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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Unfortunately my eyes have been burned out by the horrors I've seen from too many years on SA so I can't see the gang tag right now
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Mar 9, 2020 15:51
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Can I please get one doubled up with my cyberpunk tag?
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Mar 9, 2020 17:52
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i will accept a ligotti gang tag as punishment for my sins
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Mar 9, 2020 22:23
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I have heard these moderators posting in their sleep, and I stand waiting for the gangtag, as if at the top of a darkened flight of stairs.
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Mar 9, 2020 22:27
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Zartosht posted:and This Degenerate Little Town, featuring Tom himself reading another long poem. lmao tommy sounds exactly like he would be someone else and like he actually does enjoy things. He could be a narrator for like Thomas the tank engine or something
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Mar 9, 2020 22:31
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How is Robert Bloch? I've never read anything by him directly, other than a short story I just finished. Obviously he's had a big impact on horror/suspense through Psycho alone, and it looks like he has a metric ton of books and short stories, but I've never really encountered much of his work. I was kind of underwhelmed by the story I read ("The Hungry House" in The Weird") so I'm curious if he has some hidden gems I'm not aware of.
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Mar 9, 2020 22:33
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MockingQuantum posted:How is Robert Bloch? I've never read anything by him directly, other than a short story I just finished. Obviously he's had a big impact on horror/suspense through Psycho alone, and it looks like he has a metric ton of books and short stories, but I've never really encountered much of his work. I was kind of underwhelmed by the story I read ("The Hungry House" in The Weird") so I'm curious if he has some hidden gems I'm not aware of. I like some of his pulpier pre-Psycho stuff. I've got a collection from Famous Fantastic Mysteries that has Bloch's 'The Man Who Collected Poe,' and that one's enjoyable.
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Mar 9, 2020 23:24
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Unfortunately my eyes have been burned out by the horrors I've seen from too many years on SA so I can't see the gang tag right now Many thanks for all your clickins HA!
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Mar 10, 2020 05:41
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I hear there are gang tags here. Gotta get the 'gotti.
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Mar 10, 2020 07:22
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But I remained silent until the emptyquotes died. And as twilight passed into evening, I felt my special post for which there are no words moving towards a greater darkness.
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Mar 10, 2020 13:14
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My Ligottification is complete And if you are too conscious of not liking it, then you may conceive of yourself as a biological paradox that cannot live with its consciousness and cannot live without it. And in so shitposting and not shitposting, you take your place with the posters and the mods.
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Mar 10, 2020 13:33
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What's the elevator pitch to get people to read ligotti?
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Mar 10, 2020 13:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What's the elevator pitch to get people to read ligotti? Imagine the pessimistic societal insignificance of Kafka mixed with the cosmic horrific insignificance of Lovecraft. Ligotti turns this on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy. I've read a lot of horror, and Ligotti's the only author who's made me uncomfortable with my very existence.
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Mar 10, 2020 13:50
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ligotti has always made me feel more comfortable, somehow. What does this mean?
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Mar 10, 2020 13:51
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SniperWoreConverse posted:ligotti has always made me feel more comfortable, somehow. What does this mean?
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Mar 10, 2020 14:08
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If it's not too late, I'd love to get in on the Ligotti gang.
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Mar 10, 2020 14:13
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I know that I don't really contribute much to this thread but I would also love a Ligotti gang tag, pretty please. By way of offering some content, I've been reading Paul Tremblay's Growing Things, and the stories I've read so far are just great.
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Mar 10, 2020 15:21
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a foolish pianist posted:I like some of his pulpier pre-Psycho stuff. I've got a collection from Famous Fantastic Mysteries that has Bloch's 'The Man Who Collected Poe,' and that one's enjoyable. Interesting, I'll try to track that one down! GladRagKraken posted:I know that I don't really contribute much to this thread but I would also love a Ligotti gang tag, pretty please. I tried reading Growing Things right after it came out and bounced off of it. I did like the titular story, but the next few I tried didn't really grab me, and I actually don't really remember them at all, other than the one with people trying to get away after robbing a pawn shop and having... bad things happen to them.
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Mar 10, 2020 15:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:What's the elevator pitch to get people to read ligotti? Mine is just usually, "Did you see Season 1 of True Detective? Did you find yourself agreeing with Rust Cohle? Do you want more of that?" Also: Hooray! Thank you for the gang tag!
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Mar 10, 2020 15:45
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Skyscraper posted:Mine is just usually, "Did you see Season 1 of True Detective? Did you find yourself agreeing with Rust Cohle? Do you want more of that?" Yeah I've sold more people on Ligotti via True Detective than via any other means. The creator whose name escapes me specifically name dropped Ligotti (and Laird Barron) in an interview around when the show aired, I know I had a couple of friends who asked me about them after watching the show, and it was the reason I picked up a Ligotti collection myself. Then after reading a bunch of Ligotti you can go back and rewatch TD like I did, and discover that the creator just kind of lifted most of the ideas wholesale from Ligotti and other writers! It was great! I jest, but it's not entirely untrue. The show is still good, though.
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Mar 10, 2020 15:48
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I think there's parts of TD where he literally quotes Conspiracy Against the Human Race verbatim
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Mar 10, 2020 16:11
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MockingQuantum posted:I tried reading Growing Things right after it came out and bounced off of it. I did like the titular story, but the next few I tried didn't really grab me, and I actually don't really remember them at all, other than the one with people trying to get away after robbing a pawn shop and having... bad things happen to them. I've been reading completely out of order so for all I know the second through fifth one are awful, but if you do still have access to the book, I highly recommend "Don't Feed the Ducks". The author what I think is a fair job telling the story from the viewpoint of a small child, but what I found so interesting and compelling about that was that you never actually find out what exactly is going wrong, and so as a reader I was forced instead to focus on feelings of dread and uncertainty and powerlessness.
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Mar 10, 2020 16:13
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MockingQuantum posted:Yeah I've sold more people on Ligotti via True Detective than via any other means. The creator whose name escapes me specifically name dropped Ligotti (and Laird Barron) in an interview around when the show aired, I know I had a couple of friends who asked me about them after watching the show, and it was the reason I picked up a Ligotti collection myself. I think it was the first time Ligotti ever reached TV audiences. It was my first time hearing of him, and I hadn't even heard of the show at the time, someone just reposted the "A Dream About Being A Person" clip and I got enlightened about both.
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Mar 10, 2020 16:29
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MockingQuantum posted:Interesting, I'll try to track that one down! Speaking of these pulp anthologies, which ones are really worthwhile? I've got the Famous Fantastic Mysteries anthology from 91, which I think is the only published collection specific to that magazine, and it's got a nice introduction to each story that gives publication info and context. Are any of the Weird Tales collections particularly good? 32 Unearthed Terrors, maybe?
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Mar 10, 2020 16:48
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I enjoyed True Detective but it drove me to the brink of madness. Why would you lift directly from two horror authors, both of them exploring the inability of mankind to live with the revelations of the true, awful nature of the universe (and choose a theme song about being driven mad by a sight too strange to comprehend, no less), if you were going to conclude it by having the agents of civility triumph over backwoods weirdness and basically get over the whole pessimism thing, because maybe good things in this world are worth fighting for? It's like Nic Pizzolato wrote and produced a prestige TV show with the aim of annoying me personally.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:01
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no kidding generic humanist optimism in fiction can't die fast enough
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Mar 10, 2020 20:02
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grobbo posted:I enjoyed True Detective but it drove me to the brink of madness. I mean the honest answer is that going hard into Ligotti/Barron style grimness is probably too depressing to sell a show on, but I get what you mean. I haven't watched the show since I read a bunch of both authors so it's possible the ending would make me more mad now. Just in general, I wish there was so much more TV/film that actually did the grim end of cosmic horror justice, rather than the Cthulhu as Kaiju kind of stuff that crops up occasionally. I know Barron's got his flaws as a writer but I would love to see some stuff inspired by his sort of trademark style of starting something out as just a standard crime drama or whatever, that slowly transitions into basically having been a weird sort of flesh-mortification dream cult the whole time, but you're left uncertain that the cult is even the bad guys in the big picture.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:07
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grobbo posted:I enjoyed True Detective but it drove me to the brink of madness. Ya, that last scene with them outside the hospital ruined the whole season.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:07
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It bothered me how much True Dicks was plagiarized and praised for its plagiarism. Like the closing line is literally just Alan Moore and goddamn that was a beautiful moment in Top Ten.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:07
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a foolish pianist posted:Speaking of these pulp anthologies, which ones are really worthwhile? I've got the Famous Fantastic Mysteries anthology from 91, which I think is the only published collection specific to that magazine, and it's got a nice introduction to each story that gives publication info and context. Are any of the Weird Tales collections particularly good? 32 Unearthed Terrors, maybe? There were two weird tales books that I had years ago that I thought were awesome as gently caress. I think maybe late 90s, they were paperback and had ~400 pages. They got destroyed with every other old book I had so I dunno how well the stories would hold up now, but sometimes I'll be doing something and remember one and wish I could go back and read them. One was I think "best of weird tales" and had a green tentacle alien, the other had a barbarian getting ready to fight some kinda smoke monster. Really wish the mag didn't die I'd subscribe if the stories had a similar vibe. Hell, I'd do a quarterly version that showed up as a book. Kind of want to find those again but in the few searches I've done over the years they seem really overpriced online.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:12
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Oxxidation posted:no kidding hey so this raises a question that I'm curious about : What horror fic ends optimistically, but feels like it earns its optimism? I agree that generic optimism will kill my enjoyment of most horror faster than ever, partially because it's almost always blatantly the result of either a creator or a producer or whatever being told flat out to back off of a more appropriate but darker ending, partially because it almost never feels earned. But also, reading a bunch of grim horror works over and over forever gets to me some times, so I'm kind of curious what's out there that ends optimistically in a way that feels justified and earned as a result of the story? I imagine it'd be hard to do without feeling trite, and I can't personally think of any good examples off the top of my head.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:12
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GrandpaPants posted:It bothered me how much True Dicks was plagiarized and praised for its plagiarism. Like the closing line is literally just Alan Moore and goddamn that was a beautiful moment in Top Ten. It sucks but it also makes sense, a lot of the stuff he was cribbing had never really made it into the mainstream before, and if it had, it wasn't ever really distilled and delivered in the way True Detective did it. Despite a lot of it being a ripoff and the ending sucking (I'm told), the show does a lot of justice to the source material, just in terms of how well it delivers on a feeling of fascinated dread about everything that's going down.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:14
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MockingQuantum posted:It sucks but it also makes sense, a lot of the stuff he was cribbing had never really made it into the mainstream before, and if it had, it wasn't ever really distilled and delivered in the way True Detective did it. Despite a lot of it being a ripoff and the ending sucking (I'm told), the show does a lot of justice to the source material, just in terms of how well it delivers on a feeling of fascinated dread about everything that's going down. That's about how I felt about it. And I felt at the time that they could've kept going with a second season, and then they ended up deciding that the show was in fact not the Thomas Ligotti Power Hour, which was a mistake. Like they wanted to keep it at plagiarism, and not let it extend far enough into actually engaging with what they took.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:39
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Skyscraper posted:That's about how I felt about it. And I felt at the time that they could've kept going with a second season, and then they ended up deciding that the show was in fact not the Thomas Ligotti Power Hour, which was a mistake. Like they wanted to keep it at plagiarism, and not let it extend far enough into actually engaging with what they took. To me, the second season absolutely felt like Pizzolato didn't want to keep cribbing off his favorite authors, but couldn't actually produce any work that was up to that same standard without taking ideas wholesale. It was severely disappointing, I think the whole concept had legs but it felt like the team wasn't up to the task of elaborating out what the first season did so well. It was kind of weird to see, honestly. I never watched the third season as a result, though I hear it's better than the second one, at least?
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Mar 10, 2020 20:49
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Oh man, did I miss out on the gang tags???
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Mar 10, 2020 20:51
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MockingQuantum posted:I mean the honest answer is that going hard into Ligotti/Barron style grimness is probably too depressing to sell a show on I think that's what still confuses me about it. Why introduce these specific authors and themes so prominently if you're only going to discard them? I don't think anyone at HBO was calling for a show that capitalised on the sought-after Ligotti audience, so why bother with this? Why drop lots of cosmic horror hints if they're only going to be distracting non sequiturs by the time the show wraps up? (Why *were* all those minor characters speaking in deranged whispers about a mysterious and otherworldly domain that turned out to be a non-fantastical Mardi Gras Sex Abuse Fort?) Was there anything more to it than authorial ego and the idea of prompting dozens of buzzy The Horror References In True Detective You Might Have Missed articles around the show? grobbo fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 20:52
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MockingQuantum posted:hey so this raises a question that I'm curious about : What horror fic ends optimistically, but feels like it earns its optimism? Allowing that you need to curb your expectations of what would qualify as optimistic in a horror novel, a quick glance through my books gave me this list: Primitive by JF Gonzales Dark Advent by Brian Hodge Live Girls by Ray Garton Containment by Charlee Jacob The Border by Robert McCammon Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo Dream of the Serpent by Alan Ryker
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Mar 10, 2020 20:58
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(spoiling title in case anyone is a weirdo like me and doesn't want to risk being kinda spoiled on something they might read one day) Scott Sigler's Infection series is dumb Clancy-esque body/gross-out horror, but it's incredibly fun, and I honestly think it would've been a little less fun if he tried to subvert the genre and give it all a grimdark pessimistic ending. (actual spoilers) Also like billions of people die so it's not exactly happy, but it does end with the heroes getting medals from the president.
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Mar 10, 2020 22:03
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itt a lot of severely depressed people mad that the cop show didnt validate their narcissistic nihilism chernobyl kinsman fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 22:24
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they only got one guy who was himself a product of the hideous epstein-style conspiracy. they say out right that all the real prime movers of the cult were still out there, never to be brought to justice.
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Mar 10, 2020 22:26
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