Witches in Writing

Witches are a very broad subject matter, especially when it comes to literature portrayals. From the Wicked witches, to kind souls capable of bending magic to their will there are a thousand different kinds that you can pick and choose from. one of my favorite small time authors I like to read when it comes to witch’s is a tumblr user by the name of caffinewitchcraft, who specializes in short stories, with a personal preference for witches and the supernatural. She also keeps modern spins on her stories, In regards to representation and taking well known stories and twisting them. One of my favorites by hers is a “climax” piece for what could have been a longer story. It’s the story of a witch whos magic was taken from her by the stories love interest and used to kill another witch who was corrupt, and those responsible had never given her the chance to help. So they stole her magic and now as she is recovering in the hospital the love interest is begging for her understanding, asking her is she gets why he had to do it. She accepts his words but warns that he will be judged by the Mother, the earth itself for his crimes of slaughtering one of her daughters and stealing her magic. The story ends very nicely and I would recommend reading it and it is just one of many interesting pieces that she has written. she does an excellent job keeping to the norms of the witch, a focus on maternal and female relationships (in both the platonic and romantic sense of the word) a connection to the earth, an a warning not to mess with them too much. and she does a good job by portraying each in different types of moods, some are more comedic, others more of a hurt/comfort vibe, while others are terrifying and everything in between.

https://caffeinewitchcraft.tumblr.com/post/188729910411/caffeinewitchcraft-prompt-a-lot-of-stories-end(this is the link to the story I mentioned.)

while this is too her writing page.

https://caffeinewitchcraft.tumblr.com/tagged/my-writing

New Weird

New Weird

Before this class I had heard the term new weird a little, but never really understood what exactly it was. But I think I understand it now, in that its taking and reworking as well as developing new tropes to fit our world and link the horror aspect to the newer generations. Annihilation did a good job of getting that across with its environmental horror, while other films play a bunch on a wide array of tropes, tweaked and twisted to fit this new generation. Ill be honest I don’t read a lot of professionally published material, mostly due to the monetary costs to upkeep my pace, and stick to a bunch of smaller authors that write mostly for fun. One of my favorite micro genres of horror that I feel falls very well into New Weird are short two sentence horror stories. They are a little hard to find unless you are looking very hard for them on line, but they are some of the best.

And New Weird is not just limited to literature and movies. 

In the realm of games there are so many horror games that work hard to really nail the feeling of terror, and having to tweak it to fit our new age desensitization to the horror elements of our forefathers. One way games have achieved this is by limiting what the player can do, its harder to not be scared when your only options are run, hide and distract. Alien Isolation, and the original outlast games do this extremely well, even if they don’t stray too far from traditional horror elements. I personally turned the game off halfway through the prologue of the first outlast game cause my heart rate to skyrocket extremely quickly. PT, I believe it is called, is a game demo that did an even better job, due to it pulling in a bunch of different elements from both traditional and modern horror tropes and was absolutely terrifying to play. This game specifically covered your player character walking through two hallways repeatedly with different things happening each time. to progress you had to figure out just what to do all while a malevolent presence resided over you. Another game that I enjoy that takes some of those New Weird horror ideas and plays with them is Dead by Daylight, which is one of my favorite games. It’s a survival horror competitive game, where you go into matches of four survivors, each with unique perks that you can mix match and customize, and one killer who has the majority of the power. The actual gameplay can be unnerving but for the most part it pulls forth the minor adrenaline high of fleeing some giant creature. 

Asian Horror

Typically I hate horror films and stories that involve Ghosts, demons, and poltergeists. Slashers, giant monsters and environmental destruction I can handle with ease, as the Anaconda series is one of my favorite in this genre. And that’s typically because I can’t handle the malevolent antagonist being invisible/ not stoppable by normal means. But I didn’t get that with Pulse. Yes I felt stressed out by scenes and scared but not to the point where I started panicking. Partially I feel like it was due to the ghost not being as overtly malevolent. I chalk it up to the difference between western and eastern media. The ghost were their but they weren’t actively going after people to harm them like they typically are in western media. They’re more stagnant in a way, typically in one specific place and not interfering unless they are disturbed or its them reacting. It lead to a less threatening situation, but still scary cause once the ghost were triggered they were a threat, but not in a you cant escape way. It’s the same feeling I got from watching the Yukioni movie. The threat was there but it wasn’t in your face, you are going to die immediately. It was simply an overarching threat that wasn’t taking up the entire story so you could get more narrative in the story without it seeming forced and it allows for better stories in my opinion.

Vampires and Their Types

When it comes to vampires I have a couple of set stereotypes that I tend to sort them into. The first is the Van Helsing(2004 Film) Vampire, and this set the standard for the more horror Vampire stereotype. Full disclosure this film is one of my top three favorite movies of all time, and I watched it almost religiously through my school years to up to this day. I loved the grand scale adventure aspect of this film as well as how it tied in the top three horror monster icon elements. Frankenstein’s Monster was a very nuanced and interesting character, especially considering how he had been portrayed in all previous films. And I like that even though they went with the more standard monster appearance they still kept him a likeable and sympathetic character which now that I have read Frankenstein by Mary shelly I feel is a closer homage to the feelings I got from that book. The were-wolves too were portrayed interestingly, still a wild near untamable beast, but reined in by Dracula’s control over them. To be honest though out of the three archetypes I felt they were the least developed past their origin and to be honest it works well enough for the story. 

Now Dracula. This movie does an absolutely amazing job of developing his character. He’s an emotional person, pissed off when his wives and children truly die, desperate for the Monster to bring his unborn children to life, down-right sassy and smug when he comes out before the finale.  Hell the scene where he meets van helsing for the first time is one of the funniest scenes in the movie in my opinion. He’s so overdramatic and charismatic its amazing and I can see why he actually has three wives that seem to share a decent relationship with him given the time period. But my favorite part is that he is still a monster and its very clear, especially when he drops the façade of humanity and actually transforms into a huge beast that’s absolutely terrifying to look at. 

Now on the other side Dracula Untoldit a great vampire movie in which you have a more “Monstrous” Dracula as a hero instead of the villain. He’s less terrifying than Van Helsings Vampire, though his creatore fills that aspect a bit better. Once again in this movie they create a developed character, who struggles against his nature, mostly in the case of wanting to protect his family. He agrees to become a vampire to protect them and his kingdom. This movie does an excellent job of creating a more heroic vampire, while still showcasing the horror of vampires, specifically when Dracula makes his vampire army to go save his son from the Persians.