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Monday, March 9th, 2026 02:05 am
Theme Prompt: #291 – Safe Harbor
Title: From Distant Shores
Fandom: Miami Vice (TV)
Rating/Warnings: PG. Spoilers for the Burnett arc (but if you haven’t seen it, you can just enjoy the weirdness)
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 986
Summary: When Sonny starts having flashbacks of the flashbacks he experienced while an amnesiac Burnett, it illuminates the darkness he’s been living in.
Notes: Song lyrics from "Distant Shores," by Robbie Patton & Jonathan Cain


From Distant Shores )
Monday, March 9th, 2026 02:23 pm
Spent 8 days in Hanoi and it was lovely~

Photos, thoughts, etc. probably sometime this weekend, but I already want to go back and experience all the other things I haven't experienced, eat all the things I have not tried, eat all the things I've tried and enjoyed and spend more time at the cafes, sitting and drinking coffee, watching life go by (their chairs tend to face the traffic, so traffic/people watching is built into the coffee drinking experience).

My attempt at learning Vietnamese before I go didn't get very far but I did make full use of "thank you" (cảm ơn) because my friend's family kept giving me things. They let me stay with them, and then my friend's aunts and cousins took me around, invited me over for lunches and dinners, so I ended up having a very local Hanoi experience. Learnt a bit of Vietnamese history too, and realized that I really need to fix my lack of knowledge of all the Southeast Asian countries older history. Recent history, yeah, I know basics, but older history? Very lacking.

A minor complaint unrelated to Hanoi: I flew Batik Air, and I have lots of complaints about their in-flight food. On the flight to Hanoi, I had chicken pizza (I think), while on the way back, I had their fried mihun. The chicken pizza was... sad, but it was preferable to the salty (honestly kinda revolting) fried mihun. How do you even mess that up? Batik Air, I am impressed. -_-;
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Monday, March 9th, 2026 01:30 am

Heir


ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, pdf, and xhtml)

Free at my website.


Blood Vow (The Three Lands). He has taken a blood vow to the Jackal God to bring freedom to his land by killing Koretia's greatest enemy. But what will he do when the enemy becomes his friend?

New installment:

Side story | Heir. Secrets can destroy. Secrets can also heal.

New omnibus:

Blood Vow: Novel and Side Stories.


BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

New installments:


News & upcoming fiction )


My fiction announcements are also available by e-mail and feeds.

Monday, March 9th, 2026 04:01 am

Posted by Paige Francis

Meta, or self-aware horror, is typically said to have begun with 1996’s Scream. But as any pedant will gleefully point out Wes Craven’s New Nightmare incorporates the fundamental conventions of meta-horror in 1994. Wait! Kevin Williamson wrote the first concept of Scream in 1994! Yeah. Probably about the same time Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was being made. Except the concept for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was at least eight years old. The basic plot was pitched by Wes Craven originally when he signed on to write the third Nightmare movie; a project that would become 1987’s The Dream Warriors. It became The Dream Warriors because New Line Cinema didn’t like Craven’s story, mainly the entire “meta” idea. But none of that matters anyway, because There’s Nothing Out There was made in 1990 for less than the cost of most houses in the United States.

Several essays and reviews make the distinction that There’s Nothing Out There doesn’t actually count, because meta-horror is “a horror movie that makes typically humorous comments on other movies” while the film in question is undoubtedly and intentionally a comedy. To which I say

But beyond that, we’re *already there* by 1990. We didn’t need a “first movie,” except to prove the point (maybe). I will admit I don’t think the “humorous” part of the above definition is necessary to make something a meta-horror. I would actually rephrase the idea as “a horror movie that shows through context OR explicit lampshading it is aware of genre tropes and audience expectations.” And honestly, the last few Friday and Nightmare movies were only missing the universality of the meta-world. Their self-awareness was either situational, as with Freddy Krueger’s parodies; or tied to specific elements such as Jason’s undead status. The Halloween franchise managed to miss this trend, for better or worse, by trying to dig deeper and take itself even more seriously. Something it seems even Akkad as producer and everyone else involved in the production of Halloween 6 couldn’t do. Or didn’t understand.

Don’t misunderstand, though. I’m not saying Scream and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare don’t deserve credit; they do. As I said above, *someone DID* need to point out that slashers, and horror broadly, had to be done a bit differently to connect with the then-modern audience. This was happening thirty-plus years ago, keep in mind. We’re in a whole new generation of horror movies now, including slashers. Thankfully getting there is a shorter trip than the creation of the slasher to the first new idea. Second caveat: Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, unlike Scream two years later, *was not* a hit. It made $20 million off an $8 million production budget. New Line also advertised this film heavily, so it likely barely made a profit, and conceivably could have lost money. It was…IS…the lowest grossing Nightmare movie. Audiences stayed away in droves. Yet, critics liked it for the most part. And of course, it has grown to be very-well thought of. Fan rankings typically classify New Nightmare with Dream Warriors as the second-best movie, but it’s not unusual to see those who give it the #2 spot also consider it every bit as good as the first movie.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare as a title is doing double-duty. Movie-going horror fans would know who Craven was, and likely also know that he had originated the franchise but not been involved in the past few films. The title and the advertising made it clear that a thing audiences had a positive connection with was being included in the next A Nightmare on Elm Street project. At the same time Wes Craven, who is in the film as Wes Craven, the guy who is making a *different* yet *the same* movie as the one YOU ARE WATCHING, is having precognitive nightmares that drive the plot. So…you know…the audience is worried about whatever “new nightmare” Wes Craven is going to have.

I mean, on paper anyway. This plot device has always been the big letdown of the movie for me. See, everyone (not everyone) in the movie is playing themselves, but a fictionalized version of themselves. You’re not actually supposed to keep that in mind; this is all supposed to look like you are watching a movie about real movie people making a real movie. I.e. Heather Langenkamp the actual, real actress is playing Heather Langenkamp the not-real actress based on the real actress Heather Langenkamp, who has been cast to play the character Nancy that she originated in the first Nightmare movie, in a NEW Nightmare movie. The movie Heather Langenkamp, the one who plays Nancy; not the one who is playing…ok, look; I think you get it. I’m cutting out the layers of abstraction unless it’s needed. The fictional Langenkamp has nightmares associated with Freddy Krueger, but she lives in L.A. and wakes up during an earthquake. Her fictional husband is killed by Freddy Krueger while driving and her fictional son starts having nightmares about Freddy Krueger and doesn’t want to sleep. Just like in the first movie! Langenkamp talks to Wes Craven and discovers he has precognitive nightmares. Craven had figured out that creating fictional movies about a fictional version of the nightmare entity that gave him his nightmares which everyone now perceives as Freddy Krueger kept that nightmare entity trapped. But the production of the “final” Nightmare movie Freddy’s Dead freed the nightmare entity to attack those who kept it imprisoned. That is, all the people on Elm Street that made the movies.

The fictional Nightmare movies start combining with the real world depicted in *this* fictional movie and the fictional Heather Langenkamp enters the nightmare entity’s/Freddy’s world which is depicted as an extremely disturbing version of the boiler room used as Freddy Krueger’s lair in previous films. Heather defeats the entity by pushing it into the furnace and emerges back into the fictional real world, where she finds a completed script and a note from Wes Craven thanking her for “defeating Freddy” one more time.

Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is loaded with references and call-backs to all preceding A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Actors from the franchise appear as themselves. A notable exception was Johnny Depp, who was bigger-than-big by 1994. Wes Craven felt there was no way Depp would agree to appear in a low-budget horror film as a reference to himself and so never asked him. (Depp later said he would have been happy to make the appearance.) But the entire movie is itself a comment on the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Craven had been opposed to creating a franchise off the Freddy Krueger idea and had originally pitched this script to kill the character. Not that it would have; I don’t know why writers keep thinking that writing a character’s death actually means something…but I guess the 80’s was the era where character-death in entertainment stopped being taken seriously. By the 1990’s Wes Craven was ready to revisit the script not so much as a way to kill the franchise but as a correction and as a commentary. By increasingly focusing on humor and making Freddy a celebrity, the franchise, Craven believed, had diminished the real horror of people being killed by their nightmares. By writing New Nightmare to be about the people making the movie he also wanted to reflect how horror movies affected people by their very existence. This element, to me, requires getting past the kludge of Craven making movies to keep a nightmare entity imprisoned. And honestly, it is also something that, despite *other* problems, Scream would do better. That movie explicitly points this out, or at least, points NEXT TO this idea; the antagonists of that film base their actions on what they have seen in slasher movies. In New Nightmare Wes Craven creates a situation in which the horror movie is reality is the horror movie. By associating the film with a then-current and existing reality, Craven is trying very hard to invite the viewer into the possibility that the nightmares (as a broad concept) CAN BE REAL.

Did he succeed? Not with audiences, as already discussed. And arguably Scream didn’t land that connection either. With an important distinction: Scream felt current, relevant, and real. I mean, at the time (thirty years ago, remember?) Wes Craven’s New Nightmare feels exactly like what it was (correction and commentary) but it doesn’t feel like a A Nightmare on Elm Street sequel. Viewers went in to the theater wanting more wise-cracking Freddy and inventive kills. Outside the opening sequence and fx viewers of the era found the film boring and unimaginative. Contemporary approval praised the sleek design and acting. Some even mentioned clever story elements. Personally New Nightmare is the only A Nightmare on Elm Street movie that still scares me. I found all horror movies and even films with minor horror elements, like Ghostbusters, disturbing when I was young. Other than random jump scares, which try to trigger involuntary fight-or-flight reactions (and thereby “scare” you) I can now watch any of the movies from my childhood while eating chunky, saucy, spaghetti and laughing. Including the first A Nightmare on Elm Street, although the ideas presented are discussion-worthy every time. This movie, however; still gets me a bit. Some scenes from various Halloween movies also still hit hard; that might be why I tend to give that series a bit of grace despite many flaws in the sequels. E.g. Ben Tramer getting rammed by the police car in the second movie; that was VISCERAL.

While not really framed the same way it would be in future slasher films Wes Craven’s New Nightmare did establish the idea throughout the film industry, or at least; prefigure the idea, that horror movies going forward had to be made with the understanding that the audience and the characters *in the movie* knew how horror movies worked. Not just popular characters, killers, or mechanics; but horror movies as a concept were now general knowledge. Some ideas would be handled with more intelligence than others. Ready access to phones and computers, for example, has to be addressed now. We spent a decade with movies being made that consistently prompted the audience to wonder what the protagonists had done with their phones. Scripts still struggle with the idea of “motive-less crime.” After all, the killer’s “motive” also being the protagonist’s “motivation” is a great shortcut. And just generally, almost any story creation class you take will tell you people have to have motives. Certainly many villains have been *created* to have no motive, but the goal (by some) every time is to create a franchise and the fastest way to create a sequel where none was planned is to give something a reason. You don’t have to do that; you really don’t. I would think it’s now easier to accept than ever before that some real, allegedly human people are, in fact, just *****.

That’s it for this week, see you soon!

Sunday, March 8th, 2026 09:23 pm
For various reasons not limited to the overhead activity of children in the mornings, last night was the first real time all week that I slept and have thus spent most of the day in a vague state of hibernation despite the warmth of the air. There was a mauve overcast around sunset that turned out to belong to a volcanic wall of gold and bougainvillea over an agate-blue cloud-band. Have some mostly musical links.

For the more than twenty years since [personal profile] lesser_celery made me a CD of Peter Gabriel's Melt (1980), I have assumed that the eerily voiced French refrain of "Games Without Frontiers" was either the singer's own falsetto or pitch-shifted vocals. It turns out to be Kate Bush. I would never have identified her on my own, but then I thought about "Army Dreamers" (1980).

I grew up on Arlo Guthrie, but my favorite version of "City of New Orleans" (1971) is almost certainly Steve Goodman himself in 1970, where he reminded me unexpectedly of a Chicago-accented Stan Rogers. It's driving me nuts that I would swear the first person I heard lead "The Twentieth Century Is Almost Over" (1977) was Pete Seeger and I can't figure out where.

WERS has been playing nothing but female artists for International Women's Day, which means everything from Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman" (1978), Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" (1983), and Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" (1993) to Tegan and Sara's "I'll Be Back Someday" (2019), Orla Gartland's "Little Chaos" (2024), and Arlo Parks' "2SIDED" (2026). I had a moral obligation to let my father know when Rickie Lee Jones came around.

Video quality regardless, [personal profile] sholio's "Waking Up in Vegas" (The Greatest American Hero) remains one of my all-time favorites of their vids.
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 07:31 pm
* Goaltender Interference by Ari Baran - This book was recc'd to me so much. I read the other Ari Baran books in order to get to it, and then I didn't like it much.

I am very glad I read the other books. Ari Baran's stuff is still the best hockey m/m I've read outside of Rachel Reid's books. But yeah, this didn't do it for me.

I've heard that a popular m/m hockey book had name choices that are very distracting if you are a Kraken fan. Well, found the book! Unlike a certain other situation also involving squiddy names, I am very sure this was unintentional. But wow, the name choices threw me out of the book a few times. That made it harder to get into, but I don't think a F&R on the names would have helped much.

spoilers )
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 09:48 pm
Ugh, daylight savings, why are we still doing this???

Anyway, I got up at my usual workday time instead of sleeping in so I could get the onions in the slow cooker, and I did both the "soak onions in cold water in the fridge for 15 minutes" and wore the stupid onion goggles, and still by the 4th onion my eyes were extremely unhappy with me. *hands* Thankfully I only had 6 onions total, so it all got done, and for dinner I made French onion pasta as planned, and now I have dinner for 3 more days as well. I do love this pasta dish - and I always use bucatini, which is one of my favorite pasta shapes, so it was pleasing all around. Every time I make it after not having made in a while, I'm like, why don't I make this more often!? and then I remember the onion-slicing and how annoying it is. Anyway, definitely recommended for a delicious and easy dinner (except for the onion-slicing). I also made bacon so I have lunch for the week also.

I meant to mention this yesterday and forgot, but The Mountain Goats collaborated with Mary Chapin Carpenter to cover World Party: Put the Message in the Box (don't worry if you only recognize one or two of those names - the song is good!).

*
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 09:39 pm
I think all of these were created around 2001 (possibly earlier) - the earliest references I can find for some them are around May 1st 2001, August 4th 2001, and November 22nd, 2001.

(based on some of the footage included, I think #10 and #13 were made sometime between May 7th 2001 and August 4th 2001 and #6 and #12 were made somewhere between June 18th 2001 and August 4th 2001)

A digitized version in mkv format with chapters marked for the vids is available here (password = fanvids).

imho the horizontal lines are less noticeable in the digitized version then they were on my TV when I was playing the VHS. There is some flashing (usually pink) between some vids. Also heads up that vid #4 is kinda NSFW because of the fanart included.

list of vids with vidders and possible dates )
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 06:07 pm


If you notice the phrase 'Buffalo Pothole Bandit' in there, I believe that's the name of a street artist who has done two 'residences' here doing guerilla repairs of streets and sidewalks. I think know where one other fill is, but I haven't made it out there. Some of his repairs are illegal road repairs, and I do need some shots of this literal street art.



Video of a pan and zoom onto that little picture.



Been a while since I've seen a fairy door. This is a cell phone grab I got out and about. May grab a better shot later.
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 08:42 pm
Knowing my parents' summer plans, I don't think I'll want to attend the full vacation with them. I don't know yet if I'll want to attend any of it with them. They're staying in a town a half-hour's drive from Beacon, which is a pleasant enough train ride, so I'm thinking maybe three days, tops, would be okay.

Last time they did this, I only stayed a handful of days. It's not unprecedented in our vacation plans. I'll probably want to get out of New York City in its sticky season, and knowing I'll have a limited amount of time there from the get-go is probably one of the better things I can do to be able to enjoy myself. I've seen what happens when it's all on my parents. It doesn't end well.
Sunday, March 8th, 2026 10:57 pm

Reading. I confess I have tripped and fallen into a special interest and am therefore currently primarily working my way through the archives of She's A Beast. BUT.

  • This was all kicked off by A Physical Education: *, Casey Johnston, *inhaled; more comprehensive notes on this topic currently part way through being typed up.
  • I am also about half way through (reading!) LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell, also Casey Johnston, and am having fun starting to play with moving my body in ways.
  • Continuing the theme of Moving Bodies In Ways and What Even Are Muscles, I have also started Science of Pilates (Tracy Ward).
  • I also continue to work my way through What Is Queer Food?, John Birdsall, and am nearly done. Probably more thoughts on this at some point in the upcoming week.

Writing. Words continue to, very slowly, go up.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Very close to being caught up to the point I've theoretically listened to with A (some of which I wound up being asleep during)...

Playing. Inkulinati Exploders run on Master difficulty continues. We have now broken a quill (DEMONS :|) but we do continue to progress...

Another round (well, most of one) of The Little Orchard, this time with The Child deciding that we SHOULD turn the Bothersome Crows back over and put them back...

Cooking. New recipe! Meera Sodha's leek & chard martabak. Unlikely to make again but not sorry to have made.

Exploring. Adventures this week have included:

  • Wood Green Mall, which contains PRIDE STAIRS, and the Community Diagnostic Centre, which contains GIANT WATERFOWL MURAL
  • the walk between Wood Green underground station and Wood Green Mall, feat. ACORN BOLLARDS
  • went for a bit of a Cross Walk one evening earlier this week (brain said AAAAAAH) and discovered along the way a fantastic white-with-pink-stripes camellia
  • generally Going Out To Run Errands is currently accompanied by Many Flowers and that is nice, actually

Observing. flowersss.

Sunday, March 8th, 2026 05:23 pm
Used my game/drama/etc boardgame. Last challenge here.

That took a while... I completed 6/6 and had a good time with everything. It's been a while so I'm nervous, as if I don't do other media boards all the time;;

























~Game/Drama CD/Etc To Do List~

[Isekai/Fantasy] Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku
[Music/Sci-Fi] Paradox Live
[Adventure/Fantasy] Wuthering Waves
[Phantom Thief/Adventure] Persona 5: The Phantom X

x3 games, x1 voice/music drama

Monday, March 9th, 2026 11:16 am
 
I'm Batman and so's my Bat-husband!

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