Nominal - 2021-05-09
Same with movie posters. There was a video about it here a while ago, but modern movie posters are all the same flat, bland group shots of the stars standing there. You're never going to see something like the original Gremlins poster again.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1416/8662/products/gremlins_ 1984_original_film_art_f_5000x.jpg?v=1569082638
Graphic design in general is at a low point right now. Orange & teal puked up everywhere.
(same with movie scores. There was also a video about that here showing how soundtracks today are so blandly ambient that no one can recall any modern theme songs)
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Rosebeekee - 2021-05-09 I was talking to someone about how I don’t really like buying soundtracks for modern movies because it feels like there’s usually just a main theme that’s decent to listen to, maybe the credits (which is just the main theme, but shorter) and maaaaaybe a character/love/battle piece, and then the rest is not only bland, forgettable stuff, but all the tracks are less than a minute long. I don’t know how true this is, but they mentioned how movies today have such loud sound effects that there’s no point in bothering with good music.
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SolRo - 2021-05-10 You know what still has great sound tracks? Anime.
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Nominal - 2021-05-09
Here's the wiki entry for The Fungus:
Plot summary
The Fungus is a novel in which a fungus causes people's body parts to become spongy and fall off.
Reception
Dave Langford reviewed The Fungus for White Dwarf #66, and stated that "Truly revolting. Even the authors are ashamed, and skulk behind a pseudonym."
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Binro the Heretic  - 2021-05-10
I had literal nightmares about those old 1970s & 1980s horror covers when I was a kid. They used to have magazine racks in convenience stores and one section was always devoted to paperbacks.
There were a lot of sci-fi & fantasy books with really awesome covers. There were a lot of romance novels with standard romance novel covers.
The horror covers were all wonderfully lurid.
I can remember one about an evil nanny or something that had a teddy bear on the cover. The head of the teddy bear had been ripped off and was laying to one side. One of its glass eyes dangled by a thread and it had an angry expression on its face. The headless body of the bear, with a thin trickle of blood on the sparkling white stuffing in the stump of the neck, was using a meat cleaver to slice a mouse in half.
I had a nightmare about that thing chasing me through the house and out into the woods with that meat cleaver. Everywhere I went, I would look around and see the head staring at me then hear the body pattering up to get me.
There was another called "The Cats" by Nick Sharman. It was basically like "Willard" but with cats instead of rats. The cover had a black cat with a weird human skull face licking blood off its paw.
I had a few nightmares about seeing that cat peering at me through windows. It would always be faced away when I looked at it then it would suddenly turn to face me revealing the bright white human teeth and glowing eyes.
I can't think of a single contemporary horror novel cover that would give a kid nightmares.
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Nominal - 2021-05-10
Why do half of the modern covers all have that exact same "something your kid made with macaroni " look?
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Rosebeekee - 2021-05-10 Because they're quirky and unique and not like the other book covers.
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Marlon Brawndo - 2021-05-11 Because Grandma might not buy the book with something incredibly innovative and awesome looking. She might buy the cheerful cover with pretty colors slapped all over, even if it's about murder. It's all about marketing. You want to grab people but now it's not about really showing them something new that is unique to that book, that fits it perfectly.
Now it's about appealing to as many people as possible who will buy the book, outside of the normal genre readers. For those who do like reading horror, they lose out on the art. But who cares about them? You're going after teenage girls and their grandmothers for the most part. A broader audience loves Barbara Kingsolver novels so a lot of the books I see emulate that style, or that of VC Andrews or Danielle Steele covers. So now most books have that bland look to them.
Booksellers turned to accountants and number crunchers to calculate how to sell more books. A lot of my career has been in sales and I know people, one in particular, that used to do really good work in publishing and now their style just isn't sought as much anymore, even though it's miles above the really simple programs used to make most covers now.
Look at the fucking Twilight books. A fucking apple. How fucking original. It made a bazillion dollars. A fucking chess piece? None of those characters are complex enough to warrant a fucking chess piece. But everyone remembered it. They should have replaced it with checkers or maybe the Operation game...but I digress.
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Marlon Brawndo - 2021-05-11 Oh and check this out. Premade book covers!
https://bookcoverzone.com/premade-book-covers/fiction/horror
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Nominal - 2021-05-11 Mike Nelson's 372 Pages podcast just got done covering a book in the "cozy mysteries" genre: murder mystery novels by and for post menopausal women. Heavily themed on baking, craft hobbies, and cat ladies. Watch what happens when the local quilting club teams up to drive drug dealers out of town! (spoiler: mostly idle yenta gossip about 100 insignificant characters and their relatives)
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The Mothership - 2021-05-12
Never judge a book by its gang afta gley.
Or maybe you should, according to this commenter!
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TheInternetisFullofGenitals - 2022-09-26
This made me miss the days of going into a bookstore or video rental store and picking out stuff to read or watch based on how interesting the cover was.
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