MetaFilter posts tagged with Horror and fantasy

He is interested in confusion

misteraitch — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:28:34 -0800

‘I am a phantasmagoric maximalist. I like things to be overwhelmingly strange and capacitous. I want what I write to live; it isn’t about something, it is something’— Michael Cisco. Michael Cisco is a professor, novelist, critic and translator. An aficionado and idiosyncratic exponent of weird fiction, his published works include The Divinity Student, The Golem, Secret Hours, The Tyrant, The Traitor, The Narrator, The Great Lover, and Celebrant. Some shorter texts published on-line are The Thing in the Jar and The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau. Also see his series of short essays Jungle Mind, and his commentary on Kafka’s ‘Zurau Aphorisms.’

Kindness killed, just as surely as the huntsman's knife

The Whelk — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:37:39 -0800

Seven For A Secret - an anonymous fanfic author creates seven unhappy ( or at least, unconventional ) endings for Disney Princesses by placing them in proper historical, mythological, or thematic context.

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff

Artw — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 15:04:51 -0800

Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, a podcast in which writer and game designer Robin D. Laws (Hamlet's Hitpoints, The GUMSHOE system) and game designer and writer Kenneth Hite (Tour De Lovecraft, GURPS Horror) (previously) talk about stuff. Stuffs include: Why vampires are assholes and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, stopping WWI and Beasts of the Southern Wild, Margaret Atwood and the difference between a mystic and an occultist, why no invented setting is as interesting as the real world and Woodrow Wilson, Gencon and sundry RPGs, Neil Armstrong, HP Blavatsky and theosophy, the ebook prcing settlement, what big publishing could learn from RPG publishers, and the many crazy fictional possibilities of Charles Lindbergh and his UFO investigating chums, and Dungeons and Dragons edition wars and Aliester Crowley.

False Positive: a stew of short sci-fi and the macabre comics

filthy light thief — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:28:36 -0800

False Positive is a a short story, webcomic anthology, which author and illustrator Mike Walton likes to call a stew, cooked from the gut, made with "a scoop of horror, a pinch of science-fiction, a dash of fantasy, and a bit of (To Be Determined)." Mike says the language could be rated PG-13, and the visuals feature a varying degrees of comic book violence and gore. There are 10 stand-alone "chapters" posted now, and new posts are made every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Mike also made a short trailer to further pique your interest. If you like his work, he doesn't have any merch available at the moment, but his prior project was the digital comic Dual. There are only six "issues," and the first one is free. If you want a bit more, here's a short review of the final chapter. He has also posted videos of some of his sketches, which are of known characters. You can see some of his other finished works on his other website, QuasiLucid. He's also done a re-interpretation of Batman in Red (the Covered blog, previously).

Gingerbread House

The Whelk — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:39:39 -0800

"There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls. It’s been many years since any child was taken. But still, on nights like these, when the wind comes cold from Tsibeya, mothers hold their daughters tight and warn them not to stray too far from home. “Be back before dark,” they whisper. “The trees are hungry tonight.” Tor.com brings us some short horror/fairy tale fiction from Leigh Bardugo, "The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale."

We’re Tearing the Heart Out of Saturday Night!

zarq — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:59:01 -0800

"Let's do those drive-in totals. We have: Nineteen dead bodies (plus fragments). Ten breasts (shame on you, TNT censors). Two zombie breasts. One-hundred twenty-five zombies. Mummy dogs. One-half zombie dog. Ten gallons blood. Brain-eating. Gratuitous embalming. Zombie fu. Nekkid punk-rocker fondue. Gratuitous midget zombie. Torso S&M. One motor vehicle chase (totalled by zombies). Pool cue fu. No aardvarking. Heads roll. Brains roll. Arms roll. Hands roll. Joe Bob says, Check It Out." Only on MonsterVision. On Saturday nights from 1993 to 2000, the TNT network aired MonsterVision, a "drive-in movie" double feature of some of the best (and often the worst) cult and B-movies ever made. Originally guest-hosted by Penn and Teller, the network soon turned the reins over to actor and professional drive-in movie reviewer Joe Bob Briggs (whom some may remember from the Daily Show’s "God Stuff with John Bloom." Briggs was once President of the Trinity Foundation, a Dallas-based religious watchdog group that investigates fraud perpetrated by religious organisations against the public.) Briggs had spent the previous eight years hosting "Joe Bob Brigg's Drive-In Theater," a weekly movie show on The Movie Channel (TMC), which showed cult and B-movies rated using Briggs' unique euphemisms and special system of things to watch for in each film (Drive-In Totals) -- developed during his time as a movie reviewer for the Dallas Times Herald. The show was cancelled after a 490-episode run ("Aardvarking," mentioned above, is Briggs' euphemism for sex.) In grand late-night horror host tradition, Briggs incorporated those elements into his new TNT show: MonsterVision. However, TNT (unlike TMC -- a pay cable channel) censored all the movies they showed, as well as Briggs’ monologues, for television broadcast. And, like “Mystery Science Theatre 3000″ it wasn’t the movies that drew you in but Briggs’ segments, where he’d use his educated, yet at the same time peckerwood humor to ease down the visual crap you were swallowing en mass.
Joe Bob’s Website has hundreds of drive-in movie reviews, from Killer Shrews to Head Cheerleader, Dead Cheerleader, to Piranha 3D and Eight Legs to Love You. "In other words, absolutely no plot to get in the way of the story. My kinda movie." The Youtube playlists linked above include the following full-length Monstervision movies: * The Fog / Transcript * The Funhouse / Transcript * Ice Cream Man * It's Alive * It Lives Again * Jaws 2 * Maximum Overdrive / Transcript * The People Who Live Under the Stairs * Poltergeist / Transcript * Project Metalbeast / Transcript * Return of the Living Dead / Transcript * The Stepfather / Transcript * Swamp Thing / Transcript * They Live! (With guest “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) All available MonsterVision show transcripts (Only 95 are listed.) Also: Pet Shop, in 13 parts: ("This movie is so lame I’m not even gonna embarrass the writers by saying their names on tv: Brent V. Friedman and Mark Goldstein.") 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. MonsterVision Intros * Original * A Christmas Nightmare * Godzilla New Year’s Eve Marathon * Interstitial Montage * MoonsterVision * Small Titles, Big Screams * and... the MonsterVision theme song. (So bad, it's good.) Extras * The Joe Bob Briggs FAQ (Q. What the heck is all this "Fu" stuff? A: The original "kung fu" resulted in the all-purpose suffix, "Fu," meaning "an act of senseless or random violence, usually inflicted on the viewer.") * Onion A/V Club Interview * A list of movies containing commentary tracks by Joe Bob. (Youtube has a clip from Samurai Cop with his commentary.) * Joe Bob on Twitter * Wikipedia * YouTube user hootyhaha has uploaded a number of Joe Bob’s commercial break segments. Also of possible interest: Reason Magazine article by Joe Bob: Kroger Babb’s Roadshow: "How a long-running movie walked the thin line between exploitation and education." It's a lengthy review of a movie from the 50’s: Mom and Dad. (Wikipedia: Kroger Babb)

"I Make Monster Porn"

zarq — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:21:20 -0800

Show The Monster : "Guillermo del Toro’s quest to get amazing creatures onscreen." Video: Monsters in the Making. (Via)

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."

Artw — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:45:13 -0800

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown - A 90 minute documentary on HP Lovecraft with contributions by Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter and Guillermo Del Toro.

Writemare at 20,000 feet

Artw — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:30:35 -0800

Richard Matheson—Storyteller - To mark the publication of a book of tribute stories writer and editor Richard Bradley has been blogging about the author's 60 year writing career- covering I Am Legend, Duel, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, not to mention Somewhere in Time (full index here). Of course Matheson is probably most famous for his contributions to the Twilight Zone, being one of it's three major writers and scripting Nightmare at 20,000 feet. Twice.

Critters online genre fiction workshop

kavasa — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 11:35:21 -0800

Are you an aspiring writer of genre fiction? Would you like to workshop your stuff before submitting it to magazines and publishers, but you don't happen to have a group of local friends that you can workshop with? Critters.org is an online, highly automated fiction workshop. You submit your manuscript, it waits in a queue until its time comes up, and then it gets sent out to all the active subscribers, some of whom will hopefully send you some helpful feedback! Make sure to critique at least one story every week, though, or you lose your privileges to post your own stories to the queue. "Genre fiction" here means fantasy, science fiction, or horror. Personally I find this curious - why not non-genre fiction? Heck, why not mystery, alt history, or romance? Ah well! Better some than none.

You know, that thing where...

Artw — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:05:12 -0800

The secret origin of TV Tropes (Previously)

Speculative Poetry

cupcakeninja — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 05:08:53 -0800

When we think of contemporary poetry, what comes to mind is difficult footnotes, scorching confessions, bardic combat, or maybe a new translation of a classic. Look to the land of children and you spy the sidewalk's end or a pack of Thneeds. Somewhere between the gravid and the childlike is the realm of speculative poetry. Speculative poetry has little in the way of defined form, though the SciFaiku has its adherents, but it focuses on speculative subject matter: fantasy, horror, science fiction. How is it? Sort of like all poetry: some great, some horrible, and much in between. Rhyme and meter seem a bit more common than in poetry generally these days, but not universal. Many speculative poets belong to the Science Fiction Poetry Association, as well as an annual award. If you want an idea of who writes this stuff, click that last link, and you may see names of SF writers you know. Who else writes this stuff? Well, did you know Robert E. Howard wrote poetry, and rather a lot of it? Conan's creator wrote many volumes of weird, wonderful verse, all worth hunting down. One of Howard's contemporaries, Clark Ashton Smith, was a prominent poet in the earlier part of the 20th century who lived a typically poetic life of penury, wrote many volumes, was well reviewed, and is today best known for association with matters tentacular. Joseph Payne Brennan came along a bit later, but was likewise prolific. Many SF aficionados remember his stories, but I've always preferred his verse to his fiction. Sadly, ~~a few minutes poking around on Google~~ an exhaustive search revealed none of it online. Get thee to a library if you care about fantastic and subtly disturbing poetry. The audience for speculative poetry is, as you might guess, not humongous. The web has allowed for much flowering and greater publicity, however, from online publications to online symposia. Poets give interviews about their work, and there's help out there for those who want to learn how to write it. Finally, where do you go to read more of it? Check the online symposia links in the previous paragraphs: lots of links in there. Also, check the Wikipedia entry for speculative fiction for online venues for speculative poetry.