BETE NOIRE: Stories Concerning Human Nature And Horror


The characters are adventurous, mystifying and generally like people we admire or fear. Written by a lover of surprise O'Henry endings. We will send you an SMS containing a verification code. Please double check your mobile number and click on "Send Verification Code".

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Enter the code below and hit Verify. Free Shipping All orders of Cash on Delivery Pay for your order in cash at the moment the shipment is delivered to your doorstep. Don't have an account? Update your profile Let us wish you a happy birthday! But all those weird Gothic accoutrements in very poor taste aside: The strength of them, as has been observed a hundred times, isn't in the writing style so much as the story. They addict because they tell a good, classic beauty-and-the-beast tale, really. So, why not cut out the words altogether and embrace the theatrical, quasi-operatic proportions of the whole thing?

The dark side of all this is that we're much more likely to end up with Twilight: The Musical a la The Phantom of the Opera in a couple of years than we are to end up with a decent ballet I wasn't going to post on this, because I'm not sure exactly how it relates to writing per se should I really be recommending the excision of words on a blog devoted to writing??? As long as we're talking Victoriana: Couldn't resist, either, apparently.

Doctor Who , horror , twilight , whimsy. Monsters are very flexible symbols. That is all I really have to say at the moment. Wednesday, October 22, Horror? So, my horror-reading jag continues, sort of - I don't exactly get a lot of time to read these days. But it's got me thinking about other reading jags of mine. I spent almost two months last year reading nothing but fairy tales, retellings of fairy tales, and critical essays on fairy tales. And it occurred to me that perhaps these two reading jags are not unrelated. It's fairly common knowledge, at this point, that Disney pretty much eviscerated the raw power of the original tales collected by people like the Brothers Grimm and Straparola -- if you spend time with the original tales, there's plenty of horror to go around, and yet it doesn't quite qualify as horror fiction.

There are important differences that I'm exploring imaginatively at the moment.

Bete Noire: Stories Concerning Human Nature and Horror

The following is typed pretty much verbatim from a free-write I did, and in it I'm working out the delicate balance between dark and light in my own aesthetic. I imagine that balance is different for everybody, but at the moment I feel like a tuning fork, striking some clear, precise note between horror and happy endings: Horror is always lurking in the darker corners of fairy tale -- cutting out a young princess' heart, cooking children for dinner, killing wives and keeping them in a bloody chamber But what I like about fairy tales is that those dark corners are offset by brighter shades, by the glittering gold of happiness and beauty.

Horror, true horror, is in actual fact a bit too dark for my aesthetic. I like a hint of the macabre, but too often in horror it takes over and the darkness is unrelieved. I like the way fairy tales gesture at horror, at chaos, at darkness, without dwelling there for too long. It does seem rather as though, if you chase the horror too much, if you deliberately linger in the bloody chamber, you can just keep going into ever-deepening dark corners that just grow narrower and narrower but never actually end, as though the actual corner were some kind of asymptote or event horizon which you never reach.

From the horror of the threat of incest in "Donkeyskin," you find yourself with the actual presence of a dead uncle reanimating the dead body of your husband in Swamp Thing You never actually reach the heart of darkness, but really, do you want to? Aren't you more interested, really, in the light that escapes from it? Being focused on bottoms, on the roots and limits of evil, leaves you like Gollum, like Matt Cable with his disgusting fantasies. It turns you into Kurtz from The Heart of Darkness; master of your own horrible empire of death.

A little bit of the macabre is great, is a good reminder of the speckled, spare, and strange that is truth, but it's too easy to be like some Gothic heroine, edging towards darkness with perverse fascination. Better by far to explore the mysteries of the light, as though we were all versions of Stephanie Meyer's vampires, who glitter with a thousand colors in sunlight, with so much to see.

Posted by Michelle at 9: Thursday, October 16, Terrors of the Bookstore Michelle. I went to a talk on Tuesday night at the library.

bête noire : nosleep

An author was talking about "where inspiration comes from. But alarmingly, she said that she feels very pressed all the time, afraid that someone else is going to write her book before she does. She's working on a cycle of poems about a topic that has suddenly become trendy, and she's afraid someone will beat her to the punch. This was distressing as I thought I was the only one who got anxious at the bookstore. I used to be excited when I saw a book that looked like it might speak to my interests; now I get really afraid that it's my book, already written!

Apparently, being an experienced and published author does not rid one of these jitters. Saturday, October 4, Swamp Thing Michelle. Continuing me on my horror-reading jag, my brother-in-law has recommended the comic books of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing to me. It's been a mind-expanding experience in a lot of ways, especially since I've never been a comic book reader before, outside of Calvin and Hobbes, and it's opened a whole new genre of art to me.

The jury is still out for me on what I think of the medium, and sometimes I definitely find Swamp Thing too overwhelmingly horrible for my sensibilities - the story with the Monkey King if you're familiar terrified me, and some of the images are viscerally terrible, disgusting beyond my ability to assimilate.

Yet I keep returning to the stories, because I feel like I'm learning something, about the fate of medieval romance in modern culture how can you resist a comic book that makes use of the medieval folk motif of the Green Man?! I'm sure I'll have more to say.

Bete Noire - Stories Concerning Human Nature and Horror (Paperback)

I have also been very impressed with Alan Moore's prose. It's dramatic and reminiscent of Lovecraft's excesses, perfectly pitched for comic books, but it has a strong poetic sense as well that really makes the stories as much about words as images. A sampling, from "Down Amongst the Dead Men": The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth. Stories shape the world. They exist independently of people, and in places quite devoid of man, there may yet be mythologies.

Welcome to the Game 2: The Story You Never Knew

The glaciers have their legends. The ocean bed entertains its own romances. Even here, within these chill and perished thickets that know no witness save the sleeping toads, each curled like a gorgeous alien fetus beneath its stone. There are stories even here.

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Stories that grow, as blighted trees, into a tormented puzzle. Frictions that become over-ripe and fester on the vine. The stories here have blossomed into deformities, nurtured by a curious soil. There are also some wonderfully imaginative stories. I loved the dream sequence "Abandoned Houses," in which Abby Arcane visits the collective unconscious, which turns out to be two decrepit houses, the House of Mysteries and the House of Secrets, where all the stories in the world are guarded by Cain and Abel respectively. Cain is being punished for being the first killer, Abel for being the first victim, and every night the crime is repeated.

This fusion of Jung and medieval allegory is just bursting with poetic energy and possibilities. Likewise, another story includes a journey through the afterlife a la Orpheus, Odysseus, Aeneas, Dante, or, most recently, Philip Pullman's Lyra. I was a little disappointed with the execution, but any modern story that attempts to assimilate those ancient, primal themes of Western literature gets my stamp of approval! Nevermind that I completely disagreed with the worldview fuelling it; it was so exciting to read another modern author engaging the ideas that fuel my own imagination. Not exactly my cup of tea, but I have a feeling it's the cup of chai that helps me understand why I like Earl Grey Monday, September 15, Showing the Monster: Cthulhu and Frankenstein from Michelle.

The few times he did speak were either in regards to Piggy, a character he was fascinated with, or what was spoken by him fell shortly from memory, since the points he made were too emblematic for the other students to grasp. Once while the class was discussing who the 'lord of the flies' might be, Jai made a reference to something he had read beyond my literary ventures that ascribed the phrase 'lord of the flies' to a rotting carcass, hung or impaled as to prop it up where flies might swarm around it, feasting on its flesh.

Though I had theories of my own that correlated with this, the idea itself is fruitful and should've been given a taste, rather than go unplucked by the greedy gluttons. It was often that Jai's musings went unheard, unheard by all but I. Even though I now seek to destroy him, and in releasing this information, I ensure that; may it never be said that I didn't have admiration for him.

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And yet I did read them. The Telegraph as all the intrigue. If there is anything I am sure of in regards to Jai, it is that he peruses the many disturbing alcoves of the internet with glee; a glee reminiscent of a child chasing a butterfly on a sunny day-- Jai chases ghouls through the graveyard. You can get the remaining amount to reach the Free shipping threshold by adding any eligible item to your cart. Stories must be a minimum of words.

That admiration stayed strong, even as I noticed the shattered pair of glasses in his pack, shoved haphazardly between Algebra and Biology textbooks-- almost out of sight. It quivered, when I recognized them as belonging to George, a fellow student, who had been absent for the past week or so. It waned, with the notice of four blonde hairs wedged within the crumpled spectacles. Flakes of red, semblant on the crooked frames. It cracked, as I introduced a possibility that itself seemed less and less debatable with each passing second. My admiration was still intact, though disheveled, by the end of class and with it, the day.

It was when he made that proposition of his, that it was rent apart. We often exited the building together, since our destinations were in similar directions. This time, however, I felt like walking alone. I was not allowed that placidity; rather the opposite, as Jai made it his business to speak to me.

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Worse still, I couldn't express the slightest sign of distress, since even a wince would be detected by my horrific, twisted, inhuman friend. He spoke casually enough, though only when directed at me, and he wouldn't say a word if he thought someone might overhear, which in itself was a strong indication that something was amiss. Jai was capable of marching through a preschool and continue speaking without lowering his tone, usually of the implications of rape in our society or other questionable topic; so any caution expressed by him was something I should be equally, if not more uneasy towards.

And again I had to keep a calm demeanor, fighting the urge to flee all the while carefully listening to every word that was said. I almost wish I hadn't; to run for home as fast as I could, locking every door and window and crouching in the farthest corner of my attic. Cause what he spoke was horrifying.

He talked more of the sanctity of human life--life in general, by the sound of it--and how he'd been pondering it for some time now. This is the discussion I had with him-- I remember every syllable he and I uttered:. Every second of our lives seems haunted by the Reaper's steel. We fear what we can't understand. It took him only a few seconds to respond, likely having spent class composing his speech. The tone he used unsettled me in a way my suspicions had not: And whatever the fall ends with, if anything," he added. It went on like this for some time, until I realized that the street I was walking down was not part of his route.

Dear god, he was following me home. Before I could cry or collapse from fright, he concluded, "Sometime in the future I may call in your assistance, to help me in my mission of discovery. Will I be able to trust that you'll answer my call? I didn't have anything clever or smart to say that might exempt me from his utility, while doing so without raising suspicions, and he expected a quick answer. So the reply I gave, with a stone face and unshaking voice: He laughed and shook his head, "Well thanks, pal. I'm glad I can rely on you and your sense of humor at moment's notice.

I'll be seeing you.

And with that, he left. Having shaken off my refusal as a joke, I was both reassured that he had no suspicions of me and horrified by whatever he had planned, that I was now the unwilling accomplice in. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Log in or sign up in seconds. Submit a new text post.