S1E34 - Horror - “And then BAM! A cat jumps out of a cabinet!”

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Horror!
In this episode:
  • It’s October! And you know what that means? That’s right, geeks...HORROR! You see,Void thinks horror is dumb and boring. Beej thinks it’s awesome. Is the Beejmeister going to be able to convince the Voidenator that horror is worth his time?
  • Beej taught a horror literature class for English majors a few years back, and he had a wonderful experience with horror in college because all of his friends loved it. So where he’s coming is different from where some fans are coming from.
  • A lot of horror hits on cultural and societal fears, far more than personal. We can trace the entire 20th century’s outlook based on what horror media was being produced.
  • Rarely does horror exist on its i.e. because of its nature. If the intent is to bring people a primal realization of a cultural or societal fear so they can deal with it, that’s not a genre. What you probably think of as “horror” is technically “gothic romance”
  • Emotional connection to events. To situations. Not characters so much. The blank-slate the characters tend to be written that way purposefully, which is why they’re archetypes. But you do have lots of writers, however, that tend to focus on people more than the “hook” of whatever horror element they are writing, which is why Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill, are so successful. It’s why The Walking Dead is so successful. The Walking Dead, for instance, is an ensemble survival drama that happens to have Zombies. Much like Battlestar Galactica is a military drama that happens to be in space, but we are horrified by the events that occur.
  • Different kinds of horror: Physical and Psychological. Stephen King has 3 criteria: Horror, terror, gross-out
  • We use horror as a way to achieve catharsis: We watch this stuff so we don't have to do it ourselves.
  • Beej loves slashers and horror comedies. Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, My Bloody Valentine 3D, Santa’s Slay.
  • Books like Duma Key and It by Stephen King. Heart-shaped Box by Joe Hill. Even Odd Thomas and Phantoms by Dean Koontz are good places to start.
  • The Secret World is the best horror game out there right now (to Beej, at least) because it really grabs a lot of the worldwide horror elements and does them justice. It even grabs Eastern horror and does them well, which is hard to do in America. Other games are obvious like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and Until Dawn.
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