My Favorite Things with DL Wainright

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with author DL Wainright, whose Hollow Sun series features supernatural creates that hide in plain sight!

What does DL love when he’s not working on the fourth book of his Hollow Sun series? Spoiler alert: a video game that knows just how to create claustrophobic horror, a Disney cartoon that’s a lot creepier than you’d think, and an extension of crafting. Intrigued? Read on to learn more!

It’s honestly really difficult to pin down what my favorite things are, mostly because there are a lot of things I really like, but “favorite” has a specialness to it. So, after some thinking, here are some things that are special to me.

Video Games: While I have a soft spot for most horror games, the Dead Space series is by far my favorite. As I type this, I’m even wearing a Dead Space shirt, and my computer has a Dead Space theme. But seriously, as someone literally raised on horror movies (some of my fondest memories of my childhood were on my dad’s lap, watching things like A Nightmare on Elm Street), Dead Space is like getting to exist inside one of those horror movies. Or, well, a few of them combined, really. It draws obvious inspiration from classics like Alien and The Thing, as well as movies like Event Horizon and even Lovcraftian horror in general. One of my favorite things about it is that Isaac Clarke, the main character, isn’t some super-powered space marine or anything. He’s just an engineer, called in because the ship has been having some issues. What he and his team find upon boarding, however, is that the crew is missing and blade-armed monsters are swarming the halls. Heck, the first weapon he even gets is a plasma cutter, which is originally intended to be a tool. The series focuses on creating feelings of claustrophobia, isolation, paranoia, and just general creepiness. Voices whisper to you when no one is there, faint screams echo through the cavernous insides of a metal ship, hallucinations blur with reality. I love it.

Cartoon: So based on what I write and my love of Dead Space, it’s no secret that I love things that are a little darker. At first look, Gravity Falls may not seem to fit that qualifier — it is, after all, a Disney cartoon. But anything where a chaos demon gifts a twelve-year-old boy with a perpetually screaming disembodied head that then proceeds to unravel itself in order of skin, muscle, then bone…yeah, I’d say that’s a good match for me. Gravity Falls is about twin siblings who have to go stay with their great-uncle (“Grunkle”) Stan for the summer in his tourist trap of a cabin (The Mystery Shack), in a sleepy backwoods Oregon town. Except it’s actually not such a sleepy place at all, but infested with all sorts of cryptids, ghosts, and the aforementioned chaos demon who is trying to find a way out of your dreams and into the real world. The show does a fantastic job of swinging from silly (like a gnome vomiting a rainbow) to horrifying (like a man having every orifice on his face rearranged). Plus, the characters are fantastic, and it’s great watching their progress and development. If you like conspiracies and hidden codes, there are secret messages written in ciphers throughout, especially in each ending credit.

Fashion: If you can consider cosplay fashion, then it’s my favorite geeky “fashion.” Crafting is another thing I was raised on. Growing up in the middle of nowhere in the south-west mountains of North Carolina, there honestly wasn’t much else to do. This was before computers, and only two kids I knew were in bike range, so my choices for entertainment were limited. Good thing I love crafting. Costuming is kind of an extension of crafting, for me. Plus it’s fun as hell running around and pretending to be a certain character. My favorite cosplays to make are ones where I get to do some type of sculpting or fabrication. Like Loki’s pauldron, the Horseman’s head for Ichabod, Jareth’s necklace, and so on. For Black Mask, I sculpted the skull mask and secured it in a way which allowed the jaw to move when I spoke. Currently I have a goal to try to cosplay as many Batman villains as possible, and so far I’ve been Scarecrow, Joker, Black Mask, Mister Bloom, and Riddler. If you count a Halloween costume I did when I was maybe twelve, I’ve also been Catwoman, the Batman Returns version, complete with white stitches on a shiny black catsuit. My mom is a skilled seamstress, and has always enabled my costuming addiction, even when I was a kid. At the next Dragon Con, I plan to be an androgynous version of Poison Ivy, but also have two costumes planned which relate to Dead Space. One of the Dead Space costumes will require more sculpture work and fabrication than I’ve ever done before, so I’m both excited and nervous. Hopefully it’ll all work out, and I’ll successfully be a terrifying monster with blade arms.

DL Wainright (one W) is a gothy trans boy raised on horror and mythology, which is why he went on to write spooky books with mythological beings and queer rep. When not writing, he’s probably doing some type of craft, be it costuming, painting and modding tabletop miniatures, or turning the living room into a “Joker Room.” DL has lived all up and down the eastern side of the US, and currently lives in Ohio (but no telling for how long) with his husband and two cats.

If you want to learn more about DL’s book series, The Hollow Sun, or find fun ways to stalk DL online, you can visit www.thehollowsun.com.

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Featured image from EA.com