reviews – GenderTerror

Nyx Fears: Horror, Cats, and Skeletons!

Started in 2013, May (also known as Nyx Fears), has covered many topics but mostly focused on horror movies. May has made several lists that could be classified as doing us all a favor and watching some of the most baffling, absurd, and grotesque the horror genre has to offer. With elaborate set-ups, a few drinks, and a few inside jokes, May has set-up her own section of horror YouTube that is a wonderful balance of review, opinion, and honesty.

GenderTerror was able to interview May about her YouTube channel, her very public transition, her cat, and a little bit about her creative process.

GenderTerror: What made you decide to start making YouTube videos, especially horror movie reviews?

May: I’ve always been interested in horror stuff so it was obviously what I was gonna do if I ever did YouTube. I think I got the motivation because it was snowing one day in Texas and I just decided to go for it. There’s this sorta wall people run into where it seems too hard and weird to coordinate so they give up without ever actually trying. So I basically felt bored enough to give it a try. I had a microphone from when I was in a failed high school band so I just plugged it into my computer and started recording without editing and putting it online. Thank God I learned to edit but ya gotta start somewhere. And being online very quickly changed my life and I figured out how to actually make quality videos. Haha.

GT: What does horror mean to you?

‘What Keeps You Alive’ – an era of hope for queer horror

In horror, queer women have always been subject to their own version of the virgin/whore dichotomy: predator or sex object. Colin Minihan’s thriller ‘What Keeps You Alive’ offers not only a burst of fresh air, but hope for a new generation of queer audiences.

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Sonic Monsters: A Guided Tour Through SOPHIE’s ‘Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides’

Those of us who inhabit bodies that do not align with societal expectations are at risk of falling prey to those who seek to enforce them. There is a long and storied history of queer fans finding strength and power in identifying with the Monster. Tied in with the above is the societal fear of the artificial body: the idea that humans can be constructed in part or wholly. From Altered Carbon to The Fly, popular culture is rife with anxieties about what technology can do to humanity, to our very definitions of what humanity is. It’s easy to see why: so much of the media we consume has been tweaked and enhanced, from CGI superheroes to tightly autotuned pop songs. And it’s in this intersection of artificiality, horror, queerness and pop culture that we find SOPHIE and her debut album, Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. (The title is important, but I’ll get to that later.)

(I recommend listening along while reading. I also recommend using headphones for full immersion.)

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The Horror of Assimilation: Queerness in Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives

In an era where acceptance and assimilation have an increasingly blurred boundary, The Stepford Wives becomes the tragedy of a generation of activists slain by those who call themselves allies.

Since its publication in 1972, the ubiquity of Ira Levin’s dark satire novel The Stepford Wives has been almost unquestionable. With millions of copies sold, two movie adaptations (one passable, one frankly terrible), and a permanent place in the vernacular with the term ‘Stepford wife’, Levin has inspired a generation of social horror and brought a very real sense of the terror of everyday prejudice into the limelight. With this political niche of horror growing in popularity after the success of 2017’s social horror masterpiece Get Out, we are reminded again and again that the patterns we see in fiction are replicated in society at large. The victims of horror are the victims in reality too. Social horror presents us with a tension marked by very clear social categorisations that are easier for many to ignore in reality: black versus white, men versus women, oppressor versus oppressed. Battle lines in horror are drawn clearly for those who choose to see them, and protagonists are left to deal with the messy in-betweens, the people they love, and the betrayals of trust involved. For those unfamiliar with Levin’s sinister suburb, The Stepford Wives tells the story of Joanna Eberhart, a feminist/photographer/mother/housewife who has moved with her family from a bustling city to the idyllic Stepford, a suburb with unassuming middle-class professionals and their submissive, carbon-copy wives. From the very beginning, it is clear that something is amiss in Stepford, and the novel tells the story of Joanna uncovering a conspiracy against Stepford’s women, coordinated by the men of the town. The novel has been lauded for its prescience, with Levin presenting a world in which perfection is the biggest aberration, where against the backdrop of the rise of second-wave feminism, these Stepford wives are the biggest abnormality, not the feminist protagonist who questions them.

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Two Dead Queers Presents: GUILLOZINE the Interview

Shock. Gore. Sacrilege. And more! GUILLOZINE contains art and stories that dare to push the boundaries. Available both for free online and for physical purchase on Amazon, GUILLOZINE is really a no boundaries zine.

GenderTerror had the good fortune of being able to interview both parts of Two Dead Queers, K.M. Claude and R.E. Hellinger, about not only the zine and the future, but also about their creative process.

GenderTerror: Let’s start off with the obvious, what is Two Dead Queers?

K. M. Claude: You’ve got Two Dead Queers the brand or institution or whatever you want to call this overarching beast and then the zine series Two Dead Queers Present which’re two separate but interrelated, symbiotic entities. Two Dead Queers as a whole is about creating art and stories without shame, without silence, and without censorship, and strives to deliver works by queer horror creatives for anyone and everyone who’s interested — or at least who dares.

R.E. Hellinger: With Two Dead Queers Present, we wanted to be able to offer something we made and enjoyed making for free. It’s a sort of love letter to those who already love Claude’s art and to those who love weird horror. We want people to find our zine and go “hey! This is neat!” and not only get excited for our next zine release or other projects we may be separately working on, but also encourage them to put their own wonderful weirdness out into the world.

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Dead For Filth Presents: The Glam & Gore Picture Show!

The Glam & Gore Picture Show, presented by Dead for Filth Michael Varrati, focuses on bringing a queer twist to classic horror movies. Presented for free every Saturday by queer streaming site REVRY, The Glam & Gore Picture Show digs deeper into films such as Nosferatu and The Last Man On Earth.

Through a mix of wit and inspiration from horror greats like Elvira, Varrati brings a wonderfully queer twist that is sure to capture and delight all viewers. The Glam & Gore Picture Show hopes to bring horror classics to a younger generation as well as those newly into queer horror. Queer horror has been around for many years, including being pervasive in many of the classics.

Varrati is no newcomer to the screen or horror either. Not only has Varrati been the host for the queer horror podcast Dead For Filth, but he has also worked as a screenwriter, columnist, and actor. His name can be found in the credits for such movies as Tales of Poe, Flesh for the Inferno, and The Sins of Dracula. To top his amazing resume off, Varrati is also the host of the yearly San Diego Comic Con panel “Queer Fear”. If there is a person suited for this job, Varrati is the guy.

At the time of this writing, two episodes are currently out to watch for free on REVRY, with three more on the way. Dead For Filth can also be found on REVRY, as well as iTunes.

The final episode of The Glam & Gore Picture Show will drop on Halloween, so be sure to catch-up while there is still time!

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Happy One Year Anniversary!

Art by Tsi-bi, who has also done The “Thing”!

In the beginning of August in 2016, I began to rebrand my personal blog into a queer horror community. As someone who has always loved horror, I felt there was a significant lacking in queer horror coverage as well as in showcasing queer horror creators and their particular works, some new, some old. I wanted to create a place for people to be able to share their love of horror, discuss their love of horror, as well as support the uniquely queer type of horror created by artists and writers.

Thus, on August 28 2016, I re-launched the site with Monsters Of Our Own, a piece on trans identity and monsters that continues to be extremely popular to this day. GenderTerror became it’s own special place in the queer horror world that is continuing to grow and expand.

In one year we’ve had:

27 unique contributors
15 exclusive art pieces
20 exclusive short stories/interviews/reviews
37,530 views
25,081 visitors
all from all over the world from every continent (except Antarctica).

The following are the top 3 posts in each category. This does not mean there is not other fantastic work on the site! Please use these as a stepping stone if you are new here and wish to explore the wonderful area of queer horror!

Antiviral: A Transgender Take on Body Horror

TW for discussions of: abuse, sexual violence, forced institutionalization.

As I entered into adulthood, I didn’t have a way to name my dysphoria. I had three queer friends, one of whom came out as trans my senior year of high school. I remember feeling a little envious, wondering why I couldn’t be trans too. I spent hours trying to find information about medical transition, reading everything I could. Unfortunately a lot of what I found were trans-exclusionary blogs that assured me I’d want to detransition, and that I would be much happier as a cis butch lesbian. That, and bodybuilding forums. Even the supportive, useful resources I found scared me off. They often greatly exaggerated testosterone’s effects. Puberty sucked the first time. I didn’t want to go through it again. But I did know my body didn’t feel right, so I kept looking.

That was about the time that I discovered the body horror genre. It was inevitable that I’d run into it. I loved cult horror, I loved anything psychological and atmospheric, and I loved special effects. The genre scratched my itch for weird, unforgettable movies. In retrospect, my fascination made a lot of sense. The creeping horror of watching your body mutate, transforming into something improper, inhuman, and wrong is something I think a lot of people with dysphoria can relate to. I knew that horror from my own adolescence. And I was afraid I’d know it again if I transitioned. What if hormones and surgeries only made me hate my body more?

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Desperately Seeking Queer Representation

by Santino Hassell

As someone who spends a lot of time on book social media, I commonly see people saying it’s difficult for them to find queer representation in paranormal and horror novels. There are several reasons for that but I tend to think the common obstacles are as follows:

1) Lack of rep in general in mainstream publishing. Even though non-queer people seem to think we’re all taking over because we may now have a queer hero for every twenty hetero heroes… that’s still only one queer hero among a sea of non-queer characters.

2) The queer representation primarily consisting of cis gay male heroes with little room for the rest of the rainbow.

3) I’ve seen many readers and authors alike state “it’s not out there”, and then being shocked when they receive many recommendations for paranormal and horror books featuring queer characters. This could be people assuming there’s *none* out there due to a lack of mainstream marketing for these novels. At the end of the day, readers are consumers and consumers tend to drift to things that are heavily marketed unless they follow social media accounts where they will receive word-of-mouth recommendations.

4) Writers receiving the advice that “those books won’t sell”, and writing less books with a queer cast. It’s a tricky situation because writers do want to make a living, but I can’t help but think the publishing industry sometimes gas lights writers into thinking queer characters aren’t interesting or relatable to non-queer people when, in reality, often those books aren’t marketed the same as books with hetero casts… so it’s not a comparable situation.

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All in Fear: Queer Horror for the Holidays

All in Fear is a queer horror anthology that features a wide variety of different topics. From vampires, to experiments, to frat houses, All in Fear has something for everyone. Each one of these six stories has a unique and alluring feel to it, drawing the reader into the world of the author. All in Fear: A Collection of Six Horror Tales is available now at OpenInkPress.com.

GenderTerror was lucky to get a small interview with each of the authors, asking them what their inspirations were as well as why queer horror was something that was important to them. Each author’s personal feelings are felt in each story in this small anthology, making it that much more personal and interesting for readers.

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