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The Horror of Mundanity (The Not-So-Fun Scary)
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9248272" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>In the movie Inside Out, we explore the emotions of a young girl as a representative human being in a manner that is both deep and cartoonish. Inside her head, she has five primary emotions that drive her actions. Two of them are fear and disgust. She is afraid of falling down the stairs. She is disgusted by broccoli. It's important to note the difference, because too many horror writers seem unable to distinguish them. </p><p></p><p>Child abuse isn't frightening. It's disgusting. My catch all term for things that provoke disgust is "squick". Squick is everything that provokes disgust or squeamishness. It includes all sorts of filth from dirt to raw chicken to vomit and all sorts of things which provoke feelings of disgust because they violate social norms about morality or violate spiritual taboos - cannibalism to child abuse. </p><p></p><p>What I find is that it's very difficult to generate genuine fear or horror or anxiety through writing and that in struggling with this problem most writers seem to migrate to trying to solve a much less difficult and much more solvable problem in their writing - provoking disgust. Actually provoking horror is hard, but it's easy to fill a story with "squick" and provoke disgust. </p><p></p><p>I was never interested in HPL's "squick". The man was neurotic and sensitive and had all sorts of violent revulsions from seafood to having neighbors who weren't Anglo-Saxon, but it's not his squick that is interesting or worth exploring. And IMO it's not even really interesting exploring our own squick or trying to use squick to provoke disgust in others. </p><p></p><p>Doleres Umbridge is not frightening because of squick, and so I think you are missing the point. Doleres Umbridge for the most part is anti-squick. She likes china plates, the color pink, and cats. The opposite of squick is cute, and Doleres Umbridge is trying really hard to be cute. But Umbridge is frightening quite aside of the fact that she's not squicky. </p><p></p><p>I have really given up on CoC for a lot of reasons and have no further intentions to run games with the system. One problem I have is that it's not clear how we explore the interesting parts of HPL's writings in a productive manner. Personally if I can't have cosmic horror then I'm not interested in his work. It's that that makes it interesting, and which just barely justifies tolerance of his squick in his writings. He is himself a pretty disgusting individual, however pitiable he may be. Like to me the real focus should be on something like the insolvability of Diophantine equations, Godel's incompleteness theorem, and the other things which were shattering the 19th century world view and with it HPL's fragile mind. And that's I find hard to capture in this modern era. I think for example that it's no coincidence that "Three Body Problem" with its foundations in cosmic horror was written by someone who could grasp emotionally Mao's cultural revolution, and that if you talk to an American he'll say something like "Godzilla isn't scary because we could just build giant mecha to defeat him." as if the comfortable solution to everything is just waiting to be implemented.</p><p></p><p>You have to be a particular sort of person to be afraid of child abuse and not disgusted by it. But regardless of the consumer of the media, maybe that's not a subject worth exploring in this manner. Somethings may be taboo for a reason, being too important to breach in a light hearted manner.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9248272, member: 4937"] In the movie Inside Out, we explore the emotions of a young girl as a representative human being in a manner that is both deep and cartoonish. Inside her head, she has five primary emotions that drive her actions. Two of them are fear and disgust. She is afraid of falling down the stairs. She is disgusted by broccoli. It's important to note the difference, because too many horror writers seem unable to distinguish them. Child abuse isn't frightening. It's disgusting. My catch all term for things that provoke disgust is "squick". Squick is everything that provokes disgust or squeamishness. It includes all sorts of filth from dirt to raw chicken to vomit and all sorts of things which provoke feelings of disgust because they violate social norms about morality or violate spiritual taboos - cannibalism to child abuse. What I find is that it's very difficult to generate genuine fear or horror or anxiety through writing and that in struggling with this problem most writers seem to migrate to trying to solve a much less difficult and much more solvable problem in their writing - provoking disgust. Actually provoking horror is hard, but it's easy to fill a story with "squick" and provoke disgust. I was never interested in HPL's "squick". The man was neurotic and sensitive and had all sorts of violent revulsions from seafood to having neighbors who weren't Anglo-Saxon, but it's not his squick that is interesting or worth exploring. And IMO it's not even really interesting exploring our own squick or trying to use squick to provoke disgust in others. Doleres Umbridge is not frightening because of squick, and so I think you are missing the point. Doleres Umbridge for the most part is anti-squick. She likes china plates, the color pink, and cats. The opposite of squick is cute, and Doleres Umbridge is trying really hard to be cute. But Umbridge is frightening quite aside of the fact that she's not squicky. I have really given up on CoC for a lot of reasons and have no further intentions to run games with the system. One problem I have is that it's not clear how we explore the interesting parts of HPL's writings in a productive manner. Personally if I can't have cosmic horror then I'm not interested in his work. It's that that makes it interesting, and which just barely justifies tolerance of his squick in his writings. He is himself a pretty disgusting individual, however pitiable he may be. Like to me the real focus should be on something like the insolvability of Diophantine equations, Godel's incompleteness theorem, and the other things which were shattering the 19th century world view and with it HPL's fragile mind. And that's I find hard to capture in this modern era. I think for example that it's no coincidence that "Three Body Problem" with its foundations in cosmic horror was written by someone who could grasp emotionally Mao's cultural revolution, and that if you talk to an American he'll say something like "Godzilla isn't scary because we could just build giant mecha to defeat him." as if the comfortable solution to everything is just waiting to be implemented. You have to be a particular sort of person to be afraid of child abuse and not disgusted by it. But regardless of the consumer of the media, maybe that's not a subject worth exploring in this manner. Somethings may be taboo for a reason, being too important to breach in a light hearted manner. [/QUOTE]
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