Just looked up Eraserhead. I really need to see that. I knew the name but not anything about it. Looks really interesting.I'm not sure if it's a movie that I can actually recommend. I enjoyed it (at least I think I did?) but it's extremely confusing and has almost no dialogue. It's kind of just a series of bizarre and disquieting scenes that tell a story but never really explicate on it. I think a good scene to describe the movie is probably the dinner scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBpd5xy-vCY). Don't worry, it's spoiler free (as much as the movie can even have spoilers).
The ThingIs also a good one. Yay for being alone in the Antarctic being unable to trust anyone.
Also the Penumbra Series (http://www.penumbragame.com/ageGate.php) are apparently pretty spooky too. I haven't touched those though.
How about this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0)?The sequel (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/566914)
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I just don't get why people bother to make fun of that song. It is so obviously mediocre that I don't see the point.How about this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0)?The sequel (http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/566914)
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I played Penumbra Overture a bit, my problem was that it was too scary. I kind of freeze up when the first enemy appears and I'm too scared to actually do anything but hide. So yeah I guess that's a recommendation.I wouldn't say so. It seems to me that horror works vary greatly based upon how scary they are. Like so:
Of course, taste varies greatly. Your typical muggle might prefer Boring Unscary. I prefer Paralyzingly Scary. I love the horror genre because it forces you into introspection and makes you emotionally stronger. Don't pull any punches with me. Make me lose sleep. However, I do not like pointless sadism. I don't understand the growing market that consists of 'watch helpless people get kidnapped and tortured for a couple hours just for the hell of it.'Yeah, this is pretty much why I don't consider myself a horror fan. When I think horror I think paralyzingly scary and that's it, so I'm usually really disappointed. That's not the kind of thing most people, even horror fans, are looking for though. I can't say it's a pleasant emotion that I enjoy feeling but it is certainly an experience that I wouldn't normally have and that's the kind of thing I look for in fiction.
Paralizingly Scary would be running out of the movie theater 25% of the way though the film, hiding under your bed for a month, and never encountering the film ever again.
Ju-On is special to me for being the only one to do it on pure creepiness alone. There was nothing especially psychologically challenging about that film, other than the fact that it strips you of everything normally held as psychological comfort. It was just... so goddamn creepy... for a couple years afterwards I couldn't help but imagine that girl every time I saw a flight of stairs. Every. Single. Time. Nothing else has ever unsettled me in that way before, and I'd love to find another.Okay, you've really sold the movie to me except...I've already seen the American version so I think that would lessen the impact of the original. This is all Sarah Michelle Gellar's fault.
Okay, you've really sold the movie to me except...I've already seen the American version so I think that would lessen the impact of the original. This is all Sarah Michelle Gellar's fault.
It is surprising me this hasn't been said, but, call of Cthulhu anyone? I liked it myself.
On that note, SuteF is a great indie horror game. Go give it a try!
I've been playing suteF. Does it ever start to make sense?
Ocean House Hotel from VtM: Bloodlines.In the event you should play it again, try it with Auspex on for a while. No guarantees, but you might just see somthing interesting...
Played it again earlier tonight. Even though I knew what was coming, it still scared me.
Horror music: Portal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmeRlIhPdUc) is terrifying, and their lyrics and imagery give Lovecraft a run for his money.Wow. That was pretty awful. But actually, I kinda enjoyed it.
Portal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmeRlIhPdUc) is terrifying, and their lyrics and imagery give Lovecraft a run for his money.Err... That song's not scary at all... Well, to me at least.
Your one stone cold badass.Portal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmeRlIhPdUc) is terrifying, and their lyrics and imagery give Lovecraft a run for his money.Err... That song's not scary at all... Well, to me at least.
Portal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmeRlIhPdUc) is terrifying, and their lyrics and imagery give Lovecraft a run for his money.Err... That song's not scary at all... Well, to me at least.
The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
Would you look forward to The Thing vs Predator? I know I would.
•Getting Crap Past The Radar: The initial cut was so gory that test audiences complained of nausea. John Carpenter alleviated this by changing nothing.
◦God bless that sick, sick man.
Predators respond to dishonorable death with nuclear weapons.
Just have a monster mashup with every creature in one big free for all.
I really have been disappointed by horror movies lately, I saw the Ring, Case 39, a bunch more that I can't even remember. They all sucked. The single scariest movie I have ever seen (and the best horror movie), is The Thing.But I loved The Ring...
I really have been disappointed by horror movies lately, I saw the Ring, Case 39, a bunch more that I can't even remember. They all sucked. The single scariest movie I have ever seen (and the best horror movie), is The Thing.But I loved The Ring...
(Or as least the Japanese version, I've never seen the english version.)
Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.There is an even shorter one: The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a lock on the door.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
There was a box. A skeleton popped out.
He lay in the dark, his face all red.
BOO!
Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.I read a story that basically had that premise in the Thomas Disch collection Fun With Your New Head, it wasn't really scary but it was kinda creepy. A lot of the stories in that collection are like that. The best one is probably Come to Venus Melancholy which was kinda like if Philip K Dick had written the Jupiter Mission section of 2001.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
Ocean House Hotel from VtM: Bloodlines.In the event you should play it again, try it with Auspex on for a while. No guarantees, but you might just see somthing interesting...
Played it again earlier tonight. Even though I knew what was coming, it still scared me.
"The Impossible Planet" really screwed with me, at least the first half of it.
We must feed...
We must feed....
We must feed...
*Opening Plays*
...you, if you are hungry.
The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a sock on the door.Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.There is an even shorter one: The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a lock on the door.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a roc on the door.The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a sock on the door.Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.There is an even shorter one: The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a lock on the door.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
What, no Doctor Who?Personally, I've found "Midnight" to be the scariest one.
"Blink" messed a lot of people up (but it's way overhyped, so maybe you shouldn't bother by now). "Silence in the Library" was excellent. "The Impossible Planet" really screwed with me, at least the first half of it. A lot of Doctor Who is campy, but that just means that the honestly scary ones that come out of nowhere really nail you.
Here's a spooky little comic:
http://brasscockroach.com/h4ll0w33n2007/manga/Amigara-Full/Amigara.html
Here's a spooky little comic:
http://brasscockroach.com/h4ll0w33n2007/manga/Amigara-Full/Amigara.html
I am sorry, but I can not be afraid of something where the big ‘shocking’ ‘reveal’ says Dur dur dur.
Although the implications of how he survived months without food or water is pretty interesting.
I am sorry, but I can not be afraid of something where the big ‘shocking’ ‘reveal’ says Dur dur dur.I hear this a lot about it, but I'm living proof that YMMV on it. After the story broke my mind, I spent a lot of time trying (not) to imagine what kind of sound that was trying to represent. As a result, I was set on edge by any odd sounds for about a month.
Although the implications of how he survived months without food or water is pretty interesting.
Your second point was something I clung to as to why something like this could never be possible. I think that's part of what got to me - apart from that, there was nothing overtly supernatural about the process.
I'm with Palazzo on that. Don't get me wrong, the others are scary and definately entertaining, but Midnight has a definate Lovecraftian feel to it. That we never really are given an explanation for what is going on probably helps that.What, no Doctor Who?Personally, I've found "Midnight" to be the scariest one.
"Blink" messed a lot of people up (but it's way overhyped, so maybe you shouldn't bother by now). "Silence in the Library" was excellent. "The Impossible Planet" really screwed with me, at least the first half of it. A lot of Doctor Who is campy, but that just means that the honestly scary ones that come out of nowhere really nail you.
Huh. I did not even think of magicness. I just thought since, you know, there were thousands of inputs up only a couple of outputs. My mind went straight to cannibalism.
Think of the tunnels slowly growing nearer to eachother and squishing you together. What else would you be able to do?
I found "The Road" scary.
Sometimes, simple things can be creepy as well.Quote from: The World's Shortest Horror StoryThe last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock upon the door.
Here's a spooky little comic:
http://brasscockroach.com/h4ll0w33n2007/manga/Amigara-Full/Amigara.html
I am sorry, but I can not be afraid of something where the big ‘shocking’ ‘reveal’ says Dur dur dur.
Although the implications of how he survived months without food or water is pretty interesting.
Here's a spooky little comic:
http://brasscockroach.com/h4ll0w33n2007/manga/Amigara-Full/Amigara.html
I am sorry, but I can not be afraid of something where the big ‘shocking’ ‘reveal’ says Dur dur dur.
Although the implications of how he survived months without food or water is pretty interesting.
For some reason I never got the impression that they were still alive at the end...just horribly twisted corpses sliding out.
For some reason I never got the impression that they were still alive at the end...just horribly twisted corpses sliding out.
I was going to say the same thing, it did say that it was a form of execution. Although that may refer to after, I really don't know.
How about The Prestige? That one felt very much like a horror movie to me, but so far no one I know has agreed with me on that.I'll be the first one to agree with everybody else you know. ;)
It was groaning.I'm rather more inclined to read that as a sound of months-old carcass being sqeezed through tiny holes.
How about The Prestige? That one felt very much like a horror movie to me, but so far no one I know has agreed with me on that.I'll be the first one to agree with everybody else you know. ;)
Seriously speaking, while the implications of some of the revelations might've been disturbing on a moral level
Heh, you must've been scared shitless watching Black Swan, then.
I haven't seen every single Dr. Who episode, the scariest (and my personal favorite) episode was the one in WWII London with the kid in the gas mask saying "Mommy?"What, no Doctor Who?Personally, I've found "Midnight" to be the scariest one.
"Blink" messed a lot of people up (but it's way overhyped, so maybe you shouldn't bother by now). "Silence in the Library" was excellent. "The Impossible Planet" really screwed with me, at least the first half of it. A lot of Doctor Who is campy, but that just means that the honestly scary ones that come out of nowhere really nail you.
The other things is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (http://www.google.com/search?q=scary+stories+to+tell+in+the+dark&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=88LsTeWPL8LdgQe0mujhCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1420&bih=770) series. The stories aren't that scary, ranging from humorous to campfire ghost stories to urban legends, with a few genuinely disturbing tidbits mixed in. But the illustrations...ye gods, the illustrations....those things burned holes in my brain when I read it in elementary school. And it should be stressed -- these are children's books.Ugh, dear me. It's like putting H.R.Giger's or Beksinski's illustrations in a book for kids. A troubled childhood and a lifetime of morbid fascination guaranteed.
No shit. They *still* affect me. When the Google result page came up, there was a part of me trying to avert my eyes.The other things is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (http://www.google.com/search?q=scary+stories+to+tell+in+the+dark&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=88LsTeWPL8LdgQe0mujhCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1420&bih=770) series. The stories aren't that scary, ranging from humorous to campfire ghost stories to urban legends, with a few genuinely disturbing tidbits mixed in. But the illustrations...ye gods, the illustrations....those things burned holes in my brain when I read it in elementary school. And it should be stressed -- these are children's books.Ugh, dear me. It's like putting H.R.Giger's or Beksinski's illustrations in a book for kids. A troubled childhood and a lifetime of morbid fascination guaranteed.
"Flowers for Algernon", or rather the second half of the story. It's a perfect window into what I think it would be like to have a degenerative neurological condition like Alzheimer's or dementia, and to be cognizant enough that you know you're losing your intellect and you can't stop it. That shit scares the f**k out of me, because it's a very real-life threat, and one of those things that's a personal nightmare of mine.
I still wonder about The Thing, in that it's never clear if Things are aware of their status as Things untill they get outed.
I love the cheesy computer simulation. It scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Now, when I think about it, I can only see the cheesiness, which seems to be suggesting that my high regard for The Thing is mostly nostalgia-driven.
Oh, I meant the simulation one of the scientists runs on his computer in the movie. The silly thing with purple blobs of pixelated "cells" eating the blue ones or something. He watches this animation, that he coded himself, with that extremally worried expression on his face, as if seeing exactly what he programmed gave him some profound insight into the whole thing(i.e.Thing).I love the cheesy computer simulation. It scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Now, when I think about it, I can only see the cheesiness, which seems to be suggesting that my high regard for The Thing is mostly nostalgia-driven.
I didn't know they even used computer animation in the Thing.
Oh, I meant the simulation one of the scientists runs on his computer in the movie. The silly thing with purple blobs of pixelated "cells" eating the blue ones or something. He watches this animation, that he coded himself, with that extremally worried expression on his face, as if seeing exactly what he programmed gave him some profound insight into the whole thing(i.e.Thing).
I mean, he was like if he had written <print "hello world">, and then went all "Holy crap this is some powerful shit I made".
So that's what I meant, and not the monster effects which were most probably all animatronic.
The other things is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (http://www.google.com/search?q=scary+stories+to+tell+in+the+dark&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=88LsTeWPL8LdgQe0mujhCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1420&bih=770) series. The stories aren't that scary, ranging from humorous to campfire ghost stories to urban legends, with a few genuinely disturbing tidbits mixed in. But the illustrations...ye gods, the illustrations....those things burned holes in my brain when I read it in elementary school. And it should be stressed -- these are children's books.
The other things is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (http://www.google.com/search?q=scary+stories+to+tell+in+the+dark&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=88LsTeWPL8LdgQe0mujhCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1420&bih=770) series. The stories aren't that scary, ranging from humorous to campfire ghost stories to urban legends, with a few genuinely disturbing tidbits mixed in. But the illustrations...ye gods, the illustrations....those things burned holes in my brain when I read it in elementary school. And it should be stressed -- these are children's books.
We had copies of those in our school library. They scared me so much back in 2nd grade! :'(
Oh, I meant the simulation one of the scientists runs on his computer in the movie. The silly thing with purple blobs of pixelated "cells" eating the blue ones or something. He watches this animation, that he coded himself, with that extremally worried expression on his face, as if seeing exactly what he programmed gave him some profound insight into the whole thing(i.e.Thing).I love the cheesy computer simulation. It scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Now, when I think about it, I can only see the cheesiness, which seems to be suggesting that my high regard for The Thing is mostly nostalgia-driven.
I didn't know they even used computer animation in the Thing.
I mean, he was like if he had written <print "hello world">, and then went all "Holy crap this is some powerful shit I made".
So that's what I meant, and not the monster effects which were most probably all animatronic.
Yes, thank you. I couldn't quite put it into words, and that's much more like it.
Anyway, scared the crap out of me when I was a wee little kid.
"Flowers for Algernon", or rather the second half of the story. It's a perfect window into what I think it would be like to have a degenerative neurological condition like Alzheimer's or dementia, and to be cognizant enough that you know you're losing your intellect and you can't stop it. That shit scares the f**k out of me, because it's a very real-life threat, and one of those things that's a personal nightmare of mine.
Oh godThe game really is terrifying. The plot even changes between versions.
I'm watching a playthrough of the game right now, ToonyMan
I tried playing it but it won't let me because I'm missing RGSS103J.dll D:
Many years back, I put forward the theory that what stops horror games from being truly horrifying is the fact that your ability to fight back effectively means you end up feeling in control of the situation. The baddies aren't as terrifying when you know you can just pump whatever jumps out at you full of lead and be safe again immediately.That seems to be why Clock Tower, Haunting Grounds, and Ao Oni work so well for me.
The other things is the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (http://www.google.com/search?q=scary+stories+to+tell+in+the+dark&hl=en&prmd=ivnsb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=88LsTeWPL8LdgQe0mujhCQ&ved=0CCYQsAQ&biw=1420&bih=770) series. The stories aren't that scary, ranging from humorous to campfire ghost stories to urban legends, with a few genuinely disturbing tidbits mixed in. But the illustrations...ye gods, the illustrations....those things burned holes in my brain when I read it in elementary school. And it should be stressed -- these are children's books.Just read through the entire thread. This one is by far the one I was most impressed by as a child. Those pictures, man. We're talking gouge out your eyes scary.
The Human explodes into gore! x100While you know precisely who's murdering who, and the characters on-screen are pitifully clueless. The Thing leaves the viewer uncertain as well, to great effect.
While this might not be horrific for the viewer, it is absolutely horrific for the person playing the game itself. (http://www.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=PH#/watch?v=UbE9-3s7qvo)doesnt work
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbE9-3s7qvo <- That is the linkWhile this might not be horrific for the viewer, it is absolutely horrific for the person playing the game itself. (http://www.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=PH#/watch?v=UbE9-3s7qvo)doesnt work
This one. Mostly because the trapped feeling.: http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Cabin_and_the_Dolls
Ok. Slight de-rail out of curiousity. Does anyone here actually believe in anything supernatural? Had any experiences?I was kinda hoping someone would answer this, because ghost stories are fun, and my answer is boring: nope.
I'll be honest: even though I don't really get it, I Found A Digital Camera In The Woods (http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/I_Found_A_Digital_Camera_In_The_Woods) intrigues me. I keep wondering what I'm supposed to be seeing in the photographs.
My mom's been involved in some things as well. She had an experience with a Ouija board in her teen years, where her friend's eyes turned black and she began speaking in tongues. She's also had a few prophetic dreams. They've all been minor things, where she would suddenly realize "wait I've seen this before.... X is about to happen" and it was true. One was special, though. It was a very vivid dream that occurred on a date she wouldn't understand the importance of until much later...
When my dad took her home to meet his family for the first time. They had all sat down to eat supper. Her, my dad, his brother, and his mom.
My mom asked "So where's your dad?"
... awkward silence
Brother "Didn't he tell you? Dad died a few years ago."
... realization dawns on my mom
"Wait... did he die on that couch?" *points to living room*
"Umm... yes"
"Did he look like *insert description*"
"Umm... yes"
"Did he die on ___ date?"
"....... yes"
Yeah, apparently she dreamed of her future father-in-law laying down and dying in vivid, accurate detail on the same night that it happened.
Say the odds are a million to one that when a person has a dream of an airplane crash, there is an airplane crash the next day. With 6 billion people having an average of 250 dream themes each per night, there should be about 30,000 to 1.5 million people a day who have dreams that seem clairvoyant. The number is actually likely to be larger, since we tend to dream about things that legitimately concern or worry us, and the data of dreams is usually vague or ambiguous, allowing a wide range of events to count as fulfilling our dreams.
if nothing paranormal happens to me by the time I'm fifty I'll be like 'meh it ain't real' but I'm willing to give it a fair shake until then.
This is one is frighteningly believable. (http://www.creepypastaindex.com/creepypasta/baby-doll)Especially since how connected sleep deprivation is with insanity in general.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And I'm still seeing that red eye. Thanks Salmon :P
It is nearly 1 AM, the moon is merely 10% lit, it's late October, and a light thunderstorm just started up. Time to play Amnesia.Don't forget your surround sound headphones. or look out the window.
It is nearly 1 AM, the moon is merely 10% lit, it's late October, and a light thunderstorm just started up. Time to play Amnesia.
One man one ice pick: its a snuff, dont look it up unless you like being fucked upWell I can't help myself now, can I?
Probably because gore and spookiness are closely related in most people's minds. For good reason too, gore can be pretty bloody scary.Maybe it's because I've tagged along with my mom's colleagues in the morgue a lot as a child, so gore isn't scary to me, it's just disgusting.
PT was a sort of demo for Silent Hills. Unfortunately, since the game was cancelled, the only way to experience PT (I know of, anyway) is watching a Let's Play. I thought it was pretty cool though.Unless you have it saved still, like a friend of mine. I think he made backups of it, too. :P
Watched Train to Busan on Netflix lastnight.
I randomly chose it as something throw-away to watch to force myself to stop actively doing things and move towards sleep. Ended up liking it more than I expected.Spoiler: As usual, zombie film is social commentary. This is for real spoilers. (click to show/hide)
It's Junji Ito. The constant comparisons between him and Lovecraft are for the negatives alongside the positives. His writing is bad fanfic-level (or else his translator is) and his plots are schizophrenic, but that's not why people read Ito. It's for the iron-hard conceptual grasp of horror and the gratuitous art. If you're looking for the subtle prose of a master above all else he's just not for you.I must interject as I'm duty bound to argue my case for the genre of horror, having been a student of literary horror. I think you're really short-selling it, especially as now I write my dissertation on Lovecraft ;D
However, I think his shlock demonstrates the heart of horror as a genre, something that is forgotten by almost all its creators. The b-horror movie is not a coincidence. Writing and plotting are secondary to horror, almost uniquely among genres. Horror is all on the conceptual level and the morbid fascination of having nightmare fuel put before your eyes. Friday the 13th works because someone slaughtering you and all your young friends getting drunk and fucking in the woods is a thought that most people have had at least passingly. The Thing works because Antarctica's barrenness is fascinating all on its own, and because you're never quite sure of the people around you. Saw works because everybody who's ever been around a machine tool has had a moment where they look at their fingers and really see all the joints and sections for the first time. Martyrs or Hostel work because some small part of your mind wants to go on r/watchpeopledie and look through the top posts, even though you know that's a bad idea. Dawn of the Dead and zombie movies in general tend to break the mold by including a degree of power fantasy with the violence and the criticism of society, but that can all come crashing down as demonstrated by the anti-power fantasy of Day of the Dead.
Those are the two real subgenres of horror: splatter and nightmares.
So you've got Ito. Spoilers for all his stories follow, by the way. Enigma of Amigara fault is barely even a fucking story, but it's the one he's arguably best known for. And it's as simple as it gets: Claustrophobia. Forced supernatural claustrophobia, but claustrophobia all the same. It even shows you the damn twist half way through the story in a nightmare and then immediately repeats it, but god if it doesn't get in your head and stick there
Hellstar Remina goes completely the other way into surrealism. Claustrophobia is a concrete fear, but the true fear represented in this is the old Lovecraftian ideal of total helplessness, except it goes way more direct than Lovecraft ever did. The worst Lovecraft ever said was "mankind is unimportant and will always be unimportant". Ito here is saying "mankind is unimportant and the Destroyer is coming next Tuesday to crack the Earth like a jawbreaker, which you can see happening with a backyard telescope to the other planets". Sure, Remina is personally in danger of being raped and sacrificed, but that doesn't extend to the reader all that much. Which is why the story keeps going round and round away from her to show people getting fucked over trying to solve this impossible question of how to survive.
Uzumaki goes for a blend of the Enigma style and the Hellstar style. Something utterly supernatural happening not to the world but to a small group of people, who are caught up in it and have no recourse at all. The true spiral is the narrative one, a death spiral surrounding the characters and dooming them before the story even begins. And much like Dawn of the Dead it shows society going kind of crazy resisting, exploiting, and accepting the spiral in its various forms. The "central plot" is nothing more than the final one, of some poor fools who didn't have the decency to surrender while the getting was good and drew it out for everybody. But in the end the spiral is absolute. It is carved into the bones of the universe, and it sucks them all down like it always was going to.
Then we have Gyo. I thought Gyo was alright, but I do agree with you that it's on the weak side for Ito. Gyo is like Saw or perhaps closer to Hostel in that it's full on body horror. With Uzumaki there was more mystery. Sure, there was body horror aplenty, but it was a spiral to unravel (the spiral's end is the spiral's end is the spiral's end is the) while Gyo just flat out shoves ZOMBIE LANDSHARKS OH GOD EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE SHIT at you. There's a bit of confusion there, I think, between the zombie movie style of "monsters are everywhere and nobody knows why, now shut up and fight and take your due from our exploitative society while you're at it, and do all those other things you deny yourself because of societal constructs too" with the grander "the Japanese didn't make these things, they fucking found them, what forbidden knowledge lies beneath the waves?". And then this already precarious balance goes crashing into "and now the machines are going to physically violate you and make you live forever smelling rot gas with a giant tube shoved in your ass". And crashes a little more at the very end with "ALIEN WORLD MAYBE".
Gyo does all those individual things well enough, but I think Ito's plot schizophrenia took a bridge too far in letting it reach beyond the limits of a single horror style and eventually grabbing all of the ones he uses at once.
His writing is bad fanfic-level (or else his translator is)THIS IS MY POST
LW understands horror. When things are explained, it's ruined.And it's got a killer soundtrack
Your post made me think about how excellent It Follows was. I feel like watching it again.
It's a shame LW seems to spend a lot of his time talking politics because I could listen to him discuss horror (or at least just break down Ito if nothing else) for awhile longer. :/Politics is horror.
I suppose it can be, but it's infinitely less interesting to me. :PWhat about political horror (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w)
I skimmed over the thread since apparently it's been 7 years since I posted here. I saw SCP mentioned once or twice but only as a one-off reference... Does anyone here actually read it anymore? I've been desperate for earnest discussion about the SCP-verse but can't find anyone (including their own communities) that actually wants to talk about it.We've had a few threads about SCP but it died when the SCP lads killed their own site. But I've been killing my sides with the Bedbanana & Criken SCP diaries (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAI3b-H-wpU)
SCP lads killed their own site
Explain? There's still new stuff being posted...Zombies are animated, lifeless corpses
also, check out this guy's Confinement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0b2s_ot9_0) series. It's mroe comedy than horror, but the special anthology nails some of my favorite SCP's.
I regret asking the question, forget it.
Profile: The genre-savvy and enigmatic "Dr. Alto Clef" maintains that its true name is that of an A major chord played on a ukelele, which it carries around with it at all times should other entities wish to address it by name. It has recieved its current nickname due to its habit of signing reports with a hand-drawn Alto Clef symbol. Although apparently competent at its job, its acerbic attitude and habit of annoying its coworkers by walking around minimal security areas with unfurled cinnamon rolls stuck in its nose has gained it the enmity of several of its coworkers.It used to be dark, dark times for SCP lmao. It can still be enjoyable, just make sure to have a reading guide so you don't waste hours on duds. Some people still haven't grapsed that 5 pages of containment protocols alone is not enough to make an unnameable thing an object of interest; it's just a description of a job function. I suppose if you love lore SCP will never fail to please, it's got lore for days, and enough vagueness to allow for endless speculation and theorizing.
This marked a transition from the SCP site being an archive of horror stories made by anonymous contributors, to a site being a community whose focus is on the personalities of the community members.
SCP had a real nadir there a couple years ago, but after the Canon Hub got started I feel the site took on some new life. Once the Antimemetic Series was posted I was pretty much back with it.
-snip-
The original anons from /x/ started sailing off to greener pastures. It was inevitable imo, that the ephermal anon would go to shitpost beyond, but they had in their ephemeral ways sought to leave behind dank spookiness in an archive which would outlast their fleeting nature. This archive was pretty good, but began to decline in overall quality because it started getting shitty animus or too many edgy Spongebob murder copies, that some basic regulation had to be put in place.Let's not be too conciliatory towards ebin hackers known as 4chan here. I'm a salty dog by the history of the creepypasta world, and I remember the Asylum Series, which was your standard quality of writing from golden age /x/ and rarely exceeded. They get some credit for accidentally starting SCP's style by never deviating from "do all this weird unmemorizable shit when you meet the aslyum object or you'll have barbed wire pulled through your urethra until the sun burns out" that in time would evolve into Special Containment Procedures, but I say again, that credit was for them utterly lacking in creativity in everything but thinking up various methods of physically impossible torture.
There was a point where the wizards and catgirls showed up that I just quit reading, but it seems like in the time since there's been some great work done. Antimemetics and Counterconceptual division are both great.Pretty much, it can still produce some gems; a bog need not be without flowers. That's why it's good to get a reading guide and keep arm's length from the drama, though there are better platforms and mediums to write spooky horror funs
Thanks for expounding... and you're not wrong. I joined the site, tried to critique and submit, even tried the analysis subreddit. Every community outlet surrounding the actual site is a festering pile of trash in some way or another. That's what drove me to post here, more or less...
All that said, I do think somehow they manage to turn out a good story now and again, regardless of the attendant drama and other issues I'm sure as hell not touching on.
Let's not be too conciliatory towards ebin hackers known as 4chan here. I'm a salty dog by the history of the creepypasta world, and I remember the Asylum Series, which was your standard quality of writing from golden age /x/ and rarely exceeded. They get some credit for accidentally starting SCP's style by never deviating from "do all this weird unmemorizable shit when you meet the aslyum object or you'll have barbed wire pulled through your urethra until the sun burns out" that in time would evolve into Special Containment Procedures, but I say again, that credit was for them utterly lacking in creativity in everything but thinking up various methods of physically impossible torture.To me 2014 was the dead cat bounce of /x/. The Golden age was before then, before even when the /x/ anons were cast out and sought refuge in /tg/. Then the /x/ anons were cast out from /tg/ into the rest of the internet, much as the Greek scholars evicted from Constantinople sparked the renaissance, sowing the seeds of their own destruction by making their works self-archiving. Now that the deluge of redditors has successfully decomposed the creepypasta, new spicy meatballs are what I seek. One of the greatest things about the golden age of /x/ was that it was true to its ephemeral format, if it was not worthy of being remembered, it was forgotten. Once 2014 comes around, all the urethra barbed wire shit nipple crap that would have been forgotten, is not forgotten, instead taken up by all the eager baby birds lapping at the creepyvomit. It's like the nutcases murdering for slenderman in 2014, the effortless immortalisation of /x/'s works was not a golden age, it was a curse, enshrining their mistakes as canon for the wider internet to consume. The very notion that you should even care about who gets credit for making a creepypasta is sentiment to how far the autistic vision of the true artiste has been lost - it's laughable that the thing an anonymous poster would want, is to claim credit to their non-existent character. It's a copypasta, a thing shared from person to person, the digital oral epic of contemporary Homers and Homersexuals, now reduced to the basest, commercial and easily consumable products for individuals with real personalities. The death of nirvana, brought to you by 9gag ecksdeeeXDDDDD
The brooding vampire boyfriend SCPs and Attitude Era moderation staff were a bridge too far in trying to squeeze water from that stone, but it didn't come out of nowhere. It was a necessary growing pain, looking back on it now.
Ah, so what did you guys think of Annihilation if you've seen it? It's very elegantly done--and adapted from quality novels to boot--but the source material itself has some issues with... well, understanding what it wants to say, and the filmmakers--for all the brilliant work they've done--kind of slapped a thin veneer of esoteric and vague, hand-wave-y themes concerning xenophobia and acceptance on top of what appears to be an already nebulous story/plot/reason-to-read/watch.Worth watching? The trailer didn't really grab my attention
According to the story, at some point in or around June 1947 (Gaddis and others list the approximate date as early February 1948), two American vessels navigating the Strait of Malacca, City of Baltimore and Silver Star, among others, picked up distress messages from Dutch merchant ship Ourang Medan. A radio operator aboard the troubled vessel sent the following Morse code message: "S.O.S. from Ourang Medan * * * we float. All officers including the Captain, dead in chartroom and on the bridge. Probably whole of crew dead * * *." A few confused dots and dashes later two words came through clearly. They were "I die." Then, nothing more. When Silver Star crew located and boarded the apparently undamaged Ourang Medan in a rescue attempt, the ship was found littered with corpses (including the carcass of a dog) "[s]prawled on their backs, the frozen faces upturned to the sun with mouths gaping open and eyes staring, the dead bodies resembled horrible caricatures", with no survivors and no visible signs of injuries on the dead bodies. A fire then broke out in the ship's No. 4 cargo hold, forcing the boarding parties to evacuate the Dutch freighter, thus preventing any further investigation. Soon after, Ourang Medan was observed to explode and sink.The sea is horror (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourang_Medan)
There was a point where the wizards and catgirls showed up that I just quit reading, but it seems like in the time since there's been some great work done. Antimemetics and Counterconceptual division are both great.Pretty much, it can still produce some gems; a bog need not be without flowers. That's why it's good to get a reading guide and keep arm's length from the drama, though there are better platforms and mediums to write spooky horror funs
Thanks for expounding... and you're not wrong. I joined the site, tried to critique and submit, even tried the analysis subreddit. Every community outlet surrounding the actual site is a festering pile of trash in some way or another. That's what drove me to post here, more or less...
All that said, I do think somehow they manage to turn out a good story now and again, regardless of the attendant drama and other issues I'm sure as hell not touching on.Let's not be too conciliatory towards ebin hackers known as 4chan here. I'm a salty dog by the history of the creepypasta world, and I remember the Asylum Series, which was your standard quality of writing from golden age /x/ and rarely exceeded. They get some credit for accidentally starting SCP's style by never deviating from "do all this weird unmemorizable shit when you meet the aslyum object or you'll have barbed wire pulled through your urethra until the sun burns out" that in time would evolve into Special Containment Procedures, but I say again, that credit was for them utterly lacking in creativity in everything but thinking up various methods of physically impossible torture.To me 2014 was the dead cat bounce of /x/. The Golden age was before then, before even when the /x/ anons were cast out and sought refuge in /tg/. Then the /x/ anons were cast out from /tg/ into the rest of the internet, much as the Greek scholars evicted from Constantinople sparked the renaissance, sowing the seeds of their own destruction by making their works self-archiving. Now that the deluge of redditors has successfully decomposed the creepypasta, new spicy meatballs are what I seek. One of the greatest things about the golden age of /x/ was that it was true to its ephemeral format, if it was not worthy of being remembered, it was forgotten. Once 2014 comes around, all the urethra barbed wire shit nipple crap that would have been forgotten, is not forgotten, instead taken up by all the eager baby birds lapping at the creepyvomit. It's like the nutcases murdering for slenderman in 2014, the effortless immortalisation of /x/'s works was not a golden age, it was a curse, enshrining their mistakes as canon for the wider internet to consume. The very notion that you should even care about who gets credit for making a creepypasta is sentiment to how far the autistic vision of the true artiste has been lost - it's laughable that the thing an anonymous poster would want, is to claim credit to their non-existent character. It's a copypasta, a thing shared from person to person, the digital oral epic of contemporary Homers and Homersexuals, now reduced to the basest, commercial and easily consumable products for individuals with real personalities. The death of nirvana, brought to you by 9gag ecksdeeeXDDDDD
The brooding vampire boyfriend SCPs and Attitude Era moderation staff were a bridge too far in trying to squeeze water from that stone, but it didn't come out of nowhere. It was a necessary growing pain, looking back on it now.
Pretty much this. But by his standards, we could have the old ones walking down the street and we would be OK with it these days. (Most of his "madness" was the realization that Victorian standards of behavior, culture, status, etc were all hollow vanities, and the psychic implosion of people that based their worldview on these things. Considering how far removed our culture currently is from that kind of silliness, he would view our culture as quite corrupt indeed. I suspect he would liken us to the culture he described in The Mound.)Reading At the Mountains of Madness, the Scientists are completely chill when they are analysing the elder things, even when the elder things slaughter his camp the protagonist remarks that they were merely acting like men of science. I wouldn't call it Victorian standards of behaviour or culture, since Lovecraft's attachments to culture went back to a past far before the Victorian era, but definitely one regarding scientific innovation unsettling all. Consider in this time period for example, Einstein's relativity, Darwin's speciation & breakthroughs in archaeology fucks everyone up, and we know from his letters that Lovecraft was reading of all of them. With relativity mankind finds that their intuitive understanding of time and space is only accurate to their immediate locality in the vast expanse of existence, hence all the non-euclidean geometries and extra-dimensional fuckery the characters attempt to comprehend. With speciation the concept that mankind is distinct from other species in a great chain of evolution or a racialist hierarchy is untenable; around this time scientific racialism is reeling from the notion that humanity, the white race included, is a type of great ape distinguished only by degree of evolution from a gorilla, hence the stories of white men finding out they descend from gorillas / fishmen e.t.c.. With new findings in archaeology exposing just how many ancient civilisations are dead & really just how young even the oldest one was, it puts human existence into context, especially the context of ruin - as in Memory (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/m.aspx), we are a moment in time.
Personally, I would be very intrigued by the prospect of a candid conversation with one of his Elder Things, rather than repulsed.
Sounds like alt-left to me.The Ky'nan are a colonial remnant enclave of a dead master race that once spanned the stars, the Elder Things are empirical men of science who were overthrown by the imitated plastic of their slave race. Where the stories of the human protagonists 'getting along' (or at least being ok with their existence) of their eldritch counterparts are concerned, it's usually because there's a similarity between them and the degenerated white race; as with at the mountains of madness, the scientists are completely ok with the elder things butchering and dissecting all of their companions, because that's what they tried to do to the elder things - they were both just being men of science. It is the shoggoth, the dumb plastic amoeba, which disturbs the scientist. Because the shoggoth, already the superior of its master in terms of brute force, adopts its master's language and educates itself, beginning to surpass its master in intellectual and physical prowess, a parallel to world-wide white rule beginning to deteriorate under the increasing education of the rest of the world; former colonial subjects becoming equals with their nominal overlords. It's a motif which Lovecraft probably got from Poe, that the masters have grown weak while the slave races are advancing - linguistically and biologically, coupled with degeneration theory from the likes of Lombroso & Nordau.
(You also have to include the evil practices of human kind if you intend a fair comparison. )
If you actually read the story that features them, they try to integrate the protagonist. One even fancies him, and goes with his escape plan. For a race with such baggage, they only presented that face when confronted with the threat of being wholly discovered by the human race.
...what?J.J. Abrams made a movie that, from a glance, seems like it tries to approach WW2 from the novel viewpoint of "What if the Nazis were doing spooky secret supermutant experiments?", and then everybody screamed and there was a flamethrower.
Re: the Temple: his success is a matter of debate. He's successful only insofar as he wins against the mutineers. But there are some comments to be made hereHis objective is to stop his crew from trying to save themselves, to that end he is completely successful and only seems to mourn the loss of his 2I/C lieutenant Klenze (I think it's apparent that in spite of his dismissal of Klenze as weak, Heinrich considered Klenze to be the closest thing to a friend he had). Throwing away the figurine would have done nothing to quell the mutiny, because at that point the crew was mutinying over the realisation that their Captain was determined to see them all die before they surrendered to an allied warship in spite of the futility of their situation. Regarding sanity, I wouldn't question the rationality in assuming one has gone insane after hearing laughter underwater or seeing a fire burning underwater beneath antarctic ice, in the ruins of some settlement far from any known human civilisation of the past or present. From the description it's apparent that he does try his best to exhaust every conventional explanation, but bio-luminescence only goes so far before you have to conclude that you've gone mad, or there is an undiscovered sub-arctic civilisation of some kind chanting songs at you. Given that it is far more likely that being the last survivor of a submarine trapped in darkness will have affected his psyche, that the worst of the apparent delusions went away after he took the sedative sodium bromide, and that he feels a compulsion to investigate the source of light which overrides his conscious will; he has all the evidence to conclude he is no longer in full control of his mental faculties, while he has no evidence to suggest that the sub-arctic civilisation is real (until he visits the light source - before the end of the story).
- regarding his sanity: he has an irrational attachment to the (likely cursed) figurine. He should have thrown it away to suppress the mutiny, even if at a rational level he didn't believe it was really cursed. Which brings us to point two
- his skepticism is also of questionable sanity given the situation. I mean, it's reasonable that a scientific minded person would look for conventional explanations, but even when those are ruled out he sticks to his guns about the problems were related to his overactive imagination, and doesn't hesitate right upto the very end.
I feel that this question is relevant in this thread - What would have to happen for you to believe that you were mad? How bizarre or mundane may a thing be before you assume that it is your apparatus that is at fault?Well, kinda depends on how you define "mad". Is it a full-scale, long-term "incapable of rational thought"? In which case, you likely wouldn't be able to make such an assumption at all.
I feel that this question is relevant in this thread - What would have to happen for you to believe that you were mad? How bizarre or mundane may a thing be before you assume that it is your apparatus that is at fault?I remember one of my neighbours making a joke about how they didn't intend to get married because they already had 3 voices in their head and didn't need 4 ;P
I've always preferred the counter-interpretation of Lovecraftian Sanity, that being that to be sane is a wrong and undesirable delusion, flat out. This was most made clear to me when someone published house rules for Call of Cthulhu that separated the sanity loss system into two components: sanity and stability. A character would lose both when exposed to cosmic things, but while sanity loss was semi-permanent stability loss was not. A low-sanity high-stability character is what we today think of as Post-Lovecraftian in attitude: the universe is a weird and dangerous place that doesn't care about humanity, and they accept that truth without peeling people's faces off.I prefer the interpretation that it's not insanity at all, it's just accepting a perspective which is so far removed from normal human experience that its acceptance appears insanity without exposure to the same phenomenon the protagonist experienced. A good example would be the psychiatrist in 'Beyond the Wall of Asleep (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/bws.aspx).' I don't want to spoil what he discovers, so spoilers ahead:
The reason the cultists are so face-peeling is not because they are insane (i.e., they have accepted humanity's lack of supremacy in the universe), but because they have combined the epiphany of insanity with a fearful iron grip on the cultural attitudes of sane humanity, and so conclude the cosmic things are true gods to be worshiped and have faces peeled for. The investigator characters make a lesser version of the same mistake, approaching the cosmic as if the knowledge of it will simply bow to White Civilized Anthropology, which gets them a little further before failing and backlashing ("If the epistemology of my Superior Culture couldn't contain this, we're doomed to be nothing but insects! Rutting bleeding apes under the baleful stars! Damn you! Damn you all!") . If one fully embraces insanity they only move from the cosmic terror attitude of Lovecraft's day to the cosmic acceptance attitude of today.
As I have already admitted, my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly in need of the long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me.Which is fucking hilarious, but is also something I like bringing up a lot since Lovecraft derived works have solidified the concept that knowing a cosmic perspective = roll for san loss. While ignorance being bliss is a recurring themes in a lot of the famous Lovecraft stories, people miss how in the stories where characters are not put under the stress of life-or-death situations, they are as comfortable accepting a radical redefining of their place in the cosmos as one can be for such an incident - whether it is a breakthrough in archaeology, anthropology, geometry or an encounter with some extradimensional things. The cultists however are insane, seeing something they cannot understand and turning to worship it in a fit of superstition. I also do not see the reading where the investigators from the white academic institutions recoil in resentment & cosmic horror, as in the source material they respond pretty uniformly with morbid curiosity, even eagerness. For example the investigators from ATMOM don't caution against investigating the Antarctic ruins because finding out humans are an accidental offspring of ayy lmaos shakes them - on the contrary, their determination to continue investigating to uncover the truth regardless of their casualties, to even sympathise with their attackers, shows their commitment to the scientific method. The only reason they caution against continued exploration is that they might end up disturbing something which can kill off humanity; please do not wake the sleeping shoggoths
A low-sanity high-stability character is what we today think of as Post-Lovecraftian in attitude: the universe is a weird and dangerous place that doesn't care about humanity, and they accept that truth without peeling people's faces off.
Bit of a necro but meh.''The universe is a yawning chasm filled with emptiness and the puerile meanderings of sentience. Why should you deserve special consideration within it Augustus, above all else?' - t. A fucking space jellyfish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbWg7VB3hPY)
I often feel this lovecraftian sanity being described when I try to explain space and the solar system to friends. It seems so odd to me that they don't realize how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things. Individual humans are... Imperceptible flickers in a vast and uncaring universe. Sand grains on a nigh-infinite beach.
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