Pulp scholar. Author of SEX AND THE CTHULHU MYTHOS. He/him.
Aug 6, 2023 • 30 tweets • 6 min read
Meditation of the day: Lovecraft and Why You've Probably Never Read REALLY Racist Weird Fiction
As part of an ongoing series of threads about Lovecraft and racism, this is your friendly reminder that Nazi Lovecraft fans who like to post bigoted shit on twitter just because Elon Musk won't ban them can continue to fuck off.
Sep 26, 2022 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
Meditation of the day: Lovecraft, Death of the Author, and Not Separating The Art From The Artist
When it comes to literary criticism and analysis, I'm all about reading things in context. The historical context of the author's life and work, when and where it was published, what stories and authors influenced it, what stories and authors they influenced in turn.
Sep 25, 2022 • 52 tweets • 6 min read
This evening's film is THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS (1959), a creature feature that draws inspiration from THE CREATURE OF THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) and spare parts from THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955) and THE MOLE PEOPLE (1956).
Black-and-white 50s horror action that starts with a dramatic score and some claws copped off of a mole person outfit. The cinematography is actually quite nice, so far.
...having characters named "The Boy" and "The Girl" does tell you what kind of a story this is, though, ngl.
Sep 2, 2022 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Thinking about that time during the pandemic when I just spent like a month writing articles on male writers and editors of Lovecraftian fiction that used female pennames for one reason or another.
Including H. P. Lovecraft, that one time.
“The Sin-Eater” (1895) by Fiona Macleod (William Sharp)
See, the nice thing about dirt streets is that when you have real rain, you get mud, and you get muddy street fights, and you can just tell they had this whole damn street made up somewhere and everybody was really wet and freezing their asses off.
Sep 1, 2022 • 52 tweets • 8 min read
1 like = 1 work of diverse Lovecraftian fiction you should read (AND WHY)
1. “My Boat” (1976) by Joanna Russ
Russ didn't write a lot of Lovecraftiana, but this is undoubtedly her best such work, with a really impressively diverse cast for the 70s and a damn solid story. Recommended for fantasy lovers period, even without the Mythos connection.
Sep 1, 2022 • 44 tweets • 5 min read
Tonight's film is CRIMSON BAT, THE BLIND SWORDSWOMAN (めくらのお市) a 1969 chanbara film about, you guessed it, a blind swordswoman. This was based on a manga (like LADY SNOWBLOOD, which would come out a few years later), and probably inspired by the success of ZATOICHI.
There were four CRIMSON BAT movies, all with the same lead actress and from the same studio, although two different directors. I got these as boxed set from Shochiku Video. My only note--I won't call it a complaint--is the inside of the box smells like my grandmother's basement.
Aug 31, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
It's a midweek special on Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein as we cut a little deeper than usual - to discuss medical science, its influence on pulp fiction, and transphobia in "The Hormonal Lovecraft."
deepcuts.blog/2022/08/31/dee…
I don't know if I did a particularly good job on this one, but it's one of those topics that's been bugging my backbrain for a while.
Aug 31, 2022 • 39 tweets • 4 min read
Tonight's film is LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE (修羅雪姫 怨み恋歌), the 1974 sequel to the 1973 film LADY SNOWBLOOD, based on the manga of the same name.
Sequels are always a weird idea; attempting to give audiences more of the same is doomed to diminishing returns, but if you stray too far from the original conception, you might lose the audience. So it's a real question of approach.
Aug 11, 2022 • 116 tweets • 19 min read
Meditation of the day: Breaking down H. P. Lovecraft & Adolf Hitler
Doing something a little different today. I'd like to break down a fairly large passage on Hitler & the Nazis from a letter dated 12 June 1933 from Lovecraft to James F. Morton, sentence by sentence, to dissect things in microscopic detail. Buckle in, this is a long one.
Aug 11, 2022 • 56 tweets • 7 min read
Tonight's film is UNBORN BUT FORGOTTEN (하얀방, lit. "White Room") a 2002 South Korean paranormal thriller/horror film which tends to get lumped in with THE RING (2002) and FEARDOTCOM (2002) - and reading the plot description, not hard to see why.
Opens up on a black-and-white shot. Crying pregnant woman in a bath. Mosquito netting (?). A painting of a nude pregnant woman. Some deliberately messy camera and shadow work so we can't see the killer's face...fade to black, and cut to the intro.
Aug 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
WARNING!
It's a mid-week special on Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein, and the subject under review this time is very NSFW!
That said, let's talk about disgust vs. horror and CTHULHU SCAT HANGOVER & THE INNSMOUTH PORNO VHS (2014) by Adolf Lovecraft.
Meditation of the day: New Weird, New Edge, New Lovecraftian, and Other Labels
This is one of those things that have been cropping up in the feed lately, so it's worth discussing.
"Genre" labels as we know them are largely a product of late 19th and early 20th century marketing forces. We often remark on Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN as the beginning of
Apr 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
@lamparamagicak Lovecraft knew a number of LGBTQ+ folks in his life, all of whom had their influence on him and who in turn influenced and promulgated the Mythos. For example, there was his friend Samuel Loveman: deepcuts.blog/2019/11/23/to-…@lamparamagicak And R. H. Barlow, whose work Lovecraft revised and who would become Lovecraft's literary executor and preserved HPL's letters and papers: deepcuts.blog/2021/06/05/the…
Apr 18, 2022 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
The Terrible Truth Behind "The Unnamable": A Thread
"The thing, it was averred, was biologically impossible to start with; merely another of those crazy country mutterings which Cotton Mather had been gullible enough to dump into his chaotic Magnalia Christi Americana,
and so poorly authenticated that even he had not ventured to name the locality where the horror occurred."
- H. P. Lovecraft, "The Unnamable" hplovecraft.com/writings/texts…
Apr 18, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
Meditation of the day: Lovecraft, racism, and splitting hairs
Lovecraft's racism is a subject too vast in scope to sum up in a non-reductive way. You can pithily say "He's racist!" and you would be correct, but that doesn't actually tell you anything about how or why he was racist, the context or language of his racism, or its expression.
Apr 18, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Someone asked me about Lovecraft, panels, and conventions today...and I have thoughts.
I don't go to many conventions, and when I do I usually don't go to Lovecraft panels. The number one rule of conventions is to never attend a panel which you should be on. It's an exercise in utter frustration.
Jun 16, 2021 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
The Robert E. Howard Days comic panel was packed, and there was only so much time for any particular subject to get talked about, but one thing that doesn't get talked about as much as it should is an important one: racism in the comics.
Robert E. Howard was a white male from Texas who lived between 1906 and 1936. The fact that he was racist shouldn't be a terrible surprise to anyone, and while most of his stories were not unusual in their depiction for their time today they have to be read with the understanding
Apr 24, 2021 • 54 tweets • 4 min read
Tonight's Sword & Sorcery movie is WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD (1991), a Troma film directed by Fred Olen Ray, whose oeuvre includes such classics as EVIL TOONS and BIKINI FRANKENSTEIN.
I kind of love Troma for the dedication and earnestness. This one actually has a Corman connection: they had just finished up shooting THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and Ray came in and shot two days of WIZARDS before the set was torn down.
Apr 23, 2021 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
No one asked, but one of my most controversial takes on any of Lovecraft's stories is "The Shadow over Innsmouth."
This is a story about miscegenation...except not in quite the way most people think. So let's talk about that a little.
The first thing to understand is that "The Shadow over Innsmouth" has its whole mythos built up about it. I don't mean the dozens of stories and novels that is has spawned, but the ways people talk about the story have been repeated so many times it has its own mythology.
Apr 23, 2021 • 55 tweets • 4 min read
Tonight's Sword & Sorcery movie is ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1982), which spawned three sequels. From legendary Joe d'Amato.
This was back when people knew how to tell a story in 82 minutes, dammit.
