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I can see that TweetDeck really wants me to uninstall it , as it’s failing horribly and locking up and doing all kinds of dumb stuff like getting caught u pon its own really awesome startup screen. TweetDeck, the worst idea I ever had was updating you. Which really should be titled “Matt writes fanfic.” Yes, I write fanfic, that is to say, I write stuff that is sometimes not set in worlds I created (though it is often about characters that I do create). This is one of them, based particularly in Azeroth, which is to say the universe of WARCRAFT. The general setting is their copyright. The characters are mine inasmuch as I can say that with a straight face. This story is problematic, mostly due to length and time, and I’m not to go about fixing every little thing (or big one) in it. In short, like much work, it is not finished: merely abandoned. Yes, I still have a problem with the passive tense. Sue me. The Bulwark It would have to hold, thought Nord. There were enough hands lashing together enough timbers. None had abandoned the township, even after the morning that showed the smoke of the coming host. He cursed the rain-muddied roads that refused to dust. The clouds would have been visible a day earlier and there would have been that much more time. It was one thing to listen to the Elder’s words and suffer through his visions. It was another to see that he was actually right about one this time. He wondered where Kalin had been off to. She had overseen the planning of the rushed defenses but was not here now. Morning was bone-chill and dripping. At least the road up the mountain would be slippery and treacherous. Nothing larger than a single horse would be coming up that path. Not today, at any rate. “Nord! Nord!” came the hoarse cry from down the road. The runner came around Chal’s Elbow, the last bend before the road into the township cleared. He slipped on the greasy mud as he ran, scared more than he should have been. “We’ve seen them!” The ground at Nord’s feet gave way for an instant as he landed, leaping down from the makeshift bulwark. “The host? Who is it?” Armies didn’t march in the foothills of Alterac without good reason. Timothy stopped, haltingly, finding his grip in the mud, gray furrows dug inches in. “Nord, it’s the Scourge! They’re coming!” Hey! I got interviewed over at CBR. Main page and everything. Lookit that. I’d apologize for the lack of content lately, but as I learned from Baron Strucker, I should never apologize as it’s a sign of weakness. Been a weird couple of weeks, and looks like things just got weirder, mostly in a good way. So I’ve just been writing non-internet stuff, catching up on my Netflix queue, cursing poor quality DVD bootlegs of SHIVERS and the like. Hope to have some stuff together to put up here shortly. Maybe. Possibly. Yeah see, I did it all wrong. I said I was going to post them here and then just flooded the place, leaving the announcement in the dust. So, here it is again. A few years ago, I wrote a column for the lamented Dark, But Shining, entitled Conversation Fear. Horror-focused, sometimes wandering a bit. I’ve brought all those posts over here for easy reading. Just click this here link, and you can have it all at your fingertips. Probably of only limited interest to the comics folks out there, but maybe some others will find them entertaining and/or provocative. Sean responds to my question about macro/micro horror. Take a peek. Aw heck, here:
Perhaps. Lovecraftian horror, at least Lovecraft himself, only hinted and suggested at what would come should the Great Old Ones reassume their rightful position (or perhaps they already have, just that humans haven’t figured it out yet). Lovecraft himself never wrote of a post-Cthulhoid-invasion/awakening scenario. That’s largely been the purview of today’s writers. Lovecraft’s protagonists suffer through personal apocalypses and shuddering revelations that are cosmic in origin, but society doesn’t. Indeed, society survives and only has meaning *because* such an ocurrence is beyond the pale, at least for ordinary humans. So I’d say that Lovecraft double-dips here (and I’ve always maintained that Lovecraft was a science fiction author — there’s that silly distinction again — in his imagining of monsters driven by existential indifference.) Aside, if humans are so insignificant, then why do the agents and cultists of the Great Old Ones plot against them? Does it matter to Cthulhu whether he sleeps or wakes? CLOVERFIELD is an interesting case, as like GOJIRA, it was trying (successfully at times, though I had issues with it) to elicit horrific reactions. Whatever else GOJIRA was, it wasn’t a cuddly cottage industry in the first movie. The monster was terrifying, unstoppable but for mad science. CLOVERFIELD uses the same kind of monster, only a different scale, focusing on the micro, though on a greater tapestry than just the clutch of doomed characters. Would CLOVERFIELD feel more like a science fiction movie if the army had been able to send the monster back to the sea, thus preserving humanity (or at least staving off imminent destruction?) Does LAND OF THE DEAD feel like a horror movie or something else? The zombies are horrible, but they’re also sympathetic and exploited. The humans have successfully rebuilt a normality in the dead land. Outside the walls, zombiepocalypse. Inside the walls, the Village Green (mall writ large). I suppose when one transmits itself within the second, then there’s horror, or is it simply recognition? Golly, I’ve never done this blog back and forth stuff. Am I doing this right? As originally posted at Dark, But Shining some seven months after it had officially closed its doors. Old ghosts and all. Oh, you didn’t think I’d let Halloween pass unnoticed, did you? And after all, horror is where it finds you, where you’re not expecting it. And where better than the abandoned field, the neglected site once thought utterly dead? You cut across it on the way to school, following the path worn down by a thousand other kids just a little bit late to class, hoping to shave off a moment from your evening trek. Secretly you speed up your pace, all the while assuring yourself that it’s no scarier than it is in the daytime. And then your foot catches, something digging into your ankle just above your shoe. If you hadn’t been hurrying, you might not have tripped. Galvanized by adrenalin, your muscles too ready for flight, you instead fall to the grass (twisted and stringy like the hair of your crazy aunt, the one that you always hid from), paralyzed. Good thing it was just a stray root and nothing really dangerous, right? Ah, but I love a good digression. I was indeed hoping to find a proper subject to talk about this Halloween. And by “proper”, I mean unexpected and yet cogent to the matter at hand. FIGHT CLUB? Been done. CHINATOWN? That was last year. KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER? Okay, that was mostly a joke at Rick’s expense (you all remember Eat More People, right?), but still, that was…three years ago. Time indeed flies like an arrow. At any rate, I was in an ever-increasing bind. Nothing was coming. And really, I’ve talked zombies to death and back. Looking kinda grim. No Halloween this year. Called off due to lack of interest and inability to look beyond the pale. But sometimes, sometimes Netflix is kind to me. And by “kind” I mean that they dropped the answer right in my lap. For you see, THE WILD BUNCH arrived a couple days ago. As originally posted on Dark, But Shining. One of the great things about entertainment in the internet age is that getting feedback to creators is a lot more…direct than it used to be. After reading and enjoying Monster Island and Monster Nation, I got in touch with the author, David Wellington and let him know what I thought of the books (which you all know as you read the last installment of this column, right?) I also figured that he’d be a pretty good candidate for an interview at this august weblog. Luckily, he agreed. MM: So, David, first of all: why zombies? Horror has a thousand faces to choose from, so why did you choose zombies for your Monster novels? DW: I always start my writing projects with one cool image. In this case I had been watching a lot of zombie movies. 28 Days Later, the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I went back and watched all the George Romero films. They were all about the survivors, about how people would hold up in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. I wondered what it would be like if you could get out into the devastation and see what the zombies did when there were no people around. I had this image of an astronaut coming back to earth after the zombies had eaten everybody. I saw him walking around New York, walking down 42nd street, unable to take off his space suit because if he did the zombies would smell him and kill him instantly. I wanted to know what he would see–what the millions of zombies would look like, how they spent their time. That’s where the character of Gary came in—originally he was just supposed to be a passive observer who could go behind enemy lines, so to speak. I wanted him to show us what New York looked like when everybody in it was undead. As originally posted during All Hallow’s Month, 2006 at Dark, But Shining. If you believe that horror film must be dictated by the splash of scarlet, the hockey mask, the primordial monster or the glimmering of a machete, you should stop reading right now. Because I’m here to talk about horror film and I’m here to talk about CHINATOWN. Yeah, you read that right. That CHINATOWN. Directed by Roman Polanski, written by Robert Towne, starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, CHINATOWN is pure film noir (though some might argue its purity since it’s actually a color picture). And it’s also one of the more singly disturbing and horrific movies to come out of the seventies. What it lacks in traditional horror tropes, it more than makes up for in mounting dread and a shocking conclusion that rivals any other horror movie you’re likely to see. Of course, I’m going to ruin that shocking conclusion if you haven’t seen CHINATOWN. So if you haven’t, I urge you to stop reading immediately. I won’t warn you again. Continue reading Conversation Fear Special - Chinatown: The Monster As originally posted on Dark, But Shining Greetings, programs! Yes, I’ve dared to show my face again after letting another deadline not only woosh past, but actually break the sound barrier in the process. There’s no excuse. But there is a harsh reality. That being that I’m not in possession of the time or energy required to get this done in a regular manner. I’d every intention (and they were such good intentions) of taking things in a new direction, just that direction happens to be in a completely different one altogether. Part of it was the fact that here I’m sitting around trying to dissect horror in a rational manner. Which is kinda crazy when you get down to it. Horror is all about what happens when the mundane and the irrational collide. Pick apart horror too much and you end up with dark fantasy (maybe) or science fiction (maybe again). One of my favorite examples of this is THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR, which was a movie that came out a few years ago, based on Michael Crichton’s EATERS OF THE DEAD. It’s the story of an arab who’s exiled to the land of the Vikings, where he and his adopted people are confronted by an alien tribe of killers who have harnessed the powers of darkness and are spreading like a black tide across the land. They kill, they eat what they kill and then move on, apparently unstoppable. Serpents of fire twist down entire mountainsides in advance of this damned army. And then something happened. It just turned out that they were a tribe of cannibals who fought as berserkers and worshipped an ancient stone statue that they carried around. Take away the mystique and they were just another band of marauders. What a letdown. All that awesome buildup and then POP, the balloon is in tatters and what you have left is escaping empty air. Continue reading Conversation Fear - Late for My Own Funeral As published originally on Dark, But Shining. This will likely be a short one. The process of buying a new home has grown, shoggoth-like to expand all available space and energy. It is my hope, my hope, that things will settle back into something resembling the new normal in the next several weeks (but there’s all this…painting to do…). There will likely be a number of changes in that time. I’m leaning towards running Conversation, Fear far more intermittently and sticking to a regular fiction feature instead. I’ve done an awful lot of theory and not a lot of practice recently. It’s college all over again. I did want to take a moment or two to talk about horror in unexpected places, though. I love being surprised by glimpses of horror in the everyday, one of the few benefits of this job, I suppose. Continue reading Conversation Fear - Not under the rocks, but out in the open |
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