Film Noir Movies

Black Horror Writers

Feeling a sudden desire, for whatever reason, to add some diversity to your bookshelf? Want to put a few bucks in the pockets of authors of color? Here’s a sampler platter to get you started. 

Tananarive Due A film historian and a hot name in horror fiction, Due is an outspoken academic and prolific author. Start with The Good House, a 2003 Gothic, if you’re a fan of haunted house stories.

Wrath James White A former athlete, White is a hugely prolific author of hardcore horror. You can start with The Resurrectionist, but honestly, with more than 35 books to choose from, you’ve got plenty of options.

Victor LaValle LaValle has only written four novels so far, but they’re well-regarded and rich narratives. The Changeling is the usual recommendation for a starting place.

Brandon Massey Southern Gothic themes woven through horror, suspense and urban themes - that’s Massey’s brand in a nutshell. He’s plenty prolific, so you’ve got a bunch to choose from. Maybe start with this year’s new release, The Quiet Ones.

Chesya Burke A prolific short story writer, Burke writes speculative fiction and comic books. If you’d like a collection of stories all in one place, try out Let’s Play White. If you’d rather do a novel, read The Strange Crimes of Little Africa.

Jemiah Jefferson Do you like pulpy erotic vampire horror? You don’t have to answer that. Just buy Jefferson’s books if you do. There’s a series, so you’ll want to start at the beginning with Voice of the Blood.

Michael Boatman An actor and screenwriter, Boatman is also a novelist. He writes splatterpunk that Joe Lansdale has praised, which is as fine an accolade as they come. The Revenant Road was his first novel. He also shows up in a ton of anthologies, so keep an eye out.

Helen Oyeyemi Oyeyemi is a rising star, Shirley Jackson Award finalist, scholar, a world traveler, among other things. Her most recent book, Gingerbread, came out in 2019. I think it would not be out of line to compare her to Angela Carter.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin A debut novelist, Ruffin’s work launched with a bang in February. His book We Cast a Shadow was long-listed for a stack of prizes, and as a scathing cultural sci-fi horror, it fits right in with the work of folks like Jordan Peele.

Nnedi Okorafor A Nigerian-American writer, Okorafor writes for both children and adults, and her stories have earned a whole stack of awards. She is, for the record, also disabled. She’s got a whole stack of YA and adult books to choose from, as well as comic books. Binti and its sequel are as good a place as any to start, though.

Jewelle Gomez Philanthropist, playwright, poet, author – Gomez dabbles in a lot of things, and she’s an outspoken voice for LGBTQ women of color. Check out The Gilda Stories if you’ve always wanted to read about a black lesbian vampire (and, let’s be honest, who hasn’t?)

PS: When you order, don’t waste your money on Amazon. Instead, use a service like https://bookshop.org/ that distributes your hard-earned cash to independent booksellers. Keep money in your community. 

PPS: I love Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler and also left them off the list because they’re well-known already and because I think it’s really important right now to support living artists, but you should check out their work too. 

Salamander’s Eyes compliment can only work once in a lifetime. It just did

cause of death: newtina

*spoilers for crimes of grindelwald

newt looking for tina when jacob and queenie arrived

narrow feet

jacob being a wingman

salamander’s eyes

“tall, dark-” “-beautiful”

tina’s jealousy

newt trying to tell tina the truth

newt and tina’s reunion

mr. scamander

newt’s expression when tina called him her fiance

newt + his appreciation for tina’s eyes

newt showing tina her photo

when newt finally told tina he wasn’t engaged

legit thought he was going to turn and snog her after the ‘I’ll think of something’

newt tracking tina

rescue attempt

they’re in love

and I’m dead

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

Aight y'all. Here’s a lesson I learned from my wife, and I wish I’d learned it years ago:

Before you buy anything, take 5 minutes to search (preferably with a non-Google search engine like DuckDuckGo) “best [whatever] for [specific purpose if necessary].”

Make sure you look at who the reviews are from; there are a lot of bad spam sites out there, but you can find good lists on reputable sites. However, you’ll get some of the best lists on Reddit.

Most of what you’ll find at the top of the lists on Amazon (and Walmart) are people who have paid for that spot. You’ll still have to use discernment to make sure you’re picking a good review site, but I’m not kidding when i say that the last time we had to buy a plunger, I ended up on a thread on a plumber’s forum where they were discussing which plunger they keep in their own bathroom. (The overwhelming winner was something called a Toilet Saber, and… it’s much easier to use than the usual style of plunger, actually.)

She searches “best potato peeler” and “best pastry blender” and “best standing desk” and it seems so obvious, right, but she does it for literally everything and the average quality of things I own has gone way, way up since I started taking 5 minutes to search “best yoga socks” and “best cuticle trimmers” and then going to buy whatever it is.

Her research skills go into overdrive when it comes to big purchases; she’s the one who researched our sublimation printer and found the desk I currently use. If there’s an extremely passionate subreddit out there about the thing she wants to buy, she’ll find it and then read half a dozen reviews.

I cannot stress enough how much she does this. About. Everything. And how much everything we own is better as a result.

It’s amazing, honestly.

Do Hangfire and V.F.D. share a secret criminal past?

An overlooked aspect of “All The Wrong Questions”’s complex plotting is the apparently extensive knowledge Hangfire managed to compile on the V.F.D. organization. It seems that his sinister Inhumane Society acts as an evil (well, slightly more evil) counterpart to the volunteers, copying a number of their most frequent methods: disguises, arson, secret messages, trained animals, etc.

“The jig’s up for Snicket,” Stew sneered. “The boss told me to make sure he suffered. Hangfire has a particular revulsion for members of V.F.D.” [Shouldn’t You Be In School?, Chapter Twelve]

“That’s exactly wrong,” I said. “You’ve concocted a beautiful plan, Hangfire. I’m not going to mangle it.” He turned his mask to me. “But V.F.D. stands for the true human tradition of justice and literature,” he said. “I thought you’d find a lawless world an ugly place.” [Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?, Chapter Nine]

But we don’t exactly know HOW and WHY Hangfire got all this information. Dashiell Qwerty is young, but he’s clearly been the librarian of Stain’d-by-the-Sea for quite some time. When did V.F.D. start investigating the secrets of this town? And how does that factor in with the history of Inhumane Society? It seems that Hangfire and V.F.D. are much closer than either cares to admit.

The following article is highly speculative but nevertheless tries to paint a coherent narrative around Armstrong Feint’s start of darkness. Find out how V.F.D. created its own worst enemy after the cut.

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Pasta is great. It’s like hey, let me take delicious things like butter,or meat, or tomatoes or basil and then let me just fuckin mix whatever the fuck i want in and combine it with some random ass noodles.  That’s basically pasta.  BUT, there’s a big difference between “basically pasta” and “holy shit food of the gods” pasta, and that is that the latter has some rules that must be followed.  10 PASTA COMMANDMENTS COMIN UP:

Always boil pasta in boiling SALTED water. Ever had a dish where you forgot to salt it before cooking it, and no matter how much seasoning you did post saute/sear, it still sort of tasted bland on the inside? Same goes for pasta. Your sauce could be fuckin on point, but if you don’t salt dat pasta water, ya fugged, bruh. 

Always have your sauce ready BEFORE the pasta. Pestos, emulsified butter sauces, bolognese sauces, they should be in their respective sauce pans, heated and ready to go (unless we’re takin pesto or carbonarashit, as those go bad with heat). The worst thing you could do is fuck up and overcook your delicious pasta bc you were too busy making or finishing up your sauce. 

Always TASTE your pasta. I don’t care if the package says it’s ready in 1 minute or an hour, taste your pasta from the boiling water at least 2 minutes in, and every 2 minutes after that. Al dente’s usually the way to go, but you’ll never know when to take it out if you’re not constantly tasting. 

DO NOT strain your pasta, wasting your pasta water and allowing your pasta to cool. Use tongs to take pasta straight up form the boiling water (don’t dry it, nerds) and throw it in your sauce. A little pasta water gets in? no probs, and I’ll tell you why. 

If your sauce is reducing too much, or it’s too tight, add pasta water. It’s salted and hot and ready to go, it won’t dilute the flavor at all, you’re golden duude. golden. 

Finish your pasta in the sauce, allow it to become homogenous, let the sauce stick to the pasta, BECOME ONE WITH THE PASTA BRUH. 

Add cheese last, because cheese get’s weird and fucked up in hot pans, so it’s best to throw that on right before you’re ready to eat that shit up. 

4 oz is a normal serving size for pasta. If you don’t have a scale, that’s basically like the first pic above. If you hold the pasta like such, and the width of the bunch is a little smaller than an american quarter, then ur good 2 go bruh. 

Dry pastas are not better/worse than fresh pasta. They’re legit just made with different flours using different procedures. One isn’t ‘fancier’ than the other u pretentious buttrockets. 

PASTA IS NOT SCARY, IT’S DELICIOUS. These rules look tough, but honestly it’s not that bad bruh. I believe in u. 

and now, onto the recipe I used for my pasta. It’s a restaurant favorite, we always make it on the line because it’s simple, delicious and super filling. 

~

Caciopepe Pasta serves: 1 (lol like id share this with ppl lolol) -

Ingredients-

salt water for boiling (just salt some water, don’t fuckin travel to the beach in hopes of created the most bomb pasta ever)

1 bunch of pasta

2 bay leaves

1 sprig thyme

cold butter (approximately 2/3 cups cut into small pads

parmesan cheese to taste

a shit ton of black pepper to taste

-

Procedure-

Throw some pasta into some boiling water and do that thing where you constantly taste test the pasta to see if it’s ready. In the meantime, make ur sauce u lazy bumbum.

Add a little boiling pasta water to a saute pan over low heat, and whisk/mix in the butter quickly till it’s creamy and emulsified. If it’s too thick, just whisk in a teeny bit of pasta water. Add 2 bay leaves and a sprig of thyme for aroma, remove when pasta’s ready. 

Once the pasta’s ready to rock and roll, use tongs to scoop it up and place it in the sauce. Flip and mix using tongs. Add cheese and crack a lot of pepper. Add salt if it needs seasoning, add more pasta water if the sauce tightens.

and bam, ya ready to roll. 

~ I promise u if you use these pasta techniques, people will think ur literally a GOD. ur welcs. 

I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.

can we as a society make puppetry cool again. like lets make it trendy. Mainstream. more people should get into doing it and more people should appreciate it. puppetry requires craftsmanship and charisma and physical acting and vocal performance!! you can’t get that from ai. it has a charm to it that neither 2D nor cg animation has. Have you ever watched a puppetry performance and realized you were genuinely convinced that the puppet was getting into bed or eating something or giving a hug that you wholly forgot there was some guy’s arm in there.

isn’t it lovely. to make a funny little guy to tell stories with. is that not so human of us. it’s such a lovely art form. I love you puppets I love you muppets I love you marionettes I love you handmade sock puppets I love you paper bags with googley eyes I love you armatures I love you I love you I love you!!!!!