Month: October 2022

cucubert:

Spooky season is upon us! To celebrate I put together a few designs promoting books and libraries. If you like them, feel free to use them! These are four of my poster designs! Again, these posters are absolutely free for you to print and use!

Schools and public libraries are under attack and need your support. They are facing quiet defunding, book bans, and acts of hate. Please consider contacting your local representative to ask that these institutions remain funded and protected, and show your support by stopping by your local library.

For additional Halloween freebies celebrating libraries and reading, click the link here!

If you would like to see more of my library/activism designs or would like to get these designs on a T-shirt, book bag, or sticker, you can visit my shop here.

New Horror 2022 – Day 11

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“The Striding Place” by Gertrude Atherton (1896)
“He shuddered and turned away, impelled, despite his manhood, to flee the spot.”

Huh, this is a really surprising ending. It just doesn’t feel like something that would have been published in the late 1800s due to how abruptly it concludes. Naturally, that means I like it.

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“Infected” by Bruce Jones, Richard Corben, Steve Oliff (1982)
“You drag a shaking claw across your mouth and wipe away the sour smelling bile.“

Whoof. The casual racism is real bad in this one, even if it’s portrayed just to show the shitty attitude and personality of the protagonist. It feels more like some white guys riding the wave of edgy work like Heavy Metal to paint a portrait of “those people” and a cautionary story about getting involved with “them.”

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The Experiment dir. Oliver Hirschbiegel (2001)

”Drink. Your. Milk.”

I forget what horror movie list got this on my radar, but it’s a stretch for that genre. It is, however, very dark, and the course of events feels like the inevitable conclusion to humans. It is also early 2000s as hell and that lent it the same grittiness I noted in my previous 90s movie.

I’m not sure I’ll ever convey the dread of knowing another human being is going to be in my studio apartment, the mad rush of cleaning an apartment I’ve neglected for many months, and the ecstatic relief when it’s done and I can be satisfied that it’ll look like I’m a somewhat clean person who does not ignore all elements of basic space maintenance in favor of far more valuable time spent in movies, books, video games, outside, anything that doesn’t feel like such an immense waste of the little time I get to be alive.

A lot of words are thrown around when it comes to creative work: trust, community, ‘gift’ in the Lewis Hyde sense, sincerity, etc. But conviction is different—it’s belief in what you are doing, being driven to create something because it must exist. Because it exists already in your mind so strongly that it has to exist in the world. Conviction doesn’t cower to market forces, it doesn’t move with trends. If it’s not there, then what are you doing? I realize now that what I dislike about certain work—novels, films, whatever—is a lack of conviction.

What you imagine must exist, Joanne McNeil

lezbianz:

being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse

I wrote essays upon essays for years and I would now rather build the cosmic horror supercomputer.

New Horror 2022 – Day 10

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“The Angle of Horror” by Cristina Fernández Cubas (1996)


“Why was her skin suddenly so pale, so slimy to the touch?”

That unsettling dread that is never quite fully explained, but then it makes the reader question whether the source of the dread is in the story or the mind.

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“Save the Last Dance for Me!” by Dennis O’Neil & Pat Boyette (1969)


“Tin Toes makes the decisions around here!”

So many horror comics of this time are just peeks into the Ironic Punishment Division in hell.

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Ravenous dir. Antonia Bird (1999)
“When I stepped inside that cave, the smell of meat cooking… I thanked the Lord, I thanked the Lord.”

I didn’t realize how much I needed to watch something from the 90s after the last week. This is right in that time when we’re getting movies like Sleepy Hollow and Blade, a particular grungy feel and aesthetic with a good budget, but still not overly CG’ed so it has a tactile feel to it. I suppose something like Bone Tomahawk can take you there these days.

New Horror 2022 – Day 9

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“The Black Phone” by Joe Hill (2004)


“Finney was one of the black balloons now.”

Back on that modern lit buzz with a really good ending here. Doesn’t linger, doesn’t seek to resolve anything beyond the barest minimum.

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“Mars Is Heaven!” by Ray Bradbury, Wally Wood, et al. (1953)


“And Lustig began to cry." 

Looks like this story hit pretty hard in the fifties, but then the Godliness and paranoia of the nation was more potent then. Now it comes across as quaint.

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Terrifier 2 dir. Damien Leone (2022)


"You’re really weird, you know that?”

I was ready to dismiss Terrifier 2 as a movie for gore fetishists and anyone who thinks it’s hilarious to watch visceral torture, but watching Scream 2 right after (which I’ve watched many times) made me pause to reconsider. Terrifier 2 is a slasher movie that tries to get weird and show off admittedly great practical VFX and that’s fine, but it’s not for me. Between this and yesterday’s movie selection I’m reminded that I’m just not a certain kind of horror fan.