Audience of Strangers

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, and I don't know why I didn't. I had one story come out in December and one in January.

The December one is in Pulp Literature - they're a Canadian press, and you can get a copy here. Prices are in Canadian, FWIW.

The January one is in Cossmass Infinities. You can read it free online here, and you can get the ebook copy (on Amazon only, sneef) here. There's also a physical copy available here.

So, John and I are driving around, and between the GPS in the cars and our phones, it's a very well-informed trip. And it came up in casual discussion that many many horror movie plots have been rendered unworkable by the existence of these things--GPS systems and cellphones.

This is pretty obvious stuff; it ties back to the truism about horror movies being, in many ways, about isolation. Being able to dial 911 and start hiking out with a map that shows you your heading and the distance to the highway makes things a lot more manageable. (Or, you know, the amusing values of being able to Google something like "chainsaw sabotage"... But I digress.)

We went back to it later, a bit. If you eliminate the tactical elements of isolation, then what you're left with is two options. There's social isolation ("they won't believe me" or "they didn't believe me")[1] which has a long and storied history, including those godawful fifties movies about the aliens landing and the teenagers being the only ones to see them. Or else there's self-imposed isolation, where the protagonists don't want to call for help; what that sprang to mind was them being in a haunted house where they had no right to be[2], but Session 9 is also a beautiful example. The guy needs the job, there's no way to leave and get it done, and he can't afford to take the time to call for help. Alright, yes, there is definitely an element of social isolation there; that's fine. One kind doesn't need to do all the work.

So I am discussing this with John, and he points out that splitting up becomes a lot less frightening, a lot more manageable, if you have something like Google Latitude in place. You know where people are, you can track them. And I nod in agreement, and then he smiles and points out that it isn't true.

"You don't know where I am. You know where my phone is."

I do confess I shuddered. (A lovely moment over lunch, to be sure.)

Because that takes it out of isolation and into uncertainty, which is the other great foundation of horror. The world crumbling out from under you, slowly or suddenly. In some ways it ties to isolation--not having anything you can be sure of to reach out to--but it's a basically different development. It's the horror of "The calls are coming from inside the house!", which relies not on there being no-one to help but on the space that you were sure was safe being taken away.

So that's something else to look to, I guess. Not sure how much good it'd be for movies, which don't necessarily have a lot of time to establish certainty, but definitely something to keep in mind for written work.

(ObDisclaimer: no, not all horror movies rely on isolation. Scream, f'r ex, handles the advent of the ubiquitous cellphone quite well.)
---
[1] See also: all the travel horror that involves being surrounded by those terrible strange Other People (usually brown).[3]
[2] Or this 90s movie about four suburban guys out for a night on the town who accidentally see a murder and don't want to call for help because they hit someone with their car... I will try and look up the title later.
[3] ...echoes of HP Lovecraft, actually...

There is a new Oglaf comic up that has something to say about inspiration. It's an Oglaf comic, so it's NSFW. But it's funny.

Because I've gotten it stuck in my head (after the fourth episode of Criminal Minds), and I understand one should share one's earworms.

Doctor My Eyes, with lyrics.

( Cut 'cause you probably know them, posted 'cause I like them. )

...I could absolutely see that as a quite creepy theme song. Hmh. Compartmentalization much?

Oh! On that note, is there a term for the... I guess you could call it the tame monster archetype? Serial killer who only kills serial killers (thank you Dexter), protagonist who has the potential to be a serial killer and keeps his impulses on a leash until a monster (competitor) shows up, that kind of thing? I was scraping through TV Tropes, since they're usually pretty good at collating examples and naming them, but the closest I could find is the Monster Allies and that doesn't really fit--I'm thinking protagonists.

Note that I am specifically excluding nice vampires and the like. They're generally portrayed as nice-people-with-an-addiction/allergy-combo. I'm thinking of characters that are inhumane to the point where other characters in the setting would be prone to seeing them as inhuman--if they knew what they were.

(ETA: That the protagonist's nature can be described as "what they were" rather than "who they were" is probably a fairly good indicator of the kind of thing I am looking for, here.)

(ETA2: Ben suggests looking up Hellsing.)

Going through my external hard drive, and found some stuff I wrote--some very old stuff, '95, '96, that kind of time ago. I haven't forgotten about any of these, but I haven't thought of them in years. And deargod but a lot of it was painfully derivative overwritten telling-not-showing crap with the subtlety of a sledgehammer dropped on your foot.

On the flipside, I actually finished stuff, then. I'm looking at a thirty-thousand word--I guess it's a novella?--novella, and it's hokey and hamhanded and I think it might loose a lot of its wordcount if I made it semi-presentable, but it's finished.

I think I am becoming a knitter. I spilt a sticky deep red wine on the knitted part of my merino-and-silk pale cool blue-lavender-periwinkle scarf, and the first thing I did was call for instructions.

(After the damn thing was soaking, I attended to such minutae as "mopping off the chequebook". I think all things were salvaged.)

I threaded it on to waste yarn, but twelve of the stitches came off and I have no idea how. I think it might have something to do with the yarnovers. I think that while it's laying flat I can get one of the other rows rethreaded onto waste yarn and go from there. Means I won't have to rip back as far.

Still not tired. Kinda disappointed over yet another knitting setback, but not sick of *knitting*, just a bit worn down.

I don't think I've written anything in a week. This needs to change.