yuemusings

[yuemusings]

DISTURBING THE READER

A Comparative Looks at Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (LaRocca) & Where Are You, Dear Hear? (Enriquez, trans. McDowell)

*CONTENT WARNINGS*

General Disturbing content, mentions of death (including infants & animals), mentions of suicide/self-harm, abuse & manipulation, brief mention of homophobia, descriptions of GBH, implication of sexual assault/abuse, kink play

*SPOILERS FOR*

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (2021), The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (2009), Saw X (2023), Saw 3D (2010), Happy Death Day (2017), Scream (1996)

It’s hard to say what a ‘good’ disturbing horror is. Is it a story that terrifies you to the point of being unable to sleep? Or one that leaves you feeling disgusted and makes your stomach churn each time you just think about it? Or where you’re left almost in a paralysed state as you’ve been forced to think of a wider picture you don’t have the theological prescription to see? It’s hard to say what a disturbing horror even is because at its core isn’t all horror disturbing? Is Saw more disturbing than a psychological horror like Get Out because it features more gore? Or is Get Out more disturbing because it features more difficult political and social topics? That’s not what we’re discussing in this essay - although I eventually do want to. Here we are discussing the art of doing disturbing horror and more importantly doing it well. I’ll be looking at two short stories for this - Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke from Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke & Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca & Where Are You, Dear Heart? from The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Marianna Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell.

Subjectivity is the root of a majority of arguments as we’ll all possess differing subjective opinions (for example, there are people who believe the Child’s Play franchise isn’t a masterpiece of modern horror and my subject opinion is that objectively those people are wrong).

But with my discussion of these books I will be heavily relying on my own opinions & readings of the stories as well as looking at the reviews & content other people have made about the books.

So with no further ado, let’s get into it.

I’ve been internally debating horror that sets out to truly disturb since reading Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke And Other Misfortunes. From Waterstones, to the author’s website it’s boasted as a viral TikTok sensation across all of its marketing and that’s more than accurate. The hashtag of the book title has 8.2 million views and the GoodReads page has 42,755 ratings alongside 12,469 reviews.

However, the reason it’s so viral it seems is due to its divisive nature - many preaching the book as far too disturbing, and even relishing in its own disgusting nature. It currently sits at 3 stars on GoodReads.

LaRocca is a fairly new author - the earliest of his work I could find only dated back to 2021 - and is a Bram Stoker Award nominee as well as won a Splatterpunk Award - both for Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. I couldn’t find much on LaRocca except for an interview where they describe their work as “the dark and the absurd filtered through a decidedly queer lens,” as well as citing somewhat controversial films “High Tension, Martyrs, Inside, and A Serbian Film.” as influences due to their “frenetic intensity.” He also cites in this interview and in an afterword of their anthology book that a lack of belief in God he desperately attempted to achieve as well as a desire to fit in with the children around them is a major inspiration and driving emotion behind their writing.

I’d like to preface that I wanted to like Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. I’m a big fan of horror and even more of psychological horror. I went in anticipating perhaps a gory version of Hereditary - another story that relishes in its own shocking macabreness in a way - as both indicated itself as a subset of gothic literature as well as being gory. However, I found I just couldn’t. The first story to greet you at the start of this anthology is the titular (and most ‘popular’) story, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. It’s easy to see why these collections of short stories are named after this specific one as it’s easily the best. The other two stories - The Enchantment and You’ll Find It’s Like That All Over are in my opinion significantly weaker.

Described as a “macabre ballet between two lonely young women”, we follow the rise and horrific fall of an online relationship between two women in a chat room in the 2000’s.

Warnings for spoilers now.

In Things Have Gotten Worse, we’re introduced into this world via an Author’s note - it's not LaRocca speaking in this author’s note however, it’s an in world character who we never see who is reporting on “… the untimely demise of Agnes Petrella.” They assure us of their detachment of the two characters (“… no way affiliated with Zoe Cross’ legal counsel or Agnes Petrella’s surviving family.”) before informing us due to the police report nature of what we’re about to read, “… certain elements of [Zoe and Agnes’] communication have been redacted or censored…”

Off the bat, I really liked this formatting of this story being pulled from a police report. Whilst it was a bit confusing - I had to go back in the book to check if this was indeed an author’s note from LaRocca and if the story was true if so - it wasn’t. It helps to build on the fetish themes as we feel voyeuristic reading these women’s conversations - and every time we see an “[Omitted.]” it reminds us we shouldn’t be seeing this and builds upon the suspense as your mind races; what could possibly be censored in a chat log that already details a masturbation instruction and then a detailed recount of the horrific murder of an infant? A lot of the omitted make sense - like the domain of the emails/ chat rooms the couple use. Almost like the companies didn’t want to be associated with a murder or get involved with a law suit. The framing of the police report that also tells us in the first page that the main character will wind up dead by the end also helps add to that feeling of dread and voyeurism. With every page, you feel yourself walking down a hallway and know no matter how slow or fast you walk (slash read), there’s no way to save Agnes from her fate. It’s a cruel dramatic irony we can’t escape.

Speaking of…

Agnes is a woman on a queer chat forum who lists an antique apple peeler for sale - circa 1897 to be exact - in an eloquent prose that touches on how much the antique peeler means to her family.

This isn’t your regular Facebook marketplace listing. Agnes writes for nearly 3.5 pages about this apple peeler and its history with her Grandmother.

It catches the attention of Zoe Cross, who emails offering to purchase the peeler for her elderly Grandfather due to the possible link to composer Charles Ives. Her email similarly is lavish with familial detail and the two women continue to email, Zoe eventually learning Agnes is financially and physically cut off from her parents due to being a lesbian. Zoe sends Agnes a thousand dollars, taking care of her rent and asking her to keep the apple peeler and not to sell it as it’s her last familial connection. Quickly - quite quickly actually - the two women start instant messaging in a chat room.

About the IMing. Due to the fact this story is the book version of found footage we have no author based description - everything in the book is basically digital based dialogue. World building is hard, especially in such a short space of page without this narrative description, and LaRocca is skilled in giving us just enough to build the world in our head without overloading us with exposition or scene setting. However, I struggle to believe the setting of 2000 - despite the use of a chat room that evokes memories of AOL and MSN, the ‘dialogue’ feels like it was written in the 2020’s. It almost reminds me of the first Fear Street in that regard. I adore the Fear Street movies, but even I have to admit the first one - set in 1994 - doesn’t really feel like it’s set in ‘94. Speaking of, the dialogue is another point of contention. Some of the criticism Things Have Gotten Worse receives relates to the elaborate prose Zoe and Agnes uses - and how it can often be somewhat hard to differentiate between the two voices? In my scriptwriting class at uni, one of the things we were taught is to make sure when writing dialogue, the voices are distinct. Make sure two characters don’t speak too similarly - they need some kind of a unique voice even if they have the same accent as another character. The similar prose styles of Agnes and Zoe does lead to a bit of a difficult time reading - it can take a while to realise who’s speaking, especially with the IM chat logs and when a character sends multiple emails in a row.There’s a take you can stand with that the similar prose between the two suggests why they found each other and were attracted to each other, but I feel like that would be supported more if there was another characters speech we could compare that to - but with the nature of the story and formatting we don’t have that. Even the author’s note uses lavish language and it does still make for a little bit of having to go back and forth to realise who’s actually talking - or, well, typing.

Back in the world of the story, the two’s conversations eventually result in a discussion into some fetishes of Zoe’s. The two enter an online master/slave relationship - Zoe’s demands of Agnes leading to her losing her job and killing a salamander under Zoe’s request.

This escalation of Agnes and Zoe’s relationship and eventual dynamic does kind of come out of nowhere. It’s effective for horror, but outside of the shock value it’s not very effective from a plot point of view.

To her credit, this untimely unaliving of the amphibian does prompt Agnes to leave but she ends up returning to Zoe and the two resume their relationship and dynamic. Agnes’ insistence on wanting a baby leads Zoe to instruct her to purposely contract a tapeworm by eating days old meat. Agnes does indeed contract a tape worm, referring to it as Zoe’s baby and even going as far as to ascribe a gender and name to the parasite.

This part is a point of major criticism shared by people online. A disclaimer, I am not a lesbian myself and therefore cannot be the voice of knowledge on the topic. However, I did some research. I found an article from 2020 that stated lesbian & bisexual women in WLW relationships were more likely to report a pregnancy ending in stillbirth. Lesbian women were more likely to report low birth weight infants and bisexual and lesbian women were more likely to report very preterm births compared to heterosexual women. A lot of queer women in queer relationships struggle with pregnancy and childbirth and as such this plot point has been criticised as a ploy of using something WLW couples actually struggle with as a horror plot point - especially since LaRocca is not a queer women (although they are a queer person I’m not trying to negate their identity). This delves into a larger discussion on representation and who gets to tell certain stories.

When Zoe realises how rapidly Agnes’ physical & mental health is deteriorating, she ceases their master slave contract and cuts communication. Agnes spirals and when she passes the tapeworm she ends up seemingly ending her own life by cutting out her own eyes with the antique apple peeler.

It’s a lot.

Most of all, the narrative feels unnecessarily cruel. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by horror movie villains having clear motives even in the most ridiculous of movies (heck, John Kramer has four throughout the Saw franchise) but I don’t understand why Zoe is insistent on torturing Agnes. (I will note Zoe isn’t an explicit villain but she’s definitely the antagonist to Agnes’ protagonist) Again, the story is short and can only get so much across in its 120 pages but the only explanation resembling a reason for Zoe’s abuse of Agnes is that she’s a domme, but that kind of excuse leads to some uneasy generalisations around kink play and those who engage in it.

Another general criticism I have of the story - and this is an opinion quite a few agree with - when LaRocca’s work isn’t relishing in its own shocking macarbness, it’s kind of boring. Maybe I don’t have the attention span for it, but at certain points I was feeling myself uninterested in what I was reading. This happens less with Things Have Gotten Worse to be fair, but I did find especially in The Enchantment I wasn’t interested and was actively getting frustrated.

And another reason I was getting frustrated was because of my other major criticism - I don’t like any of the characters. I do think this may be on purpose - as implied by LaRocca’s tweet here - “I promise you—reading horror fiction with complex, vile, yes even “problematic” characters will not impact the integrity of your moral character. Not every character in a FICTIONAL book needs to reflect your ethics and values. I will die on this hill because I know I’m right.”.

And, it’s true. Not every character has to be morally good. There are plenty of characters that horror fans love despite their morally dubious or even outright heinous actions. For instance, murderous doll Chucky. Love of my life Amanda Young. John Kramer. There are also morally dubious protagonists in horror, Gale Weathers is seen as narcissistic and power hungry in the Scream franchise, in Happy Death Day, Tree is - for lack of a better word - an asshole to everyone around her at the start of the film. But, at least for myself, my dislike of the characters in LaRocca’s work doesn’t come from a moral high ground. I don’t know who to root for. I simply don’t like any of them. Like I said, this issue is less present in Things Have Gotten Worse but in the other two short stories I genuinely didn’t root for anyone. I didn’t have a reason to. I didn’t have a reason to keep myself engaged in the world of these stories. There’s a reason slashers that set up 2 dimensional meatbags as their only ‘characters’ generally are critiqued and seen as ‘bad.’ If we’re given nothing to root for or relate to, what’s the point? In Scream, heralded as one of the greatest horror movies of all time, nearly every kill we get a chance to get to know the victim that dies and like them - and that’s not even mentioning Sidney who’s one of the best final girls of all time. If we’re not given anything to like or find interesting, what’s the point of the story? What’s the point of us as viewers/readers spending time in this world?

Take, for example, Saw 3D vs Saw X.

I promise I’ll stop mentioning Saw. Actually I can’t promise that.

In Saw X we’re mainly following John Kramer getting revenge on some people who scammed him by promising to cure his cancer. That’s not a spoiler, it was in the trailer. Despite being a morally horrific character, the film is garnering great reviews and people are willing to follow him in the story because we enjoy being around him.

Whilst in Saw 3D, that guy who lies about being in a Saw trap? Fuck that guy. Even though as a dislikeable character we see him getting tortured, we don’t enjoy seeing him getting tortured ‘cause there’s nothing there for us. What’s the point? Maybe this is because LaRocca cites A Serbian Film as an inspiration which is a red flag unto itself. A Serbian Film is once again mindless torture without the plot or any semblance of humanity within the filmmaking.

So, overall, do I hate this book? No. I think it’s an okay/good book depending on how much you agree with what I’ve mentioned. I don’t think it’s a bad book and maybe with a couple more revisions it could’ve been really great. I feel like LaRocca was maybe trying to evoke the delicate torment Black Swan evoked - “a macabre ballet” - but ultimately I feel it’s more aligned to a reddit horror story in its current state.

So can a disturbing horror short story be great?

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed - originally published in Spanish under the title Los Peligros de Fumar en la Cama - is a book I couldn’t help but keep thinking about when reading Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes. Similarly to the latter mentioned book, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is an anthology series composed of several short stories under the genre of psychological & supernatural horror.

Mariana Enriquez is an Argentinian author/journalist. The history and politics of Argentina are easy to see in her writing - especially in several short stories that feature ghostly children and children who return following disappearances. Being born in 1973, Enriquez was young but grew up in the time when “military officials carried out the systematic theft of babies from political dissidents who were detained or often executed and disposed of without a trace.” She describes herself as not “want[ing] to be complicit in any kind of silence; to be timid about horrifying things is dangerous too.” What she knows and what she believes is present in her work. Curiously, she also seems to pride herself in research - asking for clarification and feedback on any male love making scenes from her gay friends. I’d describe Enriquez work as horror that can sicken people that also has a delicateness and preciseness to it - everything is planned.

A story that is reminiscent of the themes of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is the 7th short story in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed; Where Are You, Dear Heart? We follow an unnamed woman who details over only 10 pages her journey with cardiophilia - or a fetish for heartbeats.

Okay, so let’s acknowledge the significant differences between these stories; Things Have Gotten Worse has 121 pages whilst Where Are You, Dear Heart? only has 10 - which fun fact puts Where Are You, Dear Heart? officially in the short story region whilst Things Have Gotten Worse is in the novella territory. Things Have Gotten Worse follows a queer couple whilst the woman’s two partners in Where Are You, Dear Heart? are male. Where Are You, Dear Heart? takes place around the 70’s/80’s but it’s not explicitly made clear and is a more conventional narrative experience compared to the chat logs/emails of Things Have Gotten Worse.

So, why am I comparing these two? I think there’s enough similarities to warrant such. Hear me out! Both books focus on unconventional fetishes - yes cardiophilia is quite unconventional but also the length Zoe wants to control Agnes’ life & actions down to forcing Agnes to kill a small creature for Zoe is a bit more than your typical fetish. Both use this fetishistic relationship as a way to examine our character.

The story opens with a woman detailing seeing an older relative of her friend’s (supposedly the friend’s Dad) penis when she’s a young child as well as very briefly touching on the fact he potentially/more than likely sexually abused her.

I really chose a safe first topic, huh?

Right off the bat with Where are You, Dear Heart? we’re dealing with similarly upsetting themes of someone being taken advantage of. There’s more to be said on that but I’ll touch on that when we get to it. Off the bat Mariana grabs our attention - especially as the narrative voice or narrator - speaks about these incidents so nonchalantly. Similarly to how some victims can end up with amnesia after suffering abuse.

One of the few things our narrator remembers from this man isn’t his name or even his face. It’s the fact he died due to a failed heart operation. That night she scratches an X onto her chest with her nail. She continues to detail that she became attached to a sickly Helen Burns from the novel Jane Eyre - becoming attached because Helen is dying - even going as far as to view the scene where Jane sleeps in Helen’s bed on her last day alive as a love scene (That imagery will return later). She goes on to explore what arouses her even further - as many teenagers going through puberty do - and visits a friend’s brother when she learns he has an inoperable tumour between his heart and lungs believing she could fall in love with him. However, she finds he’s too sick for her to be attracted to him, so satisfies herself with medical books.

I find this plot point of the brother actually a bit funny - not the fact a kid is dying - but it almost seems reminiscent of that cliche of being attracted to the best friend’s brother, this is basically like that! But it’s his cancer that led her to being interested. And with this, we’re invited to view the narrator as a regular teenage girl figuring herself out. Plenty of girls have their first crush be a book character and a friend’s relative - it just so happens she’s not attracted to their looks but their ailments. I really appreciate this framing of our main character - we’re provided context for the fetish in the main storyline and allowed to find a way to relate it to our own lives. It feels like a mature way to handle this idea - it’s not a gruesome spectacle, it's a character study, we’re grounding the character in relatable reality with book crushes and the like.

We continue to experience the narrator developing her sexuality via the medical books she spends all her allowance on - even going as far to refine her interests such as knowing she isn’t a fan of tuberculosis, cancer or the suggested ‘eroticism’ of quietly dying characters in Victorian novels. She clarifies herself as being attracted to cardiovascular disease and purchases a CD that held recordings of different heart beats, murmurs and flutters that pleases her so much she ends up getting rid of the CD due to the power over her as well as makes her realises she’s not interested in traditional sex. She clarifies the moment she ‘lost control’ so to speak was when she found a website where heart beat fetishists could share and indulge in audio recordings of different heartbeats. Even the way she describes her ‘alone time’ is almost medical - brutal and bluntly descriptive to the point I couldn’t put the description in this video without fear of no one ever seeing this blog. I’d highly recommend reading both these books to not only get the full effect of the author’s words but also, make up your own opinion.

It’s a subtle bleed in - pardon the metaphor - of Enriquez showcasing how the fetish is taking over our narrator’s life. Gone are the emotive prose she used to describe the sickly Victorian characters she was attached to. Now she’s taking influence from the medical jargon.

On the heartbeat website, our narrator refrains from communicating, preferring to keep to herself. Until she locates an account where she cannot resist reaching out. Somehow, they live in the same city but choose to ignore the ideas of fate and become enamoured with each other - his sickly heartbeat and her stethoscopes against the world.

“We both knew how it would end, and we didn’t care.”

A statement that builds unto itself, it gives imagery of desperation. I instantly thought of the poster of Blue Valentine - a desperate intimacy between two lovers who no one else understands. It’s curious how the only people that get extended descriptions are the characters our narrator is attracted to or the prominent men in her life. We’re seeing the world through our narrator’s tunnel vision view - similarly to how we only see the world of Things Have Gotten Worse through what Agnes and Zoe give away in their communications. I really focused on the description afforded to this man our narrator becomes enamoured with. He’s described as sick - which isolates him from the rest of the cardiophilia community as they believe he takes things too far by playing with his illness to produce audio recordings. Our narrator also notes that he resembles the man from the start of the story - the friend’s parent with the scar and… penis. With this, I build this image of possibly she’s further being taken advantage of. Throughout, Enriquez doesn’t give any indication to how much time has passed between each event and as such it’s almost like we still have the original young girl in our minds as we read. With this visual reminder of her original abuser and the fact he’s known to their community as someone who takes things too far, it evokes the idea that this man is more sinister than the narrator might be recognising. And it’s a common theme for young inexperienced women in kink to be taken advantage of and I wonder if this is what Enriquez is portraying.

As the cardioplay grows more extreme - experimenting with items ranging from caffeine to drugs - our narrator grows frantic and begins to develop a desire to maim him so as to grow closer to the man and his heart.

“But I think I ended up hating him. Maybe I hated him from the start. Just like I hated the man that made me abnormal, who’d made me sick, with his tired penis in front of the TV, and that beautiful scar.”

The statements about her lover are short and punchy. Whilst the sentences about this original man - the one who now it seems more clear may have indeed sexually abused her in some way (“made me” “with his”) - build upon each other. What’s building? Her rage? Her general emotion? Her regret? I think that’s up to interpretation.

This hatred and association with her previous abuser seemingly influences our narrator to further push this man to his limits. More drugs, holding a bag over his head, even pleasuring herself in a toilet stall when he’s hospitalised due to their play. The story ultimately culminates in her insisting on wanting to see his heart - only referring to the heart as “it.” And he responds that they’re going to need a saw.

The actual line packs a punch, as we fill in the blanks of she is going to cut out his heart to satisfy herself. The ending reminds me of Midsommar - I spoil so many other things in this review of two books - whereas Dani’s ultimate fate is still debated on whether we should say 'good for her!' or 'oh shit, oh no' as she condemns her gaslighting boyfriend to death. In both cases the victim is not a great person but not deserving of being killed in a horrific manner. I believe both endings are using a surface level wrapping of 'good for her' to invite you to wade further into the analysis and realise how the cycle of abuse can lead those who are abused to lash out in retaliation, pain and an attempt to retrieve power.

Whilst not a perfect book objectively, I really adore Enriquez’ stories and the disturbing horror interlaced. As mentioned above, she uses what she knows and more importantly what she can learn from other people’s first hand experiences to create these stories that pull us in and shock us.

In conclusion, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is not a perfect book. The length of the stories have led to criticism of corners being cut and characters lacking development. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes is not a bad book - whilst I personally didn’t enjoy reading it I can appreciate the book for what it is and what it was trying to do and I do think LaRocca has talent and the ability to continue in this industry. I’m just a horror fan on the internet with one opinion - you might have a completely different one so please check both of these books out and share your thoughts (be nice about it though please).

So, disturbing horror. We can be disturbed by gore. We can be disturbed by unconventional relationships with wildly imbalanced power dynamics. We can be disturbed by the chat logs between two lonely queer women. We can be disturbed by a young girl discovering her sexuality as it’s not what we’re used to. But what makes a horror truly disturbing? Maybe we’ll find out soon.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES LaRocca, E. (2022) Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes. London: Titan Books. Pastorella, B. (2021) Meet the writer: Eric Larocca, This Is Horror. Available at: https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/meet-the-writer-eric-larocca/ (Accessed: 13 September 2023). Q&A with author Mariana Enríquez (2017) Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/1c3facd2-28e6-11e7-9ec8-168383da43b7 (Accessed: 13 September 2023). Enriquez, M. (2022) The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories Megan McDowell. Translated by M. McDowell. London: Granta. Cummins, A. (2022) Mariana Enríquez: ‘I don’t want to be complicit in any kind of silence’, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/01/mariana-enriquez-our-share-of-night-i-dont-want-to-be-complicit-in-any-kind-of-silence (Accessed: 13 September 2023). LaRocca, E. @hystericteeth (2023) [Twitter] 5th July. Available at: https://twitter.com/hystericteeth/status/1676404563690045440 (Accessed: 13 September 2023). Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke (u.d.) GoodReads. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57876868-things-have-gotten-worse-since-we-last-spoke?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=0KP3oz91cg&rank=1 (Accessed: 18 September 2023). The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (u.d.) GoodReads. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53215250-the-dangers-of-smoking-in-bed?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=yUVz3vAmNQ&rank=1 (Accessed: 18 September 2023). Everett, B.G. et al. (2019) Sexual orientation disparities in pregnancy and infant outcomes, Maternal and child health journal. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501574/ (Accessed: 25 October 2023). Williamson, K. (1996) Scream [DVD]. United States: Dimension Films. Lobdell, S. (2017) Happy Death Day [DVD]. United States: Blumhouse Productions, Universal Pictures. Melton, P. Dunstan, M. (2010) Saw 3D [DVD]. United States: Twisted Pictures, Lionsgate. Goldfinger, P. Stolberg, J. (2023) Saw X [DVD]. United States: Twisted Pictures, Lionsgate. Graziadei, P. Janiak, L. (2021) Fear Street Part One: 1994 [DVD]. United States: 20th Century Studios, Chernin Entertainment, Netflix. The Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke hashtag on TikTok.

#horror #analysis #horror books #Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke #The Dangers of Smoking in Bed #media criticism #tumblr essay #queer writer