It's the middle of the week and even though I planned to apply to more jobs, I chose to read manga all day. Giving a summary of what I read wouldn't be terribly interesting. I reread Psychic Detective Yakumo. The art style totally gives away that the illustrator is a woman. Yakumo is too beautiful. I looked her up. Only older than me by two years. Damn. When it comes to drawing, it's all about talent, huh?
Then I read some more stuff, including 6000, which gave me some heavy Event Horizon vibes, except in the middle of the ocean instead of space. I let the day drift away in stories of unspeakable violence. I've been trying to pinpoint the elements that constitute horror.
I've already identified some important elements: the inexplicable, the invisible, and the institutional. The last two go along together They refer to everyday horrors, the events unseen but facilitated by a society that leads to situations where, say a woman gets raped and the man remains free because the woman never says anything about it. Terrible, isn't it? But it happens more often than not, simply because of the shame in a culture that further victimizes victims for being victims. It's invisible. But the worst part is that it's institutional. You can't attack it as an individual. It's a systemic infection. It's not something that can be solved neatly.
Horror is a very personal thing. I'm aware these elements may not be as horrifying to other people. For instance, I don't find ghost stories very scary simply because ghost don't exist. And if they do exist, then it's proof of the afterlife, which isn't something to be scared about. It's a concept tinged in hope. Conversely, some people don't find murderers scary because they can be killed, unlike ghosts. So, the good approach is to pull the readers into your nightmare. They may not be scared by the concept, but they can still be drawn into your web. It's all about perspective.
As for the inexplicable, what scares me most is when things don't make sense. When events occur without rhyme or reason. It's a type of horror that takes advantages in the gaps of logic, in the painful realization that there is no answer in a sea of questions while we suffer meaninglessly. Horror must be formless, shrouded, and unexplainable. When the mind is confronted with something that can only be described as impossible, that conflict, the friction between reality and fantasy, is where horror is born, and it never more plainly expressed than through the inexplicable.
Not knowing is the true terror.
/eventlog
