Kitten's Yammerings

He’s still tired, even after he’s died. He’s all alone again. But this time there might be no possible way back. He has to basically start over. Did he lose his power again… Sora doesn’t know Riku went looking for him; does he expect anybody to come looking for him.

(x)

bear with me tho. i Promise there's more to this than just, like. "have you considered that you've only consumed horror that sucks?? 🙄 i am very good at media analysis"

so. My Onion.

over the past decade or so, i feel like i've seen a Remarkable shift in how horror media is analyzed by mainstream audiences. the genre Used to be widely seen as sort of schlocky, low-effort, no-meaning garbage.

and then over the past like 15 years, there's been an influx of Really Really Really Fucking Good and Really Original and Really Deeply Frightening horror movies.

and a Lot of that horror incorporates social commentary. and cultural context. and a lot of those stories are and were done in ways that most mainstream media enjoyers hadn't ever seen before.

(social commentary in horror is not new At Fucking All, to be clear. but i Do think there's been a shift in how your average moviegoer thinks about the genre, bc of the popularity of these films.)

so. the attitudes around horror and Being A Fan Of Horror shift. horror stories are no longer low-budget schlock with no artistic merit. NOW they are multilayered, Very Deep pieces of art peeling back the Layers of Society and our ingrained cultural fears and whatever other Very Important Issues you wanna address.

now, to write a horror story is to interrogate your surroundings, and the human condition, and your culture, and The System, and so on and so forth.

and then this becomes, like. the Expectation with horror. a Good horror story is theme-first, fear-second. a Good horror story has Something To Say and is full of Allegories for Real Deep Things. we know this because some of the most subversive and interesting horror of the past 15 years was all stuff with Something To Say!

which is True. like, i don't think anyone on god's green earth would argue that jordan peele's horror has Nothing To Say OR that it isn't scary.

he can do both!!

and So. a lot of inexperienced and mediocre writers start penning their own horror stories, as they have been doing since time immemorial. but instead of emulating the former genre conceits of scary slashers, weird aliens, spooky ghosts, random fucked-up unexplainable shit, etc....

....they emulate the genre conceits of Wokeness.

which is to say, they emulate a story with Something To Say.

because that's what's expected of the horror genre now!! that's what makes a Good Story. your audience should be able to recognize that there's a metaphor and an allegory and a big Message to take home n make video essays about. and a preachy earnest undercurrent underneath it all. about The Human Condition. And Society . And. Intergenerational Trauma. Or Whateverrr

the Problem is when these authors don't.... actually.... HAVE something to say.

instead they're retreading the plots and motifs of prior stories without, like, understanding Why they work. this is not something exclusive to horror. it reminds me Especially of how the YA genre was FLOODED with generic uninspired dystopian knockoffs of the hunger games -- a story that actually did have A Lot To Say, and said it very well -- because the hunger games sold well, and so that became the publishable Genre Of Fiction.

if this was the early 2000s, i Firmly believe that these exact same authors Wouldn't be writing woke theme-first allegorical horror. they would instead be writing generic slasher ghost spooky abandoned house stuff... which would Also have absolutely nothing new or interesting to say. the plot twists would be contrived, the characters would be uninteresting, the resolutions would be tropey and uninspired.

because they're writing to conform to the genre expectations. not to tell a story they care about.

admittedly, this may be a little harsh -- because i DO think a lot of inexperienced horror writers Are Actually Earnest about their Themes and Messaging. and they do care about the story they're telling. and they just don't have the experience to execute those things super effectively yet.

but as someone who's been mainlining a TON of short horror films and horror stories and horror audiodramas with very little fanbase lately -- i also feel like i can Tell when a writer is earnest but inexperienced, as opposed to going through the motions bc Horror Is Woke Now.

with the former, i can usually enjoy and finish the whole film/story/podcast/etc. and then i conclude, "well, that could have been better... lots of room for scarier monsters and more suspense and better character arcs. but at least it was fun and genuine!"

with the latter.... i tend to get irrationally mad. and quit early.

LMAO.

in conclusion. i dunno. there's nothing to really be Done (TM) about this, bc it's just. how storytelling and genre and popularity work in general.

however. i DO think that we Gotta stop using "this story is an allegory for real world stuff" as shorthand for "this story is well-written and poignant."

because sometimes it is!

The reason this stuff is judged to be seriously superior for some baking is that—unlike baking powder and baking soda—in the finished product you can't taste that any leavening product has been used. The heat of the baking process drives off the ammonia (and you betcha, you'll smell it then!). But the final baked product will be light and beautifully risen, and will taste of nothing but the non-leavening ingredients. It's frankly kinda magical.

(More about the chemistry of leavening agents, and some discussion of the comparisons among them, is here.)

Like, the allos just take a look at something and KNOW it's hot, but the aces have to fucking DISSECT the thing to figure out wtf people are even going on about with calling it "hot", and funny story, turns out when you write a whole-ass 10k of PWP explaining what's hot about the thing in a way that makes sense to you personally, you are a whole lot likelier to make that thing read AS hot to people who normally would not think it was even remotely appealing ( and also, like, to take anybody who was already into the thing out at the knee ).

( see: everyone who has ever told me "I HATE this kink/that kink/this pairing/this genre/this trend, but when YOU write it--" )

And especially in prose, the dissection-explanation gets you into the mood of the scene/head of the character a lot better, while if you DON'T have the dissection worked out but also don't have the crutch of any visual aids to point to, well, then people are a lot less likely to instinctively understand what YOU instinctively understand, even if everyone in the conversation is the same sexuality/has the same tastes/etc etc etc.

So basically, if you're an allo, you probably have not actually HAD to spend that much time breaking down "why is this person/behavior/situation hot to me" unless you just felt like doing it; if you don't bother, though, you don't stop being able to look at something and go "that's hot". Because you just KNOW it's hot; it's like an instinct or a talent, and it's just immediately THERE, before you even necessarily fully know what it really is or develop it at all. You KNOW it's hot, and you don't get why anyone else would need that explained to them when it is just so damn OBVIOUS. You're immediately good at understanding it in yourself, but you don't necessarily understand it in a way where you can explain it to someone else; you haven't put in the practice or developed the thoughts, because you didn't need to, they were already just THERE.

But the thing with prose is you can't just point at the thing and be like "SEE?!??"; you've gotta figure out how to actually EXPLAIN the thing to people, and I feel like that can be a longer process for an allosexual person because they don't necessarily get what it is that they have to explain in the same way an asexual who's starting from ground zero does. The ace person already knows they don't know any of this shit, and knows there's other people who won't get it either, both ace AND allo. The natural talent, meanwhile, is just like "but it's so OBVIOUS, why don't you just GET it??" THEY get it, after all; it's OBVIOUS!!

That kind of self-justification is exhausting and shouldn't be necessary to be treated like a human, but alas, I live in a society that demands it, and if there is one marginal silver lining to this, it's that it's made me Very Good At Words.

I think it's yet another shared experience of the ace and bi communities (and every marginalized community tbh) to have to examine our experiences because they don't match the 'default' and come up with a working theory of why those are different and both valid to maintain our place in the world. The farther afield your experience, the more detailed and nuanced that understanding is likely to be.

The principled difference is "I want people to be compensated for their labour."

I'm not in the field anymore, but I was a librarian once (degree and all) and wow do people not know how libraries work. To a degree that never ceases to astound me.

I'm gonna try not to go into everything in deep detail because I have things to do right now but I want to address two major myths being so confidently asserting here.

This might seem like the less important myth but it's actually the more misunderstood of the two: when patrons donate books to a public library, by and large those books are not going to end up in the collection. Many municipal libraries (in the US at least, the only place I have firsthand experience with) have a "Friends of the Library" (or similar) group that supports the library, primarily through fundraising. If your library also has a little shelf of books for sale (or in bigger systems maybe a whole separate book shop!), that's where donations are going. The reasons why are many but essentially boil down to the varying quality and condition of donations that come in. I can count on one hand (in fact on two fingers) the number of times I've seen a donation become part of a collection, and both times those were items of a local history interest that did not circulate for checkout. One rare book and one collection of papers, donated basically for archival purposes.

The library field is a major pillar of the publishing industry, and libraries frequently buy multiple copies of a book if they buy one at all because collection developers are experts at stretching their ever-shrinking budgets and can only buy what they think is needed, wanted, and will circulate. When I worked in collection development (a job I loved until it burnt me out) we occasionally had wiggle room for small presses, local authors, etc., but buy in large when I submitted my vendor carts to my boss I was buying more than one of everything. I was in a larger system, so we wanted coverage for multiple branches, but sometimes I ended up having to buy more of something if it developed a following.

You know that friend who goes to the library all the time and is in book clubs and is always recommending books to you? That person is powerful, and their interest in contagious, and in addition to creating more circulation at the library (which makes collection developers buy more copies of a book), a lot of their friends will just buy the book themselves. Ask any author (especially if fiction) and they'll tell you the same.

They're the pickiest because they only eat things they can catch by plunging into at least six feet of water feet-first and are as close to their maximum carrying capacity as possible, to maximize calories-per-trip.

They're the Least Picky because so long as something fits those parameters, Osprey will go for it.