10 More Movies You Only Need To Watch Once

I wrote something similar to this in the past, but I have since thought more on this, and discovered there are quite a few movies I will probably never watch again.

And it’s not because these are bad or scary films. It’s because they are very effective in accomplishing the film’s goal, which is mostly causing a lot of discomfort. These are great films, but I’m unlikely to ever watch them again because I got it the first time, or they make me too uncomfortable for them to be a fun watch, they’re just too scary, even for me, (and I’m what I like to call a professional Horror movie watcher), or I have to really be in a very special mood to do so.

So here, in no particular order, are a bunch of really good films, that I never want or need to watch again!

Get Out

This is one of those movies that is very, very good, but I had a hard time getting through it the first time. I did like it, but I cannot watch it again, because I got it the first time, and because as a Black woman who has been in a lot of spaces with only white people, it hits just a little too close to home. I see myself in Chris (not the Sunken Place stuff, although that hits pretty hard too, because I’ve been there), but just his general attitude, his bemusement at everyone’s behavior, his wariness, and patience, in a space that isn’t made for you, and makes you feel distinctly uncomfortable, as you wait anxiously for someone to misbehave towards you.

Some of the things that get said to Chris, I’ve actually heard from white people, who meant well, thought they were my friends, and weren’t even trying to hurt me, yet nevertheless, was wrong enough to make me deeply uncomfortable (and not trust them). It is ironic that in their efforts to make me feel more comfortable they ended up accomplishing the exact opposite. Of course, in the movie, Chris is right not to trust his girlfriend’s family, but if I’d seen this movie thirty years ago, I would have been deeply paranoid about visiting the homes of my white friends!

On the other hand, I do love Jordan Peele’s movies, I’ve watched Nope about five thousand times, and enjoyed it every time I’ve seen it. That is my version of scary but fun, but I think Us can probably be added to this particular list, too. I genuinely really liked it, but there are parts of it that are too scary, and weird, and uncomfortable for me to make a habit of viewing it multiple times. Then again, I’ve watched it exactly twice. I have to be in a real mood to re-watch this again.

Speak No Evil

Oh my lawd!!! but this is one of the most infuriating movies I have ever watched in my life, and I think that was probably the point! I think, at one point, I was screaming at my TV. The is a Finnish or Danish film (I’m not sure which) about a couple of couples that meet while on vacation. One of the couples invites the other to visit them at their home, and the other couple takes them up on their offer. The first couple proceeds to cross every single one of the other’s personal boundaries, without so much as a peep from the second couple, until, by the time of its tragic, yet inevitable end, I was rooting for the two villains. (Not really! They were utterly detestable people.)

It’s not that I didn’t understand the point of the film, but it’s one of those movies that make you ask, during every single minute of it, what would you do under these circumstances. (I know what I would do because I’ve done it before.) The second couple is so passive, so willing to please, avoid any kind of confrontation, and go along to get along, that they just walk right into the horrible events that happen to them later, and they do so without a word of protest, just as they’ve lived their entire lives. At one point, they actually do make an attempt to escape their fate, but turn around and walk right back into it, because the two of them are people pleasers, who want to be “polite”, and its their complete inability to speak out against anything (Speak No Evil) that seals their doom.

I am a loudmouth who will speak out about anything. I’m Black, and a woman, and I have learned the hard way that I cannot afford to be silent, or people will very happily tell my who I am, supposed to be, or just walk all over me. I have learned that I need to control the narrative of me, and to never allow anyone to become a habitual line-stepper without saying something to them. I was even like that as a child, because I remember being perfectly willing to give even my extended, adult, family members the sharp end of my tongue. I wasn’t mean about it, but I let ’em know. My family just got used to it since I learned that behavior from them! So you can imagine the amount of rage I was feeling at these two grown-ass, seemingly adult human beings, in this movie, who absolutely refused to say anything in defense of themselves, as their boundaries got crossed again, and again, and again. They are the kind of people you want to just slap the living piss out of, not because you hate them, or desire to hurt them, but because you actually like them, and are desperate to wake them up, to save their lives.

I didn’t hate this movie, though. It’s very effective, and the plot is well set up, but it came close to being heavily disliked. I even liked the two main characters but their behavior is infuriating, and their fate, when predators finally catch up to them, was absolutely inevitable.

Hereditary

I’m pretty sure this one was on my last list of movies I won’t be watching again, but I’m gonna list it here anyway. I really did like this film. It has some very effective scares in it but it is also incredibly bleak. This is another movie with an inevitable end, where the characters have lost the fight before the movie even started. Not fun-bleak like The Mist, with all of its many creatures, but depressing-scary-bleak. This movie was very good, too good, but not what I would ever consider fun. Its very well made, and well plotted, and the acting is top-notch, and really cemented my utmost respect for Toni Collette, who was simply awesome. By all accounts, it really is the kind of film one could re-watch, but I don’t think I will, or if I do, it will be at some far point in the future, when I’m in a mood.

The movie deals with themes of generational trauma, evil legacies, and the awful plans of one’s ancestors. It’s not until the end of the movie that you realize that not only did the monster win, but that this family never even stood a chance of winning against it from the word GO. From it’s opening scene to its last, every move this family makes to save themselves and each other is simply doomed, and that was just too much for me.

Grave of the Fireflies

This movie was just depressing. It is not the kind of movie that gets re-watched. I realize that was the point, because it is about Japan during the war, but that’s not the only thing. Some of the imagery is pretty horrifying. I don’t think I’m ever going to be in a “mood” to watch this ever again. I watched it the first time because a lot of people kept mentioning it as something a person should watch at least once. I did.

Once was enough.

Banshees of Inisherrin

This movie made me cry, but in a good way. It’s a great movie, but one of the reasons I won’t watch it again is I think I identified just a bit too much with the lead characters. Its a good example of how personal some movies are. The movie stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason, as close friends, Colm and Padraic, who live on an isolated location, off the coast of Ireland. It all starts when Colm tells Padraic that he no longer wants to be friends with him. Colin’s character, not wanting to be alone, or give up the long term friendship, and having not been given any reason for this sudden shift, simply ignores this request, which starts a feud between the two of them, to the point where Colm threatens self harm if Padric talks to him.

On a certain level, the movie is deeply, and darkly, funny because the situation devolves into chopped off fingers, burnt houses, and dead animals. I identified with Gleason’s character, Colm, wanting change so badly, wanting his life to be meaningful, and just different than it is, that he was willing to do almost anything. He wants change and meaning in his life, of some kind, but he also doesn’t want either of them to go on doing exactly what the two of them have been doing, for the rest of their lives, on this little island, so he essentially tries to blow up his life, which is something I’ve done myself when I was feeling trapped by my circumstances and needed a change.

Colm also thinks Padraic’s best decision would be to leave their truncated and limited life on the island, and go do something meaningful with his life, but he knows Colin’s character won’t ever leave without him, so he thinks he’s setting him free by ending their friendship. But Padraic is okay with the way things are, just wants things to go on the way they always have, and doesn’t want all this drama that Colm has started.

This is a very uncomfortable movie to watch because there’s so much tension of laughing at these characters but completely understanding the characters. I only needed to watch this once becasue I got it. I liked the film just fine, and it is mildly enjoyable, but I don’t need or want to “get it” again.

12 Years A Slave/American History X

I know all I need to know about the atrocities of slavery and racism, having been inundated with movies, books, and TV series about the subject all my life. I’m just tired of watching these types of movies, and being told, every time one of these movies gets made, that its the most important movie of whatever time period, and I should see it. No, I do not!

I’m a middle-aged Black woman, who has seen all the Slave movies I’m ever going to see. The Hollywood Film Industry is absolutely fascinated with the spectacle of Black pain and degradation, as well as white male redemption arc as aided by the Black people who forgive them, and I’m not fascinated by any of it. I absolutely refuse to watch any more of them! and what’s more, I don’t need to.

Quite frankly, I didn’t need or want to watch either of these movies the first time. I don’t think I got thirty minutes into 12 Years A Slave. There are some movies you just know are going to totally piss you off, so you have to be in some kind of mood to watch it in the first place. Like Grave of the Fireflies, I kind of regret having lost even thirty minutes of my life to it.

American History X, I watched on the strength of Edward Norton’s acting. It’s not a bad film at all and was rather uplifting because of its redemption arc, but there’s no need to subject myself to it again. I know all I kneed to know about that movie.

The Revenant

I think I mentioned this movie once before. This movie is so harrowing to watch, that I was exhausted by the end of it. I don’t know if it’s because the whole movie takes place in a wintry environment, or if its because of the events that happen in it, but I was tired.

The movie is based on a true story about a trapper who is betrayed by his “friends” and left for dead in the wilderness when they go back to town and tell the authorities he’s dead. He spends the rest of the movie trying to survive the wilderness, and get back home. One of the most exhausting and terrifying events is watching him get attacked by a bear. This scene seemingly lasts forever. I get that these events speak to the determination and fortitude of his character, but I guess I don’t have enough fortitude to watch this movie again.

Parasite

I really liked this film because it had some interesting revelations in the plot, but the movie is deeply depressing. I only needed to watch it one time, but I really did like it, and I wanted to keep engaging with it, so I read everything about it I could find, and watched a bunch of analysis videos.

I was so intrigued by what Bong Joon Ho was trying to tell the audience, I watched several of his interviews. I couldn’t stop thinking about it long after the movie was over, and it still sits on my favorites lists, but I won’t watch this again. This is a darkly comic movie about a poor Korean family (so poor that they live in a kind of apartment half basement) that take to grifting a wealthy family (who live in a high rise house on a hill) so they can get out of poverty. There are parts of the movie that are deeply funny, because events are so exaggerated, that it just skirts the edge of ridiculous. The ending is sad and tragic and hopeless. I wasn’t looking for a happy ending but the end of this movie haunted me on a level I wasn’t expecting.

I got it. I don’t need to watch this again, but that doesn’t actually mean I won’t!

Skinamarink

Hoo boy! Okay, this is one of the rare films that is too scary even for me, not because it has some creature in it I’m scared of, but because it sits too close to home some things I was scared of as a child, even though these things didn’t happen to me. Apparently, this movie hit a nerve with a lot of people, especially those who understood it. Some people just thought it was boring, but the people who were frightened by it said it reminded them of certain childhood fears they thought they’d long forgotten about.

There is the idea of children being put in a dangerous situation, so if that’s something you can’t tolerate this may not be the film for you. Two very young siblings (I think they are like 5 or 6), named Kevin and Kaylee, wake up one night to find themselves alone in the house, their mom and dad are missing, there are no doors or windows, and their toys and other objects in the house keep being moved around. The movie mostly consists of the two of them trying to survive on their own, and make the best of things. The story is told with the Found Footage style, and at no point do you see the faces of any of the characters. The story gets worse when Kaylee eventually disappears, and audiences have all kinds of dark theories about what’s actually happening in the film.

I’m not saying this movie works for everyone. Your mileage may vary. But it did work for me and only because the movie showed some of my worst childhood fears. If you don’t have those kinds of fears then the movie will probably just be nonsensical to you. I thought it was so effective that I simply didn’t want or need to watch it more than one time, although, like Parasite, I found it fascinating enough to research as much of it as I could, because I wanted to know what the director, Edward Ball, was thinking when he made it.

Most Anticipated Horror Movies of 2024!

Hey y’all, this is gonna be a great year for horror movies! I can feel it. First, there aren’t too many tentpole superhero movies being released this year, and I’ve been seeing some very interesting Horror trailers, not just for streaming, but in theaters as well. I think we might even see a few surprise hits, too.

Here’s my list of my most hotly anticipated Horror movies. The movies at the top of my list are streaming films on Amazon, Netflix, Shudder, and AMC. The second will be movies that I believe are being released in theaters. The last part of the list will be movies I’m not too hot to see but y’all might be interested in checking out. There’s also a small list of movies that sound interesting that I do not have trailers for.

Streaming

The Animal Kingdom

I don’t know if this is scary but the trailer makes it look really intriguing and that seems to be enough to capture my interest I guess. It is currently not streaming anywhere but I will keep an eye out for it and let you know who has it and when.

Parasyte: The Grey

I watched the entire anime series and loved it, so I’m willing to check this out. The flavor of this movie is a little different than the cartoon, because it seems a lot more serious. This is more of a straight up Alien Invasion Horror movie, whereas the anime had a lot more humor, and the protagonist is now a woman. I’m okay with that. They definitely kept all the gore, which I can appreciate. This seems more like a story set in the same universe than a remake of the anime series. I think this is streaming on Netflix on April 5th.

Infested

For some reason we are getting giant spider movies this year, and although I’m deeply arachnophobic, I’m on board with that. This also looks like fun and reminds me of a cross between Eight Legged Freaks and Tremors. I would never watch such a film in a dark theater though, because when I get creeped out at home, I can turn it off, and it won’t be a waste of my money to never look at it again! I like that more PoC are being seen in Horror movies these days, although it is impossible for me to tell if this movie is American or what. It sounds like everyone is speaking French though. Its streaming on AMC+ on April 26th.

Late Night With the Devil

I’m a huge David Dastmalchian fan, so I’m very eager to see him put his shit down in this movie, where he is the primary character, rather than a side character who gets knocked off. I’m not too keen on possession films, in general, but the premise of this sounds kind of interesting. It will be streaming on AMC/Shudder on March 26th, and April 19th.

Out of Darkness

I’m always up for some Historically based Horror movies, and the setting for this is rather unique. I’m going to check this out and get to y’all on it. This can be rented on Amazon Prime. AppleTV, and Vudu today!

From Black

I was not impressed by the trailer, but I did get to see a small clip of one little scene in this movie, and now I’m all in. That scene was genuinely scary so now I have to know what happened. This movie is not going to skimp on the gore either, I can tell you that. This is streaming on Amazon/Shudder today.

Handling the Undead

From time to time someone will make a more thoughtful and introspective Zombie movie and I like those. This movie was written by the same guy who wrote Let the Right One In, and I have read it. The book was rather melancholy and the movie seems to have captured some of that same flavor. I’m intrigued. So technically ,this is a 2023 movie that will see a US release this year, and is available on AppleTV, although that is not where I’ll be watching it.

In Theaters

Sting

This is the other giant spider movie released this year. Unlike the previous film, where I wasn’t entirely sure, this one is definitely supposed to be a comedy. I’m not sure this is a theatrical release or streaming but its coming on April 12th.

Lovely Dark and Deep

This movie looks good and creepy. I can probably take a guess at what it’s about but that’s not going to stop me from looking at it. This is one of those movies I’m not certain is playing in theaters, but I’ve heard it came out on VOD in February.

A Quiet Place: Day One

I love the Quiet Place movies, so I’m really excited to check this one out. This is coming to theaters on June 28th.

The Watchers

I don’t know much about this movie, even after watching the trailer a couple of times, but I like the lead actress and it looks pretty creepy. This is being released on June14th.

Alien Romulus

I have not been able to find a single trailer for this movie that I trust is a real trailer. There probably isnt one yet but I’m gonna leave this here even though I’m not as enthusiastic about this movie as some of the other films on this list.

I’m not excited to see this exactly, but it is a new film in the Alien franchise, so that arouses my curiosity even if the movie turns out to be waste of my time. I was under the impression this was streaming on Hulu but I’ve also heard its playing in theaters. I don’t know. The date I have for this is August 16th.

Nosferatu

This is another movie I’m very enthusiastic to see later this year. I’m a big Robert Eggers fan, and I liked the original, so I really want to see what he does with this remake of the 1922 version. The release date is December 25th and we don’t got no trailer for this one yet.

Of Note:

Mystery Film from M. Night Shyamalan – No one has anything on this one, not even a trailer.

Mystery Film by Jordan Peele – I’m always excited to hear that Jordan Peel is working on something. He is also the Producer behind Dev Patel’s new Action film, Monkey Man.

Winnie the Pooh 2 – I’m not into Slasher style movies really but the idea behind this is novel. Maybe some day in the future I may be in the mood to watch this, but not now.

Imaginary – This doesn’t look especially scary to me, but I’m sure its up someone’s alley, as its being heavily promoted on YouTube.

The First Omen – Nah. You cannot improve on the first movie, which was perfection.

The Strangers – I’m mostly not a fan of Home Invasion movies, but a lot of people really liked the first movie which is why we’re getting a sequel. I don’t hate these types of movies, they’re simply not to my taste.

Speak No Evil – I saw the original movie on which this was based and that movie frustrated me to no end! I mostly just felt like slapping the holy crap out of most of the characters, since I always have my mouth opne to say something, but the plot hinged very heavily on the idea of people not talking when they should have, in other words “speaking no evil”. I do wonder how the creators are going to change this remake to fit an American aesthetic, because most Americans have no problem speaking their minds.

Terrifier – I’m not that into killer clowns, and this movie seems to be more about spectacle than message, which I do not find attractive. But somebody out there likes it, so they made a second one. There’s a Horror movie to fit every kind of taste.

Smile 2 – I didn’t watch the first movie even though I heard from a lot of people that it’s pretty good. Someday I’ll get around to watching both of these.

Return to Silent Hill – I was not impressed by any of the Silent Hill movies that showed up after the first film. Shockingly, I have actually played the first iteration of the game, which made me reach the conclusion that Horror games are not for me!

Out Come the Wolves – I know nothing about this movie beyond the basic synopsis that its a about a group of people being attacked by a pack of wolves.

Dust Bunny – The basic plot is that a little girl teams up with some kind of hunter to kill the monster that lives under her bed, which she thinks ate her family. I have no trailer, but this sounds interesting. I hope its a comedy.

Later this month I’ll be posting stories about the different types of new Horror available to partake of online, and new Horror authors I’ve been reading the last few years! Stephen King has some real competition out there, or at least a new successor.

The Ten Monsters That Scared The S@#* Out Of Me

Alright guys, I’m about to kick off my favorite month of the year – Spookytober – with a scary little list of the monsters that scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve listed favorite monsters a couple of times on this blog, but this is really the first time I’ve listed monsters And as a consequence the movies) I don’t watch very often because they are genuinely terrifying to me. Your mileage may vary, of course, because Horror is subjective and depends almost entirely on the mindset of the individual involved.

Now there are a helluva lot of scary movies out there and there’s a few that didn’t make this list but are terrifying just because they’re terrifying. What you will notice that’s absent from this list are the more traditional monsters like vampires and werewolves, and it’s not that I don’t find some of them scary, but there really aren’t enough vampires that are scare me, for example, to make a ten item list. This list focuses on Creature Features, but there’s whole other list to be made for Supernatural and Slasher films, and I might list those later, but here goes: The Most Terrifying Monsters in Horror.

He Who Kills From Trilogy of Terror

Now the other monsters are not in any particular order but I had to bring this guy in at number one because this was truly the very first monster that actually scared the bricks out of me (and quite frankly he works pretty good at it today). There’s a reason I’ve only watched this movie about three or four times in the last thirty years. I read the short story its based on Prey by Richard Matheson about the same number of times because the movies is extremely faithful to the story. One of the more interesting aspects of this monster is that looked at under the correct light it is deeply funny. I mean, it is just a puppet and you might laugh at it for about five minutes, but by the end of the movie he is a lot less funny, because the movie is filled with some genuinely suspenseful moments.

I first saw this movie late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, and waaay too young to be looking at it, which may be the reason I now have “doll fear”. Now, I didn’t fear my own “plastic” dolls. I got along fine with them, so this wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but this movie definitely contributed to my general fear of wooden puppets, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and other humanoid shaped wooden objects that are not supposed to be moving, but are kinda doing that anyway. So yeah, Chucky, Pinocchio, a few of those Japanese puppets, the creature from the 2016 movie, The Boy, and that puppet from the 1978 Anthony Hopkins movie, Magic, they can all catch some of this smoke.

The Xenomorph from Alien

I remember seeing the first trailer for this movie when I was about nine or ten years old and being very excited about it. The trailer was immediately intriguing to me because it was dark and ominous and told you absolutely nothing at all about the movie. I loved it! And then, when that Summer passed, I kinda forgot about it, until I watched the movie for the first time on late night TV when I was about fourteen, and y’all, I was not ready! Since the trailer didn’t really tell you anything, I had no idea what to expect. Talk about sitting on the edge of your seat!

I was following along with this movie just fine and it was alright, until the last fifteen minutes. I will not spoil it for those of you too young to have watched it yet, but that last scene contains what is possibly one of the greatest jump scares in film history and cemented the Xenomorph as one of the most terrifying monsters in Horror for me.

The H-Man 1958

I won’t list the original Blob because while that movie was definitely disgusting, it was also kind of funny. The H-Man makes this list because I’ve been terrified of watching this movie ever since I first saw it. I’ve told you about my issues watching acidic, sentient snot devouring people alive and this movie is probably the reason why. I’m serious. Like quicksand, this is an actual problem! In japan this movie is called Beauty and the Liquid People, a very poetic name for what is probably one of the ickiest movies I’ve ever watched. The only other movie about acidic slime that maybe tops this one is the remake of The Blob made in 1987, and while that movie is certainly disgusting, its also kind of fun. This movie wasn’t fun. There’s nothing in this movie that’s played for laughs.

I think I’ve watched this movie about two and a half times over forty years. The last time I tried watching this was about three years ago, and I had to stop, because it was the middle of the night when it aired, and it totally creeped me the hell out so badly, I had to stop! I mean this movie literally makes my skin feel crawly! Yes, I had a hard time falling asleep with the lights on.

The Thing of The Thing

It’s not that the monster isn’t scary, but more the idea of the monster is what’s so terrifying. It’s this idea that the monster can look, act, and sound exactly like someone close to you, that you’ve been living in close quarters with, and that its mimicry is so good, that you literally cannot tell the difference between it and someone you think you’ve known for months, is what contributes so well to the movie’s feelings of dread and paranoia. For the first thirty minutes of the movie the monster is only ever referenced, and not shown, but once it does show up, its worth the wait, because Carpenter does a righteous job of its depiction.

The mood of this movie is incredible. In fact, the 1982 remake of The Thing is sometimes referred to as a perfect Horror movie, which despite its age, has not done badly. The monster, the practical effects, the environment, the cinematography, and characters, all still hold up very well over thirty years later.

The Medusa from Clash of the Titans

So, for comparison I watched the Clash of the Titans remake and let’s just say I was less than whelmed by the remake’s depiction of the Medusa. I mean she was alright, and she definitely had them bow and arrow skills but there’s just something about the original Harryhausen version that is both terrifying and wonderful. There’s something about the stop motion that lends itself well to her character that didn’t work well with the computer generated version in the remake. Also the remake decided to make the Medusa conventionally attractive, which is faithful to the original story, but is not scary.

Part of the reason this Medusa is frightening is the general mood and environment, and we can’t forget the novelty of having seen her for the first time. The low lighting and frozen bodies with their terrified expressions, and her disregard as she knocks them over during her pursuit, is simply disturbing. There’s also her facial expressions. She doesn’t just look angry or mean but a little melancholy. She is one of my favorite monsters and I keep imagining what it would be like to encounter such a being. Let’s face it, it would be terrifying!

Jean Jacket from Nope

One of the most terrifying things about the monster from Nope is that it appears more or less harmless ,and turns out to be anything but that. Part of the reason Jean Jacket so terrifying is its general demeanor. It’s really fast moving, and stealthy, and there are things about it that are just a complete mystery. We think its an alien because it resembles stories we’ve been telling ourselves about aliens, (and that attitude is what gets most of the people in the movie killed) but we don’t actually know what it is, where it came from, what its going to do next, how smart it is, or even its purpose.

There are somethings Jean Jacket does in the movie that are just puzzling and we can’t make any sense out of, like the rain of blood, or the final threat display that shows what it actually looks like. There’s a lot of conjecture among fans about this. So a large part of the terror of this monster is all the things we simply don’t know about it and I’m glad Peele didn’t bother to try to explain.

The Grey Widowers from The Mist

I think I mentioned before that along with “Doll Fear” I also have “Spider Fear”, its not as bad as when I was younger. I can at least look at them in movies, but these guys are simply horrifying because of their size, acidic webbing, and near human faces. These guys are inhabitants of one of the greatest monster movies ever made (simply because of the sheer number of horrors in it), Frank Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation of The Mist. I mean, I don’t like spiders because they’re bad enough at the size they are in the Amazon, but these guys spit acidic webbing! WHY?!!! Why would anyone think of that?!

If you are a fan of Creature Features than this is definitely the movie for you because it has all kinds of great, barely glimpsed, monsters strutting around in the Mist, devouring and chopping up various people who insist on running out into it. There’s the Giant Lobster creature that haunts a parking lot, and the giant mosquito creatures with poisonous venom, and the extra giant sized Kaiju… okay, lets face it, most of the monsters are of enormous size, but still I very much suspect that the Grey Widowers, as they are called by the film’s creators, are the top dogs in this monster ecosystem. I think one of the saddest scenes in the movie is when the lead characters drive past an overturned bus containing the desiccated bodies of school children. Darabont has no problem killing children in this movie, and this also makes The Mist one of the saddest and most shocking Horror movies of the 21st century.

The Entity from It Follows

I wrote two whole essays about the meaning of the invisible entity that stalks the lead character in this movie becasue there is a lot deeper stuff going on here than the surface plot of an STD monster that stalks and kills people. There are some very concrete reasons why the monster does what it does, and appears the way it appears in the movie. The entity here has some of the same issues that came up for The Thing. It can look like anyone, including people you know, and the victims wouldn’t know that it was dangerous to them unless they’d either been forewarned, or the person it was imitating was standing right next to them. In one instance in the film, a victim was warned, and still wasn’t ready when it attacked him.

My theory was that the monster shows up as personifications of the things its victims either fear the most (like rape, or growing old), or have the most anxiety about (their relationships with friends and family), and that the longer it tracks its victims it starts to attune itself to their very specific fears, which is why it will show up looking like their mother or their best friend, especially if they have any lowkey anxieties about them. What forms the monster takes can tell us a lot about the victim, and I thought that was kinda terrifying in an existential type of way.

Pennywise (from the It remake)

Okay, this entire movie (both parts) was simply deliciously terrifying and kind of awesome. I liked this movie far more than I enjoyed the original movie, which for me was simply meh! I am usually not impressed with remakes, and I was prepared not to like this, but after some thought and a couple of re-watches, I have to admit, this movie was very good, and part of the reason for that is the attention to detail of the monster and our care for the characters. Pennywise is actually very well done and very scary, and I like that his presence is often preceded by the appearance of a red balloon. I distinctly remember reading the original story by Stephen King, and being captivated by the opening scene of the clown in the sewer, and this terrifying scene was wonderfully depicted in this film, almost exactly the way I imagined it.

The monster is genuinely scary in all of its incarnations, but most especially in the second half of of the movie when it keeps showing up in various spider forms. It also doesn’t hurt that I actually cared about the characters and either rooted for them or condemned them based on their actions.

Normally, I would add a bonus round right here, but I think I’m going to start a new post. Next time my focus will be on the Scariest Traditional Monster films like werewolves and vampires and stuff. I think that’s with a look and allow me to expand this list of most terrifying monsters in Horror Cinema.

Spring and Summer Mini-Reviews (Pt. 1)

There Was A Lot of Good Stuff This Year

Zom 100 (Netflix)

This is the live action version of the anime that’s currently playing on Netflix. I watched the anime version of this too but I prefer this version. It has the same basic plot as the anime, with little extras added, and I thought, more likable characters.

Akira Tendo is a much put upon and bullied office worker who works too much overtime, never takes vacations, and almost never has any time for himself. He’s bullied by his boss, is in an unrequited love with his female coworker, and generally hates going to work, but then his good fortune comes in the form of a zombie apocalypse. He sees this as a grand opportunity to complete a bucket list of activities before he succumbs to being a zombie.

He makes a list of all the things he’s always wanted to do and wished he could once do, and sets about actually fulfilling the list. He starts off with relatively easy things like cleaning his apartment, rooftop camping with steaks and fries, lazing around the house drinking beer, and shooting off some fireworks.

While out re-upping on beer he meets a bad ass zombie fighting girl he attaches himself to, and the two of them go off to save an old friend of Akira’s with whom he had a falling out after college. Apologizing to his best friend was one of the items on his bucket list, and his friend is so touched by this that becomes one of Akira’s biggest cheerleaders.

I really liked the relationships between these three characters, which thankfully DOES NOT become a love triangle. They’re just friends who care about each other. I also liked how the other two characters decided to join Akira on his bucket list quest, cheer him on, and even add their own wishes to the list. I was surprised that the list wasn’t already finished though. Akira doesn’t have a hundred items, and he and his friends would think of something they hadn’t done yet, and just add it to the list. Sometimes they would get the activity done, like driving an RV to the ocean, or being a superhero for a day, but the list started with only about ten items and by the end of the 2 hour movie there are only about 18 items.

Now, this zombie apocalypse is mostly played for laughs. The zombies are fast when they need to be, or conveniently slow whenever the characters need to pause and say a few lines, like when Akira encounters his first zombie hoard, and they’re chasing him quite quickly, until he needs to stop and reflect for a moment while they make sure to pause or fall down in the background. Yes, the zombies are dangerous but only when the plot requires them to be. So while occasionally Akira seems as if he might be in danger of being bitten he’s mostly safe. The movie is a comedy after all.

Unlike in the anime, Akira’s character arc mostly involves standing up to his bullying boss, whom he encounters later in the film, (and he has seemingly bullied an entire crew of people to work for him during the apocalypse), and gaining the confidence to save his coworkers from him and a great white zombie landshark, which is terrifying, utterly disgusting, and still deeply funny!

I really liked this movie, and hope there’s a sequel, because Akira and his friends weren’t anywhere near a hundred items on the bucket list and were basically making it up as they went along. This is not even remotely a serious movie, and I had quite a lot of fun, cheering Akira and his friends in their ridiculous adventures.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (In Theaters)

I saw this with my niece and nephew when it was released because we are both huge Spiderman fans. Now, I’m more of a classic Peter Parker fan because that’s the Spiderman I grew up with, but Miles Morales has really grown on me. I like him a lot and I enjoyed this movie, even though it’s only the first part of a duo or trilogy.

Since I’m an art nerd, I paid really close attention to the various artistic styles used in the animation and I LOVED IT! Every prominent Spiderman gets an artistic style that reflects their nature. The Indian Spiderman gets really bright red and gold sari-like colors and a smooth drawing style. SpiderGwen gets some soft pastel pinks and blues which are often reflected in her environment and shows her moods, which I thought was a neat subtle trick. There’s the primary villain (who is a result of decisions Miles made during the first movie), who gets a chaotic black and white, polka dot, drawing style, as befitting his character, and another minor villain reflects an old school Leonardo DaVinci style (in keeping with that character’s personal philosophies about what is and isn’t art), and all these different styles just had me sitting there with a big silly grin!

But the plot doesn’t slack either, as it’s not all style with no substance, and the story successfully juggles a couple of narrative messages. If the first movie was about Miles taking that leap of faith and owning up to being Spiderman, this second film is about his full acceptance of his Spider Identity, what kind of Spiderman he wants to become, and trying to escape the league of Spidermen who have decided he is not worthy since it turns out that this version of Miles was never meant to be Spiderman.

In deciding what type of Spiderman he wants to be, we get to meet a lot of great Spidermen, some of which I knew from the comic books, including some great cameos from Spidercat, Spiderhorse, and a holographic Spidergirl of the future. But my all-time favorite character was the English Spiderpunk, Hobie Brown, (I also read those comics a long time ago) with the Indian Spiderman (Pavitr) running behind him at a very, very, close pace! I loved these two characters even more than the ones from the first movie, and it’s hard as hell to top Nicholas Cage as Spiderman Noir (Yes, I still want a Spiderman Noir movie.) There’s also Miguel O’Hara as Spiderman 2099, who I distinctly remember from the comics, and a very pregnant, Black version of Jessica Drew, who is also from the comic books. Classic Peter Parker also shows up and we get to meet his babygirl, MayDay Parker, (who got them spiderskills just like her daddy!)

Okay, I better zip it up before I give the whole plot away, but heads up! the lowkey MVP of the entire movie, is Spiderpunk! Pay close attention to everything he says and does, which is easy because, even though he only gets about five minutes of screen time, and Billy Idol sneer aside, he’s easily the funniest, coolest, and realest Spiderman to ever grace a movie screen!

This movie was so much fun, and not just because of the cameos, but the plot had plenty of little twists and turns, and the film’s message echoed some of the messaging I saw in The Flash movie, (about saving everyone) and I cannot wait to see its conclusion next year.

Last Voyage of the Demeter (In Theaters)

I was really looking forward to this as I said in a post earlier this year and I think it was worth the wait. I cannot say it was an enjoyable film because that would imply that it didn’t scare the pants off me, which is, of course, exactly what I wanted it to do. I really got invested, and I considered it worth both my time and money.

Now, the clearest description I’ve heard of this movie is it’s basically Alien At Sea. This is a classic old school creature feature, with lots of practical effects and an incredible star turn by the Spanish actor Javier Botet, who I’d never heard of, but apparently I’ve been watching him in a lot of monster movies.

This is the OG Dracula in attendance here. If you walk into this expecting the Dracula from any number of romance-adjacent movies of the past thirty years, you’re gonna be disappointed. This Dracula barely speaks. He kills, slashes, stalks, flies, and skulks, but he doesn’t talk. He’s a monster and a disease. This is not the suave, well spoken, sophisticated gentleman that you’re used to seeing.

I’ve read Dracula multiple times over the years. It’s one of my favorite novels, and the Voyage of the Demeter is one of the early chapters of the book, chronicling Dracula’s journey from Transylvania to London, as told in the Captain’s log, and this version of Dracula is as described in the book. The director remained as faithful as possible to the chapter and the plot is fairly simple. Just like the movie Alien, there’s something on the ship, picking off the crew one by one, and discovering what the monster is and fighting it, is the bulk of the movie. This isn’t just a retread of the Alien movie, although there are some formulaic parallels in keeping with this type of film.

The mood of the film is exactly as it should be to induce maximum dread, even though you know more about what’s happening than the crew. I could’ve done without a few of the convenient thunderstorms that popped up whenever Dracula was on the move because it made things hard to see at times. I was rooting for the crew though, and the Black character, Clemson, who is the primary, is a made up character just for the movie.

That there is a setup for a possible sequel is mildly annoying, but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing another more accurate version of the rest of the book. Coppola’s 1992 Bram Stoker’s Dracula is about as close as Hollywood has ever gotten to actually filming the book, and it still has never been topped. I don’t expect a sequel to do that, but I would watch a straight up Horror version of Dracula, that’s a mashup of 30 Days of Night and Aliens!

The Last Of Us (HBO/Max)

Let me confess, I’ve never played the videogame this series is based on. I’ve heard a lot about how good it is, and I’ve watched a few videos that explain the monsters in it, so I didn’t exactly walk into this series blind. I knew who the two primary characters were and what the goal was. I can say that you do not need to have played the videogame to understand or like this series. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Based on reviews of those who have played the game it is faithful enough to be worth watching but has enough depth and story explanation to be satisfying for those who haven’t.

The basic premise is that humanity has been overcome with zombie-like creatures that infect human beings through a fungal infection based on the real world Cordyceps infection. Like a lot of zombie adjacent movies and series, there is more than enough body horror to satisfy even the most jaded Horror movie fan, the special effects are excellent, and there is plenty of action and pathos. Once again though, what captured and kept me interested were the characters, and thankfully that’s where most of the focus is.

Joel is a burnt out survivor who finds it hard to get close to others after losing his daughter during the pandemic outbreak, and Ellie is a young girl who is seemingly immune to the virus, that he must escort to a medical facility to determine if there is a cure. In other words, this is your standard zombie road trip movie where people need to travel somewhere or accomplish some goal at the end of the world. Where it excels is in the writing and character. There are certain things expected to happen because we’ve seen this type of plot dozens of times, especially if you enjoy zombie (and zombie-adjacent) movies and shows, but there are also more than a few unexpected gems that make the series more than award-worthy.

For me and a lot of other critics, the outstanding episode was #3, Long Long Time, not least because the title is one of my favorite Linda Ronstadt songs. It isn’t often that a show about zombies makes me cry but as I said this is where this series excels. I got deeply invested in two characters who, while they were peripheral to the story in the game, are fully fleshed out here, and done in such a way that they didn’t feel like token or tragic characters, and their storyline added to the overall theme of the show. I consider this particular episode one of the finest hours of television I watched this year. It stars Nick Offerman as Bill, and Murray Bartlett as Frank, as the gay couple from the game, in an episode that is universally hailed as the series greatest.

But the show doesn’t stop there. There are many beautiful moments within the season that made me sit up and take notice. Another of my favorite episodes is the one where Ellie falls in love. Some of my favorite scenes simply show Ellie and Joel walking and talking to each other, including one where he and Ellie feed a pack of giraffes they encounter in Central Park!

I think there is definitely going to be a season two, since so many people seemed to enjoy this, and there is a part two to the game, although the focus there isnt Joel, but Ellie and her adventures. I always hesitate to say something is fun when it made me cry, or scared the bejeezus out of me, but this actually was fun to watch, since it did for me exactly what it promised.

Next Up: More Summer Movies I Loved

10 More Ridiculous Personal Questions

That Nobody Asked Me!

When you use an object in your home, do you put it back where you found it?

Yeah, actually I do. It’s pretty much just me in hte house but I’ve always known that if I don’t put something back in the place I’ve chosen for it, I will never be able to find it again, and I hate looking for stuff. Basically, that item will be lost forever. I will buy a whole new thing rather than keep looking for something I lost in my house.

I recently lost (of all things) my laundry bag, and rather than continuing to look for something I know damn well is still in my house, and can only be in one of two rooms, I chose to just get a new laundry bag. I still cannot imagine where I might have placed the old one. I suppose I could try searching harder for it…but I don’t feel like it.

Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle or the bottom?

I’ve heard that this is barbaric, but I squeeze the tube from the middle, until I get down to the last of it, and then I squeeze from the end. I’ve never thought this through or anything. I’m just lazy when it comes to tubes of stuff.

Do you peel a banana from the handle or the bottom?

I used to peel bananas from the handle, but I have since learned that not only are you supposed to peel it from the bottom, but it’s just easier to open up the banana. So now I peel them from the bottom.

This sort of goes along with the toilet roll paper unrolling from the top or the bottom. I’m a roll out from the top toilet paper roll person because that’s just scientifically correct.

Do you leave dishes in the sink overnight?

No. I’m one of those obnoxious people who washes the dishes as she cooks. It’s just me in the house dirtying up the dishes, so I’m pretty much the only one to do them, and I’ve learned that if I leave a single dish in the sink, my brother (who visits every day because he lives nearby) will come along and exasperatedly wash it while giving me the stinky eye and asking me pointed questions about why there are dishes in the sink. I do not enjoy being given the stinky eye so I keep the sink spotless.

What was your best school subject? What was your worst?

My best subject in school was of course, English, because it involved a lot of reading and thinking and I can do that. My worst subject (the worst subject I’ve ever taken) was Statistics. I chose that because I had a choice between that and Calculus and thought Statistics would be easier. It was not! It is the only class I’ve ever needed to be tutored in to pass it.

Funny story, but the teacher for my Statistics class also tutored my brother at his school. Its funny because my brother and I went to separate schools, and he tutored my brother in Algebra a couple of years before he taught math at my school. About halfway through the semester he asked me if I knew his name, and I had to explain that yes, that was indeed my brother, which tickled my teacher no end!

How many instruments can you play?

I can expertly play two instruments: The triangle, and the tambourine!

I can read music, (I can even inexpertly write music), which allows me to slowly and incompetently tinkle the ivories. I would not call it playing.

I also know how to look as if I know what I’m doing while strumming a guitar. Hint: I have no idea what I’m doing on the guitar.

Yes or no to music?

What kind of person says no to music? I am inherently suspicious of any human being that doesn’t enjoy at least some form of music. That person is getting a very long side-eye from me because they cannot be trusted.

Do you prefer salty or sweet foods?

I love sweet foods, especially ice cream. I will eat sweet foods all day if given the option. Fortunately, my body decided a long time ago that it’s not going to allow me to just eat whatever I want, whenever I feel like it, and will punish me for giving it food it doesn’t need. (Also, the medication I’m taking severely limits how much food I can eat, so I end up prioritizing actual home-cooked foods, rather than processed junk food.)

I still want the sweets though.

Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

I am most definitely an introvert.

To give you some idea of how much of an introvert I am: The Pandemic shutdowns had absolutely no effect on my lifestyle whatsoever. My life was not significantly upheaved in the slightest.

What is your favorite fruit?

Apples. I will eat just about any fruit, but I eat apples at least 3 to 5 times a week, usually for lunch. My current favorite is the Ambrosia variety but I will eat any other kind of apple in a pinch except for the McIntosh and Gala. The rest of the time it’s seedless grapes, navel oranges, and different types of berries. But I prefer peeled, unaccompanied, apples. (I peel them because I hate it when the skin gets caught in my teeth.)

Ten Biggest Horror Movie Pet Peeves

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this here! That’s incredible! I’ve talked about my favorite movies and monsters, examined various landscapes and talked about language, sound editing, and symbolic imagery, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about the things about horror movies that make me angry, exasperated, or are a complete turnoff if I all I do is see it in the trailer.

Here, in no particular order are the tropes I’m tired of seeing, the most annoying types of characters, and the kinds of events that are a complete turnoff when watching any type of Horror movie.

1. The Unprepared Hiker

I absolutely cannot stand it when I see Hikers in Horror movies who are woefully unprepared for walking around in the middle of no and where. I’m not even talking about phones. I’m talking about basic shit like a compass and a map! We never see any of these future lost bodies consulting maps or using a compass, or hell, checking the weather on their phones which, even if you can’t get a signal to call someone, is at least good for that. These are supposedly experienced hikers with no talents whatsoever for woodcraft.

I’m a Black person and we don’t usually wander around in the woods as a general rule. I mean we could, as there’s nothing really stopping us from doing it, except most of us like the kinds of nature found in cities, and wandering about in the middle of the woods leaves us especially vulnerable to any white people we encounter who want to do us mischief, and I’m not talking about the events of Deliverance. If a serial killer/KKK wannabe wants to do something to me he’s gonna have to find me in my house. I’m not gonna make it easy for him (or her) by stranding myself in the middle of bumfuck Idaho, where my body could potentially never be found!

Personally, I don’t think anyone of any race should be wandering around in the woods with no destination in mind, when they could simply step out of doors for a few minutes and get all the -mosquitoes, err…I mean nature, they can handle.

2. Technology Is Unreliable

From now on, I will be forever reminded of that Geico ad where the teenagers are running from the deranged killer with a chainsaw, and they have the opportunity to get into the running car, or hide in the shed behind a wall of machetes, and they elect to hide in the shed, while the killer just shakes his head at their stupidity (and we’ll get to that in a moment.)

At first, I was kinda mad at them for not choosing the car, but then I gave it some thought. Hiding behind the machetes is a better choice because we all know that in a Horror movie, that car is completely unreliable. Its just a trap. Sure the car is running now, but as soon as they get behind the wheel, it will shut off, and no one will be able to turn it back on.

Cars never run in horror movies. Phones never work unless the killer is the one doing the calling. In fact, any piece of technology that could potentially help the victim will not work in a Horror movie. Any form of transportation will shut down, any form of communication beyond a smoke signal won’t get one, and of course, the killer has cut the phone lines! I have never understood the thing about cars, since the vehicle was working just fine while getting its victims to their “place of assignation”.

Those teenagers would be much better off attempting to defend themselves with the machetes rather than trusting the deceptively running vehicle.

3. The Unheeded Warning

I hate when characters in Horror movies receive multiple warnings of what not to do, where not to go, what not to read, or touch, or look at, and they do it anyway! The first time I saw this was in American Werewolf in London where the protagonist and his best friend commit the unpardonable sins of not just unprepared hiking (because adventure!) but not heeding the warnings from the locals to stay on the road.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t feel that them staying on the road would’ve at all saved them from the monster, but it was still annoying. YOU WERE WARNED! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

In movie after movie, usually involving hikers and campers, people are given multiple warnings not to go near the Old Johnson Place, or not to cross that bridge, or whistle past the cemetery while juggling a pair of bowling pins, only for the characters to basically say, “Hold my beer!”

I just watched a short film where a character is given multiple warnings to not go near an old barn, and make sure the house lights are off at 11PM, so they could get a discount while staying at some off grid B&B. Well, what do you know? She promptly forgets both of these rules and is subsequently killed (and probably eaten) by the monster, and all I could do was roll my eyes at this because apparently this trope is still alive and well, and I saw it coming.

See, once I reach the point where I’m rooting for the monster, because the characters are hardheaded and/or stupid, I’m pretty much done with that movie.

4. Unlikable Characters

Speaking of rooting for the monster, this is something my mother and I used to engage in all the time. We’d watch monster movies and hope sometimes that the monster would win or discuss which unlikable characters would die first.

I think the movie Cabin in the Woods laid out exactly which character tropes are supposed to be included in every Horror movie, (The Final Girl, The Scholar, The Whore, The Jock), and I don’t normally have a problem with these particular tropes because such characters can still be given, well…character. They can be written in a sympathetic way, or at least made likable.

There’s always the obnoxious dudebro, usually a Jock who thinks he’s a Scholar (Hint: he knows nothing!) and just wants to be in charge because he has a penis. There’s always one, exactly one, Black guy. He’s got no family, and no other friends of color. Sometimes he’s dating one of the white women in the group. He is always angry for no apparent reason, because that is a Black man’s natural state , I guess! Now, normally I don’t USUALLY have a problem with a character being a sexpot, but I do object to bad timing. YOU WANNA KISS HIM NOW?!!!REALLY! THE MONSTER IS STANDING RIGHT THERE. IT’S LOOKING AT YOU!

In any movie where the monster is more likable and/or sympathetic that the characters, you better be Guillermo Del Toro, or at least it had better be on purpose.

5. The “Blink and You’ll Miss It” Monster

I didn’t post a photo for this trope which is entirely appropriate because you cannot see the monster. This is about movies that are so badly edited (or cheap) that the monster isnt given his due diligence and actually shown on the screen.

Now, its okay if there is a slow buildup to showing a monster that’s been haunting the edges of the story the entire time, like Jaws, or if the monster is invisible. I get it. But when its time to show us the monster and all I get are a bunch of quick edits and growling noises, Imma get a little pissed. What kind of monster is it? Don’t tease me that the characters are seeing something truly horrible and then don’t show it to me!

I do understand budget constraints but I’ve seen a few good movies where that worked out to the viewer’s satisfaction, in movies like It Follows, where the monster literally just looks just like everyone else in the movie and that’s the point. No, what I’m talking about are editors and directors who think they need to show the monster’s frenetic activity by wildly swinging the camera around or a bunch of half a second quick cuts of claws and screaming faces.

Guys, that’s just annoying. Stop it.

6. Cheap Cinematography

This is sooo annoying! I like a nice crisp picture with sharp outlines, nice contrasts, and some color wouldn’t be too bad, although I will watch black & white films with no issue, but I do not want to have to strain my eyeballs anymore than I have to to see what’s happening on the screen, and I hate a dull washed out image. It makes the movie feel cheap, like the creators couldn’t afford good film stock, or didn’t know how to use a digital camera. In more than a few cases it seems like they didn’t know how to use lights either, because there are quite a few movies where things are happening in the woods at night, or in dark rooms, but I’ll never know what any of those events were because I can’t see them.

Bad cinematography is a sign that a movie is just cheap. Sometimes the sound is dull, the dialogue is bad, and the acting is even worse. I’ve learned to look for the signs that the movie is going to be a waste of my time because Imma snob. Also, that first half of the photo up there is the reason why people need to wear makeup. You don’t want your actors looking like that.

If it looks as if more money was spent on the women’s hair and bikinis than on the sound editing, and/or images, I know I need to keep it moving cuz the monster (if there is one) is also gonna be no good either.

7. Party, Party, Party (The Drunk and the Stupid)

This goes along with unlikable characters because I just hate dumb characters. In fact, I will forgive a drunk character quicker than I will characters who do things because the plot requires them to be idiots. There are two kinds of Horror movie plots. The kind where the characters really don’t know any better and are responding the best way they know how to their circumstances, and the kind of plot where the characters do the stupidest things the writers can think of just to move the plot forward.

I won’t discuss the usual stupid choices that characters make in Horror movies like reading from the supernatural tome they just found in the basement, or splitting up to investigate a noise. But oddly, one of my biggest pet peeves are characters who are always looking for a party. They are obsessed with partying. I’ve met people at parties in real life, who seemed to be enjoying themselves a bit too much, but I have never met anyone who is obsessed with finding and attending any and every party. It is their absolute obsession with finding a party that has them making really stupid choices throughout the movie, like hiking, unprepared, into the middle of of the woods.

8. The Pointless Jump Scare (It’s Just the Cat!)

I am so done with this trope. Are people still doing this in Horror movies? I mean I wouldn’t know because I generally am sticking with a better class of Horror these days (like Midsommar, and Nope) but I’m curious. Is this still a thing? I do remember there was a short period during which people were claiming to have become fed up with cat jump scares, but I don’t hear anyone talking about this anymore, so maybe things have changed.

9. The Strolling Killer

I think this one is just personal to me but I hate the leisurely killer trope. They are in no hurry to kill anyone. They just calmly stroll through the environment, whether it’s on a woodland trail, or a suburban sidewalk, without a care in the world. They just know they’re gonna catch ya. No rush!

What’s even more annoying is the killer who just suddenly appears in front of the victim, when we just saw them strolling breezily along behind the victim a minute ago. So…lemme get this right. He can move Sonic Hedgehog fast when he wants to, but…chooses not to do that while we’re looking at him? are they taking in the scenery? Can only do this in short bursts? What?

10. Let’s All Die Separately

This is in line with stupid characters making dumb choices, I guess. Its a lot easier for the killer or revenant or zombies or whatever to kill individual people, so that’s why this decision gets made. I just wish that the writers came up with much better excuses for why everyone gets separated. In the movie Cabin in the Woods, the writers answered all of the stupidity by having the manipulators of the story pump drugs into the cabin so the participants would make foolish choices and get killed more easily, and I thought that was funny and inventive. Sometimes the writers seem aware of these tropes and take this into account when crafting the movie, and I appreciate that.

In the movie Cabin in the Woods, the writers answered all of the stupidity by having the manipulators of the story pump drugs into the cabin so the participants would make foolish choices and get killed more easily, and I thought that was funny and inventive. Sometimes the writers seem aware of these tropes and take this into account when crafting the movie, and I appreciate that.

Honorable Mention:

There’s one thing that I’m completely tired of in Horror movies and that is the sight of people being dragged into the dark by invisible assailants. This happens in every supernatural Horror movie made in the last twenty years and its a trope that needs to be retired. This is one of the primary reasons I remain unimpressed by the endless Insidious, Conjuring, Paranormal Activity, Grudge remakes. They just aren’t particularly scary to me and if I see that scene in a trailer I don’t even bother to watch the movie.

Note: Last week I caught a cold bug. I was down for the count and couldn’t post. But I’m all better this week and I’ll be back on track with more content.

Anticipated Fall Films

Here’s my Fall movie list. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’ll actually see these movies. That depends if I have the money to see them. I’m not a person who wants to see everything nor can I afford to. I work full time but I don’t have the kind of disposable income that will let me see everything whenever I feel like it, and I try to pick movies I know for an absolute certainty I’m going to like, which means movies I had a high anticipation for based on the trailer (or if my niece or nephew ask to see it). So, a couple of these they asked me to take them to see, a couple of them are streaming movies I’ll watch at home, and a couple of them (usually the more serious or dramatic ones) I’ll see alone.

Anyway, I may have talked about a few of these movies here before, but here are the full trailers for them rather than just the teasers.

One Piece

I talked about this movie here before. As I said last time, I don’t actually know anything about the Manga from which this movie comes, but the full trailer looks like a lot of fun, and more importantly, I can stay home and watch it, since its airing on Netflix. I’m not normally into pirates, although I do like films set at sea. This looks like a combination of superheroes and found family, which I’m always a sucker for.

Release Date: August 31

The Marvels

Here’s the full length trailer for this movie. I had every intention of going to see this with my niece and nephew. We made a vow to see every MCU film that gets released this year, but we failed for reasons beyond our control. We didn’t get to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but we have seen the other movies. My kiddos like this because they’ve become big Marvel fans, and I just want to see Kamala Khan. I’m a huge fan, I loved her series, and the plot seems like a fun use of the character’s superpowers.

Release Date: November 10

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

Of all the characters I knew would never be killed off this series Daryl was definitely it. I’ve long abandoned the series itself but I want to see this because I genuinely like the character, it’s got those Last of Us/Found Family vibes, I love so much, and zombies.

Lately, I’ve been reluctant to invest in serious shows, sticking to more lightweight, comedic series and movies, since that’s all I’m capable of emotionally handling right now, but on occasion I do want to watch something with slightly more depth, but not too deep, and this kinda fits.

Release Date: September 10

The Creator

I’m starting to enjoy robot films again (not that I ever really stopped). I really like John David Washington and I’m a sucker for “the big gruff man who adopts a vulnerable child” plot, which this seems to resemble.

This movie, Dune, and Killers of the Flower Moon are the three deepest movies I’ll watch this Fall. There are a couple more that are mildly serious, like The Equalizer sequel and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and a couple of fluffy/comedy movies, like Blue Beetle and The Marvels. I think that’s a good combination of films to spend my money on. And of course, the more serious movies I’ll be going to see on my own, sans niece and nephew.

Release Date: September 29

Killers of the Flower Moon

I’m really looking forward to this one and not just because its Scorcese’s latest. I read the book eons ago it seems and I don’t remember much of it beyond feeling outraged, but I like Scorcese, and hope he does Justice to the topic. This is one of the films I’ll be watching alone.

Release Date: October 20

Last Voyage of the Demeter

I talked about my enthusiasm for this movie which comes right at the start of what Halloween enthusiasts like me refer to as Spooky Season (the time period between September and October 31st) although frankly its Halloweenland all year long for me, and its also the first really good looking monster movie of the year! Unless they specifically ask, I won’t be taking the kiddos to see this one. My niece loves Horror movies, so she might ask to see it. We’ll see what her Mom says about that.

Release Date: August 11

Blue Beetle

This is one of the last couple of superhero movies we’ll be seeing in the coming weeks. I read the comic books this character is based on and there’s a few things I really like about this, and a few eye rolling things, but it otherwise looks like a fun time.

Release Date: August 18

Dune (Part 2)

We already know how I feel about the first part of the Dune trilogy. Here’s the full trailer for the second part, and it looks awesome! I hope it’s a good as the first part, since sometimes the middle section of trilogies can fall flat. As usual, I’m gonna have things to say about this, and how it relates to the first movie, so stay tuned. I do not expect the kids to express an interest in seeing this movie, so I’ll be watching this alone, just like I did the first.

Release Date: November 3

In December:

The Color Purple

I’m not sure I’m going to see this, but I look forward to its reception. I’ll see it if my niece asks me to take her. It’s a musical, and a re-imagining, but it’s possible it might be too mature for an 11 year old, and I also know its gonna make me cry, and I like to try to look like I’m holding my shit together in public. (I’m a pronounced failure at that. I will cry at anything! I cried during The Flash!)

Release Date: December 25

The Ten Strangest Books I Have Ever Read

Actually, this list isnt out of my wheelhouse or anything. I read weird books just as a matter of course. Most of the time nothing I enjoy ever gets seen on a best of list, unless it’s written by Stephen King, and while regular bookreaders might think his books are pretty strange, they’re not especially weird to me.

I know that some people might not consider them weird but I tried not to fill up this entire list with books on Jewish Horror and Fantasy. I don’t know why I consider those types of books weird. Probably because Jewish protagonists are kind of rare, although not rare in Jewish culture apparently. I had no idea there was a large enough market of Jewish people reading Horror novels for there to be books specifically dedicated to the subject. I just finished reading The Jewish Book of Horror by Josh Schlossberg a few months ago, and that was pretty good. And, as it turns out, Jeff Vandermeer’s wife, Ann Vandermeer, is Jewish and occasionally writes about the topic, but I tried not to fill up this list with their books either.

I don’t personally know any Jewish people, so I have no idea how they feel about these types of stories, so if you’re Jewish and got an opinion, hit me up in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

I love weird books though, and the weirder the better. I hope this list inspires some of you to check these out. Here, in no particular order are the ten weirdest books I’ve ever read.

Rosehead – Robert Jeschonek

This was the first time I’d ever read one of Jeschonek’s books. I stumbled across this by accident while browsing on Amazon. The reason why this book made the list and not any of Chuck Tingle’s books is because while I have seen Tingle’s books on Amazon, and he sort of writes books in the same humor/half serious Fantasy genre, I haven’t actually read any of Tingle’s books!

Its a hardboiled, Dashiell Hammett style novella where all the characters have flowers for heads. The lead character, a cop with a rose for a head, has to stop a serial killer named The Pruner who is cutting off people’s heads, and he gets involved in some “seedy” underworld shenanigans as a result.

There is a difference between the two, in that Tingle’s books are very specifically written as jokes (although he takes his craft very seriously) and I had the impression that Jeschonek isnt necessarily trying to be funny, and is just playing around with strange ideas. This book wasn’t written in an especially jokey manner, as far as I can tell. Only the premise is funny, while the characters and events are taken seriously and the world building is well thought out, like how some of the characters have flower heads with human bodies and some have human heads with flower bodies, and how these groups interact, communicate, and move around.

To date, while this isn’t the weirdest book I’ve ever read, it’s definitely up there, and I haven’t encountered anything quite like it since.

John Dies At the End – Series by David Wong

The picture above is from the movie based on this book, specifically the scene where John and his friends encounter a monster made out of various meats. In the story ,a couple of college dropouts have to try to save humanity from a bunch of Elder Gods that are being brought into this dimension through the use of a special recreational drug, called Soy Sauce, that allows people to travel across time and space, and see things that regular people cannot see, like various monsters.

This is a comedy, but also considered a weird book because the characters are a not too bright pair of self styled Paranormal investigators, it’s written in the first person by the self insert author, David Wong, who is not the most reliable narrator, as a result, any of the events in the book could just be him lying, delusional, or just high, and the events described in the book are, simply put, crazy, like the meat monster in the above photo.

I have not watched the movie, so I don’t know how closely it hews to the book, but there is now an entire series about the dimension hopping exploits of Dave and John, which are, if that is even possible, even crazier, titled in order, This Book Is Full Of Spiders, which is my personal favorite and also pretty damned weird, What The Hell Did I Just Read, and the latest one, If This Book Exists, You’re In The Wrong Universe, which I bought but haven’t finished reading yet.

Merkabah Rider – Edward Erdelac

This is one of those books where, since I encountered it for the first time, I just think it’s strange. It’s the genre called Weird Western, meaning it’s in a Western setting (the American West of the 18th and 19th century) with extra stuff added, like robots, zombies, or magic ,and sometimes all three. There are a lot of books that fall into this category and most of them have been written by Joe. R. Lansdale who is one of my favorite writers. I will probably have to do a post on Weird Westerns you should read, since that’s the wavelength I’m on this Summer.

This is another favorite writer of mine. I have no idea if he’s Jewish, but the hero of these books is a Hasidic Jewish Spellcaster who uses Kabbalah to destroy the many demons (and their worshipers) he encounters, and save any Jewish people, throughout the western territories in 1881. There are four books in the series, with each book containing about four or five novellas, with titles based on old Western films, High Plains Drifter, The Mensch With No Name, Have Glyphs Will Travel, and Once Upon A Time in the Weird West.

As you can see, the titles are a bit tongue in cheek, but the writer approaches his craft seriously, and the stories are mostly horror, and played straight.

HebrewPunk – Lavie Tidhar

See, if I wasn’t careful every book on this list would just be those written by Lavie Tidhar who has a knack for writing strange images into all of his stories, no matter how benign you think the subject may be, from WW2 historical pastiches, to superheroes, to SciFi, and this Fantasy anthology, which is a bit of a mashup of all of these. Lavie, as you can probably guess, is Jewish, and a very well respected author in SFF literature.

HebrewPunk is a collection of Fantasy stories featuring a Rabbi, a rat, and someone called a Tzaddick, which is, from what I understand about it, something like a Jewish paladin, a person of high moral character who is obligated to help right the wrongs of the world. It’s written in a hardboiled, 40s mystery style, and involves the three main characters having adventures in alternate worlds, London, and World War 2. You do not need to know anything about any of the various Jewish cultures or folklore to enjoy these books, since Tidhar explains just enough of that for Gentiles to be able to follow along.

I knew nothing about Jewish folklore when I started reading it, and since I love a well written Fantasy, this was a fun learning experience for me.

Anything Ever Written by China Mieville

I don’t even know how to talk about Mieville. Everything that Mielville has ever written is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read. The very first story of his that I encountered, waaaay back in the mid 90s, was King Rat, about a young man whose life falls apart after he discovers that he has rat powers, and he goes to war with his uncle, who apparently, is King of the Rats! The story was kind of disgusting but also a lot of fun. Then there are his books set in the bizarre fictional dystopia of New Crobuzon, called Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and the Iron Council, peopled with strange cults, insect headed lovers, aliens, mutants, magical entities. and any combination of those.

He has written a bunch of weird cities books among which are The City and The City, about two cities where all the citizens live parallel lives to one another but can’t see or interact with the others except under special circumstances, and a YA book titled Un Lun Dun, about a chosen girl who turns out not to be, having Alice in Wonderland style adventures in a bizarre mirror universe version of London.

But my two favorite books are Railsea, which takes place in a world overrun with train tracks and people hunting underground creatures as if the trains were sailing vessels, and another nautical book, Kraken, about a museum worker who gets caught up in a lot of elder Gods cultic nonsense, after the body of a giant squid gets stolen from his museum. Kraken feels faintly silly and tongue in cheek, and has a very Neil Gaiman-ish feel to it, sort of like Gaiman’s novel, Neverhwere, which also covers absurd circumstances happening to some hapless British fellow.

As you can see, I’m somewhat partial to stories about bizarre, alternate universe versions, of the city of London.

Punktown by Jeffrey Thomas

No, this isnt an alternate version of London, Its even stranger as it contains aliens, mutants, and multiverse gods and creatures all living in a semi-underground city, which is kind of like New York! One of Thomas’s favorite characters is a Detective named Jeremy Stake who fought in some kind of alien war, and came back changed. He can model his face to look like anyone except his old self. Jeremy Stake ahs a couple of standalone novels of his own, titled Blue War, and Deadstock, which I really enjoyed.

There is a lot going on in these Punktown books, of which there are several, and most of these things are unrelated to the things in the other books. Most of them are like slice-of-life-stories for aliens, and some are vaguely frightening, but easily followed. Although the names of the races and characters seem strange, Thomas doesn’t get too bogged down in made-up vocabulary, and all of these books have very Lovecraftian feel, without feeling like he was riffing off Lovecraft, which I like.

Fort Freak – Wild Cards Series by G. R. R Martin

I really liked this book because it reminded me of one of my favorite comic books, titled Top Ten, about a police precinct full of weird characters an superheroes.

This nearly twenty book series, (Wild Cards) which has been around since the late 80s, is set in a world where some type of global alien infection happened during WW2, and it has given most of humanity either superpowers (Aces), horrible mutations (Jokers) , minor powers that are not significant (Deuces), or death. There are several different iterations of the series, (usually in the form of a trilogy) set in different time periods and locales, like a gameshow for superheroes, modern day Russia, or time traveling to mid-20th century Mississippi.

This trilogy, beginning with Fort Freak, is set in a police precinct in New York, and it was a lot of fun reading about the different cops with super abilities (Aces) or just odd quirks (Deuces) patrolling the streets or trying to solve various supervillain crimes, alongside regular human beings, who just take it all in stride. The books take themselves pretty seriously, and since its a shared world series, the stories are written by various authors, each of which have their own style.

Finch by Jeffrey Vandermeer

Here is yet another book written about a bizarre city set in something called the Ambergris universe. This one involves mushroom people, called Graycaps, and their fungi technology, slowly taking over the city, and the Detective, named Finch, who has the thankless job of hunting a serial killer of Graycaps and humans through the city’s moist underground dwellings.

Clickers by J F Gonzalez

There is an entire series of these ridiculously over the top Marine Splatterpunk books written with one of my favorite Horror writers, Brian Keene. The books start out pulpy enough with giant crabs attacking America’s beaches because they’re being driven to land by one of the Old Gods of the deep, and over the course of 5 books things get even wilder and stranger, with the addition of more Old Gods, an insane President, the military, Lovecraftian fish people, and yes, zombies!

J F Gonzalez passed away in 2014 and wrote dozens of books, but Clickers is the series for which he is most famously known, culminating in the tribute book above, written by authors across the Horror genre. Unfortunately, I have not read it yet, as it is only in Paperback.

FantasticLand by Mike Brockover

Okay, when I picked up this book, or rather chose it on NetGally, I expected it to be funny. At least that’s sort of how it was described in the blurbs I read.

This book is not funny at all.

But what I got was still pretty damn good. It’s abut a bunch of college age people who get trapped in an amusement park when a hurricane hits. The countryside around them gets pretty trashed, and there’s no communication with the outside world, making it impossible for the authorities to rescue them, and over the course of several weeks the survivors descend into warring tribes and cannibalism, after one of the male survivors sexually assaults one of the women. It’s like a men vs. women Lord of the Flies at Disneyland, and a somewhat harrowing book to read, even though it’s written as a series of interviews, letters and various lawsuits from the investigators and survivors. I had just come off of reading World War Z, so that kind of book was right up my alley.

You should only read this one if you like gore and can stomach a great deal of recounted violence.

Honorable Mention:

Motherfucking Sharks by Brian Allen Carr – I have not yet read this book, but I had the impression it was like a prose version of Sharknado. I don’t particularly care for those movies, but I would be willing to read about that kind of plot, so go figure! 👀

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski – This book was mostly frustrating to me, although I can see its appeal for some people. I definitely learned about the types of Horror I find horrific while reading this book, and this isnt it. While scary for some people, (in an existential kind of way), this book was not particularly scary for me, and I also do not like to constantly juggle a book around in my hands in an attempt to read the chapters.

Doctor Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke – At the time this was released, I was not used to reading books where the footnotes were so long and numerous that made it seem like I was reading another book alongside the primary book, and its impossible to skip the footnotes because they provide a deeper understanding and backstory of the characters and plot as you go along, and for a nerd like me, they’re just as fascinating as the story.

Ten More Questions No One Asked Me (But Probably Should Have)

I answered ten more of these burning questions as part of my ongoing efforts to bring you guys all that great content you’re supposedly here for. Good luck!

What hobbies do you have?

My hobbies are always artistic in nature. Right now it’s knitting, writing, and baking. I used to draw, and for a while, I was a professional illustrator in the 90s (for about thirty seconds), but I lost interest in that. It seems that I keep picking up hobbies I did as a child. I started crocheting when I was twelve. I stopped for about twenty years, picked it up again, and then segued into knitting. I’ve recently taken up baking again, which is also something I did as a teenager but stopped doing as a hobby for several years, while I did professional baking. My life is a Fibonacci Spiral.

What Music do you like to listen to?

I don’t listen to any one genre of music because I think that’s kind of a boring thing to do. I will and have listened to any genre of music, and will basically listen to anything with a beat though, from Algerian Pop to African drumbeat, to French Electronica, since I choose music based entirely on my mood. Some days I’m in a Hard Rock mood, in which case I’ll put on some Ozzy or Motorhead, but sometimes I’m in an R&B mood, in which case some Braxtons or Michael Jackson is called for.

These days I’m in the mood for lots of upbeat, funky music, like Michael Jackson, Will Smith, and Club Remixes of 90s R&B hits, and a melancholy film music mood, where I listen to sad Pop songs featured in Action movies.

What is your dream job?

When I was a little girl, I saw Leontyne Price on some TV show and thereafter I wanted to become an Opera singer. (I have also wanted to be Ellen Ripley, Michelle Yeoh, Spock, and Grace Jones). I did sing though and have had some training, but I gave up that dream to become a draftsman (someone who draws) after my voice changed when I hit puberty. I set myself towards drawing as a career for ten years, (while dabbling in every other form of art from sculpture to painting) until I decided I no longer wanted to do any of that as a career.

Eventually, I settled into one of my other dream jobs that I wanted as a child: Librarian! This was a job that I worked off and on for several years while pursuing my artistic career, but when that career didn’t happen, and I got laid off from my job at a bakery, my mother suggested that I put in an application at the library since I was always hanging out there, and I’ve worked at the library for almost thirty years.

One thing I’ll never try again…

Rally’s burgers. I have a freakishly good memory for tastes. I can remember the exact tastes of things many many years after I’ve had them. Waaaaay back in the 90s I got a very bad burger at a Rally’s in Columbus Ohio, and I haven’t been back to any Rally’s since! Okay, I know it is unlikely that will ever happen to me again but that burger was soooo bad that I’ve been too terrified to ever try one of their burgers again.

I’m also picky about food based on texture. I will never ever eat another mushroom, I don’t care what people tell me about them. I like looking at them because I think mushrooms are pretty, but I refuse to eat them. I also refuse to eat raw tomatoes. As long as they are pureed into something else I can eat them, but the raw texture is just too much for me.

Do you have a personal Mantra?

Keep Moving Forward

Speaking as someone who has suffered from the mental illness that is depression there were times I definitely had to crawl.

But I didn’t stop moving.

What do you daydream about?

A better world.

To that end, I often dream about living on the Starship Enterprise or just generally in the Star Trek universe. Usually, I daydream about meeting with or talking to my favorite characters. I used to daydream about living in the Buffyverse, but that was mostly because I loved the characters so much. I wanted to be a member of the Scooby Gang from the show. Some of my other favorite shows and movies to daydream about are Star Wars and Supernatural. Basically, a lot of my daydreams involve meeting my favorite characters in the various fictional worlds of the shows and movies I love, and having adventures, kicking ass, or defeating monsters with them. In other words, pure escapism!

What is the unhealthiest thing you do?

Right now the most unhealthy thing I keep doing is buying Twizzlers! I have diabetes so I’m not supposed to be eating these rubbery little strips of artificial flavor, but I can’t stop craving them. I’ve also been craving chocolate chip cookies, honey-covered cashews, and Doritos. I do not buy those though. I just steal them from my niece and nephew.

What is your most embarrassing public moment?

I’m a pretty clumsy person so I’ve had a few such moments, and most of these memories consist of falling down somewhere. Down some stairs, out of chairs, on sidewalks, over my own two feet… fortunately, while doing all of this falling down, I’ve never broken anything other than my dignity.

Do you collect things?

Apparently, I’m collecting different artisan skills. I don’t know why. Perhaps this is in preparation for some future apocalypse, in which case, I’ll be ready.

What is your biggest pet peeve?

Bad drivers! This is the only thing that will make me scream at people in my car. I cannot stand people who act a fool on the road by slaloming in and out between the other cars, running through red lights after a slight pause, tailgating, or not using their turn indicators.

Another thing I don’t understand is why these people all seem to drive the same tiny black sports car.

Stupid Movies I Love

(And One I Hate)

These are not smart films. I actually made a small list of those films a couple of years ago and I’m reasonably certain none of these movies were on there. What constitutes a “dumb” movie could be lots of things, but mostly it’s the plot and characters. I really hate dumb characters and by that, I mean characters that do very obviously stupid things, that no one in their right mind would do, but this character has to do it to move the plot forward. Sometimes it’s a plot that is entirely hinged on how stupid the characters are.

Sometimes it’s not the entire movie that’s dumb but one major plot point that takes me entirely out of the movie and makes me yell at my screen. Normally, I hate dumb movies, but sometimes a movie has at least one redeeming quality that allows me to sit through it with a minimum of fuss, while I just laugh at the dumb sections. And yeah, there’s a reason why all of these are action movies. It’s easy to compile a list of dumb action films, but harder to make a list of dumb action movies I will watch multiple times because I like the actors, or the action is really good, or just because of the lead-up to that one scene.

Sometimes the movies are stupid, but a great deal of fun, usually due to the strength of the personalities involved. The Rock and Nicholas Cage, for example, could star in just about anything, and I’ll watch it. It’s always great fun spending time with either of them, just don’t always expect an intelligent plot. In some cases, like Scorpion King, don’t even expect a coherent plot. Some movies are very well-made but are corny and/or silly, like Independence Day, although Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum manage to save it.

Cobra (1986)

Cobra is a Sylvester Stallone joint from 1986. Now, Stallone is no stranger to making dumb films and the 80s are pretty much famous for dumb Action movies so this was bound to happen. I remember watching this movie late one night when I was probably supposed to be asleep and thinking, “This movie is deeply stupid.” Which was true but it was also deeply funny with lots of happy and mindless ultraviolent fun. It’s one of those dumb movies that gets repeated viewings on the strength of Stallone’s performance and the cinematography. The movie just looks cool.

The 80s was known as the golden age of what we now call Copaganda. Movies about cops and other law enforcement officers being rebels, breaking all the law enforcement rules, and pretty much acting like America was still in the Wild West stage of history, were all the rage back then. Just about every other Action movie starred a rebel cop or an FBI agent blowing stuff up, and frankly, I’m glad we’ve moved on from that to having other types of professionals blowing things up, like assassins, car valets, and insurance agents.

This movie has all the usual tropes. There’s the rebel cop with the cool name, Marion Cobretti, Cobra for short, a hot blonde played by Brigette Neilsen, who I kinda liked back in the day (I don’t know why). Brigette plays a business/model named Ingrid because what else are you going to name a six-foot-tall blonde white lady. Brian Thompson was your typical bad guy with a dubious philosophy and even more dubious plan for taking over the world by killing disabled people, I guess, because it was all very radically Dawrwinist, and he has a gang of followers and nameless henchmen.

When Neilsen’s character witnesses some malfeasance by the gang they need to hunt her down and kill her and she comes under the protection of Cobra who naturally falls in love with her. But that’s really not what makes the movie fun. What makes the movie fun is the action and the dialogue. Yes, the dialogue is stupid but it was really fun to watch these characters trying to emote while being too tough to show their emotions, and I actually liked Stallone’s character. Neither he nor the villain will be winning any Mensa awards so they’re about evenly matched. He and Cobretti get into a knockdown, drag-out fight at the end of the movie, which I enjoyed watching (I don’t know why.)

10/10 will most likely watch this again on some idle Saturday afternoon.

Nemesis (1992)

Nemesis is a cyberpunk action thriller from 1992 that contains all the well-worn tropes of a Copaganda/Robocop Ripoff. There is a burnt-out cyborg cop, a wayward former partner, a manhunt, a missing computer McGuffin, or bomb, or something, and several beautiful but deceitful cyborg/AI women. It also stars three of my favorite actors, Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ( I don’t know why.) And I don’t think it was a coincidence that Brion James was involved in this movie. I was not a fan of Brion James, but I guess I am now, because he was everywhere after his stint as a robot in Bladerunner, so I built up a tolerance. This movie is bad in all areas of badness. The acting is atrocious, the action scenes are well done but make no sense, and quite frankly I didn’t care enough about any of the characters to root for or against anyone, but I remember watching this blatant Robocop rip-off multiple times, and will probably do it again at some point in the future since it’s free on Youtube.

For some reason, I was really crushing on Olivier Gruner at the time and remember watching several movies just because he was the star. He could be described as a low-rent version of Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he does have actual martial skills. Here, he plays an ex-cop, who is also a cyborg, named Alex. He gets recruited by an old boss or something to hunt down his former partner who runs some kind of underground rebel group. The plot involves a lot of shooting and blowing up of things. Do not even try to make any sense of the plot because you’ll only hurt yourself. I, on the other hand, am a professional bad movie watcher. This is what I do and I couldn’t even make sense of it.

I think I just liked the idea that half the characters in this movie were cyborgs, and the dialogue was pretty funny, even if the delivery was horrible. Nowadays, I’d watch it because there is a considerable nostalgia factor involved. But I don’t think you should watch this movie just because I have no shame.

The Rock (1996)

I wanna start off by saying that okay, Michael Bay is a horrible director, but I had to watch most of his 90s movies to figure that out, apparently. I did eventually learn my lesson and stop looking at them but not soon enough to miss seeing this. It also has the added benefit of starring both Nicholas Cage and James Bon- uh, I mean Sean Connery. Ed Harris is in this too and he’s worth about two and a half Connerys. Both William Forsythe and Michael Biehn (from The Terminator) also star in this movie, so Bay somehow managed to gather some of the hottest action stars of the 90s to take part in this novel, but still somehow mediocre plot.

This movie has everything. SEALS, the SAS, the Pentagon, ex-government prisoners, a rogue general, some rogue Marines, Alcatraz island, nerve gas, rockets, hostages, threatening an American city for ransom, and did I already say it? Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery hating to work together to accomplish their goals.

This is a movie where the plot actually makes sense in that it’s relatively easy to follow and keep track of people’s motivations, more or less. It did pretty well at the box office, a lot of people seemed to really like it, and it even won an Academy Award for Best Sound! But I’m going to argue that it’s the earnest and occasionally charming performances of the actors that make it so watchable.

The Rundown (2003)

Have no doubt, this is a dumb movie, that makes no pretense of trying to seem like it’s smart, but I love the hell out of this deeply stupid film. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) stars in this movie and while he is not known for making smart films, he is such a fun and charming character in all of his movies (even though he pretty much just plays different versions of himself) that I always enjoy watching anything in which he shows up.

The movie also stars two more of my favorite actors, Christopher Walken and Rosario Dawson (and Stifler from American Pie, but I am not a fan of him though). The Rock plays a bounty hunter who gets sent to Brazil to hunt down his employer’s son, who is in Brazil hunting an object called The Gato (a gold-plated cat. Why? Who cares!), which is also an object of seeming importance to both Rosario and Walken. The three of them juggle this McGuffin between them for most of the film while Dwyane tries to keep Stifler alive to get him back home.

There are jungle scenes, a political resistance camp of some kind, angry monkeys, toxic fruit, explosions galore, a herd of stampeding cattle, and a batty Scotsman who spouts biblical scripture, and is also a helicopter pilot! Frankly, this guy is my favorite character in the entire movie. You have to watch it just to see the last thirty minutes, which is how I stumbled across it on cable, one idle weekend.

Universal Soldier (1992)

This was my and my Mom’s favorite Jean Claude Van Damme movie. She was a huge fan of his (so was I) and she really loved this deeply goofy film which we watched and laughed through multiple times. Now the movie isn’t exactly dumb but it is a bit cheeky. It takes itself just seriously enough that the introduction of those cheeky little moments of humor don’t feel out of place. The plot is non-sensical (in the sense that the science behind it goes completely unexplained), but also surprisingly easy to follow. Oh, did I mention that Dolph Lundgren is in this movie? No. Well, I should have, because that man can chew scenery like nobody’s business, even though he’s only playing a low-rent Arnold Schwarzenneger.

Jean Claude and Dolph play a couple of soldiers who died during some kind of personal skirmish in Vietnam, but through the magic of science fiction movies, they get resurrected as Special Operations soldiers who decide to pick up where they left off. But the best character is Veronica, played by Ally Walker, as a television journalist trying to get the latest scoop about some dead soldiers, who is also a great audience stand-in, as she speaks our minds most of the time. She spends most of the movie not believing what’s happening to her, but never comes across as stupid, which was very refreshing. She also gets all the best lines and I love her!

Why this particular military team is committing war crimes in Vietnam, long after the war is over, is never explained. Why do these two US soldiers have clearly non-US accents is never explained (although the writers do try to sell us the idea that Van Damme’s character was from Louisiana, so there’s that)? Why these two characters have beef is also not explained (outside of one of them being crazy). They just do. But the writers do make sure to explain why Jean Claude needs to take his clothes off in one key scene, though. There’s a little bit of Robocop, a little bit of Apocalypse Now, and the action scenes are, of course, EXTRA. With butt cheeks!

My mom and I used to crack the hell up so hard at this movie, which we watched every single time it aired on TV, no matter how late it was.

The Fifth Element

I just want to make it very clear that Milla Jovovich is a horrible actress, yet for some reason, she keeps getting cast in Action movies even though she has all of the fighting grace, and emoting talent of a 2 x 4, and I blame this movie for starting her Action movie career. I just wanna let it be known that while I don’t like her very much I am willing to tolerate her when she’s surrounded by better actors like Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and of all people, Ian Holm!. Hell, even Chris Tucker, as an androgynous television presenter named Ruby Rod, while deeply annoying, is at least trying to be funny, and more or less succeeding.

But the standout character and the one which most moviegoers remember is Diva Plavalaguna, a blue-skinned, tentacle-headed, 7 ft. tall opera singer, who gets about five minutes of screen time, but still manages somehow to steal the whole damn movie (by twerking), despite the distracting hairstyles, fashion sensibilities, and atrocious accents of all the other characters. Ian Holm plays a space priest, and I don’t know what Bruce Willis is doing in this movie, other than being himself, but they are the two most normal characters in the entire movie, which is kinda saying something, but I’m not sure what.

Bruce Willis’ character has to escort Milla’s genetically perfect mutation to a special location so she can save the universe from the Darkness or some such nonsense. This involves lots of aliens, elemental stones, kung fu, Gary Oldman choking on a cherry pit, and shootouts with said aliens. Don’t bother to follow the plot. It’s essentially meaningless. On the other hand, the director somehow managed to get the French fashion designer, Gautier, to do the costumes, hair, and makeup for the film, so pay attention to that.

The movie is a visual treat and occasionally funny, with acceptable action scenes, but do not mistake any of that for greatness. This is very much a niche movie for Sci-Fi Action fans only.

Venom

I resisted putting this movie here but finally relented because although I enjoyed it immensely, it’s not a smart film. I liked the characters, but they are not especially bright and there are a number of things that remain unexplained. The pacing is off, the plot is easily followed but makes little sense, and the dialogue needs some serious help. That said, the movie just leans into its inherent goofiness, with no shame, and I kinda liked that. It’s a lot of fun, mostly funny, and bears almost no relation to the things going on in the comic books, outside of the characters’ names.

This film was popular mostly on the strength of Tom Hardy’s performance as a journalist that’s kinda like himself, and the alien symbiote who falls in love with him, named, of course, Venom. Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed are also starring in this but no one remembers that. This is strictly a Tom Hardy joint, where he plays a man possessed by an alien that takes over his body, falls in love with him, and decides it doesn’t want to join its murderous brethren in taking over the world and eating humanity, although it still wants to eat people.

The movie’s got some problems, which is everything in the movie that’s not Tom Hardy. But I am a huge Tom Hardy fan so I was able to tolerate all the other problems in this movie like the dialogue, the plot, the villain, and the special effects. Still, I was able to pull a handful of things that I really enjoyed besides Tom, like the relationship between Venom and his character is funny, and the relationships between him and most of the other characters are quite wholesome. Even the villains are suitably despicable.

I think most of this movie’s fans would never argue that this is a good movie. However, if you are a fan of Tom Hardy…it’s a great movie!

Face/Off

I tried to add other movies to this list but I kept coming back to this movie, which I have watched multiple times. Like the above-named films, the science and plot are just sort of hand-waved away, which gives me the nagging sensation that the movie is unfinished, but doesn’t otherwise hinder my enjoyment of this spectacularly goofy film. I think you can guess that I’m a big John Woo fan. He has made a number of these types of movies with some silly plots, starting with the very first one I ever watched, Hard Boiled. That movie was so wild that I had to backtrack and catch some of his previous movies. I didn’t love them all. John Woo is the kind of director that can just make you watch a plot that, if proposed by any other director, would get them laughed out of the studio, and I am here for it. It is the existence of John Woo that makes the John Wick franchise possible since he is the one who pioneered what we now call Gun-Fu!

Get this. Nicholas Cage and John Travolta play a cop and a criminal (it doesn’t matter which is which) who get their faces surgically altered in Travolta’s face-swapping plot to, pick one: blow up some shit, get revenge, or steal something. How about all three? Good! There’s all kinds of battiness going on in this movie, multiple Mexican standoffs, little children oblivious to shootouts happening just out of their fields of vision, nuclear bombs, boat chases, husband swapping, endangered daughters and wives…you name it, it’s probably in here, and all done with a style and swag that makes John Woo the Godfather of modern action cinema. The only thing this movie is missing is Chow Yun Fat, the star of Woo’s previous Hong Kong films.

As you can imagine both Cage and Travolta are chewing the scenery like it’s a BLT, but there are, as in all of Woo’s films moments of startling beauty and pathos that make it worth taking a look at. But if you’re going to start watching John Woo’s films, don’t start with this one. It’s best to ease into it with something like Hard Target or Mission Impossible 2, to prepare yourself for all his slow-motion, Mexican standoff finery.

Double Impact

I know a lot of people would pick Hard Target, which is pretty dumb but this is quite frankly one of the dumbest Jean Claude Van Damme movies ever made, and that is saying something when you consider some of the other films he’s famous for. This movie, like Universal Soldier kind of knows how silly it is, and JC more or less plays these twin characters completely straight, except every now and then he does or says something with that little mischievous twinkle in his eye that lets you know he knows this movie is deeply silly, and he looks like he’s having the time of his life.

Jean Claude plays some kind of yoga instructor who likes to show off his leg flexibility to the ladies in his class (seemingly the only reason they are there is to look at JC’s butt in tights, and I’m not gonna lie, that’s why I would attend such a class). Of course, back in the day, JC would take every opportunity to show off his naked leg muscles at even the slightest provocation. He is separated from his twin brother when they’re children after their parents get killed by some Hong Kong Triad gangsters or something. Anyway, they meet again as adults and have to team up to take down the people who killed their parents even though the two of them intensely dislike each other, which makes for some brotherly shenanigans as they show their love by punching and kicking each other. Eventually, they do get along long enough to blow things up.

To give you some idea of how silly this movie is, there is a completely unnecessary dance scene, with JC working it out with a couple of beautiful women in what appears to be a shed, and I enjoyed this scene immensely. It never fails to crack me up, mostly because it matches absolutely nothing else in the entire film, and yet is entirely in keeping with his character’s character! The brother, also played by Jean Claude, does not dance, hates black silk underwear, and is a grumpy, unlikable, stick-in-the-mud, who still somehow manages to make that look cool, and yet also appears to be living his best life.

You have to watch this movie just for the dance scene, because JC, unlike a lot of white guys I know, can actually stay on beat and appears to really be enjoying himself, as he should.

Bonus Movie:

Prometheus

I don’t even know where to start with this movie. I have friends who like this film and I guess if you turn your brain off and only see this as a Horror/sci-fi/Action film, it’s okay, but my problem is I know far too much about how the scientific method works to ever enjoy this movie. I kept getting pulled out of the movie by the character’s actions.

These are quite possibly some of the stupidest scientists to ever grace a Science Fiction movie. And the non-scientists aren’t too bright either. These people are so stupid they had me screaming at my television screen and that’s not a good look for any movie.

There are a good half dozen dumb character moments in the movie, and if you’ve seen this movie, then you know which is the worst one, but if you haven’t let me illustrate this for you. Towards the end of the movie, two characters are running away from a massive rolling ship (do not ask why it is rolling, you will only hurt yourself). One of the characters manages to avoid being crushed by the ship by accident. She falls down (as is traditional in Horror movies even though she isn’t wearing heels), and the other woman (who is wearing heels) also manages to fall down but does not avoid being crushed. Both characters could have avoided the entire thing by just not being stupid, and running into the wide open spaces to either side of the rolling ship!

This is my whole feeling during the entire movie!

You have scientists getting lost who aren’t supposed to be getting lost, people afraid of things they’re not supposed to fear, and/or touching things they’re not supposed to touch.

I was rooting for the monsters.

All the monsters!

The “This or That” Horror Challenge

JD Nealy on Medium.com recently issued this all-things Horror “This or That” Challenge and I’m here for it. I’ve done This or That Challenge before but to be honest, most of them are boring or nerve-wracking. This one though is a lot of fun, although when I discussed it with my friends there was some confusion over whether or not some things meant being killed by or fighting with something, so our answers were somewhat inconsistent. That’s okay though because hey! it’s Horror.

View at Medium.com

Slasher or Supernatural

Im going to have to choose Slasher because theoretically a Slasher can be killed, appeased, or sometimes even escaped, depending on what type of slasher we’re talking about. A regular human slasher cannot generally walk through walls or just suddenly appear behind you in your bathroom or in front of your car.

There is something to be said for supernatural slashers and none of it is good. Supernatural slashers are just cheating, really. That said, I would prefer to star in a supernatural thriller like It Follows, where there are some concrete rules rather than any Nightmare on Elm Street movie, where there don’t seem to be any.

Zombies or Cannibals

I’m gonna go with fighting zombies. I at least know all the rules of fighting those having watched multiple films in the genre. Cannibals on the other hand have no rules and are liable to do anything at any time, including prolonging your death for their own enjoyment (see Hannibal Lecter.) At least getting eaten by zombies, while painful, is still relatively quick. So is killing them.

I would choose to star in Dawn of the Dead over The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes.

Vampires or Werewolves

This was one of the questions we found the most confusing. Would we rather fight these creatures, or be killed by them? In either case, I’m gonna go with vampires who have a set of weaknesses that can be easily taken advantage of. There are pros and cons for each choice though, and I’m definitely going to overthink this later, but I’m going with vampires on this one. Also, vampires are just sexier to be fighting. If I had a choice about the type of vampire movie it would probably be the first Blade movie since I’d get to hang out with Blade, and those vampires can definitely be killed since they’re not especially bright ones.

If I had to choose between being a vampire or a werewolf, I wouldn’t exactly like it, but I’d choose to be a vampire. There are all kinds of workarounds to being a vampire. There don’t seem to be any for being a werewolf although the movie What We Do In The Shadows make both options seem like fun.

Humans or Aliens

My friends and I were not sure what this question meant. I chose humans though because once again humans are at least a category of monster that’s understood. There are set rules for dealing with human beings who are “acting a fool”, and no rules for dealing with aliens, unless we’re talking about the ones from Alien or Predator, in which case I still choose to deal with people. Nobody wants that alien smoke. When all is said and done I’d still rather deal with the humans from The Fifth Element than anything from an Alien film. Predators, on the other hand, can probably be reasoned with and you can at least team up with them to fight the Alien.

Witches or Warlocks

My friend’s first question was what’s the difference, and since we’re librarians we had to do some research to find out. It turns out that there’s no difference between the two, because according to Scottish folklore, a warlock is simply a male witch, and both male and female witches are malevolent. Personally, I’d rather have nothing to do with either, but maybe some people would choose witches because women who have decided to become witches can be reasoned with and at the very least are justified in joining the hellish crusade of the powers of darkness. Any men who do this are probably wholly irrational, and also sexual predators, and I have standards. I’d rather deal with the witches from The Witch than the idiot warlocks of Jennifer’s Body.

Jason Or Freddie

I chose Jason for this one because at least in some of the earlier films Jason can be outrun. Freddie on the other hand, cannot. Jason can at least be killed even if only temporarily. I have a soft spot for Jason that I don’t have for Freddie though. Jason is at least a sympathetic villain, and I have standards. Freddie is an aggrieved child molester, and that’s just icky. Also, I prize getting a night of good sleep and Freddie isn’t conducive to that. Jason could conceivably kill me in my sleep and it would be relatively quick. Jason generally doesn’t try to draw out your anguish for his enjoyment.

Summer Camp or Suburb

I’m going with the suburbs here because there is at least the idea that other people are around. It’s true, they’re not very helpful, but you can at least break into their homes and your killer can be distracted for a few minutes by dispatching these unhelpful monsters. There are potentially police, ambulances, weapons of some kind, and streetlights in the suburbs. I do not want something chasing me around in the woods in complete darkness. That’s just silly. I’m basically picking any Halloween movie over Friday the 13th, because I know I’d make better decisions than any of the fools in Halloween.

Low-Budget or Blockbuster

I’m gonna have to go with Blockbuster for this one. The people in a blockbuster are prettier and more well-spoken. It’s not that there are no good low-budget Horror movies out there, but your death is likely to be prolonged and agonizing or happen entirely offscreen, which is also no good. I want my death to be memorable, but not last the entire movie. I also want it to be a surprise which is something a lot more likely in a Blockbuster than in one of those movies where you can see death coming thirty minutes in, and you spend the rest of the movie running to no avail. In fact, the louder and more bombastic the blockbuster, the better.

Fight or Flee

Like Baymax, I am not fast! In fact, I’m probably one of the slowest-walking people on the planet. No matter how fast I move my legs, I just don’t seem to get anywhere, so it’s gonna have to be fighting. Of course, this is something that depends entirely on the circumstances, but considering how I handle my quite boring and everyday problems, (by simply tackling them head-on), I’m definitely a fighter. If there’s a mystery to solve to get the monster off my back, then that’s the movie for me. The exception to this is any J-Horror ghost movie. Japanese ghosts, such as Amara from The Ring, can never be appeased by anything you could do for them and will torment and kill you anyway.

Cemetary or Swamp

I don’t like bugs, and I for sure don’t like bugs in warm water. And while I’m sure that there are cemeteries that contain both, I will happily avoid those too. Cemeteries generally don’t have giant man-eating reptiles, although they might contain ghosts or zombies, which I can deal with. What I imagine could be much worse is the cemetery that’s located in a swamp. How’s that for places to avoid?

Shrunken Heads or Skulls

My friends and I were not quite sure what this meant so we decided it meant how we would decorate our homes. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two really. The shrunken head still has some skin on it while the skull is baring its full loveliness. I’m gonna have to go with skulls as decorative objects, and even for myself if it came to that. After all, if you’re using my skull, I’ve long been deceased and so have no idea what you’ve gotten up to with my remains. Nor will I care.

Also, Black Mask (Ewan McGregor) from that Birds of Prey movie has an apartment decorated with shrunken heads, and nobody wants to be like that guy. Besides skulls are Shakespearean and way sexier than shrunken heads.

Machete or Chainsaw

Quite frankly, I would prefer to avoid being killed by either one of these, but as a weapon, I’d pick the machete, which is relatively easy to use for anyone who is not used to edged weapons, and doesn’t require gas or electricity to wield. As for being murdered by either, I’m gonna have to go with the chainsaw, which is large and unwieldy and will likely run out of gas, at some point. There are only so many people one can kill with a chainsaw at a given time.

Hospital or Home Depot

I’m a pretty inventive person (so is my brother). I’d consider it a dream come true to be locked down in a Home Depot. The possibilities are almost endless if you have any imagination about how to use found objects. Hell with the right skills and materials, you could probably build an entire fortified city inside a Home Depot. Not that I would be lost in a hospital but there’s a lot less material to work with it in one of those. The Home Depot seems more fun.

Apocalypse or No Apocalypse

Yeah, I don’t know what the alternative here means. It’s apocalypses all the way down. That said, I don’t want the whole world destroyed. I want people to still enjoy life after I’m gone. I want there to still be music concerts, pastry cafes, and bad tv shows. Just because I’m not here to enjoy those things doesn’t mean I want the rest of the world to suffer. Also, there is no such thing as a fun apocalypse, even if you get to stay in a Home Depot.

Nightmare or Reality

A nightmare isn’t real and one could potentially wake up from it. I’ve had my share of nightmares. I was always glad to wake up and find out that whatever it was was not real. So I guess I’m choosing the nightmare scenario as long as there are no supernatural creatures involved. Supernatural creatures mess up your ability for lucid dreaming, something I’ve been practicing for a few years now.

Dungeon or Maze

Yeah, I’m really not seeing the big difference between these two. One of them is indoors and underground, and the other is outside most of the time, either one could be full of monsters. I just saw the movie Dungeons and Dragons, and there’s a maze and a dungeon in the movie, both of which seemed equally dangerous in my opinion. In fact, it’s possible that the dungeon might actually be a maze, in which case it makes no difference! But if I absolutely had to choose I’d rather be outside and upstairs, so I’m going with the maze on this one.

Radiation or Disease

This one was easy. Everyone has had at least some experience with disease. Few of us have had any experience with radiation poisoning, which has all of the worst symptoms of a disease, but without any possibility of a cure. I’m not a fan of disease but a person can recover depending on what disease it is. I’ll take the common cold, or hell, even shingles, over radiation sickness.

Spells or Rituals

I’m not particularly worried about either of these. Neither of these is especially frightening because I’ve watched enough Horror movies to know that a ritual can be disrupted, and a spell can be blocked. All you have to do to stop a ritual is make sure it can’t be completed. Stopping a spell is a little bit trickier as it involves having a certain amount of skill. If i had to choose, I’m picking a ritual. And depending on what kind of ritual disruption we’re talking about, it could bring on the apocalypse, in which case nothing matters, or one could end up summoning a tiny, ineffectual demon.

Skeletons or Ghosts

I’m gonna have to go with ghosts on this one. Ghosts are incorporeal, meaning they can’t actually affect anything in the real world. Sure, they’re creepy and can give you a chill, but they can also potentially be ignored. Skeletons however tend to be attention seekers. They’re pretty loud and can actually hurt you, although that may just be me, haunted by recurring images of those sword-wielding skeletons from the 1963 movie Jason and the Argonauts.

Series or Standalone

At least when a standalone movie is over it’s over (except for those damn franchise films.) I do not want to go through whatever I’m going through for 22 hours, which is the average length of a network TV series. I don’t even wanna go through it for 8 which is the average length of a cable series. When a standalone is done, I don’t have to keep revisiting it if I don’t want to unless my name is Laurie or Sidney, and it isn’t so I’m good.

Bonus Question:

Theater or Netflix

Netflix all the way. I don’t care how many people slag off Netflix for having bad movies, it still is good for the price I’m paying. I’ve never been the kind of person who was enamored of theatergoing. I don’t go to the movies for the ambiance. I go for the STORY! And I can get good stories in the comfort of my home, with a cleaner bathroom, and a lot less talking. When i get scared or disinterested, I can turn it off, and I won’t lose money doing it.

Netflix costs less, and I’m still getting entertained, so it works for me.

Liminal Spaces In Film

What are examples of liminal spaces?

A physical liminal space is something tangible that you can recognize as a pathway, passageway or portal. These places are transitory, meaning you’re supposed to pass through them on your way to something else.

I talked here before about liminal spaces which are places where people transition from one place to another and where no one actually lives. Liminal Spaces are often defined as places where people once were, as they have left their constructs behind, but now are not. These are also places where people normally spend time but may be empty at a given moment. Liminal space is the opposite of a permanent residence like your apartment or your hotel room. It is any portal, door, or corridor between places or any place where people stop for a brief period of time, or travel from one place to another, like a highway or rest stop. Even people can have liminal qualities. Travelers, for example, have such qualities, as they are moving between one space and another and have no fixed position or state of being. Teenagers and those nearing death are people who are also on the threshold of being or entering another state, of being a child or an adult, or alive or dead.

The Overlook Hotel – The Shining (1980)

Here we have a classic liminal space. Hotels are by their very nature places where there can be no real permanent residence, and are often a transitional space between one place and another. Here is a scene from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining where Danny is rolling quickly down the empty halls of a deserted hotel, a liminal space that exists within a liminal space. Liminal spaces are often portals or doorways between the living and the dead because the walls of reality are thinner where they are not shored up by the mental strength of a permanent resident. This allows spirits, ghosts, revenants, demons, and other beings to enter or inhabit such places. In the case of the Overlook, the hotel itself is a liminal entity that has taken on a life of its own and regularly consumes the travelers who pass through or temporarily inhabit it, like Danny and his parents.

The Open Road – Duel (1976)

America’s highways (and any points along them, like gas stations, and rest stops) are also places of transition from one place to another. The road is not a fixed or permanent residence. Just like many cars, buses, trains, and many public places, it is a place people travel on, or pass through. All kinds of inexplicable occurrences can happen and there are countless unknown dangers on the road, not just from the road itself, but the people, and vehicles that travel along it. This is a scene from Steven Spielberg’s 1976 movie Duel, where a man is pursued by a dangerous truck driver along various highways. This kind of thing happens in road trip horror movies like Jeepers Creepers, and Joy Ride.

The Nostromo – Alien (1979)

Outer Space is itself the definition of a liminal space because of its life-inhibiting nature and because it is, once again, something people pass through rather than truly live in. In the 1979 movie Alien, the crew of the space freighter Nostromo encounter a dangerous life form while traveling through this space. The ship, Nostromo, is full of plenty of transitional spaces where the creature can hide and then leap out at the ship’s inhabitants who are hunted and killed while traveling through the ship’s empty halls and backrooms. In that sense, the Nostromo is reminiscent of a hotel environment. it seems like a more permanent residence except there is too much empty space for it to be considered a home. At its foundation, it’s just a vehicle in which people are moved from one place to another.

The Parking Lot – Fargo (1996)

Fargo is shot in such a way that even the permanent residences of its characters feel like liminal spaces. The feeling of the movie is cold and emotionless. just like its villains. It doesn’t help that the environment in which the story takes place is bleak and wintry Minnesota. Many of the plot developments take place in moving vehicles, places of work, diners, hotels, and parking lots, and the relationships between the characters often feel just as cold and disconnected as the places through which they travel.

The Incursion – Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

The entire movie is about portals, doorways, and traveling the in-between spaces. The film is full of liminal moments of ghosts and demons, and even universes, possessing the living, the dead, and other universes, causing disruption to the natural order. These liminal spaces are places where the normal rules of physics seem to have been completely overturned. Since the little girl in the movie, America Chavez, has the power to travel between universes, it means she has no fixed permanent residence of her own, which makes her a liminal person, a doorway through which others can pass, which is also the ability that makes her so powerful and coveted by the movie’s villain. Here, the Doctor and his friend Christine walk through a world that has been invaded by another world through one such portal.

The Closet – Poltergeist (1982)

Closets are classic portals, doorways to other dimensions, through which other beings can enter this world, or in the case of Poltergeist, the 1982 film by Steven Spielberg, spaces through which people can be abducted. The little girl in the movie, Carol Ann, is abducted into the afterlife through this doorway, and much of the plot hinges on her family successfully navigating the outer fringes of liminal space to rescue her. In this scene, there are several doors through which her family can or cannot pass.

The Swimming Pool – It Follows (2014)

Water possesses liminal qualities since its surface is a barrier that separates the realm of earth from the aquatic realm. In the movie It Follows, swimming pools are set up as liminal spaces in time as well as space, places where childhood innocence and the literal avoidance of death can be maintained. I wrote about this film in another post, about the symbolism of all the bodies of water in the film, and how whenever the film’s monster gets too close in its pursuit of Jay, the film’s lead character, she retreats to places of innocence, symbolized by bodies of water. At the end of the movie, she and her friends hope to lure the monster to its destruction by using her as bait in an abandoned swimming pool, which itself takes place in the liminal space of an abandoned building after the crowds of students have gone home.

The Mist – The Mist (2007)

Based on a book by Stephen King, The Mist is part of the Stephen King multiverse, where different versions of Earth exist. In the Stephen King universe, the various earths are separated from each other by what King refers to as Todash Space, which is something like outer space, a largely empty and dark space between the worlds. Only Todash Space isn’t entirely empty. It’s full of horrifying monsters such as the ones seen in this movie after a military experiment opens a portal between it and this particular earth, very much like the Incursion seen in Doctor Strange’s movie.

The City and People of – Dark City (1998)

I don’t want to give away any spoilers but the entire movie is about trying to live in a space that isn’t really a space of its own. The Dark City of the title is a liminal space where the rules of physics do not apply, and even the people and their relationships are impermanent, including that of its lead character, John Doe, who must navigate his way from the center of the city to its outer edges, while being pursued by mysterious figures, in search of…himself. His journey is represented by the Fibonacci Spiral seen in the title sequence and throughout the film itself.

My Movie Hot List

Antman: QuantumMania

I’m gonna be honest, while I’m “mildly” excited to watch this, I don’t know that I’d shell out the money to go see this movie in a theater. Due to family issues beyond my control, I would have to watch this alone. Some movies are good for watching alone, but this one isn’t. It looks like a lot of weird fun that you share with your buddies.

I’m mostly interested in seeing Jonathan Majors’ giant screen breakthrough because I really really like him, I’ve heard that the character he’s portraying, Kang the Conqueror, is a huge Billy Bad Ass in the Marvel Universe, and because this movie kicks off one of the multiple plot threads of this new phase of the MCU, The MultiversalWar. Each movie after this one will be a piece of that story introducing us to alternate universes and other realms of consciousness and existence, like the Quantum universe in this movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2.5: Christmas Special

This movie looks like so much fun. Unlike the many fanboys who insist on complaining about the direction of the MCU, it seems that I actually do have a sense of humor. I love the MCU comedies, and I do not understand why all the MCU movies must be dark and deadly serious all the time in order to be taken seriously. I love the direction in which Thor was taken. I thought it was great fun and definitely better than the emotional slog that was Thor 2. Sometimes you don’t need or want great cinema, you just want the creators to lean into the craziness of whatever you’re watching.

Guardians of the Galaxy has been something of a comedy from the beginning, mostly because of the nature of the characters, and that last movie and this new one just sort of lean into it a little bit more. I’m looking forward to this one more than the Antman sequel because I really like spending time with all these deeply funny goofy people, and I’m glad that the creators and writers are just fearlessly leaning into the sheer batshittery of this part of the universe, because C’mon! Really!

Chevalier

I’m just coming off the finale of the Interview With the Vampire series which I’m going to have to talk about at some point because Wow! so, I’m really in a good place mentally to feel excited about seeing more Black men in wigs and stockings! It’s one thing to see Black and Indian women doing the whole ballgown movie thing, but we don’t often get to see Black men in these roles unless it involves Shakespeare or playing a servant.

I love the look of this film, and there’s the added attraction of it being based on a true story, that of a French Caribbean composer named Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologne. I’m a sucker for beautiful costumes, beautiful music, and sword fighting, and you throw in some Black people and I’m in, I guess!

John Wick 4

I just had the most interesting discussion about this movie with my co-worker, who said she had a real problem suspending her disbelief while watching these movies and kept getting pulled out of the film. I told her I didn’t have that problem because it never even occurred to me what I saw as taking place in a world like this one with the same political and systemic setup. I had always viewed this franchise as taking place in some kind of fantasy alternate universe, where you can just be riding through the streets of downtown New York with swords and guns and not one person would blink an eye at it.

This is what I mean when I say that whatever your mindset is when you start to watch a movie will probably determine how you’ll feel after having seen it. Anyway, this looks great and I’m eager to sit down in a theater with some popcorn and enjoy two hours of sheer Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, and Hiroyuki Sanada mayhem!

Violent Night

This looks like such wild and crazy fun that I just have to see this. This is definitely one of those movies that you can go see by yourself at the theater. I don’t know that I’ll do that but it’s an option. It looks like a Christmas version of a John Wick movie except it’s Santa Claus using magic and probably some guns which I know all of you must be excited about as well.

Glass Onion

Still don’t know what to make of this but I will not have to go to the movie theater to see it. I can just watch this, whatever this is, at home on Netflix. I like most of the actors here and quite frankly I was going to watch any movie that starred Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae, and Daniel Craig because these are not actors’ names that one tends to think of as being together. This also looks to be more comedic than the first film, which I didn’t think was especially funny, but apparently, that’s just a me thing.

For some reason, I’ve been watching a lot of comedy mysteries this year. I just came off the Hercule Poirot movies, The Orient Express, and Death on the Nile, and I will probably be watching See How They Run this weekend. I don’t normally gravitate to period mysteries. I’m not opposed to them or dislike them or anything. They’re just not the sort of movies I tend to gravitate to, so when I get the urge to do so, I flow with it.

Maybe I’ll Watch These

Bones and All

I’m not sure I’m in the mood to watch anything dealing with cannibals but I’m willing to watch this if it’s streaming. If it’s in the theater then it’s out of luck. I’m not spending a bunch of money to see this, although it seems intriguing.

Shadow Master

Yeah, this is a movie that’s just going to be watched via streaming only. This is not the kind of movie I would ever watch in a theater. I mean, Kung Fu movies are meant to be watched in the house, with popcorn and a remote.

Warriors of the Future

Fortunately, this is a Netflix jam so I don’t have to spend money on my curiosity about it. Okay, it really doesn’t seem like it’s a lot of fun, in the sense that it’s intentionally funny, but it does look thrilling and action-packed, so I guess that’s a kind of fun.

And Movies I’m Not Watching

Avatar 2

I didn’t care too much for the White Saviorism of the first movie. In fact, I found that movie infuriating in a way that I didn’t for movies like The Last Samurai, or Dances with Wolves. I’m not arguing about how beautiful it is but I think I’m gonna wait to watch this next year on some streaming service. Since my niece and nephew aren’t going to be with me, and this is really the kind of movie one watches with a group of people, I’m unlikely to see it in a theater anyway.

The Whale

I do not have any particular need or desire to spend money to see this. Plus this looks like one of those movies where there’s going to be a lot of crying. I’m really glad Brendan Frasier has made this return to making movies. I missed him, and this actually looks alright, but I’ll catch this on streaming.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

I’m not going to sully my memories of Whitney Houston with a biopic. I just can’t do it.

M3gan

This movie is probably going to blow up once it comes out becomes it looks unintentionally hilarious and there are already a bunch of memes about it! I’m not paying money to watch what is essentially a killer-doll movie, but I’ll go see it my sister pays for my ticket because this seems like the kind of thing she’d attach herself to.

I still do not understand after all these killer doll movies why anyone would ever build life-size killer robots that look virtually indistinguishable from an actual person. I don’t understand the plots of movies like Bladerunner and stuff where that kind of thing happens. Why would human beings still be doing that? Have we learned nothing?!!! On the other hand, this could just be an American thing because the Japanese build life-size robots all the time and they don’t ever seem to have this problem with the robots trying to merc people.

The Monster Files (Pt. 1): The Old School

I had a lot of fun making this list and classifying these monsters, although there are all types of classifications to be made and someone else’s list may be very different from this one.! This is just how my mind classifies certain Horror films.

I love monsters! I love watching the movies and talking about them, and I don’t need to wait for Halloween to do that if I don’t want to…

This isn’t a comprehensive or even academic list, btw. This is just a broad, general sort of list, and there were a few I had trouble assigning to a type, because some monsters simply defy description, and I guess that’s their point. Some of them I just threw in where I think they should show up. You’re probably going to have a different idea of where certain monsters go, for example, you may classify some of The Stalkers into another category.

You should argue about this among yourselves, and then let me know what consensus y’all reached.

Also, some of these monsters can fit into multiple categories anyway, because most of them do eat people, many of them lurk in isolated areas, and almost all of them can certainly be classified as animals of some kind, but I chose to put certain ones wherever, for reasons. For example, zombies can go under both Devourers and Classic Monsters, and I chose to put them under both.

The Classics: The Old School

Y’all know these guys. They’ve been around forever, and there are about five bajillion movies and television shows that are all about their prehistory, history, present, and future. That’s right, we’re talking about vampires, werewolves, and zombies, although the modern versions of zombies are relatively new, compared to say, Frankenstein’s monster. Some of the earliest films in the horror genre were made during the silent film era, like Nosferatu from 1922, which bears little resemblance to the vampires we see today, and Dracula, which was released in 1931, starring Bela Lugosi, in which some of the vampire tropes were simply made up for that film, (but that is a fairly common occurrence). There is also the silent-era movie, The Vampire, from 1913, which starred one of the first female vampires and was taken from a poem by Rudyard Kipling.

Vampires can be used as a stand-in for a wide variety of issues. The original Dracula was a stand-in for sex, disease, and anti-immigrant hysteria of East Europeans into England. Since then, vampires have been a euphemism for sexually transmitted diseases, unmitigated consumption, wealthy patriarchy feeding on the proletariat, and elites fighting against extinction.

And then there are the scientific and natural vampires, that have nothing to do with the supernatural, as their condition of vampirehood is scientifically explained, like the advanced vampires from Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade 2, and the TV series The Strain, and the species of vampires featured in 30 Days of Night. Vampires even managed to make their way into outer space in movies like the 1985 Lifeforce. And finally, there are the parodies of vampires like 1995’s Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and the brand new, What We Do in the Shadows, which can be seen on television and the big screen.

The next classic monster would be the Werewolf, with the first movie about a man becoming a wolf, released in 1941, and starring Lon Chaney. Although Chaney, and his monster, went on to star in a bunch of team-up movies and parodies with other classic monsters, the werewolf never seemed to gain quite the same amount of popularity as the vampire, even though it too can be successfully used for allegorical storytelling. Typical themes associated with the werewolf are the ancestral curse, dark legacy, or hereditary disease.

There are long stretches of time when we don’t get any movies about werewolves, and no one seems to miss them. There was a brief spate of them in the ’80s, which made for a good handful of modern movies, like American Werewolf in London, with its themes of personal displacement, The Howling, which addressed sexual assault trauma, Dog Soldiers, which involved military corruption, Ginger Snaps discussed sexuality and young womanhood, and the Underworld franchise addressed themes of class and slavery, through a long-standing war between vampires and werewolves.

And then there are Zombies. The ones we see today don’t have a lot of resemblance to the really old-school version. There are, at least, three types of them, and pretty much all they have in common is being dead. Some of the old-school classic zombies are based on the demonization of African pagan religions by Hollywood. In some of the Caribbean cultures, there is extensive folklore about bringing the dead back to life, to serve as slaves using magic. What a group of people consider horror is closely related to the culture, and the creation of zombie folklore in Caribbean cultures, served much the same purpose as the Japanese creation of Godzilla, in that it served to give voice to the cultural, and generational trauma of chattel slavery. Pre-Night of the Living Dead, most zombie movies had their basis in Hollywood’s racist depictions of African religions of the diaspora, with the exception of scientific zombies, like Frankenstein. Written by Mary Shelly in 1818, it’s about a scientist who resurrects a man from the pieced together bodies of the dead.

Today’s zombies are not based on religion and have a closer resemblance to scientific zombies, as they are sometimes caused by outside factors like viruses, meteors, or experimentation, and can be a stand-in for social issues, like consumerism or racism. Many modern zombies are the fast kind, that apparently do a lot of cardio, and there are now ironic, and self-referential, zombie parodies, starring people who’ve seen all the zombie movies that came before and mock the sub-genre.

There’s always a new zombie movie lurching about, and there are far too many to name, since the huge resurgence in zombie fiction that started in the late 90s and hasn’t let up yet, as people keep finding new twists, like the Historical zombies of 2016’s Pride Prejudice and Zombies, and Zack Snyder’s heist/zombie mashup, Army of the Dead. We now have several television series about them, and zombies have even moved onto the international stage, with some of the best stories produced in South Korea, like the historical zombie television epic, Kingdom, which was created by the writers of the movie Train to Busan, and movies like #Alive, and One Cut of the Dead.

https://asianmoviepulse.com/2019/03/30-asian-zombie-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/

The Classics/Slashers

The Slasher movie had its heyday in the ’80s, but the ball really got rolling in 1960, after Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was released to shocked audiences, and it set some of the conventions of the genre, like the spooky house, the surprised female victims, and the killer’s association with madness. Psycho spawned a slew of similar films about isolated houses, where crazed, knife welding, madmen lay in wait, although movies, like Don’t Look In the Basement, were usually called psychological thrillers.

After Psycho, other movies paved the way. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre used the same idea of the isolated, rural location that was seen in so many slasher movies of the 80s, and the 1978 Halloween, introduced the staple trope of The Final Girl, who fights the slasher and survives to the end of the movie, due to her sexual purity. All these movies led to what is now called The Golden Age of Slasher Movies, with Jason, Michael, And Freddy, slashing their way through nubile teenage girls, between 1978, and 1990. During the 80s, novel plot twists would be added, like the dream killings of Freddy Krueger, from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. This Golden Age also sparked a Conservative backlash based on concerns about violence in movies, which eventually led to the decline of such films by the 90s. Not that such films weren’t still being made, because there were always the low budget and direct to video movies, but the larger commercial sellers mostly fell by the wayside, as the teenagers, of the early 80s, grew into adulthood, and mostly lost interest.

In the 90s though, a new crop of teenagers spurred the creation of a wave of Slasher movies with ironic, meta-textual, and self-referential themes, like Scream, Halloween :H2O, and I Saw What You Did Last Summer, which existed mostly to highlight the various murders of stars like Jada Pinkett, Brandy, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze, Drew Barrymore, and Courtney Cox, but this era was eventually supplanted by the genres next biggest darling, The Zombie film. This current era has produced the comedic version of the Slasher film, based on viewer’s knowledge of previous slasher movies, like Cabin in the Woods, Freaky, and the re-emergence of the Scream franchise.

The Classics/Kaiju

Contrary to popular belief, Kaiju are pretty old school, and did not actually start with Toho Studios 1953 Godzilla. It sort of began with the 1933 King Kong, which had some influence on the making of Godzilla. Later in 1953, The Beast from 20,00 Fathoms was released, about a newly awakened dinosaur rampaging its way through the streets of New York. The Kaiju movie is distinct from your typical giant monster movie, in that it takes place during the modern age, the monster is mostly a metaphor for another real-world problem, and at some point, the monster must menace a city, although that is negotiable. Godzilla was a metaphor for nuclear power and was Japan’s way of dealing with the trauma of the atomic bomb, and King Kong was a metaphor for the American enslavement of Africans, not because that was the intent of the creators, but because many of the movie’s viewers thought that allegory mapped neatly to the film’s plot.

Many of the American monsters of the 50s were nuclear metaphors, with regular animals, and insects becoming oversized because of atomic energy, like ants, locusts, rabbits, spiders, and in one spectacular case, an angry white woman, in Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. And then there is The Blob, which wasn’t so much about the fear of radiation as it was about science in general, and a response to American fears about the US space program.

There is a good, long history of movies about giant monsters tearing up cities, and Hollywood continued this fine tradition, by substituting fictional monsters, like the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth, and the monster from Cloverfield, and the scientific man-made monsters, like the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. We’ve even reached the stage of parody, in movies like Colossal, where a young woman finds out she is the avatar of a rampaging Kaiju and can control its actions, and we’ve also reached the “homage” stage, with a callback to the Japanese monster/robot battle movies of the 60s, with movies like Pacific Rim. I spoke about this in my Starring the Landscape series on cities, about how cities, mankind’s greatest artificial construction, and the theme of destruction by creatures that were irresponsibly created by mankind, or were a form of natural revenge.

There is room in the genre for all kinds of stories to be told, from Korea’s ecological horror movie, The Host, mysteries like the Cloverfield franchise, the old school science fiction of War of the Worlds, children’s comedies like Monsters Vs. Aliens, and the more contemplative, Monsters, from 2010, about an invasion of Earth by strange giant aliens, that much like the original War of the Worlds aliens, take no notice of humanity, at all.

The Classics: Animals

Outside of the gigantism suffered by regular animals, during the 1950s, which was usually caused by nuclear waste or bomb testing, there was the issue of their smaller cousins. In the 70s, a new type of horror arose, based on environmental fears, which spawned a great number of nature revenge films. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, which helped to launch the Environmental Movement in the US, which had so much influence, that it began to affect Pop-Cultural trends. Jaws was released in the Summer of 1975 and we were off to the races. What animal can kill human beings in the goriest fashion?!!

Hence the absolute glut of When Animals Attack films that were released between 1975, and 1984, like Food of the Gods, about rats grown to enormous size from eating a substance bubbling out of the ground, The Swarm, featuring Africanized killer bees, Squirm, about worms enraged by downed power lines. There were pirahna, sharks, frogs, spiders, dogs, bears, and every other animal got in on the action, in the 1977 film Day of the Animals, where hikers encounter hostile animals in a forest that had been poisoned by chemicals. I remember watching a lot of these movies when I was a kid, and while I did laugh at a lot of them, some of them were actually scary. I distinctly remember discussing the arrival of killer bees to America’s shores with my classmates and all of us were genuinely terrified at the thought. Well, they got here some time ago, and it hasn’t actually been as terrifying as the news media and the movies made it out to be.

And let’s not forget the prevalence of killer bear films, many of them clearly Jaws ripoffs, starting with Grizzly in 1976, and reaching the pinnacle in 1979, with the release of Prophecy, which checks off all the popular boxes for movies made in that interval, with a murderous bear-like creature, mutated by environmental waste from a logging company, tears apart random backpackers. We can still experience a little of this today, in the crop of grizzly horror films, like Into the Grizzly Maze, The Edge, The Revenant, Annihilation, BackCountry, and Grizzly Man.

Next up in Part 2: The New School!

I really enjoyed writing this but it was getting a bit long, so I decided to divide this list into pre-modern, and Modern. I said earlier that this isn’t a comprehensive list since there are some things that don’t make either list, like ghosts and haunted houses, a list of which is so massive, and so old, that it could go on The Classics list, or The New School list since those movies never stopped getting made. They simply kept updating themselves. I will talk about a few of them in part two.

Random Conversations on Tumblr

 Just some of the conversations I’ve been reading, and sometimes participating in, on Tumblr. Incidentally, you should check out my Tumblr page. It’s a bit different from this one, in that I post more about politics, and social issues, along with more casual things like goofy animals, and silly discussions.

Robots and Race

* The TV Series Humans has just finished its third season, and quite a number of fans are unhappy. I watched the second season and noticed that race wasn’t much talked about, although since many of the robots featured depict different races, it should have.

The star character for some of the major plotlines was Gemma Chan’s, Mia. She was killed in the season finale, and fans felt some type of way about that. I didn’t watch the third season because I had gotten bored with the show.

But something in EAWS’s essay, about how Mia was treated on the show, and the third season’s approach to racial issues, prompted thoughts from me about how the subject of racism is depicted in science fiction/fantasy shows, especially when the writers are White. I’ve noticed that they are often not honest about White culpability in the invention of modern racism.

I’ve been noticing this trend, and I had some things to say about.

eastasiansonwesternscreen

 

Humans is one of those shows that is racially diverse on the surface, but in reality is very safe, very white-centric (yes, even with having Mia and Max in the main cast).

“Äkta människor”, the original Swedish show had its own problems with writing the characters of color,  but it was always very clear that the in-universe “Real Humans” (”We are People”) movement was a direct parallel to the white supremacist, anti-immigrant alt right groups / political parties, and all their members were portrayed by the white actors.

Humans, however, while also pretending to be a sci fi allegory of real life racism and xenophobia, makes sure that for each bigoted white character there’s always a Bigoted Character of Color. Just a few examples –

• a random Black man, a member of alt-right “We Are People” movement, in s1 holding an anti-synth banner and shouting anti-synth propaganda;
• Thusitha Jayasundera’s Neha in s2 was leading a case against Niska, yes, she went through massive character development in s3, and became an active synth rights supporter, but in her own words, she changed her views mainly because of Laura (a white woman);
• a xenophobic anti-synth cameo character played by Naoko Mori in s2;
• Ed’s bigoted Black friend, who persuaded Ed to sell Mia (which in turn made it easier for the writers to redeem Ed in s3 – “Ed wasn’t a racist who dehumanized his girlfriend of color, he was just a weak man, who followed an advice from his Black friend, it’s the Black friend, who is the /real/ racist” – that’s the writers’ message here);
• a Black woman police officer, who profiled Mia in s3;
• a random Angry Black Woman on the street, that attacked Mia in s3;
• a Brown Muslim politician on the Synth commission, that was presented more anti-synth, than a white guy, who lead the commission (s3);
• an anti-synth Brown Head of the Police, member of the commission;
• an unnamed Black man leading the human supremacist group against the synth compound, targeting Max and Mia (3×08).

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, third time is a pattern, as they say.

  Keep reading

lkeke35

What was the point in changing what was basically a white nationalist into a Black xenophobe? Intersectional bigotry exists, yes. But white writers of Äkta människor managed to show intersectional bigotry through white characters – they had xenophobic white gay character and a homophobic white hubot/synth, they even had a weeb. Brown writers of Cleverman showed intersectional bigotry through Koen (in s1) and Waruu West in s2. But when white writers prefer to show Black and Brown characters as the “real” racists (like Sense8) the only reason for that is that the writers don’t want to touch the subject of white supremacy because it makes them uncomfortable. *

I love this, and I just want to piggyback a little bit off this post for a minute:

This is one of the major reasons why I dislike racism allegories written by White writers. They often, and very deliberately, get these allegories wrong by trying to equate racism and white nationalism, with “reverse racism” (which is not a thing, btw). They often do this by casting PoC as virulent racists against whatever out-group is the stand-in for a marginalized group in the narrative, whether its robots, supernatural creatures, or aliens.

I’ve seen this happen in a lot of fantasy, and sci-fi narratives written by White writers, who are attempting to lecture their audience on how bad racism is, all while trying never to acknowledge the elephant in the room: That our current model of racism, they are riffing on, was invented by White people.

They often make these virulently racist characters Black as well. In Heroes, the nasty racist, who wanted to kill all heroes, was a Black woman, who actually killed children. In District 9, the African characters were racist against the aliens, monetarily prostituting them, exploiting them, and even cannibalizing them, (which is a whole other nastily racist trope about people from the African continent, that I simply cannot believe no one caught.) In the X-Men/New Mutants TV Series, The Gifted, you have a Black man, as a member of the government, hunting down the mutants, to put them in concentration camps, and in Teen Wolf, you have a Black woman who wants to destroy all supernatural creatures, and yet again, advocates killing children to accomplish her goal.

It’s even worse when sometimes these are the only Black characters in the entire narrative, or worse yet, Black women.

There is already a dearth of Black women in fantasy and sci-fi media, so Black women being cast in these roles (of killing children) is an especially nasty trope, that needs to fucking die, especially when you consider that it is real life Black women, who know, above all else, what it is like to lose their children to violence, and are working hard right now to protect their children from things like gang violence and police brutality. Real life Black women work damn hard to counter the very narratives these characters are advocating in these shows. To then cast these (always dark-skinned, with natural hair, because its simply not enough that they be Black) women as the advocates and killers of children, in these shows, is an especially insulting slap in the face to Black fans, as Black women are some of the hardest fighters against racism and sexism, being so often on the receiving end of both, and to keep seeing them cast in these roles is more than a little enraging.

I know the point the writers are trying to make is that there’s racism on all sides and that anybody can be racist, but that message is more than a little self-serving, especially when you consider that it is only White writers who tout this message, in their allegories about bigotry. So, not only are they appropriating our stories of oppression (all things that have been done by Whites to everyone else) to use for non-human beings, but casting PoC in these roles as the oppressors, because they want to express the idea that that type of racism and bigotry is an equal opportunity position. By doing that, they thereby remove themselves from collusion with the issue and relieve their own guilt.

 

Source: eastasiansonwesternscreen

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*And then there’s this problem, which is seen in every scifi/ fantasy racial allegory from True Blood, to Zootopia, to Bladerunner, to Bright, to The X-Men……… 

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-cringe-worthy-way-sci-fi-fantasy-deal-with-prejudice/

Yet it’s the kind of parable that turns up over and over again in science fiction and fantasy stories that are reportedly trying to convey a message of tolerance. “Look, we get that you’re having trouble seeing minorities as humans, so perhaps it would help if you imagined them as something that is A) objectively not human and B) inherently dangerous.”…

…What makes it worse — and weirder — is that writers can’t resist giving these marginalized groups some kind of superpowers, which in turn actually gives the fictional society a legitimate reason to fear them.

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Science Fiction Genre and Race

 *White writers also have a tendency to be lacking when it comes to imagining futuristic depictions of race, often simply reproducing the same racial issues (and many of the same stereotypes) that exist right now. The situations of various PoC simply never changed. We’re still sassy sidekicks, living in poverty, model minorities, or just erased.

https://psmag.com/social-justice/welcome-to-the-post-racial-future-its-still-pretty-racist

Altered Carbon presents a world that looks post-racial, and in which humanity has escaped from identity, and identity politics, once and for all. But even when bodies are interchangeable commodities, certain bodies are treated as having more value than others. for the greater profit of rich people and white people, and especially of rich white people.

 

http://colorwebmag.com/2018/03/27/the-racial-flaws-of-blade-runner-2049/

I’m surprised a film of this magnitude and of this scale decided to show one of the most regressive and most racially-charged images I’d seen in a while; replicant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), the replicant assistant to Niander Wallace (Jared Leto)  is shown getting her nails electronically altered by a small Asian man, whose hunched over, deep in his work.

The stereotype of the Asian nail salon tech has made its way into the future.

 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/03/-em-star-wars-em-and-the-4-ways-science-fiction-handles-race/359507/

 Sci-fi likes to believe it can imagine anything, but, especially in its mainstream incarnations, it’s clearly a lot more comfortable imagining race in contexts where the topic is dealt with obliquely or simply not mentioned or foregrounded. In this area, Hollywood adventures are strikingly timid. 

 

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Black Feminism

*Discussion of Black women as love interests. By saying that Thor is only interested in Valkyrie, as a heroic figure, it  is akin to saying she’s a strong, independent, Black woman, who don’t need no man, and how this does not take into account intersectional femininity:

The Problem with Valkyrie Being Simply a “Hero” to Thor

So…I get not everyone is going to understand this, especially if someone is not a Black woman and doesn’t have our experiences, so I’m going to try to lay this out as nicely as possible and try not to come off too harsh.

I’m going to start off with a quote from Alice Walker:

“Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly indentifies one’s status in society, ‘the mule of the world,’ because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else–everyone else–refused to carry. We have also been called ‘Matriarchs,’ ‘Superwomen,’ and ‘Mean and Evil Bitches.’ Not to mention ‘Castraters’ and ‘Sapphire’s Mama.’“

You see, Black women are expected to be the “hero” of someone else’s story. We’re expected to be “the help.” The “mystical hero.” The “sassy friend.” We’re always there to help out the lead, but we’re never the love interest.

Chris Hemsworth has said himself that Thor is “smitten” by Valkyrie…when you disregard that and say she’s simply his hero and that it’s refreshing that he’s not admiring her in a romantic way, you are confusing your experience as a non-Black woman with ours.

Black women have historically been masculinized and fetishized. We’re either seen as too unattractive for love or too sexual to be romanticized. So, when we are put on a pedestal as a hero, it’s not at all refreshing. It’s the same ol’ same ol’. Now, being adored and loved? That’s something Black women never get to see for themselves.

It’s something that has slowly been changing, but the more it changes, the more pushback is given in response. CW’s Iris West is nitpicked as a character for the silliest things while the fandom constantly ships Barry with Caitlin, a white character who has shown no interest in him or vice versa. Even the actress cannot escape the anger from fans who prefer the lead be paired with a white woman. She faces constant harassment on her social media on a regular basis.

So, while it might be revolutionary for white female leads and other non-Black female leads to be looked at like heroes rather than love interests, it’s not so much for Black women. So rarely are we given the message that we too can be worthy of love. Please tread carefully when you suggest that a Black woman being seen as a man’s hero rather than love interest is “refreshing.”

 

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Humorous Interlude

 

 

*The discussion, on the adoption and care of the Roomba, continues: 

 gaymilesedgeworth

after i move i really wanna get a used roomba

 

gaymilesedgeworth

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses

just remember they’re social animals and should always be kept in pairs, don’t get a roomba if you aren’t prepared for that responsibility

 

fireheartedkaratepup

That’s a common misconception. Roombas do perfectly fine on their own if you spend quality time with them! They group together in the wild for protection, but when they have no natural predators in the area they often choose to live alone.

 

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses

i didn’t know that! do you have any advice on roomba breeding and the problem with parent roombas’ tendency towards eating their young?

 

ironbite4

……..I’m nuking this entire hell planet from orbit.

 

biggest-gaudiest-patronuses

even the roombas?

 

ironbite4

The roombas are coming with me.  Can’t let them stay with you crazy people.

 

Source: gaymilesedgeworth

 

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Representation

*I loved this speech about the importance of representation and inclusion:

Rick Riordan won a Stonewall for 2017

rosetintmyworld84

 

Rick Riordan was awarded the Stonewall Book Award for his second Magnus Chase book, due to the inclusion of the character Alex Fierro who is gender fluid. This was the speech he gave, and it really distills why I love this author and his works so much, and why I will always recommend his works to anyone and everyone.

“Thank you for inviting me here today. As I told the Stonewall Award Committee, this is an honor both humbling and unexpected.

So, what is an old cis straight white male doing up here? Where did I get the nerve to write Alex Fierro, a transgender, gender fluid child of Loki in The Hammer of Thor, and why should I get cookies for that?

These are all fair and valid questions, which I have been asking myself a lot.

I think, to support young LGBTQ readers, the most important thing publishing can do is to publish and promote more stories by LGBTQ authors, authentic experiences by authentic voices. We have to keep pushing for this. The Stonewall committee’s work is a critical part of that effort. I can only accept the Stonewall Award in the sense that I accept a call to action – firstly, to do more myself to read and promote books by LGBTQ authors.

But also, it’s a call to do better in my own writing. As one of my genderqueer readers told me recently, “Hey, thanks for Alex. You didn’t do a terrible job!” I thought: Yes! Not doing a terrible job was my goal!

As important as it is to offer authentic voices and empower authors and role models from within LGBTQ community, it’s is also important that LGBTQ kids see themselves reflected and valued in the larger world of mass media, including my books. I know this because my non-heteronormative readers tell me so. They actively lobby to see characters like themselves in my books. They like the universe I’ve created. They want to be part of it. They deserve that opportunity. It’s important that I, as a mainstream author, say, “I see you. You matter. Your life experience may not be like mine, but it is no less valid and no less real. I will do whatever I can to understand and accurately include you in my stories, in my world. I will not erase you.”

People all over the political spectrum often ask me, “Why can’t you just stay silent on these issues? Just don’t include LGBTQ material and everybody will be happy.” This assumes that silence is the natural neutral position. But silence is not neutral. It’s an active choice. Silence is great when you are listening. Silence is not so great when you are using it to ignore or exclude.

But that’s all macro, ‘big picture’ stuff. Yes, I think the principles are important. Yes, in the abstract, I feel an obligation to write the world as I see it: beautiful because of its variations. Where I can’t draw on personal experience, I listen, I read a lot – in particular I want to credit Beyond Magenta and Gender Outlaws for helping me understand more about the perspective of my character Alex Fierro – and I trust that much of the human experience is universal. You can’t go too far wrong if you use empathy as your lens. But the reason I wrote Alex Fierro, or Nico di Angelo, or any of my characters, is much more personal.

I was a teacher for many years, in public and private school, California and Texas. During those years, I taught all kinds of kids. I want them all to know that I see them. They matter. I write characters to honor my students, and to make up for what I wished I could have done for them in the classroom.

I think about my former student Adrian (a pseudonym), back in the 90s in San Francisco. Adrian used the pronouns he and him, so I will call him that, but I suspect Adrian might have had more freedom and more options as to how he self-identified in school were he growing up today. His peers, his teachers, his family all understood that Adrian was female, despite his birth designation. Since kindergarten, he had self-selected to be among the girls – socially, athletically, academically. He was one of our girls. And although he got support and acceptance at the school, I don’t know that I helped him as much as I could, or that I tried to understand his needs and his journey. At that time in my life, I didn’t have the experience, the vocabulary, or frankly the emotional capacity to have that conversation. When we broke into social skills groups, for instance, boys apart from girls, he came into my group with the boys, I think because he felt it was required, but I feel like I missed the opportunity to sit with him and ask him what he wanted. And to assure him it was okay, whichever choice he made. I learned more from Adrian than I taught him. Twenty years later, Alex Fierro is for Adrian.

I think about Jane (pseudonym), another one of my students who was a straight cis-female with two fantastic moms. Again, for LGBTQ families, San Francisco was a pretty good place to live in the 90s, but as we know, prejudice has no geographical border. You cannot build a wall high enough to keep it out. I know Jane got flack about her family. I did what I could to support her, but I don’t think I did enough. I remember the day Jane’s drama class was happening in my classroom. The teacher was new – our first African American male teacher, which we were all really excited about – and this was only his third week. I was sitting at my desk, grading papers, while the teacher did a free association exercise. One of his examples was ‘fruit – gay.’ I think he did it because he thought it would be funny to middle schoolers. After the class, I asked to see the teacher one on one. I asked him to be aware of what he was saying and how that might be hurtful. I know. Me, a white guy, lecturing this Black teacher about hurtful words. He got defensive and quit because he said he could not promise to not use that language again. At the time, I felt like I needed to do something, to stand up especially for Jane and her family. But did I make things better handling it as I did? I think I missed an opportunity to open a dialogue about how different people experience hurtful labels. Emmie and Josephine and their daughter Georgina, the family I introduced in The Dark Prophecy, are for Jane.

I think about Amy, and Mark, and Nicholas … All former students who have come out as gay since I taught them in middle school. All have gone on to have successful careers and happy families. When I taught them, I knew they were different. Their struggles were greater, their perspectives more divergent than some of my other students. I tried to provide a safe space for them, to model respect, but in retrospect, I don’t think I supported them as well as I could have, or reached out as much as they might have needed. I was too busy preparing lessons on Shakespeare or adjectives, and not focusing enough on my students’ emotional health. Adjectives were a lot easier for me to reconcile than feelings. Would they have felt comfortable coming out earlier than college or high school if they had found more support in middle school? Would they have wanted to? I don’t know. But I don’t think they felt it was a safe option, which leaves me thinking that I did not do enough for them at that critical middle school time. I do not want any kid to feel alone, invisible, misunderstood. Nico di Angelo is for Amy, and Mark and Nicholas.

I am trying to do more. Percy Jackson started as a way to empower kids, in particular, my son, who had learning differences. As my platform grew, I felt obliged to use it to empower all kids who are struggling through middle school for whatever reason. I don’t always do enough. I don’t always get it right. Good intentions are wonderful things, but at the end of a manuscript, the text has to stand on its own. What I meant ceases to matter. Kids just see what I wrote. But I have to keep trying. My kids are counting on me.

So thank you, above all, to my former students who taught me. Alex Fierro is for you.

To you, I pledge myself to do better – to apologize when I screw up, to learn from my mistakes, to be there for LGBTQ youth and make sure they know that in my books, they are included. They matter. I am going to stop talking now, but I promise you I won’t stop listening.”

 

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Dinosaurs

*This entire review is basically the only reason people got to see these films. We’re certainly not watching them for the people in them.

Now, I’ve told you guys how much my Mom loves movies about people being eaten by things, so if she says something was a bad movie, take what she says as the truth. This woman will watch almost anything with giant creatures chasing and eating people, and she hated this movie!

I’m probably one of the few people that didn’t actually hate this movie, although I hated most of the people in it, and spent some amount of time rooting for my three favorite dinosaurs: the T-Rex(which I have named Sue), the velociraptor named Blue, and the mosasaur from the last movie, which I have, henceforth, named Molly.

https://www.tumblr.com/allthefilmsiveseenforfree/175238468895/jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom

 

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The Apocalypse

*I had to leave a response to this because the whole idea of the zombie apocalypse has now become nothing more than power a fantasy for White men, who all imagine they’re gonna be Negan, from The Walking Dead. 

I’m not watching any more shows, or reading any more zombie apocalypse novels, with White men in the center of the story. Most zombie novels and movies only feature White, middle-class people, and focus on their reactions to the loss of electricity, I guess.  Despite the existence of most of the world’s infrastructure, and the clear examples of what human beings would actually do when encountering catastrophe, in places like Puerto Rico and  Katrina, apparently one’s immediate reaction is to run amok in the streets, trying to kill each other for food.

I’m ready for some stories featuring unconventional heroes, in diverse environments. This is why I enjoyed World War Z (the book). How does the zombie apocalypse affect the plains of Africa or the mountains of Tibet? The slums of India? Or the favelas of Brazil?

Its also interesting to note that none of the pop culture we know, exists in any of these universe created by the zombie apocalypse. It’s always a surprise to the inhabitants of these stories as if they’d never heard of zombies. They always have to start from scratch. What if we just didn’t? I want to read a story (or watch a show) where all the Black, and Latinx people, in the ‘hood,  lived, because we’ve all been watching movies about the zombie apocalypse for decades, and we know all the rules and the tropes.

why is there no electricity after the apocalypse?

jumpingjacktrash

 

something people writing post-apocalyptic fiction always seem to forget is how extremely easy basic 20th century technology is to achieve if you have a high school education (or the equivalent books from an abandoned library), a few tools (of the type that take 20 years to rust away even if left out in the elements), and the kind of metal scrap you can strip out of a trashed building.

if you want an 18th century tech level, you really need to somehow explain the total failure of humanity as a whole to rebuild their basic tech infrastructure in the decade after your apocalypse event.

i am not a scientist or an engineer, i’m just a house husband with about the level of tech know-how it takes to troubleshoot a lawn mower engine, but i could set up a series of wind turbines and storage batteries for a survivor compound with a few weeks of trial and error out of the stuff my neighbors could loot from the wreckage of the menards out on highway 3. hell, chances are the menards has a couple roof turbines in stock right now. or you could retrofit some from ceiling fans; electric motors and electric generators are the same thing, basically.

radio is garage-tinkering level tech too. so are electric/mechanical medical devices like ventilators and blood pressure cuffs. internal combustion’s trickiest engineering challenge is maintaining your seals without a good source of replacement parts, so after a few years you’re going to be experimenting with o-rings cut out of hot water bottles, but fuel is nbd. you can use alcohol. you can make bio diesel in your back yard. you can use left-over cooking oil, ffs.

what i’m saying is, we really have to stop doing the thing where after the meteor/zombies/alien invasion/whatever everyone is suddenly doing ‘little house on the prairie’ cosplay. unless every bit of metal or every bit of knowlege is somehow erased, folks are going to get set back to 1950 at the most. and you need to account somehow for stopping them from rebuilding the modern world, because that’s going to be a lot of people’s main life goal from the moment the apocalypse lets them have a minute to breathe.

nobody who remembers flush toilets will ever be content with living the medieval life, is what i’m saying. let’s stop writing the No Tech World scenario.

 

lkeke35

As a corollary to the above:

I’ve been saying this about the Zombie apocalypse for years. What city dwellers do you know are gonna immediately drop everything, run out to the woods, and live at a subsistence level, just because dead people are walking around? People with disabilities, allergies, or elderly parents to care for, ain’t going to be doing any such thing. Why is the advice given to people, that they need a “bug out” plan just because the dead are walking? I’m not buying it.

I live in the hood. Do you know how many handymen we have in the hood? How many military personnel? Or even homebody engineers? Do you have any clue how resourceful and cooperative poor people are, and have to be, to survive even with electricity? And how many of us have been trained to expect the best, but plan for the worst case scenario. No, you don’t, because that idea of poverty is never represented in popular culture. Shit! A zombie apocalypse won’t even ruffle our fucking hair. We’ll come up with ways to kill the zombies while keeping it moving. Hell, my brother, all by himself, could have the electricity up and running, a defensive tower, a moat, schooling, and gardening, all in the space of two weeks, and entirely organized by my mother.

It’s also interesting to me that all zombie apocalypse narratives only seem to consist of middle-class, white, suburbanites trying to survive, with a handful of PoC thrown in like confetti. The most that White writers can imagine, for PoC, even during the apocalypse, is that we all die? Really! That seems to be their only scenario. They don’t take into account that poor Black people have been taking care of each other since the invention of poor people. The poor have never believed in an isolationist, go it alone, ruggedly individual attitude, when it comes to surviving, because we couldn’t afford that! That’s the kind of attitude that only people, with all of their basic needs met, could adopt as a life strategy. Poor people are not lazy, and of everyone, they would be the most likely to survive the apocalypse, because we have experience with surviving hardship and insecurity!

On the other hand, the middle-class white guys who invent these types of stories are obsessed with that attitude. They really think that as soon as the electricity stops, people are gonna lose their gotdamn minds, and start trying to kill their neighbors for fun and food, or planning a long journey to go find their wife, son, daughter, lost somewhere in the pre-tech Badlands! Not even taking into account that we have real-life scenarios right here, right now, that we can look at and figure out that most people aren’t gonna act like that. (*cough, ahem! Puerto Rico! Cough*).

I have long come to understand that apocalypse scenario are just wish fulfillment fantasies for middle-class white guys who think that the end of the world will make them the heroes they always wanted to be. As a result, I’m no longer interested in apocalypse scenarios with white men in the center of them as the heroes, and yes, I’m also talking about a certain TV show, too.

 

Source: jumpingjacktrash

Actually, I’ve noticed one staple of almost all apocalyptic fiction written by White people: In everything, from those Purge movies, to alien invasion, and zombie apocalypse movies, the White Western reaction seems to be “go out and kill each other”.

I’m mostly talking about the Purge films, where the premise is that all crime is free for 12 or 24 hours, but all people can think of to do is kill each other. Are you kidding me? Can we get an Oceans 11 version of The Purge, where someone has been planning the perfect heist, all year long? Actually,  I hate the Purge movies because the movies create more questions than they answer, and my super-villain brain keeps trying to organize the cultural, social, and legal implications of such an arrangement.

In a lot of American apocalyptic fiction, we never get any idea how the rest of the world is handling the destruction of the “civilized” world, or even if the rest of the world is experiencing it at all. For all we know, it’s only the Americans and Europeans who have lost their damn minds, and the Canadians are doing just fine! How do we know the Aussies haven’t just all gone punchy from the heat,  put on some fetish gear,  and decide to ride around in the desert?

When White men write about the apocalypse, they often seem to write about destroying whatever, and whoever is left.  Now contrast all that with how Women and PoC write about the apocalypse:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivia-cole/people-of-color-do-surviv_b_5126206.html

https://www.indiewire.com/2016/03/women-and-poc-survive-the-apocalypse-march-2016s-vod-and-web-series-picks-202649/

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Fandom

*Advice on how to NOT be a shitty fanfiction writer:

There IS such a thing as a bad premise. A story that relies on accepting racism, sexism, homophobia etc as valid or justifiable or not something that needs to be contested, like any story that can not exist or function as is if you take those elements out…is a fundamentally bad fucking premise.

Nobody questions the existence of good ideas. Why do some people fight so damn hard to deny that there is such a thing as a bad idea?

Every idea a person has ever had does not NEED to be put out there. Not every idea leads somewhere good.

And each and everyone of us is capable of evaluating whether an idea we have is good or not. If it’ll do harm or not. We each have the capacity to look at an idea we have and say…yeah that’s not really workable. And just….not share it.

This isn’t an imposition. This isn’t censorship. This is basic human awareness of the fact that ideas in our brain impact us and us alone. Ideas we make the choice to enact in the world in some fashion impact others as well as us.

So fucking many of you resort to crying censorship when all that’s being asked of you is applying some scrutiny to what ideas you decide to share, because you can’t seem to wrap your heads around the idea that someone else telling you what you can and can’t write isn’t the only conclusion to be made from conversations about creative responsibility.

Because you just can’t seem to fathom the concept that you could just decide for yourself…oh, huh, I don’t actually HAVE to do this thing I’m digging my heels in about. It’s not a binary equation. It’s not either I do this or I do nothing at all and I might as well just have no rights or freedoms whatsoever gawd.

It’s almost like it’s actually….hmmm when examining the endless array of possibilities that go into crafting ideas and honing them and all the variables that act as search filters to narrow down my selection process of what areas to focus on, what elements to include….what if ‘hey is this idea one that appropriates shit that’s outside my lane or perpetuates harmful and toxic tropes’ was just an added search filter used in that process?

 

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 Post-lude

moami

if you find bones in the forest, sit a bit and listen. they are old and have some good stories to tell. maybe they’ll teach you a spell or two, or explain where the water on our planet came from.

if you find bones by the ocean, run. don’t look back. run, faster, faster. the sea may love you but there are nights where she knows neither mercy nor science, and the bones warn you only once.

deseng

boi if you find bones call the police i hate this website so much

moami

this is a piece of creative writing, in case you couldn’t tell from the fact that real bones don’t usually go hey lil’ mama lemme whisper bony secrets in your ear or warn you of the incoming tides like a calcified weather frog.

Source: moami