I’ve mentioned this before but BTS Nieceling and I were supposed to (re)watch a bunch of horror movies this past month. We… didn’t. But we had a list and that’s what I’m gifting y’all with this Halloween: the very long list of horror movies and related documentaries that we basically… didn’t finish because we have nonexistent attention spans!
Enjoy!
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When we last left Anita and her unwieldy polycule + Claudia and Benito, they were being homophobic as hell over one challenger to Rafael’s throne (the hella homophobic Nestor) and Rafael just dropped the bombshell that another, Hector, might be his long lost son. This, by the way, should be impossible as born-shifters are incredibly unlikely because of Hamilton’s own worldbuilding.
Either they kill the human mother partway through gestation and work sort of like a chestburster… or the shifter mother shifts during the full moon early on and just… has a period. It’s only recently (the Las Vegas book) where we found out that tiger shifters can “take pregnant women’s beasts” so they don’t shift and miscarry at any point. They only just started teaching other shifters how to do that.
Read More »If you missed watching this mid-October, here’s the replay!
😀
Mind the Gender Gap Discussion on Monday, October 18 at 7:00 PM
Panelists: Sydney Amanuel ; Sue Kisenwether; Cin’Von Quinzel; Stitch ; and S.R. Toliver
This is the full version of Junji Ito’s interview and the entire set of questions and answers I sent to him that you all were able to read in October’s second Fan Service column Why Horror Fans Love Being Scared. I’ve been a Junji Ito fan from the moment that I learned that horror manga existed and it was an incredible honor to interview him!
I’d like to thank Ito-sensei for answering my questions and sharing his insight! I’d also like to thank Chantelle and VIZ for making this happen as well as for giving me permission to share the interview in full! Please go treat yourself to Sensor after you read the full interview, and of course, go shout about it on social media!
You’ve been working in horror for over thirty years, with new fans coming to your work every year thanks to international translations like your Frankenstein adaptation and Sensor. Do you think of your work as “timeless” and if so, what do you believe contributes to that feeling in your work?
Read More »However, the majority of horror media does not inspire violence. Fans of graphic violence and gore aren’t generally driven to commit harm on any level, much less the racist violence that The Birth of a Nation committed. Liking horror at any level doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a bad person or that you secretly want to make your own Human Centipede to see if it’ll work for you. It simply means that you probably just enjoy the thrill of being scared senseless and witnessing fictional extremes of human behavior.
Why else do horror fans enjoy paying to be frightened? Horror legend Junji Ito, creator of long lasting horror manga staples like Tomie and the recently released Sensor, explains that the phrase “forbidden fruit is the sweetest” comes to mind.
Why Horror Fans Love Being Scared
I love horror even though I am one of the biggest weenies out there. I love it so much that from day one I was like “okay so if Fan Service makes it to October, we’re doing a Halloween column”… and here we are.
Across October, BTS Nieceling and I were supposed to watch at least one horror movie a day. I think we did… six. While I’m a faithful livetweeter of AMC’s History of Horror and get that in every week so far, the niece and I quickly realized that we want vastly different things from horror… and that we really are too chicken to watch these movies together.
However, I really freaking love scary things. I love gore, I love mess, I love madness – especially when reclaimed and reinvented by people who have that thrust upon them because of mental illness. I love being scared by things that probably can’t hurt me.
I’ve talked regularly about my interests in horror. I’ve done rec lists, explored what it means to be a “monstrous” POC and talked about the impact Candyman had on me (short answer… it was thrilling and traumatizing), and I keep trying to get spooky in my own writing.
I studied romanticism and gothic horror in college (and for fun, as I am a nerd) and of course, if you remember my Crimson Peak thing… well I had a Crimson Peak thing. (I own literally every published piece of material for that film actually. I’m obsessed. It’s brilliant!)
Horror is so cool and has so much value. I also love (more hardcore) horror fans! They’re some of the coolest people out there and they seem to have nerves and stomachs of steel!! Shout out to my sister for absolutely traumatizing me that time we watched Dog Soldiers together when I was a tadpole!
Anyway, keep an eye out for a special bonus for this column going out later today… the full, unedited interview with legendary creator Junji Ito. It’s going to be amazing!
Hello friends, I come to you in the aftermath of birthweekend to tell you that I have survived and that I finally finished watching Legend of Korra season three. That was my real birthday gift to myself… on top of all of the other birthday gifts I got for myself because 2021 has been rough.
So here’s quick run down of what birthday looked like:
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I’m tired of being told that I have somehow imagined racism in fandom.
Whether it’s an interaction between myself and someone else, a subtweet thread I come across, a cosplayer in Blackface condescending at everyone, or racism in a piece of fanwork or fandom itself… I am sick to death of being told I’ve somehow managed to exercise my imagination in a way that has “made up” racism in fandom and/or from the source media.
And so are a lot of other people of color across fandom.
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These are my opening statements from earlier today on the FSN plenary. If you didn’t get a chance to see the plenary or you weren’t at FSN at all, here’s my opening comments. Please feel free to ask for clarifications and whatnot. Thanks.
My work primarily covers racism and race in fandom. It actively confronts whiteness and antiblackness – which, increasingly, becomes a multi-fandom bonding activity open to other people of color including Black fans.
Different from many fan studies scholars out and about, I’ve always been actively entangled with fandom on the ground, closer in real time to a reporter thanks to the speed with which I cover fandom practices or dustups. I screencap as second nature, download videos that I sense will be gone by the end of the day, and constantly archive webpages because of the way that modern day online fandom speeds on by.
Read More »So I didn’t read a lot or consume content outside of pure relaxation or research purposes this month. I have been busy as hell. I keep looking at my emails and guiltily slinking away because I have so much to do and limited time to do it because it’s also birthmonth, the one month where I’m basically absolutely allowed to do nothing at all. (Or so I’m telling myself.) Which means that I basically read fan fiction, watched horror movies with BTS Nieceling… and restarted My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic from the beginning. That’s largely it.
Fans had begun to notice him calling his male friends “hubby,” “bae,” and “lover” on Twitter and Instagram, which rang off alarms with swathes of rap’s homophobic fans. Straight men of all ages still use “pause,” so his terms of affection caught a side-eye from many, as did a photo of him and a hospital-bed-bound male friend feeding each other from double cups, as well as a video of him doing a bumbling, twerk-adjace dance to his “Perk” song. A YouTube commenter on the dancing video noted, “For those who say he isn’t gay… explain this, don’t worry, I have time,” capturing the sentiment of many rap listeners at the time.
When asked about his “bae” comments, he clarified, “It’s the language. It’s nothing stupid and fruity going on. It’s the way we talk, it’s the way we live. Those are my baes, those are my lovers, my hubbies, whatever you want to call them.”
First of all, I love the concept of a “Young Thug Week” anywhere.
Read More »A little early because after this point I’ll be super busy BUT… have yourself some birthday omegaverse. The first sequel is already in progress!! (If you’re not an adult or you’re not into omegaverse, please don’t read this! Thanks!)
Marcus, an Alpha out on the prowl, gets the ride of his life when an Omega and their mysterious partner pick him up at a local hangout spot.
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Makoto has long been ostracized because of his odd hobbies and a sexual kink others would see as disgusting. One day he finds a book on summoning demons and manages to summon the intimidatingly beautiful and rather chatty Archduke J. The demon offers to grant Makoto’s deepest twisted desire in exchange for his life. Once Makoto has sated his demented appetites, he fulfills his end of the bargain, only to find he’s been reborn as a monster…in hell!
Content Warnings: gore, dubious consent, flat out lack of consent, body horror, betrayal, cannibalism, complicated power dynamics, death and mutilation, corruption/corruption kink, murder
Okay! So if none of this has scared y’all away, I’m here to give away digital copies of Ryo Suzuri’s MADK!
This is my favorite erotic horror series ever – and I have read plenty. I love the dynamic between Mako and Archduke J as well as how Mako’s relationships with the other demons across the series evolves. This is a deeply dark series based on the premise of getting what you desire when what you want is deeply disturbing. I love Mako and I talked about how appealing he is as a protagonist to me over in one bonus episode of my podcast a few months ago.
I think MADK is thrilling, incredibly delicious, and so dark I wanna reach for a candle. It’s very similar to Tokyo Ghoul and Kaneki’s arc of becoming more monstrous and more human, but there’s the added bonus of uh… incredibly improbable sex. Like it’s wild how bodies work in this series and I love it.
If I could only read one manga series for the rest of my life, it’d be this one. Honestly.
And that’s why I’m choosing to give away copies!
TO ENTER: Be over 18 and use your real email address when you leave a comment below about what your favorite piece of horror in the world is. (While you don’t get bonus points for erotic horror, I’d appreciate it nonetheless!) You can comment using your social media or your wordpress account! Message me on Twitter or via the contact form if your comment doesn’t show up by like 9AM the following day.
Giveaway closes 10/23 at 11PM! I’ll email the winner!!
A birthmonth surprise for y’all! Some sweet sweet, semi-sexy Castlevania content for those of y’all who are into that. I have literally no idea how to open comments on that site at any point (if you can comment on something, please do because I do not know what I did wrong there).
For Birthmonth 2021, one of the non-omegaverse gifts I have chosen to bestow upon you all is… some Castlevania fan fiction. Canon adjacent (not necessarily compliant) and set across different characters/pairings around the series. All things are vaguely canon levels of sexy. Probably.
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Captions:
Image A: The “Don’t make me tap the sign” meme with bottom text that reads: “Declaring that the real problem with how we talk about racism is “angry” POC and not racists harming and harassing them is… racist. Bitch.”
Image B: The “Don’t make me tap the sign” mtoeme with bottom text that reads: “If you’re angrier at POC in any fandom for being “mean” – cussing, snarking, etc. – when speaking about racism in fandom than you are at racists for BEING RACIST IN FANDOM… you’re a fucking racist.
Why do racists keep getting to define the rules of engagement? Why do they get to position themselves as neutral and unbiased, when they’re clearly biased in favor of white supremacy in a given space? Why is it that racists get to declare POC “too angry” to listen to and have people listen to them instead… As they angrily insult the “too mean” POC simply asking people to stop being less racist. Do people think this isn’t their entire goal? To make listening to anti racists/stopping racism in any space or capacity too hard or scary to do.
It’s wild that we have to be nice to racists… or else they won’t listen to us? Because kindness is so important to them.
Apparently.
Except… have you ever noticed that the people who insist that conversations about racism just have to be done at their tone and in a way that they’ve previously signed off… are some of the nastiest assholes on the internet?
As Popova points out, what “dark fic” is ultimately depends on individual reader and creator interpretations of the trope or pairing. This, along with the intensity of the dark content and what it’s used for in the story, leads to people forming personal catalogs of dark content on main, works they enjoy and ones they very much don’t. Across fandoms and age groups within fandoms, two people may have vastly different understandings of what dark fic looks like and what kind of dark fic they’re okay with consuming and creating.
One person might view Real Person Fiction itself as “dark fic,” because it crosses established personal boundaries for the relationships we have with celebrities and ones they have with each other. Another one might only count RPF that uses extreme elements: for example, an alternate universe that places characters from an idol group in the universe of The Purge and has them enact horrific violence against each other. Even Omegaverse, my favorite trope/genre in fandom ever, can be considered dark fic by some people, because it often serves up gender/bio essentialist worldbuilding wrapped around some werewolf-y characters getting intimate.
On “Dark Fic,” Morality, and Why Critical Thinking Is Vital
First of all, major thanks to Dr. Milena Popova, author of Dubcon: Fanfiction, Power, and Sexual Consent, and the brilliant Arsenic Jade for speaking with me for this piece and broadening my horizons.
I’ve wanted to talk about the concept of “dark fic” – which my expert fans agree is one of those unhelpfully broad fandom terms that says everything but means… less than you’d think – for a hot minute now. For starters, y’all know I don’t actually like fandom terms that are hard to define because at the end of the day we’re all sitting here like “okay but what actually are you trying to say here” and “dark fic” is no different.
Especially when it comes to not uh… making liking or hating it your personality. Both things are extremely embarrassing for me to see because I don’t think that they’re healthy approaches to content because the positioning alone (interested/hating) isn’t enough to give you a good grasp of a person especially when you consider that one person’s dark and upsetting content is… someone else’s Tuesday afternoon.
Read More »Over on Henry Jenkins’ site, he’s using his platform to host what he’s calling a “Global Fandom Jamboree” that focuses on scholars speaking on their work on their own and with the other scholars in their field, more or less.
Here’s what’s up so far.
I won’t be linking to everything in roundups like this again, but I’ll be tweeting infrequently about the parts of this project that really stand out to me. And of course, if they move me extra hard, they’ll probably wind up in my end of the month link post!
Happy reading!
Stitch's Media Mix 
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