A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Multifandom Horror is open, and it's full of great stuff! It's been especially fun for me to go through the collection as I haven't had much fic-reading and art-viewing time for the last few months. Here's some recs.

Carrie - Stephen King .

Reunion. Sue hears stories about Carrie White. Amazingly versatile pastiche of many styles.

1982 was the first year any company made Carrie White masks for Halloween: rubbery pale flesh streaked with fake blood, long dishwater blonde wigs, and sparkly tiaras. Gore-spattered prom dresses sold separately.

The company rode out the outrage and—any publicity is good publicity—raked in the cash. By 1985, every major costume vendor had an equivalent, with some generic fig-leaf of a name like BLOODY PROM QUEEN or BAD PROM DATE.

Dark Tower - Stephen King

Green Glass. The ka-tet tries traveling by boat. They shouldn't. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written and extremely eerie.

The river lay low in its bed. Its current was lazy and gentle, like since there was only a little of it and it was sure where it was going, it didn’t really care how fast it got there.

Sometimes it would look so still that, out of the corner of their eyes, they’d almost think they saw their reflections in it. Always a little misshapen and discolored, warped and greened by the water, like they were seeing themselves on the curve of a glass Coke bottle.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

If You Get Lost. Sam, Bucky, and Zemo explore a forest that suddenly appeared overnight. They get considerably more than they bargained for. Great character development, great creeping horror, great dialogue. Bucky punches a tree.

“I’ve got wings that won’t have room to operate, and Bucky’s going to, what, stab a tree?"

Night Fishing. There's something killing people in the swamps behind Sam's childhood home. And he and Bucky are going on a hunting expedition. You can practically breathe the Gothic swamp atmosphere; unusual angle on Bucky and Sam as city boy/country boy. Bucky punches a swamp monster.

"Your neighbor has a harpoon gun just lying around?"

"Welcome to Louisiana."

Sharks! “Sharks?! There are sharks now??” What it says on the tin. Bucky punches a shark.

Bucky looked where Sam was looking and spotted a fin in the distance. It didn’t look that big to him, but he had to admit that he didn’t actually know anything about sharks and, specifically, their fin to body (or really, mouth) ratio.

Snap. Sam gets lost in a hall of mirrors. Unsettling, eerie, ambiguous. I think Bucky punches a mirror.

He struggled to reconcile the video, his own face spouting such hate filled garbage. “It’s gotta be fake. A deep fake? Or something.”

“Sure,” his therapist said, boots clacking as she walked around him in the filming studio and turned off the bright ring light. “But if it was you, and I’m just saying those dimples don’t lie, you probably had a good reason.”

Jurassic Park -

ART. The Queen's Crown. Clever girls always take trophies from their victories! Could not be more delightful.

Us (Movie)

stretch out your hand and take it The borders between who is who is always most porous at night. In the dark, they’re both shadows. One of my wonderful gifts! Beautifully written, intense, and epic-feeling in a short space.

Everything breakable in the tunnels was broken long ago. What remains is sturdy barrack furniture built for bomb raids and wire cages and scissors. The others down here have no idea how breakable the world up above is.

WandaVision

Syndication. In this week's episode, Wanda and Vision help the boys with their history homework, and Wanda worries about the quality of education they're getting. [Rerun.] Pitch-perfect sitcom dialogue, and grief and terror underneath. If you've seen the show, this is a must-read.

“You’re sure there’s no science fair project this year?” Vision said. He sounded disappointed. “Maybe a working model of the solar system? A clean energy source?” He added to Wanda, “I miss the days of dioramas. Small-scale matter manipulation… the smell of Play-Doh…”

The Wilds (TV)

ART. Haunted Even in the spa Gretchen keeps seeing Linh. It's getting harder and harder to remember that it's all just in her head. Haunted and haunting.

perilous in the wrong conditions Nora’s fight-or-flight response is triggered as Rachel’s life is endangered. Intense, well-characterized, beautiful imagery.

The pool had looked so big, and her sister so small all the way up there. The water below lying in wait for Rachel’s sacrifice.

And that's only from what I've had a chance to read! I haven't even started on Original Works, for instance.

What have you enjoyed in the collection so far?