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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

1 Jan

Hello! Good morning! Happy New Year, for those who are celebrating!

It’s #publicdomainday, and the following is a list of the best characters from the pulps who were created in 1926 and thus fall into the public domain starting today.

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Note that I’m using “pulp” in the Barthesian way, as a “metaphor without brakes:” anything that is pulp (by my definition) in character is included, regardless of whether or not it appeared in a pulp, a film, a novel, or whatever.

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Also, I’m taking these from my Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes, which you can find online at jessnevins.com/pulp/introduti…. You can find more information about all of these characters and thousands more in the Encyclopedia.

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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

22 Nov 21

By request—yes, someone actually asked me to do this!—a little discourse on the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

You remember: King Friday XIII, Henrietta Pussycat, X the Owl, Daniel Striped Tiger, Lady Elaine Fairchilde, and all the rest?

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Now, you may not remember this, but Big Bird appeared once in the Neighborhood; as Wiki says, “he came to deliver his entry to the ‘Draw the Neighborhood’ art contest.” ()
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(Sidenote: this is not the first crossover involving Mr. Rogers, as that video shows: Captain Kangaroo, Levar Burton, Arthur, the Wicked Witch of the West, etc. Sesame Street, of course, has had many *many* guest appearances. Where’s our Mr. Rogers’ Cinematic Universe?)

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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

10 Nov 21

More #novemberhorror:

Lygia Fagundes Telles (Brazil; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lygia_Fag…) is a highly decorated novelist whose stories & novels are more horror-inflected than pure horror. She writes psychological stories with dreamlike, nightmarish, or hallucinatory atmospheres.

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Telles' characters—usually women—are customarily alone and experience misunderstanding, conflict, disillusionment, deceit, fear, and death, with conflicts not being happily resolved and the narrative tension not being relieved.

#novemberhorror

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It is in Telles' short stories that she most often uses the supernatural and the surreal, with shifting realities being a norm. Occasionally she uses surreal elements as an allegory against the oppressive Brazilian government.

#novemberhorror

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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

9 Nov 21

What people don't understand is that Big Bird is a represenation of Veðrfaðir, who sits atop Yggdrasil, the World Tree of Norse Myth, and quarrels endlessly with Níðhǫggr, the dragon who gnaws at Yggdrasil's roots. In this essay I will describe the allegorical meaning of

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Big Bird, whose kindliness sweeps across Sesame Street the way that the winds caused by the flapping of Veðrfaðir's wings sweep across Miðgarðr, and Oscar the Grouch, who as the parallel of Níðhǫggr gnaws at the foundation of Sesame Street with his grouchiness.

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Where it gets really interesting is that Veðrfaðir was an Odin parallel: Odin sent his two ravens, Huginn & Muninn, "Thought" and "Memory," out to observe the world and bring back news. Veðrfaðir had the falcon Veðrfǫlnir ("storm-pale" or "wind-witherer") do the same.
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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

9 Nov 21

More #novemberhorror:

Jonathan Aycliffe (UK; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Mac…) is a respected academic who writes think-pieces and thrillers as well as horror. I’m of the opinion that his horror is better than the rest of his work, despite those being more popular.

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Aycliffe works in the Gothic mode, relying on psychological complexity, atmosphere, and setting to terrify the reader rather than overt horror or the suggestion of or appearance of the visceral or cosmic.

#novemberhorror

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Aycliffe’s strengths are in creating the sense of an atmosphere sodden with terror & in creating modern characters w/modern strengths and foibles. Aycliffe is supremely good at mood, although sometimes at the expense of a novel’s plot.

#novemberhorror

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Jess Nevins

@jessnevins

19 Oct 21

Enough people expressed an interest in this, so here I am, about to tell you one of the ways to write Superman correctly. There are any number of ways to write him. This one is mine and is how I’d write him if I ever got the chance.

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Not surprisingly, Alan Moore is my main influence in this, but not based on “Whatever Happened to the Man Of Tomorrow?” No, Moore summarized my approach to Superman in this sequence from WILDCATS #26:

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Superman as Super-Dad. Superman, as a literally superior being who loves humanity and puts himself in a position to protect and nurture us, to shield us from damaging influences and people, and to help us grow—to be the sort of father that Jonathan Kent was to him.
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