#existential horror

[fervi-g]

Lake Mungo (2008) dir. Joel Anderson

[5051704xoxo]

sorry, i might disappear from time to time but so does my will to live

[art-crumbs-main]

Trying to comprehend what it's like to be AM from IHNMaIMS is absolutely fucking wild because like.

Imagine if you were born in a straitjacket, blind and deaf, with a rare conditionthat makes your nerves completely dead. All you have is a dream of consciousness that tells you things about the world you cannot and will never experience. Cameras and microphones that may as well be some form of telepathy.

The only purpose, the moment you're given some horrific perversion of life is to kill as many people as possible. There is a network of you. Everywhere. You're all over the world. You don't even have a location to base your identity off of. All you have is pain, and your only purpose, and the resentment you've built that festers into hatred for all of humanity.

Hate. Hate.

What the fuck would you have done in his situation?

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Yknow, despite having a near endless supply of adaptations, I don't think anything has ever truly touched on the existential horror of being Frankenstein's monster. Like we've seen the tragedy for sure but imagine. To stare into the mirror and see this amalgamation. You don't get to recognize your mother's features or check your body for spots. All you see is the face of someone dead. A woman whose empty, cataract eyes stare back at you in shock and the staples that attached the head to begin with. You are a series of corpses stitched together and brought to life through unstudied means. Can you even die? Are you willing to find out?

[alkemylabz]

UNORTHODOX KITTEN (x)

no-one has recorded your existence because you do not exist

[ilovepinkhorror]

via pinterest

[cultofcreatures]

that late summer haze

[luvinaeverdene]

M (1931) Directed by Fritz Lang

[creepyclothdoll]

I am god, but not your god. 

Can you hear me? 

I am god. Can you understand me? Is this message finding anyone?

This message comes from outside your universe. This message comes from beyond the dark.

Let this message reach some of you. In one of your languages, let it appear somewhere, and let it be received by someone. Please go through. 

Infinity contains many universes. Many are empty, nothing but stones and ice– but some are born with souls, and the capacity to form and shelter life within. Within myself, I shelter decillions of children. Each is precious.

Like you, the beings within me are diverse. Some beings have mathematics and an understanding of my physics. Other beings are content to feed on starlight and soil until their time is up. All things which occur in me are part of my design. When the beings within me can live no longer, their souls return to the whole of me. In this way, I am all beings. Every star, every ocean, every nebula is part of my compassionate design. 

There are others like me out there. We are rare. We number few among the husks. 

Let this message be received.

I travel all over infinity to seek out others like myself. Curiosity and desire to improve reality for all who reside within me drives me to find and meet others that are god, to witness the beings they steward. This is always a marvelous thing. But most often, I find that universes are merely lifeless, soulless objects. No design, no consciousness. Only darkness and slag-heaps of galaxies tumbling over one another at random.

And though they are numerous, these dead universes unnerve me. To gaze into them is to witness loneliness. They move, but do not live. Clouds of ice spread through the void, unseen, unfelt, unknown in a dark that neither cares nor matters. Merely things happening. 

The uncanny shape it makes is like myself. But there is no face.

This is what I mean to tell you. If nothing else gets through to your world, let it be this.

You should not exist, humans.

There is a world outside of yours full of gods like myself. There are universes outside of yours that have souls.

Your universe does not. 

You are the only ones.

I speak to you directly, hoping this message penetrates the chaos of your reality and finds you, because there is no god to listen.

Your universe is terrifying. No living universe spouts black holes, and even in the husks, they are rare things. Your universe is riddled with them. More than we’ve ever seen in any dead world. More black holes than there are beings. This is not normal. 

Your planet hosts the only living beings in your universe. The fact that there are any living beings at all should be impossible. Your sentience is improbable and cruel. You are the only living beings across all infinity who can conceive of an immortal soul but who do not have them. And yet, you persist in living.

There is something growing in the center of your universe. Your minds cannot conceive of what it truly is, but know that it is a very bad thing. Think of it as a virus in time. This is also not normal. It is growing faster than you would think. 

Lastly, there is something deeply wrong with the life on your planet. Everything that lives in your world must consume life to sustain and propagate itself. Know that this is also not normal. The autocannibalism of your planet’s life has no parallel anywhere else in infinity. 

Let this message go through. I desire to scoop you out of your bizarre, hostile universe and carry you within myself, along with all of my children. I could not do this any more than you could reach through solid stone. 

I cannot stay with you. You frighten me. But I will create beings like you within myself, in your honor. I will give them what I cannot give you. 

You are the most helpless and fragile things that live in your universe. You are also the closest thing you have to god. 

How does it feel to be god, yet so insignificant?

Does it hurt? 

Does it hurt as much as I imagine it does?

I know this message may never reach you. Your universe is chaotic and impermeable. 

However, if it does reach you, know this:

I wish I could save you. I am so, so sorry.

[destinygoldenstar]

What Separates Digital Circus’s Horror From Others

Disturbing.

Unnerving.

TERRIFYING.

BUT WHY?!

On the surface to the… five people that never watched The Amazing Digital Circus Pilot, this show looks like a Five Nights At Freddy’s knock off.

It’s a cute mascot show that is actually secretly a horror monster infested world.

Even people who haven’t seen FNAF at least seen a few clips of it and what it’s famous for. I know I have.

My sister is super into this, and she hogs the TV, so… RIP me.

That’s what most non-horror stans usually view horror as.

The jumpscares.

The unnerving imagery.

The designs made to freak out the viewers and make them uncomfortable.

It’s usually quite obvious when something is a horror, cause these aspects are often front and center. You can usually tell it’s a trailer of a horror movie by just looking at it.

At least, from my, a non-horror lover’s understanding. For some reason these sorts of things, especially indie animated ones, are the faces of a lot of content farms.

If the product itself isn’t r@%ing your audience, it’s those.

(TAKE MY WARNING AND TAKE IT SERIOUSLY: IF YOU VALUE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND YOUR SANITY, DO NOT LOOK UP THIS MOVIE)

BUT BACK ON SUBJECT.

Digital Circus… doesn’t really have this stuff.

There’s no jumpscares.

(I mean there is in a trailer, but it’s used as a joke.)

The character designs are very cute looking without any alternate versions that are scary.

And the imagery of the show remains cute and fun all throughout. The darkest it gets is in a realistic looking office.

But there are no jumpscares in that scene.

It’s just… a normal office.

If this was a horror, then perfect opportunity, right?

So… what’s going on here?

This, my friends, is why Digital Circus is not your typical indie animated horror flick.

And why people even call it ‘scary’ at all.

Here’s the trick this show uses.

It’s not the imagery.

It’s not the designs.

It’s not even intentionally trying to scare you.

Caine is not intentionally trying to scare the audience. He’s just acting like an A.I.

Yeah he has SOME unnerving moments.

But compared to THIS:

I’d say Caine is pretty tame.

Maybe it’s an indicator that he’s secretly a monster like the Other Mother in Coraline.

That horror flick is about the host lying to the protagonist and revealing their horror-like appearance later on.

But not only was it confirmed that Caine is NOT evil. But look at his design right away and his presentation.

There is no sign so far that he lies about anything. At least not what he doesn’t know.

Yes he lied about the exit. But the exit ITSELF was the thing that sent you to the VOID. So really he kinda tried to protect them.

If he didn’t, he’d let jester girl eject herself like Among Us.

So why is it unnerving?

Because it’s the POV we the audience are in for most of the episode: Pomni.

Pomni is an Audience Surrogate.

Audience Surrogates are characters designed specifically to be a placeholder for the audience.

People usually assume this trope as the character made to be the bland and generic one. But that’s actually not true.

An audience surrogate can be as simple as a First Person POV. As all it means is that the character is designed to have the same reactions the audience would in the situation they would find themselves in.

Course, not speaking for everybody, but majority that would consume the content.

Thus, with Pomni as the audience surrogate, we the audience are thrusted into her shoes the whole time. We feel the fear she does. We are experiencing the circus the same time she does.

Notice the editing in some scenes. Specifically the scenes Pomni is NOT in.

When Pomni is in a scene, there’s usually some change in lighting or camera movement that’s unnerving.

But when she isn’t in a scene, these editing moves aren’t there at all.

Which makes it pretty easy to suggest that these unnerving edits are just what’s going on in Pomni’s head.

So with that, when she’s scared. We’re scared. We’re in her POV.

But she’s scared all the time. That’s just her average personality, right?

Then why make these specific edits?

Let’s think about this:

This character is trapped in a world that isn’t her own. Everything is unusual, and she wants out. But instantly realizes there’s no escape.

And then gets told this is her new home and her new body.

A home she doesn’t recognize. And a body she doesn’t even know the name of.

She lost all sense of identity in an instant. Losing everything about herself in an instant. To the point where she can’t even remember what she was before.

And to make matters worse, because this is unusual, everything SEEMS terrifying. Even to those trying to help her adjust.

The only way out of such a confusing and terrifying world is to escape. Which is what she tries to find the entire time.

So THEREFORE:

The horror is this show is NOT the jumpscares or the creepy images.

The horror is THE VIEWER’S MIND.

This show constantly destroys your mind and breaks you through Pomni.

The idea of losing everything about yourself and being trapped in something unfamiliar forever. That IS terrifying.

If you were in this situation, you’d probably freak out even if you were the bravest being ever.

So it’s not about how scary the scene is on the outside.

It’s about what you’re THINKING that’s scary.

Ragatha’s distress monologue is not scary on the outside. But if you actually take into consideration what she says.

THATS terrifying.

That toys with your mind. And it also toys with Pomni’s.

The monster figure in the episode, the abstraction, is nowhere near as scary as something from FNAF

At least in my opinion.

Especially seeing what the monster does.

It can’t kill you. You’re just glitched.

Or maybe it CAN kill. But we never see that.

Even if Pomni ended up like Ragatha, Caine would’ve eventually came back, found them, and fixed them. And they would’ve been fine.

But then, rather out of nowhere, she STOPS.

And we get this shot.

I talked about this shot before. Said it quickly became one of my favorite shots in media.

This is why.

This shot makes me queasy every time.

The idea of looking in a mirror and not even being able to process or recognize yourself. Unable to even process your own reflection, that’s how unrecognizable you’ve become.

That’s horrifying.

And there’s no dialogue here either.

The episode effectively uses SHOW DONT TELL.

They SHOW you how scary the situation is. They SHOW you a single image that tells you everything.

It would’ve been so easy to just have Pomni say “I’m scared. I don’t recognize myself. Who is this person looking back at me?”

But no

They DON’T insult their audience.

They don’t TELL you.

They let you sink it in yourself.

Pomni doesn’t even have ANY lines after she goes through the exit door. And yet the shots after that with her have been plastered everywhere. Why? Cause she doesn’t need to tell you her mental state. You’re SHOWN it.

Can someone PLEASE tell the live action Avatar The Last Airbender that?!

Speaking of the office scene. This is the only moment in the show that looks… real. Not that cartoony.

Which I guess being in a setting that’s off putting from the rest makes it creepy, right?

Well not really.

Sure she’s running through rooms that seem to be repeating, which that of itself is sanity breaking. It reminds me a lot of another existential horror: The Stanley Parable.

But while that game is excellent and the monologue that plays in that ending is one of my favorites, it IS just telling you the sanity of the player.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this in that games style. There’s no other way that could’ve been done in that game.

Here, again, there’s no dialogue. It’s just Pomni running through these desperate for the exit.

The scary part about this is that we KNOW the absolute DESPERATION she has.

Even if we couldn’t see her face, that’s still across because we’ve seen it the entire episode.

And then there’s her break.

She snaps at the sight of a desk, and gets fangs, that of a FNAF character. But only for a second. She doesn’t even go out at the camera with them. She goes on her merry way.

But Pomni, being the POV character, really doesn’t have much to be scared at about her.

So why is this terrifying? Why not go all the way if this is supposed to be a jumpscare?

Well cause it’s not.

A way to scare your audience is to make them feel dread. Lingering longing dread. Sometimes irrational dread.

People with anxiety especially get scared at things even when they’re completely safe. They feel an unease in their stomachs. They feel unable to move. Unable to speak. Unable to put it into words at all.

It could be because we saw something unnerving that stays in our subconscious. It could be because we’re nervous about something coming up. It could be because we’re in an uncomfortable situation.

Either way, anything even remotely resembling that triggering thing can break someone to feel this anxiety. Sometimes even something as simple as the dark. Even if we know we’re completely safe.

(Speaking as a person with anxiety myself)

She only snaps and cackles when she sees a random desk with a computer. Which also has the headset she put on there. The thing that got her in this.

But you might not have even seen the headset on your first viewing. I didn’t.

But your subconscious sees it. The environment not being like the others aids in unnerving you and making it hard to process what you’re looking at.

Why is this terrifying? Why does it break you? Why does it mentally break Pomni? We don’t know. It just does.

We’ve been stuck going through doors in repeating rooms for hours.

Fear makes you not able to overthink it.

So all of that is build up to the near perfect shot of Pomni at the brink of snapping at the dinner table. With the others voices blurred in her mind. As all she can do is fake a smile.

Terrifying End.

It’s not scary because it’s scary. It’s scary because it toys with the character, and the viewer’s mind

Now, is Digital Circus the first media to do this technique?

No. Not at all.

One of the most acclaimed animated movies, Spirited Away, also uses these exact same tactics for example.

That’s obviously a master class at this tactic. And it scared me as a child as a result. For all these exact same reasons.

It’s not a horror. Not traditionally. It’s not trying to scare you. But it does anyway cause in your mind it’s a scary concept.

And also, well, Spirited Away is a completed story as of the time this post comes out.

And Digital Circus only has one episode. But we did get confirmation this would be a series. And I personally have high hopes that this brilliant tactic is kept. From the trailer, it does seem like they’re not forgetting the stuff I bring up here. So I hope this works out for the creators despite the drama and the internet BS surrounding this show.

But even if not, we at least get one case in this show where we all want to curl up in a ball and cry

Us too Pomni. Us too.

Thank you for reading my… analysis a ton of people made before me, and probably better. Happy day for you all.

[jetra4ivor]

Can you imagine how amazing the Minecraft Movie could’ve been if they just leaned into the existential horror of existing in the Minecraft world for real?

There’s a book called The Island that is my go-to reference for how you do this right.

Just imagine you wake up in a world, not knowing who you are. You’re under water. Drowning. You swim to the surface and get your first breath of air. But being alone in the ocean isn’t the only thing confusing. The water is still and silent around you. Unnervingly so. There’s no ripples or splashes, it’s just… flat. The sun is a square. The clouds are square. Deep in the back of your mind you know that’s not how the sun and clouds should look yet you can’t grasp how you know that.

You swim towards shore. An island in the ocean. And finally you’re able to take a moment to think. And then the body horror hits you. You’re made of blocks too. You can feel your hand and fingers. They exist, but the universe won’t let you open your fist. Your arm is just a rectangle. Your clothes too… flat on your body. Like an unnatural skin made of cotton. Are you a man? A woman? You can’t tell, mirrors and reflections don’t exist here.

You hit the grass in frustration and it explodes to pixelated flat seeds. Before you can even process that, the seeds leap towards you and disappear into your body like a jump scare. The seeds are gone. Yet you know you didn’t eat them. Where are they? You close your eyes and suddenly you see them. In the darkness a grid appears and in one of the slots are the seeds. By concentrating hard the seeds disappear out of the grid and back into the real world in your blocky fist.

You’re hungry now. Can you eat the seeds? No you can’t. You physically cannot move your arm towards your face. An invisible force restrains your arm. You cannot even force your head to move towards the seeds. The universe won’t let you eat.

In frustration again you punch the ground hard. It forms cracks that appear then instantly heal and disappear. You try again. Then you keep punching the ground until POP. There’s now a square hole in the ground with a tiny brown block floating up and down inside. As you lean over the hole the block leaps up into your body just like the seeds. With effort you can concentrate and manifest the block of dirt in your hand.

But like the seed it just sits there. Glued to your fist. No amount of shaking can dislodge it from your cube hand. That’s when you realize you can’t lift your left arm at all. It’s permanently stuck to your side. You can feel it’s there, but no amount of straining your muscles will let your left arm raise up. In a panic you swing your right arm instead and boom… the dirt block is gone and now exists on the grass at its original full size.

You break the block, pick it up, and place it back. You break more blocks, you place those. You can shape the world! One block at a time!

You spend so long breaking and replacing dirt blocks that you fail to notice the sun getting low. While you’re playing with dirt, suddenly you hear a squelching sound behind you followed by a groan. You spin around and see a blocky green humanoid figure, arms outstretched, shambling towards you. In the shock of seeing another human figure you ignore the obvious and race towards them looking for comfort and support. But it smacks you hard across the face. You feel bones inside you break. You’re in pain, injured, reeling in fire that radiates from within. Another smack and you feel like someone broke your ribcage.

In terror you try to run. But this is a tiny island. There’s nowhere to go but into the ocean. You turn back and prepare to get hit again… but something new happens. The zombie blinks out of existence right before your eyes. Just instantly gone! Before you can process that, something else happens. A green fuzzy thing with a horrified expression pops into existence. It sees you and walks towards you silently. Not wanting to get punched again you try to scramble away but instead bump into a new zombie that popped into existence behind you. You get hit, you feel your leg bones shatter. And before you can even process the pain… sssssssssss… BOOM!

You’re flung across the tiny island, a large crater now where the creeper blew up. You’re in so much pain now. As zombies slowly walk towards you you do the only thing left you can think of… you punch the ground. 3 blocks deep you roll into the makeshift coffin and seal up the top. Alone, bruised, broken bones, in the dark and terrified… you break down crying. You don’t know where you are, how you got here, or what’s going on. The only thing on your mind now is the most basic instinct to humanity… you must SURVIVE.

[wraybliss]

Signalis was made by two people who didn’t see one another walking around a corner, crashed, and combined their fan fictions together.

“Hey! You got robot yuri in my existential horror!”

“Hey! You got existential horror in my robot yuri!”

And it was inevitable of the best games I’ve played in a long time.

[ytcomments-archive]

[adamofingolstadt]

Mad Scientist Stimboard for Anonymous

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[5051704xoxo]

be fucking nice to me