weird menace and excessive bloodletting @gemmafiles Twitter profile

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weird menace and excessive bloodletting

3 years

For those who just followed me: She/her/hers, neuroatypical (Asperger's), a preliminary sketch of a crone, raised areligious, talks about film a lot/too much, poetic purple prose, firm proponent of monster pride. I try to be kind.

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weird menace and excessive bloodletting

@gemmafiles

3 years

My favourite relic/reliquary of all time.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

Movies I feel like were made for me:

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weird menace and excessive bloodletting

@gemmafiles

3 years

From Billy Senese’s The Dead Center (2018):

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Some nights it floats up near my window like a balloon

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@gemmafiles

2 years

Guess what

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2 years

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@gemmafiles

11 months

Okay: 31 movies I sometimes re-watch around Hallowe’en

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@gemmafiles

11 months

Saw it hanging in the rain

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@gemmafiles

2 years

agree to disagree! those are sweet and very clean domesticated rats

animals going goblin mode

@mischiefanimals

2 years

this is how plagues happen

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@gemmafiles

2 years

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@gemmafiles

3 years

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@gemmafiles

1 year

I think my favourite "criticism" of horror has to do with people straight-up refusing to suspend their disbelief. "Oh, are we gonna pretend that ghosts exist?" Well yes, asshole, that's exactly what we're gonna do; if you don't want to, shut the book. Thanks! :)

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@gemmafiles

3 years

@DrButcherMD2 @VibertKevin Or what crime IT committed

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@gemmafiles

10 months

Always remember that at least one alternate version of Spider-Man is Spiders-Man, a hive-mind colony of irradiated spiders who decided to fight crime after devouring Peter Parker alive

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@gemmafiles

3 years

I tend to think every writer in the world thinks ever other writer writes both faster and better than they do.

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@gemmafiles

11 months

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@gemmafiles

9 months

“Become”? I don’t think your version of punk was as punk as you think, sir

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@gemmafiles

3 months

Well holy hell, what an amazing surprise. I am…so incredibly grateful.:) Thank you, everyone!!!

Greg Greene

@iGregGreene

3 months

GEMMA!!! Winner of the Stoker for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection @gemmafiles @StokerCon

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Shirley Jackson Day! Wear unflattering glasses and undermine the patriarchy; smile while you stick pins into that voodoo doll underneath the table. Write funny stories about being a bad housewife, then hammer out We Have Always Lived In The Castle between faculty parties. SMILE.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

The term elevated horror implies debased horror, which sounds like a dare.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

The reason gothic keeps resurfacing is that gothic marks the intersectional point where horror and thriller meet, and you can't persuade me otherwise. Also: Emotional stakes, beauty, decay, bad family mechanics, etc.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

And that author is @slimyswampghost

horror plot generator

@horrorplotbot

3 years

Seven masked killers compete for the love of a bumbling author.

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@gemmafiles

6 months

Not being willing to watch older films is depriving yourself of an entire vocabulary, an entire toolbox. All creation begins in pastiche; why deprive yourself of reference? Art is just as much study as practice.

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@gemmafiles

5 years

I'm pleased and proud to announce that I'll officially be working on a four book deal for ChiZine Publications over 2020: Nightcrawling (my next novel), a new collection of short fiction, a new collection of poetry, and Dark Comforts: Horror as Comfort Food in a Time of Fear.

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@gemmafiles

10 months

@HitFactoryPod "whatever lets me do exactly what I want is the best system" is a hill a lot of people choose to die on, film at eleven ;)

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Horror is a spectrum, and comfort is part of it, even if it's just "aha, not me!". Implying that horror which doesn't involve a very small part of that spectrum (lizardbrain fright response, total disgust, immediate shock, etc.) isn't "really horror" is some gatekeeping bullshit.

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@gemmafiles

2 months

Hey, all! My name is Gemma Files. I’ve been an award-winning horror author since 1999. I tend to the dense, the poetic, the over-explicative; I love old gods and new monsters. I also doodle.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

More and more, I'm super happy that the novella/short novel has returned to genre, especially horror. All the freedom of a short story and as the prospective depth of a novel to play with.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

Can I say how happy I am that short story collections are doing so well in horror? I love them, I love it.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

The idea of having to "build your life or destroy it" between 18 and 25, is, obviously, ridiculous. I started writing professionally when I was 25, won my first award in 1999 and published my first novel at 41, after berating myself for a year for not doing it at 40.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

A tool to create disasters

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@gemmafiles

2 years

I am incredibly excited to confirm I now, after thirty years in the biz, have an agent.:)

Becky LeJeune

@BeckyLeJeune

2 years

I am extremely excited to announce that I am now representing the amazingly talented @gemmafiles ! I’ve been reading her work for ages and now I get to work with her! #stokercon2022

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@gemmafiles

5 years

I wonder sometimes how many times I'll have to say it, but just because something makes you sad or disappoints you, that isn't in itself proof a story is "bad"/"badly written." It might, however, be proof that the story was never about what you thought it was about.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Locating ourselves inside of terrible characters is one of the truest pleasures of fiction.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

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@gemmafiles

2 years

oh, I beg to differ

Horror4Kids

@horror4kids

2 years

not the best idea for a children’s hanging lantern

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@gemmafiles

4 years

The great thing about seeing tiny sections of Hieronymous Bosch is how they recontextualize exactly what cornucopia of fuckery is going on generally. Thank you, @boschbot .

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@gemmafiles

8 months

“But if you keep insisting on calling genocide genocide, we’re all going to start feeling bad about doing genocide!” Motherfucker, hopefully! That’s sort of the point!!!

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@gemmafiles

7 months

Started rewatching True Detective Season One and am once again enchanted by what a terrible coworker Rust Cohle would be to have for ANYONE doing ANYTHING

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@gemmafiles

4 months

Motherfucker, you’re gonna make me watch football

Nerdist

@nerdist

4 months

Jordan Peele's next movie, a psychological horror set in the world of football, gets a title and a fall 2025 release date.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

Okay, that's three stories, three submissions, three acceptances. I'm very happy. :)

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@gemmafiles

7 months

I want the play by play

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@gemmafiles

2 years

And now I am fifty-four years old.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

Watching The Void again because why not (I mean, aside from the fact that everybody but me hates it).

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Evil Dead. A million times Evil Dead.

C.K. Buchanan

@The_CK_Buchanan

3 years

Which reboot do you like best from this list?

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@gemmafiles

11 months

@boneysoups No, I always got that he murdered her. His guilt has more than a little impact on the plot.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

A) said Turkish Delight was magic B) Turkish Delight in general IS good, WTF is wrong with you people

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Today I saw Dracula by Bram Stoker described as a "Hidden Gem."

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@gemmafiles

2 years

Gore is what happens to somebody else's body. Body horror is what happens to your body.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Netflix's No One Gets Out Alive, based on Adam Nevill's brilliant and very British folk horror novel, manages to switch continents ably; slow-simmering dread and a monster whose design gives The Ritual's Moder a run for her money definitely help. :)

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@gemmafiles

1 year

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is the way that streaming without physical releases has essentially looped us back around to the way I saw movies as a young person: As many times as I could and maybe never again, unable to study them, only internalize.

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@gemmafiles

1 month

The Fisherman, John Langan

Classic Horror Films

@HorrorHammer1

1 month

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@gemmafiles

5 months

And now I am 56

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@gemmafiles

4 years

@CallMeAztro Gangs of New York, May the Devil Take You, Ravenous, The Empty Man.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

Thanks so much to everybody who's congratulated me thus far (and in future) for winning my Bram Stoker Award. The con was amazing; I left energized in all the best ways. Very excited for the rest of 2022, as well as for Pittsburgh 2023.:)

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@gemmafiles

1 year

Three days away from 55.

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@gemmafiles

1 year

The sheer poetic density of prose by people like Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Clive Barker and Adam Nevill will be something I'll try (and fail) to aspire to for the rest of my life. :)

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@gemmafiles

3 years

So here's my birthday gift to myself: I've got a vaccination appointment. First shot.

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@gemmafiles

5 years

Why are the humanities useful? Fucking empathy. It needs to be cultivated. I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people--oh wait, I do: Fiction. That's it, that's the whole story.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

wouldn't you?

Into The Forest Dark

@ElliottBlackwe3

3 years

If you found this in the forest, would you enter that door?

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@gemmafiles

6 months

I'll never forget the day one of my students told me they couldn't watch older movies because "the hairstyles are so stupid." Remember, this person was in FILM SCHOOL. Ie, they wanted to make FILMS.

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@gemmafiles

2 months

My second creepy house arrived ;)

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Hot take: Writing whatever the fuck you want is always the best idea, whether or not it involves fucking.

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@gemmafiles

1 year

Anyone who can feel horror can write horror, and should

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@gemmafiles

2 years

you HOPE you won't

Black Hole

@konstructivizm

2 years

Scientists discover a black hole with unstoppable growth: “I don’t think we’ll find another like this” More:

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@gemmafiles

1 year

You know what continues to be satisfying as hell? The movie Splinter (on Tubi rn).

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@gemmafiles

2 months

Eggers’ The Lighthouse is on Tubi now and continues to be one of the most hysterical male psychodramas I’ve ever watched. Also very beautiful, in a frame-every-frame silver nitrate way.

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@gemmafiles

5 months

On Tubi rn! It is SO GOOD

Trevor Henderson🍉

@slimyswampghost

5 months

Begging for more people to watch HISTORY OF THE OCCULT (2020)

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@gemmafiles

11 months

Session 9 remains one of the best films I’ve ever seen.:)

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Ah, Event Horizon: Such a weird comfort movie. It grows on you, as my husband says. Like meat-moss.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

@thatdanhanna @MrReesesCups Pretty sure that Mary Poppins is some sort of goddess who’s just as likely to kill you with a single spoonful of her sugar as anything else. Bert worships her from afar and is smart to do so.

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@gemmafiles

2 months

New lenses and new haircut:)

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@gemmafiles

3 months

What's particularly heartening about Blood From the Air winning the Stoker is that my collections are often either mainly urban/ghost/cosmic horror or gothic/dark fantasy/Weird with a, historical slant. Less poetry vs. more poetry? It's been like that since the start/1

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@gemmafiles

3 months

The thing about the "death" of movie theatres for me is there is literally nowhere else I can count on being FORCED to watch a movie from start to finish without interruption, a stringent, analytical, transformative experience that's becoming less & less accessible. For anyone.

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@gemmafiles

5 months

New haircut, new colour, different angle

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@gemmafiles

3 years

if you genuinely judge people on the films they like, I don't what the fuck to tell you about how horribly you have misinterpreted, like, everything.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

"My god, Gemma, does everything have to be horror?" Well, it doesn't have to be. But it often is.

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@gemmafiles

7 months

Ten found footage/mock-doc films I love: As Above So Below Savageland The Atticus Institute The Borderlands (Final Prayer) Lake Mungo Ghostwatch Occult/Noroi: The Curse Incantation The Taking of Deborah Logan The Medium

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@gemmafiles

4 years

Four stories written thus far this year, four acceptances. :)

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@gemmafiles

10 months

still on my list of all-time horror canon books

Paul Finch

@paulfinchauthor

10 months

The Southern Gothic slams into haunted house horror. Tennessee Williams tensions turn on their head in this Deep South-flavoured devil’s brew, which starts at a simmer but gradually builds to a boil. More great work by @Valancourt_B . My full review:

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Finally, are you afraid of generation ships? And outer space? And dying airless, stranded in nothing? Then keep your eyes out for Ness Brown's The Scourge Between Stars (Tor Nightfire), which crosses The Expanse with Pandorum by way of Event Horizon and emerges darkly victorious.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

The idea of criticizing a fiction creator by saying "[x] just makes shit up" is...fucking hilarious.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

Oh my god, a person on a podcast just said: "So I grew up on Hannibal, like watching it in middle school on NBC..." I AM A CRONE.

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@gemmafiles

1 month

This insane idea that you not only have to approve of characters to empathize with them; bitch, you don’t even have to *understand* characters to do that. That’s half the fun.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Finally watched Pines on Tubi and HOLY SHIT more people should be talking about this film. What begins as a nonlinear backwoods thriller becomes a headlong descent into non-metaphorical hell. Huge Laird Barron vibes, and the main character performance is riveting.

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@gemmafiles

1 year

I want to see that staircase

Rick Powell

@tenebraerick

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@gemmafiles

26 days

Rewatching The Terror Season One and this is…perfection. Adult, complex, human, numinous, weird, cosmic. Historical magic realism.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

There's a particular intersection of body horror and horniness that we're definitely missing in today's horror movies, possible due to a fear of physical FX/things turning softcore. Play the Barker card and make your fetishes supernatural, kids.

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@gemmafiles

4 years

what in the fuckitty demon cat with a book on its head FUCK

BoschBot

@boschbot

4 years

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@gemmafiles

2 years

So yeah, I've been depressed. Lost almost two weeks to that. My sleep cycle is completely skewed. But today I'm talking to people again, and things will begin to right themselves.

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@gemmafiles

2 years

My new coat

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@gemmafiles

2 months

Longlegs night! And that was…fucking nuts. A Chick Tract fairytale version of Mindhunter written by a guy completely disinterested in anything but vibes. Loved it.

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@gemmafiles

10 months

but if you like to write and read and watch stuff about violence Gemma why don't you support violence in real life? because real life is REAL, idiots

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@gemmafiles

4 years

DONE. First story of the year. 2020, bite my ass.

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@gemmafiles

17 days

So cool, cool, turns out that it's open season on autistic guys who love their fathers in public on one (predictable) side of the aisle, and seriously, fuck all the way off into the sun with THAT shit.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

On a personal note: I do think that horror provides relief for me, if only because it takes place in a parallel world where you enter already knowing stuff is likely to get bad. It's not a surprise when it does; it's about dealing, surviving and remaking a life.

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@gemmafiles

3 years

Just finished Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, by @ejlarocca , wow. That's some hard-core mindfuckery/body horror. I particularly love how it constantly plays with how much worse it might get, forcing you--inspiring you--to think of your own twists on the thesis. :)

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@gemmafiles

2 years

just wearin a tree, walkin my things

BoschBot

@boschbot

2 years