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About Me Member Deviously Deviant toshers-girlFemale/United Kingdom Recent Activity Deviant for 3 Years
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The Horrific

Sat Aug 29, 2009, 9:06 AM
  • Mood: Content
  • Listening to: The boys cheer for opposing football teams
  • Reading: Something on ethics and assorted Fon myths
  • Playing: With the Joker's sense of style
  • Eating: Cupcakes
  • Drinking: Coffeeeeeee
The Horror section depresses me.

Once upon a time, long long ago, it contained books that could actually be described as horror. Now 'horror' seems to mean 'fantasy with a vaguely dark gritty feel and added erotica'. Is anyone really ever scared by those stories anymore? Anyone over say...... twelve? Why do people persist with this idea that adding an overcast day or two and a generous splash of human blood makes horror?

I'm not complaining about book shops really- More a lazy attitude to the concept of horror and a naive childish notion of what exactly we should be terrified of.

See the old horror stories, the good ones, were never really about the surface story. Like the top notch fantasy today, your Pratchett, Gaiman and so forth, it was mostly metaphor. You could talk about vampires when really you were saying something about sexuality. About monsters coming back from the dead when you were talking about outsiders......

What scares us now, really? And more to the point what should?

Horror, to me, seems like a chance for the author the explore the definition of evil. To look at despair, and examine how terror changes people, twists them back to animals.

This is important, because if we don't consider the ethical questions it throws up we risk..........well-

Horror is a chance to take a good long stare that wavering grey line between right and wrong. Demoting it to a collection of modern fantasy that barely raises a shiver robs us of one more way of discussing philosophy and examining how we think.

What are people afraid of anyway? I know a lot of people who would name some sort of animal there, which I think is probably more repulsed than afraid. Some people would say death, which I'd agree with, but I think if we're honest most people fear their own more then other people's and writing about it is bound to be more then a little removed from reality. Confined spaces, open spaces, public speaking, crime. Terrorism, I know people who've told me I should be afraid of that-

I think what I'm afraid of is states of mind.

That comes, I think, from the understanding that people are capable of anything, and that extends to me. And that this anything doesn't just encompass the motivational speaker's 'get up and go', achievement, progression, break-throughs, good......... It also contains the opposite.

Some how, horror seems to have lost sight of that idea. This makes me wonder whether writers have become cowards, willing to toy with bland fleeting fears instead of plunging into the truly terrible. To sketch us a gore plastered room, because it's easier than trying to paint what's in our own hearts.

We don't need ghosts to scare us. We don't need madmen either (because it's so much easier to just make the antagonist mad, to try and seperate them from us, to persuade ourselves that we are not and never could be like them). Madness, physical mostrosities and gore are starting to seem more and more like lazy writing.

I despise lazy writing.

(And yes Michelle I am over caffinated)

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Devious Info

  • Current Residence: A teepee on the roof of Durham cathedral
  • Interests: Truth and Beauty
  • Favourite movie: Monty Python's Holy Grail, The Godfather, Mirrormask, Full Monty.
  • Favourite artist: Rossetti
  • Favourite poet or writer: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Susanna Clarke
  • Favourite cartoon character: Howl from Howl's moving Castle.
  • Personal Quote: We're f***ed six ways from sunday.
  • Tools of the Trade: Two hands. And a foot.

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Comments


:iconcyliecleo:
you be welcome, it just kept drawing my attention, left it in my watch box for ages. normally delete things straight away

--
Methods Of Self Destruction

Member of
:iconeye-freaks:
:iconPoetryPlease:
:iconburn-p0etry:
:iconrickbw1:
:snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake:
Thanks for the :+fav:
Happy Holidays
:relaxed:
:snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake::snowflake:

--
The cure for boredom is curiousity. There is no cure for curiosity.
:icondikdiz:
Thanks for adding me to your favorites.
:icongwegowee:
Hey thanx alot for the FAV!
:iconikyoucrow:
hey, i might take some pretty okay pictures but your designs are off the chain!

i have all these ideas and i just can't seem to get them on paper.

got any advice?

--
If you sting me, I won't mind.
:icontoshers-girl:
Well I'm flattered and gods thats a hard question. Most of the things I do go into stasis for a while-when I get the idea for whatever reason I can't do it or it doesn't look right so I leave it for a bit until I have too much time on my hands and the mood strikes me. I find it's a lot easier to draw something if you're in the mood to draw it right then. So.....wait a little bit after the idea, see if it still grabs you. But to be honest that happens to everyone, the amount of half-finished stuff I've got lying around because it wasn't going right....sometimes things just don't work for no reason, sometimes you get a block and you can't do sod all, or your mood changes and everything you're working on does as a result-such is life.

Oh and practice; esspecially if it's something specific and do it on something that it doesn't matter if you screw up. It's much easier to get the important stuff right the first time if you've messed around with something similar first to see what works.....life models, reference photographs, luck....'s it mate, hope that's helpful....

--
The Cornish drolls are dead each one,
The fairys from their haunts have gone,
There's scarce a witch in all the land,
The world has grown so learned and grand.
:iconikyoucrow:
helps tons.
i guess step 1 is really to stop thinking i can get everything right in the first draft.

one of my art teachers from back in my old school days told me that even though i might not like what i've done, there's someone out there who will love it, and with that i should do it for that person - my audience.

--
If you sting me, I won't mind.
:icondreamworker72:
Thank you for the fave :+fav: ! :D

--
Memento audere semper

Si vis pacem, para bellum
:icontoshers-girl:
They're beautiful photos, reminded me of the Caribbean.

--
The Cornish drolls are dead each one,
The fairys from their haunts have gone,
There's scarce a witch in all the land,
The world has grown so learned and grand.
:icondreamworker72:
Thanks :love:

--
Memento audere semper

Si vis pacem, para bellum

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