Stag's Info

About me!

Yeehaw.
for all the basic info, please look to the Quick View. Otherwise I could list some interests probably but on the basis of it all is a nice sweet spot that combines humid fir-tree nature and old web/os haha.

I LOVE most horror films and could tell at lenghts about my favs.
Those are some strong pillars -- alongside magical-realism-ish books and -- that make up a lot of my personality.

The design principle of this space is to reflect some of that. It's my space! I can decorate it!
That, and I hope to at some point use it as a full alternative to those bigger social media platforms. I love the interactions there, but the posting itself very often gets me in a loop looking for validation. And such a thing isn't healthy. This will never be a full alternative to staying in touch with others and share some of my stuff, but every step I can take back is one more.

Essentials

General Likes

Horror films

Magical Realism

Pixel graphis

Retro games

The Woods^(tm)

General Dislikes

Callout posts

Dark romance

Corporate design

Maximalist Cutesy-core

Influencers

CHIAROSCURO!!!

Films/Series

Carrie (1976 and 2002)

Both of these are really fun. 1976 is about as close and accurate to the book in terms of visuals and hair/makeup/fashion as you could get De Palma also makes some choices that really grip me (the split screen!! the colors!!). Sissy Spacek, my beloved.

I used to be very much against 2002 for the mere reason that it has an alternate ending that I don't vibe with. That still stands, but besides that and some early 2000s effects, this is an adaptation of the book. Angela Bettis is great as Carrie and brings a unique take on the character. The writing is also pretty solid, from as far as I can remember.

2013 is the remake that introduced me to the book and movies, but ultimately is a copy-paste of a lot of 1976, so...

Let the Right One In (2008)

Also called Låt den rätte komma in, this is one of THE vampire movies of all time. The book is weird and offputting but has a lot of character to it, the movie is a fantastic piece of adaptation that knows what to include and what to omit. Eli and Oskar, my beloveds.

The slow build and the lore is some of my favorite part of this, but I also very much enjoy how it builds up characters and tells us more about them through what they say and don't say.

Sidenote: this is Hoyte van Hoytema's first big film as a cinematographer! He does a great job at capturing the atmosphere with really nice compositions in the frame.

Akira (1988)

Really the foundation for cel-animation films. It pulls so many punches on a technical level that it is hard to believe that it really did that. I discussed the opening scene in a high-school paper once along with a making-of documentary clip and it was baffling that everything is indeed done by hand.

Manga diversions aside, the story has a very specific vibe of cyberpunk dystopia that sticks with you. I think it is the mix of futuristic visuals and more traditional music in the soundtrack, somehing that Ghost in the Shell (1995) also does.

This one, along with GitS, is a great example of why some things only work in a specific format. You can't replicate this in live-action.

Lake Mungo (2008)

Lake Mungo hits you over the head with its use of genre-storytelling. The mockumentary is very realistically made with a lot of eerie shots that have you constantly wonder what the fuck is going on. Is it a true-crime thing that swerves into unhealthy coping mechanisms? Is it a search for something paranormal? Is it the last remnants of a memory being closed-off into a box? Is it someone being left behind?

All of that! And so much more. Not heavy on the jumpscares but straight up unsettling.

Yellowjackets (2021--)**

Okay so I totally love Yellowjackets a normal amount currently, and my incoherent thoughts are probably best shown over in the...

Yellowjackets Shrine!

Texts

Carrie - Stephen King

Big event for me! I picked it up at the library first when a teaser was on tv for the 2013 remake. It was in Dutch, and it read a bit dated, but it had such a grip no me woagh.

It's biggest strength to me is not even the story itself maybe, though there are a lot of memorable and unique characters in here. I was drawn to the intertextuality and how that build up the tension of the story. You know that something is going to happen at prom, and slowly the details become clearer until it reaches The Night Of and then masterfully jumps away to multiple perspective or accounts of witnesses in town as the bucket is dropped, and the return to Carrie's POV doesn't happen until much later.

There's three pocket editions on my bookshelf (Dutch, reprint with new introduction, original movie edition from 1976), and I'm picking up a 50th anniversary edition soon as well.

Watership Down - Richard Adams

I only read this relatively recently, but as someone with a background in classics, I was pleasantly surprised by how detailed the mythology of the rabbits is. Adams weaves such a great interior life for these animals and yet refuses to make it a pure fantastical setting. As he says in the beginning, if I remember correctly, it was never told as a kids story. The stakes are high, all that happens does so by some sort of logic. And sparsed inbetween are great lore breaks where we stay a moment with El-ahrairah.

The conflict at the middle is a bit silly if you take it out of the frame of the warren being a stand-in for the creation of Rome, and Bigwig basically says "Hazel, we don't have any fuckin women!"

Seven Ravens - Brothers Grimm

Iconic!! Underappreciated!!

I have a tattoo based on this on my arm. It's a really short read, maybe not even 10 pages, but it is so strange and entrancing that it has haunted me ever since.
Whatever happened to the chicken bone??

Greek Mythology**

This is very broad, but I can narrow down a particular interest to the Orphic Hymns and association mythos.

Other than that, it's a pretty serious interest. I have a masters degree in it haha. The Antiquity shrine is meant part as a collection of resources that hopefully help others, and part a way for myself to keep up with my own studies now that I've graduated.