Countdown Retrospective: The Good Times

Do you know what bothers me the most about funerals? Well actually it's religion and the way that these ecclesiastical vultures prey upon the vulnerable in a time of mourning to proselytize and promote their death cult. But that's not what I really wanted to talk about...
In actuality, one of the second things that bothers me about funerals is what I like to call the "denialist" crowd. Not the religious, but rather people who don't see a funeral and its resulting wake as a mourning of loss, but rather a celebration of life.

I find this point of view infuriating.

Firstly, because it spits in the face of memento mori. What better time to remember our own mortality than when it confronts us personally?
Secondly, because it spits in the face of the dead. Birthdays are a celebration of life, they involve the participant in a reflection of their life and even help to create more memories worth reflecting upon. Celebrating a life after it is over is as ridiculous to me as wishing someone a fond farewell after they've already left.
Thirdly, because funerals serve a vital purpose. Funerals encourage grief. Dying is terrible and mourning gives us the opportunity to grieve together. To cry, to feel lost, to collectively recognize that your life is worse now that these people cannot be a part of it. Grief is not only natural it is often vital for a healthy person. Don't deny grief.

A lot of this is detrimental. However, there is a single aspect of the "celebration of life" that I don't dismiss, and in fact actively encourage. Because, whilst grief is vital, it's also a natural byproduct of love.
I don't know who first said it, but I first heard the phrase from Dr Fatima:

Grief is Love that doesn't have anywhere to go...

That's a beautiful phrase, and I struggle not to tear up at the thought because it's so true that it hurts. We don't grieve people we hate, we grieve people that matter to us and are a part of who we are... the people we love. And if we grieve, it's often because we don't have an easy method of handling those emotions. But one of the methods of managing grief is by sharing that love with the people around us.

I prefer not to think of this as a celebration of "life", but a celebration of memories. We can't celebrate life because it's over, and in fact the reason why I grieve the people in my life that have died is because I am sad that I can't make memories with them anymore. However, I can celebrate the memories that I have and share them with others.

It may seem a bit high-falutin' to compare grieving the loss of a loved one to grieving the loss of the Halloween Countdown, but I do grieve it. I didn't love the Halloween Countdown in the same way I loved the grandparents, friends & beloved pets in my life that have died, but it mattered to me a lot. I will mourn it's loss.
So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to share some of the memories of the Halloween Countdown that I cherish the most. I hope you loved them too, or at the very least, will enjoy a moment of me sharing these memories with you, in a makeshift countdown of my own. These aren't the only moments worth remembering, but they are the ones I remember the most. These are...

The AWN's 13 Favourite Moments from the Halloween Countdown

13) How to Kill Friends and Mutilate People
I had to include the very first post. Not just because it's what started this whole project, but because it is genuinely my favourite introduction to any Halloween Countdown. This was the first time that I ever adopted my "horror host" persona, the gleefully grim narrator identity that I adopt for every introduction. But, this was also the most fleshed out introduction of any Countdown as I was introducing something new to the reader, and I think it feels the most evocative of the fun, but creepy, vibe that I was going for, whilst also presenting something for the audience to consider. As Halloween Countdowns continued, I feel like the introduction became more and more perfunctory, with less actual information or "content" to read, and merely a string of "Happy Halloween" bunting to announce the beginning of the Countdown, with some mild housekeeping thrown in.
But this first post has some interesting discussion about monsters and writing, and so I encourage you to check it out.

12) The Science of Dreams and Nightmares
I try to make the Halloween Countdown "creepy". That doesn't always happen, and sometimes that's because I have an idea which isn't really scary. Look at this very list, I have done what I can to explore the creepier aspects of reflection, but a list of memories isn't inherently scary... but I wanted a retrospective post because it suits the finality of the Final Countdown. Well, this post about Dreams and Nightmares was similar. After talking about something as unscientific as "dream interpretation", I wanted to look at the science but I didn't know how to make it scary... then I looked at the science.
The implications behind the scientific explanations were incredibly disturbing, whilst also being interesting and educational. That's the exact sweet spot that I wanted to achieve, and it fell into my lap through the happenstance of the reality behind dreams. So, I love this post, and I encourage everyone to give it a read. 

11) How to Succeed with Failure (in Writing)
When you have an epiphany, a truly mind-expanding thought, it can be hard to contain it. But, at the same time, it can also be hard to express it. Because, an epiphany isn't really a single thought, it's a cascade, it causes you to think and think more, to re-evaluate the thoughts you've had before. This post expresses an epiphany I had about writing, which made me a better writer. So, I had to share it. It's not necessarily scary, but it helped me so much (and it fit well into the theme of "failure", for that year's Countdown), so I had to share it. Also, when I realized that I could use "snake eyes", two ones, for the '11' for the Illustration, that was the cherry on top. But, the Illustration might affect when a post goes, but not if I use it... and what made me want to publish this was how much better it made my writing. If you're a writer, you need to read this.

10) 1000 Ways to Punish a Sinner
I adore a good bit of Media Analysis. I usually use YouTube for research, or for educational content, but a good analysis, deconstruction or veneration of a great movie, book, podcast or story? That's some of my favourite online entertainment, because it's fun, but as a writer I find it educational. I am really into educational content, since I love learning new things.
I originally decided to watch 1,000 Ways to Die because I was doing research into "true horror". But instead, I found something much more disturbing. I could literally see the author's horrible, hateful intentions behind every death and trying to justify it. So, I decided to share my disgust in this post. I found it enlightening both as to bad writing, but also how bigotry can make your story even worse.

09) Amusement Park Tragedy
I've created a fair few lists for this Blog, and for the Halloween Countdown. I enjoy each in their own way, but this one is my favourite. It also hits that sweet spot of disturbing and educational, but this also took a great amount of research that I am incredibly proud of. Because I was collecting a list of amusement park tragedies, and I was looking for the worst of the worst... but I ran into a problem, a disturbing truth of my own.
I usually arrange my lists from 'Least' to 'Most'... but I couldn't organize my list into the 'most' tragic, because that would be quantifying human life. Sure, if there are more victims, mathematically that is 'more', but so many of these tragedies had equal numbers, and I couldn't decide whose deaths were more tragic. As far as I was concerned, they were all the worst. But that's what lead to my decision to focus on each being the worst, in their own way. Each item would represent the absolute worst tragedy in its own category, and so I think it's the most powerful list I've ever created. Also, the post has a trigger warning as it discusses real injury and death, so whilst I recommend it, put your mental health first.

08) The Shade of a Coolabah Tree
Sometimes, I experiment with different ideas for writing because I think it's interesting. I play around with concepts to see what I can do with an idea. But sometimes, an idea needs to be written in a new way. This piece asked that of me. I wanted to talk about Waltzing Matilda, as it is a folk song that is incredibly dark. I considered writing a story about it, to show just how disturbing the actions of the story were, but that felt wrong too, because I wanted to talk about the actual history and meaning behind it all. Also, if I wrote a story, unless you were intimately aware of the song's lyrics, you wouldn't understand that this wasn't an original piece, so I wanted to include those too. So, my ideas forced me to try out this new structure, where I deconstructed the song, used it to tell the story, then show the history and meaning behind it all, and I think it all came together so beautifully. I wish I could write like this more often, but I haven't been inspired like this since, so you'll have to enjoy this iteration of layered media deconstruction.

07) The Magpie
I don't know if I'm a good poet, but I like poetry. I like a good rhyme and rhythm, and I really enjoy wordplay in its many forms. But, as a fan of horror I find it frustrating that poetry isn't usually scary. But it can be, and for that reason I adore The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. A poem which manages to be both lyrical and unsettling. When I was young, I tried to write a poem for school that was heavily inspired by the Raven, which I called Grash, and that poem is, in a word: Amateur.
I do like the concept of an omen whose forewarning brings about someone's death, but naming the demon "Grash" just to rhyme it with "ash" is lame, as is the way this plot played out. So, in later years, I sought to attempt my Raven homage again, and this time I was inspired to do something much more reminiscent, whilst adding my own, little twist onto it. So, I wrote this poem about a man who is harassed by a magpie which seems to know his secrets. I still don't know if I am a good poet, and this isn't perfect, but I still like the poem, and it's certainly a lot better than Grash.

06) Counting Black Sheep
[three parter: one, two & three]
Storytime. I love me some good fiction! If I have only one regret for the Halloween Countdown, it's that I couldn't tell more stories. I always wanted to do one year that was just thirteen chapters of pure fiction, but I never planned ahead well enough to get it done. I might still write a thirteen-chapter horror story, but for now, this isn't the only story I have, and I have 13 chapters of several stories to share with you, starting here. I was most proud of this because the idea came from a novela idea in a series I'm writing. I abandoned this idea because a story about dreams can't sustain an entire novel, but it could easily be a three-part short story, so I resurrected it here, and I'm so proud of how it turned out.

05) Five Nights at Furries
[5N@Fur: Night 1, Night 2, Night 3, Night 4, & Night 5]
I don't like Five Nights at Freddy's for reasons that I have discussed before (tl;dr it's just not that deep, bro) but it is an idea that has a fair bit of potential. I had considered in the past the idea of doing a creepy story about furries... but the problem was, when I did research, I found that furries aren't scary. I find them scary because I am scared of mascot costumes, but they're just people who like cute animals. But, when I was doing a Halloween Countdown on ignorance, I was inspired to reconsider the horror story from a new perspective, and so I decided to write this piece, the longest horror story I've written for any countdown, inspired by the furry fandom, and FNAF, and it's much better than anything Scott Cawthon has every written, but he's a game designer and I'm a writer, so that's not really a fair comparison... 

04) Automated Incompetence
I wish this post wasn't as relevant as it is... but it is. At time of writing, artificial intelligence has already lead to the invention of bold new terms like: "A.I. Slop" for the mindless content that spews from these programs; "aintist" for people who think prompting a program to generate a picture makes them an artist; "machine hallucinations" for when generative models lie, without the ability to recognize it; "model collapse" for the ways that these programs are degrading due to choking on their own slop; & "slopaganda" for the outright lies that pundits make these machines create for their biased, political ends.
Unfortunately, this post is about an old but relevant term in this new paradigm... "technological unemployment". Because, whilst A.I. is a tool with some interesting potential, I know for a fact that it isn't being used properly. This post explores why.

03) Goosebumps Chillogy
[Trilogy: Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3]
Obviously, I love a good story. it's why so many of these last few posts are the stories I've written for this blog. But in particular, these last two list items have something in common, they are both what I call my "meta-fiction" stories. In these stories I am both the writer of the story and the main character, in a fictionalized version of myself that has a talking dictionary, and it's often highly self-referential. All the other stories explored other living books, and this one decided to explore... my entire Goosebumps collection. I had so much fun putting all of the pieces together, and (as with the Jigsaw movie before it) I was inspired to create a better story than the Goosebumps movie, but this time I actually wrote the damn thing. Seriously, this is a lot of fun, I encourage you to check it out.

02) The Writer at the End of this Blogpost
[Two-parter: Part 1 & Part 2 - The Blog Post at the End of this Writer]
As I said, this and the last list item are "meta-fiction" stories, but this one holds a special place in my heart, because it was a lot of fun, and it was a collaboration with my long-distance girlfriend at the time. Whilst we're broken up now, we're still good friends, and she's still a great writer, and we both had a lot of fun working on this together. I devised the plot, but she helped in the development and she genuinely wrote all of her own dialogue, it was very sweet. And, in the end, it turned into an engaging, little story. Why not check it out? 

01) Are We Doomed?
This post started with that initial joke because I thought it would be funny, but that alone isn't enough to write an entire blog post. What truly inspired me to write the whole thing, and the same reason it is the last item on this list, is because I think it's one of the few times I think I've made a post that's unsettling in a way, that's somewhat scary when you think about it, but also... uplifting?
It's not an easy thing to accomplish, and for all I know you may read it now and disagree, since it relies on the reader agreeing with me that, Yes, we are in fact doomed, but then to continue reading on as to why that's not a good reason to give up on trying to fix it. Inspiration through Negation is a weird idea, but it has helped me to see the good in this world. I hope it can help you too.

— — —

So, that's my list. It brings back a lot of fond memories for me, and I hope it does for you too, or at the very least gives you some interesting reading material. I'm sad to see it go, but everything comes to an end. And in the end, all we are is memories...