A microfiction comedy series created by Bitter Karella. The series made its debut in 2019 in a thread on Twitter.
The series takes some inspiration from the old Nickelodeon show "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" where a bunch of kids calling themselves the Midnight Society told scary stories around a campfire, beginning their stories with "Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story 'The Tale of the (scary thing)!'" Well, in the Midnight Pals series, the kids telling stories around the campfire are a bunch of the most famous horror authors in history.
The main characters in the series, the ones who are in most of the series' episodes are: straight man and ringleader Edgar Allan Poe, out-of-touch nice guy Stephen King, sarcastic asshole Clive Barker, child-like dog lover Dean R. Koontz, awkward racist H.P. Lovecraft, and edgy goth ass-kicker Mary Shelley. There are plenty of comedic bits that come out of these characters -- King being clueless, bragging about his band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, and crying about how much he loves his son, Joe Hill; Barker being a jerk and needling Lovecraft or King or various guest stars; Poe saying "Clive..." whenever Barker needles someone; Lovecraft sweating nervously whenever Italians are mentioned and trying to keep his wife Sonia Greene from being stolen by Aleister Crowley, Anton LaVey, or Patricia Highsmith; Koontz loving dogs so much; and Shelley stabbing people and punching nerds.
But there are plenty of guest stars, usually horror authors stopping by to tell a story about their latest release around the Midnight Pals' campire -- which inevitably spin off into wacky shenanigans. Joe Hill is embarrassed by his dad and often has to explain slang to him. Margaret Atwood hides under a cardboard box and pretends to be a robot. Ray Bradbury overuses his poetic metaphors. John Carpenter is really grumpy because no one appreciates his films 'til years after they're released. Roald Dahl is a giggling pervert. August Derleth is a Lovecraft superfan whose shameless adoration embarasses even Lovecraft. Neil Gaiman is obsessed with mythology and is really impressed with his own loquaciousness. Edward Gorey insists he is not British; no one believes him. Patricia Highsmith is a lesbian who doesn't much like other women. Robert E. Howard is a cowboy. Frank Belknap Long is a furry. Edward Lee is a frat bro who is obsessed with boobs. David Lynch is only able to speak the phrase "The Deep of the Dark, the Eyes of the Snail." Joyce Carol Oates has a terrifying diseased foot. Elon Musk is a cartoon Italian obsessed with making Stephen King his best friend. George Romero is a radical socialist. Bram Stoker claims to be repulsed by sex. Lafcadio Hearn is an anime-obsessed weeaboo. Joss Whedon is an unemployed and disgraced bum begging for "shinies for a woke bae." Aleister Crowley is a combination of dark wizard and high school jock, constantly shouting, "The Great Beast! Do what thou wilt" and "Go Wildcats!"
(There's even an E2 connection as Lucy A. Snyder, known around here as Lucy-S, shows up at the campfire once. Everyone is quite impressed with how many apocalypses and moons she stacks together, and how relentlessly horny her lesbian wasteland bikers and disturbing bio-vehicles are.)
And there are so many other authors, too, some of them working in indie publishing, some in creepypasta, some in art. Some are from decades in the past, obscure in their time and all but forgotten today. Karella cultivates an image as a bit of an edgy trans dirtbag, but they're very smart, very literate, and they love horror on almost every possible level. They read the new stuff and the old stuff, as well as plenty of works from other genres. This deep knowledge of all kinds of literature combined with their irreverent sense of humor makes the series fun to read as well as educational, the kind of thing where you can laugh at an author being ridiculed and then decide to look for more books that author has written...
There are even other campfires out there besides the Midnight Pals. There's the campfire for fantasy writers, like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George R.R. Martin, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Jordan, and Brian Jacques. Naturally, the fantasy campfire is called Unicorn Fuck Club. The authors at Unicorn Fuck Club disagree about many things, but they all agree that the most important thing about fantasy is writing detailed descriptions of sumptuous feasts. Brian Jacques uses a toothpick for a sword!
And then there's Terf Island, billionaire fantasy writer/increasingly deranged bigot J.K. Rowling's wretched hive of transphobes and crotchsniffers. Rowling is depicted as an oversized snake who speaks in hisses. She lives in a Scottish castle with a four-foot-tall fence and makes frequent visits to the Midnight Pals campfire to issue proclamations and threats. Her TERF Death Eaters include Kathleen Stock, Graham Linehan, Tatsyua Ishida, Nina Paley, Jesse Singal, Allison Bailey (who keeps spaghetti in her briefcase, for some reason), and too many others. They're all horrible people, both in real life and at Karella's fictional campfires.
Karella's parodies of authors are often mean and over-broad -- but nearly every author who gets spoofed loves it, with many of them citing it as evidence they've finally made it as a horror writer. The TERFs tend to be unhappy about everything Karella writes, but frankly, fuck TERFs.
The Midnight Pals series can be found on Twitter at @midnight_pals, Tumblr at bitterkarella, Bluesky at midnightpals, Patreon at bitterkarella, Mastadon at @bitterkarella@sfba.social, and Substack at https://bitterkarella.substack.com. There are also three compilation books and a podcast, which can be found at https://midnight-pals.simplecast.com/episodes.
horrorquest