A few years ago, I adopted the tradition of watching 31 horror movies in the month of October to celebrate Halloween. This year, I decided to post a short review of each on Twitter. Scrolling through someone's timeline is about as fun as bobbing for apples that have razor blades in them, though, and this blog has lain fallow for too long, so below you'll find a brief discussion of my favorites, along with a few honorable mentions that I watched prior to October 1st.

Incidentally, I maintain a list of every horror movie I've watched on IMDB. No reviews, but you can see my ratings, and that might help you decide whether my recommendations should mean anything to you or not. 

The Lodge is a tense, atmospheric slow-burn that has strong performances from the entire cast, especially Riley Keough and Alicia Silverstone. One of the best films I watched this year, never mind this month, though I understand why the reaction has been mixed. What I don't understand is why a number of reviewers claim that nothing happens or that it's a classic example of style over substance. There are movies out there that warrant such charges, movies whose endings you literally cannot spoil because they don't really have one; this is not one of them. It is slow, but plenty happens. If you prefer fast-paced slashers, with blood flying at the screen every thirty seconds, give this one a pass. If you enjoy intense character studies and a slow descent into madness, give it a try.

Demon is also a tense, atmospheric, slow-burn, which is probably my favorite kind of horror these days. It's primarily in Polish and some of the most important plot points occur offscreen, so don't have this on in the background while you're doing other things. I can't help but wonder if that's how some of the people who left reviews on IMDB watched it, because here too there are accusations of nothing happening. It's easier for me to see why someone might think that of Demon than The Lodge, but if you're willing and able to assemble some pieces, you should see a tragic tale about what happens when a family, a community, an entire nation, is a little too eager to bury the past. 

Nocturne doesn't offer anything new in terms of premise, an artist willing to do anything to succeed, but the execution is masterful. Again, there's more tension than terror, the pace is pretty slow, but if you have a taste for that sort of thing you should appreciate this. An absolutely amazing performance from Sydney Sweeney. The biggest criticism for this one concerns the ending, which is somewhat open to interpretation. It's not wide open, though. The camera doesn't cut away at the last second or linger on a spinning top or anything. And I thought there were pretty clear hints that one of the two possible interpretations is more plausible. I'll grant that it could have been more definitive, though. 

The Deeper You Dig may be the most criminally underappreciated movie I've ever seen, having fewer than 600 ratings on IMDB (YouTube "movies you might have missed" videos regularly feature movies with 10,000 or more ratings, while your major releases tend to have 100,000 or more) at the time I wrote this. The father/mother/daughter trio that wrote, directed, and starred in it all give strong performances, and the editing, cinematography, and other technical aspects are more polished than you'll find in many movies with much larger budgets. The story is fairly simple, but you don't get that seen-this-a-million-times feel, and the characters feel like real people instead of archetypes.

Scare Me succeeds as both horror and comedy, which is rare. It also offers a scathing indictment of mediocre white men. Depending on your politics, that may detract from the enjoyment, but it added to mine. Aya Cash is amazing, as are Josh Ruben (who also wrote and directed the film) and SNL's Chris Redd. The sound effects elevate the campfire tales, and Fanny's comments on Fred's unimaginative efforts are both amusing and apt. You needn't have any aspirations as an author to appreciate this film, but you kind of owe it to yourself to watch it if you do.

Honorable mentions for movies I watched this year but not as part of my month-long celebration of Halloween: The Rental, After Midnight, Host, Greenlight, Ready or Not, We Go On, and The Poughkeepsie Tapes.

High fantasy used to be my preferred style; I don't know how many times I read the first six books of The Wheel of Time, a series I never finished, nor do I care to think about that. Over time, I came to view the sub-genre as hopelessly and intrinsically conservative. No, gender essentialism isn't always the basis of absolutely everything, the way it was for Jordan, but it's hard to separate patriarchy from knights on horseback, that the greatest virtues are bravery and a capacity for physical violence. The idea that there are unspeakable and un-reason-with-able evils out there, biding their time, from which we must be saved by the Chosen One, has a lot of baggage as well. I strongly suspect that the actual villains of our age benefit greatly from the widespread belief that bad things happen because of bad people, that the world can neatly be divided between those who make plain their intention to advance the cause of EVIL and those who have nobler intentions (and are thus, ipso facto, good guys). Those who seek to subvert the sub-genre's conventions, who traffic in gray as much as they do black and white, are often misread as having endorsed that which they meant criticize. See, for example, almost-but-not-quite-a-pacifist, self-described romantic George R.R. Martin and his believing-in-morality-means-you-deserve-to-die-like-Ned, Tywin-did-nothing-wrong, might-makes-right fan base. But when I started writing a fantasy novel of my own, I figured I owed it to myself to read the books everyone was talking about, regardless of my interest (or lack thereof) in their sub-genre, just to see what readers and publishers are responding well to, and The Priory of the Orange Tree is definitely one of those. Besides, one of the reasons people are talking about it is because of its quiet but unapologetic feminism, so maybe I was too quick to write off an entire class of books?

Well, yes and no.

My favorite thing about The Priory of the Orange Tree was the way it gave us a familiar story in a less problematic way. The focus is on the plot and its characters, on the world you simultaneously recognize yet find yourself feeling curious about, rather than its gender politics. There are no lengthy justifications of matriarchy here, no debates between authorial stand-ins and reader stand-ins, as one sometimes finds in a book that departs so dramatically from convention. What the characters regard as normal, having grown up in a society where it very much is, the reader is expected to treat as such.

There are also some beautiful descriptions and highly memorable scenes, such as our introduction to Ead and her saving Sabran from Firedell. The latter put a goofy smile on my face and made me remember why I used to love high fantasy. It was not the only part of the book that did so either, just the most impactful.

However, the final act was rather disappointing. Once evil witches, prophecies, quests for magic weapons, and talk of the need for balance between two equal but opposite types of magic, which no one outside the book would ever think to describe as diametrically opposed, my interest started fading. I would have preferred a tragic East versus West conflict, with both portrayed sympathetically and the only character(s) capable of seeing past their cultural biases ignored those calling the shots, but instead we get Working Together to Defeat the True Enemy of All Mankind. 

I would recommend this book without reservation to readers of high fantasy, especially those who are used to more patriarchal variations, whether they've tired of that yet or not. If you're as skeptical of the sub-genre as I was going in, the best I can say is that works harder than its peers to leave the worst behind—to mixed success. It gets a lot right, and I truly enjoyed its standout moments, but it does little to challenge the notion that monarchy is perfectly acceptable form of government as long the right person sits the throne, or that profound disagreements about how society should be structured are so cosmically unimportant that you'd have to be a fool to care much about them. I'm glad I read it, but if it was the first in a series, rather than a standalone, I can't say I'd continue.

The good news is that I finished revising my novel. The bad is that I didn't get much reading done or keep track of useful links. The former outweighs latter, of course, but there's nothing else to put in this post. See you Wednesday!

We've now talked about how there is no such thing as a good king, as only those whose support is necessary for the person in power to stay there tend to benefit from his/her rule, nor any such thing as will of the people, as the only way to ensure that preferences don't run in circles is to (severely) limit people's choices. With this post, we start getting into more detail about who the winners tend to be and why it's so hard for everyone else to change that.

Several key features of the US political system, for example, allow rural interests to punch above their weight. We're not talking unfortunate and unforeseen side effects either--they were designed to do just that. 

Too often, we forget that the American Revolution did not give birth to the country we know today, nor any kind or progenitor. Rather, it produced thirteen independent countries who absolutely did not see themselves as united. The Constitution was not ratified until 1787, more than a decade after independence was declared, and wouldn't have been even then had it proposed a fairer, more democratic system. 

You've probably heard a lot of criticism of the Electoral College and gerrymandering, but those aren't even the worst offenders. They may or may not be easier to change, which may or may not justify the amount of attention they get from reformers, but as long as the upper chamber grants two seats to each state, whether they have a predominantly rural population of 500,000 (Wyoming) or mostly urban one of 40,000,000 (California), and seats in the lower chamber are drawn from single-member districts, the 30-35% of the country that wants to halt societal changes the rest of the country sees as progress will get their way. I'm not saying it wouldn't help to have the winner of the popular vote occupy the White House, but the status quo persists unless both houses of Congress pass a bill that the president signs. If one link in that chain is broken, the whole thing is broken, and the Senate is most definitely broken. At least, from the perspective of anyone who thinks "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is a pretty good idea (and doesn't think that only certain types of people, those most likely to live in rural plains states, count as people).

Fine, the US should (but won't) abolish the Senate. What even are single-member districts and why are they so bad?

They're exactly what they sound like, you just didn't know there was a term for that because they seem normal to you and society has convinced us that labels are inherently stigmatizing (which is why no one thinks they have an accent, even though claiming not to have one is like saying there is no pattern to your pronunciation, why cishet people hate, hate, hate that we even have a word for that, and white people think that "playing the race card" is cheating and "identity politics" is something they don't practice). There are various alternatives, the most obvious being multi-member districts (the top two or three candidates take office) and the polar opposite being at-large elections (i.e., the country as a whole votes for the legislature as a whole, and a party that gets 30% of the national vote will control 30% of the seats in the national legislature next term). One criticism of single-member districts is that they all but guarantee a two-party system, though there is some debate about how strong that relationship is and whether multi-party systems really are better (see here, here, here, and here). The one I'm going to focus on, however, concerns over-representation of rural interests.

Let's take a hypothetical polity, cleverly named Hypothetica, which might be a state within the US or a separate country. Hypothetica has one big city, Urbanis, with a population of two million. Another two million live in suburbs or smaller cities, one million in rural areas (for a total of 5 million). The vast majority of Urbanites are progressive, while the suburbs lean ever so slightly to the right, and the rural areas are deeply conservative, mirroring a pattern found in the US, the UK, and other countries currently. Suppose Hypothetica has five representatives in some legislative body and they decide to draw them from single-member districts. Even without partisan gerrymandering, a (seemingly) neutral desire for nice geometric shapes, or contiguity at the very least, is likely to result in two districts for Urbanis, two for the suburbs/smaller cities, and one that's almost entirely rural. The left-leaning party might get, say, 80% of the vote in the first two districts, 45% in the third and fourth, and 20% in the last one, securing two of the five seats despite winning 2.7 million votes to the right-leaning party's 2.3. Might it be even worse if the right-leaning party, after winning three of the five seats, decides to redraw the districts in a way that further disadvantages the left? Sure. But as long as progressives flock to cities and contact with the other nudges people toward more tolerant/cosmopolitan views, the problem will persist. As George Carville once joked, Pennsylvania is Philadelphia on one end, Pittsburgh the other, and Alabama in between. It's not unique in that regard either. There is no way to draw districts for such states that won't result in conservative politicians winning the majority of districts while progressives dominate the cities, have some good years in the suburbs but often lose by narrow margins, and sort of fear even setting foot in rural areas.

Okay, that's enough about the peculiar institutions of the United States and the over-representation of rural interests. (Those who'd actually like to read more might wish to go here and here). Let's talk about what this all means for writers of science fiction and fantasy. There are two types of (quasi-)democratic systems frequently found in SFF: the at-large election where one-person-one-vote and equal representation are not just platitudes, such as the Night's Watch, and those with some number of single-member districts set aside for each planet, school of magic, or whatever, like the Galactic Senate. The former is unrealistic; good luck finding a electoral system in the real world that does not allow some minority, whether geographic, economic, racial, or religious, to punch above its weight. And if you do, ask yourself whether that system is employed by an non-hierarchical entity that has a large population and the power to enact policies that dramatically affect people's lives. Military orders and civic clubs don't count, in other words. As for the second, realism might not be an issue, at least in regards to the structure of that body, but rarely is the over-representation of some groups at the expense of others explored the way it should be. If the Blargonians/oneiromancers get one seat, same as the Cutesybears/enchanters, one of those groups is going to be a big fan of the system and the other vehemently opposed. Show that to your readers. Don't expect us to believe that everyone is equally happy—or unhappy!—with a system that accords equal power to groups of wildly unequal size. Give us impassioned speeches on the floor of the senate or at the wizengamut and protests in the streets. Or, at the very least, have your jaded-yet-proactive protagonist make the occasional offhand comment about slacktivists and their online petitions that won't change anything. There's so much juicy potential there. Do something​ with it.

​I wasn't sure what to expect from Hark! The Herald Angels Scream, as Christmas-themed horror movies tend to be campy and that's not my preferred style, but​ I had enough trust in the editor, Christopher Golden, and several of the authors to give it a try. I'm glad I did. One or two of the stories might be considered campy, but most of the entries aim for (and several achieve) real scares. These are horror stories that happen to take place on a holiday rather than holiday stories that kinda sorta pretend to be scary while inducing more groans and eye rolls than gasps or starts. Standout entries: "Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow" by Seanan McGuire; "Tenets" by Josh Malerman; "It's a Wonderful Knife" by Christopher Golden; "Hiking Through" by Michael Kortya; and "The Hangman's Bride" by Sarah Pinborough.

Like many fantasy geeks, I'm borderline obsessed with Wonderland. Whether it's an ultra-dark video game, Tim Burton at his most Burtonesque, or a collection of short stories, I'm there for it. Doesn't matter if it's a faithful adaption, full of puns and logical inversion, or only offers a few veiled allusions, as long as it's done well. And most of the stories in Wonderland, edited by Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane, are indeed done well. They do, however, fall into the "few veiled allusions" category more often than not; there are even one or two entries whose inclusion puzzles me, so tenuous is the connection to Carroll's beloved work. As I said, that doesn't bother me, as some of the strongest entries took the most liberty, but I figured that was worth mentioning. Standout entries: "Wonders Never Cease" by Robert Shearman; "There Were No Birds to Fly" by M.R. Carey; "The White Queen's Pawn" by Genevieve Cogman; "Dream Girl" by Cavan Scott; "Vanished Summer Glory" by Riou Summers; and "Six Impossible Things" by Mark Chadbourn.