#lovecraft horror stores

[wilwheaton]

When you watch The Curse, you are watching two children who were abused and exploited daily during production. No adults protected us.

This was originally published on my blog in August, 2022.

I had a wonderful time at Steel City Comicon this weekend. It was my first time at this particular con, so I didn’t know there was such a huge contingent of horror fans, creators, and vendors who attend.

I love horror, and I was pretty psyched to be in the same place as John Carpenter and Tom Savini, across the street from the Dawn of the Dead mall. Pittsburgh feels like one of the places horror was invented, at least to me.

A number of these horror fans came to see me, and asked me to sign posters and other things from a movie my parents forced me to do when I was 13, called The Curse. I had to tell each of these people that I would not sign anything associated with that movie, because I was abused and exploited during production. The time I spent on that film remains the most traumatizing time of my life, and though I am a 50 year-old man, just typing this now makes my hands shake with remembered fear of a 13 year-old boy who nobody protected, and the absolute fury the 50 year-old man feels toward the people who hurt him.

I told this story in Still Just A Geek, and I’ve talked about it in some podcasts I did on the promo tour, but I’ve never put it out in public like this, in its entirety.

I suspect someone at the publisher would prefer I tease this and hope it drives book sales from people who want to read all of it, but I honestly don’t want to have another weekend like this one where everything is awesome, except the few times people who have no idea (and why should they) put that fucking poster in front of me, and all the fear, abandonment, and trauma come flooding back as I tell them that I won’t sign it, and why.

To their credit, each person was as horrified as they should have been, told me they had no idea (if they didn’t read my book why would they), and quickly put the poster away. They were all understanding. I am grateful for that.

But I really don’t need to tell this story over and over again, so here it is, with a child abuse and exploitation content warning, so I can just tell people to Google it.

After Stand by Me, everything changed. The attention from entertainment journalists, casting directors, and especially teen magazines came pouring in. The movie was a generational hit, beloved by critics and audiences alike, and every single one of us could pick anything to do next.

River’s parents and his agent got him Mosquito Coast, with Harrison Ford, as his next movie. I also auditioned for the role, but I knew even then that River was going to book the job. He was perfect, and I’d have to wait a little bit for my opportunity to come along.

I went on a lot of theatrical auditions after Stand by Me. I had tons of meetings with directors and the heads of casting at every major studio. It was all a very big deal, and I felt like we were all looking for something really special and amazing as my follow-up to Stand by Me.

At some point, a couple of producers contacted my agent with an offer to play one of the leads in an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space.” The script was titled The Farm. (It would, of course, be changed when the film was released).

I read it. I did not like it. It was a shitty horror movie, and I saw that right away. It was the sort of thing you rented on Friday when the new release you wanted was already out of the store.

My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

I told my parents I didn’t like it and didn’t want to do it. I clearly recall thinking it was a piece of shit that would hurt my career.

It wasn’t the first thing that had come our way that I wanted to pass on, and every other time, it hadn’t been a very big deal.

Sidebar: I was cast in Twilight Zone: The Movie, in 1983. The film tells four stories, and I was cast as the kid who can wish people into cartoonland. It was a GREAT role, in a movie I still love. (Note that Twilight Zone had four directors. One of them got three people killed. The segment I was cast in was not that one. I mention this because too many people zero in on this to deflect from what this whole thing is actually about.)

But I was CONVINCED by my parochial school teacher that if I worked on The Twilight Zone, which she had determined was satanic, I would go to hell. (This woman and her bullshit played a big role in my conversion to atheism at a young age, but when she told me that, I was all-in on the supernatural story they taught us in religion class.) I was so scared, more scared than I’d ever been to that point in my life, I cried and wailed and begged my parents to not make me do the movie. And I never told them why, because I was afraid my dad would laugh at me for being weak and afraid. My agent tried to talk me into it, and I wouldn’t budge. It’s the only thing I deeply and truly regret passing on, and I really hate I made that choice for such a stupid reason.

Okay. Back to The Curse.

This time, when I told them how much I hated it, they wouldn’t listen to me. My mother, already an incredibly manipulative person, used every tool at her disposal to change my mind. My father threatened me, mocked me, told me “It’s your decision” when it clearly wasn’t. It was all so weird; I didn’t understand why they cared so much.

That is, until they made me take a meeting with the producers of the movie, in their giant conference room on the top floor of a tall building in Hollywood. All I remember about this place was that it was huge; the table was way too big for the five of us who spread around it, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows on three of the walls, but the room was still dark. There was a weird optical illusion in the center of the table, this thing they sold in the Sharper Image catalog, made from two reflective dishes with a hole in the top of one. You placed an object in the bottom of the bottom dish, and it made it look like that object was floating above the whole thing. They had a plastic spider in it. What a strange detail for me to remember, but it’s as clear in my memory as if I were sitting in that room right now.

One man, who I presumed was the executive producer, was European or Middle Eastern (I didn’t know the difference then, he was just Not Like People I Knew), and I was instantly afraid of him. He was intimidating, and seemed like a person who got what he wanted.

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

I don’t remember what they said to me in their pitch or anything other than how uncomfortable and anxious I was to even be in that room. I tried so hard to be grown up and mature, but I — and my parents — was way out of my depth. I’d done one big movie and that was it. We didn’t have my agent with us, who had lots of experience and would have known what questions to ask.

No, in place of my experienced agent, my mother had decided she was going to be my manager, and she tackled the responsibility with an enthusiasm that was only matched by her absolute incompetence and inability to go toe-to-toe with producers the way my agent did. She was outwitted, out-thought, and outmaneuvered at every turn.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

So we sat there, my father who didn’t give a shit about me, my mother who was cosplaying as someone with experience, and me, thirteen years old, awkward as fuck, and scared to death.

At some point, this man, who is represented in my memory by big Jim Jones sunglasses under dark hair above an open collar, said, “We are offering you a hundred thousand dollars and round-trip travel for your whole family. We will cast your sister, Amy, to play your sister in the movie.”

It all made sense, now. I was only thirteen, but I knew my parents were pushing me so hard because this company was offering me — them, really — more money than I’d ever imagined I’d earn in my life, much less a single job.

I knew that the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, was to say no. There would be other opportunities, and it was stupid to cash myself out of feature films for what I thought was, in the grand scheme of things, not very much money.

It’s incredible to me that I knew all of this. It’s incredible to me that I could see all these things, plainly and clearly, and my parents couldn’t (or, more likely, chose not to).

So after this man made his offer, all the adults in the room ganged up on me, selling me HARD on this movie.

My mother said, “Don’t you want your sister to have the same opportunities you’ve had? Wouldn’t it be fun and exciting to go to Rome? Think of all the history!”

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

I don’t think about this very often, because it’s super upsetting to me. Right now, I’m so angry at my parents for subjecting me and my sister to this entire experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In that moment, I felt bullied and trapped. All these adults were talking to me at the same time, and I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted to go home and get out of this room. I just wanted to go be a kid, so I did what I’d learned to do to survive: I gave in and did what my parents wanted.

The experience was awful. It was the worst experience I have ever had on a set in my life, by every single metric. The movie is awful, and it is the embarrassment I knew it would be.

But here’s the thing: when you watch The Curse, you are watching two children, me and my sister, who were abused on a daily basis. The production did not follow a single labor law. They worked us for twelve hours a day, on multiple film units (while I work on First unit, second unit sets up and waits for me. When I should get a break to rest, they send me to Second unit, then to Third unit, then back to First unit. I was 13.) without any breaks, five days a week. I was exhausted the entire time. I was inappropriately touched by two different adults during production. I knew it was wrong, but I was so scared and ashamed, and I felt so unsupported, I didn’t tell anyone. I knew my dad wouldn’t believe me, and my mother would blame me. Anything to keep the production happy, that’s what she did. That was more important to her than the health and safety of her children. The director was coked out of his mind most of the time, incompetent, and so busy fucking or trying to fuck one of the women in the cast, he was worse than useless. He was a fading actor who was cosplaying as a director, as in over his head as my mother. My sister and I were never safe. Instead of harmless atmospheric SFX smoke, they set hay on fire in barrels and blew actual smoke onto the set. They took buckets of talc, broken wood, bits of wallpaper and plaster, and threw it into my face during a scene inside the collapsing house. My sister is in a scene where she goes to get eggs from some chickens, and they attack her. So they hired Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror master, to direct her sequence. His idea, which everyone was totally on board with, was to throw chickens at my sister. Live chickens, live roosters, live birds. Just throw them at a nine-year-old girl. Oh, and then tie them to her arms and legs so they’ll peck her. All of this happened under my mother’s observation, and with her full participation.

Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

If just ONE of the things I can remember happened to someone I loved, I would have grabbed my kids, gone to the airport, and flown home. Fuck those abusive assholes in the production. Let the lawyers sort it all out. Nobody hurts my children and gets away with it.

My mom says she “had some talks” with the producers. She claims that, once, she wouldn’t let us leave the hotel. (God, what a fucking dump that place was. It was just slightly better than a hostel.) I have no memory of that, but honestly the entire experience was so traumatic, I’ve blocked most of it out.

The movie was the commercial and critical failure I knew it would be. My parents spent the money. I don’t know what they spent it on. I got to keep fifteen cents of every dollar, so . . . yay?

My sister and I hardly ever talk about this. I suspect it was as upsetting and traumatic for her as it was for me. I told her I was writing about it, and asked her if she remembered anything. She told me she’d been lied to her whole life about this movie. Our mother let her believe she had been cast on the strength of her audition. “I was excited to work with you,” she said. She reminded me about some stuff I’d blocked out, including a scene where my character’s older brother (played by an actor named Malcolm Danare, who was kind and gentle, and made both of us feel safer when he was around) shoves my character into a pile of cow shit. When it came time to shoot the scene, the mud they’d put together to be the cow shit looked an awful lot like cow shit. When Malcolm pushed me into it, we all found out it was real cow shit. I was FURIOUS. The director had lied to me and had allowed me to have my entire body shoved into an actual pile of actual cow shit. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember he treated me the exact same way my father did whenever I got upset: he laughed at me, told me I was being too sensitive, reminded me that he was the director and he wanted to get a “real” performance out of me, and concluded, “If it bothers you so much, we’ll get you a hepatitis shot,” before he walked away.

My sister also recalled that, after she survived the scene with the chickens, it was the producers’ idea to give her one as a pet.

Okay, let’s unpack that for a quick second: you’ve been traumatized by these birds, so we’re going to give you one as a pet. That you’ll somehow keep in your hotel, and then will somehow get back to America. It will shock you to learn that neither of those things happened.

She remembered, as I do, the huge fight I had with my parents in our kitchen, where I told them I hated the script and I hated the movie. I didn’t want to do it, and I hated that they were making me do it.

“You don’t have a choice,” my father commanded. “You are doing this movie.”

“This is the only film you are being offered,” my mother lied to me. She made me feel like, if I didn’t do this movie, I would never do another movie again in my life. I had to do this movie. As my father bellowed, I had no choice.

Both of my parents denied this argument ever happened. Can I tell you how reassuring it is to know that my sister, who was also there, remembers it the same way I do?

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them.

But one thing she told me, the thing I did not know, the thing that makes me so angry I want to break things, actually managed to make the entire experience even worse than I remembered it.

There’s a scene after her chicken incident where I check up on her in her bedroom. She’s got cuts and bruises, and I guess we talk about it. I don’t remember and I can’t watch the movie because I’m terrified it will give me a PTSD flashback (I’ve had one of those and I recommend avoiding it). Here’s the thing about that scene: she has some cuts on her face, and those cuts are real. They are not makeup.

I’m going to repeat that. My nine-year-old little sister had actual cuts on her face that were placed there by an adult, on purpose.

The makeup department decided they would literally cut my little sister’s face with a scalpel, in three places, and put bandages over them. My sister told me our mother wasn’t in the makeup room when this happened — honestly, it seemed like our mother was strangely and conveniently absent when most of the really terrible things happened to us on the set — and when my sister told her what they’d done, she “lost her shit” at the production. She was pissed, I guess, which is appropriate and surprising. I wonder what would have to have happened for her to put us on a plane and get us home to safety? I mean, her son being abused daily didn’t do it, and her daughter being CUT IN THE FACE ON PURPOSE didn’t do it.

I just . . . I can’t. I can’t understand or comprehend allowing your own children to be physically and emotionally abused. They were literally selling my sister and me to these people, like we were some kind of commodity.

This was a tough conversation. My sister’s experience with our parents is very different from mine. My sister and I love each other. We’re close. I know it’s hard for her to hear that her brother, who she loves, was so abused by her parents, who she also loves. I was really grateful she made the time to talk to me about it, and grateful the experience wasn’t as horrible for her as it was for me.

As we were finishing our call, Amy also remembered one man, a young Italian named Luka, who was our driver for the movie. I haven’t thought about him in thirty years, but I can see his face now. He was kind, he was friendly, he taught us how to kick a soccer ball, and in the middle of an abusive, torturous experience, he stood out as a kind and gentle man. I mention him because she remembered him, which made me remember him, and goddammit I want at least one small part of this thing to not be awful.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares.

Ultimately, as I predicted and feared, this piece of shit movie cashed me out of respectable films forever. I got offers for movies, but they were always mindless comedies or exploitative horror films. They were never the serious dramas I wanted to work in after Stand by Me. The industry looked at me and River, wondering if one or both of us would become a breakout star. They quickly saw that River was doing real acting work, and I was in this piece of shit. For River, Stand by Me was a beginning. For me, it would turn out to be pretty much everything, at least as far as film goes.

There are thousands of reasons film careers do and don’t take off. Maybe mine wouldn’t have taken off anyway. Clearly, it’s not where my life ended up, and I’m super okay with that now. But when all of this happened, it hurt and haunted me.

The Curse remains one of the most consequential times the adults in my life failed to protect me. I’m 50. I still have nightmares. Everything I need to know about who my parents are is wrapped up in that experience: the total lack of concern for my safety and happiness, treating me like an asset instead of a son, lying to me, manipulating me, and using me to get things they wanted, and then gaslighting me about it.

This annotation is the last thing I wrote before I turned this manuscript in, because opening these wounds is hard and painful. I put it off as long as I could, and I feel like I’m still holding back, because just this small glimpse of the experience has taken me a week to write. I can’t imagine trying to go back and unpack the whole thing. (Note that is not in the book: I’ve made an EMDR appointment to work on this because the nightmares have come back after the weekend).

Fuck The Curse, and fuck every single person who exploited and hurt two beautiful children to make it. You all participated in child abuse, and you all knew better. Shame on all of you. I hope this follows you to the end of your life. I hope that living with what you did to innocent children has been as hard for you as it has been for me, because you deserve no less.

[intertexts]

Oh wait

You like fucked up towns?

Do you perhaps have any thoughts on towns and how to make them more fucked up? :]

(^^ words of something trying to make a small town map that’s fucked up)

OH. HUH. FUN QUESTION. i feel like. i am a terrible person to ask for thoughts on things like this because the extent of my writing is like, gay ass character studies & shit. but. i do have a ton of thoughts on fucked up towns.

the most important thing, i personally think, is having your town be grounded in a real regional place and it has to be a place you love. it's so difficult to make that shit up from scratch and still carry a real weight. and the horror or strangeness or sadness of the town should come from the reality of it.

picking a few of the easiest examples: welcome to night vale, night in the woods, h.p. lovecraft's miskatonic county. the fucked-up-ness of all of them springs from the nature of the place itself. they're not interchangeable, and they all have different emotions linked with them.

night vale is, very loosely, a satire of unbothered american suburbia in the face of-- well. all the horrific shit that post-9/11 unbothered americana ignores! and the strangeness and beauty of the setting comes from the easy and pleasant and mundane way that its citizens interact with the horror. it's day-to-day, it's chill, it's normal. yeah the faceless old lady who lives in your home is running for mayor. yeah the angels who work the community garden and live with josie finally won the case for their existence we can acknowledge them now cool. (& also of course night vale is a southwestern desert town & it doesn't let u forget that!! it's hot and sunny in the day and cold at night and there's sand dunes out by the edge of town and beaches with no lakes and it is very grounded in its setting!!)

possum falls from nitw, on the other hand, is a love letter to to those old, death spiraling pennsylvania rust belt mining towns. it isn't as heavily supernatural of a setting (outside of the old god in the mines the elders are sacrificing the most vulnerable members of the community to for nothing but the continued hollow, wheezing survival of something that should be allowed to die) but it's very grounded in the reality of those places-- the omnipresent forest, the dinky grocery store, your old high school classmate sitting out on her apartment steps at sunset, the feeling of being out in the autumn cold at dusk and the empty subway station and the weathered, half-hearted historical remnants of local pride and the ghost of the closed mine over it all. the type of dead-end, black hole, potholed main street town that you know you're gonna live and die in because it's what your parents did and what their parents did and god knows how you'd even make it out.

lovecraft-- i mean, mandatory disclaimer on his insane racism of course. up to u if u wanna read of his work, a lot of his short stories r very short etc. but crucially, for what we're talking about here, lovecraft was fucking in love with new england in the way that people who r born and raised in new england r insane about it. his lovecraft country/miskatonic county/arkham county is set in massachusetts, and he's very clear about why everything's set in mass: bleak, lonely, ancient, haunted by the sea and the lingering ghosts of twisted puritan ideology. his fucked up towns are the dark hidden backwoods, the port towns, the wretched things brought by settlers who have been a parasite upon the woods and the rocks and the fields for hundreds of years, etc, the feeling that something has gone wrong and perverted here and it's far too late to fix it.

so like, tl;dr-- don't try and make somewherw generically weird. figure out what place makes YOU go crazy go stupid. pinpoint Why it specifically makes u go crazy go stupid, as opposed to everywhere else. crank that shit up to 100!!!!

[uwmspeccoll]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

FRANK UTPATEL

On this last Wednesday in May we present a wood engraving entitled Farmer's Holiday #4 by the noted Wisconsin artist Frank Utpatel (1905-1980). Utpatel made this engraving in the late 1930s as a Wisconsin artist in the Federal Art Project of the WPA. He is remembered mainly as an illustrator of fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories, especially through his longtime collaboration with  August Derleth who founded the Arkham House publishing firm in Sauk City, Wisconsin, a major publisher in this genre, especially the works of H. P. Lovecraft. Although he is remembered for his work as an illustrator, he was also a highly accomplished wood engraver.

This print was scanned as part of our digital collection Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA from a portfolio of original prints in Special Collections that bears the title Making a Woodcut, although most to of the prints stored here are mainly lithographs, etchings, and linocuts.

The Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA digital collection was made possible with generous financial support from The Chipstone Foundation.

View more posts with Frank Utpatel's wood engravings.

View more posts from our Wisconsin Arts Projects digital collection.

View more posts with wood engravings!

[werewolfsister]

THE ULTIMATE OCTOBER BUCKET LIST

Just in case you’re looking for something to do this spooky season, look no further! Please submit suggestions and additions if you have them 🎃

SEPTEMBER 1ST

Begin reading A Night in the Lonesome October, by Roger Zelazney

Choose an Inktober Challenge

OCTOBER 1st-31st

Put together a scary playlist, or check out a pre-made one! ( https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKkteYcz3WqtSTWxrid5ioJMJGLZGsZnj&feature=shared )

Go to a haunted house

Have a festive fall drink—pumpkin spice latte, Halloween-inspired cocktail, apple cider?

Watch a scary movie—like Get Out, Psycho, or Hereditary

Watch a Halloween special— like It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Go to a Halloween/scary movie trivia night

Order a Halloween or fall themed mystery/subscription box

Bake Halloween cookies

Go on a ghost tour

Attend a dumb dinner

Buy your Halloween décor

Decorate the house

Compete in a costume contest

Buy Halloween candy

Pick your pumpkins

Carve your pumpkins

Burn a campfire

Tell scary stories

Read some scary stories—like H.P. Lovecraft, Steven King, or Anne Rice

Get lost in a corn maze

Visit a graveyard

Go apple picking

Visit a fall festival

Send old-timey Halloween postcards

Go on a hayride

Do a pumpkin-head photoshoot

Visit a Halloween attraction or theme park—like Halloweentown, OR; or Disneyland, CA

Take a walk to crunch fall leaves

Drive through town and play Halloween decoration bingo

Attend Oktoberfest

Listen to a horror podcast— like The Magnus Archives or Sherlock Holmes Radio Mysteries

Watch a spooky play—like the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Little Shop of Horrors

Watch some haunting cartoons—like Spooky Month or Villainous (Villanos)

Giant pumpkin regatta/race

Go to some Museum/Zoo Halloween events

Stay overnight in a haunted hotel—like the Skirvin Hotel, OK; or the Overlook Hotel, OR

Get the latest Pokemon Trick or Trade Halloween card packs

Visit a Hot Topic or other ghoulish store

Go ghost hunting

Vote in Katmai National Park’s Fat Bear Week! ( https://explore.org/fat-bear-week )

Go on a costumed bar crawl

Play a scary videogame—like Cry of Fear or Resident Evil

Play a scary boardgame—like the JAWS boardgame, Shaky Manor, or Betrayal at House on the Hill

Take a (respectful!) tombstone rubbing

Draw for Inktober

Do an old-timey lover’s Halloween premonition

Visit a creepy museum exhibit—like the Museum of Death, CA; or the Jack the Ripper Museum, London

Get a tarot reading or some palmistry

Attend a séance

Try out a Zombie Run or Zombies vs Humans

Enjoy Samhain traditions

Visit a spooky person’s grave—like Lovecraft’s in Providence, RI; or the Paris Catacombs, Paris

Go on a nighttime nature walk and spot some creepy critters—maybe an owl!

Do some history of Halloween research

Make fall themed crafts

Go on a labyrinth walk

Dress up your pets for a photoshoot or a pet parade

Play a trick on someone

Trick or treat!

Hand out candy!

NOVEMBER 1ST- 3RD

Halloween decorations clean up!

Eat your candy!

Celebrate Dias de los Muertos

Do some calavera painting

Put up an Ofrenda/altar

Enjoy a little ancestor remembrance

Walk in a Dias de los Muertos parade

Put up marigolds and other décor

Go to a church service

If you’re crazy, start putting up the Christmas decorations <.< (we all know you gotta wait until at least Thanksgiving!!!)

[anhed-nia]

Hey gang! Once we get past the second-spookiest time of year, the the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies' Spring semester will be upon us. Frankly I'm pretty jealous of our fearless leader Josh Saco's London lineup, so visit him if you're local--but we have plenty of Online treats in store, too! Ticket & season pass link is below, here's the hype:

Our Spring slate includes lectures on site-specific horror spanning from south of the (United States) border to outer space. Anna Marta Marini joins us from Madrid to analyze the role of Mexico as a savage land in U.S. popular culture, while William Burns tunes in from New York to introduce hauntology, which uses ghostly metaphor to reconcile the grim past with our precarious present. Filmmaker Vincenzo Natali (SPLICE, CUBE) will log on from Toronto to tell us how architectural environments in horror films are encoded with human fears and anxieties, and Elizabeth Abele in Kuwait delves into the interior of the human mind with her look at sex and identity issues in Red Riding Hood adaptations. Finally, author David Goodwin presents his surprising research on the influence of place on the career of H.P. Lovecraft; the original Miskatonian may have “I AM PROVIDENCE” engraved on his tombstone, but Goodwin proves that the famously phobic writer was forged by his years in the polyglot melting pot of New York City. We hope you’re as excited by these offerings as we are, and that we’ll see you in class!

[literallymechanical]

Hi. Please write the solarpunk dystopia book. I’d read that in a heartbeat. However, if you don’t have the time, could I bother you for some book recommendations?? I’ve been on a sci-fi space semi-body horror alien kick (children of time, children of ruin, to sleep in a sea of stars) and I’m needing a new one to sink my teeth into. I think I’d like to move a little closer to the horror genera without reading an actual horror book, but anything dystopian, sci-fi, and plant/space/alien related would be cool! Any thoughts?

Space horror isn't my usual genre, nor is horror in general, but here are a few that come close. It can be hard to judge where the line sits between "horror" and "horror-adjacent," so I'm going to err on the side of just recommending a few horrifying things I've enjoyed:

Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1972. Old-school soviet scifi alien horror, and the inspiration for an entire genre of fiction – "people go and explore a Weird Zone where reality is borked and bad things happen." Stalker is a direct homage, the Southern Reach trilogy, etc. I read a translation by Antonia Bouis.

The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross, 2004 – present. This one is a longer series, the first book is the Atrocity Archives. A very modern twist on Lovecraft — bureaucratic horror. The "Laundry" is the unofficial name for the British secret service that handles the occult. Necromancy is a field of theoretical computer science pioneered by Alan Turing, and you can summon Nyarlathotep with a well-crafted raytracing algorithm. The protagonist is the department IT guy, Bob Oliver Francis Howard. If you get the pun in the name you're older than me. Later books deal with the occult implications of Brexit.

There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm, 2020. Originally published as a serial on the SCP Wiki, later re-edited and compiled it into a standalone novel. Requires no prior knowledge of the SCP Foundation to enjoy. This is the cosmic horror that Lovecraft wishes he could have written. Can be read for free on the SCP Wiki, but I recommend buying a copy to support the author. Bonkers amazing, pedal-to-the-metal, goes from "quirky high-concept scifi" to "oh god what are they going to do to him with that chisel" real fast.

American Elsewhere, by Robert Jackson Bennet, 2013. It's a bit obscure and might be harder to find, but it's one of the best books I've read in years. Scifi horror-thriller that gets both splashily cosmic and laser-tight. Our protagonist comes to a small town in New Mexico that doesn't appear on any maps to find closure after her abusive father's death, and gets tangled up in horrifying secrets. Nasty, achingly heartbreaking, grand, and takes its time in the most delicious way. The author writes mediocre YA fantasy now, and that's a damn shame.

John Dies At The End (and its sequels), by David Wong, 2007 – 2022. Comedy-horror about shitty paranormal investigators. The comedy is genuinely hilarious and the horror is genuinely horrifying – closer to the cosmic- than body-horror, though it does get up-close and personal. One of the few comedy-horror stories I've read that convincingly pulls off both.

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore, 1995. A raunchy vampire story, set against the sobering backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. I have no idea if this actually counts as horror but I think more people should read Christopher Moore. The tonal whiplash between goofy vampire sex, night-shift convenience store workers bowling with frozen turkeys in the aisles, and the trauma of young men dying from love and dirty needles, is expertly crafted.

I could keep going but this list is already getting a bit long. Hey followers et al., you should add more recommendations, especially ones that are actual space horror!

[vintagerpg]

Ramsey Campbell is great. I don’t hear his name bandied about nearly enough, but he’s had a career full of some top shelf horror. I’ve enjoyed just about everything of his that I’ve read, which admittedly is only about a quarter of his output, but still: are a quarter of Stephen King’s books actually good?

Campbell started out writing Lovecraftian pastiches, publishing his first collection, The Inhabitant of the Lake (1964), with Arkham House at a very young age. I love his Mythos stuff, it is deeply weird, has nice flavors of British folk horror and displays a unique take on the cosmic. He kind of returns to the Lovecraft well periodically. Cold Print (1985) represents a collection of his best Mythos tales through 1984. It starts with some of the early Arkham classics, like “The Moon Lens” and “The Church in High Street,” which sketch out the borders of his fictional Severn Valley, a kind of English version of the Miskatonic River valley of Lovecraft’s Massachusetts. These are great, but feel removed from the reality of their times (not unlike HPL, honestly). The more recent tales, starting with “Cold Print,” remedy that with drugs, music culture, pornographic book stores and many other seedy elements of modern life.

Cold Print was illustrated by photographer J.K. Potter. I probably read this book for the first time around 93 and they still held up when most of them were collected in Potter’s first collection Horripilations (1995). Now? I dunno, these have a quality I enjoy, even if they seem increasingly quaint. That’s probably nostalgia’s lens, though, as I don’t really vibe on any of Potter’s work beyond 1995. That Y’Golonac illustration is a legit classic, though.

[satoshi-mochida]

WORLD OF HORROR delayed to October 19

Gematsu Source

Cosmic horror RPG WORLD OF HORROR will exit Early Access and launch for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Steam, GOG, Microsoft Store, and Itch.io on October 19, a delay from its previously planned summer release window, publisher Ysbryd Games and developer Panstasz announced.

WORLD OF HORROR first launched in Early Access for PC on February 20, 2020.

Here is an overview of the game, via its store pages:

About

The Old Gods are reawakening, clawing their way back into a world that’s spiraling into madness. In hospitals, abandoned classrooms, quiet apartments, and dark forests, strange appearances and unexplainable phenomena test the sanity of residents in Shiokawa, Japan. Is it chaotic retribution, or the machinations of beings beyond our comprehension?

This is WORLD OF HORROR: The end of the world is nigh, and the only solution is to confront the terror reigning over the apocalypse. Navigate this hellish, roguelite reality through turn-based combat and unforgiving choices in this roguelite-style cosmic horror RPG.

Invoke dark rituals, uncover disturbing clues, and solve puzzles across multiple randomized mysteries. Each perplexing case unravels into a series of random encounters with nightmarish figures inspired by the works of horror legends Junji Ito and H.P. Lovecraft.

Key Features

Choose from five unique characters and solve over 10 mysteries in Early Access.

Most mysteries harbor multiple endings—for those that survive long enough.

Acclaimed wordsmith Cassandra Khaw (Hammers On Bone) lends her talents to the words articulating the game’s terrors.

A haunting chiptune soundtrack accentuates the game’s stark 1-bit art style, drawn 100 percent in Microsoft Paint.

Watch a new trailer below.

Release Date Trailer

[basementstalker]

Going to the new bookstore went well. It was a small store, the Lovecraft decorations were on point. I got a book of Jewish horror stories for my sibling, then a book of Japanese scary tales for myself. I also picked up an art book I've been eyeing, the sick rose. I'm so happy to have it, the images are fascinating. Then we went shopping and picked up some sushi for lunch. Delicious.

Today some calligraphy pens were delivered. I've been practicing with brush pens so I'm excited to try something new. I think it would be lovely to make a handwritten book in calligraphy dedicated to my god (future partner).

[darkgrail]

Any lovers of horror movie art, Lovecraft, folk horror and dark art generally please have a gander at my work. Thanks. https://darkgrail.com/shop/

[slaasherslut]

Slaashyyyy

If you have answered this already, please feel free to ignore it but what kind of media does Milo enjoy?

Like, favorite movie/book genres, art, music, etc? 👉🏼👈🏼

SOL MY DEAR

Thank you so much for giving me an excuse to talk about Milo <333 please be warned, im about to say way too much SORRY IN ADVANCE LOL

Milo is super big on horror movies and books. He wasn't a super big reader growing up but moving into the farmhouse he lives in now, the place was loaded with books. With nothing else to do, he gave it a shot and found that he loved it. A lot of it was religious junk which he wasn't a fan of but there was lots of classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, with many works by H.P Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe. He also quite enjoyed Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies a lot. After that he started frequenting the towns thrift store for whatever old horror novels he could find, or anything that just sounded mysterious and thrilling to him.

With movies, the more gory the better. He doesn't scare easy (although he tends to avoid movies about possession), but he loves and appreciates the gory special effects. Especially if it looks kinda goofy. He'll be laughing at how dorky it looks but he still thinks it looks awesome. 1980's - early 2000's is his usual demographic.

Most of the art that catches Milo's eye is the stuff that has really strong physical energy tied to it. If he feels something attached to an art piece he'll just stare at it. Sometimes he'll feel strong emotions or hear voices and sounds.

Milo is real big on almost anything loud, so he loves metal music. He discovered it in his more rebellious teenage phase and it stuck forever. He lived with his aunt who hated him just for existing and Milo would give her a real reason to hate him. Some of his favourites include Suicide Silence, Deftones, Whitechapel, and theyre not metal but he also really loves $uicideboy$. Also in my heart I feel he would be a Carnal Messiah fan. I FEEL IT IN MY BONES!!

[chiakinanami82]

The Animal Crossing New Leaf Welcome amiibo Horror Dream Masterpost

Hello! I’ve seen the masterpost of ACNL dream towns several times before, and I was inspired to make this post to spread around some lesser-known dream towns. Besides, that post by fuckyeahassortedstuff is outdated with the Welcome amiibo update, so yeah. Like his post, I will provide a small description, the language, and the Dream code. 

I have visited these towns, but I didn’t record them here. They were on my Amino, but since the awful update, I left, so they’re no longer there anymore. 

Also, all of the classic older horror towns have changed since their OG incarnations, so if you haven’t visited in a while, I highly encourage you to.  

Anyways, let’s go!

Aika Village- It’s the classic. Investigate what happened to a girl on her birthday. Japanese. 2D00- 002A- 49A0

Hitokui- This is yet another classic. Dig deeper into the mystery of a church, a cafe, and a shrine if you’ve got the guts. Japanese. 1C00-0077-A492

Cuteland- Welcome to our boarding school! Mother would love to have you here. We hope you enjoy it here! This is one of my favorite horror dream towns, and I’ve been to a lot of them. English. 5C00-0029-541E

Faleisha- Investigate the strange circumstances surrounding a young man’s death. English. 5B00-0026-1300

Fogwood- What happens when a town accepts demons and riches? Nothing good, that’s what. This is probably the most well-known new Dream town. English. 6E00-0015-B4EC

Unknown- This isn’t specifically a horror town, but it is based on Over the Garden Wall, which is a CN show that has the perfect Halloween vibes. English. 5B00-00E6-E746

AHS- This town is an American Horror Story based town, so if you enjoy AHS, you’ll like this one. English. 5D00-003E-4CF3

Hell-  Explore a rainy town that has a cutesy facade. What’s underneath? Who knows...English. 7A00-0094-3FFC

Home- There’s demons and experiments. English. 4F00-007C-7A21

Fade- This is a story of fame, and the painful journey of getting there. English. 7B00-0047-9C5E

Mosswick-  A plant store owner, a plant and fungi grower, and a librarian live in the same town. Also, there’s mushrooms everywhere, so that’s probably important. English. 4A00-002B-04CA

The Void- Dare to gaze into the void... English. 5B00-0095-BD63

Verity- A school houses a dark secret. Why are there so many messages to leave? What happened here? English. 5F00-00A6-0957

Hula Key- Welcome to a town where Death owns the pet shop. English. 4D00-0013-948C

Marshall- Visit a town full of Marshall-y goodness. This is similar to Donut/Marshall in that it’s about someone with an obsession with Marshall, but it goes a different way. English. 4C00-0086-C8D8

Aokihara-This place was brainwashed with sports. English. 4E00-0032-EBA1

Oasis- Explore a sparkling oasis town! This kind of reminds me of Covah, honestly. English. 5B00-002B-8BBE

Rosetrot- There’s a cult that worships the eldritch horrors made by H.P. Lovecraft. English. 4E00-001C-CC4A

Bohmte- Every villager is Coco, and everything is dead. Also, there’s a huge pentagram. German. 6A00-0064-5225

Town of Madness/Bonne T.- Fate has struck this town, and now, the evil has escaped... English 4F00-000F-9C1E

Rose- This is my personal town, and while it’s not specifically horror, it is Danganronpa-themed. English. 5A00-01FC-F0FB

I hope you enjoy this post! If I missed any or if you want to recommend new ones to me, feel free to let me know. 

[pandorasboxofhorrors]

2023-#4: Response to “The Thing in the Fog”

My last written bit for 2023 was going to be a neat sci-fi continuing the Mekon’s story (see 2020-#4: Eight Ball to Corner Pocket and 2021: #3-A Relaxing Interlude). However, the best plans of mice and men usually end with human skeletons and fat mice. I heard from another Tumblr user responding to this year’s true Halloween tale, 2023: #2-The Thing in the Fog. This Tumblr user shared a strange and spooky story, best told in his words:

“The online posting you referenced involving Burlap Man’s disappearance was not accurate. I know this because I wrote it thirty years ago. Here is a more accurate account of what really happened.

“If you happen to have been in Chicago in the summer of 1995 and you frequented the Lakeview neighborhood, you might have stumbled across an urban legend. This urban legend was real and was a horror beyond imagination, as Lovecraft put it. I had retired in 1991 after a hectic career as a newspaper reporter. It was the bad economy of the early 1990s, and that I was past retirement age, which sent me into retirement. I had worked as a newspaper reporter in many cities - and for an extended time in Chicago. I seemed to be cursed to regularly be assigned stories that led to the occult, cryptids, or worse. These stories led me to the things people do not want to know about. In the early 1970s, I was called back from vacation to work on a news story involving murders with the victim’s blood drained. You can probably guess where that went.

“I had a good run as a reporter in Chicago, but that ended after a story about an underground storage company. I sort of stumbled upon “something” in the lower levels of a very deep facility. I barely escaped with my life. Unfortunately, some government bigwigs were involved with the storage company, and I found myself out of a job because lizard-brained bigwigs wanted the story silenced. After I retired, I returned to Chicago and tried to avoid anything off kilter. Luckily I had some money, from investments in a robotics tech company I investigated in the 1970s. I was physically in good shape, and I really did not look my age. I sure looked like I was in my 50’s - but certainly not 73. I should mention that I was born in 1922, so I guess I am sort of 101 now. There has been no diminishment and very little aging. I have had to lie about my age for years. The only explanation I have is I once walked into a magic circle of a “youth drainer” and interrupted her spell. It’s either that or my vitamin brand is right.

“Anyways, the only problem was that I was restless. So I took retail jobs in eclectic shops in Lakeview. I worked with some odd people with blue hair and random body piercings. It was interesting, and I did not fit in since I was older. I used to walk down Clark Street after work and often buy a cigar. I eventually ended up working for the cigar store for the social interaction, since it was either that or chess with Ron, an old coworker. It kept me occupied, and after a few months I heard about something that caught my interest.

“I heard about this Burlap Man, and he was known to be lurking in the area at night. He was described as being just as you described him, almost seven feet tall and four feet wide. He wore stitched burlap sacks over his entire body and head, but you could see his beard. Some people said when they saw him at night he was so terrifying that they were paralyzed in fright. So I prolonged my walks after work, and after about a week I saw him in a dark alley. I could not believe what I was looking at since it very much appeared like something from a previous story I worked on decades ago.

“Twenty years previously, I worked on a news story about a man permanently asleep being studied at a Chicago university. This man was intentionally dream deprived, and this somehow allowed him to physically manifest a deadly Cajun boogeyman out of his own nightmares that dwelled in the sewers of Chicago. I returned to this same university and learned that they were performing a similar sleep study, with another dream deprived permanently asleep man. The difference this time was that the sleeper was not Cajun: the dreamer was just dreaming up a real life boogeyman. This new boogeyman was a lot smarter than Pere Malfait, its Cajun counterpart.

“This dreamt up boogeyman understood its existence, and it knew it needed to be free of its dreamer and have an independent existence. To that aim, it found victims late at night, removed them back to its lair with the broken shopping cart, and devoured them to make its body more of matter of this world. My online account was accurate in that I followed him back to his lair, but it sure was not a SUV. When he took off the burlap sack he was not a muscular man underneath; his body was only partially formed. About a third of his body was composed of black shadow, the rest was forming new flesh from what he consumed. There was a beard, but no eyes. He saw me and I soon found myself unable to walk, frozen in place. This boogeyman exhibited psionic ability. He could induce paralyzing fear or make people ignore him, which he did to the police when you encountered him. I am not new to facing such horrors, and I took out a small crossbow I have had ready for decades which was blessed to slay rakshashas, and I have given it a lot of use. I figured that the dreamer had summoned up the boogeyman, and his weakness was known to be light and fire. Two burning crossbow bolts to the chest did not harm him, and he was very close to me by then. I fired a last bolt at a shadow section of his arm that was not solid matter, and he immediately let out a terrible moan and was dispelled like a ghost, with its shadowy ectoplasm melting away into nothing, the formed fleshy parts of his body hitting the ground. I made sure the fire left nothing.

“When this was over I posted that bit online you saw so it would be known that Burlap Man was gone in case anyone else was hunting him. I did not expect to still be here thirty years later. I am sending this to you now since we live in a time when outlandish things are commonplace, and no one will ever believe ever this. But I do recommend to any readers: never underestimate what can lurk in the shadows, if you can imagine it, it probably exists somewhere, or will exist someday, or exists right now and is watching you.”

CK, October 2023

[with-a-martyr-complex]

With A Martyr Complex: Reading List 2023

Adapted from the annual list from @balioc​, a list of books (primarily audiobooks) consumed this year. This list excludes several podcasts, but includes dramatizations and college lecture series from The Great Courses, which I consume like a parrot emotionally dependent on access to lecturers.

The Birth of Tragedy Out Of The Spirit of Music byFriedrich Nietzsche (Translated by Ian Johnston)

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (Translated by Michael Henry Heim, Introduction by Michael Cunningham)

Financial Literacy: Finding Your Way in the Financial Markets by Connel Fullenkamp, from The Great Courses

The Dispossessed: A Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin

License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passport by Patrick Bixby

Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past by Allen C. Guelzo, from The Great Courses

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (Translated by Donald Keene)

Cyteen by C. J. Cherryh

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass

Understanding Japan: A Cultural History by Mark J. Ravina, from The Great Courses

The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold

What Has Passed Shall In Kinder Light Appear by Baoshu (Translated by Ken Liu)

The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World by Robert Garland from The Great Courses

The Just City by Jo Walton

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Life, and Culture by Andrew R. Wilson, from The Great Courses

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (Contains: Tower of Babylon, Understand, Division By Zero, Story of Your Life, Seventy-Two Letters, The Evolution of Human Science, Hell is the Absence of God, and Liking What You See.)

Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition by Grant Hardy, from The Great Courses

By The Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions by Richard Cohen

War in Japan: 1467-1615 by Stephen Turnbull

Yūrei: The Japanese Ghost by Zack Davisson

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Translated by Dennis Washburn)

Buddhism by Malcolm David Eckel, from The Great Courses

The Rise of Modern Japan by Mark Ravina, from The Great Courses

The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps: The Bloody Battles and Intrigues of the Shinsengumi by Romulus Hillsborough

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, (Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima (Translated by Michael Gallagher)

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

The Rise of Communism: From Marx to Lenin by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, from The Great Courses

Communism in Power: From Stalin to Mao by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, from The Great Courses

Common Sense by Thomas Paine

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood)

Cycles of American Political Thought by Joseph F. Kobylka, from The Great Courses

Docile by K. M. Szpara

Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes, from The Great Courses

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

Hart's Hope by Orson Scott Card

Real Service by Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alhigieri (Translated by Clive James)

Dante's Divine Comedy by William R. Cook and Ronald B. Herzman from The Great Courses

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Secrets of The Occult by Richard B. Spence (From the Great Courses, possibly?)

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

American Monsters by Adam Jortner from The Great Courses

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

Praetorian: The Rise and Fall of Rome's Imperial Bodyguard byGuy de la Bédoyère

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

Great World Religions: Hinduism by Mark W. Muesse, from The Great Courses

At The Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H. P. Lovecraft

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H. P. Lovecraft

The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft

The Shadow Out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft

The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft

The Whisperer in Darkness by H. P. Lovecraft

The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft by H. P. Lovecraft (Collected by The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, contains: The Alchemist, At the Mountains of Madness, Azathoth, The Best in the Cave, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, The Book, The Call of Cthulhu, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Cats of Ulthar, Celephais, The Colour out of Space, Cool Air, Dagon, The Descendent, Discarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Dunwich Horror, The Evil Clergyman, Ex Oblivione, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, The Festival, From Beyond, The Haunter of the Dark, He, Herbert West-Reanimator, History of the Necronomicon, The Horror at Red Hook, TheHound, Hypnos, Ibid, In the Vault, The Little Glass Bottle, The Lurking Fear, Memory, The Moon-Bog, The Music of Erich Zann, The Mysterious Ship (Long and Short Versions), The Mystery of the Grave-Yard, The Nameless City, Nyarlathotep, Old Bugs, The Other Gods, The Outsider, Pickman's Model, The Picture in the House, Polaris, The Quest of Iranon, The Rats in the Walls, A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson, The Secret Cave, The Shadow out of Time, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Shunned House, The Silver Key, The Statement of Randolph Carter, The Strange High House in the Mist, The Street, Sweet Ermengarde, The Temple, The Terrible Old Man, The Thing on the Doorstep, Through the Gates of the Silver KeyThe Tomb, The Transition of Juan Romero, The Tree, Under the Pyramids, The Unnamable, The Very Old Folk, What the Moon Brings, The Whisperer in Darkness, The White Ship)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Patton: The Man Behind The Legend, 1885-1945 by Martin Blumenson

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger by Matt Yglesias

Red: A History of the Redhead by Jacky Colliss Harvey

The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo (Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood)

The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing by Joost A. M. Meerloo

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Legacies of Great Economists by Timothy Taylor from The Great Courses

Incomplete books: Trouble on Triton, Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds, Dark Archives, The History of the World: Map by Maps, The Iliad (Emily Wilson Translation), Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric, The Three Musketeers, The Only Plane in the Sky, Myth in Human History, The Dragon: Fear and Power

---

Great Courses consumed: 17?

Non-Great Courses Nonfiction consumed: 13

---

Works consumed by women: 13

Works consumed by men: 53

Works consumed by men and women: 0

Works that can plausibly be considered of real relevance to foreign policy (including appropriate histories): 7

---

With A Martyr Complex’s Choice Award, fiction division: Convenience Store Woman

>>>> Honorable mention: Hart's Hope, Ancillary Justice, Child of God, No Longer Human, Piranesi, the first 1/3 of Cyteen, What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear

With A Martyr Complex’s Choice Award, nonfiction division: By The Sword

>>>> Honorable mention: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps, Praetorian, The Birth of Tragedy most of the Great Courses stuff I got to this year

>>>> Great Courses Division: Buddhism

The Annual “An Essential Work of Surpassing Beauty that Isn’t Fair to Compare To Everything Else” Award: The Divine Comedy

>>>> Honorable mention: Julius Caesar, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Shadow Out of Time, Pride and Prejudice, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs, The Dispossessed

The “Reading This Book Will Give You Great Insight Into The Way I See The World” Award: What Has Passed Shall In Kinder Light Appear

>>>> Honorable mention: Hell is the Absence of God (from Stories of Your Life and Others)

The "My Mind is Thoroughly Exhausted By Reading Through All This But It Was Worth It In The End" Award: The Tale of Genji

Book Most in Need of A Single Extra Chapter: The Man Who Laughs

Best Dude: Darcy from Pride and Prejudice

---

This is the first year where I didn't struggle to reach my 52 book goal at all, only some of which is thanks to the Lovecraft marathon. I also read a ton of short sci-fi stories early in the year for an online class I took (which is also why there are so many sci-fi novels in the beginning of the year) and feel much more knowledgeable in the genre even though I'm still not very well read in it. I will be taking a fantasy course next year to what I assume will be similar effect.

It's still hard to read non-audiobooks, made worse this year by a promotion at work that means I have much less free time overall but still a fair deal of time for audiobooks while working with my hands. My (I don't post it) movie list suffered similarly, with this being the first year in a while I didn't hit my movie target. Not discussed: I read various comics this year! Standouts: Chainsaw Man Part 1, the first volume of Pluto, Fun Home, the fifth volume of Phoenix, Look Back

Goals for next year: more foreign policy reading, more literary fiction, write something of my own, ohgodthesearethesamegoalsaslastyearpleasetellmeI'mnotstagnating

[famousblueraincoatmp3]

game recs:

pumpkin panic: a cute and different farming game where you play as a little pumpkin lad. beware of deer. solo dev i think so be respectful.

fallout: the first title in the iconic series. currently 75% off!

tormented souls: different indie puzzler inspired by classic survival titles like silent hill and resident evil. i think its moreso inspired by res, but there's some silent hill influences in there too.

cultist simulator: from the creator of fallen london, i think. it's a card game where you build your own cult. i was obsessed with this game in 2018.

darkwood: this is not going to be for everyone but it was for me. an indie title from eastern europe which really stuck with me after i finished it. i think the main thing for me is the forest being so encompassing. im from northern europe so it really did feel like just hitting up the gorcery store on the way home from work for a pack of cigs or whatever

sunless sea: idk if anybody has played this one but i love it. the dlc is so good too. if the story is confusing for anyone the summary is so basically a bunch of bats dragged london underground and now everything is kind of silly.

remothered: tormented fathers: an indie giallo-style title that is unlike anything else i've ever played. it's like if an italian played clocktower and was like. you know what. this needed to be even more yellow. which is probably exactly what happened. ps. the sequel is broken as hell but the first one is still good

martha is dead: another italian produced indie game from the devs of the town of light, set during world war 2 on the tuscany countryside. you know a horror game is going to go crazy when it has a laundry list of trigger warnings and "self harm" is like the least extreme of them.

maid of sker: welsh inspired lovecraftian horror game that is actually so good. warning this one has a dog in it so you spend like 90% of the game with an elevated heart rate just because of that. if i could ban any feature from horror games its including pets without knowing whether or not they're just going to die.

faith: the unholy trinity: i FINALLY. played this game. i know i know. she was a dust bunny for a while but i worked it off this weekend. i deserve an award. maybe laziest person of the year? person-most-likely-to-put-off-things-they'll like-because-for-no-reason award?

BONUS REC: sanitarium: a classic jacobs ladder-but-oh-its-lovecraft inspired story that is actually really interesting.

[masterlovehurtssfw]

It’s not often that I post about anything other than freeuse smut here but... I thought I’d share some of the non-smut stories I’ve enjoyed reading:

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper: SciFi in which tiny furry creatures that the expanding human empire can’t see as sentient at first end up being quite sentient. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0039UUBFC

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency By Douglas Adams: He solves crimes... holistically! It’s British humor, it’s fun, and you can’t go wrong with spending some time with anything Adams writes. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AYIN78A

How To Draw Anything by Mark Linley: When you don’t have “a drawing brain” but you still want to sketch out things well enough that people know what you’ve sketched out. This is the book. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0716022230

Zombie Prom by Phillip Rhoades: It has roller derby girls kicking ass and killing zombies. It’s a short book and a fun read by a little-known author. Clearly, the derby girls are a big draw for me. Same reason I wrote my derby girl stories. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08X3W17GT

Who P-P-P-Plugged Roger Rabbit (and other Roger Rabbit books) by Gary Wolf: Clearly an inspiration for my Fucking Toons story (and future stories). A world where toons and humans exist together. The movie’s version of Jessica was so great, he changed the character in future books. Eddie’s sister is even married to a toon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003FSU702

Various Stories by Lovecraft: Yeah, the man was not the best man and some of his writing is a little off but his monsters-outside-of-reason are great on a conceptual level and I am sure I reference some when I write alien stories or horror-themed smut. https://www.amazon.com/stores/H.P.-Lovecraft/author/B000AQ40D2

The Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin: I’m sure quite a few are familiar with these. Wizards, true names, bad choices, and great character development. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1481465589

Chronicles Of Prydain by Alexander Lloyd: If you like the Earthsea books and/or Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, then you will probably also love Prydain. Don’t let the flopped Disney adaptation of The Black Cauldron fool you, these stories are fantastic! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250000939

I might make more posts like this, from time-to-time, if you guys are interested in my non-smut interests. Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into some of what I read when I’m not writing smut :)