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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

@awalrusdarkly.bsky.social

4.2K followers 960 following 4.7K posts

One time I sat in the Munster Koach. Horror Writers Association Member. Host of @scaresshapedus.bsky.social. Resident Horror Books Guy at @pastemagazine.bsky.social. Bylines at Pop Heist/Dread Central/AV Club/More. Austin Film Critics member. 🍅-approved.

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 11d

So, I had to unexpectedly drop $1600 on a major plumbing repair today. Whee!

Now would be a great time, if you're so inclined, to consider a monthly subscription to my newsletter!

matthewjacksonwrites.com

Or, perhaps, kick in a buck and get one of my short stories!

ko-fi.com/s/bdd6bff3ed

Matthew Jackson and The Scares That Shaped Us

All Things Horror

matthewjacksonwrites.com

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Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

Emily C. Hughes @emilyhughes.bsky.social · 6h

oh hey if you’ve been meaning to pick up Horror For Weenies, Bookshop is having an anti-prime day free shipping sale (also a slight discount on the book!): bookshop.org/a/293/978168...

Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You're Too Scared to Watch

Everything You Need to Know About the Films You're Too Scared to Watch

bookshop.org

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Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

Kayleigh Donaldson @ceilidhann.bsky.social · 1h

Stop obsessing over Spotify streams or box office numbers. Stop turning your pop culture favourites into an endless competition and numbers show.

I wrote about the irritating gameification of pop culture and fandom.

Pajiba @pajiba.com · 2h

Fandom’s Obsession With Winning Has Made Pop Culture Boring

In the weeks preceding the release of One Battle After Another, the latest film by director Paul Thomas Anderson, the entertainment press headlines were full of speculation over its financial future. How would this big, expensive, and apparently niche film... Read more...

www.pajiba.com

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 1h

Thank you for this. Genuinely feel like I'm taking crazy pills when people talk about this movie being bad. Did y'all not *see* the shots he got on the pool table?

Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 4h

We're officially in Week 2 of 31 Days of Essays about HALLOWEEN and we're back to Sam Loomis, the Myers house, and the ghosts of what could have been.

matthewjacksonwrites.com/tracing-the-...

Tracing The Shape 8: A Haunted House

Sam Loomis is a man haloed by ghosts. We talked earlier about the madness of this scientist driven toward the supernatural by the soulless gaze of a small boy, and that's still there, but even if he w...

matthewjacksonwrites.com

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 2h

Probably naive of me to think this but I choose to interpret Dolly Parton saying "I'm Not Dying!" as "Had a little talk with my best friend God the Almighty and we decided it's best for me to stay down here forever."

Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 2h

BREAKING

In a new video, Dolly Parton, the Queen of America, says she’s going to be ok.

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 2h

Had a call just now that could actually solve our home-buying nightmare in a way that is minimally stressful to my family and won't render us destitute so I need every good vibe y'all can spare right now if you don't mind.

Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

Gretchen Felker-Martin 🍉 @scumbelievable.bsky.social · 2h

hey admiral, we stopped on planet X-14938-J7 in response to a federation emergency beacon broadcast and -- yeah, yeah, it was our ship we found crashed. yep. yeah. no the bodies of the crew were us. yeah Twilight Zone bullshit, that's what we figured. we'll take off and nuke it.

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 2h

Cargill, Captain Trips, and The Grabber!

The Scares That Shaped Us @scaresshapedus.bsky.social · 2h

NEW EPISODE

@crobertcargill.bsky.social joins the show to talk about his new movie BLACK PHONE 2, and we dive into one very specific chapter of @stephenking.bsky.social's THE STAND and the impact it made on Cargill's life as a writer.

LISTEN NOW:

redcircle.com/shows/41a2d4...

Episode 50: The Stand (Chapter 38) with C. Robert Cargill

Listen to The Scares That Shaped Us on RedCircle

redcircle.com

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 4h

Describe your Bluesky Account in a single image.

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 4h

We're officially in Week 2 of 31 Days of Essays about HALLOWEEN and we're back to Sam Loomis, the Myers house, and the ghosts of what could have been.

matthewjacksonwrites.com/tracing-the-...

Tracing The Shape 8: A Haunted House

matthewjacksonwrites.com

2 3

Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 13h

One thing about horror movies in the '70s: It didn't matter how far out from civilization you were or how narrow the road was, you could always flag down a long-haul trucker.

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Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 18h

Not too long ago I would have refused to post something like this, but life is short and I am trying to make dreams come true. I'm proud of this work and I want it to be out there.

Share the stuff you're proud of without reservations.

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 1d

One week into Halloween Season, so here's your reminder that I wrote a slasher novel about teenagers trying to pull a quick heist who find a masked killer waiting in the basement of a mansion.

It's fun, it's scary, and it needs a good home.

#amquerying #amwriting #horrorsky

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · Jan 27

NIGHT OF THE SKULL

Clown in A Cornfield x Don't Breathe

Three desperate teens try to save their families by robbing the local slumlord's mansion, and find a legendary slasher who terrorized their Texas town 50 years earlier is hiding in the basement.

#2025pit #H #YA / #A (crossover appeal)

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 13h

One thing about horror movies in the '70s: It didn't matter how far out from civilization you were or how narrow the road was, you could always flag down a long-haul trucker.

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

It's like GenAI, it's there to solve a problem that didn't exist.

"No, seriously, we can just sew them!"

"But... shrink ray."

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

Toddler socks are more expensive than adult socks and I think it's because toddler socks are just regular socks that they shrunk using the Rick Moranis shrink ray and it's expensive.

"Why don't we just make smaller socks?"

"Why don't you mind your business, CHERYL?!"

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

Watching HALLOWEEN again for more essay stuff and this time I was really taken with the way Charles Cyphers plays Brackett in the scene in the Myers house. He's the only person who really stops and listens to Loomis all day. It's quite sweet.

Anyway, Charles Cyphers, legend.

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

Y'all kids do not understand, these things could hold like, two whole documents. Maybe three. If you dream big, four.

And we were so happy.

videogame history @vghistory.bsky.social · 14h

maxell floppy disk, print ad (1984) archive.org/details/popc...

a man kneeling in dark robes, looking very calm. below, a maxell floppy disk.

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

Fun fact about this guy: He was 95 when they taped this and died just months later. That is a man who will not go to his grave without proving to his entire family that the story he's been telling them for decades actually is still cool.

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 14h

The best version of this for me is always the guy who went on a TV game show in 1956 to reveal that he *witnessed the Lincoln assassination.*

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Garrett Martin @garrettmartin.bsky.social · 15h

Super Mario’s design is based on PJ Soles’s character in Carrie

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Reposted by 🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃

Matinee Mode @matineemode.bsky.social · Dec 6

CON AIR and FACE/OFF were released 3 weeks apart in June of 1997.

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 15h

Every short fiction market lately (it seems like): No gore, please.

Me: Well, a guy literally pops like a rotting grape in this one, so...

a man in a suit and tie is sitting at a desk and making an ok sign .

ALT: a man in a suit and tie is sitting at a desk and making an ok sign .

media.tenor.com

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 16h

File under Songs I've Always Wished I Had the Range To Sing.

Rad cover. Worth it just to see the joy on Mike Portnoy's face when he gets to sit and play a cowbell.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOK6...

Dino Jelusick, Mike Portnoy & Joel Hoekstra "Jane"

YouTube video by Dino Jelusick

www.youtube.com

🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 16h

I'm the author of this quote and I stand by it! Can't say enough good things about this one, y'all.

I do not get a lot of time in my life to read books in one sitting anymore, but FRANK LIGHTNING forced me. Couldn't put it down.

Josh Rountree @joshrountree.bsky.social · 16h

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🎃 Matthew Jack-o'-lantern 🎃 @awalrusdarkly.bsky.social · 17h

Whatever Shaq's wingspan is.