Here’s a Halloween thought for you: what Halloween/movie monster do you most closely identify with? Is it the tragic cursed werewolf, doomed to a life of mad animal viciousness whenever the moon is full? Are you a more modern rage monster, a Freddie or Jason slashing their way through the world? Or a blameless Frankenstein’s monster, hideous and hated? There are a thousand choices. Pick one now and explain your reasoning.
I was thinking of this yesterday while I was doing some drudgery in the lab. I had fed the spiders the other day, lots of big juicy mealworms. I raise mealworms at home, and I have a terrarium in the basement where I cultivate thousands of the little bugs. You throw in a big box of cornmeal every few months, and periodically toss in table scraps — the ends of carrots, a mushy tomato, a shriveled orange, and they thrive in there. I comb my fingers through the meal, which is steadily being converted to frass, and scoop up handfuls of wriggling larval beetles. I drop them one at a time in the adult spiders’ cages.
Here’s the catch: the spiders are adept at quickly killing and eating them, but the way they do it leaves behind a tube of cuticle filled with the soupy mix of digested guts and venom. It’s an amazing medium for bacteria — you would not believe the stench that a rotting mealworm can produce. They reek of death and decay, and I have to go through all the containers and clean them out.
The younger spiders need more delicate food, so I raise fruitflies in an incubator in the lab. Flies are also easy, but the bottles full of medium can get quite nasty, when they got old they get moldy and a bit slimy. So yesterday I was scrubbing out a month’s worth of fly bottles, filling up a sink with scum and floating bits of mold and insect parts, and thinking…hey, this is quite pleasant. Low stress, no demands, light work, I was quite enjoying myself. I could be quite content as a lab assistant, doing the dirty work behind the scenes as long as I didn’t have any more long-term demands on myself.
It’s obvious then. I’d want to be a lesser horror movie character, not a monster, not a mad scientist, I just want to be an Igor, a Fritz, a Karl, maybe occasionally aspiring to a Renfield.
Me and Dwight Frye, we’d be the bestest buddies.
Your turn. What’s your Halloween avatar?
Mad scientists for me.. Becoz love science and not neurotypical & do get carried away so seems most apt.
Or black cat. Because just love them and thhad afew that have owned me so yeah, maybe.
Used to have a pumpkin cosume when i was boy that Mum made for me back when yes, we actually did trickor treating even here in Oz which some folsk here do turn their noses up at as “too American and an import” (which yeah, it originated in Europe as a Celtic / Catholic tradition fusion but anyhow..) which was fun so.. top choices I guess?
As a misunderstood loner who lurks at the edge of civilisation with my cat, and occasionally ventures forth to teach impressionable children about ancient languages and mediaeval daemon-lore, I think I’m pretty obviously a Witch.
A coven of my own and the occasional naked midnight orgy on the heath wouldn’t go amiss, though.
PS. So I guess if I can only choose one I’d be a half black cat, half pumpkin monster that was created by a mad scientist!
The Glitch from V/H/S “Tuesday the 17th”. There’s something unstoppably terrifying without match about it.
The classical Mad Scientist; well meaning, building a Better Future (TM) at any cost and playing god (somebody has to).
Also, I am too lazy to dress up for Halloween and this way I can just be my normal self. (Insert manic laughter)
Ann Leckie’s books have never been filmed, but I would go for the weird Alien Presger, entities with such powers and such a different world-view that in order to communicate with humans they had to create hybrid beings with both human and Presger DNA.
The recent book “Translation State” follows one of those hybrids.
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OT I have a doublet copy of the latest book. PZ, do you want it?
My friend and I used to dress as Death and Taxes. He wore a black robe and carried a scythe and I wore a black suit and carried my briefcase.
The observer of madness, driven insane and driven to never let the world forget, scribbling furisously in the asylum stories to warn the world of what lies beyond the veil. So, pretty much Edgar Allan Poe.
Lovecraftian Gentleman Sorcerer/Cultist, e.g. Joseph Curwin from “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”
Sithrak….the god that unconditonally hates you and sentences you to eternal suffering. On second thought, that would be Satan or Lucifer or the devil anyway. Shrug. But the burnig skull with stakes in both empty eysockets ist sorta cool.
Apropos werewolfs…..If a werewolfs does not know the he/she ist actually make him/her an unawarewolf? I’ll see myself out.
I would be a Professor of Analytical Chemistry.
“Welcome, students, prepare to have your grade point averages lowered! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
I would go for the loyal lab assistant, easy to be as that was what I was for years.
Colonel Fitzwilliam from Pride and Prejudice
In related news,
Teri Garr has died. I suggest capping the holiday with a rewatching of Young Frankenstein.
I’m neurodivergent so probably Frankenstein’s monster. Blameless, but ‘hideous’ and hated. But deep inside I think I long to be the werewolf.
PZ, don’t you have soft spot for Ungoliant in the Silmarillion? Ultimate super-spider and beats up Morgoth. Now who in our world be Morgoth (Sauron’s boss for anyone who doesn’t know)?
I think any sidekick character that allows me to do a Peter Lorre impression like Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon – not a horror movie, I grant you.