XIII. Death
The Death card. A horror movie favorite. To quote the movie Tarot, “It represents endings and beginnings, but in this case it means death.” Except in this case it doesn’t, and it rarely does. Death is one of my favorite tarot cards, because I love thinking about how transitions always encompass both beginnings and endings.
I chose these three very different decks to illustrate how different the vibe can be. I particularly like the Shadowscapes Tarot Death card, a phoenix, the classic image of the new arising from the ashes of the old.
Birth is also death. The death I’m acknowledging here is the end of a period of regrouping, connecting to my new home in Chicago. I’m finding my way to what it looks like to approach writing seriously. The birth is this newsletter, of course, which I mean to be a regular monthly correspondence in which I share what’s going on with my writing, recommend a few things I’ve enjoyed, and occasionally share a recipe or two.
The other death I’m celebrating is the completion of the second draft of my ghostly murder mystery book. It’s the first in a trilogy featuring Ren the ghost fixer, who travels around the country helping ghosts and occasionally helping living people with ghost problems. In this first book they’re returning to their high school home town in Bakersfield, where things are very wrong, both in the ghost world and in the living one. It’s dark and sad, and hopefully a little funny, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I hope you will be too, although it will still be a while yet before you can read it. (Sorry! The route to publishing is long and full of uncertainties.) I’m putting it down for a bit while I work on some short stories and the first draft of the second book in the series. Then I’ll do a final polish pass before starting the process of querying agents.
I’ll tell you more about my process and how things are going in future newsletters. For now, let’s move on to the recommendations!
It was really tough to narrow down the list because there were so many good movies and books this year! But I didn’t want to make this newsletter too long, so I decided to stick to my three favorites in each category.
Movies:
I love a well choreographed action movie that keeps its focus on the action without trying to overly explain itself. Previously, John Wick was one of my favorite examples, and it’s the comparison that a lot of people have made to Monkey Man. I don’t think that comparison really does the movie justice, because not only does it succeed on that level, it has a lot more depth than that. It says something important about justice and resistance, and the value of righteous anger. Most surprising and delightful to me were the themes of trans joy and the importance of community and solidarity. There’s a gorgeous trans troupe of avenging angels, need I say more?
Horror-comedy is absolutely my favorite genre, but I’m picky about it. I generally prefer when horror-comedy works on both axes, where the horror is genuinely horrifying, and the comedy underlines the scares instead of undermining them. House of Sayuri executes very well on both fronts, as well as being thematically very heartwarming and pleasurable. My one issue with it is the way fatphobia and monstrousness are used. I think it’s meant to be a kind of subversion, but that element missed the mark for me. Still very worth it, though.
I have to get this out of the way first: anyone who doesn’t think this is horror has an extremely limited view of what horror is or what it can be. I think they’re thinking of the rollercoaster, carnival, funhouse horror, where the scares are a monster or a killer or some external terror. I Saw the TV Glow isn’t that. But that isn’t to say it isn’t still building on a tradition of horror that is rooted in transformation, in a body that isn’t one’s own. Some of the best werewolf and vampire movies are treading on similar ground. There is a complex layering of desire and fear, wanting and needing the transformation and fearing death (of the old self, and, in this case, the false self). It’s an expression of a part of the trans experience, but it actually describes so many other experiences, of growth and queerness and selfhood. I’ll hold this one close to my heart for a long, long time.
Honorable mentions: The People’s Joker (which didn’t make the list only because I saw it in 2023), Love Lies Bleeding, Exhuma
Books:
I don’t consume a lot of zombie media, generally. I do have some faves (Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series, Shaun of the Dead, Train to Busan) but I tend not to seek it out. The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller was the only zombie novel I read this year, but I’m so glad I did! It’s sharp, it’s queer, it’s very funny, the action is good, and it’s full of messy queer relationships. I need more horror full of messy queer relationships please!!! And this book delivers it in spades. I devoured it in a couple of days, and I’m looking forward to reading whatever King-Miller writes next.
I was talking and thinking about Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward endlessly for months after I read it. A quiet, haunting horror, about writing, jealousy, and messy queer relationships, as well as our relationship with true crime and the media, and how we treat its victims and who owns their stories. I’ve enjoyed all of Ward’s books so far, and this was no exception.
One of my special interests is mountain climbing. Or rather, media about mountain climbing. Movies, books, documentaries, etc, I consume a lot of it. When I saw that This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer was a horror novel about a climber who gets stuck in some cursed Kentucky woods with a group of friends, it immediately went to the top of my queue. This is exactly the kind of horror I like - people and their relationships fracturing under the pressure of the horrors they’re experiencing. It doesn’t go well in these woods, and I enjoyed every terrible page.
Honorable mentions: The Woods All Black, Someone You Can Build a Nest In, The Crows, The Haunting of Velkwood, Triple Sec
TV Shows:
Culinary Class Wars is one of the best cooking competition shows I’ve seen in a while, structured in a way that makes it very hard not to binge. Each episode ends on a cliffhanger, each stage of the competition stretching over multiple episodes. Each of the challenges feels fresh and different from the previous ones. Most of the food the chefs make is Korean, Chinese, and Italian, and they all work to come up with ways to put their unique spin on classic dishes and elevate them.
Look, I know this isn’t a new show. It just took me a long time to get around to watching it, and I’m very glad I finally did. It’s both creepy and very funny, with delightful musical sequences, and a bit of an homage to classic animation while being entirely its own thing.
I read a lot of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles when I was in high school, and then drifted away from them at some point after that. I had no urge to revisit them, and I resisted watching this show for a long time because of that. But I kept hearing so much praise for it, I decided to see for myself if it lived up to the hype. It really does. It also demonstrates how an adaptation can surpass the source material. Season 2 builds on season 1, with Louis continuing the tale, and Daniel, the interviewer, poking holes in it. I particularly love the way it shows the impact of time, nostalgia and trauma on memory, making every narrator an unreliable one.
Honorable mentions: Secret Chef, Brilliant Minds
Double Feature + Food Pairing
This month’s suggested double feature is Nosferatu (2024) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), paired with a crusty loaf of bread (knife optional) and bloody roast beef.
Until next time!
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