and counting
Oct. 9th, 2024 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
not_funhello reader...s? ha
it's the most chilling month of all, and my fav holiday coming up to boot. so i thought i should update this month with some reccomendations of things i've been into. or mini reviews. i'm an expert at tl,dr if the backerkit for arc 5 wasn't obvious.
(speaking of the arc 5 printing backerkit, it's in the final two weeks! backers at the 25$ or above level now also all get a set of pins, a sticker sheet, prints, a zine, and a final secret surprise added to their orders. so if you're an inhuman diehard, check it out asap before its gone!)
anyway.
every year i talk about how much i love the japanese found footage horror film Noroi, and it's still one of my favs! BUT if you've already seen it, there's more by the director (koji shiraishi) that i have been having a blast with. Occult actually stars himself, and while its slow burn makes me super anxious as it trends towards real-world acts of terror, the ending was just so perfectly goofy i couldn't get over how much fun i had. he's a very low budget director and so everything depends largely on framing and acting to carry the film - with a few superimposed microscopic films of worms. this man loves an evil worm, that is one theme that seems to run through all his work.
i can't call the man a genius - some of his earliest work was a milquetoast Juon knockoff, and he trends into sexploitation horror a few times. but if you like Noroi and Occult and STILL want more of his supernatural horror (like me) i'd say skip Cult (a vehicle for a kaman rider actor) and bounce right into Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi which takes some well known japanese legends of horror and puts a shiraishi twist on em all. it was originally a webseries to begin with, so each episode is only a little over an hour, but kind youtubers have uploaded the whole thing with translations. it's cool as hell.
i also have been going through the more conventional english language horror offerings this year. i had a real fun time with hell hole by the film making adams family. it has just the right amount of camp and gore to be meta-funny as hell, while still sticking close to its roots as a tribute to carpenter's The Thing.
another i thought was kinda good was the demon disorder though i typically don't go for ozzie horror - it tends to be way more gorey than american horror and i'm not really into splatterfest. this one kind of won me over for its early commitment to practical effects. it's not too often you get to see latex tumors covered in slime these days. and there sure is a lot of slime. and absolutely there were some hilarious moments like chasing a sort of squid beast around on the ceiling while screaming. they also did something that's really rare which is write a story that is strictly an allegory for cancer - brain cancer in this case. too often horror throws us actual cancer survivors (or our families) under the bus by going 'its cancer. NOW ITS EEEEEVIL CANCERRRRR MONSTER CANCERRRR DEMONNNN' but for once, by NOT naming the disease, this movie left it strictly allegorical. but if you know you know, and so the haunting anxiety within the family (and where the demon appears) is very familiar. there's a teeny tiny bit of cgi at the end but over all you spend a lot of time watching latex props burst out of other latex props in a creepy old house. it's very masculine, tho. there's like exactly two women in the entire movie and one's a bit character cop. lol.
the final movie i will suggest is The Deliverance which shouldnt be confused with deliverance. this one came out this year, and is a very fictionalized version of the ammons haunting. When i say very fictionalized i mean /very/ fictionalized. while i really hope the ammons family got some cash for selling the rights to their story, it really hits all those classic posession/haunting horror beats that i'm looking for and has a really spectacular cast. the actor who plays the youngest son, dante, is especially good. he fluctuates between extremely natural child behavior and creepy haunting so flawlessly. it's got some trigger points in it for sure - the mom is drinking, she slaps her kids around sometimes, and their grandma is going thru chemo. but these are the every day real life 'haunting' elements that can make us FEEL like we're being attacked by something larger than life, so i was into it hardcore. by the time things get truly supernatural, i was just like, give this fuckin family a break!! but in a good way, in a very 'yeah kick his ass!' way lmao
that's ... about it for good horror i've seen this year. i did /not/ like LongLegs which is really just a vehicle for the director/writer to air his grievances with his famous and closeted gay father via nick cage portraying a child predator. leave that shit to robert englund & the elm street kids, imo.
but okay maybe, reader. maybe, movies aren't your thing. maybe you're big into multitasking and just prefer a good podcast or audio book. though i'm always ready to rec my top favs (like Magnus Archives, Knifepoint Horror and The Silt Verses) i want to share this new one that caught me and hooked me.
it's called Monarch, about a solitary girl hiking the north-south trail that runs through the mountains the entire length of the central united states. this is a very specific thing, people who do "through hiking" and it's not something i think i could ever do. Monarch is her trail name, and she starts out just asking folks along the trail if they've got any good ghost stories. But like every good ghost story, Monarch's being haunted by things not-all-that supernatural as well. So much of the tension just comes from her being alone in the wilderness, it's just a good low key creeper story. I don't know if there ever will be or needs to be a season two, but i really liked it. Fair warning tho: being as she's meant to be hiking, she huffs and puffs a lot as she talks. some folks might find that stressful to listen to. i didn't really mind it myself, i think it just sounded genuine.
or if you like horrifying nonfiction, i was gripped and really learned some sad but true things listening to Lost Patients which is about the failure of the US mental health system and the pattern of falling in and out of being unhoused/jail/brief treatment that its created. it's as sad as it sounds. because they can't cover the entire usa, they focus just on Seattle, WA. but if you're even remotely familiar with the story of being mentally ill and unable to get proper treatment in america, you recognize its familiarity as universal.
it's also a good time of year for me to promote the horror bundles on itchio that im in!! firstly there's the Queer Halloween Stories bundle which has over 90 games, 12 comics, zines and more in it! there's two payment options - Fright (60$) and Treat (10$).
the second is the all-comics Halloween Horrors Bundle for 35$ put together by members of the Cartoonists Coop! there's 50 comics in it, so that's a great deal. it makes me wish i had more spare time to read them all. but... gotta make that dollar.
speaking of making that dollar - i dusted off my patreon to mirror my Kofi, in the event that it's just easier to support via patreon for some folk. i'm still not a fan of the platform in general - kofi is /way/ more reliably functional. but yeap, folks can reserve monthly art commission slots on either one once more. also backing either one will give you access to the discord chat!
this month's sticker club sticker tho. get it exclusively thru kofi!
i personally prefer kofi for a variety of reasons, one of which is i can set up little galleries and post my october daily draws there for everyone to enjoy. this year i'm doing bug pokemon. just bug trainer brain, baby.
i also did a little bit of fussing around with the layout of demon-sushi.com, including the start of a classic 88x31 pixel banner button wall. if you've got a website and a button for it in that size, let me know and i'll add you to the list! the reasoning behind that size is very 1990s, because a popular web host (geocities) used to self promote with a button of those dimensions, and it sort of took off as a "professional" way to link back in the day to design yours in that same fashion. i'm really enjoying the rebirth of personal websites tbh. keep it up!!
i'm struggling quite a bit with fatigue after the last bout of covid (even though it wasnt symptomatic, it really clearly got to me if im falling asleep at 2pm randomly) but i'm slowly starting to get a sense of my own working capabilities /again/ and looking for part time work via my little scooter Red. so far, no luck. so online supporters really are important right now.
i haven't got a chance to set up halloween decorations yet, but i think this year's theme is going to be skeleton at the beach.
stay safe if you're in the southern US during this storm season, please. and if you're in the middle east, know that the jewish diasphora across the world is disgusted at what israel is doing. they are no different than nazis in their campaign of empire expansion and genocide and it's beyond shocking. i know they've been like this since before i was born, but holy fucking shit. i personally don't have resources to give, but i think its important other readers know gofundme campaigns for people in gaza are being very carefully vetted and you can rest assured they are all legitimate. you can also buy Esim cards to allow gazans to remain connected with the outside world. please help if at all possible.
and to my fellow americans - please vote. remember that this is less about finding a perfect immediate fix to our problems and more about selecting the terrain on which we will fight to solve our problems for the next four years. to abstain from voting shows a degree of self involved white moderate liberalism & privilege that i really and truly can not understand.
hang in there, friends. i'm thinking about trying to write more often. i've fallen off of it in the last 15 years as it was one of the very early complaints my stalkers made about me and i foolishly hoped it would placate them. but fuck those assholes. die mad about it.
time for me to finish this cup of coffee, this blog entry, and draw a shuckle.
love you, gracious and faithful readers. i hope more treats than tricks await you this month.
it's the most chilling month of all, and my fav holiday coming up to boot. so i thought i should update this month with some reccomendations of things i've been into. or mini reviews. i'm an expert at tl,dr if the backerkit for arc 5 wasn't obvious.
(speaking of the arc 5 printing backerkit, it's in the final two weeks! backers at the 25$ or above level now also all get a set of pins, a sticker sheet, prints, a zine, and a final secret surprise added to their orders. so if you're an inhuman diehard, check it out asap before its gone!)
anyway.
every year i talk about how much i love the japanese found footage horror film Noroi, and it's still one of my favs! BUT if you've already seen it, there's more by the director (koji shiraishi) that i have been having a blast with. Occult actually stars himself, and while its slow burn makes me super anxious as it trends towards real-world acts of terror, the ending was just so perfectly goofy i couldn't get over how much fun i had. he's a very low budget director and so everything depends largely on framing and acting to carry the film - with a few superimposed microscopic films of worms. this man loves an evil worm, that is one theme that seems to run through all his work.
i can't call the man a genius - some of his earliest work was a milquetoast Juon knockoff, and he trends into sexploitation horror a few times. but if you like Noroi and Occult and STILL want more of his supernatural horror (like me) i'd say skip Cult (a vehicle for a kaman rider actor) and bounce right into Senritsu Kaiki File Kowasugi which takes some well known japanese legends of horror and puts a shiraishi twist on em all. it was originally a webseries to begin with, so each episode is only a little over an hour, but kind youtubers have uploaded the whole thing with translations. it's cool as hell.
i also have been going through the more conventional english language horror offerings this year. i had a real fun time with hell hole by the film making adams family. it has just the right amount of camp and gore to be meta-funny as hell, while still sticking close to its roots as a tribute to carpenter's The Thing.
another i thought was kinda good was the demon disorder though i typically don't go for ozzie horror - it tends to be way more gorey than american horror and i'm not really into splatterfest. this one kind of won me over for its early commitment to practical effects. it's not too often you get to see latex tumors covered in slime these days. and there sure is a lot of slime. and absolutely there were some hilarious moments like chasing a sort of squid beast around on the ceiling while screaming. they also did something that's really rare which is write a story that is strictly an allegory for cancer - brain cancer in this case. too often horror throws us actual cancer survivors (or our families) under the bus by going 'its cancer. NOW ITS EEEEEVIL CANCERRRRR MONSTER CANCERRRR DEMONNNN' but for once, by NOT naming the disease, this movie left it strictly allegorical. but if you know you know, and so the haunting anxiety within the family (and where the demon appears) is very familiar. there's a teeny tiny bit of cgi at the end but over all you spend a lot of time watching latex props burst out of other latex props in a creepy old house. it's very masculine, tho. there's like exactly two women in the entire movie and one's a bit character cop. lol.
the final movie i will suggest is The Deliverance which shouldnt be confused with deliverance. this one came out this year, and is a very fictionalized version of the ammons haunting. When i say very fictionalized i mean /very/ fictionalized. while i really hope the ammons family got some cash for selling the rights to their story, it really hits all those classic posession/haunting horror beats that i'm looking for and has a really spectacular cast. the actor who plays the youngest son, dante, is especially good. he fluctuates between extremely natural child behavior and creepy haunting so flawlessly. it's got some trigger points in it for sure - the mom is drinking, she slaps her kids around sometimes, and their grandma is going thru chemo. but these are the every day real life 'haunting' elements that can make us FEEL like we're being attacked by something larger than life, so i was into it hardcore. by the time things get truly supernatural, i was just like, give this fuckin family a break!! but in a good way, in a very 'yeah kick his ass!' way lmao
that's ... about it for good horror i've seen this year. i did /not/ like LongLegs which is really just a vehicle for the director/writer to air his grievances with his famous and closeted gay father via nick cage portraying a child predator. leave that shit to robert englund & the elm street kids, imo.
but okay maybe, reader. maybe, movies aren't your thing. maybe you're big into multitasking and just prefer a good podcast or audio book. though i'm always ready to rec my top favs (like Magnus Archives, Knifepoint Horror and The Silt Verses) i want to share this new one that caught me and hooked me.
it's called Monarch, about a solitary girl hiking the north-south trail that runs through the mountains the entire length of the central united states. this is a very specific thing, people who do "through hiking" and it's not something i think i could ever do. Monarch is her trail name, and she starts out just asking folks along the trail if they've got any good ghost stories. But like every good ghost story, Monarch's being haunted by things not-all-that supernatural as well. So much of the tension just comes from her being alone in the wilderness, it's just a good low key creeper story. I don't know if there ever will be or needs to be a season two, but i really liked it. Fair warning tho: being as she's meant to be hiking, she huffs and puffs a lot as she talks. some folks might find that stressful to listen to. i didn't really mind it myself, i think it just sounded genuine.
or if you like horrifying nonfiction, i was gripped and really learned some sad but true things listening to Lost Patients which is about the failure of the US mental health system and the pattern of falling in and out of being unhoused/jail/brief treatment that its created. it's as sad as it sounds. because they can't cover the entire usa, they focus just on Seattle, WA. but if you're even remotely familiar with the story of being mentally ill and unable to get proper treatment in america, you recognize its familiarity as universal.
it's also a good time of year for me to promote the horror bundles on itchio that im in!! firstly there's the Queer Halloween Stories bundle which has over 90 games, 12 comics, zines and more in it! there's two payment options - Fright (60$) and Treat (10$).
the second is the all-comics Halloween Horrors Bundle for 35$ put together by members of the Cartoonists Coop! there's 50 comics in it, so that's a great deal. it makes me wish i had more spare time to read them all. but... gotta make that dollar.
speaking of making that dollar - i dusted off my patreon to mirror my Kofi, in the event that it's just easier to support via patreon for some folk. i'm still not a fan of the platform in general - kofi is /way/ more reliably functional. but yeap, folks can reserve monthly art commission slots on either one once more. also backing either one will give you access to the discord chat!
this month's sticker club sticker tho. get it exclusively thru kofi!
i personally prefer kofi for a variety of reasons, one of which is i can set up little galleries and post my october daily draws there for everyone to enjoy. this year i'm doing bug pokemon. just bug trainer brain, baby.
i also did a little bit of fussing around with the layout of demon-sushi.com, including the start of a classic 88x31 pixel banner button wall. if you've got a website and a button for it in that size, let me know and i'll add you to the list! the reasoning behind that size is very 1990s, because a popular web host (geocities) used to self promote with a button of those dimensions, and it sort of took off as a "professional" way to link back in the day to design yours in that same fashion. i'm really enjoying the rebirth of personal websites tbh. keep it up!!
i'm struggling quite a bit with fatigue after the last bout of covid (even though it wasnt symptomatic, it really clearly got to me if im falling asleep at 2pm randomly) but i'm slowly starting to get a sense of my own working capabilities /again/ and looking for part time work via my little scooter Red. so far, no luck. so online supporters really are important right now.
i haven't got a chance to set up halloween decorations yet, but i think this year's theme is going to be skeleton at the beach.
stay safe if you're in the southern US during this storm season, please. and if you're in the middle east, know that the jewish diasphora across the world is disgusted at what israel is doing. they are no different than nazis in their campaign of empire expansion and genocide and it's beyond shocking. i know they've been like this since before i was born, but holy fucking shit. i personally don't have resources to give, but i think its important other readers know gofundme campaigns for people in gaza are being very carefully vetted and you can rest assured they are all legitimate. you can also buy Esim cards to allow gazans to remain connected with the outside world. please help if at all possible.
and to my fellow americans - please vote. remember that this is less about finding a perfect immediate fix to our problems and more about selecting the terrain on which we will fight to solve our problems for the next four years. to abstain from voting shows a degree of self involved white moderate liberalism & privilege that i really and truly can not understand.
hang in there, friends. i'm thinking about trying to write more often. i've fallen off of it in the last 15 years as it was one of the very early complaints my stalkers made about me and i foolishly hoped it would placate them. but fuck those assholes. die mad about it.
time for me to finish this cup of coffee, this blog entry, and draw a shuckle.
love you, gracious and faithful readers. i hope more treats than tricks await you this month.
