Friday Links: 2Read 2Series: Born To Raise Hell Edition
"Fifty thousand ancestors...each of them a final girl. But, that’s just it, isn’t it? They were plural, not singular..." - Stephen Graham Jones, 'Don't Fear The Reaper'
We’re firmly in HORRORLAND now, and not just the Mario Party level. So far, I’ve watched a bunch of Twin Peaks, all of Scream, Dracula’s Daughter, some Treehouse of Horrors, Fright Night, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Ready Or Not, Friday The 13th Part 3, Alien, and The Relic (which takes place in the Field Museum! WOO! BORN&RAISED!). Okay, a few of those watches stretched back into September. When you’re a horror writer, every month is horror month. Also, watching TV helps if your body won’t let you go to sleep before midnight.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A book it feels strange to tease after talking about reading a series last week. A book that does what all good slasher sequels do: expand its point of view, grow its characters, and have a bigger body count. A book that, while ramping up the kills, slows down a good deal to give us some real interiority with the people caught up in this mess—what a way to make use of a novel over film. I’m talking, of course, about Don’t Fear The Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones.
We talked a little about Jade Daniels’ concept of slasher being about revenge and the righting of wrongs. I cast some aspersions on that, not because I disagree, but because I think slashers are more complex than one thing. That said, our killer this book—the amazingly named Dark Mill South—has plenty of vengeance on his mind. Before he even gets to Proofrock, he’s killed 38 in revenge for for the largest mass execution in US history: 1862, when Abraham Lincoln ordered 38 Dakota men hanged. Look, this blog isn’t gonna side with serial killers, but—y’all remember the January blogs, right? The United States of America is overdue for some retribution.
That said—this book is hard to talk about without falling face-first into the circle saw of actually ruinous spoilers. Not obvious stuff, like “Jade’s going by Jennifer now to show she’s changed but she drops it not even halfway through and goes back to Jade.” Spoilers that’ll hurt your enjoyment of the novel. So let’s just say that SGJ’s working with two underlying themes: 1) there are men who hate women and girls, and women and girls have to figure out how navigate this perilous world and 2) the colonial mindset white people get upon seeing open nature is deep, and it is insidious.
So the body count’s bigger, yes—the prose, however, is a touch more ponderous. Early on, we get an extended meditation on aging, missing a dead child, duty to community, and plenty more from a Retired Sheriff Hardy. It’s not the only such chapter, we get these digressions (which sometimes set up kills) from Letha Mondragon, Kimmy Daniels, new history teacher Mr. Armitage, and many more. Don’t worry, we’re still hanging out with Jade Daniels, but maybe don’t call her Jade anymore. Like last week, I hope this semi-warning about the prose doesn’t turn you off from reading. This book is still great, and I’m stoked to wrap up with Angel of Indian Lake next week. Just, don’t expect a thrill-a-minute horror ride. It’s [Jenna Ortega in Scream voice] elevated horror. And no shade to The Babadook, but I’ll probably be re-reading this book before re-watching that movie. That movie can be re-watched when my six-year-old has aged into college, thank you very much.
Derailing slightly—I do like this book. In a Reddit thread that I now can’t find, a poster claiming to be Native interprets the multiplicity of narrators to connect with Native American storytelling traditions. Heavier focus on community, not just Final Girl and Killer. Indigenous Americans are far more community-oriented than the colonizing occupiers of this continent, so this tracks. Honestly, more slashers would benefit from taking stock of the fallout on a community-wide basis, rather than “Jason’s got a new crop of campers” or whatever. Scream does this, of course, and SGJ is heavily influenced by Scream. Something this book seems to be doing, with its references to post-Cabin In The Woods horror, is canonizing these new movies, like It Follows or Happy Death Day. It’s a worthwhile endeavor, imo, and I am excited for the cultural touchstones of horror to be evolving to include more than schlock. Not that the 1977 Halloween isn’t a perfect film or anything. But we can talk about It Follows now, too.
Too long on the book summary! Okay okay, SGJ does this for me. He’s getting “Top 5 favorite writer” status, I think. Might have to do a whole Wednesday column on the post-Cabin In The Woods divide in horror, how Scream IV plays into it, okay, okay, let’s get to the links.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Am I gonna shamelessly plug the music videos I put up earlier this week? It’s my blog, isn’t it?
Since I was a little kid, I have thought this headline was true, but got shamed into thinking—something? That it was unmanly for this to be true? That the players can cry into their millions? Lauren Holiday, soccer star and wife of two-time NBA champion Jrue, raised this alarm last year. Anyway, I liked Rachelle Hampton at Defector saying that The Trade Is The Cruelest Thing In Sports. A pull quote, since Defector is subscription-based (but worth it!): “I imagined waking up one day to an email from Tom Ley informing me that I've been kicked out of Defector Slack and have to move to Minnesota…I thought this was the sentimentality of the amateur, but then I ran this idea by my Defector colleagues and was immediately inundated with years and years of heartbreaking trades, each tear spilled on camera filling me with grief, then vindication.”
Great writeup from Jocelyn Martínez-Rosales in Chicago Reader about floral artist Serena Madrigal, who leaves the thorns on her roses. There’s some really beautiful pieces pictured in this article, and on top of that? Madrigal is a cannabis advocate, and uses the plant in her arrangements to bring awareness both about the benefits of cannabis and the unjust, racist mass incarceration system and how it’s led to the cannabis market being disproportionally dominated by white men.
Gorillas can be host to drug-resistant pathogens without those pathogens turning into serious disease. How? Studying what plants gorillas use for medicine—and cross-referencing with plants used in traditional medicine by Indigenous peoples in Gabon—researchers have learned that bark from certain trees could have use in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries. Once again, Indigenous knowledge, coming through! Denis Ndeloh Etiendem, a Cameroonian primatologist, says this “reinforces the interconnectedness between humans and gorillas and highlights the importance of preserving both the species and their habitats,” calling the forest ecosystem “a living pharmacy.” Charles Mpaka has more at Mongabay, what a fascinating piece.
The great
has some writing advice over at for making your horror terrifying. Yes, that’s terror, and let’s make a distinction from horror, please. One “awakens the faculties to a high degrees of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them…” Lincoln quotes Ann Radcliffe as saying. Read this piece and expand your horror toolbox, I say to presumably more people than myself.This blog is always going to celebrate zines. Art outside of capitalism! we yell over and over. Over at Chicago Reader, Leor Galil reports from the ninth annual ZineMercado in Logan Square. Leor’s optimistic we’re entering into a great age of Chicago music zine-making, and that’s enough to get me excited.
What’re you still doing here? It’s October, go re-read VINE!
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. Also, don’t forget to be neighborly. Bend the rules in favor of your customers over your boss, like Kimmy Daniels. You’re already a better mom than Kimmy Daniels, I know you are. Even the good thing Kimmy Daniels does, any parent would do. Now steal from a corporate overlord this weekend.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris