Villains don't have to be sympathetic.

Fair warning, this is going to be more of a rant than anything else, but this has been bugging me all day. Also, there may be a few spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen 101 Dalmations.

Disney is doing an "origin" story for the villain Cruella DeVil, the antagonist of the 101 Dalmations movies.

Now, why? Are they really scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas?

Now, here's the thing for me. A lot of villains and even monsters can be sympathetic. Take the shark from JAWS. He's not swimming around the island eating people because it wants to. It's an animal. It's hungry. While not a usual source of food, there's a lot of soft, pink things that don't fight back flopping around in the water that satisfy that hole in the stomach for a while. Some of them do have a hard shell to smash (boats), but still, an easy meal compared to chasing down a tuna or a seal. It's just an animal trying to live from one day to the next.

Some people are driven to villainy because they don't "fit in" with the heroes, or they look different and get ostracized and start acting out because that's how people expect them to act. Sometimes a character only looks like a villain because we're only shown things from the heroes point of view, even though the hero might do things that are exactly the same or worse through a different lens. How often do we see a hero avenge the death of a loved one on the villain and cheer, but boo when a villain's acts are driven by the same ideas of vengeance?

But this bitch. THIS bitch...

This bitch offers to buy all 99 puppies her "friend" has, and when she gets turned down, dog-naps them all to skin them alive and use their fur to make herself a Dalmation-skin coat. When the dogs escape, she gets in her car and nearly runs an innocent man off the road in her rage because the puppies were hiding in the back of his truck. Over the opportunity to wear dog-skins as fashion.

Now, to be fair, the movie's only been announced and other than Emma Stone playing the title role, we know nothing about it. It could be that Cruella is, like her namesake, a monster from the start. I can't really see much of a movie in that though. So it's likely a movie about how Cruella used to absolutely LOVE dalmations, the picture does show her with a few of her own. Maybe something horrible happens to them and she just can't get over their loss and literally wearing their skins is the only way she can feel close to them again?

Cruella is a pure villain. She's a fine character without being sympathetic.

I'm sorry, but No. There is nothing redeemable in the villain from 101 Dalmations. We don't need to feel pity for someone whose end goal is animal abuse and murder. We don't need to see how she went from a normal human being to a complete psychopath. We don't need a movie to make excuses for animal cruelty.

WE DON'T NEED A MOVIE TO MAKE EXCUSES FOR ANIMAL CRUELTY.

To me, this movie is a horrible fucking idea and shouldn't get made.

Period.

~ Shaun

Kids in Horror: Monsters

Kids can take on more forms in Horror than simply the victims. Sometimes, they're the monsters.

If it's the innocence of children that makes their deaths in fiction so unbearable, what about when they have no innocence, or when that innocence gets twisted into something else entirely? The best example again returns to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, where little Gage, once the victim, returns to life but with a thirst for murder. It almost twists at you to the point where you don't know what to feel. The scene of his death is heartbreaking, but when he comes back and turns on his family and neighbors, it's with such violence and ferocity that you can't even feel pity for him, even if he didn't ask for what he became. At the same time, you can't see him as just another murderous monster to be stopped, so everything is conflicting, which is part of what makes this story so powerful.

Sometimes though, it's because of that innocence that they take such dark turns. They don't have a full understanding of how the world works, or why things are the way they are, so when left to their own devices, they reach ideas and conclusions that just aren't acceptable in the world at large. Even at young ages, without the burdens of society, children can turn to violence and savagery every bit as brutal as any adult could unleash. Is there a better example of this than The Lord of the Flies by William Golding?

I think this version of children is the most terrifying, as I don't think there's any human which has a stronger bond to their natural instincts as a young child. Human beings are hunters by nature, we kill things for food, for territory, and for safety. At that level, we also have little qualms about killing others of our own kind, or even engaging in cannibalism. All the violence and horrific acts are justified in their minds, and no matter how much we don't want to admit it, we understand it. We see mirrors of ourselves in it before we turn away.

It does happen, though, that sometimes people are just broken from the start. Whether children can really just be born evil, I don't know, but with an organism as complicated as a human being, there are bound to be errors in the programming occasionally. In this vein, we have stories like The Omen, where the children are evil from the very beginning. It might be because they are the spawn of Satan or some other religious sect, or it could be that they're just broken. Regardless, these are easily viewed as more monsters than men, and it's easier to cheer for their destruction as they seemingly had no innocence in the first place.

The main thing about these monsters is that because they're so broken, they're unpredictable. There's no instinct behind their actions, nothing relatable in their motives, and because of that they can do anything. Children acting out some form of revenge have limits. Children acting on pure instinct still have limits. People, even children, that are just broken human beings from the start, don't. They're psychopaths, and one of the scariest things about psychopaths is that you can't see them for what they are until it's too late. And that goes ten times greater when that psychopath is a child.

So, I know some people can't stand to see children as victims, but what about the monsters and villains? Thoughts? Any favorites out there?

~ Shaun

Kids in Horror: Victims

Children in horror can be a bit of a touchy subject. Some people refuse to read anything which has hints of child abuse or graphic descriptions of violence against them. I can't say I blame them too much, it is something that makes me a little bit squeamish. I say that even though some of my own works have scenes which fall along those lines.

Class 5 opens with a scene which features the death of a young boy, and it includes a scene of the boy's father finding the body later on.

Hannah has a scene where the family dog attacks the son, and later a twisted version of that same pet kidnaps the daughter.

Killing a child isn't something that should be done haphazardly, and certainly not, in my opinion, done just for shock value. It should be important in the context of the story.

One of the earliest scenes of a child's death in movies is of poor little Maria in the classic Frankenstein. The scene isn't gruesome, or even dark, it's sad. It's important because the scene brings focus on the monster's childlike innocence, and how he's not evil. The scene becomes tragic because he's not trying to kill Maria, it's completely accidental as he tosses her into the water where she drowns because she can't swim. He just wanted to see her match the flowers after she pointed out how pretty they were floating on the water's surface. Without this scene, it would be much harder to feel pity for the monster later on when the town is chasing him and calling for it's death while he has no idea why everyone hates him so much.

The death of Alex Kintner in JAWS was one of the more gruesome scenes we've seen of a child's end. There are several reasons for this scene though. It shows that nobody is safe, not even in a group (though he was out further than everyone else). It broke the mayor's hold on the problem in a way that he couldn't keep it quiet anymore, forcing the community to see and acknowledge the issue facing them. The resulting press conference also led to the introduction of Quint, so his character doesn't just feel dropped into place later on. It's also a major psychological moment for Chief Brody, who likely would've had the memory flashing through his head as he ran to his own son on the beach after their small sailboat is knocked over, and the guilt likely assisted in forcing him to accompany Quint on the shark-hunting expedition in the end, in spite of his fear of the sea.

This is one that shook a lot of people. It really comes out of nowhere and even though it's not graphic, the implied carnage is easy for most people to imagine, especially thanks to the kind of things that commonly get shown on the news and on social media these days. The death of Gage in Stephen King's Pet Sematary is so important that there wouldn't be a story without it. It's the strength of the sense of loss, something most people can relate to, that drives Gage's father to test the power of the pet sematary, setting in motion a series of events that are all as horrible, or worse, than the one that sets the whole thing in motion.

Children are innocent. They don't know the truth of  the dangers and horrors of the world around them. That's what makes it hit so much harder when dark fates befall them, and why so many people can't stand to see these kinds of scenes. Their deaths are almost always "Wrong place, wrong time" and they rarely have any hand in the things that happen to them. Maria just wanted a friend to play with, Alex Kintner just wanted to play on his raft a few minutes more, and little Gage was just chasing the kite string. People don't like seeing bad things happen to innocents, just like with pets.

Still, I don't think any horror story should be avoided simply because a child dies. As my examples show, even in death, many of them showcase the beauty of childhood innocence, they illustrate the power of grief, and show that life does still continue.

And isn't that the point of horror? That no matter how hard or bad things get, life (usually) goes on, and things do get brighter again eventually. You know, unless you bury your son in an ancient graveyard possessed by pure evil...

~ Shaun

Audiobooks!

In any business, it's generally a good idea to experiment. Buying ads, posters, signs, commercials; trying new products, things like that. The same goes for writing and being an author. It's a fair idea to try something new and different every so often.

I tried something new myself a few months ago, and while it hasn't turned into a windfall, writing is a long-game, and it certainly seems to be helping with that.

One of my shorter works available for purchase is PATHS: Three Short Horror Stories. It's just three short stories, unconnected, to give people a cheap little entry into my writing styles and moods. The stories themselves are more gothic than gore, and include a scientist taking part in a rare tribal ritual, a man trying to take advantage of the discovery of time travel, and a man haunted by the ghost of his wife that discovers things may be different than he knows.

So a few months ago, after seeing some projects from one of my fellow authors, Karl Drinkwater (Seriously, go read his stuff, it's awesome!), I decided to try an experiment and make PATHS available as an audiobook.

Like setting up for Kindle, the process is actually pretty simple, as there's a single website, ACX.com, that has most of the work already done for you. I just had to sign up and put my information in as a content creator, and away I went.

It starts with an audition. I selected a short piece from PATHS to represent what I thought would be the hardest challenge to a narrator, and posted it up. After a week I had 35 auditions of people reading the piece to choose from, a lot more than I expected, and after listening to 35 different versions of a two minute section of PATHS, I narrowed it down to four, and  then chose my narrator.

From there, ACX has a pre-written contract where I fill in the dates I would like to see the project completed by, and how much I'm willing to pay for it, and I send it as an offer. If the narrator accepts, then it's on to the next stage, and not falling back to another audition. 

Thankfully, I haven't had to fall back to my second choice yet. The narrator I chose accepted, and we were off to the races. About a month and a half later, and PATHS was available to purchase as an audiobook. Not just on Amazon, but also on Audible, and even on iTunes! So it's expanding my reach to places I hadn't actually been on before! Sales were decent and it's already got two ratings / reviews, so I'd consider that a success for the long-run. 

With that, I decided to wander a little further down this path and make Cenote an audiobook as well. It's well into the process now, in fact, we're just waiting for QA approval and for it to go live. So watch my Twitter and Facebook page for the announcement which should be coming up in a few weeks. 

In the meantime, go check out Merphy Napier on Youtube! She's the narrator for Cenote, and she also does video book reviews.

I'm happy to say all this excitement has me back into a writer/author mode, so hopefully I'll also have some new reading material for all of you to check out soon too! 

Video Game Review: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

If you're a fan of horror video games, you know the name Koji Igarashi. If you don't go find a way to play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, then come back to read this review. Widely regarded as the best Castlevania game ever made, it really set the stage for the Metroidvania style of games that are crosses between side-scrolling action and exploration-RPG games. Despite Symphony of the Night's popularity, it became increasingly difficult for Koji to convince the major company he worked for to put actual effort into similar games. So, like most creatives with a vision, he took it to Kickstarter. In 2015, Koji launched a Kickstarter campaign for the game what would become Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, looking for a modest sum of just $500,000.

In July of 2019, after having raised a final tally of over 5 MILLION dollars, Bloodstained released.

From initial screenshots, I was actually concerned this would just be a re-skin of Symphony of the Night. I was wrong.

Now, to be fair, Bloodstained is more than just the spiritual successor to Symphony. The controls, the game-play, the enemies, the music; all are reminiscent of Symphony, but Bloodstained is its own game. The story and world-building are fairly unique, bosses are challenging in different ways and memorable, and abilities are varied and give a wide range of customization for playing styles. It also has multiple endings if you manage to fully explore the castle and are adept at figuring out how to use the myriad abilities you can gain throughout the game.

The story follows Miriam, a shardbinder, in the 1800's. Alchemists have raised demons to ravage the world, in order to prove their abilities have merit in the face of the industrial revolution. Shardbinders are people with the ability to basically absorb demonic abilities, though if they absorb too much, they turn into crystals themselves, with no way to turn back.

Miriam is looking for her friend, Gebel, a fellow shardbinder that seems to have used his powers to summon a huge castle full of demons and is poised to set them loose on the world once again. She has to find and stop him, while wondering what happened to make him change to wanting to destroy the world. Fortunately, Miriam isn't alone. She has an alchemist partner who can create items and food, as well as enhance the shards she collects. You also come across a town that's been ravaged, but still has survivors that can sell you items, buy things you have extras of, and give you side quests. You'll also come across others looking for Gebel to destroy him.

The castle isn't simple and straightforward either. There are bosses that guard abilities you'll need to reach different areas to progress through the game, so expect a lot of back and forth as you explore the castle looking for Gebel. You can even reach him without having explored all of the castle.

(FYI, this is ONE boss.)

The game is excellent, even though it had some issues with the version available for the Nintendo Switch. I haven't sat down and binged a video game for quite some time, and I kept coming back to Bloodstained, even after I finished it, just to go back for monster/item farming, as well as to track down the optional bosses. Not only that, I highly anticipate this being a game I come back to further down the line. It's just that much fun to play. I only wish other games came with this level of quality, and companies wouldn't hurry out bug-ridden, paywall-locked games.

Definitely pick this up and play it if you can. PS4, PC, I'm not sure if the Switch has been patched yet, but it seems the bug isn't consistent, so you may want to give it a try anyway. 

~ Shaun