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donnerpartyofone · 4 years

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reasons my i am probably too sensitive to have anything to do with other people

including other people’s drama that has absolutely nothing to do with me

i started reading this person’s new webcomic on instagram a month or two ago, and what started out as a fun little time killer that i looked forward to every day has started making me so uncomfortable that i wish i’d never heard of it. it takes place right now, in an especially embattled US city, and it’s about the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of shallow millennials, set against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous country in an unpredictable state of revolt. it’s solidly engaging, convincingly characterized, and rendered in a unique funny animal style; i wasn’t surprised to discover that it’s going to be published soon by the most reputable publisher of this sort of thing. at first, i was impressed by it because i thought the behavior and dialog of its insecure young people was so well observed. it felt like one of the only things of its kind that i’ve read, more or less about real people living right now, that was neither a broad ugly satire, nor a pretentious drama exaggerating the specialness of its characters. the other thing i liked about it was that while it was largely about their sex lives, it didn’t seem at all sexy to me. the artist has a kind of distorted, rough-hewn visual style that i thought put some emotional distance between the overheated state of the characters, and the real consequences of their decisions. then it all got weird.

the artist stuck a really long, graphic sex scene in the middle of story that made me think...oh, maybe i AM supposed to be getting off to this? that’s weird, this all seems really bad to me, like every character is just mindlessly, selfishly bent on destruction and not doing much to make me like them, and i’d been reading along thinking “god i’m SO GLAD i’m not in my 20s anymore and i don’t have to deal with people like this--or with the pressure to act like this, as if using sex to create drama and being ‘crazy’ is the ultimate thing a person can do with their life”--and then suddenly it felt like maybe the comic was actually some kind of celebration of this lifestyle, or at the very least it’s an intensely sentimental portrait of a time of life, and of types of people, that i cannot imagine feeling sentimental about. then something else happened that made the comic even MORE uncomfortable to read, somehow: it had been gaining traction at an amazing pace, with tons of people leaving comments to the tune of “noooo don’t do it!”, the way you would yell at someone in a horror movie not to go back for the cat, as each character made the worst possible personal choice in every daily installment. the “don’t go in there!” response seemed pretty natural to me, but then the artist stepped in and made this announcement threatening to stop doing the comic altogether if the readers wouldn’t stop criticizing the characters. pretty much everyone in the comments was like “???”. many apologized if their comments were offensive, although they had no idea what they could have said that was wrong; other people, who seemed more sure that they were the ones being accused, said that they thought you were SUPPOSED to feel critical of the characters’ obviously bad decisions. that was how i felt, and at that point i was just enormously glad that i never comment on shit online or get involved in any type of community shit, especially when the artist started explaining laboriously that all of the characters represent some facet of the artist themselves and so therefore none of them are meant to be seen in a bad light at all and they’re all meant to be loved unconditionally and if you find yourself thinking mean things about the characters then you are effectively shitting all over the artist as a person. a lot of readers fell all over themselves to be supportive, and i just thought...this isn’t something you should support, though. it sucks that the artist is feeling so sensitive, but they’re about to have a book out in the world where they won’t have any ability to threaten readers who are “reading it wrong” or having incorrect thoughts about it. i mean...life is full of uncomfortable experiences and people you can’t relate to, i really don’t think we should be promoting this hopeless sanitization of all experiences in which trigger warnings used to be something that protected traumatized people from being randomly confronted with traumatic material, and now they’re used to just make sure nobody ever has to hear anything they don’t like, ever. anyone who cares about this artist should be helping them understand that they cannot control how people read their book or how they feel about each character and story in it. or failing that, they should be encouraged to just turn off instagram comments. but because of all this drama, i found myself reading all the comments obsessively--something i did when the blowup first happened, because i couldn’t find anything in there that i thought was mean or offensive, which added to my uncomfortable fascination with the whole thing--and that’s when i spotted a comment where somebody asked the artist is this was a furry comic. i wish this didn’t blow my mind, but it kind of did. i mean, it’s a book where almost all the characters are animals, and they occasionally have a bunch of raunchy sex. i think that if you’re a furry, meaning you’re interested in that sort of thing, this book is completely available for you to enjoy however you want. but this person needed the artist to FORMALLY CATEGORIZE IT as a furry comic. what the fuck is the meaning of that? it struck me as something that people in fandoms do, where they need every single thing to be labeled to death in an intensive and intractable way like it was science, the Final Word on everything in the universe, and they like *argue with each other* about whether they’re *allowed* to ship certain characters together or imagine them doing specific things, which is something you would only worry about if you thought the topic represented a literal material reality that could be adversely affected by people’s improper thoughts. i mean imagine if you felt that way about your jerkoff fantasies about fictional characters? that your horny thoughts are up for debate by hundreds of people you don’t even know? imagine feeling like that about OTHER PEOPLE’S jerkoff fantasies, like it’s worth fighting over and trying to CONTROL? like holy fucking shit you guys, STOP IT. it would even be one thing to ask the artist if THEY were a furry, which may or may not be anybody’s business, but to ask whether interpreting the comic through a furry lens is ALLOWED is like...well, actually, maybe it’s exactly in line with the artist’s recently expressed attitude, that you’re forced to think of the book in exactly the way that they personally think about it, or else you should have your reading privileges revoked. so now i’m still reading the comic, sort of compulsively, because i’m a little addicted to the soap opera of it and i’m ALSO a little addicted to the soap opera of the artist battling the readers over finding the correct orthodoxy for reading the comic--there’s a particular guy i’ve become aware of in the comics community because he is always harassing people with this mix of really caustic sarcasm and really bitter political self-righteousness, and he was surely the main person who was being “mean” to the characters, and HE’S STILL DOING IT IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, because i guess the artist would rather have problems with people than simply block them and eliminate them from the equation? but the whole entire thing is making me so uncomfortable i can hardly stand it. reading about like, dumb hot chicks with no self-control, and smug young shitheads who use the veil of progressiveness to hide or justify their predatory sexual behavior, and grownass adults who start drama with 20 year olds in order to feel relevant, AND being forced to know that the artist intends for me to embrace and adore all of this bad shit--like, people and things i left behind in real life, because it was all bad!--with ultimate love and compassion, or else they reserve the right to claim that they’re being personally attacked, has just become too much to take. it’s starting to make me feel sick. i really need to take the reigns on this thing. as much as the artist needs to forget about this control fantasy and stop being so precious about what they’re doing, i need to stop subjecting myself to something i find painful, embarrassing, and frankly creepy, if i ever wanna get back to a state where i have less to complain about.

tl;dr: stupid hipster is too sensitive to read a webcomic by a stupid hipster who is too sensitive for anyone to read their webcomic.

#NOT simon hanselmann #somebody else!#i will tell you if you chat me i just don't wanna get involved

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stillthewordgirl · 6 years

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LOT/CC fic: Subterfuge (ch. 6 of 6)

Last chapter! Many thanks to @larielromeniel for the betas. Can also be read here at AO3. (I’m behind at FF.net, sorry.)

Subtitle: "Five Times Sara and Len Nearly Got Busted--and One Time They Did." Immediate follow-up to "Date Night." Sara and Len are trying to figure out their new relationship without cluing their teammates in quite yet. That, however, is easier said than done.

It seems like the geographic South Pole should be quiet. Especially now, at the very tail end of 1911, not so long after the first men to ever step foot here have left.

In reality, though, the wind never ends, never stops howling, never stops its ceaseless sweep across the frozen plains. It’s unnerving, and the men hadn’t stayed long, making their mark, taking their photos, then heading for relative safety, for accolades and their own measure of fame.

They’d been thoroughly unaware of the conflict that arose behind them, the ambush set up by those in the ships that were just out of sight, for the other ship that came roaring in to protect the men.

And they were unaware of what came after.

Not so much longer, not at all, the roar of a timeship’s engine rises again over the never-ending wind, and the sound as it settles to the ground, then the rise of voices calling to each other, urgency in every word.

The terrain is no longer flat here; jagged spires and massive chunks of ice rise from the plains, where none were before. There are three gaping areas, as if something large had been encased in each but broken free, although whatever those objects had been, they’re gone now.

The people who’ve emerged from the timeship—a ship just about the size and shape of those three gaping holes—seem to be looking for something with increasing determination. Eventually, they find it, in the thickest part of the ridge of ice that forms sort of a semicircle around the area.

They find him.

“Sara! He’s here!”

The voices rise again, and with them, after a moment, the sound of tools and even lasers chipping away at ice, carefully, bit by bit, until…

“He’s blue.” The voice is hushed. “Guys…”

“Be careful. Don’t do any more damage…do the rest manually…”

“I’m through!”

Fingers scrabble for the hand that’s been chipped out of the ice, gingerly closing over icy flesh. “He’s…he’s frozen. No pulse. Sara…”

“Get him out of there!” The grief in the voice is cloaked in command. “He’s always cold…his powers protect him…”

“But that’s just a shell of ice usually…”

“Jax, Stein, Mick…now that we can see better, can you melt most of the ice around him, so we can chip away more? And Ray can use his lasers?”

“I ain’t good at the fine work, Boss, but I can do that. Kid? Professor?”

“With you, Mick.”

The only noise for a while after that is the rush of fire, low murmurs, then more chipping.

“Clear his head, make sure he can breathe…”

“But he’s not breathing…”

“If we get him warmed up again, he’ll start.”

“Sara…”

“Do it!”

He’s cold.

He hasn’t felt cold in…months? Years? Not since the accident.

And it was an accident, really, he hadn’t meant for any of it to happen, not like that. He’d been arrogant and stupid and a little too enthralled with the joy of tinkering and possible one-upmanship, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. Not even the Flash, to be honest, it was just the next step in their unending game of cat and mouse…

He’s cold, but then there’s…warm? The sensation is so weird in the context that his thoughts, moving slow and sluggishly, don’t register it as what it is at first.

He only remembers the ice.

He remembers…

Watching the ship rise into the sky, leaving him behind, although no one knows it yet. And it’s OK, it’s OK, because he’s using these misbegotten powers to save them, this team he’s come to care for, this woman he’s come to love.

Lifting his hands to the sky, pulling on his powers like he never has before, raising a wall of ice to stop the time pirates who’d ambushed them, the pirates teaming up to take out the ship and the team that’s been hampering their efforts.

His ice overtaking the ships and it probably won’t keep them down for good, or even for long, but it will let the Waverider, outnumbered and outgunned, get away. But he can’t raise that much ice without his control slipping, the ice overtaking him as well, but that’s OK too. If they just get away…

The ice—

The warmth—

Hurts. Feels like fire, like burning (Mick, I’m so sorry, Mick…) across nerve endings desensitized by the extreme cold. He takes a quick, shallow breath—the first in a while, although he doesn’t realize it at the moment—and lets it out.

“Ow,” he breathes, the noise nearly inaudible even to him.

“Did you hear that?

“Hear what?”

“Be quiet, Haircut! Listen…”

Mick? He tries to form the word. It doesn’t quite happen.

“He moved!”

“Len! Can you hear me?”

Sara sounds upset. He doesn’t want that. He tries to reach for her, but nothing’s working. And his eyes won’t open. Why won’t his eyes open? He frowns, vaguely aware that even that expression is barely a twitch of his lips.

“Saaaa-aahhh…”

“We’re going to get you out, Len. You’re going to be OK, you idiot. Just…just hang in there…”

There’s a wash of warm air across his face (ow) and Len tries again to open his eyes. It seems to take forever, and use far too much energy, but eventually, he manages, barely.

Everything’s blurry, seen through the ice crystals still clinging to his lashes, and he can’t seem to focus anyway. He has an impression of color, of movement, of people jostling around him, and then she’s right there, in the center, blue parka, golden hair, pale face, blue eyes staring right at him.

“Len,” Sara says again. “Stay with me.”

She reaches out, through the ice that still holds him, and rests her fingertips against his left cheekbone, the only thing she can get to. The touch almost burns, it feels so warm, and Len almost closes his eyes again, remembering just in time to try to keep them open. Just another minute.

“Sah-ra,” he manages, sounding a little better, he thinks. “Pir…pir…”

“Gone for now. You saved us. Len…”

But the haze is rising again, and no matter how hard he tries to keep his eyes open, it’s not happening. He tries to say something else, but his mouth isn’t working, and…

And then he’s drifting away again, hot and cold, pain and sweet oblivion, Sara Lance’s blue eyes, shining with both determination and tears, the last thing he sees.

He’s warm when he wakes again. There’s no pain, but he’s very, very tired, so exhausted he can barely force his eyes open to take in his surroundings, although the “beep” of monitors has already given him a clue.

Medbay. He’s in one of those uncomfortable bed/chairs that’s he’s never been able to figure out the practicality of, but right now, he couldn’t move if he tried. And…he turns his head just a little, the movement as exhausting as running the length of Central City…

Sara’s sitting in the chair next to him, looking as weary as he’s ever seen her, eyes red-rimmed and tired, hair bundled up in a messy knot on the top of her head. But she’s watching him in a way that suggests she’s been doing that for hours, and the flicker of her eyes when his gaze meets hers is nearly imperceptible.

“You stupid hero,” she greets him quietly. “Welcome back.”

Len regards her a long moment, uncertain what to say, uncertain through the haze of fatigue if he can even speak. He’d accepted his death, standing there in the snow, if it meant the team would get away, wouldn’t face a violent, fiery death at the hands of the combined pirates and their massed firepower. But he’d never thought about how Sara, living, would react to that.

The original Leonard hasn’t stood between them in a while, but Len thinks he’s here now.

After a moment, Sara shakes her head, then reaches out and very gently touches his nearest hand. When he doesn’t move or flinch (distantly, he remembers how much it hurt when they started thawing him), she wraps her fingers around it, holding on with a grip that would be painful if it was much tighter.

“You…you were frozen. You should be dead,” she tells him bluntly. “But…your powers, they apparently kept your body healing when the frostbite tried to set in and kept your core warm, so you held on. Did you know that would happen?”

He’s pretty sure she reads the answer on his face. Well, he’d suspected something like that might happen, in a way, given what happened to Mi…given what he’s seen of other powers like his. But that hadn’t been what he was thinking about when he’d made his stand at the pole.

He’d expected to die.

“Why did you do that?” Sara asked after another moment, her tone bleak. And Len can tell she’ll wait as long as needed this time for him to find the words and strength to answer.

“They’da shot us…you outta the sky,” he mumbles, after a moment, the words barely coherent. “Too many. An’…” He pauses, longer than he originally means to, collecting himself.

“We were in my element,” he manages slowly, enunciating against the tendency to slur things right now. “I could do something about it. And I did.”

“And you nearly died.”

Easy enough to read the word unspoken at the end of that sentence. He gives her a lopsided, weary smile. “Again.”

But Sara’s eyes flash and her fingers tighten on his for a second before she actually surges to her feet, scowling down at him like an avenging angel. Len blinks at her, wondering what he’s missed, and how his brain is still moving slowly enough for him to be so clueless about it.

“No, you,” she bites out. “You, Len. You nearly died. You were frozen and blue inside a chunk of ice, and I nearly lost you.” She takes a breath as he blinks again. “My teammate, my friend, my lover, the…the man I’ve been falling in love with. You.”

Len stares at her, waiting for his still-frozen-feeling brain to catch up.

“Oh,” he says finally, aware that that’s really a pretty lame thing to say right now, but unable to manage anything else. “Oh.”

Something about the syllable—or his expression—though, apparently makes it enough. Sara’s mouth twitches, and she reaches out to touch his face, much like she’d done earlier, through the ice.

“But I didn’t,” she says with a sigh. “Lose you, I mean. And please don’t go pulling anything like that again. OK? I can handle…I can handle you leaving, if you have to. Just not like that.”

How else is he supposed to response to that?

“I…OK,” Len manages after a moment. “I…” He knows what he needs to say, knows what he wants to say, but his apparently still-thawing brain isn’t managing anything even remotely near coherence.

So he just blurts it out. “Love you.” And then when she stares at him: “Um…” She’d said that, right? First? Just a minute ago? More or less?

OK, double down. “I love you, Sara.” He shifts up on his elbows a little more, fighting a little dizziness, keeping his eyes on her face, the words coming easier. “You’re badass and you’re amazing…” Deep breath. “…and you’re gorgeous and you’re freakin’ awesome in bed…and other places…” OK, maybe he’s still a bit lightheaded and maybe Gideon’s given him some of the good painkillers, but it’s true. “…and I’ve been falling for you since you guys found me back in your weird National City. I…” He stops. Sara’s still staring at him. “Um. I can keep going?”

That gets a smile, finally. Sara pauses another moment, then moves even closer. Len watches her, bemused, as she seems to size up the medbay bed and him…then sits down on the edge and swings her feet up onto it, pushing him over a little and lying down next to him.

“Hey,” Len manages good-naturedly as she jostles him, lowering himself back down to the bed, “invalid here!” But Sara’s got her arms around him now, her face buried in the hollow between his shoulder and his neck, and from the noises she’s making, she can’t seem to decide whether she wants to laugh or cry.

OK, he decides. Third option. And he turns toward her, ducks his head, and kisses her, his cracked and slightly painful lips meeting her lips, slightly salty with tears. The sting seems only fitting, the most minor of punishments for his many sins, and he deepens the kiss after only a moment, his hand cradling Sara’s jaw. She hums in amusement, pulls back just far enough to whisper “idiot” again, and then kisses him harder as they lie there tomorrow in the medbay bed, both managing to convey a depth of emotion without any further words at all.

“A-hem.”

Somewhere, in the unoccupied part of Len’s mind, part of his consciousness catalogs the quiet voice as belonging to Professor Stein. Welp, everyone else has walked in on them at this point, so why not? Sara hasn’t pulled away, so he doesn’t either, figuring the older man will give up after a moment.

“A-hem.”

Or not.

The amused and slightly louder clearing of the throat isn’t what makes them pull away from each other and look toward the doorway, though. No, it’s the low hum of laughter—Mick’s snort, Ray’s not-quite-a-giggle, Amaya’s quiet chuckle, Jax’s snicker, Nate’s stifled guffaw—together with that noise that makes them react, rising on elbows to stare.

And the team, the whole damned team, is standing there, watching them with expressions of varied smugness and amusement. Not a one of them looks surprised, of course, though Len’s sort of impressed they’d all managed to cram into the room without their captain or the convalescent noticing. (Well, OK, the two of them had been sorta occupied. But still.)

Mick, at the front, is grinning, even though—Len squints suspiciously—even though there’s a sheen to the bigger man’s eyes. Amaya glances up at Mick, smiling, then back at them, winking.

“Uh,” Len manages when Sara, laughing quietly, leans back against his pillow, putting a hand over her face and otherwise staying quiet. “Hi?” He pauses, eyeing the smirking group. “Surprise?”

That gets a louder bark of laughter from Mick, drowning out any softer agreement.

“You two really thought we didn’t know?” he scoffs, looking around at the rest of the team with a fond “can you believe these idiots?” expression. “Seriously?”

“You were wearing his shirt the morning I can back after your ‘first date,’ ” Amaya speaks up drily, eyeing Sara. “Far too big for you. And nothing under it.”

Sara sits up indignantly. “I was on my way to the shower…”

“…and your hair was a mess, in a certain…way…”

“And you freakin’ quoted Han Solo at me, Snart…”

“Well, it fit.”

“The hotel,” Nate added solemnly, raising his hand, still looking rather…traumatized. “Sara, where were you? Under the bed?”

“Well…”

Len’s staring at the sheepish-looking Ray. “Was there even an error message from Gideon that day?”

“Um.” The inventor is slightly red. “Not really. I…”

“We dared him,” Mick says, grinning, even as Nate happily adds “He just can’t resist a double-dog dare.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” the ship’s AI says primly, even as Ray yelps “Hey!” and glares up at her receptors.

Jax holds up his hands, shaking his head. “Don’t look at me! I didn’t say a word.” He gives them a smirk. “But the cat was already pretty much outta the bag at that point.”

Len, whose head is spinning just a little, flops back down onto the pillows, a combination of amused and chagrined. He hears Sara chuckle next to him, even if she reaches out to thread her fingers through his again.

“OK, OK, you’re made your point,” he hears her tell the team, mock-sternly. “Now, let the hero of the hour rest…”

“Didn’t look much like you two were resting…”

“She’s right,” Mick barks, cutting off Nate’s snide comment and sounding very much like Sara’s second in command. “Let ‘im be. And Snart…”

Not ‘Weird Snart?’ Len opens an eye and regards the other man, surprised to see a distinctly soft expression on Mick’s face—at least, much softer than usual. The rest of the team is arrayed behind and around him, looking serious, for once.

“Yer a member of this team,” Mick says quietly. “You already were, but man…you saved us. And whatever you got waiting for you back at…I ain’t gonna say ‘home,’ ‘cause far as we’re all concerned, this’s yer home now…your Earth, well, we’re gonna help fix it.” He nods firmly as murmurs of agreement rise around him. “Whatever we got to do. Got it?”

Len stares at him. At them. The team.

His team.

“Got it,” he returns just as quietly, as he feels Sara suck in a quick breath and squeeze his hand. “Thanks, Mick. All of you.”

They leave then, though not so quietly as they’d come in, heading out the door into the Waverider’s corridors. Mick holds Len’s eyes a moment longer, then nods again, turning to go. Amaya, at his side, turns back a moment, crossing to the bed and, much to Len’s surprise, leaning over to kiss his forehead gently. Then she winks again, at him and at Sara, and follows the others out.

Sara, after a startled moment, makes a thoughtful “huh” sound, then meets Len’s eyes. They study each other a long moment, and then Sara nods, recognizing that words aren’t needed, not at the time. She leans over and kisses him softly, then, pulling away to get to her feet after only a moment.

“Get some rest, hero,” she tells him, smiling as he groans. “I’ll see you later.”

And then it’s quiet. Len leans back against the pillows, feeling the fatigue he’d battled past earlier returning. Well, he’d pushed his powers far past the limits they’d ever reached before. It’s not surprising. Hell, he’s still surprised he’s even alive.

As Gideon dims the lights without even being asked, he closes his eyes.

His team.

His home.

His love.

His…family.

Yes, he thinks, even as he starts to drift off. His.

And he’s going to fight for them.

#subterfuge #captain canary #sara lance #leonard snart #legends of tomorrow

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nightcoremoon · 3 years

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I love horror, I just have impossibly high standards

anyway some of my favorite is the kind that is totally normal from the start, there's nothing off kilter or weird, everything is fine. it's mundane. but then maybe something strange happens and it's less mundane, maybe it's more colorful or lively. but it's not like it's scary or anything. maybe it's a little left of center but it's still fine. life goes on as normal.

but then suddenly it's not fine.

and it recontextualizes everything up until now and you realize oh my god it wasnt mundane at all, it was just pillars of foreshadowing and you realize this is the most terrifying thing you've ever encountered.

maybe it goes on with the weird scary shit and things resolve themselves later, but that gives you time to breathe and get accustomed to the horror.

maybe it just ends. maybe it's just suddenly "surprise, shit is fucked!" and then ~fin

that would be ideal. like, in the sixth sense, you find out Bruce Willis was dead the whole time, you see him making peace with his death, and then the movie ends. except without all of the overreliance on shock horror and the visually disturbing (for the 90s) shots of the entire rest of the everything.

but if the twist happens at the halfway point and things stay absolutely horrible for a while that's also good, like coraline. started off pretty normal, got a little weird, and then suddenly boom ITS HORRIFYING OUT OF NOWHERE.

a perfect example of the last line twist would be the girl with the green ribbon on her neck. aww the boy likes the mysterious girl and they fall in love and get married, really normal the entire way. and then oh surprise HER HEAD COMES OFF. simple yet effective.

I don't mind if it starts out the gate with being seven levels of fucked. dead space 2 opens up with nicole, narratively speaking just moments after she end jumpscares you in the first game, so we're already off-put. then 60 seconds in we see isaac in a straitjacket being questioned and in the background there's flashes of being on the ishimura and nicole's ghost walks up to you and slavsquats and her eyes light up and she whispers, then SUDDEN WHITE oh cool it's ok look it's franco from dead space ignition that's cool aww he's saving Isaac oh wow it's a really creepy atmosphere OH MY GOD IS HEAD IS GETTING STABBED AND HIS FACE TURNS INTO A GODDAMN ZOMBIE HOLY SHIT THEYRE EVERYWHERE RUN BITCH RUN CHAOS LOUD MUSIC BLOOD GUTS FEAR QUICK MASH THE A BUTTON OR DIE!!! oh everything is quiet now. good job you survived, now walk down the corridor to the next intense scary part. lather rinse repeat.

I like horror when it's well executed or creative and not schlocky and relying solely on savini's gore or unnecessary carnage.

friday the 13th is like, oh wow that person just got an axe in their forehead, I sure am quaking in my boots. oh wow the tall stuntman picked up a sleeping bag and slammed it into a tree, this sure is realistic. oh the scantily clad teen girl is running slowly through the forest while cain hodder slowly walks towards her, and he somehow catches up and stabs her with the machete. wow the effects sure look like foam core and wax got cut in half and is squirting ketchup everywhere. the music is sonically engineered to force my pulse to increase and I guess this is horror? oh look someone else got murdered. oh look another murder. I'm sure glad we spent the first 45 minutes of this movie getting to know the shallow garbage characters before they all get merced. wow crispin glover sure does know how to shake his head when a prosthetic attached with fake blood is on his head. oh look a dead body with arrows in it, the scream queen is piercing my eardrums, I guess this means I should be scared too. yawn. it's so fucking boring just watching people die over and over again. at least the later installments were either hilarious or batshit crazy. punching a dude's head clean off was the funniest thing I've ever seen in a movie given the context, and JASON GOES TO SPACE is the dumbest shit in any film but that's what makes it awesome. it had a stupid fucking robot fight. yet everyone hated it, so they rebooted it and surprising literally nobody it was the same shit but with more cgi so it looked even less real (not that it did in the first place). yet this franchise made hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales alone. nowadays there are people who see hockey on tv and ask "why the fuck is that guy dressed up like jason voorhees".

tell me why a free swedish gold source mod with blocky graphics and muddy textures and the worst lighting engine in 20 years and some bad questionable design choices in an almost direct ripoff homage to silent hill 2 and resident evil 2, crammed with bugs and bad collision and hard crashes if you die in a specific level while holding a flare which you literally need to always have lit because that's the mechanic the entire level was built around, by a team of like 6 people (half of whom were the voice actors and navmesh modelers), is still one of the best and well-crafted pieces of horror media I've ever consumed, while trash like the fucking craven-less elm street remake gets its dick sucked by everyone else because OH WOW ITS SO SUBVERSIVE AND EDGY AND GORY WOW COOL THIS IS REAL TRUE HORROR!

of course I'm approaching this from a purely american lens. japan's horror is phenomenal. mainly because it's not built around buckets of blood and literal pig carcasses and abusing actresses and actual rape scenes (although it's funny that people are totally okay with all of the graphic murders because killing people is okay and indulging in torture porn is fine but oh, god forbid a film shows something skin-crawlingly uncomfortable for the sake of making you feel disgusted and wanting a cold shower, no, the line is drawn there, you can stab a naked girl with a power drill or drop a chainsaw on her body and that's fine but if a snowman slams her body into a wall while his carrot nose is inside her hoohah that's when it's going too far? seriously? whatever I've beaten this dead horse). but eurocanadamerica's obsession with gore porn in horror and blumhouse's shitty jumpscare factories have reduced it to just... loud noise, stabbing, loud noise, stabbing, lather rinse repeat. this is horror now I guess.

nobody takes coraline seriously as horror. nobody takes the green ribbon seriously as horror.

the monster chasing you isn't horror. it's terror. horror is when you step on a bear trap while the monster is chasing you. the monster chase without the bear trap has no impact, it's just "watch this person fear for their life and die". yeah, if I wanted to watch a snuff film I'd look outside of mainstream markets. "oh but if it's just a movie it's not real" so says the people who suicide bait cyber bully and harass teens who ship a 17 year old with a 19 year old, or two people who work with batman, all over fictional alleged pedophilia and incest. because it's all bad unless it's violence. only sex is bad but not violence.

the violence cannot stand on its own. it needs to have narrative purpose. resident evil, all of the zombies and monsters were bioweapons being manufactured by a corporation. silent hill and cry of fear, all of the monsters are just the embodiments of the protag's inner demons. dead space, the batshit crazy religious cult wants to turn everyone into the undead since that's their idea of heaven, and you have to fight them and stay alive so you can prevent the universe from getting omnomnommed by the blood moons. f.e.a.r., a little girl with some psychic powers is studied, tortured, abused, and :/ raped (at least you don't see it) and she naturally responds by lashing out at the ones who hurt her and trying to reunite with her baby, who is... you! (spoilers).

what is the plot of friday the 13th? dumbass kids get drunk and have sex and let a little kid go missing and his mom has a psychotic break and starts killing them all, then they kill her and the kid kills more people and then he kills more people and then he dies and comes back and kills more people and then he dies so someone else starts killing people and then jason comes back again and kills more people again and he gets arrested and they try to execute him but he won't die so they cryogenically freeze him until he kills people in the future, and in a different timeline he kills people and fights freddy krueger. it's pointless. popcorn. drivel. there is no narrative purpose, it's just murder for murder's sake. and that's scary???

like I said. impossibly high standards.

I love horror. but holy shit is a lot of horror bad.

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