Jump to content
Post-Update: Forum Issues Read more... ×
BPAL Madness!
Post-Update: Forum Issues
  • entries
    363
  • comments
    6
  • views
    21,535

About this blog

Always Halloween and Never Thanksgiving

Entries in this blog

 

Halloween 2020, Day 8

(Artwork is “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” by theycallmedanyo.) For today I have an article/reading recommendation list to share by T. Marie Vandelly for Crime Reads: “Domestic Horror: A Primer.” 
And here are some atmospheric quotes from some of the novels that appear in the list: “It’s bad when the dead talk in dreams,” said Odessa. ― Michael McDowell, The Elementals (1981)
“The origins of the bottle tree were African, Helen had once told her; it was a folk tradition brought to this country by slaves, who, working with whatever materials were at hand, devised a crude method of catching and trapping malevolent spirits, to prevent their passage through human doors.” ― Attica Locke, The Cutting Season (2012)
“In folktales a vampire couldn’t enter your home unless you invited him in. Without your consent the beast could never cross your threshold. Well, what do you think your computer is? Your phone? You live inside those devices so those devices are your homes. But at least a home, a physical building, has a door you can shut, windows you can latch. Technology has no locked doors.”
― Victor LaValle, The Changeling (2017) 
View the full article
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Tomorrow It Begins!

Tomorrow is October! This will be the fifteenth year I count down to Halloween with daily “spooky posts.” I hope you’ll join me. Throughout October I will also be rereading one of my all-time favorite books, Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October (1994). It recounts (from the point of view of the dog Snuff) the story of a very eventful October and has 31 chapters, one for every day of the month. In recent years I’ve started treating it as an advent calendar of sorts for Halloween. It’s simply brilliant.  Here are a few atmospheric quotes. “Such times are rare, such times are fleeting, but always bright when caught, measured, hung, and later regarded in times of adversity, there in the kinder halls of memory, against the flapping of the flames.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October “I felt a strong desire to howl at the moon. It was such a howlable moon. But I restrained myself.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
“I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.” ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October
And here’s one of my favorite passages. Snuff is describing Sherlock Holmes, disguised for his investigation as a woman, playing his violin with Romani travelers in their temporary camp:

“He played and he played, and it grew wilder and wilder–

“Abruptly, he halted and took a step, as if suddenly moving out of a dream. He bowed then and returned the instrument to its owner, his movements in that moment entirely masculine. I thought of all the controlled thinking, the masterfully developed deductions, which had served to bring him here, and then this ― this momentary slipping into the wildness he must keep carefully restrained ― and then seeing him come out of it, smiling, becoming the woman again. I saw in this the action of an enormous will, and suddenly I knew him much better than as the pursuing figure of many faces. Suddenly I knew that he had to be learning, as we were learning other aspects, of the scope of our enterprise, that he could well be right behind us at the end, that he was almost, in some way, a player – more a force, really ― in the Game, and I respected him as I have few beings of the many I have known.”   ― Roger Zelazny, A Night in the Lonesome October 
View the full article
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! October 31: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818) Quote 1: My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine. Quote 2: But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.


View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p>October is almost here! </p><p>I’m currently...

October is almost here! I’m currently working on new academic projects related to Dark Academia (the subgenre, not the aesthetic), so for Halloween month I’ll be posting a different DA title each day with a haunting/atmospheric quote. I hope you’ll enjoy the recs!
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 20: Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko & Sergey Dyachenko, trans. Julia Meitov Hersey (1st published 2007, in English 2018)
Quote:  “‘If we get to the end of the course… we shall become just like them. And we shall speak their language. Then we’ll take revenge.’”

Sasha shook her head.

“If we get to the end of this course, we won’t want to take revenge anymore. We’ll become just like them.”
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now.Native women were highly visible in...

In 1920, Native Women Sought the Vote. Here’s What They Seek Now. Native women were highly visible in early 20th-century suffrage activism. White suffragists, fascinated by Native matriarchal power, invited Native women to speak at conferences, join parades, and write for their publications. Native suffragists took advantage of these opportunities to speak about pressing issues in their communities — Native voting, land loss and treaty rights. But their stories have largely been forgotten.
View the full article
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 22: Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand (1994) Quote 1: They never found her. Nothing at all: no clothes, no jewelry, no bones or teeth or locks of auburn hair. Quote 2: By the door the two figures remained still. I slitted my eyes, afraid that they would see that I was awake, be moved by the reflection of starlight in my pupils to reach for me with those terrible arms. Still they said nothing, only stood there unmoving, watching, waiting. 
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p><a class="tumblr_blog" href="https://dramyhs...

dramyhsturgis: Registration for RRIII: The Expanding Universe is now officially OPEN! Join now to attend this three day digital conference May 4-6, 2023 for social events (cosplay reception), panels, brilliant keynotes, and all things Star Wars! Realizing Resistance Episode III Tickets | Digital Cultural Studies Cooperative
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 27: The Devil Makes Three by Tori Bovalino (2021)
Quote: Demons. Dark magic. The devil. These were the things he searched, muttering under his breath and dead to the world around him as dawn broke; as something grappled at the door of his office and found itself forbidden.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 1

October is here! This year for my Halloween countdown, with the invaluable assistance of my husband (and resident expert on all things Appalachian), I will be bringing you a spooky, Halloween-appropriate song with a twist of mountain flavor. I’ve chosen one version of each of these songs to share, but some have been recorded and reinterpreted many, many times. If you like “Boograss” (or Spooky Bluegrass), Southern Gothic tales, traditional murder ballads, ghost stories, and/or Halloween chills, I hope you will enjoy each day’s post! Song: “O Death” Quote: O Death, O Death in the morning, O Death, spare me over ‘til another year.
Listen to Rhiannon Giddens’ performance…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 10: This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers (2012)
Quote 1: We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the soundtrack of our own impending death. Quote 2: Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises. This is what it sounds like when the world ends.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

<p class="npf_link" data-npf='{"type":"link","u...

Dark Academia I’m delighted to share the details of my Fall 2022 online Dark Academia class at Signum University! I’m also thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the Dark Academia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class! I’m thrilled to add that 3 of the brilliant authors whose works we’ll be studying in the #DarkAcademia course will be holding live Q&A sessions with the class! Peadar Ó Guilín for THE CALL (‘16) Elisabeth Thomas for CATHERINE HOUSE ('20) R.F. Kuang for BABEL ('22).
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 2: Conversion by Katherine Howe (2014) Quote: Something was eating away at the back of my brain. Girls. Dominant narratives. Sex. Death. Arthur Miller. Ann Putman sitting invisible right in the middle of history.  
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

31 Days of Dark Academia: Halloween 2021

October 24: House of Night series by P.C. & Kristin Cast (2007-2014)
Quote from Marked (2007): “Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.” NOTE: I contributed the essay “Reimagining ‘Magic City’: How the Casts Mythologize Tulsa” to a book about the House of Night Series, Nyx in the House of Night. You can read more of my posts about the series here.   
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

Halloween 2022: Day 21

Song: “Young Charlotte” Quote: They reached the door, and Charles sprang out and held his hand to her.
“Why sit you like a monument, have you no power to stir?”
He called her once, he called her twice; she answered not a word.
He asked her for her hand again, and yet she never stirred. There are many variations of this song. Read more here. Listen to the performance of Grandpa Jones…
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
 

2024 Wrap-Up: Podcasts

2024 Wrap-Up: Podcasts Thank you to all of the podcasts that invited me on this year! My “Looking Back on Genre History” science fiction segment ran each month on StarShipSofa. I talked to Potterversity about my book chapter “Dark Arts and Secret Histories: Investigating Dark Academia”; to Trash Compactor and New Books Network about my book Star Wars: Essays Exploring a Galaxy Far, Far Away; and to New Books Network about my book Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier. I also talked about Alexis de Tocqueville with the Vital Remnants podcast and Mary Shelley (twice, once about The Last Man and once about Frankenstein) with The McConnell Center podcast. Links to all of these podcast episodes are here.
View the full post.
eldritchhobbit

eldritchhobbit

0
×