"Manosphere"... you mean this thing?

Book haul from “One of Us” horror fest! @horrorsong.blog @patrickbarb.bsky.social @matthewmitchell.bsky.social @weirdpunkbooks.bsky.social @filthyloot.bsky.social @clashbooks.bsky.social @cursedmorsels.bsky.social @flameswallower.bsky.social @cynthiasaysboo.bsky.social @tenebrouspress.bsky.social

I have been enthusiastically following Thomas Ha since encountering “Window Boy” in Clarkesworld, a story so haunting I still vividly remember the rainy morning I first read it. Very excited for this.

People will try to shoot down social justice rhetoric saying it smacks of “elite universities” knowing damn well we all learned it for free on the internet.

Very pleased to announce that Redivider has nominated my most recently published story, “A Better Man,” for this year’s Pushcart! Read it here! redivider.emerson.edu/a-better-man/

New story up in the Fall issue of Redivider! Riyl: dark fairy tales, fish monsters, bad men getting their commeuppance. redivider.emerson.edu/a-better-man/

Great essay by Joe Koch on Turn of the Screw, a novel that has always confounded me.

The phrase “Vancian magic” always trips me up because it describes magical rules, when the actual magic in Dying Earth is so unruly. “You have to memorize spells before casting them” strikes me as the least salient property of those books. It just incidentally made a good rule for D&D.

Worth noting that Poe was vocally opposed to the idea of spontaneous inspiration implied by “I love ravens.” He claimed his process was rigidly mathematical and the raven was chosen to be “emblematical of Mournful and Neverending Remembrance.”

Is this a phishing attempt on my inner demons?

I often feel this way, but I’m not sure if this is a byproduct of “weird time” or just a weird thing that twenty-somethings have always done. Lol. I used to love coming up with wild arguments to argue why everything I hated was fascist. I just didn’t post them on social media.

Twitter is so well moderated that I can doomscroll through a long thread of posts about war and dehumanization and at the end a bot will have posted a picture of a naked lady: “Would you hit that?” Serious JG Ballard hours over there.

Widespread cat culls and associated witch panics did not happen in Europe during the time of the medieval Black Death, medieval people loved cats, medieval cats had jobs, everyone stop it with this shit going-medieval.com/2023/05/16/o...

Part of what makes body horror body horror, imo, is that the transformation is not portrayed as unambiguously negative. The horror comes from radical disruption of the sense of self, but the transformation opens new realms of sensual experience.

One of my coworkers found out I had no plans to dress up for Halloween this year, and I tried to explain that my love of Halloween is that I get to do everything I normally do, but now it feels seasonal.

There is a new friendly cat in my neighborhood and he has a tusk! One of his bottom teeth sticks out over his upper lip and it’s very charming. I petted him extensively, but no picture this time.

All I'm capable of doing right now is making little text videos for tiktok. This is the extent of my abilities.

Happy to announce that the new issue of Story magazine with my piece, “An Occult Basis for Grief” is now available. Featuring a monster from beyond time and a disastrous baby “gender reveal.” RIYL: ungodly rituals, sadness, regret.

The joke is on you, Baby.

Bandcamp built a reputation as a place that cared about musicians and music scenes in an otherwise cynical industry. Songtradr’s “business as usual” statement about the firings is cruel and stupid. Proof they are ruining something they don’t understand.

Chemistry in 1934’s Black Cat is wild. Bela Lugosi as a WWI veteran and Boris Karloff as the war criminal who betrayed him, both radiating intensity, talking about death and the occult in a modernist chateau built on the remains of a battlefield. Also there’s a cheerful American tourist couple.

Having spent years in a classroom with college kids, it’s distressing how little gd grace people have for them They’re *kids*. They’re bad at nuance. They have powerful emotions that they’re still learning to control and process. They often have strong senses of justice—which we should encourage!

Racoon: what is this stuff? Me: it’s our garbage Racoon: it’s delicious, I understand why you chase me away from it, do you eat it? Me: no we’re trying to get rid of it Racoon: ok I guess I don’t fucking understand at all then

If you’re an admirer of Gettysburg Review, follow this thread about where to send your letter about its abrupt shuttering. A letter campaign helped Shenandoah when it was on the chopping block

hi everyone. please sign this petition encouraging songtradr to recognize bandcamp united: actionnetwork.org/petitions/so...

If you go to a punk show and there’s no queer people it’s probably poser shit, tbh.

this one's my most successful piece ever by a ridiculous amount, currently at 17.6k over on tumblr, so why not repost it here dungeon crawl #dungeoncrawl #darkfantasy #retro #videogame #rpg #fantasyart

In the same 4th century source, Saint Ambrose wrote that bats adhere "one to another, assuming any position like a pendant bunch of grapes, so that if the lowest in place gives way, they all fall apart. Here we see the virtue of love in action, a virtue difficult to find among men here below."

Toy lore is weird. In 1985 a CEO says: “we need to sell a bunch of these rubber guys. One rides a tiger and the other’s got a weird head. What should we name em?” Decades later a man in crisis gets DEEP into worldbuilding of “Mystic Tiger Riders”, it’s the only thing that makes him feel young.

Great story at Nightmare!

Killer story by Thomas Ha in Clarkesworld. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_08_23/

I'm ridiculously excited (and nervous) to announce that the anthology I'm co-editing is live on Kickstarter NOW. Bring me femboy starship captains! Bring me trans berserkers fuelled by queer rage! Bring me literal demon twinks! www.kickstarter.com/projects/bon...

Support Apex. If you don't have money to subscribe, spread the word. It's a great zine.

(watching a SOV horror movie filmed in a garage where the director pours buckets of goop on their screaming friends who pretend they're being consumed by a paper mache mouth/teeth/tentacle entity) "I have rekindled my belief in the healing power of the arts"

#Indie #Horror presses @tenebrouspress.bsky.social @badhandbooks.bsky.social @weirdpunkbooks.bsky.social @cemeterygatesmedia.bsky.social @shortwavebooks.bsky.social @jackanapespress.bsky.social @cursedmorsels.bsky.social @bookslayerpress.bsky.social @undertow.bsky.social @apocalypseparty.bsky.social

Which of your fave journals & indie presses have made their way over to the other side? Boost them here?

Your daily reminder that it’s OK for first drafts of anything to be rough around the edges, like this original concept sketch for the facehugger in “Alien,” drawn by screenwriter Dan O’Bannon

Apex's next anthology project Map of Lost Places is coming to Kickstarter this October. I'm co-editing this horror anthology with the great @shereereneethomas.bsky.social. The full announcement can be found here: https://apex-magazine.com/apex-blog/coming-soon-to-kickstarter-the-map-of-lost-places/

Very excited to see works from @sgj.bsky.social , @lairdbarron.bsky.social , Scott Oden and JCH on here. Have wanted to see some new conan pastiche from any of them for a long time. All of them at once is an embarrassment of riches screenrant.com/conan-barbar...

If journalism about other topics worked the way it did with trans stuff... ...any time newspapers and magazines covered anything to do with churches or Christianity in general, half the article would be quotes from the Church of Satan.

Sometimes I make a huge pot of lentils and pretend I’m one of the troglodistes from Delicatessen.

For years I have been drinking two six-cup espresso pots of coffee in the morning. Finally figured: why not a get a twelve cup pot? Just a glimpse of my stovetop quivering under the weight of this behemoth throws my life into question.

honestly 2 eyes is a good amount. spiders can pull off 8. but flies got greedy. they were like: give me a million eyes. well, now you don't know how to get out of my house

Started my day with this creepy story by Alice M. and I’ve been thinking about it all morning https://xraylitmag.com/at-the-very-center-of-you-is-nothing-by-alice-m/fiction/

Svengoolie is on Threads. The biggest advantage of that platform.

Been here for less than a day and already seen people misinterpreting each other and insisting on weird ideas, which is how I know this platform is healthier than Threads.