Vampire Tarot Interview

May 8, 2009 3:30 PM

Follow-up: An interview on my blog with Robert M. Place, whom I posted about last November.

I don't know Place at all, I approached him about an interview long after my post to the blue. Thread's closed now, or I would have updated there.

posted by hermitosis to MetaFilter-related at 3:30 PM (21 comments total)

That thing right there you just walked up to was a fine line. You're probably on the right side of it, but damn it sure does look fine.
posted by mediareport at 3:41 PM on May 8

This is a worthwhile update. The whole angle on "why would Dracula care about England" wasn't explored in the original post, and it really helps to clarify where this guy is coming from, insofar as the evolution of the animus and why it makes sense to create tarot decks based on legends from disparate times and cultures.
posted by bingo at 4:33 PM on May 8

I'm surprised you didn't put this in Projects, hermitosis. It's an update, but it's also very much a self-link.
posted by onalark at 5:30 PM on May 8

I approve of this update.
posted by The Whelk at 5:56 PM on May 8

I'll say he danced right up to the line, but that's because I just wanted to make jokes about gothic dancing, involving the "wrist stapled to the forehead." However, that isn't covered in the above guide, & instead there's much more coverage of "hand to the forehead." Which is tragic. TRAGIC.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about?
posted by Pronoiac at 6:04 PM on May 8

It's one of those things where, like, is it a zero-tolerance policy where a kid who brings a butter knife to school gets suspended, or is it a policy that exhibits a bit of intelligence and context behind it.
posted by kbanas at 6:22 PM on May 8

"What are you gonna do, spread us to death?"
posted by bingo at 6:52 PM on May 8

hermitosis doesn't give a fuck about the self-link worry-brigade. He knows his shit is righteous so he just puts it right out there for everyone to smell.
posted by mullacc at 7:04 PM on May 8

CAN YOU SMMMEEEEEELLLLL WHAT THE HERMITOSIS IS COOKIN'????!
posted by kkokkodalk at 7:05 PM on May 8

Follow up: Andy Warhol may have eaten a cheeseburger while pointedly not noticing the camera, but that sad little fucker can't touch this.
posted by Meatbomb at 7:25 PM on May 8

A single interview or post doesn't belong in projects, so I say in the lack of a better place, this is as right of a place as any to post a follow-up.

It is cool that you got to engage someone you wrote about. Will check out both tomorrow.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:32 PM on May 8

Follow up: A post in my blog talks about how much I like popcorn.
posted by qvantamon at 8:32 PM on May 8

It's one of those things where, like, is it a zero-tolerance policy where a kid who brings a butter knife to school gets suspended, or is it a policy that exhibits a bit of intelligence and context behind it.

I trust you'll adopt the same tolerant approach to all the subsequent people who decide to promote their blogs here after having first prefaced them with FPP's on a related subject?

(This comment comes courtesy of our sponsor, BlackPhoenixAlchemyLab.com)
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:12 AM on May 9

I was as straightforward as possible with this post so that there was no mistaking the nature of it. That way people can click and have fun reading about Dracula, or not, whichever.

Based on a conversation I had with cortex a while back about re-posting to Projects, I knew it wasn't appropriate to put this there. I considered seeing if some other mefite wanted to post it for me, in hopes of remove that self-linky edge, but the more I thought about this the more tiresome an option it seemed -- if it's a valid update to the previous post (and I feel that it is) then I should just be able to post it without worrying that someone thinks that I'm going to make 30 cents off of it or get an awkward boner from all the attention.

If this was something I used MeTa for habitually I think consternation would be quite understandable, but like most mefites I post here as rarely as possible. I interview a lot of people, and some of my previous interviewees have also been individuals that I first heard about via posts on the blue, and on occasion I've linked to them in those threads while they were still open. Judicious, relevant, supplemental self-linking isn't forbidden in comments on MeFi and AskMe, but if those threads are no longer open then my choices are to either forget about it completely or post here. I thought it was worth sharing.

If anyone besides Pete McD thinks I have the foresight to plan stunt promotional posts (to the grey of all places) six months in advance, then I guess there's really no debating the matter with you. And for the record, I do run an ad on my site, for which I get paid a flat rate with no adjustments based on traffic (an arrangement which works out in my favor instead of theirs about 99% of the time).
posted by hermitosis at 7:40 AM on May 9

I had a lot of fun reading it. I just got through grading a bunch of final exams comparing the vampire mythologies of Anne Rice, Let the Right One In and... Lost Boys. So, this was rereshing.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:20 AM on May 9

Was anyone but me bothered by how evil and two-dimensional the bullies were in Let the Right One In? They were monsters in a movie full of finely drawn human characters. I was bullied as a young boy so I understand the desire to see bullies as inhuman but the movie went so far in making them monstrous that I my emotional engagement with the story broke whenever they appeared. In a movie where even the vampire's grizzly companion gets treated as a flawed human, the bullies' inhumanity sticks out like a sore thumb. Thus the climax of the bully storyline felt cheap to me, instead of the climactic moment of horror I think it could have been.
posted by Kattullus at 11:57 AM on May 9

KAttullus, I remember reading that the novel goes into much greater detail on the bullies and some of their actions make a lot more sense in the book. But I've never read the book myself.
posted by Falconetti at 2:11 PM on May 9

I liked Let the Right One In, but...

*SPOILER*

...the ending was a huge disappointment to me because I thought that he would wind up dispatching the bullies himself in some horrifying way, having learned how to stand up for himself. Having the movie end with some kind of catastrophic human-on-human violence in a school setting would have had a lot more impact, I think. Especially if he had just permanently parted ways with his one close friend immediately beforehand.
posted by hermitosis at 3:08 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]

I considered seeing if some other mefite wanted to post it for me, in hopes of remove that self-linky edge,

In the future, just type it up, put an X where I'm supposed to sign, and email it to me.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:53 PM on May 9

Kattullus, I saw it differently. The lead bully clearly had a problem more complex than simply being "evil;" you could see it in his face when he was whipping the main character early in the movie. I figured he was probably abused by parents and/or his truly awful older brother. Also, there was that one kid who was friends with the bullies but wasn't that bad, and he was spared when he covered his eyes at the end. And the fact that the final vicious act was to be committed by the brother, and not the actual bully per se, added more texture to it.

It was also significant that the bullies be painted, to an extent as archetypes, because the older vampire helper guy chose the jocks to kill. He was an older version of the main character, in a sense. At least that's how I saw it.
posted by bingo at 2:02 PM on May 10

because the older vampire helper guy chose the jocks to kill.

Had not thought about that before. I had just assumed they looked like a herd of fit young gazelles to him, ripe for the picking. But I think you're right.
posted by hermitosis at 7:34 PM on May 10