A review by __nyx__
Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors by Michael Bailey, Doug Murano
3.0
Collections are both risky and exciting. It is a risk to commit to the excitement of not knowing what to expect, and to veer away from the simplistic choice of one author, one voice.
In all honesty, I gave up after Brains. I still read on, but I feel like most of this collection was either too chaotic, or utterly underwhelming.
Primarily, it had too many authors and their work portrayed too much variance in style. I think maybe a lack of consistency in reading demotivated me. Am I too used to reading linear fiction? Maybe it’s not the collection itself. Maybe it’s me. I quite liked the theoretical perspectives in the Foreword. Maybe my research brain is too activated to appreciate creative means. However, where I felt the need to comment (mainly after a particular story), I have done so below:
A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping into a Dark Room
Phenomenal how the writer turned the story not to face you, but to come out from within you. Applicable to every man whose life is determined by inevitable morality. The horror is in its stark reality. I’m now conscious of my heart. Too conscious.
Matryoshka
The notion of ‘filling yourself’ with what you lack, and replacing that emptiness with something you did not expect to be there, proves itself an adhesive for sanity. The Matryoshka doll lacking what it may house offers so much open potential. The excitement of it all. I love this metaphor and I am trying to encapsulate it in my own life. I thought I could represent an idea similar to this with the Japanese act of breaking something and gluing it back together with gold leaf – broken, but not useless. Broken, but with another chance. But that was my initial thought.. until I read on. Instead, it alludes to sacrifice. Why must we sacrifice ourselves for another? Why can’t we address parts of ourselves we work so hard around and ultimately leave behind?
Butcher’s Blend
The notion of being ‘Disinvited – [to] reject your place in a society that wants to hold you in its loving embrace.’ It then results in ‘correction’ – such a dystopic ideal, no? We live in said society in any case. I’ve always questioned the notion of ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘terrible’. It’s all that you make of it, personally. Accompanied with your personal grievances, circumstances, celebrations, quirks, norms, fetishes, kinks. So how can one person’s ideas, provided on the basis of said experiences, be rightfully placed above another’s? If, for the good of all, who encompasses ‘all’? Does anyone have any rights, morally speaking, or not? And for what end-game? Control? Order? A comforting sense of expectation and familiarity? To nestle safely into the arms of routine and repetition? This is why I have been on the fence for most of my whole life with whether to trust or sympathise for the guard or the prisoner. We are all imprisoned, regardless, by the need to be ‘good’, ‘for the good’. Given this, are we truly ourselves? Maybe it’s good to be ‘Disinvited’. The ‘corrections’ that follow are just constructed societal ideals, anyway. And, as aforementioned, we have them in our own worlds. It’s interesting, also, that they should mention they’re ‘improving God’s work’. Can it ever be improved? To say it needs improvement is to insinuate it is not perfect, however nobody should strive towards perfection because the idea itself is also a construct.
‘That was the trouble when everyone around you was just as scared: lots of hands but no lifelines’. We are so quick to decide against helping someone else, that we forget what we would expect were we in the same or a similar situation. This reminds me a lot of ‘not waving but drowning’ by Stevie Smith; that even after visible signs of distress, someone can still be so insensitive.
My highlight of this story was the analogy of the leaf: “you’re like that experiment with the leaves. […] a series of trials that suggested life, matter, organized itself around energy fields. The researchers had photographed tree leaves via spectrums of light human eyes didn’t normally see, to reveal a glow in the shape of each leaf. When they snipped away a portion of the leaves and took new photos, the glow was still there, as if they could cut away the matter but couldn’t break the field. The leaves still knew what they were meant to be.” Seldom do we recognise, appreciate, and recall who we are beneath the masks we don. The ones we don so proudly and even still, switch out on certain occasions.
The additional notable moments in this story, I have found, are:
“Because people talked, people shared. Over a meal here, three seconds in a corridor there. They talked to make it through another day. They talked to better understand the enemy. You never knew when the softest whisper might land in just the right ear. Someone who needed to hear it; someone who might be in a position to do something more about it.”
“Without thought, he followed nature’s contours, let himself be guided by structure and cavities. Even in the densest joint there were spaces between, and the edge of his knife was honed to nothingness. He had but to slip the nothingness into the gaps, and as he worked it through, it would part the rest aside.”
“He did without having to force. He tried without trying. His hand, and the knife it held, simply followed the Way. In nineteen years, Butcher Ding had never needed to sharpen his blade, yet it remained as keen as it was when it had last left the grindstone.”
“The only easy day was yesterday. ”
“I got hate enough in me for who’s earned it and love enough for the rest.”
“it was important—very important—to know when and what to sacrifice.”
Operations Other than War
Is opportunity a “product of privileged upbringing”?
“But that was the difference between man and machine, wasn’t it: A battery could be recharged. Dead to the world and yet …”. I wonder then of the weakness in either humanity, or morality. Are we weak because we are human? Or are we human because we are weak?
One Day of Inside/Out
I firmly believe I did not quite grasp the concept of this story. But whilst reading it, I had flashbacks of every gory video or movie I have scene. And the most that bothered me about this was that I didn’t feel too bothered at all.
One Last Transformation
‘If you decide to do it, you’re doing it.’ The impulse to want to do something is just as effective as doing the thing itself. Does this relate to the concept of ‘emotional’ as opposed to real life cheating? Or maybe this concept, this story, relates moreso to the transformation we go through when we take drugs. The ‘demon in us’ is perhaps our desire. It is indeed addicted, and indeed unkind. But then I circulate my thoughts back to my classroom, on days where teaching is hard. Such as today. Why do students not listen? Why is refusal so common? Why not sit there and enjoy the ponderings of varying ideations? But then… why enforce it unto others?
‘But haven’t you heard of the man who quit smoking by keeping cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt? Way he saw it, that horrid desperation, that feeling of being so far from what he longed for, would never come to pass. Rather, it was right there, at his fingertips if he so desired. And while desire it he did, he could wait, knowing where it was’ - ah, the pull and irrationality of desire.
Brains
I don’t understand the need to separate perverts from monsters; aren’t the two the same? Anyhow, I am not interested in a forum-type posting kind of writing. This book really proves to be a letdown with such mixture of writing types. Yes, I am all for individual approaches to literature expression, but this is just too little of interest to me. I’ll admit it was hard to get into this one, even with the attempts at wit.
You are my Neighbour
What
The Vodyanoy
Very Jim Jones-like. If Jim Jones was a woman. And if the female Jim Jones was scorned by a tedious boyfriend. And if the female Jim Jones then decided to wreak havoc upon their tedious boyfriend and his family.
Imperfect Clay
I too wanted more almond milk when I first chanced upon it. Aside from this, I don’t quite share the hatred this woman has for the male species and their tendencies to dominate relationships. You cannot change someone. Even someone you create. They exist as they are and as they like, just like you too do.
Spectral Evidence
Okay, so maybe I got back into the text again. ‘I thrive on the self-doubt’. This got to me. Perhaps we all do. Isn’t it great, being your own critic? Nobody else can harm you as much as you harm yourself. This is why I make so many fat jokes about myself. Even to this day. Maybe it hurts less if I hurt myself.
Ode to Joad the Toad
The name alone first caught my attention. Then my partner’s willingness for me to read it. And then, the text itself.
‘the kingdoms of men shall endure naught but woe’ - how very Game of Thrones like; is it because I am watching the series at the moment? Possibly. I do enjoy this story. I’ll admit it has lost me over and over, but I read on.
‘Sleep well and dream a red dream of butchery in the name of your old king.’
Other than the many quips in this story, something funny happened in real life - a group of year 12 students were standing outside of the room I was supervising in, saying “bro” this and “bro” that. The class I was supervising had 23 minutes left to complete their practice exam - as you can imagine, bro, this would prove difficult under the circumstance had someone repeated statements containing the word ‘bro’ in it. So I ducked my head out of the room and said, “hey bro, can you keep it down bro? We are doing a practice test in here bro.” He could only muster a “sorry”. I told the year 11s that they “have 23 more minutes, bro.” I hope that helped ease the pressures of examinations. Schools are treacherous.
Only Bruises are Permanent
It’s quite sad how permanent this belief remains amongst many women. Scorned and scorned over and over, time and time again. I mean, it’s partly why I have no trust in the male species. To see the horror that is seeking comfort from what remains from pain, that is terrifying.
My Knowing Glance
The concept of using men’s sexual weaknesses as a financial gain is amusing to me still. This story feels like the personification, or monsterfying of sexual diseases through the concept of PVG. Very interesting.
Paper Doll Hyperplane
I fucking LOVE the theories and references this one contains. What an interesting hybrid short story. ‘To isolate a solution, one must properly define the problem.’ The problem IS that there are not enough writers who write in a chaotic manner such as this. The solution is NOT that we need more, as even if I do love this writing style, I am thrown all over the place mentally. I did however enjoy this ride. And what a trip. Even though the one typo in the story annoyed me, I was more annoyed that there wasn’t much more of it. This should definitely be extended into a novel. I would read the shit out of this. I hope this book finds its way among the lesser books, hehe.
Not Eradicated in You
Oh man, this was a really cool story too. Echoes too deeply within the likes of Gaiman’s Coraline, though. The concept of the other mother. Except this is a mother that Harlow actually wanted, not stumbled upon. That she worked hard for, and saved up for in just as much money as she had in yearning.
Resurrection Points
Interesting to see the feuds my family so often warned and spoke about represented in modern and horror fiction. The irony in this is that despite one’s skill in understanding death, one cannot quite understand the way of life. Certainly not in some cultures. And certainly not in these. It’s something that probably never will be quelled, despite any, if any, efforts to do so.
The Making of Asylum Ophelia
I hope to never be a Firm Brigitte - but in the horrors of everyday society, how can one not be? How much is too much? How little is too little? I am glad I am yet to navigate the horrors of motherhood. I suppose this story also illustrates how frightening it can be to stick too closely, look too into an idea. In this case, the idea of a name. You can bestow meaning upon a name, but can you bestow a name’s meaning upon its owner? Irony, irony, horror in irony.
Frankenstein’s Daughter
Yes yes and yes to sisters in science. The horror of the reclamation of agency, of conquering your creator and for performing utterly autonomous tasks and proclivities.
In all honesty, I gave up after Brains. I still read on, but I feel like most of this collection was either too chaotic, or utterly underwhelming.
Primarily, it had too many authors and their work portrayed too much variance in style. I think maybe a lack of consistency in reading demotivated me. Am I too used to reading linear fiction? Maybe it’s not the collection itself. Maybe it’s me. I quite liked the theoretical perspectives in the Foreword. Maybe my research brain is too activated to appreciate creative means. However, where I felt the need to comment (mainly after a particular story), I have done so below:
A Heart Arrhythmia Creeping into a Dark Room
Phenomenal how the writer turned the story not to face you, but to come out from within you. Applicable to every man whose life is determined by inevitable morality. The horror is in its stark reality. I’m now conscious of my heart. Too conscious.
Matryoshka
The notion of ‘filling yourself’ with what you lack, and replacing that emptiness with something you did not expect to be there, proves itself an adhesive for sanity. The Matryoshka doll lacking what it may house offers so much open potential. The excitement of it all. I love this metaphor and I am trying to encapsulate it in my own life. I thought I could represent an idea similar to this with the Japanese act of breaking something and gluing it back together with gold leaf – broken, but not useless. Broken, but with another chance. But that was my initial thought.. until I read on. Instead, it alludes to sacrifice. Why must we sacrifice ourselves for another? Why can’t we address parts of ourselves we work so hard around and ultimately leave behind?
Butcher’s Blend
The notion of being ‘Disinvited – [to] reject your place in a society that wants to hold you in its loving embrace.’ It then results in ‘correction’ – such a dystopic ideal, no? We live in said society in any case. I’ve always questioned the notion of ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘terrible’. It’s all that you make of it, personally. Accompanied with your personal grievances, circumstances, celebrations, quirks, norms, fetishes, kinks. So how can one person’s ideas, provided on the basis of said experiences, be rightfully placed above another’s? If, for the good of all, who encompasses ‘all’? Does anyone have any rights, morally speaking, or not? And for what end-game? Control? Order? A comforting sense of expectation and familiarity? To nestle safely into the arms of routine and repetition? This is why I have been on the fence for most of my whole life with whether to trust or sympathise for the guard or the prisoner. We are all imprisoned, regardless, by the need to be ‘good’, ‘for the good’. Given this, are we truly ourselves? Maybe it’s good to be ‘Disinvited’. The ‘corrections’ that follow are just constructed societal ideals, anyway. And, as aforementioned, we have them in our own worlds. It’s interesting, also, that they should mention they’re ‘improving God’s work’. Can it ever be improved? To say it needs improvement is to insinuate it is not perfect, however nobody should strive towards perfection because the idea itself is also a construct.
‘That was the trouble when everyone around you was just as scared: lots of hands but no lifelines’. We are so quick to decide against helping someone else, that we forget what we would expect were we in the same or a similar situation. This reminds me a lot of ‘not waving but drowning’ by Stevie Smith; that even after visible signs of distress, someone can still be so insensitive.
My highlight of this story was the analogy of the leaf: “you’re like that experiment with the leaves. […] a series of trials that suggested life, matter, organized itself around energy fields. The researchers had photographed tree leaves via spectrums of light human eyes didn’t normally see, to reveal a glow in the shape of each leaf. When they snipped away a portion of the leaves and took new photos, the glow was still there, as if they could cut away the matter but couldn’t break the field. The leaves still knew what they were meant to be.” Seldom do we recognise, appreciate, and recall who we are beneath the masks we don. The ones we don so proudly and even still, switch out on certain occasions.
The additional notable moments in this story, I have found, are:
“Because people talked, people shared. Over a meal here, three seconds in a corridor there. They talked to make it through another day. They talked to better understand the enemy. You never knew when the softest whisper might land in just the right ear. Someone who needed to hear it; someone who might be in a position to do something more about it.”
“Without thought, he followed nature’s contours, let himself be guided by structure and cavities. Even in the densest joint there were spaces between, and the edge of his knife was honed to nothingness. He had but to slip the nothingness into the gaps, and as he worked it through, it would part the rest aside.”
“He did without having to force. He tried without trying. His hand, and the knife it held, simply followed the Way. In nineteen years, Butcher Ding had never needed to sharpen his blade, yet it remained as keen as it was when it had last left the grindstone.”
“The only easy day was yesterday. ”
“I got hate enough in me for who’s earned it and love enough for the rest.”
“it was important—very important—to know when and what to sacrifice.”
Operations Other than War
Is opportunity a “product of privileged upbringing”?
“But that was the difference between man and machine, wasn’t it: A battery could be recharged. Dead to the world and yet …”. I wonder then of the weakness in either humanity, or morality. Are we weak because we are human? Or are we human because we are weak?
One Day of Inside/Out
I firmly believe I did not quite grasp the concept of this story. But whilst reading it, I had flashbacks of every gory video or movie I have scene. And the most that bothered me about this was that I didn’t feel too bothered at all.
One Last Transformation
‘If you decide to do it, you’re doing it.’ The impulse to want to do something is just as effective as doing the thing itself. Does this relate to the concept of ‘emotional’ as opposed to real life cheating? Or maybe this concept, this story, relates moreso to the transformation we go through when we take drugs. The ‘demon in us’ is perhaps our desire. It is indeed addicted, and indeed unkind. But then I circulate my thoughts back to my classroom, on days where teaching is hard. Such as today. Why do students not listen? Why is refusal so common? Why not sit there and enjoy the ponderings of varying ideations? But then… why enforce it unto others?
‘But haven’t you heard of the man who quit smoking by keeping cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt? Way he saw it, that horrid desperation, that feeling of being so far from what he longed for, would never come to pass. Rather, it was right there, at his fingertips if he so desired. And while desire it he did, he could wait, knowing where it was’ - ah, the pull and irrationality of desire.
Brains
I don’t understand the need to separate perverts from monsters; aren’t the two the same? Anyhow, I am not interested in a forum-type posting kind of writing. This book really proves to be a letdown with such mixture of writing types. Yes, I am all for individual approaches to literature expression, but this is just too little of interest to me. I’ll admit it was hard to get into this one, even with the attempts at wit.
You are my Neighbour
What
The Vodyanoy
Very Jim Jones-like. If Jim Jones was a woman. And if the female Jim Jones was scorned by a tedious boyfriend. And if the female Jim Jones then decided to wreak havoc upon their tedious boyfriend and his family.
Imperfect Clay
I too wanted more almond milk when I first chanced upon it. Aside from this, I don’t quite share the hatred this woman has for the male species and their tendencies to dominate relationships. You cannot change someone. Even someone you create. They exist as they are and as they like, just like you too do.
Spectral Evidence
Okay, so maybe I got back into the text again. ‘I thrive on the self-doubt’. This got to me. Perhaps we all do. Isn’t it great, being your own critic? Nobody else can harm you as much as you harm yourself. This is why I make so many fat jokes about myself. Even to this day. Maybe it hurts less if I hurt myself.
Ode to Joad the Toad
The name alone first caught my attention. Then my partner’s willingness for me to read it. And then, the text itself.
‘the kingdoms of men shall endure naught but woe’ - how very Game of Thrones like; is it because I am watching the series at the moment? Possibly. I do enjoy this story. I’ll admit it has lost me over and over, but I read on.
‘Sleep well and dream a red dream of butchery in the name of your old king.’
Other than the many quips in this story, something funny happened in real life - a group of year 12 students were standing outside of the room I was supervising in, saying “bro” this and “bro” that. The class I was supervising had 23 minutes left to complete their practice exam - as you can imagine, bro, this would prove difficult under the circumstance had someone repeated statements containing the word ‘bro’ in it. So I ducked my head out of the room and said, “hey bro, can you keep it down bro? We are doing a practice test in here bro.” He could only muster a “sorry”. I told the year 11s that they “have 23 more minutes, bro.” I hope that helped ease the pressures of examinations. Schools are treacherous.
Only Bruises are Permanent
It’s quite sad how permanent this belief remains amongst many women. Scorned and scorned over and over, time and time again. I mean, it’s partly why I have no trust in the male species. To see the horror that is seeking comfort from what remains from pain, that is terrifying.
My Knowing Glance
The concept of using men’s sexual weaknesses as a financial gain is amusing to me still. This story feels like the personification, or monsterfying of sexual diseases through the concept of PVG. Very interesting.
Paper Doll Hyperplane
I fucking LOVE the theories and references this one contains. What an interesting hybrid short story. ‘To isolate a solution, one must properly define the problem.’ The problem IS that there are not enough writers who write in a chaotic manner such as this. The solution is NOT that we need more, as even if I do love this writing style, I am thrown all over the place mentally. I did however enjoy this ride. And what a trip. Even though the one typo in the story annoyed me, I was more annoyed that there wasn’t much more of it. This should definitely be extended into a novel. I would read the shit out of this. I hope this book finds its way among the lesser books, hehe.
Not Eradicated in You
Oh man, this was a really cool story too. Echoes too deeply within the likes of Gaiman’s Coraline, though. The concept of the other mother. Except this is a mother that Harlow actually wanted, not stumbled upon. That she worked hard for, and saved up for in just as much money as she had in yearning.
Resurrection Points
Interesting to see the feuds my family so often warned and spoke about represented in modern and horror fiction. The irony in this is that despite one’s skill in understanding death, one cannot quite understand the way of life. Certainly not in some cultures. And certainly not in these. It’s something that probably never will be quelled, despite any, if any, efforts to do so.
The Making of Asylum Ophelia
I hope to never be a Firm Brigitte - but in the horrors of everyday society, how can one not be? How much is too much? How little is too little? I am glad I am yet to navigate the horrors of motherhood. I suppose this story also illustrates how frightening it can be to stick too closely, look too into an idea. In this case, the idea of a name. You can bestow meaning upon a name, but can you bestow a name’s meaning upon its owner? Irony, irony, horror in irony.
Frankenstein’s Daughter
Yes yes and yes to sisters in science. The horror of the reclamation of agency, of conquering your creator and for performing utterly autonomous tasks and proclivities.