Tag: Bloodletter Magazine

Dreamcore Limited

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

“Dreamcore Limited” was my submission to the Halloween flash fiction contest hosted by Bloodletter Magazine. This piece was selected as one of the three winners, and it was awarded a cover illustration by the horror artist Rialin Jose! You can read the stories and bask in the spookiness of their illustrations on Bloodletter’s account on Instagram (here).

The theme of this contest was “liminality,” and what better setting than a dead mall? Nostalgia is creepy, and the horror of dead malls is the uncanniness of feeling your history collapse into a marketing demographic that no longer fits.

I was inspired by Maria-Gemma Brown’s academic article “Ghost in the Mall: The Affective and Hauntological Potential of Dead Mall Ruins,” which is a fantastic piece of scholarship that’s interesting and accessible to a broad general audience. The article is open-access, and you can read it or download a PDF copy on the website of Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry (here).

Essay about Elden Ring and Dark Academia

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to share an essay I wrote for Bloodletter Magazine, a stylish biannual anthology of queer and feminist horror. The piece is titled “Dark Academia for Dark Times: Elden Ring and the Fall of the Academy,” and I’m writing about how the haunted lore of the game’s cursed university reflects real-world academic anxieties. 

You can read the essay here:
https://bloodlettermag.com/dark-academia-for-dark-times-elden-ring-and-the-fall-of-the-academy/

While I use the character Rennala from Elden Ring as an illuminating point of focus, my piece is really about the uncanny connections between the crisis currently facing universities and the social media aesthetic of “dark academia” embraced by young women. I’m arguing that the association of dark academia with the corruption of female bodies reflects deeper concerns regarding the ties between academic liberalism and the decay of imperial privilege. 

Basically: Is the wokeness of postcolonial queer feminism ruining college? I would like to believe that it is, and I think this is kind of neat, actually.

My piece is graced with a creepy spot illustration by the magical Katy Horan, who goes by @goodyhoran on Instagram, and you can follow Bloodletter at @bloodlettermag, where they post eye-catching film stills from indie horror movies created by emerging female directors.