Smart Girlfriend's Series On Horror Continues; Chuck Still Has A Book Out · 9:03pm Jul 1st, 2016
SCARLET'S HORROR WORDS
I mentioned a few days ago that Scarlet, the lady who is the Karl Rove to my George W Bush, is doing a blog series analysing horror, horror tropes, and horror tropes within the My Little Pony fandom. Since then, she's released another two posts on the topic, both concerning fandom famous horror tales.
The first is about The Rainbow Factory, a song-based slasher fic which few people in the fandom consider good. Spoiler: neither does Scarlet.
The Invisible Genre Continued: Rainbow Factory
A taste:
The climax of Rainbow Factory is meant to emulate a slasher chase, but it doesn’t understand how slasher chases actually work. They work on the sensation of palpable adrenaline and fear felt by the protagonist as she moves through a dangerous environment, pursued by a force she’s not sure if she can hurt or kill. There’s a constant sensation of “will she make it or won’t she”. The action is often broken up as the character attempts to hide, to fight back, to do anything to ward off her pursuer. As the audience, we are not supposed to be able to guess the outcome of any given part of the chase.
The second is about Cupcakes, a piece of fandom ancient history that has mixed reviews. Scarlet has mixed feelings, and an analysis of what it did right:
The Invisible Genre: Scare Me Once
"Cupcakes" is visceral horror, a sub-genre of horror that people will argue about the validity of from now until the dreams of Great Cthulhu end and he wakes up to discover that he was too late and Gandhi already nuked the world. Visceral or 'splatter' horror relies heavily on violent excess. In film, it's characterized by throwing enough buckets of fake blood at the camera to necessitate pulling out a firehose every time the crew needs to do a scene change. It is also often considered cheap, substituting fake blood and gore for 'real' horror. Not helping this poor reputation is a slew of poorly-made, poorly-conceived examples of the genre that serve as excellent ammunition for those who would like to shoot this poor genre and put it out of its misery for good.
I disagree with those people. Visceral horror may not be particularly frightening to me, but the aesthetic of torn flesh and blood does have its place, and in the hands of the right creator a slasher may be every bit as unnerving as whatever eldritch horrors the void has puked up lately.
Scarlet is a talented lady, who also helped develop and edit Company Town, my sci-fi novella. Yes, I have a book out:
Faster-Than-Light technology has stopped. Every advanced artificial intelligence has disappeared. Eight-hundred-million lives teeter on the edge, a fortnight from starvation. In the midst of it all, Detective Marion Clay is hunting for a psychic terrorist, a being so dangerous that her colleagues aren't even allowed to know they exist. She has sixty hours. No leads, no description, and no air conditioning.
At least it's not retirement.
Available for the absolute steal of $4.00! Or £3, in Dismal Grey Island Money. Here's all the details in this here post.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT COMPANY TOWN:
That. Was Amazing. The way the setting subtly built itself as the story went on, Clay's abrasively endearing nature, the ending... My only concern is that some idiot's going to kill the planet's only hope before she can do anything...
...Thank you for this. I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for further contributions to the universe.
yet another gaylord makes the leap to respectable authorhood
good on you tbh
-Amit
I loved this, definitely going to getting the next installment as soon as it's out. I really want this to go big.
Fast-paced, well thought out, and funny in all the right places. Clay grew on me quickly, and though the high-intensity thriller aspect during which watching Clay do her work was a joy faded toward the end into the revelation of the phantom she's chasing and the bigger mystery the rest is built around, the answers and continuing pressure kept me interested the whole way through.
-LZ, on amazon.com
that's the most horrifying metaphor I've read this week!
>Amit says something
wtf, I thought he was ded D: