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"I went into horror, the fifth-biggest genre in fiction, because I only cared about the money. But what I really wanted to do was write historical romance, the first-biggest genre in fiction."

god i hate the implication that the purpose of our existence as disabled people is to make abled folks more compassionate, but it's literally everywhere in media

-Lures in desperate people -Promises to solve all their problems -Deal always goes south for person -Basically punishes them for their selfishness Hmm, I don't think that's an angel...

Evangelicals can write the most terrifying existential horror you've ever witnessed while trying to be uplifting. Imagine if they actually embraced it

The biggest clue that this show was written by men is that Horror is implied to be more a sexually explicit genre than historical romance

"Jessie Chris!" sounds like what fundamentalist Christians would exclaim in order to avoid 'taking the lord's name in vain'.

30 years of your life gone, and suddenly trapped in a marriage with some guy you don't even actually know. This is some quality horror

‘I’m going to die before thirty knowing for certain that my child will lose me before they finish elementary school and likely grow up in the corrupt foster care system’ is a pretty good reason to get an abortion

“i’m going to die before thirty” seems like an extremely solid reason to get an abortion

Genuinely cackled at "Because there IS no god!!" " _Jason!_ you don't mean that!!" "Ooohhhh but I _do_ "

All severe problems aside, the idea that horror is both easier to sell and more sexual than romance is actually _hysterical._

"Yes, I would like to have my disabled brother come back to life, please." Angel: "Is it because you learned about empathy, compassion, and that disabled people are autonomous, regular people you can't just wish away?" "What?? No, why would I have learned any of that???"

Some real creepy misogynistic undertones in this show. All the stories about women are about them accepting the role that others have prescribed for them, and submitting to authority.

Jessie Chris sounds like what a 2013 doge meme would call Jesus Christ.

The whole concept of people with troubled pasts showing up at the motel at their lowest point and being punished existentially by it is basically how Silent Hill works

“having a child because you won’t live to raise it” is hands down the dumbest pro life argument

imagine thinking historical romance doesn't sell

"If violence sells, write that. If sex sells, write that" And she really wants to write....romantic historical fiction?! A genre totally not driven by gratuitous sex and, usually, war!

The Shelley story had me rolling my eyes. As an aspiring horror novelist and general horror fan, horror writers have to fight tooth and nail to get recognition. If your last name isn’t “King”, have fun getting published. Because horror is typecast as meaningless gore and sex, it’s not really looked at as a genre. So the idea that someone would give up writing historical romance, the literal best selling genre in the world, for horror because of “money” sure is rich.

What I'm getting from this is that the creators of the show are revealing what they want out of god. They don't want a benevolent god that loves all humans for who they are; They want god to do the dirty work of punishing those they don't like so they can feel like their attitude is justified. They want a god that actively hurts people that behave in ways that the creators deem "wrong" and whose forgiveness is contingent upon a person's willingness to toe the line. Once someone agrees to that however, forgiveness is immediate and absolute no need to be held accountable for your decisions or repent in any way; You don't even have to say sorry to anyone you hurt because your actions are in keeping with god's will.

When she says that she wants to write historical romance she's actually referring to her Peter x Judas fanfic

You can tell its a christian show by how women and disabled people are nothing more than props in the stories of men...

It's so goddamn funny how scary the mere thought of atheism is to pure flix films. The overacting in the line "Jason! You don't mean that!" is just so ham fisted. It's cringe and hilarious.

The worst thing about that episode with the disabled person is that like...as someone with a disabled family member, I don't think I've *ever* wished they weren't born. At my worst, I've wished they weren't disabled, but I think the most common thing personally has always just been that I wish someone *else* could take care of them. The thought of them not being alive hasn't entered my head once and I don't know why it would. It feels really mean spirited for no reason, much like rest of the show.

This show really says ‘For men, you will overcome what you’re going through and live a self-fulfilling life where you are happy’, ‘For women, you will conform to the situation you’re stuck in and live a life of misery knowing you’re going to literally die’. Making the women okay with living a domestic and ‘god-focused’ life, like what? I feel bad for the creators wife.

I hate watching shows that use disabled people as ways for “normals” to learn compassion, I even more hate when they can’t even bother to use an actually disabled person in the role.

These people realize that HISTORICAL FICTION is INCREDIBLY sexual and INCREDIBLY profitable, right? Lol

Pretty telling that the wish they went with was “what if Freddy never existed” and “what you had a better support system in place for taking care of Freddy” or even “what if Freddy instead lived with caretakers who were more suited and willing to look after him than you feel you are” was never so much as mentioned. There’s zero thought for Freddy, who is, you know, a person, and his sister just hops on board with “Freddy go bye-bye” instead of showing any consideration for him and other options which might potentially provide him with a better existence, or just any existence at all.

Imagine if George Bailey didn't just go to a world where he was never born, but instead went to a world where he was never born AND a meteor hit Bedford Falls. Makes u think

"Don't you understand, detective? God had to kill 4 women for you to pay attention. If you had paid attention before maybe those 4 women wouldn't have died as god tried to reach you." Like so far every episode has had sexist undertones but I am really obsessed with "women will have to keep dying until this man grows up" presented as like a thing a good deity does

Ah yes. Abusive parents showing regret on their deathbed immediately heals all the trauma lol

I want the opposite of this show, with a cool demon who makes people into better versions of themselves as they leave the church and unlearn dogma and stop being assholes...

Christian show: If you're going to die, you should have children because that way part of you will still exist after you're gone Heaven: Am I a joke to you?

Her dad is mad that she’s writing horror because she should use her gift to “bring hope to the hopeless”??? Weird to assume the horror isn’t doing that or that the historical romance would do it more

I really love in the Queen of Scream that we’re supposed to know that historical romance is like very not sexual graphic Christian love stories set on like the Oregon Trail, when most people would hear “historical romance” and immediately think of smutty Regency era paperbacks.

I gotta say, as nightmarish as this show is overall, the reveal of William at the end of Queen of Scream is absolutely horrifying. Seriously, even the whole “last 30 years will fade from your memory as your life in this new timeline takes hold” is less terrifying than “you have a husband, you’ve had him for years, and you also are now meeting him for the first time. Have fun!”

"You chose to party, and party, and party." Partying: the root of all evil.

Bold of Shelley to assume that historical romance fiction doesn’t include sex at all. Very bold.

I think another message of the first one, since it was written by evangelicals, was “as a woman your place is as a servant, for without constant work your kind can easily be lead astray” or something horrible like that

I think you've hit upon the fundamental flaw in Christian ethics in the analysis of the first episode. In the Christian ethical model, others become objects that either help us to reach salvation or who demonstrate our own moral corruption. I got into a horrible fight with my partner of many years, said a lot of cruel things, and afterward felt quite guilty. After sitting with these feelings for a bit, I realized that a good part of the guilt I was experiencing was not based in empathy and love - nor a real concern for the feelings of my partner - but was because I felt as though I was a "bad person"; I had a major stain on my character. I've been an atheist for many years, but noticing and understanding this thought process, the inevitable effects of my Catholic upbringing, was quite striking. This definition of morality literally precludes selflessness, as every action is weighed according to its affect on one's own character, the virtue of which is (because of the threat of damnation) always the primary concern. Not only is this moral scheme immoral, but it somehow manages to turn every "moral" act into a performance of deep narcissism.

"She got accepted into harvard law right out of highschool" absolutely killed me

If I was Jennifer, after meeting my unwanted adult baby and finding out that my hopes and dreams were all dashed because I didn't terminate the pregnancy, was a single mom (watched another review of this episode and her boyfriend pretty much tells her he wants nothing to do with the baby), and on top of that I would die from cancer in ten years, my response wouldn't be, "better give up all my plans." Nope, I'd go back to Jessie and say "thanks for the heads up! I'm going to go to law school, harvest some of my eggs for later, and get regular cancer screenings. Glad to know I won't be leaving a kid to the foster care system or for my parents to take care of because I died when she was 9. You really saved my family and me a lot of pain and heartache!"

11:59 the very thought of having 30 years of memories slowly fall out of my grasp fill me with existencial dread

Every time I learn of a new piece of Christian media, I always ask myself “will it be better than Veggie tails”. And the answer is always no. Veggie tales will always be the only good Christian show.

The story about the writer implies she becomes a successful historical romance author that does not include sex. That's less believable than the angels and multiple universes.

For those at the back: other people are other PEOPLE, not a "gift" or "lesson" sent to you by a higher power.

As someone whose mother reads exclusively historical/fantasy romance novels, those things are probably much less Christian than horror.

I like how they equate violence and murder with sex. They’re are disgusted with sexuality in general.

This is scarily accurate to how my Jehovah's Witness adopted family viewed disability and subsequently treated me. I lost my eye-site to a botched surgery when I was 8 and they always told me that me going blind was a great thing because had I not lost my vision I would be an ignorant ghetto sinner and partying on the streets just like the (other people like me) referring to Black people. It's truly disgusting

William looks like a worse life choice than writing horror fiction.

I would love to make a parody of dream hotel where every person picks the " wrong " option and lives very happily and the angel has a crisis of faith

I bet that the horror novelist was a reference to Anne Rice. She must have been a source of real frustration for the evangelicals as she went in and out of her belief. And now they get to strawman her in this episode.

I love how becoming a very successful published author wasn't good enough for her dad because he didn't like the genre. If I wrote a book and it sold 10 copies my parents would never stop telling people their son was a published author.

"There is no god!" "Jason, you can't mean that!" "Oh, but I do!" comedy gold

The episode about “What if my brother didn’t exist?” is so bigoted and ableist that it actually crosses the line into egoistic psychopathy. And wait… If Jennifer has the foreknowledge that she’ll have cancer at a certain point, couldn’t she just anticipate the cancer before it happens? I mean, if she knows approximately when she’s going to get cancer, then why couldn’t Jennifer just get regular checkups so they’ll find the cancer early on and give her chemo or something before it has a chance to progress? She knows she’s going to have cancer at a particular age, and even if the cancer wasn’t caused by something she could just avoid, Jennifer still knows ahead of time what to look for! As an aside, I really hate the term “pro-life,” because anti-abortion nuts don’t really give two shits about life. If they did, they’d support healthcare so sick children wouldn’t die of treatable diseases! It’s a pathetic attempt to hide the obvious fact that anti-abortionists just hate women, plain and simple. Great video, Joel! Man, these Evangelicals are the bloody Antichrist…

Complains about writing sex, decides instead she wants to write historical romance fiction.... which won't have any sex? Trash romance has as much sex as trash horror...

I like how her Dad saying “there is no God” is treated as the most horrific words ever uttered

This show is like Dhar Mann's crazy evangelical brother.

This show makes a ton of sense if you grew up in a fundamentalist Christian church. The author one makes a ton of sense to me especially the author one. She chose evil at first and though she had money from it, she didn’t have the fundie woman ideal: a husband and children! When she turned her life “right” she got the dream! A husband to support her!!! What did she ever need a fulfilling career for?? I’m not really sure how to explain it better atm the moment mostly because I’m too high to really think too hard about it.

“My father decided I wasn’t writing the correct genre of books, so he disowned me.”

Christian black mirror is some real scary shit EDIT: Holy shit as someone terminal the idea of leaving a baby behind, with my condition no less, seriously horrifies me to no end

"As soon as you step through those doors, Freddy will be no more" She steps through the door and hears a single gunshot.

Honestly I kind of hate the abortion twist even more. The idea of children being legacy haunts me to no end. I didn't have a terrible childhood and I'm on pretty good terms with my parents but if I learned that they had me so that I could continue their lineage or survive them in the event of tragedy it would break me. I had enough existential horror from my own mind pondering my existence as a teen thank you very much I don't need this as well. Being like "hey I guess I'll have a baby because I'm gonna die soon" is kinda terrifying, she's knowingly leaving a kid with no parents. It is fundimentally saying it is better to have a traumatized child than it is to die a nobody. They don't give a sh*t about the life of the fetus or whatever, as long as it eventually grows up to be a Christian they don't actually care.

them telling the guy who couldn't find the serial killer that god could only talk to him when he hit rock bottom and had no where else to turn is just the PERFECT example of how christians target people who've had tragedies to try to convert them bc those people are so desperate for an answer/solution they'll try anything and they know they'll have a better chance of roping them into their religion. honestly amazing commentary the show didnt even notice it was making lmao

In the abortion episode, if the daughter said something like, "A few years later my mom died of cancer, so, it inspired me to go into cancer research and I found a cure." It would still be stupid, but, it would make more sense. Literally a message of "That life growing inside you is a miracle." But women with an high education? And in science? Yuck.

Gotta say, as someone who’s been told both “you won’t live to 50” and “you’ll never have kids” the concept that only children bring meaning to short lives sure is GREAT.

As someone who has grown up with a mentally and physically handicapped loved one (who I am blessed to know and love), THANK YOU for calling out the first story. It’s challenging to be a full-time caretaker, don’t get me wrong, but it’s about the person you’re caring for!!

12:38 oh so we’re just gonna let “been at the bar this early, have we?” slide on by 😂 the patronizing way he says it strongly suggests she’s a drunk in her new Christian life

Jessie Chris' actor is kinda perfect for this show, because his face perfectly expresses that kind of outward simulation of kindness while you can see in his eyes that he's judging you constantly and believes himself to be the arbiter of all morality at the expense of every other person in existence.

What’s messed up about this show’s stance on abortion is how it commodifies children. That woman’s child is going to grow up without a mother. It’s not about the child. It’s about what the mom or dad gets out of it regardless of what is good for the child.

I’m really glad that you spoke about that first episode; as a disabled person with medium support needs, there’s constantly this voice in the back of my mind that tells me that my disabilities make me a burden to the people around me. And having pretty much all of the disabled characters on television be emotionless, thoughtless shells of human beings that are just used for sympathy for the main character/s and/or inspiration porn for the viewers definitely doesn’t help. Seeing how the life of the woman’s brother was used, and how her relationship with him was such a burden to her, really fucking hurt. Thank you for calling that out, I was a little worried that you would skip over that like most abled people probably would.

I love that angels can come down and erase your family member but can’t solve world hunger

"Historical romance" Ah yes, that oh so Christian and sin-free literary genre. I'm sure her extremely religious father will be much more accepting of her writing books with names such as Thirsty For Tudors and My Victorian Adonis.

“I’m going to die soon? Oh man, I better produce a child who’ll lose their mother during childhood and probably never know their father, meaning they’re completely left up to chance as to whether or not they’re adopted into a good family, stuck in the foster system for 18 years, sent to an abusive home, or any other random assortment of outcomes that may or may not lead to an incredibly shitty life, all while they’re traumatized from my early death. Hope it works out well for them!”

"You are going to die from cancer in this many years" "oh really?" *goes to oncologist*

I guess the writers were unaware that "Song Of Solomon" is an erotic poem about two lovers getting it on.

Misguided religious fiction can be so weird. I grew up Muslim and was in this Islamic club thing in school, and there had to be a play written by a student with some Islamic moral. The student who wrote it was a chill, funny, likeable guy who wasn't particularly religious. Anyway the play he wrote was about a dude, let's call him Timmy, who wants an hour off for Friday prayers, and his boss is like no, work comes first, besides I don't even pray. And Timmy's like, I gotta pray, fire me if you have to, and the boss is like okay you're fired. Then Timmy goes home and his wife is like I love you, you did the right thing, also I'm pregnant, let's pray. Then Timmy's ex-boss's wife... just fucking dies. She just dies off-screen, cause he doesn't pray. And Timmy gets a better job and a baby and his wife doesn't die and he has a meeting with his new partners and says 'okay let's go pray'. The end. It's weird how at the time the story just sounded weird and kinda silly to us when its implications are honestly horrific. And it's sorta interesting how trying to turn very tradionalist religious ideas into simple morality tales tends to turn people, often women, into props. I think the boss in the story is an asshole for not accomodating his employee's harmless religious practices, but him getting punished with death for that is nonsensical. But it's so much worse that his wife, who had nothing to do with anything, was the one who died instead. The stories in this show kept reminding me of that, how these tradional morality tales tend to teach people lessons by treating their loved ones as disposable props.

I used to be obsessed with the Book of Job and what it meant. His children died to teach him a lesson, but that only works if you're a main character. What about his children? Far more than suffering being meaningless, far more than being punished for my sins, I was terrified by the idea that my suffering existed for somebody else's personal growth. I had recently been diagnosed with a long term disability, and I started to really focus on the Evangelical dialogue on disability. The main idea is that a disabled child is "a special angel sent to teach you about kindness", and, though I'm sure that helps some parents find comfort in what can be a painful and exhausting process, there are not words for the pain of feeling that your life, your struggles, your happiness, only has value as somebody else's moral prop. At least it's better than 'your disability is a symptom of incomplete faith and, if your moral were better, you'd be healed', but damn, at least that narrative gives you some agency

If they had decided to do meeting Madison as a "she died in childbirth" situation, there would have been a very different decision to make here. I thought that's where they were going until they said she died of cancer later on.

I am just so focused on the angel taking the dude who wanted to hunt down his wife's murderer and stops him from killing the killer in an act of revenge because "he has a normal family later if you don't kill him" and I am focused on it because if presumably the angel can look into the future and change the past and see "god's will" or whatever then why doesn't he just go back in time and stop that guy's wife from being killed. I presume, like most married couples, they have kids together. Are their kids evil and that's why his wife had to die and there's no going back and fixing it??? What are the morals here. Obviously killing someone in an act of revenge is not itself justice but it's framed as wrong because "he can have a normal family after taking yours away and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that normal family gets made by changing the course of history, and instead of stopping this man from being a killer and saving your wife from this drive by shooting I am instead going to just make sure he gets the fulfillment of a family." Like what??? That's the best argument you could make??? If it's God's will that dude's wife gets murdered in an act of senseless violence how is it not also God's will the killer dies in an act of revenge?

Jessie Chris isn’t even saving souls - he’s just dumping people in alternate timelines.

“Charlie cannot merely do better, he has to always have done better” is the most anti-Christian message I’ve ever seen in a TV show. Like, it’s fundamentally antithetical to the core theology of basically every branch of Christianity, and the fact that it’s the message of a supposedly Christian show hurts my soul.

man that first story about the girl with the kid in one timeline and not in the other really bugs me. Often when women aren't able to have access to abortions and systemically forced to have a child that they can't afford to take of, they end up being pushed deeper into poverty, ESPECIALLY if they're single parents that don't have the benefit or financial stability of a two-parent household. There's a reason why the increased accessibility to abortions in the 1970's correlates very closely with the sharp decline in violent crime from 1990 onward; far fewer children that would have been born and grown up in poverty didn't exist by 1990 and onward, so as that cohort grew up, there were fewer adults that were forced to resort to crime to support themselves, and more would-be single mothers that were able to wait until they were more financially stable to have children. Obviously, correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, and there are a lot of other systemic factors that resulted in this drop as well (the Lead-Crime Hypothesis is really interesting to look into and also correlates with the same drop in violent crime). It's really why opposition to abortion by Conservatives really has nothing to do with being "Pro-Life"; denying access to abortion really is just a vehicle to continue to suppress the poor and hold them in poverty, thus their children in poverty. And then when they grow up, they have no choice but to either accept garbage wages and jobs out of desperation, or resort to crime and be imprisoned in the for-profit prison system. It's a lose-lose game for the poor and Working Class.

Wouldn’t it have been amazing if she pepper sprayed William when he came out and now her new life begins with her getting divorced?

The show looks SO weird. It's like an uncanny valley between looking like a real show and looking like a high school class project.

I can explain "Queen of Scream" for you a bit, Joel, as someone who grew up evangelical and became a writer. Evangelical Christianity tends to drive out its young artists unless they conform to a VERY specific model of art. I was told over and over as a kid that I would write the "great Christian novel," which was understood to include no sex, minimal violence, and moral lessons or Bible verses every other page. When I wrote a play with strong religious themes that happened to be set in a bar, I was forced to change it to a bar and grill where literally only Satan touched alcohol. You can imagine how people reacted to my vampire murder mystery novel at age 13. 😂 Those kinds of restrictions, especially the extra restrictions imposed on women, tend to drive young artists away from the church. It's no coincidence that the main character's new genre is historical romance (a perennial bestseller in Christian bookstores that features women being rewarded for "proper" old-fashioned behavior) and that she's now got a husband (aka a man to be in charge of her, as the evangelical God intended). Ironically, for artists who grew up evangelical, her new life is the horror story. Btw, this is why so much current evangelical art stinks. The most talented artists usually experiment with something "un-Christian" at some point, and get booted. Only those who conform perfectly, or lack the imagination to transgress, are permitted to stay. Makes for a lot of mediocre art.

I love how the singing episode is clearly building up to some beautiful gospel song, or at least something very emotional and religious. And then you get to the song and it's the most generic radio country shit ever, complete with audible pitch correction.

“She got accepted to Harvard Law right out of high school.” God this script is incompetent. Edit: A student in New York WITH A PHD? The highest terminal degree? How is he still a student??? This script was written by an alien.

I just wanted to say that in Brazil we call "motel" exclusively places where you rent a room for a couple of hours to have sex, so when I saw that this Christian show was called "Dream Motel" I snickered. Also, "Dream Motel" is exactly the kind of cheesy name a motel would have here. Come to check out our Arabian themed rooms!

do you believe that “my brother’s keeper” also speaks about what a woman’s role should be in christianity? that without having or looking for anyone to take care of or serve (her brother, her husband) they immediately turn to jail and alcoholism and are “failures” in the eyes of god?

On my fifth rewatch I just realised that Tony tacking up Jesse on his offer is simply insane: for all she knows this guy is either pulling an elaborate prank on her or is planning to murder her brother. And yet she still goes through the door. Fascinating (derogatory).

The horror writer and her husband have literally the same haircut and it's hilarious.

Angels: "If it's God's will it's right. Nothing we do really matters" Also Angels: "This person is making a terrible mistake. This can't be God's will. We need to fix it"

“if horror sells, write that. if violence sells, write that.” bestie how are you a competent writer. your standard of quality sounds nonexistent

Kinda cruel to have a kid knowing you won't be there for that child

"You should love your disabled family members because the burden of caring for them makes you a better person." Excuse me while I go break something.

I love how this show thinks you can't make things scary without sex, drugs, violence, or "satanic" creatures. As if horror isn't about fear and the unknown or the responses of humans in situations out of their control. Also Shelley's life sounds like a horror novel. A strong independent writer, turned into a christian G rated historical romance author because of a strange eldritch hotel that wipes away 30 years of her life.

The “have a kid, you’re dying soon” really bothered me. My mum was really ill with a brain tumour when I was a kid and she spent a very long time in hospital, how is being ill for the little time you have with your kid a good thing? The main thing I remember of the time is having to go to peoples houses after school cos dad was visiting her in hospital (she wasn’t in the local hospital and it was at minimum an hour each way) and we only got to see her every other Saturday.

"Children should not suffer for the sins of their parents" is a pretty big step forward for people, who believe in original sin XD