Protect Yourself!!!!!

Humans Are Weird

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

What if several species (including humans) land on a world and the humans are all “SCORE! Earth like world! Let’s get exploring before we get out competed!” And the planet starts offing the other aliens right and left, electric storms, hypothermia, tornadoes and the humans are just … there… counting seconds between flashes, having snowball fights, and just surviving. 

Deviser

DEVISER is an upcoming Sci-Fi Horror Audio Drama, created by Harlan Guthrie. In this series Son wakes up aboard a spaceship bound for earth in an effort to recolonize. What he discovers however will change everything he knows about his world and himself. All episodes of DEVISER release May 1st. Find it wherever Podcasts are found. www.deviser.ca Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey all, Today I’ve released a 7 Part Limited Sci-Fi Horror Audio Drama series called DEVISER. It’s a dark, gritty, horror story told through your headphones and one that I’m very proud of. All 7 episode are available now to listen to and I did everything on the show from the writing, acting and editing, to the music and promotions. All save the art, which was done by my amazingly talented friend Rob Donaldson. If you like Sci Fi Horror stories, find a quiet moment - a good set of headphones - and please check out my show. I’d really, really appreciate it. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a review. Thanks so much, Harlan

I love them so much oh my god

Based on this post I made

Oliver frowned at the twins who sat on the other side of the table. “What’re you talking about?”

One of them, Fred maybe, turned towards him with a grin. “Just that Percy is the weakest physical in our family and that’s saying something with Ron being our brother.”

Ron, who had been talking with Harry and Hermione quietly, turned around and glared at his brothers. Harry and Hermione had both given Fred, (or was it George? Oliver wasn’t sure) the stink eye and shifted closer to their friend in comfort.

“I know what you’re talking about,” Oliver said with a hint of annoyance in his voice now, “I wanna know why you think that.”

Others at the table had started to turn their heads towards them in interest, Oliver was annoyed and a bit baffled to see that everyone was looking at him incredulously. As if he was the one who had said something that made no sense.

“Because it’s Percy?” George said in confusion.

Others around them nodded along as if that was all the information they needed to decide that. Before he could say anything a first year started snickering, Oliver turned his head and saw Percy walking into the Great Hall with a cup of coffee in his hands. Probably had five spoonfuls of sugar with his sweet tooth, at least.

Turning towards the twins he gave them a manic smile, “If I run and leap at Percy, he will most certainly catch me in his arms.” Oliver said with a confidence that he didn’t even have going into a quidditch match.

Lee choked on his pumpkin juice while the twins stared at him with open mouths.

“Oliver,” Hermione started off nervously as she looked at him with wide eyes.

But Oliver didn’t let her finish, he jumped off the bench and turned towards Percy who was busy talking to a first year, probably about homework from the looks of it.

Oliver sent the other a grin, everyone was watching now and he could see the professors glancing at him warily.

“Coming in!” Oliver yelled as he started running towards Percy at full speed.

Percy’s head shot, curls bouncing slightly, his eyes widen in alarm. “No! I’m holding coffee!” He yelled in alarm.

Too late now, Oliver thought as he jumped into his roommates arms with a wide grin. Percy had dropped the coffee just in time, he stood there with Oliver in his arms and a mournful look on his face as he looked at the shattered mug and spilled coffee.

“Couldn’t have waited until I finished my cup could you?” Percy muttered as he shifted the other boy in a more comfortable position.

“I don’t even know how you can call that coffee, it’s basically just a cup of sugar.” Oliver said rolling his eyes as he grinned at everyone else.

Percy blinked at him for a moment before looking around and turning pale, Oliver couldn’t help but stare at the way his freckles stood out on his now very pale skin.

But he had to be a good friend instead of a lovesick idiot first, Oliver tore his eyes away and looked at everyone else. Everyone, and Oliver meant everyone, was staring at them. His eyes flickered towards the Ravenclaw and Slytherin table, he saw Marcus and Penny looking at them with amusement.

Assholes, Oliver thought fondly. Of course those two would happily sit back and watch instead of helping.

“Oh bloody fucking hell,” Percy muttered dazedly.

An odd noise came from the Gryffindor table at that, Percy must have said that louder than he thought. He also must have realized this by the red blush that was climbing up his neck.

“What the fuck,” A student whispered to themselves.

That was the breaking point for Penny apparently. The girl snorted before slapping her hands over her mouth with a mortified look.

“Oh wow, real smooth Clearwater,” Marcus muttered before freezing.

“Real smooth,” Penny mocked.

Oliver decided to ignore them and instead turned towards the twins and other Gryffindors, “Still think he’s the weakest?”

Percy frowned in confusion before glaring down at Oliver. “You made me drop my coffee because you wanted to defend my honor!?”

Oliver shrugged, “Well, yeah- wait, wait Percy doNT!”

Percy dropped Oliver.

The thing I love most about the LOTR films is their ability to do storytelling without words. 

Many of my favorite moments in the trilogy are ones that have no dialogue. Wordless storytelling is the one thing the films do that the original books can’t, because books Have to use words.

I argue the vast majority of the films’ depth comes through things that AREN’T the dialogue. So much of the storytelling in LOTR is done through the music, cinematography, visual effects, character/costume designs, prop designs, environment designs, performances, and so on and so on. So some of the most powerful moments in the films are the ones that have minimal/no dialogue  – like the moments after Gandalf’s death, or  the lighting of the beacons, or Boromir dying as he defends Merry and Pippin, or the moment when Frodo wakes up after being rescued from Mount Doom and sees Sam in the doorway, the hobbits in the Green Dragon after their quest ends…..I could go on and on and on. And people joke about how Lord of the Rings is “50 percent landscape shots to pretty music”, because it IS, but I argue those landscape shots are so important and emotional and symbolic and evocative! They convey so much about the world, and the characters, and the tone!  I’ve written essays on it here and here and here –

 One of my favorite moments in the trilogy is the destruction of the Ring. I love how it captures this feeling of like…. relief beyond words. 

There’s just so much beautiful wordless storytelling! The way Sauron’s tower collapses to the musical leitmotif we first heard playing gently at the crossroads when Sam saw the fallen king statue and said “look– the King has got a crown again.” The way that, after Mount Doom explodes, the soundtrack transitions into the musical leitmotif that we last heard at Gandalf’s death.  The elvish in the soundtrack. ;_: And I love Gandalf’s reactions in this scene….the entire trilogy he’s been racked with guilt over “(sending) Frodo to his death.” The villains recognize and torment him over this: Saruman saying “Gandalf does not hesitate to sacrifice those closest to him, those he professes to love” while Gandalf has no response. And then we see that Frodo did it, he actually made it, and Gandalf breaks into tears…;_; and without a single line of dialogue you know exactly what this means for him. I’ve already written an overlong essay on how I love the general “watercolor painting” aesthetic of the films, and I want to add that I love the way the visual effects for Mordor’s collapse are designed– the way broken tower of Barad-Dur BURSTS outward, like a spirit is leaving it– and how initially it seems triumphant until you realize that Mordor is falling apart with Frodo and Sam still trapped there. And then all of the Fellowship breaks down. ;_; And so many scenes in the films are like this….Frodo crawling up the slopes of Mount Doom to a warped broken version of the Shire leitmotif. Eowyn standing on the edge of the Golden Hall as the flag of Rohan symbolically flutters away, and the Rohan theme plays on the Hardanger Fiddle. Frodo waking up in Rivendell and walking out of his room for the first time as the Rivendell leitmotif plays, autumn leaves falling all around him, then reuniting Bilbo to a mature sad verison of the Shire leitmotif. When Gandalf dies, the soundtrack in that scene is the only one in the films where the vocals aren’t in elvish/dwarvish– it’s just cries of pain, wordless grief. 

And I know that’s Basic Film Theory– the vast majority of things viewers will take away are the things that aren’t in the script– but Lord of the Rings does it so well! 

Every element has so much love and care put into it. Every artist gets to add something to the story.

And I don’t actually think it’s because “every artist on Lord of the Rings was uniquely talented in a way no artists have been before or since.”  I actually have….really mixed feelings on LOTR as a franchise, both because there’s so much in them that I think was objectively Bad and wrong (like the horrible lack of diversity/racist use of coding.)But the reason there are so many strong moments in Lord of the Rings despite its inarguable flaws was because the films had an extended pre-production time that a lot of movies don’t get. Howard Shore was given years to work on the soundtrack rather than months. The visual artists were treated like storytellers in their own right.  The difference between the Hobbit and LOTR trilogies wasn’t talent or money– it was time.  

And the problem with a film industry where everyone is trying to churn out as much Content as possible is that time is something you can’t really buy.

The difference between Hikaru and Kaoru,

Is that, if you put your hand over their mouth to quiet them, Kaoru would lick your hand out of defiance, and Hikaru would bite you.

"Most women marry men like their fathers. This is the real reason mothers cry at weddings."

- the description for a fucking ohshc fanfic???????

“…food and love - which is of course the same thing.”

Daniel J. Miller, “The Touch of Love - It Is Everything” / this post / “Joe Pera Shows You How To Pack A Lunch Box” (2020) / a text from my sister / A. A. Milne / @chennai-expression / Chef (2014) dir. Jon Favreau / Sam Sifton, “What to Cook Right Now” (New York Times) / Alan Alda

when people talk about writing ‘the next Lord of the Rings’ they think it’s all about the wars and the languages and the histories, and Aragorn brooding in the corner of an inn and the Balrog roaring in Moria and the ruins of Isengard, and that’s how we got Game of Thrones and several dozen cheap fantasy knock-offs every year, not to mention whatever nonsense the Amazon show is going to produce

but Tolkien’s wars and languages and histories stemmed from his love of creating - of words and history and mythos - and that love infuses into everything he writes, and if you miss that then there’s no way in hell you can replicate it

and the people who want to write the next Lord of the Rings because they want to write the next epic don’t get that the story is about the hobbits’ soft and simple lives and Bilbo’s poetry and Sam’s love language being food and Eowyn discovering hope after depression and Gandalf making fireworks for hobbits even if he is a literal angelic being, and Aragorn weeping over Boromir’s body and Theoden’s kindness to Merry, and Beregond betraying his most prized orders to save Faramir, and the unlikely friendship between Gandalf and Pippin, and the even unlikelier friendship between Legolas and Gimli, and Sam and Frodo singing to each other in Mordor, and Boromir sacrificing himself for the hobbits, and Sam’s simple love for Rosie, and the restoration of the Shire, and the friendship of the Fellowship surviving down through the ages, and peace after war and hope in darkness, and the love between a gardener and a gentleman pacifist being literally the only thing that saves Middle Earth

and that is why people who try to recreate Lord of the Rings by starting with war always get it wrong. you have to start with the love, or it’s nothing: just another empty history

what does horror mean to you guys? Like, is it an artistic expression, maybe a type of comfort, etc etc. Love your podcasts!!! 🫶

I guess I see it much like any genre - as a kind of licence, based on audience expectation and audience trust, to take them to certain places.

For me the only difference with horror, and what really excites me about it, is that it's a particularly flexible licence, with fewer hard requirements, and the driver is given more scope to go to stranger, bleaker, and darker destinations in pursuit of something interesting.

So we can debate whether elevated horror or torture porn or soft Halloween spookadoodles or whatever counts as 'real' horror (or indeed whether The Silt Verses should be called contemporary dark fantasy instead), or like Stephen King in On Writing, we can try and impose some kind of hierarchy of the audience's emotional responses, but horror resists these attempts to clearly classify it: humanity's collective understanding of the genre remains broad and mutable enough to include existential terror, cosy ghost stories, transgressive body horror, bleak and violent nihilism, and goofy Lovecraftian kitsch.

I love some of this stuff as great art and hate some of it as trash (and love some of it as trash as well), but the joy of horror lies in the fact that it's such a big, anarchic, permissive playground.

Horror is the sign on the door that simply promises, 'Bad things are going to happen.'