#i know a lot about analog horror and the history of horror on the internet

[several-ravens]

@jo1sstuff i'm going to reply to this in its own post so i can find it and add to it later more easily if i need to

also it's under the cut because it's a demonstation that's long af

tldr: technology

so here is the line of thinking that got me to this conclusion:

1) episode 65 presents something totally different from any other category we've met so far, and that is analog horror (so found footage, creepy videos, possessed digital devices, and the likes). usually it is about something that's old, or older than the person who uses it (just like tessa winters in 2017 who finds the (alleged) program made by sergei yshanka in the 1980's)

and analog horror has been a very important part of the 'new age' of horror as technology and the internet grew. there are some very famous things like the movies the ring and blair witch project, or mickey mouse whistling, or the scp foundation, or the new doom mod, or creepy pasta, you get the idea

my personal comment: it's very meta to have an episode on analog horror which is literally an ancestor and relative to tma itself, and i LOVE this

2) tessa winters makes a loooong monologue about the differences between analog and digital and draws our attention to jon's tape recorder

which reminded me of the very first episode where he explains why he records some statements on tape: "I plan to digitise the files as much as possible and record audio versions, though some will have to be on tape recorder, as my attempts to get them on my laptop have met with… significant audio distortions." (unofficial transcripts)

3) in episode 62, gertrude says: "Who does the book come from?" and mary keay responds: "The End, of course." (unofficial transcripts)

notice how she said 'who' and not 'where'. so my guess is the categories are not only there to classify the different types of fears but also have an 'entity' or a 'god' attached to it

my personal comment: i like the idea that they are similar to the great old ones from lovecraft, who also plays a very fundamental part in today's horror

4) i'm then reminded of american gods by neil gaiman (<3), where the gods of the old worships have a war with the new ones (technology, media, etc.)

which brings us back to our point no.2 (analog vs. digital), and the fact that apparently the only things that won't go into jonathan's computer are the statements that fit into the categories, so that are associated with our 'old gods' (the end, and the 13 others)

"why wouldn't they go digital?" you might ask. well, because they are at war with digital and the new technologies (or something of that kind). here i quote the unofficial transcripts from mag47: jonathan says: "You make it sound like there’s a… war." to which delirium michael responds with: "[heh] Then I will say nothing further. I wouldn’t wish to tarnish your ignorance prematurely."

5) the fear of our future being taken over by technology is a very real thing (detroit become human comes to my mind rn, also fallout somehow (even though it's more about capitalism but technology is still important, i.e. nuclear weapons), also the current discourses with ai, etc.)

so its just a draft for now, but my guess is something along the lines of 'technology' or like 'progress'

P.S. (i know editing a post after it has been posted is bad but honetly idc): you (jo1sstuff) said something about the 15th corridor not being there at the time of episode 35, which confirms this theory about 'technology' being a new, emergent deity

[the-kestrels-feather]

I know I'm SO late to the party, but In light of the hbomberguy video, I wanted to drop a list of some of my favorite video essayists on here who are all great. Some are well known, some of them not, but all deserve a lot of love thrown their way!

Any creators I know are Queer will have a * next to their names if that's what you're looking for! (Note some of them might not have a star that should, that's not me trying to invalidate anybody I just didn't know, please feel free to correct me!)

Dominic Noble- book content! Has a series called Lost in Adaptation that judges how faithful movie adaptations of books were to their original source material, but also does some reviews/summaries as well. Very publicly denounced JKR after she was revealed to be a TERF and stated he will no longer review anything by her on his channel. Also deleted ALL of his HP videos after finding out she was a TERF (which were his most popular videos), so I have a really deep respect for him tbh. Former Channel Awesome member who publicly denounced them on several occasions, and an all around swell guy.

*Overly Sarcastic Productions- channel run by 2 people who go by Red and Blue. History and Mythology/Literature content, as well as analysis of tropes and media! I've been told their History content can be a bit... Iffy, but I'm not a Historian so I don't know, however if they get something wrong they're good about correcting it for what that counts for. Very interesting to listen to, I've watched Red's Videos roughly 100 times each. Also has a podcast.

*Strange Aeons- fandom/Tumblr history mostly, as well as some history, and weird businesses too. Reads a LOT of cursed content for her channel.

*Lindsay Ellis- Media/film analysis. obviously not as unknown as some of the others on here, but I absolutely adore her content and will forever be sad that she isn't on YouTube anymore.

Cruel World Happy Mind- MLM/explanation of controversial figures. I'm not sure how best to explain her content, but she seems genuinely lovely and is interesting to listen to. Also a victim of Illuminaughtii's ire and deserves some love. The video she made on Blair is a bit outdated since she made it at the start of when this all came to light, but imo it's definitely worth a watch. Her talking about her interaction with Blair genuinely broke my heart.

*Night Mind- Analog horror/Unfiction/ARG content! Analyzes and explains various internet horror pieces, and also has a very nice voice to listen to.

*Lola Sebastian- Film/Media Analysis!

Li Speaks- Deep dives into various nostalgia, mainly flash games!

*Princess Weekes- Media/film/literary analysis!

abitfrank- summaries and analysis of various "darker" children's content such as Coraline (book and movie), Nightmare Before Christmas, and various dark fairy tales

Hello Future Me- writing advice and world building information!

Curious Archive- deep dives into the various bestiaries of video games and the animals in real life that they're similar to, I love his Subnautica video!

In Praise of Shadows- Horror media analysis! Will often focus on specific franchises, but also covers things like horror comics and tropes as well.

Wait in the Wings- theatre! Deep dives into the back stories behind the production of various musicals! His video on Rogers the Musical that he did for April Fool's last year is comedy fucking gold

Weird Reads With Emily Louise- conspiracy theory/cult/weird thing analysis! Looks at things from an objective and skeptical view, and is very in depth. Recently served as a consulting producer on an HBO Max documentary on the Love has Won cult.

Ask a Mortician- death content! Covers various historical events and darker stories of death from the view of a Mortician.

*Izzzyzz- deep dives into fandoms, as well as well as different video games and kids' virtual worlds.

Disney Dan- Disney content! Covers the history of different mascot costumes at Disney and Disney-like parks! Has collaborated with Definctland in the past too!

Yesterworld- theme park content! Discusses history behind rides and parks, as well as some Disney movies. I think has also collaborated with Defunctland and Disney Dan?

Legal Eagle- legal content! Breaks down news about ongoing legal cases in a way that feels approachable. I like him because both my parents are paralegals and his videos have helped me understand what they mean when they're talking about work a little bit

Super Eye patch Wolf- media video essays! Mostly about anime/manga and video games, but also covers things like influencer scams and pro wrestling. His "what the internet did to Garfield" video is SO GOOD

*Jessie Gender- Media Analysis, loves Star Trek

*Laura Crone- Media Analysis video essays, her videos on the Swan Princess are fucking great I highly recommend!

*Lady Emily- Media Analysis, did a whole video on Spuder-Man turn off the dark that is SO good. Co writer for Sarah Z

Tale Foundry- covers different forms of fiction, their xenofiction video is great, as is their Angelarium one!

Defunctland- Theme Park ride and Children's TV History channel!

Jenny Nicholson- one of the sort of "big three" commentary channels with Lindsay Ellis and Sarah Z imo, covers all sorts of stuff but her most recent one is a 3 hour video on the theme park Evermore Park!

*Sarah Z- Fandom history and Media analysis! I really enjoy their content, the Johnlock Conspiracy and DashCon videos are my favorites!

Li Speaks- Flash games/virtual world analysis mostly! She has a very soothing voice to listen to, if you played like. Any MMOs or virtual worlds growing up I Highly recommend. I've watched her video on Horseland SO many times.

*Codex Entry- Video game coverage! Her videos on Pathologic are great if you're like me and wanted more after the Hbomberguy video!

Wendigoon- ARG/Spooky content! One of the early proponents of the Mandela Catalog and best known for his conspiracy theory iceberg, but has also covered things like various weird/unsolved crimes, Assassination conspiracies, and other things. His videos on Faith, Blood Meridian, The Mandela Catalog, and his Religion/Cult iceberg are some of my favorites

Dino Diego- Dinosaur fiction, like movies, video games, books, short stories, etc. his 2 videos on West of Eden and Winter in Eden are two of my favorites!

Haley Whipjack- I don't know how to describe her content really? She does a lot of deep dives (her Shrek one is my favorite), currently doing a recap of Once Upon a Time by season that is very fun. She's an elementary school teacher by day (that's not me dozing her she talks about it on her channel), and so she has fun unhinged teacher energy!

Other channels that are a sort of collection of different people talking about different things rather than 1 or 2:

TEDx

PBS

The Exploring Series

[chargetheintruder]

Things you need to know, before society ends.

I had originally planned something else for today.  A whole lot of it actually.  More tactics and the like to get my neighbors in the USA to actually care and VOTE this coming Tuesday.  Obviously I didn’t make it because my health has been disruptive--keeping me from getting proper sleep and interfering with other basics like keeping food in my body.  So be it, I will get to what I can tomorrow, or later today (Monday) actually.

Be that as it may . . . I’ve been watching some Emergency Alert Service fiction, analog horror things.  The “Alert World” channel is good for casuals on Youtube, and I found something called the Atlas Foundation, which is good too.  And something’s occurred to me.

Whether we win this particular Election Day or not, whether Democrats can hold on to Congress and/or Governor’s Offices or not, the truth of the matter is, good, decent people, even a majority, can only hold out against Everything for so long.  I’m not talking about the alt-right here.  I am talking about everything else: climate change, the possible end of technological advancement, the possible rise of A.I. and algorithms, overpopulation, Peak Water, the possibility of non-friendly alien contact (by extra-terrestrials, from outside of our solar system).  We have LOTS of problems here on Earth and politics as such can only address a few of them, and even then it can end up being in the lame, “too little too late” sense of the addressing of it.

What I’m saying is, nobody’s ever had to solve for everything ever, in human history.  It might not be possible.  We can do everything right and society as we know it might still collapse.  So here are five things to consider before society ends.

1--Make more than one plan.  It’s that simple, and that hard.  Some situations might want to make you check out and not live through them, but that doesn’t let you off the hook for everything.  Make a few specific plans for a) things you can handle, or survive, b) things you can overcome, or actually change for the better, and c) things that really are a “nope, I’m absolutely fucked, bye now” scenario.

2--Learn who your enemies really are, and get ready to KILL them as needed.  This should be a small and specific list, that you only have to use as a last resort.  If it’s your first option and the list is huge OR vague, consider that you might be the problem, or one of them.

3--Consider being absolutely and relentlessly KIND to everyone who is not a dedicated foe or enemy.  Not just polite or nice.  Be ready to show up and help others.  Be ready to care for others and to walk with, or if need be to walk under and CARRY others until they can stand on their own.  Understand that while some selfishness is needed for you to survive, pure selfishness alone is going to poison your mind.  Don’t bury more people than you need to.  Reach out to who you can, when you can.  When there is no society, BE social, and BE society.

4--Set aside time to be alive, while you can, while society persists still.  Get OFF the internet for a few hours.  Get out in some sunlight if you can.  Feel some rain or snow touch you if you can’t.  Pick a flower if you want to.  Call your friends or family--talk with your people.  Tell them you love them if you can.  If you can cook outdoors on a grill, do so.  If you can head to the beach, go for it.  Buy the little thing you’ve always put off getting, that you’ve wanted.  Finish reading, or writing, that book of yours.

Make some time to do things that feel GOOD while you can do that still.  There will always be plenty of time to suffer later once society isn’t a thing any more.

5--Not all endings happen instantly.  That needs to be said  How many people here actually HAVE resumed a) going to the library, b) going out to see a movie at a theater, c) going out to eat at a restaurant, dine-in, d) actually going out to a party with friends and crowds, and/or e) going out to a shopping mall (if you have access to one that’s still active and in business)?  Post-pandemic, how many social errands and outings have you lost?  If you still have family and/or children with you, how much of THEIR social life is either gone or not happening in the first place, thanks to pandemics?

Societies aren’t at risk of collapse, usually, over one big sudden thing.  Instead they die slowly as functions die and drop off, one by one as the places where you live and the places where you go become defunct and fade away and/or get outright taken away from you by so-called “progress” from out-of-state, corporate landlords newly come to town.  The death by a thousand cuts usually IS slow, always proceeds ONE loss at a time.

Prepare accordingly.  Note your losses and replace what you can.  Or you know, raise hell as you mourn the losses you can’t replace.

What I’m saying in all of this is: the end of society doesn’t change the fact that you’re a human being.  Sure, prepare and have food, water, shelter and weapons ready.  But beyond that, understand that you will need more as a thinking being.  Spending your whole life just surviving doesn’t make you the best--it just means you’re as good at being dirt-poor and miserable as everyone else surviving the shit-show.  Doing better means doing more than the least.

And if nothing else?  Thank you kindly for your time and patience.

[junipercalle]

Behind-the-scenes, Sept. 1996

This was posted last mon on my Patreon, and I'm posting it here now.

Last month, I talked about how the Cypher's format came to be.

The other thing that being "analog horror story, with 90s fandom, small town" meant is that I could really play with the location the Cypher is set. The 'analog horror' vibe comes in two parts: shit's weird, and shit's isolated (or, at least, hidden from the awareness and response of the world around it). That was fun, both in the plot where weird events are taking place, and the fandom/friend-group nature of the Cypher as an in-setting paper.

Weirdness is built in to the Cypher's location and IRL inspiration. It's largely rural, but not quite. There are fields, farms, very few chain stores. But not quite: there was old industrial development, once upon a time, now forgotten or rotting; military presence that has since gone away; heck, rail transportation that's now bike trails. It's haunted by change (fear of change from without, fear of decay within) and a weirdly fragmented history that people really don't face and occasionally should (especially when it comes to racism). That, on top of the stories you get. People see lights. People see critters. (You know; the usual.) It's a good place for a story with an underpinning that change is inevitable, and that you ultimately have to be okay with that to be able to help change things for the better.

(It's crossed my mind that this is a weird theme for a story steeped in nostalgia.)

It isn't just that, though. The isolated part dovetails so well with the characters who are writing the Cypher, and why they are doing what they do. With fandom, and what it meant to me as a person back then, in the place that I'm taking inspiration from.

What fandom meant, to me, at the time the Cypher is set (well, and for a while afterwards) was magic. A liminality. There's the material world around you: farms. Offices. Forests. There's the news, and the concerns of the "normal" world... but all of that isn't where you are. People aren't really where you are, and if you aren't a social person, you don't meet the ones who are there. And then there's stories, internet. Fandom. You had to make an effort for fandom. Find those tapes, find people. It wasn't always easy. Fandom media, and fandom social culture, was the escape that existed above and beyond the place I was in. Something you concealed from people generally, actively hid when needed, and occasionally pursued despite the rules. Fandom was where you could ask yourself who you actually were, not who you were expected to be. Where you could be less straight, less cis, (yes, even back when fandom was not as open) and acknowledge the validity of people that the people immediately around you played down or actively denied. Where you were more likely to be freer to speak (until you dealt with people who insisted "fandom isn't political"). It's easier to find some of these things now, and I don't mean now isn't magical-- but it's a different mood, and writing the Cypher has been a trip through what's now a different world and a different life.

The Cypher is a bit of an ode to that liminal space. To the world unto itself that is fandom, where people can explore the things they are impassioned by, and the implicit rebellion against society that that is. I don't mean that fandom isn't these things now (it certainly is, and better at being them, in a lot of ways), as long as you look past the commercialization and corporatization of things. (The irony being that that's probably a sentence that transcends all these years and longer. The more things change, the more they stay the same).

I think next month I'll get into fanzines I researched, and newspaper sources, that I used for inspiration.

[sunder-the-gold]

You know I’ve seen plenty of people complain about seeing ensign and skin walkers in games and such, but honestly I want to ask how does it feel seeing Helltaker?

Like as a Christian that’s gotta be weird to see right? These actual biblical demons being wooed in Hell and such, with Lucifer herself in it. Even got the giant demon fly that turns into a hot girl. Like that’s gotta be insensitive right?

That’s such a good question that I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out where to even begin answering it.

Actually, most of the trouble comes from figuring out how to address the disparity between how various people (Native Americans, NAs actually on the Internet, and White Saviors on the Internet) react to those boogeymen being used in pop-media versus how Christianity’s boogeymen are used.

One non-controversial difference is that Native Americans always believed mentioning their bogeys by name would empower or summon them, and never stopped believing that. For Christianity, that idea is fairly heretical, and I think that heresy hit its peak long after the movement started, and the idea faded into obscurity long ago.

Possibly and ironically, what helped contribute to modern irreverence for the names of Lucifer and Satan was Christianity’s apparent failure to maintain a presence in the arts, especially fiction.

I mean, look at the enduring legacy of Dante’s heretical Inferno (where Satan is helplessly imprisoned in the deepest circle of hell), which is better known among non-Christians than apocryphal texts like Enoch and Jasher are known to Christians. The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia also endure, but they’re not really analogous since they don’t presume to explain all of real-life existence.

In popular art and storytelling, Satan is sometimes presented as a serious threat for horror stories, but just as or more often cast as an ineffectual loser. Who doesn’t enjoy “The Devil Went Down To Georgia”?

So the idea that the devil is a threat doesn’t bother Christians, and the idea that he’s ultimately a loser doesn’t bother Christians. “The snake will bite the son’s heel, but the son will crush his head.” That’s all old news.

As for how HILARIOUSLY INACCURATE the pop-cultural idea of Christianity has become, Christians are fairly desensitized to it. Like I said, the church has largely surrendered the fight for popular culture.

When people accuse The Bankers of being Christian and punishing social media for raunchy content and advertisements because Jesus Wept, I have to laugh. If Christianity had the rich people firmly in its corner, where is the Christian answer to Hollywood, or Nintendo? The Banking Class’s only god is Money.

From my perspective, something like Helltaker is so far removed from Christianity that it’s not worth getting upset about. It’s really just a Western version of Japan’s youkai at this point, or Japan’s take on the originally-Nordic elves and dwarves.

Do Japanese people consider how their ancestors would have felt about depicting oni as sexy women to woo into a man’s harem? Though, heck, if Fate/ Grand Order’s version of Tomoe Gozen is any kind of accurate to the source legends, Japan’s been fantasizing about sleeping with demon women for a long time already.

How long has it been since they shivered in the night, worrying about ox-horned, tiger-fanged man-eaters arising from the gates of hell to beat them to death with metal clubs?

Anyway, the closest I’ve come to getting offended is when one fan-written Doom song mocked crosses and bibles as useless.

It’s not just emotionally hurtful, it’s not even intellectually honest. Given that Jesus outright told his disciples to arm themselves with swords to deal with the world after his passing, holy symbols and teaching texts were clearly never meant to substitute for shotguns and chainsaws.

It makes as much sense as saying that national flags (or emblems of warrior organizations like the Night Sentinels) and history books are useless. A history book would have saved Earth a lot of trouble, if Olivia Pierce would humble herself to learn from the mistakes others made before her.

[lazeolus]

Is there anything ur passionate about but dont have a lot of ppl to talk to about it? If so, could u tell us about it?

ARGs/Unfiction! For sure! And ik a lotta ppl are gonna be like “oh so u got into them via Wilbur/Editor ARG” and NO this is false… I’ve been in the ARG community for 5+ years, much longer than I’ve been in MCYT community! Actually first heard about Wilbur back when editor ARG originally debuted, but I was a fool and didn’t get that into it back then.

But what are ARGs, for those who don’t know? The acronym shortens to “Alternate Reality Game,” and essentially refers to a “puzzle” of sorts that communities of people have to come together to solve. ARGs are very linked to the internet since they became popular during the infancy of the digital age, but they technically don’t have to have any online elements, most just do. A core principle of ARGs is the idea of TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.” TINAG differentiates ARGs from normal fiction/puzzles in that it requires that ARGs must present themselves as real. They act as if they are not fiction, and are real stories happening in the real world. Of course, creators normally violate TINAG at least once or twice to assure people that what they’re participating in is actually a game and doesn’t have real consequences, but any more than one or two breakages of this rule is normally frowned upon. There have also been cases where TINAG was NEVER broken, and these cases led to some uhhh… confusion, to say the least *cough cough* Junko Junsui *cough cough.” I’ll also be using the term “Unfiction” a bit, which just refers to an ARG that focuses more on the story than the puzzle solving aspect (to give popular examples, think of Cicada3301 as being an ARG and Walten Files as being Unfiction)

So yeah, ARGs! Love em! Love em SO much that I actually taught a two-day course on em at my school a few years ago with the help of some friends! I have the history of ARGs + all of the most influential ones memorized thanks to the research I did for that course, and my friends and I even constructed our own small-scale ARG for the students. Was a lotta fun!

My all time favorite ARG/Unfiction is Daisy Brown! It has one of the best stories in any Unfiction I’ve ever experienced and I still remember the rollercoaster of emotions it dragged me through.

Also a big fan of the Twitter ARG gr3gory88 as well as the classic analog horror series that is Local58! And how could I forget about Petscop?

Most recently, I’ve been following along with The Mandela Catalogue as well as Alex Bale’s Spongebob ARG. This isn’t Alex Bale’s first ARG rodeo, and I love his style of creating much more cinematic ARGs that almost feel like movies (uncommon for the genre, which is very much tied to the found-footage style). Catastrophe Crow as well as Gemini Home Entertainment are both also on my radar!

AH and can’t forget about Perplex City! A much more wide-scale, for-profit ARG that was actually made by Mind Candy, the same company that makes stuff like Moshi Monsters. I normally prefer independent ARGs made by smaller creators, but Perplex City just has such a rich history behind it that it’s one of my favs! Bought the original starter set on eBay a few years back and I keep it as a collectors item lol

And of course we all know how much I love Editor ARG :)

I tried to keep this relatively short, but I love ARGs a lot and I think I just ended up gushing a bunch! Feel free to send me ARG/Unfiction related asks or if you just want more info on the stuff I mentioned!

[syndicalcrossing]

Earth vs. Syndical Crossing

History is a dead document which we must study with serious attention. The future is a blank page we all must author together. That story can be what we want it to be, so long as we are willing to work at it.

I posted a little about the history of the world of Syndical Crossing. In my dreams and daydreams I have fleshed out the world more because that is what my brain does.

Animal Crossing (the source game which I have chosen to critique and pay homage to) exists in a strange limbo which is at once our own world and also not (with walking, talking animals for example). Famous pieces of art exist there and thus are imbued with all of their relevant histories. For me, Michelangelo's David has an incredible significance as an artifact in the game.

If that statue exists, then that means the united monarchy of Israel and Judah existed as canon in Animal Crossing. Extrapolate and that means the Shoah happened in the world of Animal Crossing.

I know I’m probably the only person on the internet obsessive enough about media and games to make that connection but it is one I am incapable of not making.

I believe for a syndicalist revolution to have occurred in Syndical Crossing, there are baseline structures which also must have existed in a specific context—slavery, oppression, coercion and exploitation are some examples.

As I build the mechanics of this game, I want the world to breathe under the weight of history as our world does today.

I am the author of the dead document which represents the history of Syndical Crossing. Its world does not share our history. Syndical Crossing does not take place on our historic, material Earth.

As the sole author of Syndical Crossing’s history, I have decided that some of humanity’s gruesome inventions are too much for me to bear and therefore have no counterpart in the game.

I am also keenly aware that most of the daydream concepts I have imagined come from a historically European perspective. I want to address that in my own mind, to make Syndical Crossing’s history richer and distinct from that of Earth without feeling like science fiction. 

According to my earlier post about its history, Syndical Crossing’s world suffered from colonialism and its associated horrors. It behooves me to critically ask myself why I am comfortable with including those atrocities and not others. It is of course because of my own lived experience and histories.

I look down on my little concept sketches of cats building a cooperative commonwealth together and I wonder what differentiates them as individuals? What united them enough across cultural, linguistic and religious divides to emancipate themselves? 

Any grassroots movement capable of successful revolution would certainly comprise different factions. Although Syndical Crossing’s primary force ended up being the Universal Workers Union, surely there were other tendencies which informed the struggle? I have imagined some but now I second guess myself. How much inspiration do I want to draw from our own world and how much do I want to create from whole cloth?

There is a habit among world builders to create analogues or stand-ins for the people, cultures, nations and events of our own world, as an easy shorthand. I can see why. Drawing from our shared knowledge makes for quick understanding and comfort within a fictional setting. The more world building I do without analogous, real-world counterparts, the more I risk alienating players and creating obstacles to flow.

On the other hand, I have enjoyed filling the role of game master in many a table-top RPG. I love to craft deep, rich worlds full of cultures and languages in which my players may roam and explore. That impetus informs a lot of my development decisions and I hope won’t hinder the production of this game.

One thing I know for sure—I want players to be able to immerse themselves in the world of Syndical Crossing and have agency to author its little future together through gameplay. The history and mechanics are up to me, for the most part. Whatever happens once I invite other people in, is out of my hands.

That is scary and exciting to consider.

[divinaes-bookofsecrets]

Add something if you'd like?

Whats your thoughts on this upgrade or is it 🤔

Please share your personal experience too, to show off 😏 jk

🌟 Comment comment comment REBLOG!!! PLEASE please 🙏 im curio

Techno Witch

Filed under: Pagan Life, Spells & Potions — Leave a comment

I work with technology a lot, including virtual reality, and it made me wonder what or how it could pose as some good use for magick and witchcraft.

At the start of being Pagan, many things I did were very offline. I read physical books, went to physical locations such as the library and metaphysical shop, wrote in my physical B.O.S., things like that. If anything, I preferred it that way, things were very much in reach and given the history of magick is very much more so on paper than in bytes, it made better sense to me.

But eventually, technology got better and easier. More and more resources were online, and reliable resources at that. Granted, there is still a lot of bunk and dribble on the internet. Why people like to pick up spells from random corners of the internet is beyond me. If they are easy to get and plain out there for the world to see and, even worse, come with a price tag, it is probably fake. Some witches do indeed do paid spellwork/pay for pray but not to the excessive number that exists on the internet. More on that later, but basically, tech made witchy info collecting easier. It has probably been a while since I have penned in my B.O.S. but, if anything, I have more of a Disk of Shadows (D.O.S.) now. I have particular tumblrs and tags that I follow or curate on my own that are informative and helpful to my works and endeavors. They’re sometimes really hard to find, and sometimes they are not (if you know what to look for). There are more digital groups for Black Pagans and other minorities/poc now than when I started over a decade ago. Due to the internet, there is better access to much better information about non-European cultures that is not filtered through the perspective of a random White academic slathering on a layer of their own personal bias to the details and calling it “correct, accurate and objective information”. People can do their own research and not be blocked by institutions or paywalls.

But there’s still a lot of bunk on the internet. Due to the pop culture sensation of “witchiness” (basically think of anything American Horror Story, The Craft and the Sabrina reboot has pumped out, add some culture-vulturing via “I am a bruerja” and you got it), it makes decent info still rather hard to find. Since books and old texts that may or may not be translated well or correctly are not that popular, it is easier to find people who, frankly, don’t really know much of what they are doing, they just really like sage, cultural appropriation, gothic clothing and perhaps nursing a drug habit. They’re all over Instagram with their filter-laden pictures, offering to cast spells and do divination (usually tarot, because, what else are they going to learn? Cartomancy? Numerology? I Ching? Elective Astrology? Not as popular) but don’t seem to really know much about ethics and the other boring stuff of learning actual, proper witchcraft. It’s easy to blame just about everything on Mercury retrogrades but if that person has never heard of an ephemera before, they probably are also dead wrong about anything retrograde as well. Spells are cool and mysterious (not really), reading and research is … well, how many pop culture witch characters have you seen buzzing around countless books going “I thiiiiiiiiink this is definitely super old school Congolese – liiiiike, way, way, before colonialization. And of course, it’s a half-page passage in an out-of-print book and features a next-to-dead language. So we should either pick a different spell, or start bothering really old people who may or may not remember such a language – assuming the invading White folks did not torch or steal their cultural history – oh wait, it’s sitting in the British museum, with an incorrect placard and everything. Great, now may we have to talk to stuck up, myopic, well-dressed thieves that think they’re not stuck up, narcissistically stupid, or sticky fingered because ‘I have a degree and institutional prejudice is on my side’. You know what? Killmonger had some good ideas. Someone grab some coffee, that is probably the easier option”? Outside of Hermione Granger, not really anyone in witchy pop culture is very “research is good, research is great, research keeps random entities you summoned and can’t get rid of out of your home and life.” So it can make good info hard to break through the ether. Nothing is wrong with liking pop culture depictions of magic – I get a kick out of Doom Patrol’s magnificent depiction of chaos magick – but it is a bit of a problem when people try to base their practice on movie magic. Yes, psionics is real, yes, magic is real but no, it doesn’t look exactly like the tv and movies. If anything, they can be a lot more stressful and annoying.

I think being a technology-based witch, for me, is simply involving technology in your practice. I have thought of the idea of making a virtual space for spellwork and personal practice but then I think about my track record with magick, energy movement and electrical items. VR systems are pricy and I have made electrical items go ka-put. And, again, VR systems are pricy. But others could benefit, especially those who may not have the space or safety to comfortably practice in the real world. You can make whatever you want in the virtual world and it can be your own spot. A digital altar, a digital casting circle, the list goes on and on.

At first, I wasn’t too sure of these things because, well, they are new. No one was using computers for such practices – or any practices – centuries ago. But all technology, no matter how rudimentary, was considered new at one point. All creations were considered new at one point. From the typewriter, to the wheel, to fire itself. Certainly the deities can be understanding of some of these changes. As long as the changes are relatively seamless, especially for some deities. For example, some sun gods probably would not be too keen on the use of cell phone flashlights vs. actual natural light sources, like a flame made from the sun’s rays. I imagine working with water deities would be stress-inducing unless you are very confident in the IP rating of your technology and trickster deities + internet is probably literal trouble if you do not know what you are doing.

Has all my practices gone digital? I don’t think so but I do think a vast majority of it has. It has been the easier option for me but I always bear in mind that it is good to at least have back ups and that not everything worthwhile is on a computer. There is still always going to be a need for physical things. Links die, computers break and sometime technology can over-complicate simple processes. That and not everything is on the internet, not everything has been digitized and some things are simply harder to find digitally because the metadata is not up to snuff or it is plain incorrect. Thus it is good to find a decent balance, even if that balance is majority tech with analog supports.

Source:

Source:

[forestwater87]

Tales of Fandom Past: Harry Potter and the Shipping Slaves

So, in my spare time I read a lot, lot . . . lot of fandom_wank. A lot. More than should be possible, considering it’s a dead website linking mostly to other dead websites, but I’m a woman addicted to drama who has the gift of long periods of quiet at work, so I’m working my way through almost 2 decades of fan history and it’s just fascinating.

Fandom, back in the ‘00s? Was so much more wild than it is now.

Plagiarism! Fake suicides! Fraud! Theft of real people’s actual money! Stalkers, both real and made up! Fanfic writers so popular they finagled it into mountains of free stuff and a book deal! Everyone was really gross and homophobic! 

There were no rules, and that made it a terrible and incredibly fun time to be part of a fandom.

And we’re not talking enough about it. I guess that’s where I come in.

I’m interested in telling these stories -- not in the incredible level of detail of the MsScribe Saga or the Cassie Claire Plagiarism Debacle, but enough for us to all have a moment to think: Hold on, what the fuck was fandom doing during the entirety of the Bush administration?

A lot, it turns out. Much of it totally wild.

Today’s topic: Shipping wars are as bad as slavery

Date: August 2005

Fandom: Harry Potter

Supposed topic(s): Shipping, canon

Content warning(s): Accidental and ironic diminishing of slavery, complaints about political correctness and free speech, racism in general, lots of hurt feelings and drama

"Now, I'm not black, but boy, do I feel for the black people. If I lived in the 1800's, I wouldn't keep slaves, and if someone has a difference of opinion than me now, that's fine, believe what you want."

Background

In August of 2005, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had been out for a little less than a month, the film version of The Goblet of Fire wouldn’t come out until November, and the last Potter movie had been released over a year ago. In terms of shipping, fans had just discovered, to either their delight or horror, that Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione were canon; while some would continue to hold out hope that there would be a last-minute reversal of expectations, most of the fandom both on and off the internet was in agreement: 

The shipping wars were over, and the Harry/Hermione fans (a.k.a., H/Hr fen, or “Harmonians”) had decisively lost.

The Harmonians’ ire seemed to have been pretty evenly split between J.K. Rowling -- who they felt had let them down -- and the R/Hr and H/G shippers (a.k.a. “Herons” and “Chocolateers,” respectively, though I’m not sure anyone actually used those terms for themselves; they appear to have been given from without), who were taking a victory lap. Depending on one’s perspective, this was either a long-overdue celebration by two groups of shippers who’d faced the fandom’s ire for approximately 5 years and were now vindicated, or it was the tactless gloating of sore losers who were thrilled to get one over on their hated enemies. Either way, tensions were no lower just because canon had decided the victors, and the battleground seemed to shift from the books to the movies -- where shippers of all kinds were in debate over which romance would win out onscreen.

Enter Emerson Spartz, a teenager in charge of one of the most popular fansites at the time and king of creating controversy . . . who had very strong opinions about shipping, and Harmonians in particular.

The Inciting Incident

Emerson had already incited the ire of Harmonians by calling them “delusional” in an infamous interview with J.K. Rowling. The wound was still raw, having come shortly after the release of Half-Blood Prince, and in some circles Emerson was already Public Enemy #1.

Therefore, when Emerson was one of two “anti”-Harmonians interviewed in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the shipping wars, some fans cried foul.

More responses can be found in a summary of the incident here, but personal favorites include a letter sent to the author of the SF Chronicle piece:

The majority of Harry/Hermione shippers are not merely upset that we didn't get what we wanted in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That makes us sound childish. While I'm forced to admit that there has been much bile and vitriol posted on various H/Hr shipping sites, the majority of us are reasonable people. What really hurt our feelings was the way the Mugglenet/TLC article made it seem as if J. K. Rowling herself felt we were really dense, missing her "anvil-sized clues." Emerson's subsequent "apology" for the harsh words directed at the Harry/Hermione 'shipper community was a non-apology, which you [the author of the SFC article] would have known if you had done more than just take his word that he apologized. He simply used the "apology" as an opportunity to issue another dig. I suppose not much better can be expected from a child of 18 who has suddenly become a bit of a celebrity. But I do expect better from a colleague; a professional writer. ...

You have assisted one side of the argument and failed to represent the other. Did you attempt to interview the webmasters of any Harry/Hermione shipping sites or did you merely cut and paste posts that were pointed out to you by Emerson and Melissa? Your article shows no evidence that you made any attempt to give the other side equal time, so to speak, and as a result, you have contributed to the perceprtion [sic] that ALL H/Hr 'shippers are irrational, bitter, spoiled brats. And that's quite unfair. (Hughes, 2005, paras. 13 & 18)

Or this comment in a Harmonian forum by a disappointed reader: 

History is written by the victorius [sic] (or something like that), isn't it how the saying goes?. I'm afraid we are witnessing it firsthand. Herons feel they are the winners on this war, and as such, they feel they have a right to treat us anyway they want to, and they think we have no weapons to defend ourselves since even J.K seems to have sided with them. Even if most of us are pretty reasonable people, at this point anything we say in regards of J.K's apparent disregard for our feelings (thoughts, opinions, whatever), will be gladly taken as the lashing out of sore losers. ::sigh:: I say, just ignore Emerson, he's just some lost kid desperate for attention. And how good can the guy who wrote this article be if he didn't bother to check the facts before he went slandering us?, not much me thinks. (Remolina, 2005, para. 21)

These responses, while perhaps silly or overblown, were not enough to make history. That honor belonged to a Harmonian going by the username Panther.

How, one might wonder?

The Blowout

Ya know, come to think of it, people like Emerson were probably the kinda people that started slavery. I mean, think about it, they thought the slaves were animals, just because they had different colored skin. Emerson thinks we're stupid and delusional for having different beliefs. Get the similarities here, people? Now, I'm not black, but boy, do I feel for the black people. If I lived in the 1800's, I wouldn't keep slaves, and if someone has a difference of opinion than me now, that's fine, believe what you want. (Panther, 2005, paras. 23-25)

The reaction was immediate and explosive from Panther’s fellow Harmonians. Some understood and empathized with Panther’s view; they saw it as a bit hyperbolic, but agreed with the underlying point being made.

I can see where they were going with this...a different analogy would probably have been better. Maybe the religious persecution during Mary Tudor's reign, or the Salem Witch Hunt/Trials, the religous [sic] crusades, the wars in Bosnia etc. We harmonians are being "persecuted" for our differening viewpoints/perspectives. (Anndee Granger, 2005, paras. 30-32)

The belief that H/Hr shippers were being persecuted for their beliefs was a pervasive one, and extended to fans, Emerson and other fandom “authorities,” and the author herself.

No, what we are experiencing is not at the same extreme level because of the world we now live in, but the base level is still the same. The base level taking us back to different beliefs and views without the ability to be heard in the correct manner, and yes it does feel like a form of persecution. (*Under your Skin, 2005, paras. 36-37)

While not on the same level as slavery, the intolerance of their ship did call to mind other examples of discrimination and bigotry:

Of course no one is dying because of this, but all in all we are being persecuted for our different beliefs. "Bloody" Mary Tudor, killed Protestants because she so hated their different views on Christ. This is an extreme indeed, but the mentality behind it, the vitrol [sic], is the same. (Andee Granger, 2005, para. 38)

This extreme point of view, while widespread, was not universal among the Harmonians. Many of them were . . . understandably appalled by the comment and those agreeing with it:

No wonder other people find it easy to portray us as reactionary and vicious. Some of you bloody well are. (jane99, 2005, para. 43)

I agree that it is very vicious and out in left field . . . Slavery was an oppressive movement for hundreds of years, resulting in the deaths of millions. I would hardly regard that with 'shipper treatment, nowadays. However, the schoolyard bully is a very appropriate analogy, in my opinion. Hopefully you understand the difference. (myrhlyn, 2005, para. 52)

The Response

NarcissaM brought the subject to the outside world by posting it in fandom_wank -- a defunct LiveJournal specializing in fandom drama, which now exists primarily in archives -- and the result was universally disbelief and amusement. The responses ranged from insightful, if crass, commentary . . .

Emerson did not kill your dog, tell you that Santa wasn't real, and touch you in your swimsuit areas. And the more I read the more I'm convinced that H/Hr fans aren't angry because what he said was insulting, they're angry because what he said was *accurate*. (iczer6)

I'm also wondering where keeping slaves was a matter of, y'know, people having different beliefs, and not the subjugation of an entire culture by another which had more money and more powerful weapons, and needed a lot of manual labor but didn't want to pay for it. (slackerbitch)

To good old-fashioned sarcasm and snark:

That's not the stupidest thing I've ever read, but it's in the top five. (Anonymous)

That's right. There is a conspiracy, Hermionians! The world is against you and want to take a shit on all your fan fiction! XD (Anonymous “Mary”)

QUICKLY! SOMEBODY CALL A WAAAAAHBULANCE! WE HAVE INTERNET PERSECUTION! (aerobot)

F_W, known for good and ill as a site that takes nothing seriously except the desire to laugh at themselves and especially others, took the slavery comment and ran with it:

So how much does a healthy H/Hr fan with good teeth go for these days? (xero-sky)

Which H/Hr's are in the big house and which ones are working in the fields? ... We didn't land on Plymouth rock, Plymouth rock landed on us! *throws up the fist* (prettyveela)

If we're going to start enslaving delusional people, I want to start with the scientologists. Who's with me? (ladybirdsleeps)

Big Daddy Heron:*hits the H/Hr fan with a whip* Your ship name is H/Hr, H/Hr! Say it! H/Hr shipper: H-Harmony (sewingmyfish)

Bully for the slaves! In fact they would have been sooo much better off if all we 21st century people could trade places with the whites that lived back then. Not only could we tell them to get a life, none of us would have kept slaves! (chief)

You know, just like slaves, they have to work out in the hot sun for no wages and be beaten and whipped and raped and sold like cattle deal with an author not writing the fictional pairing they wanted. (slackerbitch)

Mere hours after the controversy was reported to F_W, a user named ahiru created some icons to celebrate the controversy:

And with some more chuckles about the inherent ridiculousness of such a claim, the fandom and its onlookers dropped the subject.

For a few months.

The Aftermath

In November 2005, some users rediscovered the icons made by ahiru and found them insensitive and racist. This is immediately reported to F_W not once but twice, and the folks there were no longer entertained, responding with less amusement than outright hostility. A couple of F_Wankers understood to at least some extent why there might be people who didn’t love the icons, though they did generally come down on the side of parody and feel those upset were missing the point of the joke. A lot of F_Wankers were upset about political correctness and free speech, and were eager to point out the oppression faced by other groups of people.

Someone anonymous entered the fray with racist guns blazing, and was summarily eviscerated by gleeful F_Wankers.

After that, the dust settled, and all was quiet on the fandom front . . . at least, until the next inevitable disaster.

Further Reading

The Interview that sparked the Emerson outrage

An offshoot of Harmony that believes in Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson’s undeniable chemistry and romance

A collection of Harmonian controversies, 2006-2010

Other HP controversies

[drsilverfish]

Nine Minutes to Midnight

5x21 Two Minutes to Midnight

Nine episodes to beat God, and fifteen years since Kripke pitched his original On The Road fan-fiction meets folk horror. 

I’ve had a lot of fun in this little corner of Tumblr SPN fandom, over the eight years I’ve been here. I arrived as a newbie in 2012, and people already here were kind to me. I’ve seen people come and go, get disillusioned with SPN and move onto new fandoms, or arrive latterly into this one, brimming with excitement. 

This is a weird social media platform, and I doubt it will be around forever, as one of its joys is how singularly bad it has been at integrating advertising.   

Some of my favourite things here have been;

Comments in the tags, often funny, thinky, joyful - love this element of Tumblr.

Coda fic - this short-form story-style, which leaps into the fan-fiction gaps, loud silences and lacunae of the text - what a joy.

All the different roles people take on in fandom, as labours of love - gif makers, fic and meta writers, artists, vidders, archivists, signal-boosters, enthusiastic readers and beta-readers, art-lovers, networkers, collaborators, question-askers and answerers, and participants of all kinds (introvert and extrovert).

Completely unrelated to SPN, posts which are full of puns and hilarity, from “lik the bred” to Brits vs Americans on the subject of drinking tea. I still love Tumblr’s collective sense of humour; it’s witty and charming. 

The language of gifs; those delightful comtemporary hieroglyphics of emotive expression.

The diversity - English is the shared language, but gradually it’s apparent that despite US dominance of the site, there are people from all over the world here, whose native tongues range from Russian to Italian to Brazilian Portuguese.

The collective meta experience - sharing “live” textual analysis has been huge fun. Viewing a text in a hive mind this way always shows you something you’d have missed on your own. It’s like holding up a crystal to a thousand lights and watching all the different refractions happening at once.

Again, not SPN specific, but experts in various subjects, from Egyptology to Medieval History suddenly emerging from the depths to provide a passionate and erudite exposition on their topic. Often prefaced with, “My time has come...”   

Fandom has a dark side. It can be a coping mechansim, for many, in a healthy or less healthy way. There are unfortunately, always the formation of various “in-groups” and “out-groups”, ship wars, harrassment (of other fans, cast and crew), entitlement, and wild unpleasantness. And, that scourge of the internet in general; performative outrage (otherwise known as the outrage economy) which turns up the dial on provocative statements and negative emotion because that acts as catnip for engagement. A lot of people act out their shadow-selves online, projecting their own internal stuff onto others, from behind the screen.    

Almost no media texts get to run as long as SPN (fifteen years) but my first fandom was (and is) Doctor Who and that has been going for over 50. It has some absolutely horrendously toxic spaces and places online, and many of pure joy. My advice is - find the joy.  

Stories, by inviting us into the shoes of others, teach us at their (and our) best, the invaluable gift of empathy.

Take care of yourselves. Endings are hard, no doubt.

Special shout-out to fellow LGBTQ+ fans - hold onto your hearts. 

It can be complicated loving a story telling its queer (romantic/ erotic) love story implicitly (i.e. in subtext). 

Don’t forget (as I always say in my tags) subtext is part of narrative - meaning, the totality of a text contains its explicit and implicit elements; its text and its subtext, just like Metatron (aka Robbie T) told us in 9x18 Metafiction. 

I wasn’t in the fandom myself, here on Tumblr, but I saw some of the fall-out from BBC Sherlock S4, and it was particularly distressing to see so many young LGBTQ+ fans feeling deeply hurt and even suicidal, because they’d read all the (extensively crafted) queer subtext in that show as a promise which would, inevitably, lead to an unequivocal queer “coming out” for John and Sherlock.

Those queer fans weren’t “self-queerbaiting” - they were just reading the totality of the text. And after all, why not read the subtext that way, as a promise? Being of a generation who’d already gotten to see many explicitly out queer characters on-screen; why not dare to imagine the subtext was a slow-burn romance with an inevitable “out” climax? Especially because Mark Gatiss (one of the writers) is out and queer himself, young queer fans were even more certain that his Sherlock would be the first “out” queer Sherlock on-screen (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970, which Gatiss is on record as being a fan of, had previously queer-coded Holmes, as indeed does Downey’s version, in Sherlock, 2009, and Sherlock 2: A Game of Shadows, 2011.)

Of course, the corporate and production politics were no doubt complex behind the scenes at the BBC, and Gatiss himself (apparently) saw things differently saying (in an interview in Oct 2010):

“No, I don’t think I’d make a kind of gay programme. It’s much more interesting when it’s not about a single issue. And equally, I find flirting with the homoeroticism in Sherlock much more interesting.” (Buzz Magazine Oct 2010: p10).

All of which, is why I’ve been adding a disclaimer to my readings of SPN’s queer subtext for a while now - namely, that reading the subtext doesn’t promise a rainbow of obviousness at the end. 

As I said, take care of your hearts, lovelies.   

Perhaps we shouldn’t need the narrative closet any longer. 

But, we are walking between worlds, an old one and a new, both of them currently existing simultaneously, especially in a globalised world. 

Queer audience fractions are, generally, more attuned to queer subtext, because it often uses codes derived from queer culture (although reading cinematic/ television subtext of all kinds is a learned skill, and no one is born with text-reading gaydar). So, whilst queer subtext may appear “loud” to some audience fractions, it remains invisible to others. That is, historically, by design, because, whilst “out” queer characters have gradually emerged on-screen since the 1950s [and the end of the Hays Code in Hollywood] queerness was, and still is (depending on where one is in the world) subject to legal penalty, state censorship or corporate production censorship.

A contemporary kind of state censorship is e.g. in China, where overt LGBTQ+ themes and characters cannot be depicted on-screen (hence, the queer subtext in The Untamed). A contemporary commodity kind of censorship might be e.g. notes from the Network, or TPTB at Marvel Studios with an eye on box-office. Queer subtext has the ability to slip past the censors, or be tolerated by them; because, now you see it/ now you don’t. A character with a straight “surface” reading and a queer subtextual one may (depending on the film/ TV product and its market etc,) be seen to pose less risk as a commercial product, whilst being able to appeal to different audience fractions simultaneously. For example, Captain Marvel  (2019) and, as above, BBC Sherlock (2010-2017).

And yes, it’s complicated, because in the midst of that still extant censorship, which queer writers and other creatives on set may indeed be trying to work around by using queer subtext, we can see another world is possible. More out queer stories are being told. And, although we may love to see implicit queerness rather than no queerness at all, and indeed although implicit queerness may (arguably) have the freedom (still) to tell less boundaried or stereotyped stories than explicit queerness (with powerful effects on the audience fractions, both queer and straight, who do “see” it) we can’t deny that it does suit corporate entities, in some cases, to be able to appeal to a dual audience without the perceived “risk” of “outness”.  A form of “queer-sploitation” which leads to the charge of “queer-baiting”.

The issue is, perhaps, particularly one surrounding male hero characters in Hollywood (and here in the UK) a) because “queer stories” are (still) often, not seen as likely to have universal appeal for broader audiences, whereas “straight stories” are not framed as “straight stories” but as universal ones, and b) because of the persistence of the prejudiced belief in particular that “queerness” undermines masculinity, especially “heroic” masculinity (here we have diverged markedly from the ancient Greeks). It’s somewhat different for female characters, but that’s another post. Fantasy, in the on-screen medium (if less so in fiction or comics) appears to be a more regressive genre than, say, comedy, in terms of the depiction of “out” queer central (rather than side) characters, with the exception of the Wachowskis’ Sense8 (2015-18) in which pretty much everyone is queer. I know there’s Ruby’ Rose’s Batwoman (2019- ) which I haven’t had a chance to check out yet, and we’ve got some queer Marvel (side) heroes upcoming, apparently; Valkyrie in Thor: Love and Thunder and Phastos in The Eternals - let’s see how that goes.

Moreover, queer subtext doesn’t have an exact analogy i.e. a “straight subtext” equivalent. Yes, many films and TV shows imply romantic/ sexual tension and interest between M/ F (pre)couples before it is “confirmed” they’re into each other in the text. However, because straight is the default assumption, audiences may muse and disagree about the potential for a M/ F romance at the implicit stage (as they have done in SPN fandom re Sam/ Rowena) but they don’t ask - “Does this mean they might be straight ????” It is assumed. Queerness, on the other hand, in order to be widely recognised (rather than solely by the subtext-reading audience fraction) must “come out” in some manner, explicitly, in the text (I don’t mean graphically, but “beyond reasonable doubt”).  In other words, as painful as it is, we are not starting on a level playing field. It’s not fair, but it is the deal. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t love contemporary queer subtextual stories, just that it’s important to acknowledge it can be painful, for some, to do so, and just as it’s important to acknowlege it’s OK to find them too painful to love, also (historical texts obviously operated under different circumstances). 

Queer audiences are not homogenous. We can, and do, see things differently from one another, perhaps particularly across generations. 

It is the case however, I think, that the structuring of a story by the narrative closet, as SPN has been structured by the narrative closet (up to this point, mid S15) (by which I mean its queerness is transparent to some, invisible to others, by design) cannot help but remind many queer audience members of our own struggles with the real world closet. Indeed that may make the story attractive, or unattractive, to different folk. 

Incidentally, which is why I avoid it, I think the “it’s canon”/ “it’s subtext” debate is a false dichotomy and a bit confusing, as there are two, perfectly legitimate (within their own terms) definitions of “canon”. In the fandom sense, where “canon” means a romantic/ erotic pairing explicitly confirmed in the text, Destiel (meaning romantic/ erotic orientation between Dean and Cas) is not “canon” (as at 15x11). It is implied. Of course, it is explicit text that they care deeply for one another - “You’re my family. I love you, I love all of you” (12x12 Stuck in the Middle with You), “You’re my best friend” (15x09 The Trap). The exact nature of that relationship remains, however, deliberately, ambiguous. 

In the literary sense, in which “canon” means “the official body of work”, SPN’s official body of work contains a metric tonne of implicit romantic/ erotic Dean/ Cas, so, it is part of the SPN “canon” in that sense - “subtextual canon” if you like. Although, of course, because implied, therefore open to interpretation.... deliberately transparent to some and invisible to others.

Despite all this complexity, and, indeed despite other elements of the SPN narrative which I have struggled with personally (the early seasons’ misogyny is off the charts sometimes, the brutally insensitive manner of Charlie’s death) I have loved this story, Supernatural, truly, madly, deeply, in large part because of its (implicit) queerness. And for may other reasons additionally, from its folkloric beginnings and dark initial cinematographic palette, to its melodrama, to its, eventual, Ourboros structure, and its Jungian alchemical journey marrying the cosmic to the earthly. 

Reading the show without the queer subtext remains possible, but oh boy is that analogous to only considering the above sea-level portion of an iceberg.  

I would prefer a rainbow of obviousness at The EndTM, but I don’t expect one. What I expect is continued, deliberate, ambiguity. Something I am sure we will be debating the ethics of, long after. 

I could be wrong :-). But I am taking my own advice, and taking care of my heart.      

For now, it’s nine minutes to midnight; let’s see how the story ends.

And afterwards, however the chips may fall, the characters will (as this most meta-narrative of seasons has been busy telling us) be set free of “Chuck’s” control. They will belong to us, in a thousand thousand fan-works, for as long as we care to keep on loving them.             

[distortionandsnow]

Favorite Podcasts of 2019 A list. Alphabetically. These are the podcasts that I keep coming back to week after week. Analog Thoughts in a Digital World Let’s start with my own podcast! Ha. I don’t really listen to my own podcast and technically it’s not really mine. This began as the 424 Recording podcast back in 2018 and then Mike took a break from it. He had an itch to make a come back and when he did, he invited me along for the ride. I had reservations about talking so much on the internet, but felt like it would be a great challenge for me to overcome. We recorded 16 episodes and they appear in the feed every other week. Horrified Chicken I don’t watch horror movies, but I listen to a podcast about them because I love the conversations between my friend Sean and his wife. Negative Splits I used to run a lot more than I do these days. And when I was running a lot, it only made sense that I would listen to podcasts about running while I was running... right? Well, I’ve trailed off from nearly all of my running content just from lack of time this year, but I still listen to The Negative Splits. Three guys that sit around and talk about running and everything else going on in their lives. This one also features the aforementioned Sean. He’s a great podcaster even if he doesn’t love the new Star Wars sequels. Other Record Labels Scott from Other Record Labels has taught me everything I know about running a record label through this podcast. I can’t say enough great things about it. If you are at all interested in releasing music into the world as a label or an artist, this is your podcast People Are The Enemy Each week is something different with Andy. He’s interviewing creatives (including me (twice!)), he reads his own writing, he chats with his alien friend, Melodica. There’s something got everyone. Will’s Band of the Week Last but not least, a podcast that I’ve been on a couple of times. I have a long history of listening to these guys. Like ten years! They’re some of the nicest dudes on the planet. Literally on the planet as they have correspondents calling in from all over the world!

Photo cred: Sylvie

[cnox]

Rowen for Distant Mirror Zine #1.* ROWEN is a project between Cristahel and Cantrith Knox. They play a subgenre of the dark ambient / dungeon synth movement they call Mythical Electronic. They have years of experience and also operate Hollow Myths in New England. I thank them for their contribution to the first issue of Distant Mirror. First, Rowen is a collaborative effort between Canrith and Cristahel Knox - do you have specialties which you like to focus on when creating (someone runs the drums and arrangement, someone finds the melodies)?

Eve, Thanx for the interview. We both play synths, drum machines and write together.  As of now, when playing live, Criss handles the synths, vocal whisperings and I play the electronic drums. Along with our visuals, fog and lighting. We are introducing more vocals on some new songs. In the studio, we also add our field recordings and percussion as part of composing. We sit and mix each song side by side.    

Tell us about your musical histories before forming Rowen, because its somewhat obvious you both have experience which maybe led to the result of what Rowen is on "Ashen Spirit"!

Both of us have electronic music in our past. Cristahel with Minimal Synth and I with Darkbeat. One of the first ideas we had for Rowen was to start all over. As part of the experiment, finding ourselves and each other through making music anew. See and hear our music become it's own entity. We started developing the concept in '14, in '16 we began recording and had our first release in '18. We set out with a clear vision of what we want to do with Rowen.

Also tell us how you discovered music and what your first true love in music was... How did you come to find music that would lead you to this underworld of music culture?

Canrith: I discovered music on a radio at age 3. First, second and third grade, I would stay up nights crashing on Ritalin (due to being diagnosed as Hyperactive) watching the first ever music videos on a UHF channel in Colorado called FMTV which predated MTV by a year or two. Laurie Anderson - O Superman, Kraftwerk, Barnes & Barnes - Fish Heads videos all had a great impact on me as a kid. During that time, late 70's - early 80's, I was hooked on the music and image of both Kiss and Devo. One of the first albums I owned was AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap on cassette that I purchased at K-Mart. Summer '81 NYC, I saw the first video air on MTV. Later, watching another UHF channel out of Boston called V66. Heavy Metal led me to the Black Metal and the dark electronic music underground. Dark Ambient and Dark Dungeon Music have always been a particular interest of mine. Mail order distro tapes and free box extras in orders started my collection as far back as the mid 90's. In the late 90's, I got really into BM, then obsessed in '03 onward, as many UGBM labels and distros were rising on the web. We are also into Minimal, Martial, Electro, Techno, New Beat, Cosmic, Italo, 8-bit, Video Game, Soundtrack, Old School Dungeon Synth, Winter Synth and so on...

Cristahel: My first exposure to music as a child was through my grandfather, who began teaching me to play classical piano by ear at the age of four. We would sit for countless hours at his black upright Steinway as he would play Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky etc. a few measures at a time for me to memorize and string together until I had the whole piece memorized. His love and enthusiasm for music, and the time he took to develop that in me, is something I will always be grateful for. Also my cousin Sue was a few years older than me and was like some kind of magical mixtape faerie, forever bestowing masterfully crafted gems upon me filled with things like Lush, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, and Mazzy Star that served to mold/blow my little mind.  

By my late teens it was the late 90's/early 2000's and I was immersed in a maelstrom of kraut/prog, electro, early new wave and electronic/industrial, shoe gaze. I was fortunate at the time to have a lot of friends with varied tastes and massive record collections they wanted to share with me, because back then there was like, only Napster to try and download music off this nebulous internet thing they had just invented.  

I spent a lot of time not doing my homework and dancing around my room on speed and/or klonopins listening to things like Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Dopplereffekt, Chris and Cosey, SPK, early Human League, Slowdive, Clan of Xymox... all of which in their own ways began to inform the atmosphere of the music I create now, warped and haunted meandering electronic melodies, analog synths, string machines and rhythm boxes, pounding 303s and 808s, tape echoes, analog delays, layered sounds lost in chasms of reverb...

I moved to NY and started making music, playing shows and djing a bit (mostly playing gabber techno synth new age sets at London squat parties to kids who wanted to hear nu rave), getting into minimal synth, and beginning my love affair with collecting and recording with analog equipment.

Of course now anything you want is available immediately online, compared to how the 80’s and 90’s crowd discovered music. I’ve asked the other artists a similar question - how do you feel about the loss of mystery these days and what will happen in the future to return to that?

I feel the ability for creating mystique is greater now thanx to the internet. Almost anyone can record some music, upload it to bandcamp, make artwork, physical releases, open an online shop, start a label, etc..   If one is good at what they do, be it a hidden persona or being a face, presenting a strong sound, image and aesthetic, either way, when done right, it works. In some ways even mystery can be a gimmick.

You both are lucky to have grown up in the best time period for music. But what about movies and books people should check out?  

I collect children's books, read a mess of olde and new Black Metal zines, Books about Black and Death Metal. Sexy comics about Vampiress and Faeries. Presently reading The Devil's Cradle, a hard back about The Story of Finnish Black Metal. It was a gift from Criss. Everyone should read Lords of Chaos '98 (then '03) and Lucifer Rising '99. I still need a copy of that leather bound Mortiis - Secrets Of My Kingdom book '01.

As for films, we watch obscure horror, foreign horror and documentaries.  

Here are some if you have not already read or watched them; 

Read: Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs ('78) James and the Giant Peach ('61) Masquerade ('79) The World of the Dark Crystal ('82) The Book of Alien ('79) Moebius - The Collected Fantasies of Jean Giraud Series ('87 - '94) Flowers in the Attic - Dollanganger Series ('79 -'86) Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo ('78) William Klein: Films, 1958-99 ('99) Wreckers of Civilisation: The Story of Coum Transmissions & Throbbing Gristle ('99)

Watch: Christiane F. ('81) Out of The Blue ('80) Deadbeat at Dawn ('88) Combat Shock ('86) Street Trash ('87) Brain Damage ('88) Zardoz ('74) Excalibur ('81) Emerald Forest ('85) Wicker Man ('73)

If atmosphere seems to be a heavy orientation for your creative drive, is your local landscape an important part of this? or is it personal experiences driving the music towards such a dark and melancholy place? something about Rowen is both light and dark.

We live on a island North East New England and seldom see others. Most of our time is spent outside, alone with the wind, the trees, on the marsh, in the mist and rain, sea side mornings, hawks at dusk and in the woods every evening. Pretty, evil and sad is what we do. We are hoping folks will also consider us in the Nature Synth category.  

New England must be a very interesting place to live... what is your favorite time of year there, and what is your favorite part of the landscape there?

We love the woods, day hikes, mountain tops, swimming holes, water falls, gorges and quarries. Small towns, old houses, fields, orchards, pumpkin patches, bonfires. Train tracks, trestles, towers, castles, monuments and graveyards. I was born in October so naturally I love the fall. Hallow's Eve and all into November.  Leaves turn, death comes and things change. There is nothing like a cold moonlit night in the snow. I appreciate being where we can really experience all four seasons.

Also You are so fortunate to live on an island.. That’s amazing. It’s cliche to talk about misanthropy with dark music but is this the reason for being secluded? What do you feel is the best thing for people could do with themselves in (what is in my eyes the end of the world?)

We made the decision to come here for a time of research, get to know each other, talk about our dreams, foster our ideas. Focus on only that of which we love and gives us purpose. Live away from it all.  If everyone did what was the most important to them, a different world this might be.  

Rowen is listed among other trees in occult literature as a tree of magical powers... Is this the reason for using the name? Is there personal beliefs at play in Rowen?

As a band we have our own ideologies, as musicians, our own theories, as artists, our own creative processes and as members, a belief system. These are shared between us and are expressed through the music, words and imagery of Rowen.

The Greeks, Norse, Celts and Druids all told mythology of the properties and significance of this mystical tree. The Greek Goddess of youth who lost her magical chalice to the demons. An eagle was sent to retrieve it. From battle, it's blood splatter on the earth grew Rowan trees. It's leaves as feathers, it's berries, the blood. The Norse myth speaks of the tree from which woman was made. And man, from a mountain ash. Saved Thor in the underworld. Runes are burned on Rowan wood. In the British Isles they tell of the folkloric tree which protects against witchcraft. The red berries of fall make up the 5 points of the Pentagram. Goes also as the Goddess or Faerie tree. The Druids used the bark and berries to dye the garments worn during lunar ceremonies black. Rowan twigs were used for divining, particularly for metals.

I had no idea the importance of Rowen to ancient people. Yes, it is true that Norse belief teaches humans were originally trees before given life and awareness by Odin, Vili and Ve. Is there any interest for you both to express your philosophy on things in the music or is this an affair of escapism and pure magic.

"The Past is not Dead, it lives on in a Woeful Drift." We are connected to our roots, our family trees, where we came from, our heritage and lands. We could only hope that our music would offer an escape. Magic is the only way.

If you could live in any time period, what time period would you live in and what would you be doing?

Canrith: I feel lucky to have been a child of the 70's and we grew up in the 80's, 90's & 00's. We were there, I wouldn't change it. I would love to live in some medieval castle in the mountains, riding a black Clydesdale, wielding a mace, reeking havoc across the land.  

Cristahel: Same as Canrith but on a white Clydesdale with a halberd.

What's the most important part of the creative process for Rowen - is there a certain revelry for using old mysterious pieces of synthesizers or do you enjoy the vast possibilities of computers? There's always the game of analog vs computer in the electronic scenes, what is your thoughts on this?

For us, again, the most important part of the process is the experiment. We use all analog synthesizers, drum machines and record live. Roland, Korg, Yamaha. Same goes for our stage show. We have used and are not opposed to using digital synths on recordings and live. Casio & Yamaha synths, Simmons drums. For instance, "In Another Dream, You Were Mine" from "Ashen Spirit" was made almost entirely on a Casiotone. We record and mix on a desk top home computer.  

What are you both really enjoying listening to at the moment?

Listening to cult 80's video Game music on YouTube while answering these questions.

do you have any thoughts on where this rising momentum will lead as far as the dungeon synth genre is headed, and do you feel proud of your place in that? am i wrong in assuming you both also run Hollow Myths?  

We are proud of our place in DS. Though we set out to make our own mythical electronic music. And think the genre is progressing as it should. We have been very active in the scene going on six years now this November. As supporters, label, distro and band. We are most appreciative of the support we have received. And from the Black Metal Underground. Our first demo was released on pro-tape by Personnel Records, a sub-label of Seedstock Records ran by Marco Del Rio of Raspberry Bulbs aka He Who Crushes Teeth of Bone Awl. We are finishing our second release that will be out on CD & Cassette this time.  

Hollow Myths, the label and distro, is the work of us two. Releases, artwork, layouts, Photography, bios, press, promo, videos, zine, jewelry, leather work, patches, we also offer clothes that we call Cryptic Raiment for After Dark. Official Dungeon Synth, Dark Ambient, Black Metal, Hollow Myths* Shirts, Long Sleeves, Hoods, Record Bags, Altar Cloths...

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Hollow Myths has had to dig deep into the underground and re-release old gems, which is like reissuing from the archives.. many people don’t really appreciate that, can you tell us about what that’s been like and if anything else like that will ever happen?  

Hollow Myths* have re-released limited special versions of cult classics in a row of how I first discovered them back when. Being also from Dallas, TX, Equitant - The Great Lands Of Minas Ithil (City Of Isildur) '94 was one the first tapes I owned of the genre (and our first release from H/M* on cassette) after I found a copy of the Mournlord - Reconquering Our Kingdom Demo from '95 (SE) for a $1 in a bargain bin. These strange and very limited cassette releases helped crystallize what Dark Dungeon Music was to me. Like hearing the Caduceus - Middle Ages Demo '95 (LT) for the first time or later with the Corvus Neblus - Chapter I & II - Strahd's Possession tapes from '99 / '01 (LV). Our second re-released offering was Equimanthorn - Entrance To The Ancient Flame on cassette, another Texas born Ritual Black Ambient project with both Equitant and Proscriptor of the Mythological Occult Metal band Absu as members. After which, we made a chain of very special limited re-releases from; Gothmog, Depressive Silence, Solanum, Lunar Womb, Cain, two from Aperion, Arthur as well as Xerión with more to come. At the same time, we have introduced many new Dungeon Synth artists, some with their follow ups; Isåedor, Wyver and Wizzard to name but a few. We began in '16 and have 43 releases to date. Some mentioned above will see second pressings in the near future.

What has been your favorite release to work on this past year and what sort of artists does Hollow Myths look for?

We focus on outsider music and art and put our blood, sweat and tears into every release. Since we are primarily a physical label and distro (Tapes, CD's, Vinyl, Merch, etc.), it has been interesting to curate and mix the last three Shadowlore Compilations.

Each run over 2 hours long and feature new and exclusive songs by legions of Dungeon Synth artists from around the world. Being Digital, we offer it for Free or name your price for those who want to add it to their collections. Corresponding J-card "tape trade" layout print outs are included in the download, so one can make their own 2x cassette version. To be shared with friends, to inspire tape trading, for more reach and exposure for the artists' projects. Shadowlore Four will be released this Summer Solstice.  

Other releases from last year we are very proud of: Apeiron - Stardust / A Separate Reality. Cosmic / Dark Ambient / Black Metal from Austria. '95 & '97 and featuring a never before heard hidden track from '96 titled "Dimensional Chanting" exclusive only to this release. Xerión - O Espírito Da Fraga / O Trono de Breogán. Black Metal / Dark Ambient from Spain. The first two demos from '01 & '02 with 3 new songs recorded exclusively for this release including a Windir cover.  Galician Mythology and Folklore. Wyver -  Tragedies of Lost Village (Demo II). Dungeon Synth / Fantasy Music follow up. (PDX) Hypogeum - S/T. Introducing outsider, Raw Black Metal from the woods of Oregon. Wizzard - The Cauldron Descent. Cryptic Dungeon Synth follow up from Sweden. Morihaus - The Empty Marches. Eccentric Dark Ambient / Dungeon Synth debut from Kentucky.  

Tell us about Rowen’s plans to start touring.

We just played our first show at the Northeast Dungeon Siege MMXIX festival. Now we are working on piecing together a tour that will begin this summer in the north east coast with the plan to then head down, across the south to California, up the west coast, pacific northwest and back across the north and through the mid-west to return late fall. We recently put the word out that we are up to perform anywhere, anytime and received an overwhelming response. If we can get on tour, stay on tour, get back to Europa without haste, we would be more than pleased.

The first two shows will be outdoor camping events. Mythical Electronic, Dungeon Synth, Black Metal, Acoustic Black Metal, Death Metal, Doom, Crust, Folk, Country, . . . Both are on private land, in the forest and BYOB. Bring a tent, water, food and supplies. Crossbows and throwing knives.

Rowen   Seasons of the Savage at The Sonorous Glade June 22nd Topsham, VT w/ Haxen, Sombre Arcane, Fed Ash, Gorcrow, Melkor, Black Axe, Void Bringer, Acid Roach and Wild Leek River  

Rowen   Woods of Gallows II August 17th  West Chazy, NY w/ T.O.M.B., Worthless, Sombre Arcane, Ordeals, Malacath, Lightcrusher, Hræsvelgr, Graveren and Callous

[wistfuldragon]

Coming Out, Sort Of

I came out as bisexual this year, sort of. And it’s both a big deal and not a big deal at all. I say I “sort of” came out because a few people knew - my husband, surely all of my sisters (sibling gossip travels fast), and a few friends. But I never talked about it with anybody except my spouse and, occasionally, friends. I wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it, or even if it mattered at all. I still feel like I’m sitting on an iceberg floating aimlessly around the ocean asking the water, “Is this okay? How about this? Am I allowed to feel these things or say these things? Does it matter?”

Almost twenty years ago I got my first big, obvious crush on a girl in college. It hit me like a sack of bricks. I didn’t understand. And - please forgive me for sounding so unbelievably naive - I wondered if was I a lesbian now? Except I still was attracted to guys. Was I straight but confused? Or a lesbian but confused? Did I need to “pick a side”? Was it a phase? What was this “bisexual” thing and why were a lot of people saying it didn’t exist or it was offensive? I stayed up late in the computer room reading scathing internet blog posts talking about college girls “experimenting” or articles about how bisexual people gave real gay people a bad name and conversion therapy proponents more fodder. (It’s important to note that I was a social idiot and never talked to anyone online or in person to get other perspectives. Give me a choice between believing the worst thing and the best and guess which one I’m likely to choose. It’s like a bad romantic comedy where you’re screaming at the screen, just TALK about it goddamnit.)

The girl I liked was straight, dating a long term boyfriend, and - oh yeah - she was my college roommate and friend of several years. That didn’t make life incredibly awkward or frustrating at all. I’m pretty sure I was an asshole for a while.

I also thought about my conservative family - and whether I would even be allowed to bring a girl home for holidays. Maybe, I decided. Probably? Still, the history wasn’t great. When I was about 8 or 9 I remember one of my sisters telling me that queer was a bad word - not precisely because it was a slur but because it meant gay and being gay was bad. She was trying to protect me, I think. She didn’t want me to get bullied over it. I lived in a lot of homophobic places growing up, though maybe that was everywhere at the time. Even though I eventually realized that being gay was normal and natural, I clearly didn’t internalize it enough. In the end, mired in cowardice and doubt, I squashed it all down and locked it in a room. All of it. I had school to focus on, good friends, zero romantic game anyway. I’d never actually dated anybody at all. Maybe it was just a phase. Maybe I was just confused. I’d ignore it and think about it later. That’s how I was raised to deal with problems, after all, and it felt like a problem I wasn’t ready to tackle.

I met my husband at a party on my first night in the dorms, had an unrequited (but secretly requited - it’s a long story) crush, and then we became friends, but we didn’t start dating until a few years later. We had a solid friendship underpinning our relationship. It was a good thing. But my sexuality continued to sit in a locked room in the back of my mind. One night about a year after we started dating we went to an LGBTQ (as it was labeled at the time) awareness event. It was a maze of exhibits highlighting love and hate. And though I considered myself an ally and not unschooled in the level of horror in the world, there was something about that evening that broke me apart. I didn’t fully realize it until the small tour group gathered in a room at the end of the exhibit to talk about the displays and why it was important to be a good ally. The facilitator went around the room asking people what they learned. I tried not to cry as people went around the room blithely talking about things they’d taken away from the exhibits. I tried deep breathing. I dug my nails into my palms. And when they got to me, I realized I should have just gotten up and left because I burst into tears. Actually, I started sobbing. And I couldn’t stop. I sobbed through the rest of the (much more rushed) follow-up interviews. I sobbed as we gathered coats in the lobby. I sobbed as we walked out to my boyfriend’s car. We sat there for a while as I struggled to get my emotions under control. And then we started to talk about it.

We talked about a lot of stuff and he asked without a hint of judgment whether maybe I could be bisexual. And something within me cracked open. I apologize for the analogy I’m about to use, but you know that scene in Goonies where they have to play notes on an organ to open the bridge? This was a correct organ note and the closed door I’d built opened a little bit. I felt freer to just have one person I cared about act like A) it was real and B) it was fine. So I started thinking about it again.

The door still wasn’t open all the way, though. Soon after that I mentioned to one of my sisters that I thought I was bisexual. She said absolutely nothing about it, neither in condemnation nor support. (And, okay, I’m fucking terrible at talking about feelings. I had slipped this into a text message conversation about something else entirely because I am an utter coward.) So, in typical fashion for me, I read the worst into our lack of communication. I decided that she probably said nothing because the internet articles were right, and it either wasn’t a big deal or it was offensive of me - a woman dating a man - to put myself forward as bisexual. Did I ask her about it again? No, because I’m an idiot.

And besides, a voice in the back of my head whispered, what if it really was just a phase?

So I waited. I fell in love and got married. I opened the door sometimes to peek inside. “Still attracted to women, too? Okay, just checking.” (Door click.) I did this for a while before I felt confident in saying, like a grand pronouncement, “I am bisexual.” Only I didn’t pronounce a damn thing, not to anyone else.

There were a couple of reasons, at this point. For one, it had been SO GODDAMN long since I first realized it and accepted it fully. Like, would I have to explain to people, “Heh, yeah good friend, sorry I should have said this years ago but, you know, I’m an emotionally repressed human being.” I actually sat around trying to imagine the conversations but always managed to come up with an excuse not to talk about it. I remember sitting on a friend’s couch one day with this new/old news balanced on the tip of my tongue. But I decided, at the time, that coming out was something people did when they needed support for a relationship. In the end, I was married to a man. I didn’t need anybody’s acceptance of my relationship. I was in the safest possible position - married for years to the opposite sex. In the eyes of the world, I might as well be straight - anything else be damned. What did it matter?

Plus, I was ashamed at how fucking long it took me to accept that I was bisexual. I tried for years to be a good ally, but it turned out I was a shitty ally when it came to myself. The shame I feel that my first response was fear will stay with me the rest of my life. I felt that I didn’t deserve to talk about my feelings. I didn’t deserve anybody’s messages of support.

And then 2016 rolled around and Trump/Pence got elected. I was commuting to work with my small daughter a few days later, still burning with rage and shock. I looked at my daughter and several great, thunderous organ notes sounded and the door opened so much wider. What kind of world will we leave for her? What kind of world is it now where someone with such a transparently hateful platform could be elected to such a high office? And I realized that I think every voice is important. I felt culpable, in my silence. Growing up, if I had known just one person who had openly said, “Hey, I’m bisexual,” I truly think I would have realized this about myself sooner. It could have spared me years of wondering. It might have spared me all this shame I feel now that I ever felt ashamed about my sexuality. Basically, I looked at my daughter as we waited for the traffic light to change and desperately wanted a better world for her. And I realized I had to start with myself.

Fandom gets a lot of flack for being a toxic place. But in the fandoms I was participating in I saw people posting about coming out on social media and I thought…yeah, I should do that. Like, it’s literally the least I could do. But it’s something. I worked my way up to it, still more than half convinced that my voice didn’t matter. Instead, I started by telling a total stranger online that I was bisexual - in a conversation related to a fictional character possibly being bisexual. I couched it in apologies about being married to a man for so many years and was told quite clearly and politely, that I had every right to talk about being bisexual - it didn’t matter who I was married to. BONG. Another organ note. The door opened further. (And, me being me, of course I cried at even the merest scrap of validation.)

So I posted something small on Facebook and Twitter, terrifically nervous about the reactions of family and friends. What kind of backlash would I get? Was it just way too weird to post this now after so many years? It turned out that all my fears of being called fake or confused or not important or a fucking coward were unfounded. Several family members and friends were supportive. At the time of that post I tried to brush it off as not really coming out. After all, “coming out” sounds so dramatic. I talked briefly about the experience it in an online chat and then felt deeply embarrassed that it had taken me so very many years to do even this one tiny thing. But, yeah. I was pretty much coming out.

Being more open is still a work in progress, I guess. My parents and I are strictly on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell plan. I don’t ask them how they feel and they don’t tell me. They didn’t “like” any of my Facebook pride posts, anyway. Yeah. Communication is…not our strong suit. I fully realize this, but I’m scared to ask them and hear something I don’t like. God, even in my upper thirties and mostly really happy with my life I’m scared of that. I find that I care and don’t care at the same time. It’s always disheartening to realize that you’re still kind of chickenshit. I’ll give them some time to process it and maybe next year I’ll work up the ovaries to talk to them about it.

Shame at my past doubts, ever-present weaknesses, and my own intrinsically awkward nature mean that I’m still bumbling around on my little iceberg asking the ocean if I’m being offensive, or overstepping, or if my voice even matters. But I will strive to be better. For my daughter, and maybe even for other people, I want to be a better advocate. And I really, really needed to start with myself this time. Our experiences constantly shape and reshape our lives and I’ll do my best to be a better, more open and self-accepting person. Maybe someday I’ll even forgive myself and shed past regrets.

So it is and it isn’t a big deal. It’s changed my life and it hasn’t changed it at all. But I’m going to keep trying to be a better person for myself and also for my daughter who might someday try to sort out her own sexuality. I’ll be able to be there saying, “I’m bisexual and proud of it and I love and accept you no matter how you identify or who you love.” That’s far more than I ever had, and I think it’s a good start. This is the first year I’ve done any kind of personal acknowledgment or celebration of pride month, and it feels really good.

[mondofunnybooks]

The thing is, come 2006, funnybooks just weren't very Funny.

Not intentionally, anyway.

Of those of us who once read Dave Sim's opinion piece in Hero Illustrated that suggested all ongoing superhero comics are best read as some kind of Rodney Dangerfield routine, then comics were doing their outright best to be utterly hilarious.

Infinite Crisis attempted to fix the Continuity as if the history of Fights N Tights were some kind of sacred text that required updating in case serious questions were asked on how Batman could possibly be fighting crime if his book debuted during World War 2 because that would put him in his 70s! Superboy-Prime also debuted in that series, apparently meant as an Evil Mary Sue by DC Editors rather miffed at this invention called 'The Internet', which would allow readers to voice their thoughts on comics they'd paid for. We regard Superboy-Prime as our spirit animal.

Civil War was a Very Serious Effort to marry the themes of military abusing power in an attempt to detain terrorist suspects by having Iron Man throw people who wouldn't reveal their secret identity to the world into another dimension. This would be followed a couple of years later with an analogy for Guantanamo Bay and the new distrust for Muslims brought about by the events of the 9-11 strikes. (mainly featuring green aliens from space pretending to be Jarvis The Butler. And possibly Ant-Man. We forget. )

Oh, Elektra turned out to be a Skrull as well, so that was good, but sadly Marvel wouldn't go as far as to say that literally every appearance of Elektra that wasn't written by Frank Miller was actually Skullektra.

Meanwhile, Marvel punished retailers the world over for a plot point being revealed on a comic news website by not sending their main purchaser preview copies anymore. Because what every comic retailer dreads is being denied the opportunity to order more Marvel stock.

So, yes, an absolute plethora of material worth parodying and humbugging to go mad over, panic trumping a desire to be sick and crazy over the whole madhouse.

It's just that weren't many voices left to actually do the lampooning. MAD Magazine had long been defanged by it's sale to Warner Brothers decades previously, all the good writers on our beloved Twisted Toyfare Theatre had been snapped up to work on Robot Chicken, Amazing Heroes had been cancelled, Gary Groth had been less of a editorial voice on The Comics Journal for a while by that point and Harvey Kurtzman had passed away a long time ago.

I mean, there was Wizard, but they'd been shown to back off whenever advertisers had issues with their soft touch so weren't really worth mentioning in the first place unless you considered mocking comics from the 70's for not conforming to the norms of a 90's audience the very cutting edge of comedy commentary.

So imagine this writer's surprise to see a magazine advertised in possibly Comic Book Artist (Now Comic Book Creator, a magazine published by Two Morrows Press and readers are advised to get as many back issues of it as possibly. Learn how the late, lamented, iconic and possibly best comic shop in London, otherwise known as Comic Showcase, was probably responsible for League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen being published!) called 'Comic Book Nerd'.

Comic Book Nerd appeared not to be mucking around. Preview art offered educated attacks on modern comics anatomy, the hilarity of the notion of the superstar comics artist, the soulless pandering of publishers to flippers desperate to try and find an investment in recently published titles, the pomposity and pretension of the highbrow small press comics scene...

We'd not seen such an articulate and educated assault on the hand that feeds it since the last time Evan Dorkin published an issue of Dork! and obviously we were instantly in love. As with anything worth reading, we ordered extra copies in assuming that the readership were more than capable of the self awareness needed to laugh at itself and would take the book in the humour intended.

Suffice to say, we may have overestimated our audience. It's worth noting we have enemies who have never forgiven us for finding the issue of Legion Of Super-Heroes where small aliens in beanie hats kill Sun Boy by barbecuing him on a spit and then eating him to death one of the funniest comics ever published. We live in fear of having our flight ring revoked by Arm Fall-Off Boy* at any minute.

Having been blown away by Pete's ability to change style based on the assignment rather than forcing every brief to fit into one over practised, over swiped and under referenced aesthetic like 95% of comic artists, we looked on further into his works and discovered the gorgeous 'Morbid', published by Dark Horse but good luck finding the damn things, a love-letter to both horror movies and EC Comics in a knowing but funny writing style married with fumetti plus lots of very silly special effects. Very much recommended to fans of things like 'The Goon', 'MST3K' or anyone who thinks Vampira was way cooler than Wonder Woman could ever be.

Here at MONDO FunnyBooks we don't really do hero worship and fear at the sight of celebrities anymore. Especially in comics because we've seen most of them throwing up in a pub toilet but even we were slightly frightened when sending a friend request to the Powerful Pete Von Sholly. We stuttered the timid words 'Hello Sir your comic was dead good can we be friends please?' and somehow we ended up learning about his most recent project: LOVECRAFT ILLUSTRATED which is currently on Kickstarter with only a few days to go. We'll turn over the description to him. (Text taken from his Kickstarter page.)

'In 2014 Ramsey Campbell introduced me to Pete Crowther of PS Publishing and I proposed a DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH book with my illustrations sprinkled throughout- He liked it, we did it and then he suggested we do ALL Lovecraft that way in a series of books under his PulpS imprint. I have collected all the art form those along with many sketches and single pieces that are Lovecraft-centric into Pete Von Sholly’s Lovecraft Illustrated. Here is some background about me and HPL.  

Context is everything, so in order to say something about me and Lovecraft I need to lay some out: One fateful late 60's afternoon I was sitting in study hall (tenth grade, age 16 or so and supremely bored) looking through the Modern Library omnibus volume entitled "Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural". The final two stories in the book (as if they saved the best for last) were by somebody called H.P. Lovecraft; they were “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dunwich Horror”.

The name Lovecraft was vaguely familiar.There were glancing mentions in Famous Monsters and paperbacks with his name on them in those pages but there were no Lovecraft movies yet so I had no idea what to expect. I read “The Rats in the Walls” first. it was a fairly short story but I experienced a delightful jolt unlike anything that I could get from all that I was familiar with.

There were horrors aplenty; hordes of ravenous rats, hideous nightmares, ancient underground grottoes leading off into infinite subterranean darkness and pocked with giant pits full of sawed and chewed bones of humans and things not altogther human and finally a man who went mad and tumbled down the evolutionary scale to embrace his ancestral cannibalistic form of nourishment... but, and maybe best of all, many hints of things just beyond the reach of the light- including something called "Nyarlathotep"... Hints which were even more exciting and pleasing than the overt horrors.

“The Dunwich Horror” was next and it was all over when I finished that one. I had been introduced to the Necronomicon, Arkham with its Miskatonic Library, Yog-Sothoth and so many key Lovecraftian entities and conceptions which were new to me. And it excited my imagination- and made me want to draw what I was imagining.'

For those interested, The Kickstarter is the link. See Ya in the Funnypages, Mondo Maniacs!:

*We have lied about many things in our lives but we could not make up Arm Fall-Off Boy on our best day ever.  Look him up if you don't believe us!

https://www.kickstarter.com/…/pete-von-shollys-…/description