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Succession Succeeds as a Modern King Lear

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I’m always a person who’s down for a new show to watch… When I have the time for it. I have to make the time for it which I have to be economical about how to spend my time; it’s a valuable resource! My philosophy then follows that if I don’t watch new and exciting shows or films, then I’m not stretching those writing muscles. So, for shows I tend to wait a couple seasons in so that a critical census reaches a point as to whether or not it’s God’s gift to the world or is a Sucksandwhich. I wish that weren’t the case, but the blog ain’t paying the bills (yet, anyways…). Then the fourth season of Succession on Max was announced…  Succession was a show that circled around my recommendation list from time to time. I didn’t have Max at the time, so it fell under the radar for a bit. It was around the same time I renewed my Max subscription for the then-new show The Last of Us came out. Then I finished that show and found Succession on the top of the Top Series consistently with The Last of
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Hope is an Eldritch Horror

               Where is hope? Man, everyday it’s getting harder to find it with the search getting longer. To find solace. To find peace. Hope; It’s something that’s been misplaced in recent memory. I used to believe in goodness and that everything would turn out alright in the end. With recent news and a sickness in my family, the sense of doom and dread permeates seemingly all around me, crushing me with an unbearable weight. What a cruel world is being said less ironically by me with each passing day. Hope is something lost on me recently, but I came to a realization: Hope exists whether I like it or not. Bad things will eventually unravel given enough time.  I had this revelation recently. That hope is a thing that’ll always exist with the likes of war, love, hate, and, God willing, peace. In Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, a vile character of Judge Holden says this on war, “ War was always here. Even before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimat
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Let Me In: Welcoming a Definition of ‘Vampire’

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(Fat Dracula) By Cody Wagner                   The imagination of humans always has someone, or something to fill in the empty darkness when fear takes hold. At first thought, the first creature thought of in said darkness is perhaps one of the more popular and most revisited monsters in history, the vampire. It’s a creature that has plagued our nightmares for hundreds of years as the fear of a bloodsucker attacking us made us think twice on just who we invite inside. A vampire, in terms of folklore, is a reanimated corpse that awakens at night to feed on the blood of a victim through sucking its blood through its pointed fangs to either feed or to produce more vampires.                   Defining precisely what makes a vampire is an interesting on as one must be specific. If one describes a predator who feeds off another organism, then a parasite would come to mind. While a vampire has a (typically hematophagous) parasitic bond with its victims, vampirism differs in the way that t
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“The Shining’s Overlook Hotel & The Overlooked Brilliance of Doctor Sleep”

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By Cody Wagner                   There’s a certain fascination when it comes to horror and why we are attracted toward it, particularly in film and literature. We’re either repulsed or gravitate to it in childhood. It all depends on what was the story to christen oneself in a baptism of fear, and how. Never being the same for better or worse. One of the films that was a gateway drug into the horror genre for me was Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). I was a young kid when I first saw it. Way too young. My mom’s a huge horror buff and had so many movies lying around, either from Blockbuster or perhaps burning onto a blank DVD through means (but you didn’t hear that from me). It felt like a fever dream of an angry father trying to kill his wife and child with an axe while the viewer feels more claustrophobic and feeling like one would go insane the more one stays in the Overlook hotel as the film went on. It was hypnotic in a way, and I was intrigued in horror and character studi
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THE DEATH THROE COLLECTIVE (Full Book)

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It’s that time of year again where I compile another book together. This time it’s a collection of short stories! I find myself getting more comfortable with longer pieces. This is that result. Don’t be surprised next year if I churn up a novella. Wouldn’t that be something? I won’t get ahead of myself, though. I am, however, got three or so more short stories cooking at the moment. Might just have another collection out then! Until then, enjoy The Death Throe Collective !    “Who Watches Over the Flies?” I’m flying over my body as my second life begins with staring back at my old body. It’s strange in that I don’t quite remember leaving it. Usually in the stories, or whatever, you just kinda go… upwards. Ascending up to the Great Beyond, you get one last look at yourself before the paramedics dramatically try and resuscitate you. Not with me. When I come to, I see myself in the early stages of decomposition. It isn’t a mess, nor a horrific splatterfest or anything. No, just me plopped
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