Your Asshole Dad's Castle, Dracula Illustrations, the Allure of Gothic Horror

Your Asshole Dad's Castle is Back Again
- Eva Problems, Medium

Undead, Undead: John Coulthart's beautiful illustrations for Bram Stoker's Dracula
- Dangerous Minds

The Allure of Gothic Horror
- Seanan McGuire, Tor

The Dark Descent

As anyone who loves reading knows, books tend to come and go but some books stay with you and become an integral part of your experience of the world. For me, one of those books is The Dark Descent, edited by David G. Hartwell.

This book entered my life because my aunt joined a mail order book club. Generously, she let me pick out two books from her first allotment of books for myself. The Dark Descent was one of my picks, and it forever skewed my taste in literature.

(My other pick, Edith Hamilton's book of mythology, was also highly formative--I'll talk about that one another day.)

The Dark Descent is an anthology of horror stories, and frankly it is a masterclass in great short horror fiction between two covers. This book introduced me to a number of authors that I absolutely love; this was my first exposure to Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Michael Shea, E. Nesbit, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Aickman, Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard Matheson, Joanna Russ, Dennis Etchison, Ramsey Campbell, Gene Wolfe, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter de la Mare, Flannery O'Connor, and Oliver Onions.

Look, this is the book that introduced me to Tanith Lee.

Also, this book was my first taste of authors I would go on to teach: Stephen King, M. R. James, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Faulkner, Henry James, Charles Dickens, Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, and Philip K. Dick are all represented.

The good news is that The Dark Descent is miraculously still in print. It doesn't have to be your first experience of these fantastic authors; I have no doubt that it would serve just as well as a repository of dark delights that adorns your shelves.

The Cacophony of the Funereal Moon

I've been prepping some Krevborna adventures lately in advance of starting a new campaign. Which means I've also been assembling a playlist to fit the mood of the new saga. Below are some of the songs in the current rotation. Needless to say, they're perfect for the Halloween season as well. Portal, in particular, might be a good band to put on if you don't want any kids coming to your house to trick r treat.

Myrkur, "Ulvinde"

Chelsea Wolfe, "The Culling"

Portal, "Curtain"

Huntress, "Sorrow"

Carach Angren, "Charles Francis Coghlan"

Cradle of Filth, "Heartbreak and Seance"

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

As anyone who loves reading knows, books tend to come and go but some books stay with you and become an integral part of your experience of the world. For me, one of those books is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, written by Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a collection of folk tales and urban legend horrors retold in a way that makes the stories accessible without lessening their macabre impact. There are many classic eerie tales retold in the first volume of this series, including "The Hook," "The Killer in the Backseat," and "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs." If your childhood didn't include these stories, you weren't raised right--but the good news is that reading this book will get you up to speed.

Stephen Gammell's art in the book in unimpeachable. It is horrifying, morbid, and uncanny in roughly equal measure--the seeds of childhood nightmares that would persist into adulthood. Gammell's art is so striking that it has frequently been cited as the reason for the challenges offered for the book's removal from school and public libraries. If you aren't familiar with the art from this series, stop reading right now and do an image search.

There are three volumes in the series, and they are all worthwhile. If you do pick them up, it is imperative you get copies with Gammell's art. A softened version with new art was published at one point to quiet mawkish parents, but those are unfortunately an inferior version. Luckily, the originals were reprinted in 2017 so you should be able to lay your hands on the real deal.

14 Terrifying Facts About Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 
Maureen Monahan, Mental Floss

This Artist Turns Iconic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Illustrations into Custom Toys
John Squires, Bloody Disgusting

Scary Stories Documentary Trailer

For the Del Toro-philes: Scary Stories Film Adaptation
Dave McNary, Vanity Fair

The Ravenloft Remix: Strahd is the Land, but the Land is a Little Lacking

Ravenloft has long been my favorite official D&D setting, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it has problems or doesn't have areas where it could be improved. Over the years I've suggested a number of alterations that I would make to Ravenloft, were I to be placed in charge of it; consider this the second post in a "best of" edition of my Ravenloft Remix. The first post in the series is here.

2) Create cohesion
It has been rightly pointed out that Ravenloft's core feels more like a patchwork of ill-fitting domains than a cohesive setting. Originally, this was by design. The Ravenloft setting was built around the idea that it was a place that D&D characters would visit for a session or two, and then return to more prosaic settings such as the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. The intention was never to create a setting with organic unity; rather, each domain was more or less a separate playground oriented toward a specific Gothic trope that had little connection to a larger, encompassing conception of the setting.

As it turned out, fans of the setting actually did want Ravenloft to feel like a self-contained setting in its own right. TSR shifted its presentation of the setting to accommodate this perspective, but the results were mixed. From the Domains of Dread hardcover onward, TSR changed the focus from characters sucked into Ravenloft through the mists for a couple of horrific adventures before returning to the vanilla fantasy grind to characters who were born and bred in Ravenloft, and thus had actual reasons to fight against the evils haunting those lands.

The 3x versions of the setting published by Arthaus followed that path, but unfortunately added a lot of questionable detail while also having to work under some unfortunate restrictions, such as a Soth-less Sithicus. 4e floated some mediocre "domains of dread" articles, then the planned Ravenloft product got shelved. (I'd love to see a draft of it, but frankly it sounded awful.) 5e has walked back from the notion of Ravenloft as a "native setting"; the Curse of Strahd adventure assumes that the player characters are abductees from the Sword Coast because of the edition's Realms-centric approach.

If I were rebuilding Ravenloft, I would refocus on making it a cohesive setting with creating characters native to the core as the assumption--with the option of visiting characters entering through the Mists. Here is where I would apply my efforts:

• Reorganize the geography based on theme. Ravenloft's geography is already malleable; the shape, arrangement, and inclusion of domains varies wildly over the setting's 2e-era history alone. We could take advantage of that by remixing the placement of the core's domains to make a more coherent cultural landscape. Since so many of the domains are based on themes drawn from the real world, that could be a helpful guide when it comes to placement.
• Expand on the themes already extant. There are great themes built into Ravenloft's domains, but most are woefully underutilized. For example, Bluetspur was clearly meant to be a place to bring in the possibility of Gothic Lovecraftian adventures, but in execution it is totally barren and really only functions as the setting for a single adventure module. (Thoughts of Darkness, which also happens to be a pretty terrible adventure.) What Bluetsput really needs to capitalize on the promise of Gothic Lovecraftiana is Innsmouth-style fishing villages, weird cults, bloodlines infected by the kuo-toa, and an Arkham analog where scholars have been collecting horrid knowledge of the Far Realm. Every domain could benefit from expanding on its thematic elements in a similar way.
• Populate the setting. It is a common sentiment that Ravenloft is far too depopulated to sustain a variety of scenario types. My solution is to add more high population density areas. The approach often discussed on the Fraternity of Shadows board works well: multiply the population figures for the larger towns by ten and make them into cities. Mix urban and rural areas for a greater variety of adventuring possibility.
• Add more interconnection. There should be more movement between domains in Ravenloft, and a greater sense that the domain borders are most often permeable to the land's residents. Make trade and commerce between domains more prevalent. And definitely add reasons to travel by sea! Ravenloft has always badly wanted to feature Gothic Nautical adventure, but the current geography makes it seem insane that anyone would build a masted ship just to trade with a far-off island with a few hundred inhabitants. One way to do this would be to include closely guarded secret paths through the sea Mists that are sought after to secure important nautical trade routes.
• The supernatural is not hidden. The point of Ravenloft is to mix D&D with Gothic conventions, but this sometimes gets lost in the weird restrictions intended to enforce the Gothic side of that genre admixture. (Which doesn't work for the Gothic anyway because it is such a migratory and mutational mode.) For example, those narrow lists of appropriate monsters? Gone. Use any monsters you want. If you can't figure out how to describe a green dragon as a primeval horror of the eldritch forest, you need to learn more words. Strahd is a vampire and everybody knows it; none of this silly "the peasants don't really think about why he doesn't age and is never seen during the day" business. In a world with clerics and wizards, vampires are not going to be something unheard of--lean into the rich supernaturalism of folklore, not away from it.

My Pretty Vampire

Mini-Episode 13: My Pretty Vampire

Katie Skelly's graphic novel My Pretty Vampire blends an array of 60s and 70s references to create a brightly-colored, deceptively sweet-looking comic that explores repressed desires, poisonous relationships, and vampiric murder. Jack and Kate take a pop art journey into the dark corners of the human psyche, taking some side trips into horror conventions, vintage TV, and the films of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin along the way.

How has the landscape of horror media changed due to the increased presence of female critics and creators? When is an owl-headed mask just an owl-headed mask? Can a sex kitten transform into a tigress? What does Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass Whipped Cream & Other Delights have to do with any of this? All these questions and more will be answered during this episode of Bad Books for Bad People.

BBfBP theme song by True Creature 

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Women Horror Writers, Best Horror Novels, Italian Gothic

23 Great Women Horror Writers to Freak You Out This October
- Emily Temple, Literary Hub

The 50 Best Horror Novels of All Time
- Steve Foxe and the Paste staff, Paste Magazine

An Englishman's Guide to Italian Gothic
- Rob Talbot, Diabolique Magazine