Maybe I should use this as a space to keep track of stuff that I like, just in case certain favorites and penchants slip through the holes of my porous memory. The other day it struck me that my media consumption trended overall more to the macabre than I’d realized– this during a day that included reading Lovecraft and watching part of a documentary on that worthy, taking in an old episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and playing some Ghostbusters the Video Game. I think the surface similarity of monsters and ghouls that they share is really only that, though, and that beneath the constrictions of genre they veer off in quirky directions. Obviously the Ghostbusters franchise, while involving ghosts and the busting of them, has never been a “horror” property, falling much more on the comedic side of things. The same could arguably be said of Buffy– the vampires were never really that scary. There were frightening elements, but they tended be rooted more in the relationships between the characters and the realities of teenagedom. Maybe I’m more interested in dark, necromantic situations as a backdrop. I like an interesting setting, but the characters and emotions have to be compelling foremost– which is why I tend to enjoy Lovecraft only a little at a time, and plan on borrowing his atmospheres rather than his stilted dialogue and flat heroes.