#but time loops are inherently horror and i will die by this hill

[starlightspin]

i love you inherent horror of time loops i love watching people try to get out over and over again i love watching people go mad because they can't get out! they can't change the outcome no matter what they do! they still loop back everytime! but they still try, over and over again because you can't not try in a time loop you have to try to get out and you have to hope you can get out you have to hope and you have to try and it works most of the time! you get out by talking or doing something specific! they get out of the loops because they had hope and they tried over and over again until they were going insane i love you time loops and the inherent horror of being stuck in one

[joanjams]

So I’ve fallen into a few horror games as of late

If In the past few days I’ve had an intense urge to consume horror media at a rate much faster than I usually do, and I wanted to voice a few of my thoughts about Outlast. Idk if y’all care about spoilers for a game from 2013 a so... Here we go?

OUTLAST

Honestly, this game did a really good job at establishing suspense and making me incredibly uncomfortable a few times. Mount Massive is a really fucking good spooky asylum. The first 20 minutes of this game are so hair-raising and have actively made me put this game down two times before I finally got around to finishing it. That being said, let’s start breaking this game down.

Characters:

Chris Walker

I thought that this guy was very good for the first twenty minutes of the game, but any suspense that his chase scenes have have already been deflated by the other random Variants that struggle to put you down properly.

The Twins

I legitimately wish these two were used in a more substantial manner. The first introduction to them was absolutely striking, and the few bits of dialogue they get are wonderful. I had to pull up the wiki because I never got a very good look at them, but apparently they make like 4 appearances throughout the game. I greatly would’ve preferred The Twins over random bullshit Variants. 

Quick quick aside: if you make like 5 main antagonists, please fucking use them over random bullshit goons. Oh my god.

Dr. Trager

This motherfucker holy god. The firstish half of the game I played, I was playing while my friend watched and we goofed the shit out of it. However, once Trager was on the scene, everything got really serious for me out of nowhere. Every single line he delivers is absolute gold. Alex Ivanovici did such a wonderful job with what he was given. Much like the twins, I really wanted to see Trager more. I felt genuine dread being exposed to this character.

Father Martin

I have... nothing really special to say about this guy? Like yeah, he set up the Walrider the most, but most of his shtick wasn’t particularly interesting. It’s a weird funny note to know that he fell into the Walrider’s religion because the art department got its budget cut. Keep funding public art, kids.

Walrider

I... I apparently missed a lot of the buildup on Walrider. I might be a kinda shitty investigative reporter, but I straight up didn’t see the Walrider’s name scribbled everywhere until a room was full of it. Yeah, it’s the big spooky bullshit monster, but I can’t help but feel like I wanted more out of Walrider. Maybe I didn’t want him to be named BILLY. I think by the time we get to experience the Walrider in its entirety, the suspense of chase scenes has already turned into tedium, which takes away from this spooky bastard.

LOCATIONS AND LEVEL DESIGN

I haven’t talked about the environments yet, but sweet jesus is Mount Massive way more fun than the dumbass lab underneath it. Part of the inherent fear I felt in the asylum was the fact that I kept getting absolutely lost, draining through batteries. The scenes with Trager I felt a genuine panic because I got completely turned around and this charming bastard was coming at me with bone shears. The twisting and turning corridors, boarded up doors, and dilapidated space make for a perfect labyrinth, but the secret lab takes everything that Outlast did well with its level design for the first 2 hours and throws it in the garbage. The underground lab legitimately disappointed me by merits of it being effectively 3 hallways attached to a sphere. I get it, we’re trying to push for those last few yards, but it lost a lot of impact.

CONCLUSION

Honestly, I legitimately wish Outlast didn’t try to pay off its suspense with as many chase scenes as it did. At a certain point, the chase scenes turn from “Legitimately Scary” into “Benny Hill.” Chases start being tedious, and the main gameplay loop changes drastically from “explore a fucking terrifying asylum” to “Scooby Doo this baddie.” Granted, this was probably a failure on my part; I’m not very good at stealth games. That being said, maybe it should take more than what feels like 12 hits to actually die. The random jumpscares were also completely unfair. There’s 3 fucking jumpscares that aren’t built up for shit, and they’re effectively “BOO! Okay, bye!�� which felt insulting to the environment that Outlast had created.

Overall? 3/5.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

tru like..........if youve got a looping environment outdoors then unless its pointed out in really obvious ways the player is just going to think it was a lack of effort....and when you do it indoors like p.t. its mostly going to be like "oh this is like pt" but if thats the only real similarity then its kind of like, yeah its unusual and you get that first moment of mild surprise but its not inherently scary. i guess it does have a slight inherent advantage towards building suspense in that, since you probably thoroughly explored the loop the first time around & would have no reason to do so again when finding out your environment is identical, you sort of have all your focus put towards keeping an eye out for any minute changes / anything to break the loop / just waiting for an attack or smthing since you know youre getting "used" to the environment and its supposedly safe each loop but for another thing, none of them really do the truly infinite loop of pt....like maybe it loops until you realize theres some task youre supposed to be doing, but so does pt and then youre still in the loop. unless you "die" and you enter the starting point room before reentering the loop. the freakin lore but yeah like, any single element could be copied from pt & be effectively transplanted into any horror game & still be scary....but really while a bunch of the individual scary bits were effective and pretty "new"/creative, its definitely the overall atmosphere that made pt such a big deal or ppl wouldve just been talking about the individual points and not the overall game. the looping environment is kind of an overall reflection of that whole atmosphere imo....its kind of creepily realistic in the first place and the simple L structure is good / giving you a slight "descent" and unsafe zone between making it through the door at the end with the danger at your back and the relative safety of reentering the loop, where the only danger in that section is noticing an atmospheric change. but anyways the fact that it loops = the whole overall kind of surreal/nightmare/dream rules that are still solidly tethered to this being a reality that can not only hurt you but operates under its own consistent rules. like its a fantastic balance of the dream reality where dissonance with how reality operates allows for a lot of eerieness but also sticking to some elements of straightforward "this is real reality", so that you can never really be sure which set of rules you should view the situation in? + the fact that really all the player is capable of doing is looking at things and eventually holding a flashlight, and thats not likely to be the case in a full game plus the atmosphere of how the game seems to treat the player, like growing more hostile but never exactly making it clear that the player specifically is being targeted as opposed to just being in a bad place at a bad time, like how in theory i think you can go completely unkilled by the game thru sheer luck or more likely knowing what you were supposed to be accomplishing and the later supposed rituals to keep you safe when all the baby sounds mean something and all.....but like, its never really knowing whats just creepy and whats dangerous and whats a reaction to your presence and whats just happening coz fuck it. like, the blood fridge. with it writhing around like something inside is bad enough, but even just hanging there is suspenseful what with the window having been smashed down earlier. oh and the figure just standing there looking down from the balcony. its like, is this a deadly ghost sighting? no. but fuck if who wants to turn their precious back on that nightmare anyways. or continue looking at it? the game really maintains such a tenuous balance in several ways that theres never any sense of safety or that you know whats going on or what any of the elements are going to do at any given time anyways the point is that a full length game is really not going to be able to evoke the same effect as pt just by having a similarly creepy radio or whatever, like, unless it entirely commits to that extremely specific atmosphere throughout. the point is always that not only should everyone have had pt forever but the actual silent hills game is a deep and eternal loss

[greenspasm]

Hate Doesn’t Help

I’m writing this on Sunday 4th June, 2017. Last night, three maniacs took to London’s streets to spread fear and mass panic. Details are still coming out, and the death toll is apparently still rising. It’s safe to say there’s a lot of emotion being stirred up right now. 

But one emotion that has no place is hate. Yes, I know I’m not the most original for saying it, but hear me out. It’s understandable to feel it, and its completely fine to feel anger. These emotions are human nature; but they can be destructive. There has never been a time when hatred has saved a life or undone a tragedy; hatred is hatred, it feeds off of and regurgitates itself in an endless cycle. 

Do you think I don’t hate these three assholes? Do you think I don’t feel angry about what happened? Of course I do. I hate what happened in Manchester as well, and I’m angry about that too. THIS is a natural response. You are not wrong for feeling this in this way; but there is always a line. A line I never cross. I hold those responsible accountable, and I do whatever I can to make sure people get through this.  I never blame the innocent. I never stoke the fires of bigotry and xenophobia. I never push a hateful agenda.

It’s too bad a lot of people can’t see that line.

As it was happening, as the chaos and panic erupted over London, hundreds of thousands of people took to Twitter. Many shared condolences - passing on messages of support; others retweeted and shared news and information to help keep people in the loop; some even shared official police reports. But there were some who did none of this. There were some - so blinded by their own self-importance - that they decided that this was the perfect time to stand on their platform and spread more hatred. Of all times, this was it, right then, as a terror attack was unfolding. We should have been focusing on getting through it all, offering whatever we could - advice, prayers, condolences. Doing anything else is just gross. Details were thin at best, yet people had already made up their mind about who these attackers were and what had led to their creation.

Immigration! Poor Security! The Government! The luvvie Leftists! Islam! The Quran! 

There had been no reports (at least not one I could find) that this was an Islamist extremist incident at the time. All I could see was that it was that the police were treating it as a “terror attack”. Yes, I know, likelihoods suggest that it is the work of Islamist extremists, but how quickly people latched on to Muslims is a frightening reality. It was almost as if they didn’t care about the truth, whether it was in their favour or not; all they wanted to do was spread their hatred. 

And that’s just it. Right there. This is the type of problem we have. These people don’t care about the victims. They don’t care about who died; killed by whom; where it happened. None of it matters. What matters is the agenda, and the agenda is “Islam is Evil”. Just let that sink in. Think about that; they will use the suffering and pain of others as an excuse to spout narrow-minded views. Worse still when they hail from America and use our suffering as an excuse to make it all about them. 

They are actually glad - if you can believe it - that this happened, because it gives them an excuse to say “I told you so” even if what they told us was wrong, and is still wrong to this day. Anyone would think they were soldiers of ISIS.

Well, arguably they are. These people are the best weapons the terrorists have. They’re so good, they don’t even realise who they’re working for. ISIS have gone on record with their goals. Yes, they want to destabilise the west, to make us fear them, and to cause mass hysteria; but they also want to divide. They want the west to turn their backs on Muslim people, to split the world into two camps: Us and Them. The west (arguably Christian) and them (Muslim). The more people who step forward with their poisonous viewpoints on Islam, the more ammo they have to recruit impressionable Muslims to their cause. Muslim bans and EDL marches are a plus for these guys. You’re proving the message they’re putting out there to Islamists: “They will never accept you. They are the enemy. Join us and fight against them”

To us, we know that this message is bullshit. At least on the grand scale it’s not true, but on the ground floor, in the daily life of Muslim people - the men, women and children on the front line of all this - this message can sometimes ring true. When a mosque is fire bombed in retaliation for what happened in Manchester DESPITE Muslim communities reporting potential extremists. When Muslim women are verbally abused on a transport because they are perceived as outsiders. When Muslim people hide away in their homes because they’re afraid to go outside after an attack has happened in case they are attacked themselves: 

These examples and many others lay the foundations for extremism.

Everyone gets frustrated; and everyone deals with that frustration in different ways. Some do it peacefully - like the Black Lives Matter movement in America, protesting with non-violent demonstrations. But some do it destructively. “Why is our home under attack? Why was our Mosque burned and vandalised? Why should we have to live in fear? Why can’t I wear what I want to wear? Why am I considered Muslim but not British even though I was born here? Why? Why? Why?” These questions are answered as above: “Because they will never accept you. Because they are the enemy”

I think too often people forget that Muslims are human beings. They’re not machines, programmed for good or evil. They’re not there to score political points for your party, be it for the right or left. They’re not inherently bad people,  nor nice people, nor annoying, nor compassionate, nor arrogant, nor selfish, nor kind. They are like everyone else. Some are capable of devastating horrors, just as others are capable of brilliant and much needed compassion. The actions of the radical should not be used as weapons against the peaceful. 

Does any of this mean I condone what happened in Manchester or London? Am I a terrorist Sympathiser? Hell NO! But I believe that understanding who and what our REAL enemies are is the first step to defeating them. Understanding is not the same as agreeing. You may disagree with my world view, but if you understand it maybe we could reach a middle ground. But there is no excuse for this vitriol; this hate speech, knee-jerk reaction. Extremism exists on all sides, and this is no better than the extremism we’re trying to fight; worse, it’s the same extremism.

As I said; hatred and anger are human emotions. They’re real, and you’re not wrong for feeling them, but too much of it can turn you into something bad. Wallow in it too much and it’s enough to turn you into a monster. A monster who thinks saying “I told you so” while people suffer is the right hill to die on. Monsters who think their hateful voice is the one to be heard whilst families from all walks of life pray for the safety of their children. Monsters who will gladly watch innocent people die if it means they can get attention. 

So the next time an incident like this happens; the next time another attack strikes close to home and your fear turns to anger and hatred; just when you’re about to yell your thoughts and comment on the internet, ask yourself this:

Would it help?

“Will what I’m about to say actually help anyone suffering right now? Will it give someone closure, or offer any means of support to those in need? Or will it just be for me and my followers? Will it just serve as a means to inflate my deluded sense of self importance? Or worse, will it serve only to fuel our enemies, and make them stronger?”

When you have your answers to these questions, make your choice.

Do you want to Hate? Or do you want to Help?

Pick one.