Blog / Midnight Pals

A humorous Real-Person Fic Flash Fiction series published since April 2019 through the Twitter account @midnight_pals, whose author is pseudonymously known as Bitter Karella. It's about various horror authors, living and dead, who call themselves the Midnight Society and gather around a campfire to trade stories.

Authors featured include: Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, and many more.

Aside from Twitter, the series is also posted on Tumblr, Bluesky, Patreon, Mastodon, and Substack. The official website is here. Three ebook collections have been released. There is also an audio podcast adaptation which is published under the same title as the collections, Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals.

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These tropes are submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society:

• Antiquated Linguistics: Neil Gaiman's Verbal Tic is this combined with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
  Gaiman: With magic, I shall find a venturesome maid to pet the mind dolphins of my fantasmaquarium!
• Artistic License – Biology: J.K. Rowling, being an unspecified large species of reptile, is a little shaky on the finer details of the human body.
  Rowling: [snapping fingers, c-minor instrumentation begins in background] the thingsss that make a young lady's cloaca saaaalivate
• Berserk Button: Do not include in your stories anything hurting dogs if you don't want to anger Koontz.
  • That said, Koontz gets in trouble with both Lovecraft and Poe for making any mean jokes about cats.
  • And regarding Mary Shelley: Just don't. Seriously. Just don't. Okay?
• Be Yourself: Averted regarding Lovecraft.
  King: ok so under no circumstances should you be yourself
  King: I don't think I can stress that enough
• Blood Knight: Mary Shelley.
  Lee: mary what really turns you on
  Mary Shelley: punchin nerds
  Lee: no I mean like in a man
  Shelley: the only “men” I need are right here [kissing fists]
  • Half the time Shelley appears, she's flicking open her switchblade.
• Boomerang Bigot: Patricia Highsmith has shades of this, being "a lesbian who did not very much enjoy the company of other women."
  Highsmith: you seen Sonia [Greene]? dumb bitch has a great set of tits
• Cloudcuckoolander: Any of the guest storytellers, who come in with their own... eccentricities that are exaggerated by the stories they read to the group. Specific mention to Neil Gaiman and Ray Bradbury.
• Creator Provincialism
  Dennis Etchison: this is a story about California
  Stephen King: where's that? Maine?
• Deadpan Snarker: Clive Barker. Oh so much.
• Dirty Communists: George Romero.
  Romero: Only the solidarity of the working class will defeat these rats!
• Does This Remind You of Anything?
  Lee: what really turns girls on
  Ursula Vernon: waking at dawn to do your chores
  Lee: lol I’d like to do YOUR chores
  Vernon: milking the cows
  Lee: lol I’d like to milk YOUR cows
  Vernon: planting the corn in yonder fertile valley
  Lee:
  Vernon: ahem planting the
  Lee: I got nothin
• Dog Lover: Dean Koontz, as per Real Life.
• Double Standard
  Rowling: when i ussse my ungodly wealth to intimidate critics, that'sss good
  Rowling: when random people tweet image macros @ me that put the transs pride colorss on the ssorting hat
  Rowling: that'ssss violence
• Everyone Has Standards When reacting to Joyce's blistered poison ivy foot...
  King: well haha i guess uh it's no big deal for us right guys?
  King: i mean we are horror afficianados right?
  Junji Ito: no this is gross
  David Cronenberg: cover that shit up, jesus
• Fair for Its Day: In-Universe, August Derleth attempts to defend HP Lovecraft this way.
  Derleth: HOWARD IS ONLY AS ANTISEMITIC AS AN AVERAGE MAN OF HIS TIME!
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Stephen King's response to being told Joyce Carol Oates' theory of genre differences:
  Oates: so to understand the difference between sci fi and fantasy
  Oates: the important thing to know is that time is cubic
  Oates: so everyday contains four simultaneous days
  King: whoa
  King: whoa guys i think i understand this
  Poe: no you don't steve
  King: no no she's right! i get it! horror IS tangent but detective is co-sign! it all makes sense
  Poe: no it doesn't steve
  King: i can see it ALL
  King: the music of the sphere is HUMMING
  King: oh
  King: my
  King: god
  King: i can see through t i m e
  Poe: steve your nose is bleeding
• Hen Pecked Husband: Percy Shelley - "yes dear" - to Mary.^note But it's okay, because she's totally turned on by his getting rusticated for contumacy.
• The Hyena: Something is definitely off about Roald Dahl.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Joe Hill toward his dad, Stephen King.
  Hendrix: dude your dad is so lame
  Hill: YOU TAKE THAT BACK!
  Hendrix: you say it all the time!
  Hill: THAT’S DIFFERENT
  Hill: I’M ALLOWED TO SAY IT
  Hill: I LOVE MY LAME DAD!!
• Never Live It Down: Tracey Baptiste.
  King: but uh let me ask you something
  King: this minecraft thing that all the kids are into
  Baptiste:
  Baptiste: I only wrote one minecraft book
  • Lovecraft keeps getting called out - especially by Barker - for a lot of the racism displayed in his works.
• Occidental Otaku: Lafcadio Hearn, in spades.
  Hearn: [chuckling smugly while humping dakimakura] that's a kind of yūrei for you gaijin
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: On the cover of the first collection, the "L" in "Pals" is a combined skeleton foot and scythe, and the "i"s in "Midnight" are dotted with skulls.
• The Pollyanna: King tends to be the most optimistic about listening to a new arrival's story submission, and tries to play nice with everybody.
• Real Life Writes the Plot A highly exaggerated version, obviously.
• Seasonal Rot: In-Universe, Clive Barker contends that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is an example of this.
  Barker: [to JK Rowling] hm interesting and just to be clear you wrote this?
  Barker: like this is official? Not some random kid's fan fic that you found online?
• Shout-Out: Joyce Carol Oates' theory of the differences in genre between SF, fantasy, horror, and detective fiction resembles the notorious crackpot conspiracy theory website Time Cube.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Elon Musk to Stephen King. Whenever King tries to introduce a new story, Musk will pop out and try to start an argument related to any Real Life tiff Musk attempts on Twitter.^note This is based on the fight Musk and King got into over paying for verified accounts.
• Smurfette Principle: Mary Shelley is the only female character in the main cast. The society originated with just the five guys - Poe, Lovecraft, King, Koontz, and Barker - but Mary got promoted up to make the group a sextet. Also, she has the switchblade and nobody can tell her otherwise.
• Tagalong Kid: How Koontz behaves around the others: a little too eager to impress everybody - especially King - and otherwise acting like a five-year-old.
• Team Mom: Poe, who either has to keep the group focused on listening to a story-teller, or trying to get Barker to settle down and stop needling either Lovecraft or Koontz.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The Midnight Society gathering around a campfire to tell scary stories is a reference to the group of the same name from Are You Afraid of the Dark?, right down to the phrase they introduce their stories with, "Submitted for the approval of The Midnight Society, I call this [story name]".

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