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Benjamin Larned 🍉

@rotbacchus.bsky.social

1.2K followers 550 following 500 posts

A gay bog witch who writes fucked-up surreal fables. Link to work below he/they ben.larned(at)gmail(dot)com www.curiousafflictions.com

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · Feb 25

Spent the weekend bringing a dream project to life with a fantastically talented and wonderful crew. Incredibly grateful for their hard work and generosity. Now we develop the film and get to cutting! Cannot WAIT to share this lovely nightmare with the world ❤️🏔🖤

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🦇 Killy Witches 🎃👻 @tillybridges.bsky.social · 1d

CALIFORNIANS!

you can help make our state better and safer for trans people RIGHT NOW by telling Newsom he needs to sign these bills!

We need you!

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 1d

If you're in LA and want to see the films, here's a link for tix:

www.eventbrite.com/e/the-unseen...

Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 1d

Official poster for I LOST SOMETHING IN THE HILLS, which screens at the Philisophical Research Society this Sunday as part of their program The Unseen!

A bearded man screams beneath an ominous mountain ridge, surrounded by darkness

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Your daily Inland Empire screenshot @bluetomorrows.bsky.social · 2d

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The Ken in Yellow @kenlowery.bsky.social · 4d

Anyway props to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for just flat saying "in times of crisis your supposed protectors reveal themselves as the racist lynch mobs they always were" 57 years ago

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 5d

reading Absolute Pleasure/revisiting Ligotti's stories, and editing a demented Gothic novella for submission 😈🎃👻

Phenomena Press @phenomenapress.bsky.social · 7d

It's the 1st of October, which means it's officially spooky season 👻

What are you reading, what are you writing, and what haunts your halls this month?

#booksky #writingcommunity 🪐📚🌈

a group of skeletons are dancing in a circle in a cemetery in a black and white cartoon .

Alt: a group of skeletons are dancing in a circle in a cemetery in a black and white cartoon

media.tenor.com

Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 5d

had a very demoralizing experience with this zine, pls drag them 🙌

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Elena “Eraserhead baby” Zhang @ezhang77.bsky.social · 6d

Thrilled to have three tiny poems up on @havehashad.com!

www.havehashad.com/hadposts/amp...

Here’s one:

A city bursts inside of me
My head becomes heavy from bloom.
The lake leaks out of my eyes.
I'm pregnant with families.
They spill onto my toes and set up tents.
I can hear crying on my kneecaps.
At night, a train shivers with longing.

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Ro Salarian @rosalarian.bsky.social · 9d

An essay about death threats, censorship, loss, and the silence of cis people. All of these events happened in one week. I'm exhausted.

www.rosalarian.com/post/transge...

Transgender Dystopia Blues

One especially dystopian week in the life of a trans person in 2025 USA. Things are getting worse.

www.rosalarian.com

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Ro Salarian @rosalarian.bsky.social · 8d

I'm 30 minutes into watching Lost Boys for the first time, and there's no heterosexual explanation for every single moment of this so far. Every single person looks like someone in my friend group and my friend group is queer as hell.

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Trevor Henderson 🍉(commissions closed) @slimyswampghost.bsky.social · 8d

Watched ANGUISH (1987) and was shocked to basically find a meta-textual horror masterpiece. How has a movie this hypnotic, stylish, anxiety-inducing and weird gone so long without so much as a blu-ray release. If you can find a copy, go in knowing nothing.

Michael Lerner in the film ANGUISH (1987). A worried looking man in stark shadows stands askew in a void of darkness, fists raised to chin level

A woman lit in green leaves a movie theatre audience. On the screen, another movie theatre audience is watching a black and white film.

A cut-out black and white image of a woman's eye fastened to a pendulum. it is in motion.

Michael Lerner, a man in glasses and a dark coat. he's lit in red from the side and his glasses reflect light so they glow

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Alexandra Heller-Nicholas @horrornonna.com · 9d

I feel like I've been kicked in the head by a horse in the best way possible. When low-budget indie horror filmmakers have a strong clarity of vision and the moxie to pull it off, there is nothing that even comes close in terms of that exhilaration and raw fucking power

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas @horrornonna.com · 9d

Shaken to my very core by just how prescient the post-Romero/pre-MAGA 2015 zombie mockumentary SAVAGELAND is. A decade old but feels like it could have been made specifically in the last six months. Low-budget indie horror at its mightiest and most formidable.

Watch free on the Tubes of You:

YouTube video by Indie Rights Movies For Free

youtu.be

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 11d

Iconic 🙌

Kier-La Janisse @kierlajanisse.bsky.social · 11d

Today I met THE WOMAN IN BLACK herself, Pauline Moran, and learned that she played bass in a 60s all-girl band called The She Trinity 🤯

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Willow Catelyn Maclay @willowcatelyn.bsky.social · 12d

It's been a little while since I've written a theoretical piece about Transness in cinema, or about transness in general. This one is about ghost stories, phantoms, and feeling embodied through disembodiment. It would be revealing to to screen FRAGMENT OF SEEKING in front of I SAW THE TV GLOW.

I’ve been wondering if queer people feel an intrinsic pull towards ghost stories after witnessing Jane Schoenbrun’s haunted, and unnervingly familiar I Saw the TV Glow. (2024) I have questioned my own cinephilia in the wake of the all the ways it ruptured how I processed my relationship with art, and I came to a breakthrough that I never feel more embodied by cinema than when a character is disturbed by their own feeling of disembodiment. For I Saw the TV Glow’s Owen, and his wandering eye pinned to the television set, it gives him an excuse to ignore himself, but the film is telling us over and over again that he is haunted by his very existence, and everything seems strange as a result. I wrote in a journal of mine after seeing the movie for the first time that “Val Lewton lives in the aching, tormented heart of a little boy who is haunted by himself.”. The most appropriate film to pair with I Saw the TV Glow is likely Lewton’s The Curse of the Cat People (1944), and that hymn for strange children is a sister film in my canon to Terence Davies’s first installment of his trilogy of life, which chronicles abusive fathers and guardian angels. I have dreamed about all of these movies, and sometimes the memory of my dreams has gotten tangled up in the facts of what was filmed. This has given me a strange layering of real and unreal alongside my perception as a viewer, and admirer of these films. What they ultimately have in common is an awareness at a young age of being separate from the status quo, and how that can create a subconscious feeling of being disembodied while one is in the pursuit of, or rejection of, an identity. The social repression of queer people is cauterized in cinema by tales of phantoms, and the provocative, sometimes troubling answers therein are nonetheless relevant in coding and feel.

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 14d

don't threaten ME with a good time...

Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 14d

Amazing cover art by @rosalarian.bsky.social

Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 14d

My contributor copies of ABSOLUTE PLEASURE arrived today from @margotatwell.bsky.social l and @feministpress.bsky.social ress - a dream come true!! Can't wait to read all these wonderful takes on one of my favorite movies

Me, a bearded white man, holding a copy of Absolute Pleasure

The title page to my essay "Who Lives in the Old Dark House?"

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 15d

eternally grateful for the mind of CMM

Electric Literature @electricliterature.com · 15d

Jayda Skidmore and Carmen Maria Machado discuss the ways speculative writing can serve as language and metaphor for queer life.

buff.ly/OPpxKbS

A Queer Story is Never Going to Represent Every Queer Experience - Electric Literature

Carmen Maria Machado on speculative writing, the crisis of fiction, and speaking from the margins

electricliterature.com

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 19d

easiest boycott 👌

Diane Ademu-John @junkyardmessiah.bsky.social · 19d

Disney Minus…my money.

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Margot Atwell @margotatwell.bsky.social · 22d

It's pub day for ABSOLUTE PLEASURE! It's such a thrill to get to share this incredible collection of essays by 25 brilliant, funny, earnest, thoughtful, talented writers with the world.

#RockyHorror #RockyHorrorPictureShow

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Benjamin Larned 🍉 @rotbacchus.bsky.social · 22d

Absolute Pleasure is out today!! immensely honored to be featured in this tribute to one of my favorite movies 🧡🖤💋

www.feministpress.org/books-overfl...

Absolute Pleasure — Feminist Press

Margot Atwell Queer writers reflect on the complicated legacy of  The Rocky Horror Picture Show .

www.feministpress.org

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John Chrostek @johnchrostek.com · 22d

new short story up today with beloved @hexliterary.bsky.social. It's about tiny jackets and everything else

hex @hexliterary.bsky.social · 22d

"The lectern of the conference room is emanating darkness. Profits are down. I know this because we all know this."

Surprise after surprise at this hilarious and horrifying marketing conference, we're so fired up to feature @johnchrostek.com's latest, Inclement Weather this week! Bring a jacket!! 🧥

Inclement Weather by John Chrostek

The lectern of the conference room is emanating darkness. Profits are down. I know this because we all know this. There is no escaping the revelation. I yearn to feel anything other than concern, but ...

hexliterary.com

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Eve Harms, Gourd Respecter @eveharms.com · 27d

Despicable conduct from DC and @safety.bsky.app . They should be ashamed

Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 27d

It’s an absolute shame that DC fired Gretchen Felker- Martin for exercising free speech and then @bsky.app suspended her account. Every writer here should be decrying this because we have to stand up for each other! This is ridiculous.

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Andrew is made of MEAT @formaldehydefce.bsky.social · 28d

"PoLiTiCaL vIoLeNcE iS oNLy OkAy WhEn wE dO iT tO yOu."

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