#satire two sentence horror

[aimless-aimz]

SCARY TWO SENTENCE HORROR!!!! YOU WILL BE SCARED!!!!! SCARY TRIGGER WARNING FOR SCARY!!

”alexa, call my girlfriend”

“Calling Mom..”

#two sentence horror #satire two sentence horror #SNRK #aimless rambles #I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE

[fireflysquidsoup]

i started watching the td reboot for a certain girl

little did i know, she was SCARY GIRL 😨

#2 sentence horror #two sentence horror #i felt compelled to make satire on two sentence horror because it occupies my brain lately #total drama #total drama island #tdi reboot #total drama reboot #total drama scary girl #total drama lauren

[chickenflavoreddildo]

I have been doing nothing but cracking my bones all day... It's nice to be able to take a break from that when I leave the morgue.

#this is a joke #about #two sentence horror #please #this is a joke bc of the number of bad ones I see #viral on internet #weird #satire

[two-sentence-tournament]

*hoooooh* Hear that? Sounds like the horrors are upon us!! Including the worst of the worst: grammar. Welcome to two-sentence-tournament, where you can submit your favorite horrible (amazing) r/twosentencehorror post and make them fight!!

(example below: please look!!!)

Anything from r/twosencence horror that is anywhere from unreadable to just edging the grammar line is accepted!

Sumbit your horrors in the google form below, including propaganda if desired and the link to the original post or a reposted image (ex; something reposted on Pinterest, Tumblr, etc *note: twitter links will not be allowed, we don't have accounts and will never get ones)

Example:

It's our first time running a tournament poll, so we're trying to keep it somewhat-small and thought this would be perfect. We plan to start somewhere in the second week of October! Have fun!

Edit: submissions open until midnight on Friday the 13th!

tagged blogs: @fictional-detective-tournament @big-brother-battle-bracket @most-hated-blorbo-bracket @gay-disabled-characters-showdown @queer-coded-tourney @favcharacterpoll @makethosenarratorsfight @obscurecharactershowdown @foundfamilyarena @worlds-worst-dad-competition @westvocap-ocbracket @let-me-date-them-bracket @redandbluegaycompetition @babygirl-beatdown @fakedmydeathtournament @vncharactertournament @character-of-all-time @tournamentdirectory

#tournament #tournament poll #tumblr tournament #new tournament #two sentence horror #tournament blog #two sentence tournament

[definitelynotstable]

Vice [Ghost x gn!Reader]

(A Camomile Interlude)

pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 5, pt. 6, pt. 7, pt. 8, pt. 9, pt. 10, pt. 11, pt. 12, pt. 13, pt. 14, pt. 15, pt. 16, pt. 17

AN: Hey girlies (gender neutral term), uni is being a bitch right now and I'm at a mental capacity hence the less frequent updates. BUT here’s a wee hurt/comfort interlude that will hopefully tide you over till the next Camomile chapter :)

Synopsis: Set sometime in the early few chapters of Camomile. Ghost catches you at war with a punching bag – the bag is winning. Hurt/comfort. Word Count: 1.3k Warnings: Canon typical violence. Mentions of self-harm, violence, sex, drugs, smoking etc. Ghost x gn!Reader (Callsign: Rags)

✧˚ · .

Everyone who enlisted had some sort of problem. A generalisation that could be easily backed up with evidence if someone bothered to carry out the research. And if one were the outlier who enlisted issue-free there was no doubt they’d be left with an arsenal of them if they survived long enough to retire.

Mental health was something not many talked about. Besides, If one were too open they risked an honourable discharge.

And so when the horrors of the mind became too much, people turned to alternatives. Alcohol, drugs (you’d be surprised what could be snuck onto a military base), sex, smoking, violence, self-harm – the works.

All were acceptable in certain contexts and most soldiers had the rules down-packed.

Violence was only tolerated on the battlefield; alcohol could be discretely added to coffee in the morning; pills before bed; sex in a maintenance closet; cigars instead of cigarettes; unnecessary risks led to injuries in the field – the works.

It was some sort of unwritten code – everyone had their vice.

Ghost was a curveball.

You’d caught him with a pack of Camels within a week of joining the 141. It was dark and you were far more interested in studying how his lighter illuminated his jawline and scarred lips than the burning cigarette between his pale fingers. It was your first time catching him without the mask obscuring all of him from view.

The mask.

That was strike two.

There were plenty of unique characters in the military; though you’d never met one like him.

It almost seemed like satire – the skull.

You were quick to learn it wasn’t. He was as silent as his namesake and as deadly as the reaper he portrayed.

But he was a complete contradiction.

Teabags he kept in a delicate tin which had been labeled in his distinct handwriting – somehow scrawly but swirly at the same time – and he drank camomile from a chipped novelty mug which depicted the London skyline. The Eye had been half rubbed away – probably from the dishwasher – and the top of Big Ben had begun fading but he dutifully used it each time without fail.

✧˚ · .

“Tea time”, as you’d coined it inside your head, began spontaneously and became a regular, though informal, occurrence.

The Lieutenant wasn’t one for conversation and it took a couple of months of tentative small talk before you could comfortably hold a two-sided conversation with him.

Though slowly but surely he unfurled.

His gaze softened, sentences lengthened and touches lingered.

Water would be plonked in front of you before you even knew you needed it, doors opened when your arms were full and jackets draped across your shoulders before your shivers even began.

He was an observer, you realised. There wasn’t a single detail he overlooked.

So it shouldn’t’ve been a surprise when he noticed.

✧˚ · .

You’d never describe yourself as violent before you enlisted. Strong, maybe, or passionate. But put a C8 assault rifle in the hands of a young soldier with unresolved trauma and violence was the only outcome.

Hand-to-hand was addictive, knives too.

It wasn’t something you enjoyed, taking lives, but it was a necessary evil – at least that was what everyone tried to convince themselves when they closed their eyes at night.

Violence came hand in hand with pain, however.

Perhaps that was the real vice.

✧˚ · .

It was regulation to wear wraps when using the bags at the back of the gym.

But after a particularly rough mission wrapping your hands was the last thing on your mind.

Your fists met the bag in rapid succession, knuckles crunching against the sand-filled column.

The bag on the end was firmed than the rest and whenever your mind became too loud, this was where you could be found.

You thought you’d been discrete; believable with your smile and cheery goodnight but the figure in the doorway said otherwise.

You were too focused on the way the pain flared as your split knuckles met the bag to notice.

It wasn’t til he’d rounded the bag and pulled it away from when you recognised you’d had an audience.

You pant, chest screaming as you met him through lashes you hadn’t realised were damp.

“That’s enough.” Though spoken softly you know it’s an order.

You feel disconnected from your body when you met his gaze with a smile that looks more like a grimace and brush away a strand of hair with a shaking hand.

“L.T.” You say, straightening up in an attempt to snap out of what ever dissociative state you’ve fallen into. “How can I help you?”

The man in front of you frowns, stepping forwards. You can barely focus enough to track his movements and jolt as he takes your wrist in his hand.

“Oh!” You force out a laugh when you finally register his interest in your bruised and bloody hand. “Must’ve forgotten to wrap ‘em.”

He doesn’t reply and instead reaches for your other hand, angling both towards the light so he can see better.

You swallow tightly when the mess is illuminated and the distant throb in your knuckles suddenly becomes sharp. You can’t help the gasp that leaves your lips as the Lieutenant wipes some of the blood away with his sleeve.

Finally he looks up, blond brows creased and eyes inquisitive.

“You’ve damn near broken your knuckles.”

You open your mouth to reply but nothing comes out; your bottom lip finds it’s way between your teeth and you settle on chewing it instead. You blink rapidly and break free of his oppressive gaze.

Ghost sighs, sensing he won’t get much out of you now. Ever the observer.

✧˚ · .

He doesn’t release his grip on your wrist, tugging you out of the gym and down the dim halls towards the infirmary.

The section that keeps patients in need of 24/7 care is down a wing to the left, fluorescent lights buzzing. Ghost doesn’t lead you there, however.

Instead he pulls you towards the bases’ clinic and pulls out a key.

Too tired and confused to ask why he has access to the wing, you let him manoeuvre you into sitting on a bed – flicking the light switch along the way.

You watch dazedly as he riffles through a couple of drawers before coming to sit in front of you on a rolling stool.

With a glance up at you, Ghost reaches for a sterile cotton swab, dipping it in antiseptic. He takes your injured hand in his gloved one and with the utmost care, starts to clean the bloody mess, movements delicate and precise.

You wince at the sting but his touch is soothing and his focus on the task unwavering.

“I’m sorry.” You whisper as he pulls out a roll of gauze to wrap the now clean wounds.

Ghost stills his movements, looking up as his brows curl in confusion. “What for?”

Everything. You want to say.

“Lots of things.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, instead blinking and resuming his ministrations. You follow his movements as he expertly winds the bandage around your hands. You know he’s thinking – he doesn’t like to speak without crafting each word carefully in his head.

“I used to use a lighter.” He starts, voice low and soft. He doesn’t elaborate, he doesn’t need to. You’ve seen the burns on his arms, some covered by tattoos – you’ve got a few smileys on your thighs to match. “But I realised – I realised I was just letting them win.”

He swallows and takes in a deep breath before looking up at you, eyes raw and more expressive than you’ve ever seen them.

“There are people out there who want to hurt us – who have hurt us. When we take it into our own hands we do their job for them.”

He watches you for a moment through his pale lashes before standing, softly patting your now bandaged hands and pulling you to your feet.

“Don’t let them win, Rags.”

✧˚ · .

Taglist

@crosshairs773fp @alanalanalanalanalanna @ghostlythots @hyperfixationwhore @shinebright2000 @sae1kie @hotaruteba @karurururu @rorel1a @http-paprika @thriving-n-jiving @lazybutsmexy @zozosrandomthings @jinxxangel13 @tumblinginoz @kee-0-kee @moonsua1 @freeseeker @kaoyamamegami @01trickster10 @umiexe @josieguts @skelletonscloset @nessaasstuff @umiexe

Reply if you want to be added :)

Masterlist

If I've missed any of your tag request I'm so sorry! I've been swamped and unable to view or reply to comments as much as I would've liked.

#simon ghost x reader #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #ghost call of duty #ghost mw2 #ghost x reader #ghost x you #cod mw ghost #simon ghost riley #ghost cod #simon ghost riley x reader #141 x reader #task force 141 #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #captain john price #call of duty modern warfare #ghost x y/n #ghost x gn reader #ghost drinks camomile

[saintofdaggers]

semi-regular genuinely disturbing* book rec list

*check tw lists on StoryGraph, read at your own discretion, etc. also you might find some of these tame depending on your tolerance levels, but they do all have some kind of graphic or taboo content.

Poppy Z. Brite: Wormwood - short stories about goths and freaks and outcasts. they're all sensual, horrifying and beautifully written with macabre, vivid imagery. a personal favorite <3

John Skipp, Craig Spector: The Scream - still reading this one, but it's VERY fun, a classic splatterpunk novel about a rising rock band whose sinister shock rock acts go way beyond the stage. has some interesting commentary on religious fundamentalism, moral panics and music censorship, and the prose is really good, if a little corny in places

Daniel H. Gower: The Orpheus Process - this book is batshit insane and horribly written. it is, however, one of the funniest goddamn things I've ever read, and the nightmare imagery is so over-the-top that it keeps veering wildly between ridiculous and genuinely horrifying. it melted my brain. I think this is the closest we'll ever get to someone actually writing the Necronomicon

Cassandra Khaw: The Salt Grows Heavy - this is a very recently published fairytale retelling, but it's gorgeously written with genuinely artistic prose, it's an interesting angle to take with the fairytale it's built on, and the gore/medical horror is excellent.

Borderlands (edited by Thomas F. Monteleone) - read this one a while ago, but it's basically an anthology aimed to collect cutting-edge stories that went way beyond the cliches and recycled tropes plaguing paperback horror publishing at the time. this collection was a little hit and miss for me, but some stories are genuinely great and they're all fairly out there.

Bret Easton Ellis: American Psycho - but of course. I think the movie is much better as satire and the book is much better as horror, but let's just say even I winced a few times as I read this. at least when I wasn't cracking up

Otsuichi: Goth - oh I love this one. two death-obsessed teenagers keep running into serial killers and trying to understand them. it's nasty, bleak and a really, really good read (it almost broke me with a certain horrifying image on my first read, but I'm glad I decided to finish it)

Ryu Murakami: Piercing - I remember someone asking me once what I was reading and I handed him the book so he could read the blurb. when he reached a certain sentence, his eyes just kinda widened and his general assumptions of my sanity were visibly reevaluated. that's how you know this one is good

J. G. Ballard: High-Rise - less graphic than the others on this list, but more skin-crawling, imo. a filthy rich highrise apartment complex starts breaking down from poor design and antagonistic neighbor relationships, throwing the inhabitants into worse and worse chaos until they start genuinely cracking. this book is so gross. I say that with love

Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge - still reading this one too, but I think it's worth checking out to see how you'll like it (I couldn't find the original Splatterpunks anthology in the library, but this collection was stated by the editor to be more diverse and progressive than the first, and that already made it interesting enough to me to pick up). Kathe Koja, Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker, Karl Edward Wagner. you know you're in good hands here.

#book recs #book rec list #horror books #horror recs #lit tag #my recs #my posts

[thedavinoparadox]

"Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh

Selenio

“O God, make me good, but not yet.”

(⚜️ 7 / 10)

The roaring 20’s.

In our mind, this decade trapped in between two world wars is characterized by its flamboyancy, self-indulgence, and unrestraint. Led by a generation that had not been quite old enough to fight in World War I (yet had been mature enough to understand all the tragedy and loss caused by it) and which was already sensing the impending doom of another World War, the ’20s, in reality, were a time of massive change and uncertainty. While women did win a lot, the fall was soon to come and nothing seemed constant.

Many tried to dance and drink away the fear and horror of the financial crisis and also other more personal issues. Evelyn Waugh’s novel “Brideshead Revisited” and especially his character Sebastian Flyte beautifully encapsulate this ‘Zeitgeist’ and paint the portrait of a society on the brink of madness.

Having read “Vile Bodies” a couple of years ago and having fallen utterly in love with it, I finally decided to pick up another one of Evelyn Waugh’s works and was - yet again - far from disappointed with his flowery imagery yet satirically melancholic and tragically funny storytelling.

“Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder”, written by Evelyn Waugh was first published in 1945 - precisely the year in which the Second World War ended. As the title would suggest, it is displayed as the memoir of Charles Ryder, specifically focusing on his friendship with the Flyte family. Apparently, Waugh himself entitled the novel as his “magnum opus” multiple times - an opinion to which he would not stay loyal, however.

⚜️ Characters (1.7/2)

The characters are described through the eyes of the narrator, Charles Ryder, and subsequently one has to look through the veil of British modesty to decipher some of their true feelings and motives.

To my greatest dismay, Sebastian Flyte (the character I was most interested in, after having learned he was modeled after Stephen Tennant, the same friend of Waugh’s who also was the inspiration for Miles in “Vile Bodies”) steps into a sort of background role after the first act, not appearing anymore except as the subject of conversation.

In fact, I feel like both the author and narrator didn’t really know what to do with Sebastian but there is such tremendous depth in his character, already present in the scenes of the book that I'm willing to forgive them for now. I guess only Aloysius will ever really know the truth about him.

The relationships between the characters resemble those in a lot of books I have read from this decade. They are almost always unhappy in a way, looking for the kind of passion and romance even the searchers themselves oftentimes clearly lack but seem to expect from their surroundings. Not a single soul is ever upfront yet somehow expects everybody else to be and resents them for not meeting these expectations fully enough. Sometimes it is rather painful to read about these kinds of unhappy relationships, yet they sort of bring a sweet melancholy with them (since some feelings are sometimes better imagined than truly experienced) and are perfectly reminiscent of the times.

⚜️ Plot (0.5/2)

To be perfectly honest, when looking for a strong plot with multiple side plots and plot twists, one looks in vain in 1920s literature. I apologize profusely for the amount of "plots" in the last sentence.

Oftentimes, aesthetics and subtle character development are more important to the writers of this decade and this is no different in “Brideshead Revisited”.

It almost feels as if the reader himself is sucked into this crumbling world of British aristocracy and is experiencing the decay of personalities and architecture firsthand. Beautiful, for the lovers of slow, realistic, character-driven fiction but perhaps a bit boring for someone used to action novels and thrillers.

Nonetheless, the storyline is coherent and structured, with one action beautifully leading to the other. So as it might not add a lot to the novel overall, it also doesn’t take away from it.

⚜️ Writing Style (2/2)

Evelyn Waugh’s writing style is simply exceptional. There were numerous passages I had to reread simply due to their almost poem-like beauty.

There is something hauntingly majestic about the way he describes depressive states, anxiety, and melancholy. Even death takes on a new, satirically funny yet somehow also emotional note. I need to stop now before I embarrass myself by getting lost in praise over his choice of words.

⚜️ Aesthetic (1.8/2)

The main image of the novel is that of the decaying castle as an allegory for the crumbling of the British aristocracy during the first half of the 20th century. The stones and groundwork seem solid and unconquerable but it is being destroyed by the vines and plants woven into its very structure an onlooker would perhaps deem as beautiful and majestic. The windows are always closed, the interior hidden by heavy, beautifully adorned flowy curtains and there is always music in the air, so distant one can’t be sure if it’s coming from a radio or the quiet song of a lonely harp inside of the walls.

Even though war, travel, and infidelity are strong topics in “Brideshead Revisited”, there is a certain homely quality about the book altogether. While the Captain and so many of the Flyte children leave the estate at one point or another, it always stays this refuge that is holding the family together - for better or for worse.

Similarly, the way the book is written just fits into this image of resting in front of a fireplace, drinking black tea with milk while listening to the soft patter of the snowstorm against the window - or maybe I’m just biased because that was the way I enjoyed it a couple of months ago.

⚜️ Recommendation (1/2)

I would definitely not recommend this book to just anyone, simply because it can be quite long-winded and tiring at times. The flowery, lengthy writing style is also definitely something, a reader would first have to get used to, ideally by consuming other books in this style.

As a lover of “Jeeves and Wooster”, “Downton Abbey” and other media set in the England of the 1920s, I truly enjoyed this book and I think anyone with similar interests would too. If you aren’t afraid of long-winded passages, intersected by emotionally and aesthetically beautiful poetry and deep character relationships, by all means: go for it!

To my greatest shame, I purchased this book as an afterthought. It had been recommended to me a few times both on- and offline but in reality, I just wanted to “complete” my book order with some nice historical fiction and to finally indulge in more works by Evelyn Waugh. I then was the proud owner of this beautiful penguin edition that was glaring down at me from my bookshelf for a few months before I finally got around to reading it.

But just like this review (which I’m only posting now after it has been sitting in my drafts since winter) shows: good things take time.

It doesn't matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.

Charles Ryder

#writing #art #literature #book #reading #brideshead revisited #evelyn waugh #book review #classics #et in arcadia ego #selenio

[beardedmrbean]

A French court on Tuesday ordered prison terms for eight suspects charged in the harrowing 2016 terror attack in Nice, where a suspected Islamist attacker ploughed his truck into a crowd celebrating the July 14 national holiday.

Two men were given the most severe sentences of 18 years behind bars for helping Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian resident, prepare an attack that killed 86 people and injured over 450 in a four-minute rampage on a seaside embankment in the southern city before being shot dead by police.

Judges determined that Mohamed Ghraieb and Chokri Chafroud must have known about the attacker's turn to Islamist radicalism and his potential to carry out a terror attack, based on records of phone calls and text messages among the three in the days ahead of the massacre. 

Ghraieb, a 47-year-old from the same Tunisian town as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, and Chafroud, a 43-year-old Tunisian, are also accused of helping to rent the delivery truck. 

They denied the charges.

Ramzi Arefa, 28 – who has admitted to providing Lahouaiej-Bouhlel with the gun he fired at police without hitting anyone – was handed a 12-year term, though he was not accused of criminal association with a terrorist or of being aware of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel's potential for launching an attack. 

The Islamic State group later claimed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel as one of its followers, though investigators have not found any concrete links between the attacker and the jihadists who at the time controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria.

The five other suspects, a Tunisian and four Albanians, were sentenced to prison terms of two to eight years on charges of weapons trafficking or criminal conspiracy, but without any terrorism link.

Brahim Tritrou was the only suspect tried in absentia after fleeing judicial supervision to Tunisia, where he is now believed to be under arrest.

Night of horror

Some 30,000 people had gathered on the Nice seafront to watch a fireworks display celebrating France's annual Bastille Day holiday on July 14 when Lahouaiej-Bouhlel began his rampage.

According to French and Tunisian press reports, his body was repatriated to Tunisia in 2017 and buried in his hometown of M'saken, south of Tunis. This has never been confirmed by the Tunisian authorities.

France has been buffeted by a wave of Islamist terror attacks since the killings at the satirical Charlie Hebdo newspaper and a Jewish supermarket in Paris in January 2015, often by "lone wolf" attackers acting in the name of IS or other jihadist groups.

In October, a Paris appeals court upheld the life sentence of Ali Riza Polat, accused of helping to find the weapons for the Charlie Hebdo attackers.

The Nice trial took place at the historic Palais de Justice in Paris, in the same purpose-built courtroom that hosted the hearings over the November 2015 terror attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead.

A special venue was also set up in Nice to allow victims to follow proceedings via a live broadcast.

For many of the victims, the sentences sought by prosecutors failed to match the scope of the suffering. 

During the trial, many of the survivors gasped in horror when prosecutors showed grisly video footage, never seen publicly, of the vehicle as Lahouaiej-Bouhlel swerved through the crowd, trying to mow down as many people as possible.

"I hope the court will be more severe than they've asked – I cannot understand them after all that's been said in the hearings," said Anne Murris, president of the Memorial des Anges victims' association, who lost her daughter in the attack. 

#nunyas news

[kevrocksicehouse]

Thor: Love and Thunder.

D: Taika Waititi (2022). 

The new Thor movie opens with Gorr a desperate man (Christian Bale) watching his young daughter waste away from hunger despite his most fervent prayers. He is called by a sword that can kill gods and begins a rampage of slaughter. That’s a good, dark premise for a Thor movie but Taika Waititi can’t mesh the darkness with comedy as he did in JoJo Rabbit, What We Do in the Shadows or for that matter Thor: Ragnarok. In that movie, Waititi unlocked Chris Hemsworth’s comic chops and gift for Douglas Fairbanks light self-mockery which in this movie veers into Will Ferrell territory. Hemsworth’s reconnects with his ex (Natalie Portman who improbably wields his old hammer as Lady Thor when she’s not playing the most unconvincing cancer sufferer since Ali McGraw) and demonstrates zero chemistry with her. He briefly fights with the Guardians of the Galaxy in the most pointless team-up of MCU history. He tries to inspire a group of captured children not to give up hope, but his compulsive buffoonery kills any Crispin’s Day eloquence. If Ragnarok used slapstick humor to set off a story with real grandeur, this time Waititi and Hemsworth sell out two great storylines (from Jason Aaron’s great run of the comic), just for a laugh. The title of this movie (which must have been conjured by a marketing committee for all it has anything to do with anything) is a laughable misnomer. It could just as easily be called Thor: Ham and Cheese.

Spiderhead.

D: Joseph Kosinski (2022).

Spiderhead (loosely based on George Saunders great short story “Escape from Spiderhead”) is also cheesy, especially in its “Oh, what the hell” action-movie climax, but before that it’s a neat (and believable) satire of pharmaceutical research and gives Chris Hemsworth one of his best roles as Steve Abnesti, a corporate functionary running a combination country-club prison/research facility in which prisoners get their sentences reduced by participating in a study that examines the effects mood-altering drugs like Luvactin (which makes people fall in love), Phobica (a fear drug), Laffodil (causes laughter) and Darkenfloxx (induces suicidal depression). One of  Abnesti’s favorite subjects is Jeff, (Miles Teller, channeling John Cusack) tortured by a horrific car accident that killed his best friend. Their sessions, (which recall the Milgram electric shock experiments) come down to “Can a person be induced to take actions repugnant to their moral values?” and Hemsworth has a blast as a bro-manipulator who uses his raffish charm to get the test results he wants (in a corporate perversion of scientific ethics that feels spot on). Kosinski is skilled enough to turn the films weaknesses (I always felt a step ahead of the plotting) into strengths (I never lost the dread of knowing what comes next) and even the trite ending when Abnesti gets his comeuppance allows Hemsworth to turn it into a comic-horror acting showcase. If Love and Thunder suggests the MCU is getting stale for the actor, it’s nice he has other places to go.

#thor love and thunder #spiderhead #chris hemsworth #taika waititi #joseph kosinski #review #marvel #kevrock

[brexiiton]

Six French teens convicted over their soles in an Islamic extremist's killing of a teacher

By Associated Press, 11:55am Dec 9, 2023

A French juvenile court on Friday convicted six teenagers for their roles in the 2020 beheading of a teacher by an Islamic extremist, an attack that shocked the country and shone a light on the real-world dangers of online hate speech.

Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher , was killed near his school after showing his class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a debate on free expression. Attacker Abdoullakh Anzorov, a young Chechen who had become radicalised, was killed by police.

The court found five of the defendants, who were 14 and 15 at the time of the attack, guilty of involvement in staking out the teacher and identifying him for the attacker. The sixth defendant, 13 at the time, was found guilty of lying about the classroom debate in comments that aggravated online anger against the teacher.

Flowers next to a placard reading "I am a teacher" in tribute to Samuel Paty, the history-geography teacher who was beheaded on October 16, 2020. (AP)

After the ruling, the six defendants left the courtroom without speaking. Some had their heads down as they listened to the verdict. One appeared to wipe tears.

The teenagers - all students at Paty's school - acknowledged wrongdoing, and testified that they didn't know the teacher would be killed.

One was given a six-month prison term but allowed to serve under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The others were given special suspended sentences of between two and three years requiring them to stay in school or jobs. The sentences included special educative follow-up measures that also involved their families.

Lawyers for Paty's family decried the sentences as too lenient. Lawyers for the teenagers expressed relief.

Paty's name was disclosed on social media after the class debate, during which he showed caricatures of Islam's prophet published by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The publication had triggered a deadly extremist massacre in the Charlie Hebdo newsroom in 2015.

Samuel Paty, 47, a French history and geography teacher was murdered in Paris. (CNN)(Twitter)

The cartoon images deeply offended many Muslims in France and around the world, who see them as sacrilegious. By Paty's killing reinforced the French state's commitment to freedom of expression, and its firm attachment to secularism in public life - and especially in schools.

The five who identified Paty to the attacker were convicted of involvement in a group preparing aggravated violence.

The sixth defendant wrongly claimed Paty had asked Muslim students to leave the classroom before he showed the class the cartoons, and said the teacher punished her for accusing him of anti-Muslim sentiment. In fact, she was not in the classroom that day, and later told investigators she has lied. She was convicted of making false allegation.

The girl's father shared the lies in an online video that called for mobilisation against the teacher. Now incarcerated, her father and a radical Islamic activist who helped disseminate virulent messages against Paty are among eight adults who will face a separate trial for adults suspected of involvement in the killing, expected late next year.

The girl's lawyer Mbeko Tebula said she "doesn't forgive herself for this lie."

"She didn't imagine it would ... turn into so much horror," he said. "She was 13."

School children pay homage to the slain history teacher outside a school Saturday, Oct. 17, 2020 in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, northwest of Paris (AP)

"She will try to move forward," he said. "She will try to rebuild herself as a woman. To line with this permanent guilt, which will not pass through her but will inhabit her."

Lawyer Virginie Le Roy, representing Paty's family, had tears in her eyes as she described her anger that the punishment was not tougher.

"Yes, I am emotional. I am emotional for this family, also for the memory of Samuel. A man decapitated in the street is not nothing. We are in France. This was in 2020," she said. The sentences are "a bad signal to the family of Samuel, a bad signal to the students, and a bad signal to teachers."

Teachers at the school and Paty's relatives were in the courtroom along with some of the defendants' parents. Family members of the teenagers comforted each other afterward, some looking depleted or resigned. They refused to speak to reporters.

The media are not allowed to disclose the defendants' identities, according to French law regarding minors.

The proceedings come weeks after a teacher was fatally stabbed in northern France in October in a school attack by a former student suspected of Islamic radicalisation. Another shock hit France last Saturday, when a man with a history of Islamic radicalism and mental illness fatally stabbed a 23-year-old German-Filipino tourist near the Eiffel Tower.

Both killings occurred in a context of global tensions over the Israel-Hamas war, which led French authorities to deploy 7000 additional soldiers across the country to bolster security and vigilance.

#terror wave #terrorwave #terror #news #wave #france #capital punishment #decapitation #islamic #extremists

[macethelaboratoryrat]

Fiction. Just in case anybody is confused.

"I like to give the shelter dogs biscuits before I close up and leave for the night because I think it makes them feel happier and more loved than if I didn't. As I walk in the dark down the aisle between kennels, sliding biscuits between the bars of their cages, I feel a clammy had brush mine, and I stare into the box to see two dead eyes of a human face staring back at me."

I always thought that two-sentence horror stories were a joke. Like I thought they were all basically satire, but I recently found out that two-sentence horror stories can actually be sincere and good and scary. So, up there is my attempt. It's based on a dream I had.

#two sentence horror #stories #horror #dream #writing

[wrongpublishing]

BOOK REVIEW: Andrew F. Sullivan's The Marigold

by Elizabeth Broadbent, Staff Writer.

It’s a Publishers Weekly pick. It has the best opening lines I’ve read all year:

Before everything that happened, before the towers, before the site plans, before the deeds, before the failing sports bar and two-bedroom apartment above it that often operated like another, more financially successful, unlicensed sports bar until the police shut it down after that one Polish kid got strangled with a pair of pink stockings behind the abandoned Shoppers Drug Mart a block or two south, there were trees there. 

One gorgeous sentence, and we fall straight down the rabbit hole. Andrew Sullivan’s The Marigold, one of the most anticipated horror novels of the season, drops April 18th from EWC Press.

Love literary horror? The hype is real. Read that first paragraph again. Yeah, Sullivan kills it. I’ve never been to Toronto, but Sullivan brought me there. His prose, characters, and atypical narrative style nail the dangers of an unfettered surveillance state in which faceless corporations buy and sell information, horse-trader style (sound familiar?). His city’s decay works, in part, as a symbol for civic corruption. We all live in Toronto. We’re rotting from the inside out, and we can’t stop it.

Fans of D. Harlan Wilson and Steve Aylett will find a lot to love. Both Sullivan’s atypical narrative and immaculate approach to character take risks that would terrify most authors—rightly so—and The Marigold nails them. It creates a world sidestepped into strange while hurling our society to its logical conclusion. There’s hints of satire there, though they don’t overwhelm, and narrative trumps moral implication; The Marigold’s far from a political screed. Want a book that’ll really keep you up at night? This one’s for you: speculative fiction at its best; horror with something to say. 

If art is a challenge that invites reflection, Sullivan has a present for you. Fans of literary horror, say thanks.

Twitter: @ AFSulli Instagram: @ afsulli

#review #gothic fiction #fiction #gothic literature #book review #horror books #fiction review #horror fiction #horror literature #indie lit #indie literature #indie press #indie horror #literary horror #small press #horror novel

[pinersyn]

Typing of the dead overkill

#TYPING OF THE DEAD OVERKILL PC#

#TYPING OF THE DEAD OVERKILL TORRENT#

I AM HERE TO REVIEW A VIDEOGAME SERIOUS BUSINESS. Sat on my own, I've both no-one else's laughter to inspire me and I'm simply not in the mindset for the lowest of low culture. Nathan played the game on Wii, in the apparent company of chums, and I am quite sure that it only takes one person hooting at Overkill's record-breaking stream of swearing, nonsense dialogue, knowingly wooden acting or politically incorrect zombies (guy in a wheelchair, fat'n'thin poledancers etc) to set everyone else off. So it's not that.Ģ) I'm always having a grumpy day! So it could be that.ģ) Yes, it's that. However, I retain a seemingly unquenchable thirst for genre fiction in all its forms, videogames in almost all their forms, swearing like a motherfucker and killing digital things in more intricate ways than simply hovering a targeting reticule over their faces and pressing the left mouse button. Here are my responses to these self-made accusations:ġ) It is true that my interest in shooty-bang games and indeed cinema has lessened in recent years. Perhaps I'm getting prudish, intolerant of sound and fury, or becoming lower-case-c conservative.ģ) I played the game on my own, in an office chair in a small room. 34 isn't old by human standards, but by Man Who Writes About Videogames For A Living standards I'm entitled to apply for a bus pass. Helplessly, I found myself reading 2009 reviews of Overkill, and there was no shortage of positivity (thought I was relived to find many references to the story and dialogue becoming grating later in the game). Now, I know that Nathan tends to be as discomfited as I am by cheap objectification and titillation in videogames, so this couldn't be so simple a matter as two minds coming from completely different directions. In my defence, that wasn't my intention - I looked up Nathan's announcement post on TTOD:O so I could link to it in this piece, then was floored by his outpouring of enthusiasm for the original Overkill. I read another critic's take on the game, and thus my own was compromised.

#TYPING OF THE DEAD OVERKILL TORRENT#

I had a diatribe all written, a torrent of invective about Overkill's clumsy, failed satire of grindhouse movies, how its up-to-eleven objectification of its female characters isn't excused by having its tongue jammed so forcefully into its cheek that you can practically count its papillae, how in any case grindhouse mockery/adulation is so 2007 and how if you are going to rely on satire, it needs to be smarter than featuring obese zombie strippers and a black character who employs the word 'motherfucker' in every single sentence. (I'm not being entirely honest there, actually. This was my first experience of Overkill, and I'm afraid I couldn't find a single thing to like about it. The Typing Of The Dead: Overkill is its sequel, and also a similar modification of 2009 Wii on-rails shooter The House Of The Dead: Overkill, which used grindhouse movies rather than Resident Evil-esque survival horror as its basis. It was and is the greatest concept for a videogame ever - that delectably weird disconnect between diligently rote-typing oridinary but unpredictable words and the extreme violence of zombie massacre. I didn't enjoy this shock sequel to The Typing of the Dead, a 2000 (on PC) reworking of arcade and console on-rails shooter The House of the Dead 2, in which you killed zombies by correctly typing on-screen words at them reallyreallyreally quickly instead of waving around a plastic lightgun. By which I don't mean "two hundred quid on a new graphics card every couple of years."

#TYPING OF THE DEAD OVERKILL PC#

Sometimes, there's a price to be paid for being a PC gamer.

#Typing of the dead overkill

[carriagelamp]

Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

#aardman animation #shaun the sheep #lumberjanes #kid paddle #asterix #the last firehawk #hunger pangs: true love bites #marian engel #bear #canadian literature #canlit #queer lit #book review #book reviews #chatter

[awed-frog]

Hi, genuinely asking here, since I kinda like your blog, but from the 2 english articles I found about the whole mila situation(it's a French issue, how is the rest of the world supposed to notice it if French people don't bother letting them know?) the uproar is about her being islamophobic af, not about her rightfully telling men to not hit on her or that she is a lesbian. Like, my French is rusty but none of the french articles even care about those parts. What are you going on about?

The uproar is that you have a right to be “Islamophobic” because freedom of speech protects blasphemy. Without this protection, we wouldn't have satirical newspapers, books like Harry Potter (which was officially branded a 'corruptive influence' by the former Pope) or anything Neil Gaiman wrote and mostly 90% of the movies we watch, not to mention random conversations, Halloween costumes, Carnival stuff and so on. I mean I'm guessing that during an ordinary day, you might enjoy an episode of Supernatural or Lucifer, or even watch a movie where two characters briefly discuss whether God is real, or what an asshole He is, and why He lets bad things happen. Next you might participate to an online or RL discussion about the same thing. Depending on your native language and whether swear words are usually about religion or not, you might even blaspheme out right - a stunned 'Porco Dio' when something doesn't go your way. You might scroll past, and 'like', posts that say Christianity fucked the world and deserves to be destroyed, or people insisting God is a woman, trans, a pink wombat. You may see or write angry posts about how all priests are pedophiles, or hiding pedophiles. You might make or enjoy memes about Biblical stuff like Cain and Abel, and reblog gifs from The Life of Brian or one of the thousand offensive jokes there are about Jesus and the 'Virgin' Mary (ahahhahah, poor cuck Joseph). And most likely, you do all of this without a second thought - you consider this a normal and unremarkable part of your life.

Well - it is a normal and unremarkable part of your life - in some Western countries, at least - because we fought the Church and its minions for literal centuries so they'd shut the fuck up and stop annoying and torturing and killing people. I mean in the US they have their own problems, but in Europe I'd say you could call about 70% of the population overt or covert Christianophobes - if such a term had any meaning - simply because they blaspheme every single day. Whether they consider themselves Christians or not, whether they've been baptized and married in a Church or not, on any given day they might dress up as a sexy nun or ironically hang a crucifix upside down or listen to 'empious' music (like all metal and most pop songs) or make a bad joke about a priest or watch a 'corrupted' movie or say they don't give a fuck about God (understood to be, the Christian God), because if He exists, than he's a fickle motherfucker.

What Mila said is not nice. She reacted in anger, she reacted badly, she's also a teen on social media so she's bound to do stupid things and make mistakes. Meanwhile, the thousands of mostly adult men who threatened her with violence are not doing something stupid or making a mistake. They're demanding what Muslims (in Europe, but also in their own countries) have been demanding more and more loudly: that we give them special treatment, suspend our freedom of speech and blasphemy laws, stop criticizing their religion - or fucking else. Because this is not a polite philosophical discussion over cupcakes. People get killed every day for 'disrespecting' Islam - most of them Muslims or ex-Muslims. Please remember Samuel Paty, the teacher who's literally been beheaded in the street for teaching a class that was on the curriculum, and that other teacher in Yorkshire who's been in hiding with his family for months - and will likely never teach again - because he's 'guilty' of the same crime.

(And tbh, 'disrespecting' Islam can be everything and anything. We always think about a certain kind of 'extreme' Charlie Hebdo humour, but there are lots of things that are forbidden depending on who's in charge. For instance, a famous (and devout) Algerian theologian, Saïd Djabelkhir, was recently sentenced to three years in jail for 'offenses' against Islam - for instance, he suggested the story of Noah's Ark could be a metaphor and not an event that truly happened. The horror.)

Legally speaking, 'respecting' someone's religion means the State can't forcibly close a church if people are peacefully practicing their faith. It doesn't mean every single one of us has to stop criticizing, making jokes, writing novels and fanfiction, and yeah - even yelling obscenities because we're all human and we do get angry from time to time - under literal pain of death.

Anyway if you want to learn more about this, I'd suggest you look for the tag 'ex muslim' here on tumblr or on reddit or Twitter. You'll get opinions much more informed than mine on all of this and why the right to blaspheme is so essential.

(Also for future reference, it's not people from country X who have to 'bother' letting the world know what's going on. Instead, you're supposed to have curious, inquisitive, unafraid media who also cover that 98.13% of the world that's not the United States.)

#ask #affaire mila #news #france #islamophobia #sorry i'm a bit curt #it's just a shitty issue

[joons]

I'm currently assisting the writing on a southern gothic horror story. I've heard you mention those before. So, what are your favorite tropes and other "must-have" elements for that genre?

The main element that makes a Southern gothic story Southern gothic is a sense of the past somehow manifesting in the present in a way that is impossible to ignore. In Southern gothic literature, the past is some kind of force that weighs on the characters, which can manifest in a lot of different ways. You might have an oppressive environment, a sense of the beyond/bizarre, characters who speak as if with the voice of God. Forests, dirt, old, creaking houses, fires, or graves can all create that claustrophobic sensation that the past is all around us and our sins cannot be hidden forever. There’s almost always a societal-level critique -- but Southern gothic can span from absurdist satire (portions of Huck Finn) to grave tales of murder (Fried Green Tomatoes) to get its point across. In Southern gothic literature, the writer and characters sense that something is wrong with their town, or family, or culture, and they are sure justice is coming even if they can’t tell you how to fix it. 

But there’s still a lot of different ways to approach the genre. Faulkner’s looping, sensory sentences bring the environment to life and create that choking feeling with just his writing style. His characters are trapped in their own minds and are trying to talk around the Big Secret in the middle of their stories that they don’t want to acknowledge. Flannery O’Connor uses religious themes and imagery that disrupt her characters’ lives and bring justice swiftly and terribly. Toni Morrison blurs the line between reality and fantasy as a way of talking about the liminal existence of former slaves or freed Blacks in the South, sort of stuck between two cultures. 

Another big staple is something called the “grotesque,” which is a character, place, feeling, etc., that makes the reader feel a sense of repulsion and dread. Flannery O’Connor says “grotesque” is generally used to describe anything outside the “norm” or the “preference” of common experience (she found that Northern readers called things “grotesque” that she thought of as “realistic”). She uses a serial killer as the grotesque figure at the center of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a short story that you have to read if you haven’t. More from O’Connor:

“In these grotesque works, we find that the writer has made alive some experience which we are not accustomed to observe every day, or which the ordinary man may never experience in his ordinary life. We find that connections which we would expect in the customary kind of realism have been ignored, that there are strange skips and gaps which anyone trying to describe manners and customs would certainly not have left. Yet the characters have an inner coherence, if not always a coherence to their social framework. Their fictional qualities lean away from typical social patterns, toward mystery and the unexpected. It is this kind of realism that I want to consider.”

 So I would always encourage someone writing a Southern gothic piece to gesture toward mystery as much as you can, to something the characters feel is real but that they cannot quite explain. Faith and fright are often the same in the genre -- it’s unknowable in some way, longed for or needed, but wild and out of our control. 

And I would suggest reading some Southern gothic “classics” as well as more modern novels. It’s cool to see how people adapt the staple imagery of, like, Spanish moss-covered trees to other environments, like trailer parks or strip malls. That will help you get a good sense of what the thing is that ties them together. (Swamplandia! is a good example; I didn’t resonate with the plot that much, but it’s a great example of how to create A Mood.)

#southern gothic