Nightmare fuel and its applications (possible spoilers)

Anonus

Steven Universe has the Cluster. Star vs. the Forces of Evil has St. Olga's. Gravity Falls is full of it both viscerally and psychologically, because Alex Hirsch is a mad genius.

I continue to worry that the things I write wouldn't make the same kind of impact, and thus, would lack profundity and provocation of thought. All I really can come up with is stuff like this.

Princess Alice

Why do you worry so much about your own writing?

Anonus

It feels like it doesn't meet the standard of what's considered excellent.

eriophora zia

You write because you like it. That should be enough. 

You should always strive to improve, but this is not a healthy way of going about wanting to improve. 

Want to improve for yourself, not because of some ambiguous and nigh-mystical standard that you create based off of other writers. 

Tachyon

well you could watch/read horror, to get a feel for that kind of stuff

i mean that's what that stuff is, horror.  it tends to make an impression, but i don't know how many people would consider it excellent

incidentally Adventure Time has this kind of stuff in spades

(it's sort of weird to me that you put St Olga's alongside the more unsettling stuff from GF and SU, but that's why this stuff is so subjective)

Anonus

Miss Heinous has to mind-rape herself in order to feel normal, and it's implied that she was once one of St. Olga's pupils. Thus, she is inflicting this fate onto other wayward princesses.

Anonus

Also St. Olga's is the kind of thing an older show would have played far more comedically, or just used as a gag with no exploration.

Tachyon

i'm just saying 'scary' is a matter of opinion

Anonus

Alice was really freaked out by "Keeping It Together", whereas it took me until "Gem Drill" to be really freaked out (though it helps that I had a heads-up for the former)

Anonus

Also, "Gem Drill" had those disembodied faces that looked like they came from a 1970s non-Disney animated movie with a barely sufficient budget and exceedingly grim subject matter

Klinotaxis

god you're neurotic.

when i was a kid raggedy ann scared the living dickens out of me. no "profundity of thought" was involved, i can assure you. i suppose i was provoked into dislike of inanimate faces.

you mentioned gravity falls. it has plenty of spooky stuff, sure. but like, half of the stuff in the finale for example was just goofy images some animator came up with with no particular story concept, or wholesale rips from Hellraiser and other shit that kids and people who don't watch 80s movies don't recognize.

it is really easy to scare people! if you're not writing horror specifically you can just leave it with stuff like that. it's fine. nobody expects "profundity". what does that mean?

thinking a lot? have you really thought a lot about the cluster? what is there to think? oh, that was people once. oh, the aliens are kind of blasé when it comes to puréeing people. i'm not going to turn my life around based on these ideas. they are really pretty simple.

just write your shit. it's fine. you'll do great.

Klinotaxis

that post you linked is pretty good. if anything it's probably too scary for kids (and some things happen too quickly, but it might just seem that way because of the format). you have a solid concept, spooky characters, jokes (this is important). s all good.

Salix Babylonika

Klinotaxis said:

too scary for kids 

Klinotaxis

point.

MadassAlex

Nightmare fuel can be explained by the head, but is experienced in the gut. Alien is in part horrifying because it's a first contact story wherein the alien species has no interest in dialogue or even the capacity to cooperate, but is such a ruthless and monolithic survivalist that it even overwrites the sexuality of its victims. But no-one walks away from that film the first time being able to explain it that way -- just a feeling that such a creature isn't merely nonhuman, but contrary to humanity. 

Anonus

Klinotaxis said:

thinking a lot? have you really thought a lot about the cluster? what is there to think? oh, that was people once. oh, the aliens are kind of blasé when it comes to puréeing people. i'm not going to turn my life around based on these ideas. they are really pretty simple.

I'm thinking of how it involves a loss of identity, and how easy it is to translate that into things that can happen to humans, in real life. Except those are individual experiences, not being forced to share them with others.

Jane said:

Klinotaxis said:

too scary for kids 

CN was more hardcore than ABC was, IRL

Klinotaxis

you might think about that, but most viewers don't. you don't plan that kind of thing in advance.

Tachyon

i feel like what you're talking about there is really more what TVT calls 'fridge horror', and possibly isn't what most people got out of that scene?

Anonus

Klinotaxis said:

you might think about that, but most viewers don't. you don't plan that kind of thing in advance.

that explains why the people on TZ didn't seem too upset by "Gem Drill"

Anonus

Tachyon said:

i feel like what you're talking about there is really more what TVT calls 'fridge horror', and possibly isn't what most people got out of that scene?

well Alice picked up on loss of identity herself, and the show itself later touched on it explicitly

not to mention Garnet crying and going "this is not fusion..."

Klinotaxis

i mean, you could plan it i guess, but probably people would come to different conclusions anyway. it's pretty easy to think.

for example, madass describes Alien as being about a very nonhuman survivalist, but i've always thought of it as a subjectively exaggerated rapist. we started with "boy, that's scary" and went different directions.

Anonus

i've been meaning to watch alien for ages

Klinotaxis

it is a pretty good movie

Sredni Vashtar

The best way to scare people is to translate what personally horrifies you into a form that is universal enough to tap into other people's anxieties yet involves enough of your own unique experience and perspective to feel sufficiently raw and direct. People connect over shared fears. It's a very powerful emotion.

Anonus

Well, at some point, I wanted to have Cadpig deal with her own immortality (or what is effectively so) and its effects on her

Sredni Vashtar

Do the implications of immortality scare you?

Crystal

Bouncing off of Vash's comment (three above, but just above too): Loneliness, a potential loss of direction and guidance from peers, regrets over days gone by that can't be solved by returning to the past… you've got that and loads more material to work with, and that's just a sleepy bird thinking about starting points.

Anonus

The world becoming unrecognizable, yes.

Princess Alice

@Anonus: Of the three shows you mentioned, only Steven Universe was the one that really had a "this is scary" impact on me.

GF's weirdness was too cool to be scary, and I didn't really think through the implications of St. Olga's the way you did.