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fictionz · 1 year

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New Fiction 2022

Ten years of cataloguing every piece of new-to-me fiction. That decade was my thirties. So much happened and I don’t keep a diary but I have this.

I still remember sitting at a Carls Jr. in Oakland, on a rainy January morning, reading short stories in an anthology, and thinking “I should write this down so I know what the hell I’ve read this year.” Or lying in the back of my Jeep and watching Only Lovers Left Alive on my crappy little tablet before going to sleep. Playing Hotline Miami on my too old laptop in that crusty apartment in Redwood City. Things just kind of snowballed from there.

Previously: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

2022: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec

Short Stories, Chapters, Excerpts

Jan - "Genesis" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jan - "Exodus" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jan - "2 B R 0 2 B" by Kurt Vonnegut (1962)

Jan - "From the Deposition of the Vaginal Teeth" by Elizabeth H. Turner (2022)

Feb - "Leviticus" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Feb - "Numbers" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Mar - "Deuteronomy" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Mar - "Josue" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Apr - "Judges" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Apr - "Ruth" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Apr - "Change :)" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

Apr - "Pain in the Neck" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

Apr - "Middle English Bestiary" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

Apr - "vodaphone.co.uk/help" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

Apr - "Nothing Old, Nothing New, Nothing Borrowed, Nothing Blue" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

Apr - "I Just Want to Pull Down Your Panties and Fuck You" by Iphgenia Baal (2021)

May - "The Ghost Birds" by Karen Russell (2021)

May - "1 Kings" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

May - "2 Kings" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

May - Dracula Daily - "May" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Jun - "3 Kings" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jun - "4 Kings" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jun - "What Dreams May Come" by Michael Jan Friedman (2004)

Jun - "Night of the Vulture" by Greg Cox (2004)

Jun - "The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned" by Keith R.A. DeCandido (2004)

Jun - "Blood Sacrifice" by Josepha Sherman & Susan Schwartz (2004)

Jun - "Mirror Eyes" by Heather Jarman & Jeffrey Lang (2004)

Jun - "Twilight's Wrath" by David Mack (2004)

Jun - "Eleven Hours Out" by Dave Galanter (2004)

Jun - "Safe Harbors" by Howard Weinstein (2004)

Jun - "Field Expediency" by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore (2004)

Jun - "A Song Well Sung" by Robert Greenberger (2004)

Jun - "Stone Cold Truths" by Peter David (2004)

Jun - "Requital" by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels (2004)

Jun - Dracula Daily - "June" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Jul - "1 Paralipomenon" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jul - "2 Paralipomenon" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Jul - Dracula Daily - "July" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Aug - "1 Esdras" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Aug - "2 Esdras" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Aug - "The House of No Return" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Teacher's Pet" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Strained Peas" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Strangers in the Woods" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Good Friends" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "How I Won My Bat" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Mr. Teddy" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Click" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "Broken Dolls" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "A Vampire in the Neighborhood" by R.L. Stine (1994)

Aug - "The Werewolf's First Night" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "P.S. Don't Write Back" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "Something Fishy" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "You Gotta Believe Me!" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "Suckers!" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "Dr. Horror's House of Video" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "The Cat's Tale" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "Shell Shocker" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "Poison Ivy" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "The Spirit of the Harvest Moon" by R.L. Stine (1995)

Aug - "The Chalk Closet" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Home Sweet Home" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Don't Wake Mummy" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "I'm Telling!" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Haunted House Game" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Change for the Strange" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Perfect School" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "For the Birds" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Aliens in the Garden" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Thumbprint of Doom" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Pumpkin Juice" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Attack of the Tattoo" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Wish" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "An Old Story" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Scarecrow" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Awesome Ants" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Please Don't Feed the Bears" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Goblin's Glare" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "Bats About Bats" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - "The Space Suit Snatcher" by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Dracula Daily - "August" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Sep - "Tobias" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Sep - "Judith" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Sep - Dracula Daily - "September" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Oct - "Leonora" by Everil Worrell (1927)

Oct - "The Hollow Man" by Norman Partridge (1991)

Oct - "The Black Stone Statue" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (1937)

Oct - "The Door" by Ann R. Loverock (2020)

Oct - "The Events at Poroth Farm" by T.E.D. Klein (1972)

Oct - "The Dead Wagon" by Greye La Spina (1927)

Oct - "Soft" by F. Paul Wilson (1984)

Oct - "Beelzebub" by Robert Bloch (1963)

Oct - "The Black Phone" by Joe Hill (2004)

Oct - "The Angle of Horror" by Cristina Fernández Cubas (1996)

Oct - "The Striding Place" by Gertrude Atherton (1896)

Oct - "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)

Oct - "The Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell (1852)

Oct - "The Girl With the Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Leiber (1949)

Oct - "The Summer People" by Shirley Jackson (1950)

Oct - "The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado (2014)

Oct - "The Phantom 'Rickshaw" by Rudyard Kipling (1888)

Oct - "Scales" by Cherene Sherrard (2017)

Oct - "The Aztec" by Carmen Baca (2020)

Oct - "The Reaper's Image" by Stephen King (1969)

Oct - "The Mummy’s Foot" by Théophile Gautier (1840)

Oct - "When the Gentlemen Go By" by Margaret Ronald (2008)

Oct - "The Pear-Shaped Man" by George R.R. Martin (1987)

Oct - "Turn Out the Light" by Penelope Love (2015)

Oct - "Unseen—Unfeared" by Francis Stevens (1919)

Oct - "The White Cormorant" by Frithjof Spalder (1971)

Oct - "A Ghost Story" by Mark Twain (1870)

Oct - "The Signal-Man" by Charles Dickens (1866)

Oct - "Rearview" by Samantha Hunt (2020)

Oct - "The Green Bowl" by Sarah Orne Jewett (1901)

Oct - "A Good Student" by Nuzo Onoh (2014)

Oct - Dracula Daily - "October" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Nov - "Esther" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Nov - "Job" ed. Richard Challoner (1752)

Nov- Dracula Daily - "November" by Bram Stoker & ed. Matt Kirkland (1897, 2021)

Nov - "Clyde" by biomechanicalmash and bogleech (2020)

Audio Shorts

Feb - "Los Espiritus Regresan a Casa" edited and translated by James D. Sexton & Freddy Rodríguez Mejía, adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "Lo que los perros vieron" collected by Joseph D. Sobol & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "El Niño Que Vio Visiones" by Victor Montejo & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "Las Memorias de los Muertos (La Misa Encapuchada" collected by Teresa Pijoan & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "El maestro de escuela" collected by Teresa Pijoan & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "La Flor Llameante" edited by J. Frank Dobie & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Feb - "Pachacamac y Wakon" based on work by Fran Gonzales & adapted by Carolina Quiroga-Stultz (2018)

Novels

Jan - Avatar: Book One by S.D. Perry (2003)

Jan - Avatar: Book Two by S.D. Perry (2003)

Feb - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (1937)

Mar - The Fall of Terok Nor by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens (2000)

Mar - The War of the Prophets by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens (2000)

Mar - Inferno by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens (2000)

Jun - Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990)

Jul - Bad Hare Day by R.L. Stine (1996)

Jul - Egg Monsters from Mars by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Cold Fusion by Keith R.A. DeCandido (2001)

Aug - The Beast from the East by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Say Cheese and Die—Again! by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Ghost Camp by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - How to Kill a Monster by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Legend of the Lost Legend by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Vampire Breath by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Calling All Creeps by R.L. Stine (1996)

Aug - Beware, the Snowman by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Chicken, Chicken by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Don't Go to Sleep! by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - The Blob That Ate Everyone by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - The Curse of Camp Cold Lake by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - My Best Friend is Invisible by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Deep Trouble II by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - The Haunted School by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Werewolf Skin by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - I Live in Your Basement! by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Monster Blood IV by R.L. Stine (1997)

Aug - Cry of the Cat by R.L. Stine (1998)

Aug - Bride of the Living Dummy by R.L. Stine (1998)

Sep - A Less Perfect Union by William Leisner (2008)

Sep - Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2020)

Nov - Places of Exile by Christopher L. Bennett (2008)

Nov - The New Girl by R.L. Stine (1989)

Nov - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

Nov - Seeds of Dissent by James Swallow (2008)

Dec - The Chimes at Midnight by Geoff Trowbridge (2008)

Dec - A Gutted World by Keith R.A. DeCandido (2008)

Dec - Brave New World by Chris Roberson (2008)

Dec - The Embrace of Cold Architects by David R. George III (2010)

Dec - The Tears of Eridanus by Steve Mollmann & Michael Schuster (2010)

Plays

Aug - The Nexus (aka The Dream Box) by Andrew J. Robinson & Alexander Siddig (199x)

Poems

Jan - "Lot's Wife" by Anna Akhmatova (1973)

Comic Shorts & Single Issues

Jan - "The Door in the Kitchen" by Abby Howard (2019)

Feb - "The most beautiful woman in town has issued an ultimatum" by Reggie (2022)

Feb - "Curiosity Killed My Beia" by Hana Chatani (2021)

Mar - "Giraffes Explained" by Tim Andraka (2022)

Mar - "I have been hired to clean the wizard tower" by tart (2022)

Apr - "The Night-Mother" by Melanie Gillman (2021)

Apr - "Sometimes even the villains have standards" by britainbray (2022)

May - "Gorn Trek" by dux (2022)

Jun - "Aquarium" by NoneToon (2022)

Jul - "Bathtub Mermaid" by Edith Zimmerman (2022)

Jul - "its time for… the dark cabinet" by itstimeforcomics-blog (2015)

Aug - "Venus En Route" by Edith Zimmerman (2022)

Sep - "Robot Woman" by Basil Wolverton (1952)

Oct - "Swamp Monster" by Basil Wolverton (1953)

Oct - "The Story of Sal Pullman" by Lonnie Nadler & Abby Howard (2019)

Oct - "O Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by M.R. James & Abby Howard (2019)

Oct - "Rainbow Sprinkles" by W. Maxwell Prince, Chris O’Halloran, Martín Morazzo, Nimit Malavia (2018)

Oct - "Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall!" by Jack Davis, et al. (1953)

Oct - "The Harvest" by Shannon Campbell & Pam Wishbow (2016)

Oct - "In Each and Every Package" by Reed Crandall, et al. (1954)

Oct - "Roots in Hell" by Richard Corben (2016)

Oct - "Mars Is Heaven!" by Ray Bradbury, Wally Wood, et al. (1953)

Oct - "Save the Last Dance for Me!" by Dennis O'Neil & Pat Boyette (1969)

Oct - "Infected" by Bruce Jones, Richard Corben, Steve Oliff (1982)

Oct - "Unpleasant Side Effects" by Kerry Gammill, Sam F. Park, Mar Omega (2010)

Oct - "The Boar's Head Beast" by George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, Wayne Howard (1975)

Oct - "Ill Bred" by Charles Burns (1985)

Oct - "Don't Go to the Island" by Sfé R. Monster & Kalyna Riis-Phillips (2016)

Oct - "Some Other Animal's Meat" by Emily Carroll (2016)

Oct - "Greed" by Becky Cloonan, Jordie Bellaire, Travis Lanham (2013)

Oct - "Goin' South" by Nancy Collins, David Imhoff, Jeff Butler, Steve Montano, Renée Witterstaetter, Electric Crayon, Simon Bisley (1995)

Oct - "Winnebago Graveyard #1" by Steve Niles, Stephanie Paitreau, Jordie Bellaire, Jen Bartel, Alison Sampson, Aditya Bidikar, Mingjue Helen Chen, Sarah Horrocks (2017)

Oct - "Seed" by Fiona Staples, Jose Villarrubia, Michael Dougherty, Todd Casey, Zach Shields, Marc Andreyko (2015)

Oct - "Kill Screen" by Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen, Ryan Kelly, Eva de la Cruz, Clem Robins, Bill Sienkiewicz, Rowena Yow, Shelly Bond (2015)

Oct - "The Fool of the Web" by Patricia Breen, Roel, Brenda Feikema (1997)

Oct - "Fortune Broken" by Sandy King, Leonardo Manco, Marianna Sanzone (2015)

Oct - "The Cemetery" by Franco, Abigail Larson, Wes Abbott, Sara Richard (2022)

Oct - "The Speed of Pain" by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, Dave Stewart, Steve Wands, Will Dennis (2018)

Oct - "Gestation" by Marguerite Bennett, Jonathan Brandon Sawyer, Doug Garbark, Nic. J. Shaw (2014)

Oct - "Chemical 13!" by Michael Woods & Saskia Gutekunst (2009)

Oct - "Hello, My Name Is..." by Nadia Shammas, Rowan MacColl, Licha Myers, Chris Sanchez (2021)

Oct - "Sea of Souls" by Jenna Lynn Wright, Alvaro Feliu, Juan Francisco Mota, Ricardo Osnaya, Erik Lopera Tamayo, Jorge Cortes, Robby Bevaro, Maxflan Araujo, Walter Pereyra, Taylor Esposito (2022)

Oct - "Crush" by Janet Hetherington, Ronn Sutton, Becka Kinzie, Zakk Saam (2018)

Oct - "The End of All Things" by Natalie Leif & Elaine Well (2014)

Nov - "Lenny" by David Cooper (2021)

Graphic Novels & Trades

Jan - Displacement by Kiku Hughes (2020)

Dec - The Last Generation by Andrew Steven Harris, Gordon Purcell, Bob Almond, Terry Pallot, Mario Boon, John Hunt, Robbie Robbins, Chris Mowry, Neil Uyetake, Andy Schmidt, Scott Dunbier, Justin Eisinger, Mariah Huehner, Bill Tortolini (2009)

Betas & Demos

Mar - "Platformer Practice" dev. Itizso (2020)

Video & Electronic Games

Jan - Florence dev. Mountains (2018)

Jan - Slide in the Woods dev. Jonny's Games (2021)

Mar - Fox's Peter Pan & the Pirates dev. Tiger Electronics (1990)

Mar - The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles dev. Chris Gray Enterprises (1992)

Mar - Instruments of Chaos Starring Young Indiana Jones dev. Brian A. Rice & Waterman Design (1994)

Mar - The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Revolution dev. Riverdeep & Asylum Entertainment (2007)

Mar - The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Special Delivery dev. Riverdeep & Asylum Entertainment (2007)

Mar - The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hunting for Treasure dev. Riverdeep & Asylum Entertainment (2008)

May - Outer Wilds - "Echoes of the Eye" dev. Mobius Digital (2021)

May - Aperture Desk Job dev. Valve (2022)

Aug - Goosebumps Night of Scares dev. Cosmic Forces (2015)

Aug - Goosebumps: Escape from HorrorLand dev. Dreamworks Interactive (1996)

Aug - Stray dev. BlueTwelve Studio (2022)

Aug - Goosebumps: HorrorLand dev. Gusto Games (2008)

Aug - Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant dev. BlueSky Software (1997)

Sep - Goosebumps: The Game dev. WayForward (2015)

Sep - Goosebumps Dead of Night dev. Cosmic Forces (2020)

Oct - Silent Hill dev. Team Silent (1999)

Oct - The Excavation of Hob's Barrow dev. Cloak and Dagger Games (2022)

Oct - Halloween Forever dev. Imaginary Monsters (2016)

Oct - Bride of Frankenstein dev. Paul Smith, Steve Howard, Timedata Ltd. (1987)

Oct - Zombies Ate My Neighbors dev. LucasArts (1993)

Oct - Darkstalkers 3 (aka Vampire Savior) dev. Capcom (1997)

Nov - Scorn dev. Ebb Software (2022)

Nov - Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force dev. Raven Software (2000)

Short Films

Jan - "The Snowman" dir. Dianne Jackson (1982)

Jan - "Baker Bobb" dir. Billy Burger (2018)

Jan - "Magnetic Rose" dir. Kōji Morimoto (1995)

Feb - "Robin Robin" dir. Dan Ojari & Mikey Please (2021)

Feb - "Boxballet" dir. Anton Dyakov (2021)

Feb - "Affairs of the Art" dir. Joanna Quinn & Les Mills (2021)

Feb - "Bestia" dir. Hugo Covarrubias (2021)

Feb - "The Windshield Wiper" dir. Alberto Mielgo (2021)

Feb - "On my Mind" dir. Martin Strange-Hansen (2021)

Feb - "Please Hold" dir. KD Dávila (2021)

Feb - "The Long Goodbye" dir. Aneil Karia (2021)

Feb - "The Dress" dir. Tadeusz Lysiak (2021)

Feb - "Ala Kachuu—Take and Run" dir. Maria Brendle (2021)

Mar - Robot Carnival - "Opening" dir. Katsuhiro Otomo & Atsuko Fukushima (1987)

Mar - Robot Carnival - "Franken's Gears" dir. Koji Morimoto (1987)

Mar - Robot Carnival - "Star Light Angel" dir. Hiroyuki Kitazume (1987)

Mar - Robot Carnival - "Deprive" dir. Hidetoshi Ōmori (1987)

Mar - Robot Carnival - "Cloud" dir. Manabu Ōhashi (1987)

May - "Sitting" dir. Emily Yoshida (2017)

Jun - "Making art in America. 👁👄👁" dir. Angie Wang (2022)

Sep - "The Dancing Pig" dir. Mr. Odeo (1907)

Nov - The Legend of Mor'du dir. Brian Larsen (2012)

Movies

Jan - Cowboy Bebop: The Movie dir. Shinichirō Watanabe (2001)

Jan - The Tragedy of Macbeth dir. Joel Coen (2021)

Jan - The 355 dir. Simon Kinberg (2022)

Jan - The King's Man dir. Matthew Vaughn (2021)

Jan - Scream dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olphin & Tyler Gillett (2022)

Jan - Scream 4 dir. Wes Craven (2011)

Jan - Belle dir. Mamoru Hosoda (2021)

Jan - Licorice Pizza dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (2021)

Feb - Moonfall dir. Roland Emmerich (2022)

Feb - Death on the Nile dir. Kenneth Branagh (2022)

Feb - Blacklight dir. Mark Williams (2022)

Feb - Uncharted dir. Ruben Fleischer (2022)

Feb - Cyrano dir. Joe Wright (2022)

Mar - The Batman dir. Matt Reeves (2022)

Mar - Gangubai Kathiawadi dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali (2022)

Mar - Compartment No. 6 dir. Juho Kuosmanen (2021)

Mar - Umma dir. Iris K. Shim (2022)

Mar - The Outfit dir. Graham Moore (2022)

Mar - X dir. Ti West (2022)

Mar - Sweet Smell of Success dir. Alexander Mackendrick (1957)

Mar - The Changeling dir. Peter Medak (1980)

Mar - Re-Animator dir. Brian Yuzna & Stuart Gordon (1985)

Mar - Everything Everywhere All At Once dir. Daniels (2022)

Mar - La Mujer Murcielago dir. René Cardona (1968)

Mar - The Lost City dir. Aaron Nee & Adam Nee (2022)

Mar - Infinite Storm dir. Malgorzata Szumowska (2022)

Apr - You Won't Be Alone dir. Goran Stolevski (2022)

Apr - Morbius dir. Daniel Espinosa (2022)

Apr - Ambulance dir. Michael Bay (2022)

Apr - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 dir. Jeff Fowler (2022)

Apr - Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore dir. David Yates (2022)

Apr - Dual dir. Riley Stearns (2022)

Apr - The Northman dir. Robert Eggers (2022)

Apr - The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent dir. Tom Gormican (2022)

Apr - The Bad Guys dir. Pierre Perifel (2022)

Apr - Moon of the Wolf dir. Daniel Petrie (1972)

Apr - Charlotte dir. Eric Warin & Tahir Rana (2022)

Apr - The Monster Squad dir. Fred Dekker (1987)

Apr - Memory dir. Martin Campbell (2022)

May - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness dir. Sam Raimi (2022)

May - The Ancestral dir. Le-Van Kiet (2022)

May - Petite Maman dir. Céline Sciamma (2022)

May - Firestarter dir. Keith Thomas (2022)

May - Eraserhead dir. David Lynch (1977)

May - Videodrome dir. David Cronenberg (1983)

May - Men dir. Alex Garland (2022)

May - Crash dir. David Cronenberg (1996)

May - The Bob's Burgers Movie dir. Loren Bouchard & Bernard Derriman (2022)

Jun - Montana Story dir. Scott McGehee (2022)

Jun - Crimes of the Future dir. David Cronenberg (2022)

Jun - Watcher dir. Chloe Okuno (2022)

Jun - Jurassic World Dominion dir. Colin Trevorrow (2022)

Jun - Top Gun: Maverick dir. Joseph Kosinski (2022)

Jun - G.I. Joe: The Movie dir. Don Jurwich (1987)

Jun - Elvis dir. Baz Luhrmann (2022)

Jun - The Black Phone dir. Scott Derrickson (2022)

Jun - Lightyear dir. Angus MacLane (2022)

Jun - The Cat Returns dir. Hiroyuki Morita (2004)

Jun - Marcel The Shell With Shoes On dir. Dean Fleischer-Camp (2022)

Jul - Lost Highway dir. David Lynch (1997)

Jul - Mad God dir. Phil Tippett (2022)

Jul - Mr. Malcolm's List dir. Emma Holly Jones (2022)

Jul - Thor: Love and Thunder dir. Taika Waititi (2022)

Jul - Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers dir. Akiva Schaffer (2022)

Jul - Where the Crawdads Sing dir. Olivia Newman (2022)

Jul - Nope dir. Jordan Peele (2022)

Jul - Black Snake Moan dir. Craig Brewer (2007)

Jul - Vengeance dir. B. J. Novak (2022)

Jul - Fear Street Part One: 1994 dir. Leigh Janiak (2021)

Jul - Fear Street Part Two: 1978 dir. Leigh Janiak (2021)

Jul - Fear Street Part Three: 1666 dir. Leigh Janiak (2021)

Aug - Bullet Train dir. David Leitch (2022)

Aug - 3 Ninjas Kick Back dir. Charles T. Kanganis (1994)

Aug - 28 Days dir. Betty Thomas (2000)

Aug - The Gray Man dir. Anthony Russo & Joe Russo (2022)

Aug - Fall dir. Scott Mann (2022)

Aug - Bodies Bodies Bodies dir. Halina Reijn (2022)

Aug - Three Thousand Years of Longing dir. George Miller (2022)

Aug - Beast dir. Baltasar Kormákur (2022)

Aug - Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween dir. Ari Sandel (2018)

Sep - Orphan dir. Jaume Collet-Serra (2009)

Sep - Orphan: First Kill dir. William Brent Bell (2022)

Sep - The Invitation dir. Jessica M. Thompson (2022)

Sep - Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. dir. Adamma Ebo (2022)

Sep - Medieval dir. Petr Jákl (2022)

Sep - Barbarian dir. Zach Cregger (2022)

Sep - Pearl dir. Ti West (2022)

Sep - See How They Run dir. Tom George (2022)

Sep - God's Country dir. Julian Higgins (2022)

Sep - Confess, Fletch dir. Greg Mottola (2022)

Sep - The Woman King dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood (2022)

Sep - Don't Worry Darling dir. Olivia Wilde (2022)

Sep - The Silent Twins dir. Agnieszka Smoczyńska (2022)

Sep - Luckiest Girl Alive dir. Mike Barker (2022)

Oct - Smile dir. Parker Finn (2022)

Oct - The Mummy dir. Karl Freund (1932)

Oct - Invasion of the Body Snatchers dir. Don Siegel (1956)

Oct - The Skin I Live In dir. Pedro Almodóvar (2011)

Oct - The Picture of Dorian Gray dir. Albert Lewin (1945)

Oct - The Uninvited dir. Lewis Allen (1944)

Oct - The Other Side of the Underneath dir. Jane Arden (1972)

Oct - Jeepers Creepers: Reborn dir. Timo Vuorensola (2022)

Oct - Terrifier 2 dir. Damien Leone (2022)

Oct - Ravenous dir. Antonia Bird (1999)

Oct - The Experiment dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel (2001)

Oct - Ganja & Hess dir. Bill Gunn (1973)

Oct - Def by Temptation dir. James Bond III (1990)

Oct - Eyes Without a Face dir. Georges Franju (1960)

Oct - Under the Shadow dir. Babak Anvari (2016)

Oct - Amsterdam dir. David O. Russell (2022)

Oct - Deadstream dir. Joseph Winter & Vanessa Winter (2022)

Oct - In My Skin by Marina de Van (2002)

Oct - Evolution dir. Lucile Hadžihalilović (2015)

Oct - Eko Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness dir. Shimako Satō (1995)

Oct - Celia dir. Ann Turner (1989)

Oct - Censor dir. Prano Bailey-Bond (2021)

Oct - Halloween Ends dir. David Gordon Green (2022)

Oct - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari dir. Robert Wiene (1920)

Oct - Black Adam dir. Jaume Collet-Serra (2022)

Oct - Trouble Every Day dir. Claire Denis (2001)

Oct - Eve's Bayou dir. Kasi Lemmons (1997)

Oct - Monster (aka Humanoids from the Deep) dir. Barbara Peeters & Jimmy T. Murakami (1980)

Oct - The Mafu Cage dir. Karen Arthur (1978)

Oct - Medusa: Queen of the Serpents dir. Matthew B.C. (2020)

Oct - Medusa dir. Anita Rocha da Silveira (2021)

Oct - Prey for the Devil dir. Daniel Stamm (2022)

Oct - It Follows dir. David Robert Mitchell (2014)

Oct - Amer dir. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani (2009)

Nov - Decision to Leave dir. Park Chan-wook (2022)

Nov - Tár dir. Todd Field (2022)

Nov - The Banshees of Inisherin dir. Martin McDonagh (2022)

Nov - Black Panther: Wakanda Forever dir. Ryan Coogler (2022)

Nov - Holy Spider dir. Ali Abbasi (2022)

Nov - The Menu dir. Mark Mylod (2022)

Nov - She Said dir. Maria Schrader (2022)

Nov - Ticket to Paradise dir. Ol Parker (2022)

Nov - Wendell & Wild dir. Henry Selick (2022)

Nov - The Devil's Own dir. Alan J. Pakula (1997)

Nov - Brave dir. Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman (2012)

Nov - Devotion dir. J. D. Dillard (2022)

Nov - Bones and All dir. Luca Guadagnino (2022)

Nov - Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery dir. Rian Johnson (2022)

Nov - Suspiria dir. Dario Argento (1977)

Dec - Strange World dir. Don Hall (2022)

Dec - Violent Night dir. Tommy Wirkola (2022)

Dec - Empire of Light dir. Sam Mendes (2022)

Dec - Demon Wind dir. Charles Philip Moore (1990)

Dec - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio dir. Guillermo del Toro (2022)

Dec - Babylon dir. Damien Chazelle (2022)

Dec - Jack and Jill dir. Dennis Dugan (2011)

Dec - The Whale dir. Darren Aronofsky (2022)

TV Episodes

Jan - What If...? - "What If... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?" (2021)

May - Goosebumps - "Let's Get Invisible" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "The Ghost Next Door" (1998)

May - Goosebumps - "The Werewolf of Fever Swamp" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "You Can't Scare Me" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "More Monster Blood" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "Go Eat Worms" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "Ghost Beach" (1996)

May - Goosebumps - "Return of the Mummy" (1995)

May - Goosebumps - "Phantom of the Auditorium" (1995)

May - Como Dice el Dicho - "Muerto el perro se acabó la rabia" (2019)

Jun - Goosebumps - "My Hairiest Adventure" (1996)

Jun - Goosebumps - "It Came from Beneath the Sink" (1996)

Jun - Goosebumps - "The Barking Ghost" (1997)

Jun - Goosebumps - "Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes" (1996)

Jun - Goosebumps - "Shocker on Shock Street" (1997)

Jun - Goosebumps - "Haunted Mask II" (1996)

Jun - Goosebumps - "The Headless Ghost" (1996)

Jun - Goosebumps - "How I Got My Shrunken Head" (1998)

Jul - Goosebumps - "Bad Hare Day" (1996)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Say Cheese and Die... Again" (1998)

Aug - Goosebumps - "How to Kill a Monster" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Attack of the Jack O Lanterns" (1996)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Vampire Breath" (1996)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Calling All Creeps" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Don't Go to Sleep" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "The Blob That Ate Everyone" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "My Best Friend Is Invisible" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Deep Trouble" (1998)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Werewolf Skin" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "The House of No Return" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Strained Peas" (1998)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Teacher's Pet" (1998)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Click" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Don't Wake Mummy" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "The Haunted House Game" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Perfect School" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "An Old Story" (1997)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Awesome Ants" (1998)

Aug - Goosebumps - "Cry of the Cat" (1998)

Oct - The Simpsons - "Treehouse of Horror XXXIII" (2022)

Oct - Bob's Burgers - "Apple Gore-chard! (But Not Gory)" (2022)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "The Sandkings" (1995)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "Vanishing Act" (1996)

Dec - Tales from the Crypt - "And All Through the House" (1989)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "Valerie 23" (1995)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "Blood Brothers" (1995)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "The Second Soul" (1995)

Dec - The Outer Limits - "White Light Fever" (1995)

TV Series

Jan - Cowboy Bebop (1998)

Jan - Cowboy Bebop (2021)

Mar - Mighty Max (1993-1994)

Jul - Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (1988-1990)

Jul - Better Call Saul - Season 5 (2020)

Jul - The Book of Boba Fett (2021-2022)

Jul - Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Aug - Better Call Saul - Season 6 (2022)

Aug - Keep Breathing (2022)

Aug - Goosebumps: Chillogy (1998)

Oct - Costume Quest (2019)

Oct - Castlevania - Seasons 3 & 4 (2020-2021)

Nov - Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

Nov - What If...? (2021)

Nov - The Sandman (2022)

Nov - Ms. Marvel (2022)

Nov - The Twilight Zone - Season 1 (2019)

Dec - Don't Hug Me I'm Scared - Series 2 (2022)

#new fiction #2022 #onward to 2023 #I'm still debating whether to do this for nonfiction #but it's nice to have stuff I can just watch or read for myself

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williamalderwick-blog · 7 years

Text

Love in the age of Facefuck: Iphigenia Baal’s Merced es Benz

Original unedited text; a poorly edited version appeared in Real Review issue 4, Summer 2017. I guess I always was a little bit in love with Iphigenia Baal. I remember seeing glimpses of a whirlwind careening through parties, pubs, gigs, the backstages of shows with all of London’s seedy nightlife scrolling behind her as if the rolling backdrop of a private theatre, moving like a comet burning its own path through the heavens, a singular orbit governed by laws all its own and beware all those that fall within its thrall. I recall a hazy cloud of curling hair, gap toothed, cheekbones, eyes that I now want to say were green, deepest hazel green flecked gems. Eyes that burned right through you, unforgivingly. Contemptuously. They had an intensity, a holding you to something, whatever it was. That’s what I remember most, a kind of smouldering raging intensity to truth — the kind that no one can really live with. She was staff writer at Dazed at a time when, on the dole in a band and sleeping on friends couches or at the studio, I thought being on staff to write was just about the greatest job anyone could have. Somethings never change. And she was simply beautiful. Beauty like in a Greek myth, with something timeless to it, otherworldly, at once raw and serene. All carried with such attitude, an always more hardcore than you kinda attitude. I guess I was struck. Intimidated. From afar, a distance. I never really knew her, of course, friends of friends of an acquaintance, the occasional party, a couple of words here or there, nodded acknowledgement outside an opening, doorways, corridors, street-level passings by. Stories and rumours and gossips…I guess I was a little bit in love with the idea of Iphigenia Baal. I’m probably wrong about the eyes. And so a decade later, in another life, Miss Baal’s second novel arrives in a package for me at the office sent by her publisher. Merced es Benz is a love story, a non-fiction novel charting the relationship between the author and one Ben Thomas — seemingly the love of her life. Bookended by Baal’s own reflective prose, we’re witness to the relationship through a little over eight months of Facebook posts and chats, SMS, BBM, email, and google searches. It’s an exhaustive record of every digital exchange between them. From SMS setting up a date or time to meet, likes on each other’s posts or updates, arguments raging across different handsets, emails, sponsored posts, Merced Es’ google search results into drug networks, police informants, flights to Australia. A transcript of all the links and communiques between them logged in the system run out in chronological order. Objet trouvé. Print All. It’s all text-speak dialogue, slanged abbreviations, the ping-pong chat messaging we’re conditioned to now. Bite-sized fluid snippets. Situated in the media that now frame our social exchanges, it feels utterly modern. And it reads quickly. Pages are scanned, scrolled rather than read. The layout echoes user interfaces — like the wireframes used to blueprint a webpage design. And yet it’s also antiquated, a rolling-back to an archaic version — Facefuck v1.3.2 circa 2011. The drama is often in the details. You find yourself checking the timestamps of text exchanges, noting the gaps, the jumps, the ellipses. Merced Es traveling across London to meet Benz, only to be stood up, the messages repeating, ten minutes, twenty minutes, two hours no response, ‘where are you’s turning to anger then rage towards the other who only resurfaces the next morning. Everything feels real, and these are conversations, relationships, exchanges, acts of dickishness and inconsolable rejection that everyone can relate to, has been, played out. It’s London love baby, utterly relatable stories as old as the hills and bitched across spilling pints in pub corners across the capital forevermore. As a teen, Baal was nicknamed ‘that Mercedes chic’ by her friends for wearing one of the iconic three-pointed-star-in-a-circle emblems snatched from the hood of a fancy MB motor around her neck. In Benz, she finds her completing half. Star-crossed lovers, a real-life Romeo and Juliette for the digital age. Merced es Benz has that touch of fate about it. Love is a fiction, a story we weave, to entwine us together. After opening with their first exchange online, Benz responding to a characteristically disdainful ‘Facefuck’ status update from Merced Es, the book jumps ahead to the immediate aftermath of Thomas’s untimely death from a drug overdose in July 2012. Everything unfolds under the shadow of this tragedy — a death that perhaps if not accidental, if not a suicide, might awfully be wilful. Heartbreak even. A deep sadness pervades the reading of the couple’s exchanges. A constricting fatality born of the knowledge of what is to come. The whole book is a looking back, involving both a deciphering and an occlusion. You read searching for clues why, as well as vainly attempting to forget what you know so as to experience the couple’s shared moments in something approaching an authentic innocence. But death shadows, a constant companion inexorably pulling us back towards the curtain closed. It’s a story of a doomed love told from the surviving half. A story of survival, of the telling required to ensure the other half lives on, can become full again once more. No longer simply that Mercedes chic. There is of course the gap here between the author and her avatar or handle, between Ben Thomas and Benz. Merced Es both is and is not Baal. They elide, and this layering, merging, pulling away, leaving out, this différence, is dynamic. In the same way, all the events and action of their relationship are absent. In between texts or emails we have to guess and imagine what transpired. Read between the lines, and project our own experiences into their exchanges, in order to make sense of the trace. A deciphering of what-must-have-to-have-happened to provoke this. Thus as one looks for the source, for the reasons why, all we have are the traces of events that have always already happened elsewhere. Events that have been removed, isolated, quarantined. What we read is reductive — reduced to a trace that itself is raw, it’s copy itself, a copy of a copy, and we’re left with the bare bones. We see the outlines of rich media, image boxes with no filler, YouTube links vacant. Absentia in media res. Just like the object of love (Benz) himself. Severed from both real life and the interconnecting digital web, the printed page is a mausoleum, but doubly here, triply even. Perhaps the only true archive or resting place of our online conversations is precisely offline — otherwise they are still live, active, full of potential to change, be rewritten, re-skinned. I toy with the idea of looking up the video links on YouTube, copying the URLs out verbatim, for veracity, to establish the mood, to listen to the same track by The Rutts. But somehow that’s not the point. Memory, clouded and somewhat made up, filled in over the gaps, feels more authentic to this story. Across the transposed Facebook group patter names are scratched out, effaced for anonymity but still recognisable, half legible, if you know what or who you’re looking for. Photographers, stylists, former colleagues from one magazine masthead to another, public house heroines and pinups. It’s a familiar world, that London of the turn of the decade. Perhaps always in negative, Baal captures the nihilistic decadence of modern urban twenty-something living. Our protagonists are neurotic, directionless within a drifting affluence, never short of a party full of people they loath who are their best friends. Alienation for the trust-fund generation at the end of history. All this… and nowhere to go, nothing to do. Baal’s unforgiving cynicism and rejection of this scene shines through. The tawdry sub-gossip milieu of rich kids idling the world from party to party to beach to island to who cares where next with the touch of overly perfumed Louis XIV court intrigues in their drama and tousling themselves up with all the braggadocio of a rap promo. This centrifugal star-lit social scene is contrasted with hints of stunning dawn views from her 15th floor flat in a Bow housing estate tower block out in deepest East London. But how much of all this is true I ask myself, is this real? I certainly remember seeing some of these posts on Baal’s Facebook, the letter that got her fired from Dazed, the ‘I fucked… and all I got was this petty vendetta’ t-shirt. Maybe one of those anonymous likes is mine. Who was Ben? Did the author make him up? If not, what would his friends or family make of who you read about here? Did she write/ make all of this up? Within a couple of quick searches Benz is revealed in the tabloid daily reports of his death. But even these always by a kind of second degree, headlines that the friend of so and so rock star kid it boy died. His death simply isn’t the story, isn’t the news, it’s his associates. Even here we miss him. I think perhaps Merced es Benz is an attempt to reclaim part of this person lost. A way of saying it did happen, that for all of everything else he was/is/was this, at least to me. The idea and love of a person is surpassed on all sides by them, until that love is all we have left. How much of this is a transcript? Untouched, unedited, unwritten? To read is to be invited in to be a witness, but of what? All the events here, everything that happens, happens elsewhere, IRL somewhere, off read, off piste, off script. Merced es Benz is an account from the aftermath of a cataclysm. It’s the act of piecing together how we got here, a looking back and re-reading of archives. It’s the act of the bereft that Baal puts us as readers into, into her shoes. It’s also the act of writing today. Through technology tracing our every move, thought, exchange, calorie burnt, website visited, link clicked, the great book of being is being written by machines in a language we can’t read. What we mean is our trace, the trail we leave behind through the systems we traverse. In this way the writer is effaced from the writing. Baal tries to take herself out of the equation, effacing herself, by instead reaching towards becoming a pure conduit to this trace of her past. It’s an act of carrying that trace forward — an act of not acting, of not writing but rather of reading — the writer in negative. In absentia. But in this way we become her — recalling and returning to the aftermath, trying to make sense of the event(s) of our lives. This non-writing — this archaeology, this digging up — this is ours, perhaps all that we have ultimately. There is a great vulnerability and honesty in Baal’s non-fiction novel. It pulls no punches, about anyone, least of all herself. If we’re sympathetic to her characters, they’re not faultless. We’re welcomed inside the expressions of their neuroses, doubts and rages to each other just as much as any love between them. And here’s the thing, thinking back I wonder if there is really love in this story, in so far as it’s a story of a failed, doomed romantic encounter. Almost as if the love each of our protagonists held for the other, living outside the book, the traces of its expression and thus their ability to communicate it to each other, couldn’t navigate these mediums between them — perhaps it’s a warning about love being innately atrophied in the age of Facefuck. You’ll only find love in the real world. Recently I’ve been seeing clips of scorpions and crabs shredding their shells recur on my social feed. There’s something strangely satisfying in watching the disconnecting, withdrawing and pulling away under the hard surface, the reveal of the soft vulnerable pink fresh skin exposed underneath and then the empty husk left behind. The hollow shape of the thing, there but without substance, without content. I think of this husk in relation to Merced es Benz. There is bravery in letting oneself be so laid bare, opening out the vulnerability and shape of oneself. An affirmation to say a kind of, I once was this. To be a writer is to share of yourself, invite others to step inside this externalised piece of you. You can only really write what you know, or write to unlearn yourself. Perhaps in reaching for an already externalised trace of herself at the intersections with another person, Baal finds something that enables an authentic intimate encounter with an other for a reader, a kind of genericity that everyone can reach towards. Ultimately, I think Baal suggests that writing today is neither simply the digital trace nor using that trace as a medium of expression, but lies beyond, within a composition or choreography that primes the possibility for encounter. And against the comforting alienation of our self-reinforcing media bubbles, her book asks how one can encounter the other, perhaps even how can one love today? Told almost entirely through social media posts and digital communications, about love and about death, Merced es Benz is an uncovering of the past and a trying to come to terms with it; it addressing the nature, and thus future, of writing itself as confronted with technology and the mediations of today; and, for the old Badiouian in me, it is about fidelity to an event, twice over, that of their love encounter, and that of his death; the one nested in the other, for only by faithfully expressing the truth of the first can one face that of the second. I guess I’m still a little bit in love with Iphigenia Baal, but not in the way I was before. Now, perhaps on her terms, in the way that she invites us readers all into a love that is forever lost, to step into these moments, and feel and watch and recall through the moments of our own lives, what it is to know, to love someone — if not the writer then perhaps her Benz.

Merced Es Benz by Iphgenia Baal is published by Book Works as part of the Semina series guest edited by Stewart Home. Order a copy here.

#bookworks #iphgenia baal #stewart home #merced es benz #real review #literature #essay

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