So no bites on reading the stories I’ve posted lately, alright.  There could be a variety of reasons for that and not much point speculating and self doubting, but it did put me in mind of cultural shift that happened in my lifetime.  Horror fiction rose to become a giant market in the eighties, then collapsed so utterly there is no longer a horror section in most book stores.

I sometimes encounter this with people I know.  I say, hey, check out this thing over here.  And they say they aren’t into horror.  This makes me wonder what’s different, between now and the ’80s.  Because right now we really are living the cyberpunk dystopia the ’80s predicted, a world of trash and fire and capitalism ripping through everything left that’s good in the world, politics so removed from reality that every apocalyptic thing that happens is just so many data points in the botox’d heads.  Even nuclear holocausts are back on the table of possibilities.  This is the ’80s on speed.  Where’s the interest in horror?

The ascendance of horror back then is often attributed to the dark undertones of the plastic pop universe, but other causes are possible.  The relatively uncensored images of the Vietnam War stained a lot of minds, and our equivalent wars were heavily, heavily filtered.  Desert Storm is a video game and a theme song in a lot of minds.  You could find images of graphic violence from that time if you searched for them, but you would not see them on the evening news.  The military industrial complex learned its lesson, and the reward was a US public very willing to go to war after that point.

There may be other demographic and market factors.  Westerns and other manly genres had a big collapse, almost like men just stopped reading anything?  That’s certainly the case now.  The vast majority of readers are women.  By that theory, it’s like men stopped reading until horror briefly lured them back in, then they fell off again in the late nineties – right as video games became so dominant in boy culture.

One person in my household read horror in the ’80s, but does not now.  She gives a reason which is just counterfactual – that the books got more cruel or violent over time.  She read Stephen King when he was relatively new, and talks like his later work was more violent?  Dude was as skeevy and creepy as anything from day one.  I think this lady’s just one of the blithe readers that somehow didn’t process the pedo content in It.  So I interrogated her a bit more and it seems she just read less of it for a while and lost her tolerance for it.  But why?

Within my own life, I couldn’t handle certain extremes of horror movies for much of my young adulthood, until I rounded some kind of corner on it.  Then I was watching Hellraiser and Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and all that.  But another change came along.  Inspired by Takashi Miike, Eli Roth kicked up the transgressive factor in horror a lot, and I had to draw a line of my own.  I’m not that hardcore.  This mirrors my bf’s mom’s idea about what happened in her own life – “I didn’t change, the horror did” – but I think people can see the difference between The Grudge and The Human Centipede.  Amirite?

But horror literature is a whole other kettle of fish.  Unless your imagination is superb, you aren’t seeing things the way you do on film.  I could read much more violent content in books than I could handle on screen.  I can write horror worse than I’d ever want to see, and it doesn’t bother me.  It’s all entertainment, diversion, spooky fun times.  A spine tingler.

Why are so many people utterly uninterested in horror?  I had a kind of lousy friend who wouldn’t check out me or my bf’s stuff when it was just gothy, not actually involving any horror whatsoever.  Weenies.  Seems like 99% of all reading that happened 2000-2005 was the terf’s kiddie books, and the people who grew up on that never wanted anything substantially different from it.  Or maybe I’m just being a hater.  I don’t know.

This is mainly looking at fiction for adults.  There actually is a lot of horror content now – short fiction, tons of video games, especially in indie spaces – but booksellers don’t want to touch it.  And on a possibly unrelated note, I run into a lot of massive weenies.  Hi weenies.  I’m sure you’re lovely people and make the world a brighter place in your own ways.  Just wish I met more non-weenies sometimes.

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Some days I get horrible mashups of bad songs in my head, most recently from watching Todd in the Shadows‘ “One Hit Wonderland” series on yewchoob.  Today I’m doing OK.  Did you know that the milieu of Tenacious D’s demons and broadswords universe was once a real place, inhabited by people like Ronny James Dio and Judas Priest?  Anyway, Judas Priest’s The Sentinel features a demonic revenant doing a throwing knife massacre.  I love it.

Also on my mind is Prince’s Kiss.  Neil Cicieraga did a remix of it which seems inspired by pure loathing, or perhaps misunderstanding that the funny aspects of the song were originally meant to be funny, and it comes off like he didn’t get the joke – a rare thing for Neil, who is a sharp musical wit.  Or it might be that any recognition of Prince’s appeal was soured by his estate’s litigiousness, a trait which may be the reason I can no longer find a link for that.

This morning I was listening to The Sound’s album Jeopardy.  I only got as far as the end of “Missiles” before I needed to tend some chore.  The lead off track “I can’t Escape Myself” is the best bad self esteemin’ song ever, sad and terrible, but beautiful rock and roll.  “Hour of Need” is a great companion to it.  Every time I hear those songs I think of the sad goths in my life with affection.  “Missiles” doesn’t have the most clever lyrics in the universe, but the late lead singin’ man’s voice elevates it to a passionate expression of frustration we all feel being in a world of nukes and war – shit regular people are nigh powerless to stop.

Sing it, baby.

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Watching the streams of CW tv shows, they changed the way their video works so my adblocking software is no longer compatible, and I haven’t gone through the effort to resolve that yet.  So I’ve been seeing commercials again.  Commercials with weird implications and issues.  I might be missing something because I always have these commercials muted.

There’s some kind of treatment for anxiety and depression which I imagine is not approved for people assigned male at birth.  One of the commercials focused on this really pretty young lady, and you know how these drug commercials are – unnaturally beautiful light suffusing everything, delicate camera movements.  Porn wishes it had what they have, heh.  However the company branded this treatment “Hers.”  A surely unintended implication: depressed trans dudes get fucked.

There’s a commercial for this credit card that claims you can build your credit score by purchasing everything with it.  We rapidly follow a kinda sweaty unkempt young man through the stages of his life as the credit score improves his circumstances.  Weirdly they include a post-coital moment of relaxation as part of the narrative of him buying house – getting married – having baby.  Each stage has him or his lover expressing their thrill with “whoa” like faker Neos.  Anyway, implication: all those things denied to you young generations by the fathomless greed of the Capitalist Lich Lords?  Actually just a funny misunderstanding.  You weren’t building your credit score, and now you can!

There’s a commercial for an HIV medicine that says it can make your viral loads undetectable, and “U=U,” undetectable equals untransmissible.  Or it’s a weird emoji.  But the way they illustrate this is by having our cute successful young homosexual in a variety of social situations having brief moments of platonic contact with people.  He shakes somebody’s hand, passes a document, touches an arm.  And all while not transmitting HIV!  Amazing!

The weird unintended implication there is, of course, that HIV could be transmitted by all sorts of actually harmless things.  But the commercial would probably have a harder time getting cleared for TV if it implied he was having unprotected sex and sharing needles without transmitting HIV.

But that credit card commercial had implied fucking, so like, get creative guys.

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If you’re on tumblr or a place that circulates screencaps of tumblr posts, you may have noticed a lot of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine images and memes.  If you’re an executive with rights to Star Trek content, you might be thinking – Yisss, paydirt, time for shitty DS9 reboot to cash in!  You are mistaken.  This is specifically a backlash against Star Wars going to hell in a handbasket.  I know this because I’ve seen a blog go from semi-ironic love for B-list Star Wars canon fodder to having zero SW and nothing but ST overnight, right around the time the mouse sharted out episode nine.

You’re begging for a backlash to the backlash if you go in like a greedlord.  I suppose you don’t care, but just understand this: DS9 Retread will not make money.  Not a bit.  Impoverished fandom dorkwads casting about listlessly after all the franchises and stars that they love turn to shit, these are not people with money to burn.  There’s hardly anybody left with money to burn.  We’re all wasting time dinking around on our phones until capitalism finishes eating itself and the survivors have to waste their time dinking around with radiotrophic fungus instead.

On another subject, Naomi never got any better.

Remember when Stargirl made superpowers look fun and amazing and comic booky?  Never gonna happen here.  Superpowers are just whatever you can make happen with actors standing around and glowy shit painted in with after effects.  It makes them feel like an abstract idea in a bad way.  In action adventure done well, the power or skill a character possesses feels like their desire made manifest.  I will defeat the bad guy.  I want it bad enough that I can fly.  The character motivations just don’t move anything and the visuals are so lackluster that’s all you have.  Actors are fine, doing the best they can.  The writing is mediocre.  The sense of anything “super” happening is fucking abysmal.

I might be just about done with CW superhero shows.  The flagship primo properties all ended their run or are showing their budget in the worst ways.  The writing of the newest season of The Flash is full of budget-shaped plot holes.  Even in the best of seasons that show spends too much time on maudlin tragedy.  The last couple seasons the main actress Candice Patton has been sequestered from the crew by writing excuses so much it feels like she must have beef with them or something.  It just has me tired as hell.

It’s just as well.  I got things to do.

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I titled this post “stars” because I am transforming into Mr. RE Nemesis.  That’s one for the #gamerz in the audients.

But seriously, there’s a lot of talent out there in the world that goes unnoticed by the mainstream.  A couple of rock ladies from the 90s got together with an unknown weirdo for a little band, did a few tracks, like ten years ago.  Metal bros didn’t like it.  I can’t listen to it much because I’ll get it stuck in my head, but the metal bros are wrong.  They just don’t know from fun.

So who are the stars?  The ol’ rock gals do good lo fi cronchy music, but that singer is who I’m thinking of the most.  She’s spectacular.  She’s got a funny presence and it’s on purpose, plus she has the powerful clear and brilliant voice.  Why was this the closest she ever came to fame before disappearing?  I’ll hide the video under the fold for gobs of fake blood and The Shining references.

[Read more…]

Watching the new superhero show “Naomi” about teenage girl who finds out she’s an alien superhero like Superman.  OK, I’m not the target demo.  But still, the writing feels mighty half-assed and poorly conceived.

Most of the other superhero shows have the advantage of featuring a cultural icon that comes with some measure of prior awareness.  If you’re going to make a new superhero, you’re starting at a disadvantage, so you’ve gotta come strong.  You need a hook.

That isn’t as hard as it sounds.  You might not go with the very first thing that comes to mind, might take a few minutes to hit something good.  Maybe a few days if you’re having a bad time.  The hook isn’t the same thing as the fabled “idea” that will make your story the next big thing.  This is just a basic entry point for the narrative, one compelling situation or mystery to get people invested.

Black Lightning had a good one.  What happens when a rusty superhero is tempted to come out of retirement because the crime in his community affects his family?  There’s the appeal of seeing a busted old dude recover a measure of his youth (relatable for busted old dudes, lots of movies about that theme), the current fight itself, the mystery of why he fell off in the first place, and a half dozen compelling character relationships hitting the screen in the same episode.

If we’re going to give it the benefit of a doubt, let’s say Naomi has a slow burn.  We’ll find out about the hook gradually, parting veils of little mysteries along the way.  Feels like a terrible way to start.  Let’s look at the mysteries.  Naomi is adopted – but it’s cool, family is nice.  Naomi has a health problem and is fainting sometimes, but nobody’s worried enough to take her to a neurologist.

Naomi likes Superman and there was a sighting downtown that she missed.  Superman is a fictional character or cryptid in this world so she’s investigating it on the assumption it was a “stunt” somebody staged.  Basically the most exciting thing to happen in the show is a non-thing that the hero wasn’t even there for.

Let’s look at the relationships.  Naomi’s adoptive parents?  Nice.  Not compelling.  People in town are all on a first name basis, which is a bit weird, but they don’t know each other all that well, so…  Not compelling.  There are spooky guys that run a car dealership and a tattoo parlor.  Ooh.  Naomi has like three different friends who want to date her.  Whaaat?

That could be interesting, if a bit insulting to the dignity of the suitors.  But since she isn’t going for any of them, they could go for anyone else at any time without it having any emotional stakes for her.  What if they fight each other, like when Odysseus trashed all those bozos?  No, two of them are kinda terse with each other and the third never interacts with the other two.  What if the suitors cause her strife?  No, she’s just sorta awkward friends with all of them.

By the time it’s revealed in episode two she’s an alien with superpowers, it feels like, eh, whatever.  Her BFF takes the news like NBD and that feels reasonable, tho by now her own mild excitement in no way mirrors that of the audience.

I’ve written stuff this tepid before and I’ll probably do it again.  I’ve got this approach to writing where I ask myself questions and answer them.  That can be good, or it can produce something as rote as a job interview.  This feels like the result of that process.

Naomi wasn’t a story somebody wrote because of inspiration, it was written to order for a project – or off a pitch with no actual story ideas behind it that got greenlit.  I understand it’s a comic adaptation, maybe the original comic was like that.  Or maybe the adaptation eschewed enough of the original story that it was written from scratch in this way.

I don’t know how it worked in this particular writer’s room.  Probably their process was kneecapped by time constraints, or interference, or budget?  But there’s a lot of ways to prevent this.  They mostly amount to the same thing.  Don’t go with your first answer, your first impulse.  Think about it – is this really entertaining? – or get input from somebody else, or do some kind of activities to stimulate a genuine feeling of inspiration and look at that story again.

Another problem which is bad, though less fundamentally bad, is that there are a lot of situations and scenes that strain credulity or just make zero sense, or seem like they’re only happening because shit like that happens in TV shows.

The most extreme example in episode two has Naomi and all her little suitors and friends in a spooky abandoned mill when the scary car dealership man shows up and says, “We gotta talk Naomi, I know your scoobies broke and entered my car dealership.  That’s a misdemeanor.”  She says, “If I talk will you let let my scoobies go?”  The scoobies are like, “If Naomi says that’s a good idea we should all just go along with it, for reasons.”  You might be wondering by now why car dealership man is scary, and the answer is mostly the way the camera frames him.  This show is a sad mess.

I’ll probably watch more anyways.  I’m watching the new Superman show for which I am *really* not the intended demographic either (namely people who want desperately to believe conservatives have redeeming qualities and can be reasoned with).  I don’t have any streaming services and not much else to do in these interstitial moments.  I’ll post on it again if it gets any better.

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