It's official: nobody likes me. At least, nobody at my former workplace does. I creep them out. I make them feel uncomfortable. They don't want to be around me. They dislike me so much I was fired. 


Some people say the need to be liked is shallow. However, humans are social creatures and need to feel a sense of community. We need to feel supported, appreciated, and nurtured by those around us. Everyone is different, and it is illogical to think everyone will like everyone else; it is mature to acknowledge and understand this. But to be told nobody likes you, that every single person in a workplace doesn't like you, is incredibly depressing. To be fired from a job you loved and valued because you don't fit in with the 'culture', and people find you creepy, is heart-shattering. It feels like a knife to the heart. This is what happened to me. I was called into the office, told nobody liked me, was fired and told Uber was waiting to take me home. The end, goodbye, see you never. 
*** 


I always thought I was a polite and decent conversationalist. I try hard to be polite, as I have extreme anxiety due to my borderline personality disorder (BPD). And after almost four years of therapy, I assumed I would have discovered a way to deal with my anxiety. However, I still often over-generalise and believe because one person doesn't like me then everyone else hates me. And while I've tried hard within my almost four years of cognitive behavioural therapy to work on my problems with 'the self-fulfilling prophecy' – that if you believe something strongly enough it will come true, not necessarily because of your actions but because of your perception and attitude- I still haven't found a way to present myself in any way other than I am. This has been my detriment. However, I also feel this isn't entirely necessary to be a part of a functioning society. 


Much of my writing stems from my loneliness and the things in the world I perceive to be threatening. BPD can be incredibly isolating, and can warp my perception of how the world is. To deal with this, I often make jokes and tell stupid puns because laughter and humour has always made me feel better. Perhaps that's why I'm such a fan of comedy. Many people who are funny suffer from depression and anxiety. Many creatives take their own lives. In 2014, academics from the University of Oxford published the results of research into comedians' psychological traits.

Professor Gordon Claridge, of the University of Oxford's Department of Experimental Psychology, studied personality questionnaires filled in by 523 comedians (404 men and 119 women) from the UK, US and Australia, revealing many comedians had unusual personalities, in that their results were contradictory. 'On the one hand, they were rather introverted, depressive, rather schizoid, you might say. And on the other hand, they were rather extroverted and manic. That was a rather unusual profile. The actors we compared them with didn't show that, and this was highly significantly different from the norms on the test. Possibly the comedy - the extroverted side - is a way of dealing with the depressive side.' 
As a writer, my descent into horror was therapeutic. I'd had four short comedy stories published in 2014, but it wasn't until my first horror story was published in 2015 that I finally found a way to channel my depression into something productive. My loneliness allowed me to create scenarios and situations inside my head where everything bad happened to someone else. Watching horror films was one thing – I'd get that dopamine and serotonin hit – but writing horror was another. Ernest Hemingway is quoted as having said, 'Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.' And for me that's true. Writing, for me, is a lonely experience. But it's a loneliness I can control, especially in horror. Horror forces me to focus – the monsters in my stories (many of which are human) reel me in and require my complete attention. The anxiety and depression I feel can be useful. 

Everyone has the fear response – the fight or flight mode – and it's ingrained within us, stemming from our ancestor's need to survive threats like animal attacks. When we experience this emotion, our body is flooded with stress hormones, usually adrenaline and cortisol, and our heart rate and blood pressure elevates, allowing us to make instinctive decisions and act quickly. When the fear and the threat is gone, our body experiences a period of rest and digestion, allowing us to calm down and return to our baseline. But for people who experience anxiety, their fight or flight modes don't quite work the same way as everyone else. Our brains react to everyday scenarios as though they are major threats in our lives – like an imminent bear attack against our ancestors – and we are filled with a looming sense of doom and defeat, our bodies rarely able to rest and digest, our fears and anxieties rarely resolved. For some, horror makes this worse. They might read a book or watch a movie and find themselves in the same fight or flight situation, even though the threat isn't real. But for others, like me, it's a welcome relief from pent-up tension and stress. It allows my mind to steer away from real-life stress and anxieties and process how I'm feeling in an environment I can control. I can turn off the movie whenever I want. I can close the page of a book and put it down. I control the anxiety I allow myself to experience. And it's utterly wonderful because it's one of the few ways I can feel as though I've mastered my BPD. As I stood in the tiny office at work listening to my boss tell me how much people didn't like me, I had no control. My heart felt like it would burst from my chest, my muscles were so tense it seemed they would burst through my skin. I felt humiliated, angry, sad, disappointed, and all I wanted was to do was run. And in a way I experienced my own fight or flight mode – do I stand here and defend myself, or do I storm off? But I did neither. I froze. I felt trapped within my body, unable to move. I remained calm when I asked them if there was anything I could do to change their minds. I remained still when they said there wasn't. I didn't yell or scream when I quietly gathered my belongings and left, even though deep inside all I wanted to do was run. And it didn't matter that my heart was beating so loud it felt any minute the adrenaline would burst out of my chest in some Alien-esque fashion. As I walked away I was able to maintain my composure because I didn't want them to think they'd beat me. I didn't want to feel like a victim. They may have attacked me, but I had not been defeated. 

***
Culture is a word I have grown to dislike. In workplaces, culture describes the created environment in which values, belief systems, and attitudes in a workplace are shared. While culture is shaped by individual upbringing, social, and cultural influences, in a workplace the leadership and the strategic organisational directions and management influence and dictate the workplace culture. Management wants a positive workplace culture, as it improves teamwork, morale, efficiency, and productivity. Yet somehow I didn't fit into this and was singled out as not sharing their values or attitudes. For some reason, they believed I didn't enhance this positive culture.  I was the outsider. I was the monster. In a 2007 journal article 'Culture, Evil, and Horror' published by the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc., Paul Santilli wrote 'a culture is a way in which human beings represent their lives to themselves through language and other symbolic systems. With culture, the human separates from the animal and enters an order of discriminations by which the beautiful is distinguished from the ugly, the noble from the shameful, and the pure from the defiled.' It may seem a ridiculous notion, and perhaps this stems from my BPD, but being told I didn't fit within the workplace culture made me feel I was the ugly, the shameful, the defiled. I was the other. I was the Frankenstein's Monster of whom everyone was fearful of and repulsed by. I was the monster in the movies in which I'd found solace. And this is what hurt me worst of all. 

***
It's interesting – many creative people have some kind of mental illness. And while I don't like the term 'tortured artist', I find I am my most creative when I am at my lowest, and I highly doubt I would be as creative as I am had I not experienced depression from my epilepsy or developed BPD.  Vincent Van Gogh (30 March 1853– 29 July 1890) is one of the most famous 'tortured artists', with his paintings – bold, dramatic, and expressive – some of the most famous and expensive artworks in the world. Not commercially successful until after his death, his struggles with severe depression, psychotic episodes, delusions, poverty, and several years in psychiatric hospitals led to his suicide at thirty-eight (he is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.) In life, Van Gogh was deemed a madman and a failure, and it was only in the ensuing decades after his death people recognised his artistic genius. While I am no Van Gogh, I have had the pleasure to be relatively successful and known in my creative field. However, it doesn't make my impostor syndrome or BPD any easier. It does, however, give me glimmers of hope that one day I may write something that will be commercially successful. 

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (20 August 1890 – 15 March 1937) is another example of a creative genius who also died never knowing how much his creativity impacted horror literature, and by extent, the world. Throughout his life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself as an author and editor. Though he was born to a wealthy family, after his father was institutionalised for general paresis (a severe neuropsychiatric disorder caused by chronic meningoencephalitis leading to cerebral atrophy in late-stage syphilis) in 1893, he and his mother moved in with his less financially stable aunt and grandparents. During this time, he grew close to his grandfather, who introduced him to not only classic literature and poetry but also 'weird tales' of 'winged horrors' and 'deep, low, moaning sounds' which he created for his young grandchild's entertainment. In 1896, Lovecraft's grandmother died, and at the young age of five, he began to have nightmares of beings he referred to as 'night-gaunts', and began experiencing what is now known as atypical depression. By the 1900s Lovecraft's grandparents' fell into an economic spiral, his mother was institutionalised in 1919 for being 'permanently stricken with grief', and from then on Lovecraft's life went downwards. 

Over the years, Lovecraft had many publications in pulp magazines and kept correspondence with dozens of other people, including notable writers, however, he was unable to keep stable employment, and relied on his writing to live. While he married the pulp fiction writer Sonia Greene (who only a few years earlier had dated Alistair Crowley), and relied on her income to support his writing, after their marriage ended (the pair lived apart and agreed to an amicable divorce), and his literary career declined, he spiralled into a deep depression, unable to write any longer. Shortly after having written his last original short story, The Haunter of the Dark, he stated the negative reception of the now-famous At the Mountains of Madness had done 'more than anything to end my effective fictional career'. After months of pain, for which he refused to seek treatment due to his fear of doctors, Lovecraft died from terminal intestinal cancer in 1937. While he was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death, but is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors of supernatural horror fiction. His work is studied in universities, depicted in TV shows, films, and video games; bands write entire concept albums about his Cthulhu Mythos; entire religions and occultists are inspired by his work; his correspondence between himself and other authors amount to almost 100,000 letters, all about a variety of topics, from weird fiction and art criticism to politics and history. His legacy has endured. And it can be said that perhaps none of it would exist without his childhood night terrors, without his family's economic downfall, the institutionalisation and death of his parents, and his failed marriage. Lovecraft's life was a cycle of one bad thing after another, yet it made a positive impact on his writing. He created an entirely new genre - cosmic horror. However he, like Van Gough, lived a life of poverty and depression, never knowing how much they would impact the future of art and literature. 
*** 


My husband is antisocial, anti-religious, and because he makes jokes about all religions, people assume he is racist or antisemitic. However, he also has BPD and is one of the most honest people I know. He said, and I quote: 'you're an insignificant piece of carbon in a universe that wouldn't notice or care when you're gone. It won't give a shit and will continue for billions of years after you just as it did before. When you realise that's how little you matter it's easy to get on with life, and so easy to make jokes about being dead.' It's obvious his favourite author is HP Lovecraft, right? He, too, has struggled in the workplace, and after dabbling a little in painting, he's now directed his attention towards cooking. He plants to start a small business selling jams and hot sauces. He's also rather good at making bread. Like me, he is unable to keep a job, despite the fact our symptoms appear very differently. But he discovered a way to accept it father quicker than I have. 


When I was fired, he was sympathetic and told me to dedicate my life to what I am good at – writing. He told me nothing happens when someone is offended – they said they didn't like you? Fine. But that doesn't change who you are as a person. He told me quite bluntly I was a little weird but said that shouldn't matter. Workplaces are supposed to accept and embrace differences, for the world would be boring if everyone was the same. He's always encouraged my writing and given me many ideas to work with. He introduced me to Lovecraft's work via audio-book and suggested I try writing cosmic horror. My husband is incredibly nihilistic, but he's also logical, practical, and while he doesn't read all of my work, he will read paragraphs here and there, listens to me talk about my current works in progress, and gives me ideas, many of which are things I'd never have realised or thought of without his help. 


Because of my husband's encouragement, I designed and ordered author business cards, several copies of my 2018 collection 'Metamorphosis' (IFWG Publishing) for conventions and stalls, and I'm currently looking at buying a corflute and banner. Yes, I have been blessed to have met a wonderful author friend who is excellent at promoting herself and has given me amazing advice and encouragement on how to present myself and have people buy my work, but I often find myself in the fight or flight mode when it comes to my writing – will people buy my books? Am I deserving to be promoted? Is buying promotional material for myself at conventions and stalls a waste of money? Am I a waste of money? What is my value? And what does value mean, anyway? 'Fitting attitude (FA) theories propose to analyse value, or some limited range of values, in terms of evaluative attitudes endorsed as fitting—or, alternatively, as appropriate, correct, merited, proper, rational, or warranted.' So, what is 'good' is 'desirable.'  According to them, I was 'good on paper', but not a good fit for them. I was good, but not desirable. Kind of like Van Gogh and HP Lovecraft. 


***  


Horror builds communities, where like-minded people can be accepted for simply being their authentic selves. Many of us who love horror are 'outsiders' to a certain degree, in that our 'real-life' friends and family aren't as passionate as the darker shades of life as we are. United, we can share our experiences and know we are valued and appreciated, which can be especially helpful when people feel ostracised from the 'real world'. Horror isn't simply a genre, it's an outlet for us to escape from our own lives, whether they be positive or negative. Not all of us as depressed or struggle with mental illness, but a vast majority do, and it's a relief to be part of a community in which we feel wanted and valued. As kids, monsters are the ones that live under our beds, but as adults, often the monsters are the struggles we face every day within the world of which we feel we do not belong. Horror isn't being chased by an axe-wielding madman – it's the feeling of isolation we get when we feel we don't belong. Horror isn't seeing a ghost in your family's ancestral home – it's the shame of feeling different. Horror isn't an emaciated hand rising from a grave – it's the anxiety we feel in moments of pure terror when we are told nobody likes us and an Uber is waiting to take us home.  The end, goodbye, see you never. And it's the fear of not knowing when my mental illness will negatively impact my life, and people will realise I am different from them. Thinking back, I genuinely believe I didn't do anything 'creepy' or say anything that would make people uncomfortable. But maybe they sensed some horror within me? Maybe they knew something about me I don't? Maybe they see through the mask? Maybe I am a monster? Maybe it doesn't really matter?


Whatever the case, I'll keep writing. And while I don't know if I'm quite there yet in my therapy to completely dismiss being told nobody likes me, I'm working on making sure it doesn't affect me as much or change who I am as a person. I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but most people drink coffee anyway. Or energy drinks. Lots and lots of energy drinks. Wait, that's me. Shoot. Maybe I am a monster after all? 

The End

MARGINALISATION, AND THE FUTURE OF HORROR BY CLAIRE FITZPATRICK
​GRIEF AND HORROR: WHEN MONSTERS ARE YOUR FRIENDS BY CLAIRE FITZPATRICK​
BORDERLINE PERSONAL DISORDER: WHEN PSYCHOPATHY HELPS YOUR SUCCESS AS A WRITER BY CLAIRE FITZPATRICK

Madeline will never become a woman. William will never become a man. Does June deserve to be human? Does Lilith deserve a heart?

Seventeen stories. Seventeen tales of terror.

If imperfection is crucial to a society’s survival, what makes a monster?

"Visceral and demented, full of flesh that twists and deforms...Fitzpatrick's stories will either sicken or delight." - Brian Craddock, Australian Shadows Award-Winning Author.
[On Scents] “One of the creepiest stories I have read in a long time.” – Jeani Rector, editor of The Horror Zine ​

Given the consistent theme of this year's series, readers might be forgiven for finding this subject somewhat incongruous. Of course, outside the works of Oscar Wilde (and a rare few other notables), one would be hard pressed to find examples in classic literature (certainly of the English, Victorian variety) that directly represents or even references LGBTQ issues. 


However, scratch the surface, and it's not uncommon to find ruminations on self, socio-cultural taboos, proscribed roles within society etc, all of which are profoundly resonant for LGBTQ individuals. That The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde references them as directly as it does likely comes as quite a shock to many who know the book only by reputation (or via one of its universally less-than-stellar adaptations). 


First of all, the common misconceptions: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde is often -reductively- presumed and presented to be a meditation on the moral dichotomy of humanity; that within even the most civilised, mild-natured and decent of us lurks a shadow self; a face of secret vices, unspoken yearnings and violent appetites that, when given reign, results in nothing but violence and self-destruction. 


Whilst this is certainly one facet of the work, it is far, far from the entirety of its import: 


I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.


Whilst Jekyll -and the narrator himself- speak often of the “duality of man,” and often refer to Hyde as a manifestation of a secret self, the book goes on to evolve their understanding and shatter that very dichotomy: by the end, it is clear that the distinction between Jekyll and Hyde is not so clean cut, that the two are intermingled in varying quantities. Thus, the dichotomy they manifest is undone: Hyde reveals himself to be little more than a mask for Jekyll; another self in which he is free to indulge “appetites” that are referred to but never described (save by their apparent insalubriousness). That Jekyll experiences and indulges these “unclean yearnings” before he even has the notion to embark on his grand experiment is made clear; Hyde does and feels very little that Jekyll himself does not; the appetites in question and his willingness to engage in them are merely magnified and given free reign in Hyde, who is not anchored by the same social status or expectation of his other self: 


The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. There was something strange in my sensations, something indescribably sweet. I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. 


Thus, it should be noted that the apparent duality of Jekyll and Hyde is not only a misconception, it is a defence mechanism that Jekyll himself employs to rid himself of responsibility and to indulge however and in what manner he pleases. The wider significance of the story therefore becomes an excoriation on the rigid protocol and etiquette of Victorian society, particularly with reference to its “polite” upper classes, of whom Jekyll is obviously a member. 


Whilst the “appetites” Jekyll experiences are never defined, the nature of their presentation renders them something unspeakable and terrible; something that would undoubtedly undo his reputation, his social standing and leave him a pariah amongst his contemporaries. It is immediately clear that these “appetites” are sensual -and very likely sexual- in nature. Even were it not the intent of the original text, it is very easy to read -especially through a post-modern eye- a parallel between the experiences of Jekyll and LGBTQ men and women in their places of work, families and social networks. Even at the time of writing, in late 2021, I know of LGBTQ people in my close circle of contacts who still fear being open about their identities in their social or professional circles for fear of reprisal and censure. This is precisely the place Jekyll finds himself in when he embarks on his grand experiment. Here we have a man who operates in a buttoned-down, highly conformist society, but who is intelligent, inspired, imaginative and highly regarded by all who come into contact with him. The motivation for embarking on his experiment is to separate what he considers his higher self from the lower, to engage a kind of spiritual amputation in which the “darker,” more atavistic and dionysian elements of his nature might be divorced from the milk and honey of the higher. 


Of course, this fails spectacularly, ostensibly as a result of some imperfection or contamination of the potion he concocts, but this is only from Jekyll's own self-serving speculation (and, as is made apparent throughout, one of Jekyll's chief flaws is his self-denialism; he refuses to take responsibility for “Hyde,” even when Hyde is an entirely abstract face for his lower nature). The subtler truth is that Jekyll and Hyde can never be separated; they are the same consciousness, emphasised differently, but fundamentally parts and particulars of one another. The effort of one to destroy or deny the other is what leads to the extreme expression and self-destruction that is inevitable from the moment Jekyll establishes a conflict with his own hidden self, the parts of his soul that Victorian society has taught him to deny and suppress. 


This, then, is the more sincere reading of the text: as a subtle, subversive condemnation of Victorian moral hypocrisy, a statement, however veiled, that repression of appetite leads to extreme expression thereof and, in certain circumstances, breeds monsters within us: 


I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each I told myself could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil. 


Hyde, despite pervasive misconception, is not the “dark side” of Jekyll; he is what is born when an ostensibly intelligent, healthy and enlightened man is taught to demonise himself, to deny parts of himself that are otherwise blameless. The fact that Hyde's appetites run to the violent in their excesses is an example of how repression and demonisation of elements of ourselves that are fundamental leads to them swelling and congealing in the manner of cancer. Whilst the appetites Jekyll himself secretly indulges -and excoriates himself for- are never detailed, it is clear that they are not violent in nature (Jekyll is the kind of man who would have either harmed himself or turned himself into the authorities were that the case). Rather, it is not problematic to conjecture that his twilight dalliances are sexual in nature, and likely illicit in some peculiar fashion. The unspoken implications of this hang heavy within the text, leaving the reader to determine what, exactly, Jekyll engages in and why it causes him such moral distress. 


Hyde is the manifestation of the repressed self; long before Freud and Jung et al would begin their studies into the human psyche, Robert Louis Stevenson dared to conjecture via his fiction that Victorian high society -of which he was a part- seethed and sagged with hypocrisy; that demons were breeding in the minds and souls of his contemporaries thanks to their self-denial, the culture of judgement and repression in which they operated. It is well known now, of course, that beneath the veneer of “polite” Victorian society, with all of its proscriptions and meticulous etiquette, lay a seething hotbed of drug-addiction, sexual license, violence, indulgence and any number of vices that operated in underground arenas, beyond sight and notice of those they might offend by their existence. In that, Jekyll and Hyde are Victoriana; personifications of culture itself, in all of its ambiguities, hypocrisies and neuroses. 


But they are also extremely brave -and somewhat scandalous, given the standards of the era- dissections of the human animal: to even talk of appetite in polite Victorian society in such a manner was deemed inapproproiate, especially in the literary circles where Stevenson operated. To have written and published a book such as this which directly comments upon it and overtly lambasts the moral hypocrisies of its own audience is almost self-destructive in its daring and contrariness. 


Whilst there is no direct commentary here on the status of LGBTQ people -either contemporary or present day-, the parallels are clear: Stevenson dares to draw a situation in which repression of the essential self, denial of appetites -that are not indulgences, as commonly defined, but essential to psychological health and mental wellbeing- quite literally leads a man to make a monster of himself. Hyde is not some Freudian release of the Id, as commonly understood, but a corruption of it made sick and violent by extreme repression. This is PRECISELY the situation many within the LGBTQ community face in cultures all around the world; it is no secret that we generally suffer more with mental health than our straight counterparts, nor that phenomena such as depression, anxiety and suicidal tendencies are extremely common amongst us. Whilst there are those that desperately try to cite that as evidence of some spiritual and/or innate flaw, the truth is far more prosaic and damning on a historical level: just as Jekyll is taught to demonise and repress elements of himself, so too are we, to the point that many of us suffer with internalised homophobia and/or transphobia throughout our lives. We are conditioned, even in cultures that generally consider themselves more “enlightened” on these matters, to regard ourselves as aberrant and lesser; to emulate our straight and cisgender counterparts as a price for “acceptance” into the meta-narratives of culture, the processes of politics, even the structures and traditions of family. 


Jekyll is a peculiarly queer-coded character for his era; a factor that is likely not conscious on Stevenson's part, but conspicuously apt given his status as someone operating on the fringes of what is deemed “society.” Even as Jekyll, the man is something of an enigma to those that know him; isolated, strange and intensely private. Once again, the ethos of a character with secrets, struggling with maintaining a public and private persona, is pronounced and obviously parallel to the dynamic in which many LGBTQ people find themselves. Hyde, on the other hand, is far more public and voluable than Jekyll and extremely at home in the world outside his door. In many respects, Hyde is the perfect creature of the Victorian night; a child spawned not from its diseased underbelly, but the pressures and proscriptions from higher quarters that necessitate that state of disease. Hyde, unlike Jekyll, is also unerringly straight: there is no ambiguity made of his sexuality, which is painted in fairly lurid colours for a character of his era: rapine, violent and predatory, he is as sincerely straight-coded as Jekyll is queer. That in itself lends credence to the notion of Hyde as a child of the repressions that Jekyll has been conditioned with all his life: he is not only id and appetite run amok; he is those factors of humanity mutilated, poisoned and perverted to serve a particular, public expectation: 


I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound forever on man’s shoulders; and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure. 


It's also significant to note that, throughout the book -which is told retrospectively through the accounts of Jekyll's few close acquaintances-, there is little-to-no indication of the truth that is now culturally enshrined and pervasive: that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. In the story, Hyde is painted as the unsavoury “friend” of Jekyll, who visits him at ungodly hours and seems to have some peculiar hold or sway over the “innocent” doctor. His friends even attempt to stage what would be now called an intervention, proclaiming that, no matter what hold Hyde has over him -what secrets he knows-, it is paramount that Jekyll turn him away and amputates their relationship for the sake of his own mental and physical wellbeing. 


Of course, Jekyll cannot comfortably do this. 


Even before Hyde becomes a fixture in his life, there is a suggestion of some lurid secret, some second, insalubrious existence that those closest to Jekyll suspect. The almost angelic face he is painted with in the earliest chapters is simply too pristine; a mask of shining sugar-work that cannot help but break and slough away. Again, parallels with LGBTQ experience are fairly clear; like Jekyll, so many of us present a particular face to friends, family and wider society, even when we operate in relative freedom and openness, whilst maintaining shadow lives beneath the surface. The state of repression breeds this dynamic, and creates the kind of internal fracture of self that Jekyll and Hyde have become euphemistic for. Furthermore, early in the story, it is suggested that Jekyll might have prevented his ultimate fate had he stopped at one experiment; he had no particular need to continually recreate the potion that facilitates his transformation, yet he does. There is an undeniable addiction in the release of Hyde, the unshackling of the mind from any strictures of shame or guilt afflicted upon it by a society informed by hypocritical censure and -largely class-dependent- repression. 


Yet, were Jekyll not to make that choice, were he to continue in his state of self-denial, it's not beyond the realms of conjecture that the negative qualities Hyde embodies would have festered inside, finding expression elsewhere and -potentially- in similarly destructive fashions. 


In the case of LGBTQ individuals, those expressions have, historically, almost always been self-destructive; we turn on ourselves, emotionally, mentally, even physically. Occasionally, we are even given to turn on one another, as a means of expressing externally the proscribed contempt of tradition and culture (the so-called “ex-gay” movement that was incredibly pervasive and lucrative during the early-to-mid 2000s in the US was almost entirely populated by individuals who expressed such dichotomies in their natures). 


Now, the conflation of repressed appetite and conditions of humanity with a creature as extreme and self-destructive as Hyde could be read as incredibly problematic; a condemnation of something within humanity itself (triply so when applied to LGBTQ themes and issues. There is more than one reading of the text that might just as well be considered homophobic, transphobic etc. There have certainly been adaptations of the story in the past that have emphasised those very qualities). 


However, when one considers that the pervasive reading of the juxtaposition between him and Jekyll is a misapprehension, largely brought about by simplified adaptations of the story for cinema and television, it becomes remarkably less so: Hyde is not human appetite in and of itself, nor is he an expression of any kind of sincere, misanthropic truth at the heart of humanity. Rather, he embodies appetite that is denied, sublimated, repressed and masked for the sake of propriety; the twisted, mutilated, diseased incarnation of all we are and might be, and a part of Jekyll that can never be exorcised, no matter how earnestly he tries; only understood. 


I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both...

Further Reading 

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET:  PART 2 [THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN 2021]

LOST SOULS  BY BILLY MARTIN (WRITING AS POPPY Z. BRITE) [13 FOR HALLOWEEN]

IN THE HILLS, THE CITIES BY CLIVE BARKER [FEATURE]
​
​THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN 2021: GONE HOME [FEATURE]

​LIFE IS STRANGE [THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN 2021]​

​Life is Strange is a rare and radiant beasty that came seemingly from nowhere, dropping into the independent video game scene of 2015 with a force and significance far outweighing any expectation. A radical experiment in almost every way, the game was not released as a completed work but in episodic form as “chapters,” before garnering enough of an audience to warrant a more traditional, commercial release in later years. 


Given how quickly video game culture moves and evolves, it might seem trite to say that the landscape of 2015 was exceedingly different from the present day: whilst the independent gaming scene was expanding exponentially and new, theretofore unheard voices proliferated with the rampancy of wildflowers, it was still very much the case that mainstream video game markets were extremely conservative, pandering to very particular, exclusive demographics whose assumptions and narratives had come to pervade the medium. 


Life is Strange is one of several titles responsible for changing that. A peculiar narrative exercise, it foregoes most templates of genre or tradition and strains to be its own, peculiar species of entity. Ostensibly a point and click adventure, the game incorporates very little in the way of action set pieces or arcade-style button mashing, opting instead for a quieter, more sedate and atmospheric experience that is as enthralling as it was unusual for the time. 


The central mechanic revolves around protagonist Max Caulfield (yes, that is a deliberate reference to Catcher in the Rhye, which is one of the central influences on the game's mythology and narrative) being able to mentally rewind time to greater or lesser degrees, and thereby change events around her to better suit her designs and desires. In technical terms, this provides the player a highly unusual puzzle-solving dynamic; in those scenes and set pieces where particular actions are called for, the player can allow events to play out and then rewind them, intervening at key moments to ensure they play out differently. 


But this is not merely a technical exercise; the game succicntly interweaves the mechanism with its own mythology, making Max and her powers the fulcrum around which the plot pivots. Ultimately, Max discovers that her powers are far more profound than she ever realised; that, in extremis, she can alter significant or radical lifetime events to fracture causality and create entire different timelines. 


However, what ostensibly seems like positive interventions often lead to terrible consequences; people she knew and loved in one timelines become different people entirely in those she has established through her actions. Tragedies that seemed like the worst of all possible outcomes lead to later connections and relationships that simply don't occur if they aren't allowed to play out as they should. 


Ultimately, Max -and her childhood best friend, Chloe- embark on a journey of self-disovery and actualisation via Max's powers, by which they uncover dark secrets of their own pasts, that of the town in which they grew up, and come to realise some sense of identity through their relationship with one another. 


This is, perhaps, the game's greatest narrative ploy; whilst it maintains throughout elements of science fiction and horror, the true tension derives from Max and Chloe as characters and how they relate to one another. Estranged since late childhood thanks to Max's family moving away from their hometown of Arcadia Bay, they come together again through an unlikely series of circumstances that initially spark Max's time-warping capabilities.


From her introduction, it's clear Chloe would have become a queer icon even were it not for the twists and turns her and Max's relationship take: a gender-proscription-flouting, punkish, rebellious late-teen, she is the very embodiment of a 2000s American youth; lost in the swirling maelstrom of cruelty and hypocrisy of the culture she is born to, flailing for some sense of identity, of who she truly is, in a world that will punish her for realising it. In that, she and Max are intertwined on a spiritual level; they both see and operate in ways that are beyond the designs and impositions of their hometown's “little America,” conservative culture, even of the family dynamics in which they find themselves. 


This alone would have likely made the game extremely attractive to LGBTQ youth, since these are tensions that we naturally wrestle with throughout our lives. However, the game is brave enough not to just let these matters lie in the abstract: 


One of the key decisions in the game allows Max and Chloe's relationship to take another turn, from the platonic into the romantic. 


Once again, in the arena of video games, this degree of representation was extremely rare at the time, especially with regards to young women. Stories of queer youth tended towards the exclusively male, and often occurred in a manner that relied on stereotype and proscribed narrative rather than allowing the dynamics to develop naturally. 


Here, Max and Chloe's relationship is not only believable in its complexity, but also develops in such a manner that will be familiar to many who experienced similar during their formative years. The game doesn't stray too deeply into the politics of their relationship, prefering instead to explore what it means for them as individuals, with reference to the identities they are building together. This, in turn, makes it one of the most natural and sincere video game romances that exists, thrown into harsh distinction against a backdrop of mystery, patriarchal horror and impending calamity. 


Homaging the likes of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, a central focus of the plot involves a misogynistic serial killer who murdered a girl whom the town generally adored, but who is revealed to have had a dark and mysterious life beyond the public eye. Together, Max and Chloe uncover the truth of her disappearance, leading to one of the game's more biting commentaries: 


The culprit of the murders ultimately turns out to be one of the game's many flawed Father figures; a teacher and photographer who has an especial relationship with Max and is extremely encouraging of her photography work. Like most of the icons of patriarchy in the game, he is revealed as being a source of danger and disturbance rather than wisdom; not a shepherd, but the most rabid and diseased of wolves. This factor is consistent throughout the game; Father figures are either absent, impotent or directly abusive, whilst the patriarchal culture of the town in which they occur always leads to the demeaning and denigration of women. 


Chloe and Max thereby represent the potential to transcend that twisted engine; they have the means of turning away from it, defying it, not through Max's powers, but through their relationship with one another. 


This is one the many ways in which Life is Strange elevates the conversation regarding LGBTQ representation; far from merely arguing that queer people have a right to exist, it dares to say that through our relationships and self-realisations, we can be more and better and more beautiful than the cultures that birth us. We have the means of perceiving and combatting their myriad, enshrined and accepted evils in a manner that, for the most part, our straight counterparts do not. 


This comes to a head in perhaps the game's most controversial moment; a single binary decision in which Max can choose to save Arcadia Bay from destruction or Chloe from certain death. The choice comes down to one between tradition and conformity, nostalgia and sentiment or love, forging one's own tomorrow and the potential for better days that her relationship with Chloe represents. 


Whilst the game came in for some criticism for the binary nature of the choice, in thematic terms, it underlines beautifully the same decisions so many of us who identify as LGBTQ have to make: do we conform, do we stay quiet and sacrifice the lives we could live for the cruel comfort of others, or do we dare break the engines we were born to by living as we are and inhabiting the states we dream of? 


That decision is left -quite cannnily- up to the player. Having discussed the matter with many of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters, I know what side we tend to err on. 

Further Reading 

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET:  PART 2 [THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN 2021]

LOST SOULS  BY BILLY MARTIN (WRITING AS POPPY Z. BRITE) [13 FOR HALLOWEEN]

IN THE HILLS, THE CITIES BY CLIVE BARKER [FEATURE]
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​THIRTEEN FOR HALLOWEEN 2021: GONE HOME [FEATURE]

​Here's the thing with LGBTQ themes in horror (and, indeed, all media): there are those works that go at it with deliberate and conscious intention, that incorporate those factors as integral parts of what they are. Then there are those that don't intend anything of the sort, but owing to some quirks in their production, end up becoming icons of unwitting -or, perhaps, sublimated- queerness. 


A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 2 falls squarely into the latter category. Whilst incorporating no -ostensibly- LGBTQ characters at all, the film is a Pride Parade of unintentional campery, homoerotica and rainbow-hued horror. 


Foregoing the more concerted disturbia of the original film, this first of many sequels is the beginning of the series' inevitable slide into self-parody. Freddy Krueger, an entity of sincere threat and disturbing supernatural horror in the original film, here begins his transition into the familiar, wise-cracking anti-hero that the franchise will eventually revolve around. The horror set-pieces are generally played more for gallows humor than genuine tension or disturbance; even most of the murders, grotesque as they are, are framed in such a manner that they maintain a camp, black comedy beneath the gore and elaborate mutlation. Freddy himself undercuts whatever horror the audience might experience with wisecrack after wisecrack, which eventually serves to shunt the film more into the realms of horror-comedy than any sincere sequel to the original.


That said, the film has maintained a certain fascination above and beyond most of the other sequels in the franchise, owing to the subtext of homosexuality that runs throughout. Whilst no character is particularly marked out as gay or even queer in and of themselves, there are factors that are more than a little suggestive at various intervals: 


Take, for example, protagonist Jesse: whilst ostensibly romantically interested in one of his (female) classmates, his role in the film is a proxy for the original film's Nancy, whose prophetic dreams concerning Freddy Krueger he shares. Likewise, his trajectory in the film is redolent of what has become -problematically- known as the “Final Girl” trope; the last survivor of a horror serial killer's rampage, who usually occurs in the closing sequences for one final scare. 


Beyond that, Jesse's framing is unusual for horror films of the era; much of it requires him to be in states of sleep or having just woken, meaning that he is often all but naked, sheened in sweat and curiously sexualised in a manner reminiscent of soft-core gay pornography. This may be simply a quirk of the directorial style of the film, but seems to be bizarrely deliberate, as though the film makers are trying to inject a commentary that they couldn't make directly owing to studio mandate or perhaps just good, old fashioned culturally-prevalent homophobia. Making the male protagonist a proxy of the female characters that came before -and that predominate horror of the era in general- makes for as fascinating commentary in and of itself, deliberately or otherwise subverting proscriptions of both masculinity and femininity, making Jesse a curious focal point for numerous LGBTQ concerns.

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Jesse's relationships are also highly redolent of those LGBTQ youth faced in the 1980s when struggling with their identities: whilst he ostensibly has crushes on female classmates, his most abiding and intense relationship is with bully-turned-confidante Grady, with whom Jesse shares several scenes that verge on the homoerotic. Their relationship, beginning with violence, becomes physically intimate in a manner somewhat beyond friendship, suggesting that one or both may be struggling with their identities. 


This, of course, fits neatly into the central conceit of the film in which Jesse is effectively becoming Freddy Krueger during his nightmares, providing a medium or gateway through which the supernatural monster can stalk and murder his victims. Throughout the film, Jesse is forced to confront certain changes and unwelcome feelings occuring inside of him as a result of Freddy's influence; a factor not unlike a young, gay youth dealing with internalised homophobia. Whilst perhaps unintentional, this seems to be a consistent reading of the film in years since: Krueger represents -and, to a degree, embodies- the culturally pervasive demonisation of LGBTQ people which Jesse, being a child of that era, has internalised. It's only by mastering himself, gaining some control over his identity and emotions, that he manages to defeat Freddy and prevent the demon from emerging again. 


One could derive any number of metaphorical implications from this: making Freddy a manifestation of homophobic narrative makes a great deal of sense given his origin story and the pervasive fears and distorted myths regarding LGBTQ people throughout the 1980s. Jesse's fear of being gay -or perhaps bi- serve to feed and resurrect Freddy as a manifestation of all he secretly most dreads in himself. 


This element, however metaphorical, is compounded by certain decisions the film makes: during one of his blackouts, Jesse is discovered by his school coach at a gay fetish bar, which in itself might be a more-than-heavy-handed suggestion of what the film ultimately wants to say, but is prevented from in any direct fashion. Likewise, Jesse seems to be framed and presented in the same manner that over-sexualised female protagonists and characters of horror franchises of the era generally were: there are numerous scenes in which he is showering, semi-naked, engaged in some intimate activity more commonly associated with female characters. This may be a thematic by-product of the film attempting to put him in the place of Nancy from the original, but even that has the effect of shunting a male character out of their traditional framing and into a condition in which proscriptions of “masculinity,” sexual identity and gender become questionable. 


Perhaps most revealing of all is his relatinship with Grady: whilst the two begin as enemies, even that dynamic has a subtle, homosexual undercurrent: the initial physical violence is a precursor to physical intimacy, this film's way of introducing male on male physicality in a manner conducive to certain proscribed expectations of genre and gender. This quickly transitions, however, into intimacy of a very different kind: whilst the two never -overtly- engage in any romantic activity, the fact that Jesse trusts Grady above and beyond anyone else with what's happening to him is a barely-coded metaphor for LGBTQ youth “coming out” to a friend who they have a crush on. The fact that Jesse chooses Grady to confide in above and beyond his female friends is significant, as is the fact that Grady accepts him and believes him, even agreeing to watch over him while he sleeps in case Freddy should emerge (which, of course, he does). 


Grady's murder at the hands of Freddy during this encounter thereby becomes more than just the latest “kill;” it is a metaphorical representation of the relationships destroyed or never even begun thanks to internalised homophobia. Freddy, being the manifestation of 1980s demonisation of homosexuality, slaughters the subject of Jesse's sublimated homosexual desires, a murder that is psychologically ritualistic and has certain wider implications given that Freddy, it seems, can only murder with Jesse's subconscious permission (later in the film, Jesse prevents him from killing other characters by exerting influence over him from within). 


Freddy in this film is a subtly different monster from the original; in that film, he represents the sins of the Fathers, a cruel past taking its toll not on those who were directly responsible, but on their children (a dynamic that any child of the 1980s and 1990s will be immediately familiar with). Here, that dynamic definitely exists, but is rendered more specific thanks to the LGBTQ subtext that pulses beneath every scene: 


He is culturally proscribed, internalised homophobia: the fear of the self that LGBTQ youth of the era were afflicted with almost universally, and which crippled so many emotionally to the point of neurosis and even suicidal tendencies. All of this is bound up in Freddy's peculiar dynamic with Jesse, and the fact that Krueger is able to kill other youths through him as a result of his fear: the commentary is fairly plain, if one takes the time to analyse beyond the surface: traditional bigotry murders our children. It turns them against themselves and against one another, enjoining them to destroy what they might otherwise love.