or so ago I remember asking if anyone who was going to the convention would be coming from the exact city I live in, or passing through on their way, attempting to find someone to carpool with. The Texas Frightmare family was very responsive to that post, and I got many offers to help. 

I also typically post pictures of cosplay I wear to the convention. I do really enjoy scrolling through the group after the convention is over to see everybody’s pictures, and hauls from the weekend. One memory that sticks out is when someone had posted about losing an autograph they bought at the convention. Many people were commenting on the post, trying to help the person out, showing once again how tightly knit and loving the group is. I actually ended up helping the attendee be reunited with their autograph because my friend was working at that specific guest’s table, so I showed her the post and she had the autograph and was able to send it back to the person who lost it.

When it’s not convention season, the group is still very active, and the post in it consists of articles about horror movies, pictures of personal horror collections, but mostly, the group is full of horror-related memes. I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the case because the poster may not feel comfortable sharing the memes on their timeline, knowing that their Facebook friends who aren’t into horror wouldn’t understand them, or even worse, would judge them negatively for it. When someone shares one of these funny memes to the group it’s usually just a reshare of it from another page, and the poster typically doesn’t insert their own caption on their share of it. These posts don’t warrant much discussion, but they do get tons of likes, love, laugh, and wow reacts. Other types of posts, such as personal pictures or stories, or ones that share articles do tend to get more comments, but less reacts and attention in general. 

During the month of October, I figured that the amount of activity in the group might go up a little bit, due to the holiday season. I did see more posts from people showing off their Halloween costumes, and decorations. I kept my posts for the month on theme as well. In a prior Viral Content class, I learned that people interact with posts that make them feel strong emotions, like happiness from the funny memes, or if they feel like they’re getting something out of it. For instance, people are more likely to start a conversation if they are prompted to through a question or poll, so this is what I decided to do in one post, by asking what everyone’s Halloween costumes were going to be, and then saying what the ones I had planned were. In this post, I got a fairly decent response, with only two likes, but 12 comments from people sharing their costumes. 

Posts with media typically get more attention than posts with just texts, since the image or video with the post catches the attention of people scrolling through Facebook more easily. So for the next post, I decided to post pictures of my costumes, as well as ask what everyone’s Halloween plans were in the text portion, in an attempt to get more people to react AND comment on the post. While my pictures did catch more people’s attention, making the post get 56 reactions, only six people commented on the post, leading me to believe that most people only looked at the pictures, and didn’t read the text. 

From my posts in the group this month, I learned that the group is filled with tons of creative people. Most of the people that commented on my post asking about costumes were creating their own costumes. While part of me is not surprised by this, since there are a large number of attendees who go to the convention in cosplay, I am still shocked. Scrolling through the group, you will see the occasional post of someone’s horror art as well. When thinking about these facts, I wondered if the members of the group mainly use their creativity as a hobby, or if it’s incorporated into what they do for a living. If you look at the list of members of the group, you can conclude that a large portion of the group does the latter. It seemed like every other person in the group had their job listed as something that involves being creative. From artists, graphic designers, writers, filmmakers, and more. Many members have a career that doesn’t only involve creativity, but the horror genre as well.

Through my time spent analyzing the group, and the horror community as a whole, it’s clear that the members of the Texas Frightmare Official Group on Facebook, take their love of horror, and others who love horror as well, to the next level.

Sources Cited

“Frightful Fans: The Profile of Horror Movie Lovers.” What People Watch, Listen To and Buy, www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2015/frightful-fans-the-profile-of-horror-movie-lovers.html.

Palmer, Will. “CinemaCon 2017: Who Is Your Audience in 2017?” Box Office Pro, 29 Mar. 2017, pro.boxoffice.com/who-is-your-audience-in-2017/

“The Horror Syndicate Facebook Demographics.” Facebook, www.facebook.com/horrorsyndicate/insights/?section=navPeople

Picture

Sawan, Morgan. “My first Texas Frightmare”, May 5, 2013

Sawan, Morgan. “Screenshot of Texas Frightmare Haul”, Druin II, Roger.  November 10, 2019

Sawan, Morgan. “Screenshot of Lost Autograph”,D. Armendariz, Isaac. November 10, 2019

Sawan, Morgan. “Screenshot of Asking for Ride”, November 10, 2019

Sawan, Morgan. “Screenshot of post 1”, November 10, 2019

Sawan, Morgan. “Screenshot of post 2”, November 10, 2019

[dwestfieldblog]

2018 - NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

(Solve et coagula)

Untying the Not and Never Was...back from Britain...Hello pagan heathens, welcome to the 14thyear of the blog and variations on the theme of transcendental dystopia in the key of F sharp. Feeling positivelypriapic today...with a private new list of  ancient sins that would make even a priest blush...in joyous celebration of Bacchus, Aphrodite and Apollo... I have my own morals, but morals they are and are followed as such. I don't remember what I am taught, I remember what I learn.

Within two minutes of walking past airport customs into the English speaking world, see a display of Newsweek magazines with the front cover blarting 'Putin is preparing for World War 3 -is Trump?' So good to be back so fast into the feculant nightmare. Great to hear the baldhead is running for yet another presidential term and barring his most serious rival from taking part in the lip-service of democratic process. And threatening him with imprisonment for daring to suggest the polls be boycotted. Wonder who will win? Here's hoping today's pig is tomorrow's bacon.

I watched no TV news at all but of course read the Daily Horrors with my breakfast every morning for three weeks...The Golden Reptile in the mickey mouse white house...he doesn't believe in exercise because it is unhealthy for the body and has a Very busy working day from 11am to 5pm...with 'executive time' between the hours.... a separate bedroom with 3 TV screens and cheeseburgers to lull him to sleep until he awakes to tweet his dawn chorus of mindless excremental bilge. Direct quotes from his twitter feed –'My two greatest assets have been mental stability andbeing, like, really smart'... 'a very stable genius...' America....truly serving as a genuine example to the world. How does it feel to be pitied by those you despise and despised by those you pity?

Trump has a 'much bigger and powerful' nuclear button on his desk than Cheese Boy in North Korea... 'and my Button works!'. (How would he know? Hard to test.) Penis measuring across continents. Mentally unstable is a very generous description of these child presidents....And speaking of dumber than paint leaders with bad hair (nice segway eh?) I heard a wonderful description of the lying wannabe UK prime minister Boris Johnson... 'like an arsonist pretending to be a fireman', returning to the Brexit crime scene to save the day...

Another foul/fowl pretender to the throne of PM in the UK, Mr Gove, coming out in sudden favour of chlorinated chicken from the USA and GM crops via the ever popular Monsanto corporation. Follow the lobbyists, follow the money trail. Ignore (or defenestrate) those who speak for corporate interests until you have checked whether their words are actually an opinion based on long running verifiable tests of good health or sound bites paid for by a wedge of serious wonga/moolah/cash into their bank accounts... and/or a future job when they leave politics. Shameless filth. Eg. David Cameron now accepting a role with the Chinese government's one and a half billion pound infrastructure programme.

China said recently that the 1989 British ambassador's claim that 10,000 students were murdered in Beijing is a little extreme. Well it was. Running tanks over unarmed students cannot said to be anything else. 200 has been given as a more realistic death toll. It took them 28 years to come up with this number.

'Oh Lord make my enemies ridiculous'. (Voltaire) Thank you lord...thank you lord.Hallelujah, to coin a phrase...

Pope Francis used his Christmas message to advise his masses to drop 'all sorts of useless baggage'...'the banality of consumerism, the blareof commercials, the stream of empty words and the overpowering waves of empty chatter and loud shouting'. This is the sort of stuff which should indeed be spoken by spiritual leaders but shame he didn't mention talking snakes, pregnant virgins, burning bushes, self inflicted guilt over original sin or the endlessly Unchristian behaviour by his flock. (And there is a special circle in Hell for priests of any faith who rape children.) 'Useless baggage' almost covers it all. As Francis said; '...rediscover what really matters'... Or discover what reality matter is made of..

.'A cross on every hill, a  star, a minaret, so many graves to fill, Oh love, aren't you tired yet?'Cohen, The Faith. Why not not eat pigs together?

The same evil government shit as ever after a massive storm destroying homes... Hurricane Irma wiped out almost every home on Barbuda (Caribbean) and as in New Orleans and dozens of similar cases after a force of nature, the greedpigs move in fast. Deals between the politicians and land developers overpower the rights of those who lived there, such is the freedom of a life without morality. Rebuild and replace communally owned land with dwellings for the wealthy and push aside all former residents. If ever a group of men deserved the force of nature/an act of the Goddess against them and their property, it is these swinefeed.

The West and the East, the East and West, condemning each others' subversions... What came first, the pot or the kettle?

Demonstrations in Iran by the lower classes of all generations across more than 100 cities and towns against the endless drift of power upwards to Khameni and the mullahs...and money outwards to various non charitable organisations (fill in the blanks with live ammunition, missiles, rocket launchers, suicide bombers etc.) the lack of hospitals and social support, the lack of aid after natural disasters, corruption and price rises. 40 percent of young people are unemployed and starting to wonder where the billions are going...or else knowing where. Most, if not all of the above bullet points (ha) are strong factors in the West too...but in America the tension implodes and is directed against ethnicitiesrather than those actually responsible.. and in Britain/ Europe... hmm...Civil unrest is contained in blaming foreigners, thus encouraging Nazi opportunist populists to manipulate the easily persuaded angry mass into voting for them. And the suckers fall for it everybloody time.

Issues of utterly irrelevant social media opinion, autistic entertainment saturating the global human mind to applaud the lowest common denominator, rocking back and forth with glee at the latest exploits of the hollow kardashians and their foul ego stroking ilk, famous only for being famous...a mass debate on the meaningless, billions of people being trained to focus their tiny, blurred attention deficit spans on a multitude of soul numbing emptiness. All looking in the absolute wrong directions while meanwhile....

The strong and immoral arise and laugh their arses off, stirring, provoking, initiating... and they prepare...America and Europe are weaker and weaker. A few computer viruses here and there, shared passwords, blackmail via disinformation,  man made disasters, plenty of random shocks, a constant underlying panic, threats and needling rhetoric result in.....on one side, an aggressive focused mobilisation of forces with intent and on the other, half a billion people with the spiritual bravery and intelligence of a pillow. At some Rubicon of a breakpoint, paranoia becomes common sense. The clock is now at two minutes to midnight. Be aware.

BE AWARE.

'The universe is a total construction of waves and vibrations whose inner content is 'Meaning', and Man is a micro system of the same vibratory nature, floating at some depth in the universal and meaningful wave system. The universal wave system is qualitative or value structured according to its vibration rate spectrum (faster frequencies have more informational capacity).David Foster

'Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is the best'.... speaking of which...Sufferers of schizophrenia with audio and visual hallucinations could be aided by learning an instrument or by listening to music, says new research... Musical aptitude has a strong effect on 'the white matter integrity of the corpus callosum', which protects against the disorder. Quite tempting to comment on the plethora of musicians of all creeds who are obviously unbalanced, unstable and dangerous to themselves and others. Maybe too much music eh? Arf. Never. Anyway, Love IS music and music IS love Sorry Frank.

'All lovers young, all lovers must, consign to thee and come to dust'. Shakespeare -Cymbeline.

'Micro dosing' is one of the 'new' trend things...(as opposed to non functioning overdose situations) brought to you all the way from Silicon valley. That's right... just one tenth of 150 micrograms of LSD will aid you in your chosen field (no pun intended, almost) to break through, focus, go within, go OUT and open neural pathways blocked by the mundane and logical. I have not tripped on acid since 1985 (and that last trip was just over 21 hours long before I took sleeping pills to make the galaxies stop flowing through my brain.) Have been very tempted over the years but truly didn't want or need such an eternity of multidimensional senses while still in flesh...(once the doorway is opened, it stays opened.) This micro dosing is highly interesting however and I will do this this as soon as the first possibility appears. Still think I prefer October mushrooms....Where the Heart Is, in a Halo of Stars.

Picked up a leaflet yesterday...Non stop erotic massages and hotel escorts in Prague... 'Your imagination has no limits'...ermmm...ahhh..hmmm...probably not, but there are laws and only so much available cash this evening..Or, as Alien Sex Fiend sang, 'Everybody's got what everybody wants and everybody wants what everybody's got.' Well, almost.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.' So sayeth (saideth?) George Orwell. Doesn't seem to apply to British and American universities where the mind fecking 'Safe Space' ethic is rigidly enforced by the twenty something brain police. Anything which could be offensive or disagreed with, is banned.....That comedian who once made a joke ridiculing transgenders... REMOVE him from the list of those who should speak... that woman who said the holy land is bollocks because the old testament was just some non verifiable book which told the Hebrews what they wanted to hear? No platform for her, no stage for them unless it has a gallows pole upon it. (Yeah, self fulfilling propaganda works like a dream every time. Bullshit is half of the charm.) You university morons. You MORONS, working for the enemy, for ones who seek to bring YOU down. Who seek to cage and contain thee. To limit the horizons of creative expression and put a sterile tank around truth. Poor little fragile youth, too delicate to be offended, WHY AREN'T YOU ANGRY? The ancient schools of Sumeria and Greece would be disgusted at your level of human intelligence. 

You cannot make up your own mind until you have exposed yourself to all shades of opinion and distilled all. Read what you disagree with with, it is a fascinating comedy...and very often reveals that what you thought you know, you do not Feel.

The man of the crowd is a weakling; people who need people are the stupidest people in the world. Evolution requires individuals, a union of outsiders working in random harmony...or...'Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see'. Schopenhauer. I know some of this may seem like nonsense. But it's a discipline and I do it with purpose.

Meanwhile, remaining emotional attachments to the socially acceptable drugs...I Want a cigarette or a Strong Drink, or at least, at long last, a painkiller that actually works. Arnica Montana and DL-Phenylalanine don't quite cut the mustard. Thirty minute pause while I go for a walk in the cold dark park, come back home and cut my own hair for the second time in my life. (Not bad at all, just as good as all my last cuts by semi professionals...) One side is half an inch longer but WT actual F? Who cares? Fate is gonna find you with a glass of champagne? Make it a triple espresso and half a bottle of good whisky and then we can talk. And a cigarette...my lack of smoking is making me want to claw and bite this wood table into splinters. There...a normal paragraph of usual life...just in time for the end of a page.

Favourite depressing headline from the new year...'Couple who left son to drown in lake were poor parents, judge concludes.' The wisdom of Solomon. My favourite headline from last month has to be ;A fried egg has no place in the nativity, say 77 percent of parents”\ My first thought was, uff, so 33 percent think it is ok?? My second thought was, well, why not eh? Makes as much sense as anything else in that twisted story....I read a useful column in a newspaper last month, called 'Failsafe ways to spot a Liar'. Glad to see my instincts were right according to researchers and clinical psychologists. Some humans are bereft of as much emotional intelligence and morality as AI machines. Blame it on childhood trauma,always an easy way out. How was the first year of your life? Use trance hypnotism recall, recall and release.

'The key task of a muse is to allow the artist to see his own feminine aspect that is otherwise invisible to him and to be a screen that fits the artist's projections. What completes the artist isn't the intrinsic qualities of the romantic interest but the artist's own feminine archetype. So, to the extent that the artist's projections dominate or replace the muse's own qualities, the muse's soul is dissipated.' Allan Showalter, psychiatrist.

Time to go back to being oblivious to the 'news' again, in the two minutes which are left, there is space to become plenty of nothing and locate your Will. See you in a few weeks after my probable final birthday, which falls upon an Easter Monday this year. Too late for a resurrection (well, there are pills for that anyway) but in time for the beauty of rising Spring with the binary healing of cabala chakras...every man and woman is a star...Stay well....

[2ndinooo-blog]

Halloween Spectaculars

The month of October is full of surprises, screams, spooktacular events, Octoberfest, and much more. Seems to me to be one of the busiest holiday besides thanksgiving and Christmas. Companies like busy months and holidays because there is lot of Marketing that needs to be done and they release a lot of content that gets geared towards consumers. While most consumers are in the October holiday spirit marketers are loving it and so are we. Marketers take advantage and find creative ways to get gasp their consumer’s attention and let me tell you they are doing one heck of a good job. Companies like Universal Studies, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and Queen Mary focus their theme parks and attractions on Halloween. Many people look forward to the month of October because of all the spookiness that get promoted towards the end of the summer.

My all-time favorite is Universal Studios Hollywood. They also have a theme park in Orlando, Florida that is twice as big compared to the one in Hollywood, California and another in Singapore and Japan. Universal Studios has a special Halloween theme event that runs all of October but because of high demand it now starts late September and ends Early November. Their event is called Halloween Horror Nights “HHN”. The event is gear up their social media toward the fall season. October seems to be their best month for HHN because of all the scariness going around. They are constantly active on all their social media platforms and consumers seek to enjoy it. On their social media platforms, they are very interactive and connect with their followers. Several followers have been featured on their sites and have gotten exclusive gifts. Their target population is millennials but all ages seemed to enjoy the events. HHN does have ad commercials, and billboards here and there. But most of their marketing is done by word of mouth. Their fans and followers are their real marketers. People who tend to attend their events have such a great experience that they recommend their attractions to their friends and post it all over social media. It has become one of the most visited attraction in California. People travel far distances just to come and experience the horror of Hollywood. Their own fans have made the event trend all over social media and now people can view their videos worldwide.  

As for Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, they advertise their best and most haunting movie thriller mazes. Big Hollywood screen movies like, The Shinning, Halloween, The Purge, The Exorcist, and much more. Advertising big Hollywood names attracts lots of movie and horror fanatic. Their audience varies throughout the years. Another great bonus for their event is that it is now trending as must do for October that celebrity endorsement. Famous Hollywood figures have attended their event and fans are just waiting to meet their idols. Many celebrities let their fans know about their appearance at the event and more people attend the event, hoping they get to see celebrities. Kendrick Lamar posing with a scary man. 

 Every year they add and take away attractions and same goes to their revenue. Their revenue seems to go up around the same time they have the Halloween Horror Night event and goes down after the holidays. Meaning, having this Halloween special event is a major asset for the company. This event has been going on as long as I can remember, so give or take about 10 or more years. Universal Studios alone bring goes revenue to the company they are owned by which is Comcast. Competitors like Disneyland Six Flags and Knott’s Berry Farm bring lots of more revenue because those theme parks are twice as big. Even though Universal Studios suffered at first with HHN event they have successfully made it. Now it is one of the most visited events of Southern California.

However, they do need to seem to be active yearlong because one of their weaknesses is that when the HHN event is over they seem to lose a lot of their followers. Yes, they do have some super fans that keep loyal to the company but majority of their regular followers only follow the company around the Halloween season. What can be recommended for them is to have constant content throughout the year of behind the scenes work on their HHN event or special events to have their followers stay connected. Or have polls and surveys for their website and see what their consumers really want from them. Remember communication and connection is key with your consumers because you are providing for them.  

Overall, they can use minor changes but they are doing a great job.

Do you dear attend? What are your fears?