Stuff that I had to leave out...

[yukie]

...Of the prior entry:

-my personal relationship with health torpedoing my suspension of disbelief, along the lines of '...your left lung is SMALLER, dumbasses, where do you think the heart goes!' and 'that isn't where your colon starts' and so on and so on. It has ruined some shit for me. But then, the most egregious example I can think of WRT this fail had characters repeatedly firing guns underwater. So - that.

-Further examples of better grossout/body horror:
1) Parasite Eve's giant slime beast, and the thoroughly nasty scene portraying its genesis. Also the FMVs of things mutating. That rat disturbed me.
2) The X-Files. FLUKEMAN. The Chupacabra brothers' effect on people. The alien ship guts in the movie oh man. The Peacocks ("AH'M HONGRY"). NEED I GO ON?
3) The entire fourth volume of Saiyuki - Hakkai's OHGOD moment with his eye is in volume 5, but 4 has an infamous two page spread with LOTS AND LOTS OF CHILOPODS EVERYWHERE that grossed out Minekura's assistants. Also of note: the image Hakkai's bad dream about Kanan ends on, Gonou's handiwork in the mansion, the second and final death of Yisou-shiki.
4) Fatal Frame IV's weird lunar syndrome. GodDAMN D: Hell, ANY RITUAL in that series makes me cringe. Of particular AAUUGHGH is how to make a Kusabi. The identification factor is a big big part of why these games work so well too. The OHGODEYEBALLS factor shows up in I and III as well in the form of the worst mask ever and freaky tattoos getting into one's eyes respectively. Eeyaugh.
5) This will seem VERY STRANGE to some because the game is so old and nothing at al is shown, but the fate of Geshtar in Secret of Mana is FRIGGING TERRIFYING to me. 'Living magical mechanism' oh goddamn D:
6) The mutants in 2300 in Chrono Trigger also scare the invisiballs off of me. I think too much about what they might have been before XD;

Comments

[mullenkamp]

I have this theory that video games are actually better mediums to tell certain kids of stories in than traditional ones, and body horror's right at the top of the list. I mean what better way to invoke sheer terror in someone than making them identify with the victim? And you don't identify any more strongly

I mean, as corny as they were, the scariest parts of the old Resident Evil games weren't the stupid "sudden zombie dog jumps through window" shock moments engineered to do so. They were those moments when Jill or Chris were down to literally their last magazine of ammo, wounded so they couldn't run fast, being chased down by god knows what. Because YOU were Jill or Chris. YOU were trying to get away and you knew damn well what would happen if those things caught you, with all of four bullets left, and you missed that damn headshot. Or even in the newer games, which the fanboys detest for being more action oriented. Being trapped in that tiny house with Luis and an entire town full of Ganados beating down the door and windows trying to get inside is just--and if you can't hold the entry points, or turn your back for just a few moments, hearing Luis scream and watching them drag him away? Dude. Just, dude. Because that's you in the room holding the shotgun.

That identification with the playable character is why Bioware games are so compelling to me, in all the ones where you actually create your own protagonist (IOW, everythign but Mass Effect and the coming Dragon Age sequel), because that same idea is cranked over 9000. ANd I think that's ultimately why, in all my years of gaming, in every conceivable genre, nothing will ever come close to the terror of the Deep Roads in Dragon Age. That was some of the scariest shit I've seen in any medium, not just because of the slow ramp up to the eventual "payoff" in the Dead Trenches, but precisely because I was playing a female Warden. Yeah, Broodmothers are horrific and disgusting and terrifying to everyone, but to hear Hespith's mad rhyme and look upon it, as a female Warden, suddenly having it click in your head just why there are so few female Wardens in a world with metric fucktons of female soldiers/knights and powerful women? And then realizing that you are staring exactly at what your character will become in approximately 30 years time unless she has the good fortune to go out fighting? Holy fuck, man. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been had I been a female Dwarf instead of an Elf, considering that particularly Broodmother was once one. Jesus, the confrontation with Branka and Caridin over the Anvil in the next zone is actually anticlimactic after all that.

[yukie]

sdfg;gai7hpeo THE BROODMOTHER THING. Usually, that kind of creepy incubator business pisses me off because it's SO often tied into bullshit misogyny. In the case of Dragon Age though, it isn't. it's like the creepy ghola tanks in Dune if anything. There's this very gut-level 'that isn't fucking right D:' and I think that has a shit-ton to do with the fact that DA and Dune take place in universes when things ARE equal between men and women and the folks in between. It's like the business with Thrall's dickhole owner in Warcraft - because there is equality in Azeroth, the fact that someone is treating a woman as lesser BECAUSE SHE IS A WOMAN is not normalized. it's not acceptable there. There's not the cultural narrative that we are less-than and that it is okay to hurt us or do bad shit to us because a symbolic someone ate a symbolic apple. Sexual abuse isn't NORMALIZED in Azeroth and it's not eroticized or presented as healthy!

(This normalization business is incidentally why I am horribly squicked out by so much fanfic and by the BS in the Anita Blake books and shit. Like,it is seen as okay and perfectly well and good and NORMAL for the 'seme ' to bully and armtwist and shove and trick people into promising them sex and ignore the 'uke' saying no...and people will present this as totally consensual and throw abusive little piss-prince/ss temper tantrums when you say it's not.)

So - yeah. That's why the broodmothers don't piss me off. They just make me go O_O *CROSS LEGS* in a big way.

And man from what I've heard the ramping in the Deep Roads is almost J-horror levels of slow and sadistic XD

But YES, gah. Because you are the character, a survival horror game can be much much creepier than a movie about the same subject. It is worse when you get turned on or betrayed in a vidya gaem because it's your proxy being turned on. It's worse when something jumps out and punks your main because that's YOU. That's why that goddamn knife fight was so twitch inducing - Leon KNOWS this big guy who was allegedly dead and now bug guy is bearing down on him with a sharp thig and trying to jab that sharp thing into his sternum - much as I can't stand those buttonmashing sequences, in the case of that scene it worked because your frantic hammering of buttons is a nice mimic of the kind of steady tremor your arm develops when you're pushing back on something/someone yeti-sized. It imitates that tremble. And I am bening SUCH A FAPMEISTER ABOUT THAT but XD; I have an innate hand tremor so THINGS! (I'm good at those mashy sequences XD; ) Anyhow - It's worse in Curse of Darkness when Trevor is punked because we are used to being a Belmont so we can identify with Trevor anyway, and in that scene Trevor is our secondary identification figure. His dawning horror and "oh FUCK" when he realizes this is not, mentally or spiritually, Isaac - yeah. Trevor does not start to go D: until he turns his head and makes eye contact. I made sure of this XD; It's not the knifejiggle that gets Trevor into the 'oh fuuuuuck'. It's the realization that this skinny little punk is Dracula's proxy n a BIG WAY NOW. Trevor for all intents and purposes has been shanked by and is being held onto by the big D himself. That's creeping me out to type about XD;

*pause while the typist feeds the fox under the bed*

Yeah XD; identification! I think that's why so many fanboys hated the streaker Raiden sequence. Because Hideo is a MEANIE about identification, and about screwing with the fourth wall. Streaker Raiden has no weapons, he's been made totally powerless. Everyone else is armed and he's not. And they went and named the places in the facility he's held after the human digestive system, which brings you to the conclusion that this place ate Raiden. You the gamer got eaten by some Linux or something.

yay XD; In closing - man. The Geshtar thing. That scared me so hardcore because my mind immediately went 'if this guy can pull that shit then what happens to our crew when we go ded?'

And then later there's the possession thing. The implication that one of you is the next host.

GAGDDJHSKGJHFdfgfsjd I'm gonna go make tea and flail more XD