Long Live the Blue Flesh

Letting my body unalive with Havana Moon.

@blueghosts

I’ve always been obsessive about the things I liked. As a child, I watched the same movies over and over, scrawling my favorite lines of dialogue down in notebooks and describing scenes to unimpressed camp counselors. I’d read books until the covers tore off and the spines cracked. I collected dolls and action figures far past the age when it was “appropriate.” At a certain point, I became aware that it wasn’t cool to be so invested in things. I lost or threw away the things I’d collected, becoming a person who could pick up and move with nothing more than a few boxes.

In my thirties, as I’ve lived alone and settled into a more assured version of myself, I’ve eased back into collecting things. It started with clothes and shoes—so many shoes—but then I remembered how much I’d loved toys and dolls and VHS tapes and records and CDs. I loved owning multiple but slightly different versions of the same thing because that proved that I really loved it.

A huge inspiration in this reclamation of my hoarding-lite sensibilities was bluegh0sts, aka Havana Moon, a TikTok creator I first saw on my FYP talking about Hellraiser. I’d never seen the movie but watched it when her in-depth analysis piqued my interest and was instantly in love. As the weeks went on she popped up more often, and when I realized her taste—gay, macabre, sexy, camp—aligned with mine, I followed her. Since then I’ve come to treat her opinions as near gospel. It was because of her that I watched Hannibal and Videodrome, and read Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts, experiences that altered me on a subatomic level. I was also greatly influenced by her collection of horror memorabilia, art, and physical media. Seeing her sheer joy over a successful eBay hunt inspired me to start rebuilding my collection.

I wanted to talk to Havana mostly because she’s fucking cool, but I was also interested to know how she developed her taste. At 25, her self-possession is astounding, especially when so many people of her generation seem—at least from a distance—like pearl-clutching prudes easily swayed by every passing fad.

I have been so inspired by your complete submersion into your interests from what I've seen on TikTok. Have you always been like that with things that you like?

Yeah, I always like things too much. I don't know if it's my fake only child syndrome: my only sibling is 10 years older than me and my parents are like senior citizens, so I was all just by myself. And so the only thing to do was like, get super into whatever I liked. I would always do that anytime I saw a movie or watched a show when I was a kid, I was like painting pictures of it and my mom would get mad at me because I would only ever talk about fake things, like whatever I was watching. I like to surround myself with things that make me feel nice.

What was the first thing you can remember being obsessed with?

In a really abstract way? I think the first ever thing is I was obsessed with was animations of food when I was little. Picture books, like Winnie the Pooh when they were having a picnic. I was super into that. But after that, I think the first thing I was super into was probably when I was 11, Netflix first became a thing and I watched The Office in the background 24/7 on a loop from that time until I was probably 19 years old.

Looking at your interest now, one would not think that’s where they sprang from. Do you still, do you still ride for The Office?

You know, with my adult brain, I'm kind of like, these people kind of suck, but sometimes for the nostalgia hit, it works. I do still think it's funny, but it is probably the farthest removed thing from everything else I'm into now. It's my guilty pleasure.

What are your other guilty pleasures? It doesn't seem like you feel guilty about the things that you like.

Besides that, I don't feel guilty about liking anything. I like so many stupid things, just wholeheartedly. Like right now I'm, I'm still really into Hannibal. I watched it and then immediately started my rewatch and now it's like a rewatch of the rewatch because I can't do the third season again.

I've been—and I'm only a little embarrassed by this—I've been reading fan fiction, a passion of mine for many years, but I took a break, so sometimes I'm like, wow, I'm 25 and I'm on ao3 reading the most depraved things ever.

Well, the way you said that's kind of hateful because I'm 35 and doing the same thing,

[I’ll still be] doing it when I'm 35. Some people are like, “You're still reading fanfic? I stopped reading fan fiction when I was 17.” Well, maybe some of us still have joy in our hearts.

Exactly. I mean, if only they knew that most people writing fan fiction are either like 18 or 47.

I'm reading so much gay Hannibal fan fiction. That's like my main thing right now. And then rewatching Hannibal in the background.

Have you always been somewhat of a collector?

Yes. I love to keep things. I love to accumulate things. I think it's because my dad was a little bit of a hoarder for a second, and that's not even hyperbole. He was, I guess an organized hoarder, but he had a shopping addiction. So walking through our dining room, you would scrape your shins on boxes and containers. I would always keep things and I've always been pretty consistent. I like things forever. I've always liked to nest. I like to fill my little nest with pretty things.

What's your most prized possession?

Probably one of the oldest things I have that I always make sure I know exactly where it is, at least 20 years ago I got a Barbie play set and it had a little serving dish with a big Turkey dinner. I used to call it a feast when I was little. It’s just a plastic accessory for a Barbie. It's not even a Barbie. And I loved it so much. -I still know exactly where the little fake-roasted Turkey is.

The thing I most appreciate about your presence on the internet is your taste.I trust your taste enough that I will consume almost anything based on your recommendation. How, how did you develop your taste?

Unrestricted access to everything. I had, like I said, elderly-ish parents, so there was such a gap between me and everybody else in my family age-wise. And I guess they just resolved to never talk to me like a child. So I wasn't watching things for children at any point. I think my favorite movie when I was three was Scarface. I didn't have any restrictions on my media. I could just watch whatever and develop my taste.

I can pinpoint the thing that I consumed like too young that developed a large part of my taste. When I was in third grade, I saw Stephen King's Carrie on a bookshelf in the library, it had a cool cover and I just picked it up and read it and no one told me that I shouldn't or that I was too young. And so that kind of broke the seal. Do you have a thing that did that for you?

Even though I could watch whatever I wanted, my mom was the more conservative one. She didn't like to watch anything scary, anything. Even an episode of Criminal Minds. My mom says if I describe it to her, it'll break her brain. She watches The Andy Griffith show, Leave It to Beaver. But when I was nine years old, she found a VHS tape where she had recorded a TV showing of Misery, and it was so shocking for her to like that. But my mom was like, “I love Misery, you have to watch that.” It was the 4th of July and I was nine years old and she put the VHS on in the kitchen. I just stood in front of the TV and I watched Misery and I was like, “Oh my God, I can do anything I want.”

One of the reasons why I started following you initially is you came up in my algorithm and I liked the things you were talking about, but then what I also really enjoyed was your tone for people who like didn't agree with you. You can talk about things that most people would delicately talk around online in a way that is very uninhibited and you seemingly don't care what anyone thinks. You’re not one of those people saying “unalived” instead of “died,” which is so deeply lame. I feel like this twisted crone being like “Gen Z are all prudes,” but they are!

It's kind of a new wave of Puritans. I'm super not into it.

Did you ever have a moment of thinking you should be more careful? Or do you just not care?

I don't care. My mom says this lovingly because she's the same way, she says I was born a bitch. I can't be so precious. It feels stupid to me. Also, I think maybe it helps that I went to public school and I've been on the internet with at least a small following since I was 16. People have always been mean to me for liking the things I like or the things I say. And when you're online for so long, when your brain is forming, you realize two people will say conflicting things about you in an unsavory way. So you realize nothing is real. It doesn't matter what anyone's saying to you, someone else will say the exact opposite two seconds later. So I can't concern myself with being precious about certain things. I'm an I'm an adult lady. I'm not gonna get on the internet and be like, I saw this movie where someone was unalived. If I get censored, if the video's taken down, that's that. I'm not gonna make a video saying silly fake words.

It is such a strange phenomenon and there's part of me that wonders if it's real or if people have created their own muzzle, that they’re censoring themselves for no reason.

I think it's that. I don't think it's real. I've always said whatever I wanted on the internet and nothing terrible's happened to me. I think we can say kill. I think we can say die. Also, if the topic is serious, it feels so ridiculous to say like a made up word. Like, true crime podcasters, they're like her husband unalived her. Don't do that! If that was me, I would become a ghost just to hit you with a big rock

When people say “shmex” instead of sex, I'm like, I don't think you should be allowed on the internet.

It's gotten dire. I'm super into psychosexual movies, so sometimes I'll talk about a movie where it's like, yeah, fucked up things happen. That's what happens in movies and people are like, “Oh, I don't know if I can watch this because bad things happen in the movie.” I love The Piano Teacher, it's one of my favorite movies ever. And they're like, “Okay, well what about the themes of incest?” Yeah, she's fucking crazy. That's what the movie's about. This sexually repressed, insane woman is weird.

It's very disheartening as someone who consumes a lot of media, who creates media.

It's all so limiting. There's so much to be gained from watching a movie where people are fucked up and weird and maybe they're also perverts.

How do you feel about the potential of TikTok being banned? What are you gonna do?

As far as what I do on the internet, I'm not sure yet. Everyone is talking about it like a funny social media thing. But I do think it's spooky that the government is trying to do online censorship. People should care about it on that front. It's never funny when your government tells you what you can and cannot do on the internet, you're not breaking the law. That's strange and bad. I've been keeping up with it on that front, but as far as me, maybe I'll disappear, maybe I'll go on YouTube. Even though that sounds horrendous, who knows? I have had such an interesting relationship with the internet. So I'm sure eventually I’ll wanna hop back on something because I love to talk and I dunno how to shut the fuck up ever.

What has been your most controversial take online?

Oh my God. Like everything I say. People don't like when I shit on male directors just in general. But there's no nuance with it. I have such a, a gripe with movies like I Spit on Your Grave and shit like that. But people will always take it and be like, “Oh, so you think no movie should like show these themes ever.” But it's just so obvious when a guy who's making a movie is being weird. And it's when you say that it suddenly you're, you're a blue-haired liberal and everybody hates you.

But on the other side of that coin, people get a little weird when I like more extreme things, like extreme cinema or extreme horror and novels. When I read things with really intense themes, people are like, “Well what's the point? Like, that's so weird, that's so fucked up. Why would you read something like that?” I don't know because, sorry. I have a variety of interests. Sometimes you need to read or watch something fucked up.

I would say most of the time.

I don't always wanna be on my Little House on the Prairie shit. Sometimes things need to get a little weird, a little gross.

Follow Havana on TikTok.