#maybe the occasional environmental storytelling but i implore you it MUST NOT be enough to create Lore

[silverjirachi]

So many adaptations of things like the backrooms and the poolrooms get it wrong. it’s not that there’s a monster in there. it’s that the monster is the rooms themselves.

To me the horror of things like the poolrooms is because something should be there, and isn’t. This is actually what liminality is at its core. From a theoretical perspective, it is a space between two places. It is not a place where people go and remain. Motels. Train stations. Rest stops. Stairwells. Office buildings. Community pools. All places people are, but don’t stay.

Putting a monster in the poolrooms always feels so cheap because there are a million other horror experiences where a thing is chasing you or lurking somewhere. Avoiding a monster in the poolrooms is the same as avoiding a monster in a forest or a pizza restaurant or a house or a hospital or or or or etc. it’s a coat of paint at that point. It undermines the very unique liminal aspects of these locations by not engaging with its core components of time, space, solitude, and even identity that do not exist elsewhere. It just makes it Avoid The Monster Game number fourteen thousand and three.

When really, there is a horror of a place that is ever-expansive. A horror of a beast that is a location, a place that you cannot escape from, where you cannot die, and the only living thing is you.