👾 @alis@fandom.ink

It's a me, elsewhere:

https://alisx.dreamwidth.org/
https://ask.alis.me/
https://www.pillowfort.io/alis

So I never did an #introduction but I probably should, so...

I'm Alis! I'm an #sff #author and I love #monsters and so I write books about monsters. I also sometimes (very rarely) draw, and (mostly) play way too many #videogames.

I'm also the admin of fandom.ink, a small #fandom centric Masto instance, inspired by the #tumblr exodus and aimed at #fanart, #fanfic, #RP, and other general fannish content. (Also cat photos.)

So... hi!

Seriously. The entire plot of THE THING can be resolved by isolating the Thing and being like:

"Hi. We are human beings. We find it culturally insensitive when you forcibly co-opt our flesh to survive, and will respond aggressively if you do. Please don't initiate this conflict. If you require living flesh to live, we are happy to provide you with non-human samples. We are also happy to provide other material assistance as required. Looking forward to a productive partnership. Thx, humans."

So yeah tl;dr the wildest thing about THE THING is that The Thing... doesn't actually really do anything wrong, per se?

Like it's an alien and its method of survival is confronting to us as humans, but it doesn't seem to behave maliciously. (And multiple scenes show the opposite?)

Instead, basically all the conflict in the film is because the human characters MASSIVELY OVERREACT... *and* no-one ever considers just, like. Talking? To the Thing (since it's obviously sentient)?

(I mean not entirely because it makes its whole shtick *almost* a criticism of Silicon Valley-style capitalism except, phew! The Big Bad is actually aliens and, phew! Also MUSLIMS!!!!!!! So it ends up having this kind of wishy-washy choose-your-own-adventure political stance. But. It aa-aa-aa-aa-almost gets there, probably more than any other superhero film in recent memory.)

Which is also, incidentally, why I think VENOM is suck an odd duck of a film. Because it manages to sit in the middle of a su-uu-uu-uu-uu-uper conservative/right-wing genre (i.e. superhero media), yet because it skips/condenses/etc. so much of its own comics lore in order to shove itself into its running time, it ends up... ki-ii-ii-ii-ii-inda almost ends up on the subversive end of the horror spectrum.

On the flip side is the horror of people like Clive Barker, where "normative" space is itself shown as constricting and in-and-of-itself violent, and transgressing it is both horror and liberation.

(Ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ge0P8z_q1M )

See also Jordan Peele, and films like JENNIFER'S BODY or TEETH. (All of which, along with Barker's work, at all not coincidentally made by/for/about marginalized peoples.)

TBF I don't think that's... entirely true. But I do think horror has kind of two polar opposite ends, each of which map to different ends of the political spectrum.

The horror of works like THE THING in primarily conservative, i.e. the "invader" coming in to a "normative" space to disrupt it, and that needs to be violently overthrown.

And the whole, "They look like us BUT THEY'RE NOT US!!!! AND THEY WANT TO DESTROY US!!!!!!!" (which Carpenter revisited in e.g. THEY LIVE) is, like... textbook antisemitism.

Like... I like these films but holy hells pretty much every stock horror trope is problematic af.

Like yeah holy shit. I do like Carpenter's film (mostly for the body horror effects, ngl) but the underlying story is such. A. Mess. Like... yikes.

NGL, and since it's new on Netflix: THE THING reads su-uu-uu-uper differently when you know it's based on a work written by a paranoid racist.

Like... VENOM is basically THE THING told from The Thing's point-of-view.

Why is "frankenstein in baghdad shmoop" the first autofill thing DDG suggests when I search for that book? o_O

So I was wondering why I've heard literally zero about the local con coming up in a few weeks---no calls for panellists, no announcements, nothing---only to realize it's because the entire thing has been organized on Facebook. And it's like...

Ye-ee-eah. Don't do that, hey.

It is like the third week of spring and there's snow* on the hilltops around town...

* I live somewhere where it doesn't regularly snow.

TIL from actually reading the Hugo Award rules: they're not just for works in English.

I don't think a work *not* in English has ever, ever won, but... huh.

One week of catching the bus to work and either bussing or walking home and... it's kinda freakin' amazing? Like, best 6am impulse decision I've ever made. Desire to go back to driving every day: zero.