The Skellingcorner

[The Skellingcorner]

[writerswritecompany]

Have you ever tried to write a horror story and found the result wanting? In this post, we look at how the 3 pillars of horror can improve your horror story.

It’s a difficult genre to do well. But why? All you have to do is create a monster and put it in a creepy location. Then you make a bunch of dumb jerks go there and let the monster pick them off in gruesome ways, right?

The problem with that approach is… it isn’t scary. Intense? Spectacular? Sensational? Sure. It’ll get your blood pumping, just not from fear.

Here’s the problem. If the characters are all dumb jerks, we won’t like them; if we don’t like them, we won’t care for them; if we don’t care for them, we won’t be worried for their safety. And if we aren’t worried for the character’s safety, well—we can’t be scared for them in the face of a haunted house or the monster within.

Instead, some part of us might feel these dumb jerks are getting what they deserve. We might even laugh at their horrible fates and become morbidly curious about who will die next and how.

Again, that’s not scary; it’s just a weird, vindictive betting game.

Before we look at what makes a Horror story scary, consider Stephen King’s method. He suggests the opposite of the one outlined above—the one we’ve mistaken for horror for so long.

King says: “I create sympathy for the character, then I cut the monster loose.”

With that in mind, let’s look at The 3 Pillars of Horror.

The 3 Pillars Of Horror

[The Skellingcorner]

[throwbackblr]

Wendy’s Training Videos
Hot & Cold Drinks

[fuckinglilah]

Me hoppin out the training room like

[The Skellingcorner]

[svartvitkatt-blog]

The kakapo, New Zealand’s flightless parrot (x)

[The Skellingcorner]

[celticpyro]

To everyone who tries shaming people with “y’all are too busy with [insert frivoulous fad here] to care about [insert important world issue here]”

[mielparaoshun]

It’s not healthy to only think about the negative.

[The Skellingcorner]

Feeling guilty is not a form of activism.

[hollyhockash]

To be completely clear about my position: Racism is bad and the police are being incredibly terrible right now.

I could make many more strident statements, but in the interest of my own mental health and that of others:

Feeling guilty is not a form of activism.

Spending all your time checking your privilege is not itself virtuous. Guilting other people by saying that “if you aren’t spending all your time thinking about this, you are a bad person” is not effective praxis. In my experience, it leads to people getting stuck in guilt spirals. Triggering someone else’s OCD episode is not helping the world.

I think guilt-as-an-end-in-itself is a remnant of Puritan culture, a form of self-punishment that you were supposed to engage in because you were afraid of God. I can’t be sure of this, and even if I was, I don’t know how I’d back it up with citations. But my parents were Asian immigrants, so I inherited a rather different set of neuroses, and this is what I see.

Human brains were not built to watch helplessly as people suffer far away. Bystander PTSD is a thing that exists. It is OK to pull back and focus on what you can control in your life. It is OK for you to take care of yourself and the people around you. We need to support each other emotionally, too.

It’s a lot of work - real work - to be trans, to deal with PTSD, to have chronic health issues. If you, like me, are severely depressed, if you have OCD, if you have CFS/ME, if all you can manage to accomplish on a good day is rolling out of bed and you’re lucky if you manage to cook an actual dinner: Existing while disabled, continuing to live and find occasional moments of joy despite being “objectively unproductive”, is already a protest. You are defying capitalism and ableism by continuing to exist.

As the information leaflet in an airplane says, you need to put on your own oxygen mask first before you help others. Otherwise you will pass out and be useless for both yourself and anyone else.

Please take care of yourself. Please take care of each other.

[findingfeather]

“Spending all your time checking your privilege is not itself virtuous. Guilting other people by saying that “if you aren’t spending all your time thinking about this, you are a bad person” is not effective praxis. In my experience, it leads to people getting stuck in guilt spirals. Triggering someone else’s OCD episode is not helping the world.”

And let me add: if you’re on a public platform there is ALWAYS very likely to be someone with a mental illness who is watching what you post. Even if you don’t know who they are. (Indeed if you don’t know who they are, the more likely they’re going to be hit by a guilt spiral.) They may even be the in the exact intersection of whatever axis of oppression you’re trying to raise consciousness about and mental illness. And yes, that kind of guilt crap can hit even them. (Sometimes even worse.)

Is it harder and more effort to consider how you phrase your calls to attention and action to avoid hitting those buttons? Probably! I’m not sure why that’s surprising.

[The Skellingcorner]

[carry-on-my-wayward-artblog]

unpopular opinion: Vimes is kind of drama queen

[mangaluva]

Sam “held a burning hot coal until it nearly took the skin off his hand while maintaining perfect calm and eye contact with the asshole in need of intimidation Just Because” Vimes? Sam “sitting on the stoop with a mug of cocoa and a cigar, cautiously aware of every inch of the scene he’s building” Vimes? Sam “could just tear his sleeve to show the mark of the Summoning Dark but instead tears off his whole goddamn shirt” Vimes? A drama queen? Reaching a bit don’t you think

[thestuffedalligator]

Yep, certainly doesn’t seem to describe Sam “pretends to eat poison as a power move” Vimes. Not Sam “buries an axe in the table in the Rats Chamber” Vimes.

[mangaluva]

I mean are we really talking about Sam “yes a whole room full of candles with wicks dipped in holy water is the best way to beat this vampire” Vimes, here? Sam “has fought bad guys on top of a speeding train AND a riverboat during a flood” Vimes, really? Definitely Sam “nearly gets shot in the head by a crossbow bolt that shatters his shaving mirror and then uses the bolt to prop up a shard of said mirror to finish shaving” Vimes we’re discussing here?

[davetheshady]

excuse me?????

vimes did not resign from his post in protest, observe the rest of the watch resign from their posts in protest, recruit them into a militia, sail to the country they were at war with, and attempt to arrest two different armies for disturbing the peace so you could sit here and call him a drama queen, as though drama was some myffic quality bestowed by an accident of birth and not the inherent right of every creatively petty and histrionic citizen of ankh-morpork 

vimes is a drama public employee

[The Skellingcorner]

[jesperfahey]

I get a little bit Genghis Khan
I don’t want you to get it on
With nobody else but me

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[The Skellingcorner]

[siobhanblank]

I remember some YouTuber tweeting like “TV shows are too political these days old shows like Fresh Prince didn’t have all this sjw bullshit” and like the first episode will and uncle phil talk very sternly about malcom x

[mirukaiam]

If anything, sitcom shows even from Disney esp if they're black were bold in your face political about societal issues

[enajcosta]

ima just leave these here

[cosmoetherockcat]

Am I black? No, I’m as white as white bread, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

[The Skellingcorner]