#I'm going through my drafts to finish posts I was just too lazy to locate the quotes for lol

[procrastinationaccount]

Horrible little Ninth gremlins <3

[byjillianmaria]

As I dive into the umpteenth draft of A Colder Home, I decided to do a meta dump similar to the one I did for Behind You! Very similar, actually... you'll notice that all of the photos are more or less in the same place. And that is because I am lazy. But not too lazy to ramble about inspirations under the cut!

SONGS

Once again, my eight track playlist for this WIP goes extremely hard, and once again, I could easy ramble about all eight of those tracks. I will stick to the three I selected for this graphic.

This Unrest by Siouxsie and the Banshees - In general, I associate this WIP with a lot of post-punk and goth rock, so of course I had to lead with an iconic goth rock band. The lyrics are haunting and capture a feeling of deep unease, which is the sort of feeling that pervades this book. Also, there are a lot of weird vocalizations in this... gasping noises that sound like someone being strangled, along with echoing, ghostly shouts. Both become very relevant.

Blue by The Birthday Massacre - I started associating this song with A Colder Home immediately upon hearing it. It absolutely calls to mind a house haunted by ghosts that are slowly being twisted by their anger the longer they stick around, the singing switching back and forth between calm and violent. The lyrics even reference a car crash! And the notion of "casting shadows in a pale shade of blue" does remind me of limited light making its way through snow-caked windows...

Double Dare by Bauhaus - Okay, I'm going to be real with you. I don't associate the lyrics of this song so much with this WIP. I mean, if you want to stretch it, you can say that Cleo's whole arc deals with her learning to "dare" to hope and to not live her life ruled by fear, but that's about it. What really gets this song for me is the heavy, oppressive instrumental. It absolutely sounds like a house that's weighted down with decades of pain and anger and guilt... a house that is now reflecting those emotions in destructive, violent ways.

BOOKS

Writing that influenced A Colder Home! Like the books I referenced for Behind You, I wouldn't consider these comp titles, just inspirational.

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones - SGJ is such an influential horror writer for me, with The Only Good Indians probably being one of my favorite books of all time, and is also a heavy influence for A Colder Home as far as pacing and tone. I haven't actually finished MHIAC yet — I have to read it slowly, because Jade's specific flavor of paranoia does not play very nicely with mine — but I included it as the reference title here because, like A Colder Home, its main character is a teenaged horror movie nerd.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - I mean, Hill House is THE haunted house novel. Of course I'm going to include it as a reference! The opening paragraphs of this novel are burned into my mind, and its characterization of a haunted house definitely influences how I write the house on Brewer Street. I'd also be pretty remiss not to bring up the Mike Flanagan adaption here... while it's decidedly its own thing separate from the novel, his specific brand of emotionally-fueled horror writing has definitely left its mark on me.

The Shining by Stephen King - I mean. A Colder Home is a book about people trapped by snow in a haunted location. Need I say more? Interestingly, both of these books also deal with themes of alcoholism and addiction, although they come from very different emotional places. Cleo also references the Stanley Kubrick movie at one point, which is, again, very different from the book. But as a film nerd, I think it makes sense that she'd think of that over the book... I do also wonder if the film's less sympathetic portrayal of Jack Torrence might have stuck with her more. She probably wouldn't like me pointing that out, though.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - Another work that gets directly referenced in the book! It's not a direct comparison or anything, but it gets referenced early, and over time more parallels can be drawn... Overall, thematically, this borrows a lot when it comes to complicated family dynamics, skepticism vs. rationality, and that sort of overall inevitability/hopelessness thing that goes on.

VIDEO GAMES

I'm not much of a gamer myself, but the way that the medium is able to tell horror stories is fascinating! I've enjoyed watching Let's Plays of both of these titles.

P.T. by Kojima Productions - P.T. was a playable teaser for a (tragically) scrapped Silent Hill game, and it remains one of the absolute creepiest things I have ever seen in my life. The sound design haunts me... every time I hear something that sounds like that creaky light, I break out in goosebumps. I cannot replicate the feeling of this thing in ink and paper, but goddamn it if I'm not going to at least try. Also, you can definitely feel Lisa's design in Virginia, one of the main ghosts of A Colder Home, haha.

Devotion by Red Candle Games - I'm really fascinated by the way the story unfolds in this, how the player is given these little vignettes and has to piece the story together from that. I think you can sort of see that in the way I approach some of the ghost scenes in A Colder Home... but, also, I'm very inspired by just how personal this game feels. The little details in the set design just really add to the sense that you know these characters, and makes the scares hit all the harder.

POETRY

Poetry can express in just a few lines the same emotion that it takes me thousands of words to dig into! One is not better than the other, but I'd lie if I said I wasn't inspired by it.

In The Pines by Alice Notley - Technically, I think the version of it in this graphic is from the song #6 by AroarA, but they pulled their lyrics directly from Alice Notley's book of poetry, so I feel like that's where the attribution lies. This poem absolutely gutted me the first time I read it... It makes me think of loving someone who is unwilling or unable to stop their self-destructive tendencies, and how hopeless that can feel. Which is, really, what's at the core of this book.

Selfishness by Margaret E. Bruner - This book deals a lot with complex feelings of grief, and some of the less savory feelings that comes from that. Anger, guilt, blame... these are all really human and understandable reactions to a loss, especially if that loss is sudden. The horror in A Colder Home comes from watching what happens when those emotions are all that's left... I think that poem really captures that energy.