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yaniasogames · 9 months

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lacey’s flash games and the horrors of womanhood: part 1, lacey’s wardrobe!

(trigger warning for discussions and possible depictions of: sexual assault/rape, stalking, abuse, violent misogyny, gore)

so i guess it’s a bit awkward for me of all people - someone who is a girl but not assigned one at birth or passing - to be writing this post, but i just wanted to talk about this aspect of this series cause i think it’s a big part of why it feels so unique and why the horror works for so many people.

the lacey’s series is pretty often praised for it’s great horror and scares, as well as it’s depiction of trauma, but i think more specifically it deserves praise for taking subjects such as stalking and sexual abuse and executing them in a way that’s deeply sympathetic and yet still so shocking and effective.

in the first ever lacey’s video, lacey’s wardrobe, we of course follow the titular lacey in the titular game as she gets dressed for multiple occasions. a picnic, going to the mall, and a date with the “cutest guy.” all that is disrupted, though, by her stalker, a man who follows her in near every area of the game, proclaiming his love for her in a totally not creepy and invasive and wildly inappropriate way.

throughout the video, lacey seems to have no privacy, and no relief from her stalker. besides not even being safe in a public place like this one, some of the most terrifying events in the video bar the finale happen while she’s still at home. she gets threatening phone calls and a grotesque gift from the stalker that make her feel trapped, and there’s whole segments where the stalker is seen peering through her window and is heard knocking furiously on her door. all while she’s in her own bedroom getting dressed.

the videos ending consists of the player dressing up lacey and forcing her to go outside alone at night, even when she breaks the fourth wall and begs and begs and begs them not to. lacey gets cannibalized by her stalker, with audio of her crying and shots briefly flashing by of her dismembered corpse. unless, of course, her stalker kept her alive through all of this torture. said stalker’s reason for doing this?

this video on it’s own already carries a lot of dark subtext with it. it’s not uncommon knowledge that many people in real life experience stalking, with most victims being women. it’s also not uncommon knowledge that in many parts of the world, walking home at night as a woman is very unsafe and carries the risk of your wellbeing being in danger, which is why many women carry pepper spray and why products such as rape whistles exist. lacey is aware of her stalker, and pretty clearly feels unsafe throughout the whole video. her permanently smiling face and the music distort after the first call from the stalker, and she begs at the end not to go outside. she knows how vulnerable she is against this threat, but she has no agency as a video game character simply there to be dressed up and beautified by the player. it’s like watching prey get dropped right into the cage of a predator, despite all the fear it’s showing at the sound of the predators roars.

this feeling extends to how out of all of the ways lacey could’ve ended up at the end of the episode, the specific choice is made to have her be eaten. to be gruesomely consumed by a man who claims to “love” her. consumed so that he can keep a woman who shows zero interest in him all to himself, not even caring that she’s crying and in immense pain as he literally rips her apart. it’s entitled. it’s greedy. it’s horrifying. and everything about this video shows how many stalkers view their victims, and how many men view women in general - as something they consume, they indulge in. as pretty dress up dolls who only serve to fill them up and be the objects of their affection, even when those women don’t want it.

another thing to note (although i am definitely not trying to victim blame poor lacey in any capacity) is the outfit lacey wears at the end. while a common shitty excuse that rapists make to put down their victims is that “they were asking for it!!1” because of the clothes they chose to wear, lacey pretty obviously doesn’t have a choice in this situation, and for her date, the player chooses to put her in a red jacket, choker and daisy dukes, a color and articles of clothing that are often associated with flirtiness and sexuality by society. these would be great choices if lacey wanted to go on this date of her own volition, but it’s made unsettling because, again, she doesn’t have a damn choice. in two of the shots, there’s even deliberate focus on her torso and therefore chest and legs as she meets her demise. could these possibly be from the stalkers POV?

a piece of media that this all reminds me of is silent hill 3, an (actually real) horror game that also taps into the many fears women commonly face, and how it feels to be a girl in a world that largely sees you as nothing but a target, an object, a tool. while not directly tying into the main plot of that game, in the area of the brookhaven hospital, you can find letters directed to main character heather from an unseen man named stanley. these letters are very… purposefully uncomfortable. the whole vibe of this part is made even worse by the fact that 1) the sound design, way the letters are written and the fact that earlier letters disappear when you go back to them support the idea that stanley is actually in the hospital watching heather from afar, and 2) heather is still a teenager, only being 17 years old throughout this whole game. not even her young age protects her from these circumstances. hell, many girls that age are already thought of as being “woman” enough.

stanley, similar to lacey’s stalker, is convinced that himself and the girl he’s stalking are meant to be together, and he objectifies heather through his writing and the way he sends her a doll as a gift.

stanley is shown as well to be a physical threat to others. you can find out he stabbed another patient at the hospital completely unprompted, and in one of his final letters, the doll that was a gift to heather? it’s broken into pieces.

the parallels to lacey’s stalker are apparent, as he both shows signs of violence against others before harming lacey (yells and demands her to come outside over the phone and sends her a gift of blood and guts), and is shown to have broken lacey into pieces when he eats her. just like children with their dolls, violent and dangerously misogynistic men often decide to rip apart and carelessly destroy the women they view as their playthings when they aren’t getting what they want. they desire control and for women to feel like their tools, and their victims are often left feeling like they have nowhere to go that’s safe. not a picnic with friends, not the shopping mall, not their own house, nowhere at all. it’s profoundly isolating and calls to mind how many abusers function, with the typical victims of both domestic violence and stalking usually being - you guessed it - women.

while all of this is heavy stuff for one video, as the lore of the series expands in the following videos and you learn more of lacey’s situation, the themes of the abuse, objectification and unwanted sexualization women face are strengthened, and become even more integral to why the lacey’s games are the way they are.

as rocio, the in-universe creator of the series states, these are the real girl’s games.

#🐻💖#lacey’s flash games #lacey’s wardrobe #lacey’s games #lacey’s games spoilers #horror analysis #tws in post because idk what tumblr is doing with my damn tags #feminist analysis

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paranormeow7 · 7 months

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been thinking about house horror a lot lately and it’s occurred to me that a lot of it takes place in houses of evil that there’s no escape from, where you fall deeper and deeper in until you are swallowed. While I love that kind of concept, I watched a couple of spooky videos today that got me thinking about a scenario where you could leave the house and go about your life as normal, but you were still forced to live in it and come back “home” to it every day.

The videos I watched were “my house walkthrough” by nana825763 and “RADAR” by lyrahorrorz. In “my house”, the protagonist walks through a noticeably decrepit, disgusting home that slowly loops over and over, becoming more corrupted and hellish throughout each walk through its halls. This protagonist treats it as normal and describes each room and how it relates to their family as a person who would live in this house, even the ones that were “closed off”. They wander into rooms that have been condemned and show off the corpses of their family as if they are still there with him.

In Radar, the protagonist is seen desperately trying to escape his house, and an entity tormenting him by reminding him of horrible things, flooding the home with an unbearable smell, and removing his hands. He tries to escape by banging his head into his door until it splits open. Eventually he gets out and simply goes out for a casual movie night with his friends, yet having to go back home to this torment directly after. His house also becomes noticeably decrepit and abandoned by the ending.

These aren’t particularly made to display the theme I thought up, but it was interesting all the same. Your house is a place of solace, a place to rest after a long day. Now imagine if this house was a horror eating away at your psyche and your very life the longer you stay in it, yet you have nowhere else to go. Your mundane every day tasks, such as going to school/work, picking up groceries, or watering your garden become your escape, your sense of normality in this nightmare you go home to every day. You may try to run away, or stay with a friend, but you always end up crawling back into the jaws of the house one way or another. You are tethered.

The most interesting and scariest part of this concept to me is that it’s a real thing that some people live. Some people have abusive family members that they stay with because they have no one else. Some people can only afford disgusting and barely livable places infested with things that want to get under your skin. I’ve known loved ones in these situations and I’m sure if I asked them what their house felt like to them, they would describe it as a monster, a sinkhole, a place of stagnation and stress. So is it really much different to be forced to live in a haunted house, or a sentient, malevolent house, or any other sort of surreal, winding nightmare of a place that you just can’t step away from for long?

You tell me.

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jannwrites · 5 months

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It is a cliche to say that a building's windows look like eyes because humans will find faces in anything and of course the windows would be the eyes. The house of Usher had dozens of eyes, so either it was a great many faces lined up together or it was the face of some creature belonging to a different order of life -- a spider, perhaps, with rows of eyes along its head.

T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

#horror quotes #horror writing #horror analysis #ghosts #writing references #writing analysis #haunted houses #* mine.#just my post not my quote !!#sorry i powered through this book in a few hours and it's making me feel clinical

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scaredsick · 5 months

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hi! i'm canis, i use it/he/they pronouns, and i am a mentally and physically disabled young adult with a special interest in horror!

horror exists partially to vent personal and cultural anxieties and fears, and i would like to nonjudgementally find out why so much of modern horror surrounds the fear of physical and mental illness, injury, and disability.

posts will include trigger warnings as well as links to doesthedogdie.com , a great resource if you have the energy to parse through it

#queer horror #disabled horror #scared sick #horror #malevolent #saw #tma #silent hill #resident evil #hereditary #film theory #film analysis #horror analysis

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cozmicraft · 8 months

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seeing so many people suddenly starting to say the love witch has no substance and is just a pretty movie is driving me crazy like you’re missing so much if you just view it that way! i wrote an article about it but i really want to emphasize these points

i find it so interesting that the love witch came out at a time when the feminist movement was at a crossroads in the mid-2010s in reckoning with the end of the obama era and the rising traditionalist movement that we see in full force today

i don’t know what spurred the sudden discussions on the love witch and i certainly don’t agree with everything anna biller says or does, but the love witch does have substance, you’re just not being spoon-fed it

#i didn’t even touch on comphet but that’s a lens that could be applied #of course this isn’t an endorsement of anna biller or her views but c’mon #the love witch #the love witch 2016 #horror #horror analysis

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cordycepspog · 1 year

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Tbh I think there are entire scholarly essays to be written about the concept of the zombie and consent, and one of the things that’s pivotal to that whole lens is the fact that what makes zombies scary, on top of the concept of the undead and cannibalism of course, is that there is no consent. Like. Zombies are going to bite, whether you like it or not. They are going to put their mouth on their victim and take a chunk out. They’re going to eat their victims. You’ve never seen a zombie attack someone, stop, and ask, “hey, mind if I munch on your arm? Only if you’re into it, of course.” (I would love to see that actually, so if anyone knows if something like that out there actually exists please send it my way lol).

The other glaringly obvious thing that makes zombies scary is the undead aspect. It’s what made the walking dead so popular because the makeup was horrifying, and watching a literal rotting corpse sit up with the animalistic desire to eat you is scary as fuck. On top of all that, you can’t tell a walking corpse that wants to eat you “no.” And that, at least for me, makes it waaay scarier because it unlocks the hindbrain fear that tells you “you should get the fuck away from that right now.” I’m sure there’s a lot more psychology involved, but I hope you get what I’m trying to say.

And then there are the infected from the last of us. The concept for these zombies comes from a real life parasitic fungus called Ophiocordyceps that effects insects, and the story takes that terrifying concept and asks, “what if that happened to people?” In my opinion, the concept of the parasite makes this version of the zombie even more terrifying, because it’s a living thing that’s gets inside and then uses the victim’s body for it’s own purposes. There’s absolutely no consent involved in that. That’s like, the benchmark for a violation of consent.

But the infected in tlou aren’t dead, at least not like a typical zombie. There’s a process that the infected undergo as the cordyceps takes root. It’s what makes freshly infected runners sound so terrible, particularly in the beginning of the game when you’re not used to it, because they sound like people in pain. And it’s a wonderful tool for a horror story, because it begs the question: when do the infected stop being people, and start being monsters? But then, conversely, other questions arise, like, is the cordyceps fungus monstrous at all? Or is it just another living thing that’s adapted to survive?

I’d add more thoughts but I haven’t eaten dinner yet. If you have any thoughts you’d like to add on feel free! Just be nice, please.

#putting this under a read more so I don’t clutter up the dash #I have thoughts and I wrote them down. that’s all #tlou #tlou meta #the walking dead #zombies #zombie meta #i guess #tw body horror #horror analysis #tlou hbo #tw non-con #it’s not at all graphic i’m just talking about it generally #tagging just in case is all

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tempural · 2 years

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👻Scary season is the PERFECT time to read my horror analysis zine: HELLAWEENIE WHORROR!

11 movie reviews, 11 illustrations, and one essay, all concerning the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality in popular horror.

All free to read on my site!

With text transcripts on the zine interiors on AO3!

Movies discussed:

(1922) Nosferatu

(1968) Night of the Living Dead

(1974) Texas Chainsaw Massacre

(1977) Hills Have Eyes

(1978) Halloween

(1984) Nightmare on Elm Street

(1996) Scream

(2000) Ginger Snaps

(2004) Saw

(2005) Hostel

(2008) Let The Right One In

(2012) V/H/S

I'm big on "read 4 free, buy if you liked it." So if ya liked the zine:

🎃Pay what you want for a digital copy to print for yourself! 🎃 Pay $10 for a DIY print zine, made with my own two sweaty hands!

#zines #shilling #halloween #horror movies #slashers #media analysis #horror analysis

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crown-ov-horns · 6 months

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Valak chooses his form deliberately, right? In St. Cartha, he had objective reasons to appear as a nun. In a random boarding school, he did not. Which makes me believe he knew he'd face some old adversaries. So, he chose a mask familiar to them. Essentially, he was saying yes, it's me.

#the nun #the nun 2 #valak #the conjuring universe #the conjurverse #the nun 2 analysis #the nun analysis #horror fandom #the conjuring fandom #the nun fandom #horror analysis #diary pages #he knew he'd be facing his true love

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tlbodine · 2 years

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The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers was a prolific author of the 19th century, with dozens of novels and short story collections to his name. But if you've heard of him at all, it's almost certainly because of his 1895 collection, The King in Yellow -- a cluster of stories whose influence has far surpassed the fame of its creator.

What is The King in Yellow? How did it gain such infamy? And where can its ideas be found lurking, more than a century later?

There are ten stories in Chambers' collection, spanning genres from Gothic horror to Romance, all mostly centered on artists of various kinds. The first four of these stories (and certainly the best known) carry references to "The King in Yellow" -- a play that is universally censored. Even though it isn't performed anywhere, just about everyone involved in the art scene in the book has heard of it, and many have read it, suffering deleterious effects as a result. Because, you see, the censorship of this play has less to do with its contents…and more with what it might do to those who read it.

The specific contents of the play are left mostly mysterious, with only a few small snippets to hint at its contents. Far more explicit (and intriguing) is what happens to the people who come into contact with the text.

In the first story, "The Repairer of Reputations," the narrator is recovering from a brain injury after falling from a horse. While getting treatment, he reads "The King in Yellow" and becomes obsessed, falling into a delusion with the certainty of a conspiracy that would place him in line to a throne of succession -- if he just could get his cousin out of the way first. The story relies heavily on the unreliability of its narrator, and it's easy enough to assume that his brain damage (and not the play) is responsible for his break with reality…or is it?

The other stories tease at The King in Yellow similarly, from different angles. In one, a group of friends are driven variously to madness and suicide under the creative influence of the play. In another, a man in church thinks about the play and falls into a waking nightmare (or is it reality?) In one, a couple discover the play on their bookshelf after bringing home a related work of art, only to be filled with dread about what might happen next.

The rest of the collection does not directly reference the forbidden play, but it does share some similar vibes -- from the unsettling surrealism of the events to the artist characters to the vague hints that there is a great deal more happening in the world beyond the confines of the story.

It's hard to say for certain what Chambers had in mind when he sat down to work on these stories. They certainly seem to draw on the work of earlier writers of Gothic horror and fabulism, like Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Charles Baudelaire. He may have also been inspired by "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which had come out just a few years earlier and crafted the link between yellow and a specific kind of madness. Given the (then) futuristic and dystopian elements of "The Repairer of Reputations," and the over-arching themes of artists, censorship, and messy interpersonal relationships, it's reasonable to conclude that Chambers was making a larger statement on art and culture.

Regardless of his own influences, the influence Chambers had on the future of cosmic horror is inarguable. H.P. Lovecraft was so inspired by Chambers that he included references to the work in his Cthulhu Mythos story "The Whisperer in Darkness" in 1931. Later, August Derleth would make the ties between the King in Yellow and the Lovecraft mythos more explicit, forever linking them together -- and creating a more monstrous, physical manifestation for the King himself.

All of that is interesting in its own right. But I'm more interested in the underlying conceit of the story itself -- the idea of a work of fiction that could destroy the mind of someone who came in contact with it.

Forbidden Knowledge

The theme of forbidden knowledge (and the consequences of learning it anyway) is a common one in folklore, from Adam and Eve's banishment from Eden, to Prometheus's stolen fire, to Bluebeard's too-curious wife. But in these ancient tales, the focus is a bit different: A person in authority warns you against doing something, you do it anyway, and they punish you for the transgression. Sure, you may sometimes find more than you bargained for (such as the myth of Pandora's box), but the punishment is being handed out by the authority you disagreed with.

Not so for The King in Yellow.

Considering the effect it seems to have on those who come in contact with it, its universal censorship seems to be a helpful thing. After all, if something could cause that much harm just by proximity, then banning it outright would be a good thing, right?

Unless, of course, its notoriety is what draws people to seek it out in the first place.

Unless it's the rarity of the object, and the difficulty of the quest, that attracts people already prone to a certain kind of madness -- or those people project their delusions onto the thing.

There is a principle called an "information hazard" or "info hazard," which refers to knowledge that, if it were allowed to spread, would lead to harm -- because it would put power into the hands of people who could not yield it responsibly. For example, the exact formulation of particular poisons or bomb-making materials could constitute an information hazard because they might fall into the hands of kids or bad actors. (the logistics of whether or not controlling that information actually works is a subject for another essay)

But what about knowledge that is itself inherently harmful -- not because it will be used for nefarious purposes, but because it hurts the person who learned it? Haven't we all had the experience of learning something we wished we didn't know, and from which there's no return? It's the horror of overhearing a friend saying something cruel about you when you shouldn't have been listening, writ large to a cosmic scale.

The universe is vast and unknowable, and you are a small and simple ape. If you have the misfortune of catching a glimpse at the wider world, the greater truth of the universe, you may not be happy with what you find...and you may not be able to leave it alone.

A Horror History of Tales to Drive You to Madness

The concept of art inciting violence or driving a reader/viewer insane crops up in modern horror in a variety of different ways.

In John Carpenter's 2005 short film Cigarette Burns, produced as an episode of the Masters of Horror series, a rare films dealer goes on a worldwide quest for a notoriously disturbing film titled La Fin Absolue du Monde. This film reportedly aired once and was meant to be destroyed after inciting a homicidal riot at its premiere; but it was not destroyed, instead passing through several owners and wreaking absolute havoc on the lives of everyone it's touched. We catch discordant glimpses of the film throughout Carpenter's movie, but the story makes it clear that the actual content of the film is not what gives it power. Rather, it's the evil act behind the film's production that makes it so dangerous.

The same could arguably be said for The Ring franchise of films adapted from Koji Suzuki's Ring trilogy (beginning in 1998). The initial conceit of the story revolves around a cursed videotape that kills anyone who watches it seven days later. In many ways, Suzuki's work straddles the border between ghost story and cosmic horror, and The Ring in particular spawned a number of pale imitations.

The story evoked in Cigarette Burns also seems to be the inspiration for the 2018 Canadian horror film Antrum, which claims to be recovered footage of a cursed film released in the 1970s. The film is bookended by documentary-style warnings and history. The film itself (which mostly tells the story of two kids who inadvertently summon the devil) is fairly underwhelming, but with that kind of build-up, it would almost have to be.

Part of Antrum's gimmick is that there are unrelated scenes from a purported "snuff" film spliced into the footage by an unknown person. Snuff (a film where a person is killed live on camera) plays a role in Cigarette Burns as well. But we cannot talk about snuff in the context of forbidden films without David Cronenberg's 1983 film, Videodrome.

Videodrome tells the story of a television exec who unwittingly stumbles on a satellite feed that appears to be broadcasting scenes of torture and murder. Intrigued and thrilled, he decides to investigate further and begins airing the footage as well. Unbeknownst to him, though, he's tapped into something quite sinister -- a sociopolitical weapon used to control the population. If you can make violent pornography destroy the people who watch it, society will be improved….right?

In a similar vein on a much smaller scale is 2012's Gut, directed by Elias. A disaffected office worker gets a thrill when a friend shows him a bootleg snuff video of unknown origins. Is it real? Is it fake? By the time it worms its way into his thoughts and forms a destructive obsession in his mind, it doesn't natter. Violence ensues.

Not all snuff films are sexual in nature. Consider the box of home movies in Sinister (also from 2012), evidence of grisly murders of multiple families. In watching, he unwittingly invites a demon into his life -- the evil force responsible for those murders in the first place.

At the fringes of these stories are other types of cosmic horror tales, all centered on the horrors of forbidden knowledge that pierces the veil of our understanding of reality -- from Lovecraft's work to Darren Aronofsky's π to Junji Ito's Uzumaki.

So what gives? Why our persistent fascination with being destroyed by what we should not know?

Horrors of the Information Age

Cosmic horror has been enjoying a resurgence in the last 20 years, and I don't think it's wholly surprising.

We live now in an era when the collective knowledge of mankind is, arguably, at your fingertips at all times. We have greater and more widespread literacy than ever. With that, unfortunately, comes the spread of misinformation. Our odds of stumbling across something ghastly are also higher than ever. A generation ago, nobody was likely to accidentally find grisly crime scene photos, a live streamed murder, a videoed terrorist decapitation, or anything else. Now, you can stumble across those things, and once these traumatic images have been seen, you cannot unsee them.

Sometimes you want to spread them. You want to pass them to the person next to you, maybe for the same reason you'd hand off a carton of sour milk. "Hey, does this taste rotten to you?" You want to know if the image is real. You want someone you can talk to about the emotional experience of seeing it. You want someone to share in that trauma.

There are also pockets of forbidden knowledge in our society, a handful of places where we are not allowed to tread -- certain subjects that are illegal to search for -- coupled with an all-seeing, vigilant watchman who will see us and judge us for our sins. When you know that whatever you search might land you on a government watchlist somewhere, it's plausible to become obsessed with that knowledge, or develop a compulsion toward that information, even if you don't even want to know it in the first place. That's a human nature thing that I think is reflected well in cosmic horror.

But what of The King in Yellow's other proposition -- that a sufficiently powerful story could drive someone to madness? Could a story really incite someone to violence the way Cigarette Burns would suggest?

Contrary to the worries of fandom antis, I'm not convinced that a work of fiction can cause an act of violence. Barring any supernatural involvement (tortured angels, for example), I don't think any piece of media can jump over the gate of free will and force you to do anything.

But I can see why artists might like to pretend we wield that kind of power. I don't think it's coincidental that Chambers wrote primarily about artists, and that authors and filmmakers would be so intrigued by the idea of a piece of art so influential it could take over a person's brain. It's a fiction...but it's a compelling one.

#the king in yellow #deep dive #story analysis #horror analysis #horror #long post #horror fiction #horror movies #horror history #literary taxonomy

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sinister-surname · 10 months

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Right, so, about to start off this horror blog by shitting on some of the most beloved and acclaimed modern horror movies... Because I am a smart person.

So something I should state right off the bat for this blog is I'm a huge proponent of the Slasher genre because unlike a lot of genres of horror I feel like it's the one that does the best job both sharing some sort of message while still being entertaining and, another thing you should know about me, I think it's a good movie's job to entertain. Entertaining an audience is a good idea because A: They may actually stick around long enough to digest the thematic elements of your movie and B: Good movies can tell a message and entertain, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Take for example what I think is the best and my favourite horror movie, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's an hour and a half long and it's a non-stop fucking roller-coaster and I got the message of the movie the first time watching.

Compare that to my least favourite horror film, Suspiria 2018. That movie is an entire hour longer and after finally slogging through it I had absolutely zero clue what I just watched. I'm not ignorant to feminist theory which, like... I think (?) was what that movie was going for, but even without the fact that that movie put me to sleep even upon critical analysing I still didn't get it. And yeah, call me a big gay dumb dumb with a pumpkin for a face but the fact is that movies CAN convey their message without having to be picked apart and analysed, if they're not up their own ass.

And there we see the advantage of the Slasher, the genre that is unashamed of what makes it unique and has retroactively benefitted over time for its earnesty.

#Texas Chainsaw Massacre #Horror #Slashers #Horror movies #Slasher movies #Leatherface #Horror analysis #Cinema #Elevated horror #Suspiria 2018 #Yes I did put Suspiria this far down in the tags just to spite it

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charcoalowl · 10 months

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"All horror is about love". What if I kill you? Slowly, while inflicting an unbearable amount of pain, in order to express how I feel about you.

You might believe that your it's-a-romcom-to-me attitude about any and every story of horror makes you a little quirky weirdo who's scaring the 'normies' but all it does is reveal your deep seated need to find some form of warmth and affection even in the most grotesque violence. Take your trauma to the therapy room. Mads Mikkelsen isn't gonna fuck you.

#*gasp* THE OWL CAN TALK??!#horror #horror analysis

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jannwrites · 2 years

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No ghost in the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself. One can’t even say that the ghost attacks the mine, because the mind, the conscious, thinking mind, is invulnerable; in all our conscious minds, as we sit here talking, there is not one iota of belief in ghosts. Not one of us, even after last night, can say the word ‘ghost’ without a little involuntary smile. No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.”

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

#horror quotes #horror writing #horror analysis #ghosts #writing references #writing analysis #* mine.#once again. not mine. just my post lmao #the haunting of hill house #shirley jackson

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killersofa2019 · 1 year

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getting into the academic side of horror analysis is all fun and games until you realise most material is behind a paywall. like i am certainly not in the place to pay $80 for a pdf BE FR... luckily i did find a database for a lot of open access material (horrorlex)

#horror #horror analysis #why must everything cost

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kiri-cuts · 1 year

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A killer Maddie Ziegler moment in “M3gan

If there’s one thing that money-grubbing corporations love, it’s exploiting vulnerable young girls. In “M3gan,” that conclusion is arrived upon via Cady -- a child of indeterminate age with only two defining features: A set of recently deceased parents and an apparently even greater void left by a broken Purrpetual Petz toy (RIP).

The woman who designed said toy also happens to be Cady’s aunt -- another vaguely written character called Gemma. However, what we do know about her is that she is a woman who has chosen robot building over nurturing any motherly instinct, and so is apparently worthy of our scorn.

When Cady is placed in her care, Gemma does what any good monstrous female would -- builds a human-synthetic android to take over care duties so she doesn’t have to (honestly, all the love to her). At one point a social worker even catches the aunt committing the apparently enormous sin of allowing a traumatised orphan to watch cartoons all day. Remove that woman’s uterus immediately!

Luckily, M3gan has a great singing voice and knows how to slut drop like a pro, so Cady -- and her suppressed trauma -- are in safe hands. In one scene, the doll comforts her master by singing Sia’s “Titanium” to her. During another, Gemma proves the value of her pet project during a presentation for investors where Cady is wheeled out into a hidden room, sobbing about her dead parents. M3gan provides her instant comfort by singing to her -- and every corporate hog watching sloshes about in the filthy potential profit pool of it all.

Of course, by the end, M3gan takes her protective duties too far, murdering a variety of unpleasant people -- and one perfectly innocent dog -- in gruesome ways, mostly offscreen. But because she was #BornToSlay, M3gan approaches the film’s most deserved kill with an acrobatic flourish. Like Sia’s one-time adolescent dance partner, Maddie Ziegler, the doll practically swings from the chandeliers as she dispatches with a greedy CEO.

It’s the best part of the movie. And that may be because it fulfills a certain fantasy -- what if all exploited teenybopper girls of past (and present) could enact vengeance on the very people who profited from their talents and servitude? And with the functions they were programmed to deliver? Step up Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Chloe Moretz, and Dakota Fanning. Step up Honey Boo-Boo and the “Dance Moms” debutantes. Step up Britney, Christina, and Amanda Bynes.

Dance like you could kill. Choke em with that sketti. Literally hit them, baby, one more time.

The sequence also stands out for it’s strange simplicity: This is a robot complicit with her programming. Simply doing as she was told. M3gan soaks up the world, and spits out violence. She’s also a reflection of her master’s trauma response -- you can dance through that shit all you want. But at the end of the day, you still have to deal with the perpetual motion bird of your brain dipping it’s beak into the bottomless pool of grief at the bottom of it all. No singsongs or synchronized cartwheels are going to put a dent in that, sadly -- but they can always be used to your advantage. Bulletproof, nothing to lose. Fire away, fire away

In pop culture, young girls understand that better than anyone. From a shockingly young age, they’re programmed with the same functions: Be talented. Be casual. Be cool. Be relatable. Be wholesome. Be sexy. Be edgy. Be demure. Be submissive. Be wild. Be everything. Be nothing. One way or another, they all end up fulfilling their function a little too well and catch heat for it.

Underneath it all is a swelling trauma -- about three pokes short from being popped.

The industry always eats these girls alive -- but it makes sure to turn a profit before it swallows. They are left carrying their bones to the next venture, where undoubtedly they will continue to dance -- of course they will. It’s what they were programmed to do. Party girls don’t get hurt, can’t feel anything ... Swing from the chandeliers.

Cady and M3gan are two sides of the same coin -- presenting diverging modes of girlhood, up against the odds: You can either sit back and accept the cruelty of the world, and let it devour you. Or you can take charge and fight back against those who seek to exploit and destroy you. If you’ve experienced the spectacular challenges posed by both options, then you’ll know it’s not even a simple decision to make.

So, I guess really, all that I’m trying to say is that I’m glad that little girl had a murderous android doll looking out for her. Good riddance to the lot of them -- except for that poor, innocent dog

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