mistressofmuses | Work + writing + dream

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

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Work + writing + dream

Kind of a better day at work, though when I clocked out it put me at 2 minutes shy of 50 hours this week. I think the long week/short weekend is definitely wearing on me. I KNOW it was just one extra day, I KNOW that plenty of people work far more than 50 hours a week, but still. I don't enjoy it.

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Two days away from the end of Camp NaNo. It's still been going well, and I want to not lose my current momentum, yet I also REALLY want to just... not have to write every day. Which is usually a sign that I'm getting at least a little burned out. Though I think it's work more than the writing itself. I'm just TIRED.

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Had a weird dream last night that was kind of Halloween (the horror franchise, not the holiday) in the style of It Follows. I was being pursued slowly but repeatedly across a fictional college campus by Michael Myers, and kept trying to escape or hide, and while I was never being actively chased, he would appear near me after a certain amount of time (in suspenseful horror fashion, dramatically across a room or on the other side of a street or the like, so I would just have time to be terrified and flee). I kept trying to warn other people, but no one believed me, and they'd always wind up dead. At the end I knew I was doomed, because it had gotten to the point I was unable to sleep because he would catch me, and I couldn't stay awake forever. I was making a call on a payphone to say goodbye to my mom and tell her what had happened, but my alarm went off so I didn't get a conclusion to the dream.

Not sure why I had a dream in which... Michael Myers of Halloween was my villain. We did see the trailer for Halloween Ends when we went to see Nope on Tuesday, but I very genuinely did not think about it since then.

Like with most of my horror dreams, like the ones I used to have that were more Silent Hill-ish, it really wasn't a bad dream. Being pursued by a monster that's killing people around me and knowing my own death is growing more and more inevitable SHOULD by all rights be a nightmare, but... instead it was fine. Positive if anything. The only part I found distressing was having to call and tell my mom. (But why a payphone? Lol.)

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Glad to hear Camp Nano is going well!

I haven't seen Halloween. I actually haven't seen much horror from that era. I might watch it to see more of Stranger Things' DNA. I know that it draws more from Nightmare on Elm Street, but one of the actors is a nope for me.

I'm a bit surprised it went as well as it did!

Halloween is pretty good. I mean, very classic slasher. I also liked H20, which was the only of the sequels I thought was worthwhile. (Admittedly, I did not see the most recent. Didn't hear good things about it, though.)

Nightmare on Elm Street is my favorite of the classic slasher franchises, but yeah, I can understand the nope.

I might check it out, but I don't know if a classic slasher is my style. I want to find a few things to watch for context, I like doing that, but not sure where to start.

Slashers are definitely... their own subgenre. And one that can be pretty damn stupid, haha. It's not my favorite subgenre, though it is true that they've had a pretty strong effect on a lot of modern horror, too. It can be interesting just to see where some of the common tropes and things come from (or at least where they became sort of codified.)
I liked Nightmare on Elm Street I think because the supernatural element is stronger. It's also present in the Friday the 13th franchise, though not quite as overtly, at least initially. By contrast Halloween has the implication of a somehow supernaturally unkillable killer, but for the most part it's much more mundane.

I've seen a lot of video essays made on... I think the second Friday the 13th? I may try that one and maybe Hellraiser because they used Hellraiser sides for casting reads this season. ... Actually I should see what I can watch on a Shudder sub for a few months and go from there :)

The second one is the one that introduces Jason as the iconic killer, so it's probably a good one to watch. I wouldn't say it's a *good* movie, but it's a good example of what Friday the 13th as a franchise is.
Oh, it's been a hot minute since I saw any of the Hellraiser films - I think I mostly saw those in the awkward Scifi channel edits that left in all the blood and gore but made sure no bad words snuck in, lmao. I really should give those a real watch someday.

I feel like I hear Hellraiser being mentioned as a reference in a lot of things. I like being well versed in movie genres. When I was younger I watched a lot of older Sci Fi and Fantasy stuff for context. I like knowing the references and other things in films. I never really dug into horror, though.

Hellraiser definitely is an influential one. Clive Barker in general has a lot of influential stuff out there, but Hellraiser has a pretty big footprint.
Knowing where genre history comes from is really fun - it's neat to see the ways that certain things really impact the aesthetics and storytelling of a genre even decades later. Or watching the ways that tropes are codified or subverted, things like that.
I took a film class that focused on horror, and it was a neat chance to see the history of the genre when it comes to film, and how different subgenres treat horror differently.

I like horror and know some stuff about it, but I really don't have a good overview of it or it's subgenres. I guess I am too focused on trying to find the few paranormal things I like.

I like horror as a genre, though it's extremely hit or miss in terms of quality. (Which is true of anything - there's a lot of garbage out there in general. Horror does have a LOT of garbage, though.) I enjoy the analytical bits about what the given "monster" of a horror story says about cultural fears, why different kinds of horror are more effective to me personally than others, etc. Paranormal stuff is often my favorite, though I get frustrated when it's overly formulaic, which knocks a lot of it out, haha.

A lot of paranormal stuff tends to front load with creepy, but never have any payoff. I don't expect it all to make sense, the world building explained but a lot of the times the plot just devolves into pure nonsense.

Ugh, so true. A lot of paranormal stuff HINTS at interesting spooky things... and then kind of craps out on the ultimate explanation. I'll suspend disbelief, and I don't mind some mystery remaining, but I DO want a satisfying conclusion!

Yeah, they don't need to reveal coherent world building and it's fine if the investigators never find out much of the truth. Like, 'this is too bad for us to even try anymore, things that bad lurk out there in the darkness' can absolutely work. But most of the time the plot isn't even coherent in terms of what's going on with the normal humans.

Right? I'd rather have "welp, some evil is just too deep to be explained" ending (for all that some people loathe those) than a WEAK explanation. A lot of it is just poorly structured though, and winds up with yeah, either too many attempted plot threads that don't go anywhere, or stuff that's treated inconsistently, etc.

It can be good to not explain what the supernatural thingies are, but the story still needs a structure. You can't throw plot threads around like a toddler throwing spaghetti. And if it's a frame story we need the bit at the end.

Actually, 'the thing is too scary to even try to deal with, it just lurks in the darkness' sounds like an interesting thing to write

There absolutely still has to be a structure! And way too many do look pretty much exactly like a handful of spaghetti flung onto a page and called a script. While almost any trope CAN be done well, so many of the ones that I commonly see attempted fall super, super flat.
Oh jeez, I can't think of an example at the moment, but I've seen two or three shitty horror movies recently that were set up as having a frame story that had no concluding part! I hate it!
Same goes for things that are explicitly marketed and framed as found footage and then just randomly have ordinary multi-camera shots of a conversation or something.

I could see that being an appealing thing to write! Those kinds of... "too big/too much/too evil" horror can be really effective. Eldrich horror usually goes for that, but I think there are options to explore it beyond that.

Yes, I'm obviously still annoyed at frame stories just... ending.

I need to find some good horror to watch. I feel like I spend so much time trying to find the bits I want to watch, but it may be worth it. I started Hellraiser and I loved the lore, but I wasn't invested in a single character and that made it a chore to try to finished. I almost made myself finish it and then was all 'wait... I could.. not do that'

Ugh. I HATE it when stories - that were supposed to be frame stories! - do that, and don't close the damn frame. (Frames aren't things you close, but you know what I mean, lol.)

Yeah, I think the Hellraiser lore is pretty interesting, but other than like... Pinhead, I could not tell you anything about a single character in any of the movies I watched. (Though that was, admittedly, a long while ago.) High school, maybe.

I feel like I like a lot of horror, but in unpredictable ways. There are some that I really, deeply enjoy, yet objectively feel bad reccing because I know they probably aren't actually *great*, lol.

I need to keep better track of what horror I enjoyed. The film that always pops in my head is Cabin in the Woods, which is fantastic but not actually horror. (I may hate Whedon these days, but Cabin is fantastic).

Yeah, I can see liking horror because it's got the right vibe as opposed to really good dialogue or anything else. I really need to spend more time on Letterboxd.

Cabin in the Woods was great! I'd say it still counts as horror, even if the overaching story is more sci-fi and it's comedic all through. It certainly still UTILIZES horror, even if it's very directly lampshading the tropes.

If you have any particular types of horror or aspects of horror that you tend to like, I can certainly let you know if I see anything (in the dozens and dozens of horror movies we wind up watching, lol) that seems like you might like it. Or things you know you don't like! I know reccs are deeply hit or miss though, ha.

I'll forgive some iffy line delivery and such if the atmosphere worked for me, it's true, haha.

I need to spend some time on Letterboxd and make a good list of what I like so I can even answer that. I need to remember when I've seen.

I do like religious horror, though.

Horror can also be hard to set the right expectations for. I enjoy The Exorcism of Emily Rose, but I was also expecting it to be a dry realistic courtroom drama about the limits of religious freedom and living in a precedent based legal system. That gets a lot of thumbs down from people expecting... not that

There are so many movies I've seen but forgotten that I've seen, haha.

Religious horror can be quite good! I'm not religious, but there's a lot of *weight* to that type of horror anyway.

Yeah, a lot of horror is poorly marketed (if marketed at all.) Crimson Peak is always one that comes to mind - I absolutely love it, but a LOT of people were disappointed in it because it's much more a gothic romance that certainly has horrific elements, but it's not the straight horror that some of the marketing made it out to be. I remember Exorcism of Emily Rose being very polarizing for the same reason - what people *thought* they were going to watch was very different than what the film itself was about.

I'm impressed you found a payphone - even in your dreams.

Appreciate the icon!

Right? I'm shocked there was a payphone anywhere! That's probably the weirdest part of the dream!
Maybe second weirdest, next to me evidently remembering a phone number to dial it.

The fact that people exist who work 50-60 hours without showing ill effects doesn't mean you can do the same. The folks who can keep up with it have sacrificed something else with those long hours; sometimes family, sometimes food prep, sometimes sleep. Don't beat yourself up for not being okay with stressful overtime.

I appreciate that, very genuinely. I feel like sometimes it's "lazy" of me to only want to work 40 hours, to not want a "side hustle", etc. I KNOW that it's not bad of me to not want to just work and work and work, but it's nice to hear someone else say it, ha.

I feel that. I genuinely don't think I can work 40 hours a week on a consistent basis, and it's been difficult trying to reframe that with kindness to myself. I don't think laziness exists; there are always real reasons people need rest, or that a task seems insurmountable, or that they can't or don't want to get up and do it. But it's hard to work the idea of laziness out of my perception of myself. All this to say: you deserve rest, even if you see other people pushing different limits.

I agree - coming up against "laziness" almost always means you're actually hitting fatigue or burnout or overwhelm of some kind. (Executive dysfunction does a number on me on a regular basis.)
Even 40 hours feels like a struggle for me, albeit one I'm very used to at this point, in that I have a hard time staying on top of anything else outside of work. I'm lucky enough to have a partner who takes care of a lot of the rest of it. I know there ARE people who have to do a lot more with less help, and it's hard not to feel like I SHOULD be able to handle more.

So I appreciate it. Here's to us being kinder to ourselves about our own abilities and limitations!

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Work + writing + dream

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Using the Silent Hill icon for ya!

Re: Using the Silent Hill icon for ya!

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