The Habitat

    John had run out of bug spray. He had run out of the pads, out of vinegar, out of everything to keep the little bastards at bay. Now, he was crouched down by the ants endless line and squashing them under his thumb, one by one.

   "Damned ants," he muttered each squish. "Ruining my perfect new home!"

    The light from the windows grew more dim. He faintly heard the dirt shift under the foundation, as though even it was tired of the swarming army.

    "Those are custom made windows, you sons of bitches!" He lamented.

    His beautiful home. The home that had impressed even his family, covered in endlessly marching ants.

    But he would have the last laugh. He swore it.

    John rolled to his side an on to his feet, uncaring of the ants crawling over him. He had laid a crowbar to the side -- it was meant to help him pry off the old wooden eyesores in the walls. Instead, he found himself aiming for the pipes under the sink.

    "Like mother always said. You keep washing until there's no more mess."

    He swung the pipe with a manic grunt, and beat at it until water began to spurt upwards. He knocked holes in every wall and beat at every single pipe that had painstakingly been marked, each with a battle cry of, "Drown!"

    The water took its time, but it didn't take too long before it had near turned black with struggling dots. John sank against a wall with a tired smile. The bliss of feeling the bites fade as he was cleansed was absolutely euphoric.

   He'd let it flood. He could buy new furniture, start over on his dream home. His family would come back and be even more impressed. Maybe he'd put in that god forsaken gaming room for his two snot-nosed little shits. He had the best job in the whole family -- bunch of deadbeats, druggies and whores. Who was going to turn their nose up at him now?

    No one, that's fucking who.

    John shut his eyes and let the water rise. Done. Over. Finally.

    When he could be bothered to open them again, he thought perhaps he hadn't opened them at all. The light had gone completely.

    "I'm just too tired to open my eyes," he assured and forced them open with his fingers.

    Darkness.

    He looked instinctively towards his beautiful, custom arched windows. Brown? How could they be brown?

    Then he realized that the water wasn't the only noise. The very foundation of the home had been dragged down and loose dirt crinkled all around him in surround sound. The real deal, not that cheap shit the guy at the store had tried to sell him.

    John stumbled to his feet and waded in a frenzy to the kitchen to grab his flashlight. He turned it on with a muffled sob.

    His beautiful home had been buried. What once had been a million dollar view out on the bay had becoming nothing but dirt and buried dog shit.

    For a long moment, all he could do was watch the ants crawling in the thousands on his windows. They would get in soon. He looked to his food: covered in ants. His clothes, covered. Everything was nothing but a squirming black horde.

    His mind went back to his mother's ant farm. How he used to stare as they moved around like the undead, following the call of a matriarchal tyrant. He wondered if ant queens ever told her ants that they didn't collect the right sugar, or sent them off to their deaths for amusement.

    They were beginning to swim on him. The stubborn bastards used their own comrades bodies as little boats.

    Smart fuckers.

    His flashlight, filled with water, gracefully took its death.

    The water was still rising.

Junji Ito Inspired Depiction of Depression

Broken pen strokes

The Four Facets of Horror

Or, what makes for the best horror

Time again to be a horror snob, I suppose. I'm sorry! It's my favorite subject!

As such, I've spent a lot of time analyzing what makes for the best horror. What key ingredients there are, and finally arrived at the four facets. While this may be useless to most people, I still feel compelled to write on it, so here goes:

The Unknown

You're in an uncertain place, a place foreign or alien to you. Something is there with you. You don't know what it is, what it wants - but you know that it wants to hurt you.

A fear of the unknown is especially common in mankind. We fear the deep ocean because it is unknown, we fear the supernatural because it is unknown.

As an example, let's take PT aka Silent Hills.

You're trapped in an endless loop with the unknown. You see only a wailing fetus in a sink and a ghostly woman -- no explanation, no prompting, but it is there. You have no means to fight it, you can't escape it, and it becomes very clear very quickly that it means you harm. That feeling alone prompts the next facet.

Helplessness

There is nothing worse than being rendered powerless, facing a foe with no means to fight it. I think this is why spirits especially scare people. How do you fight an incorporeal being? Sure, you can be a Ghostbuster, but how about the really mean ones.

Like the ones in Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining. Not only is it an unknown, but Jack is helpless against the forces driving him mad. Worse still, he is helpless to fight the demonic call to always return to the Overlook Hotel, to kill again. A river of blood runs in its wake, and the only way to fight it is to destroy the hotel.

But how can you really be sure it will ever die? Especially when you are all alone with hundreds of malevolent spirits. That being said...

Isolation

Isolation is the spirit killer. The feeling of being alone, trapped, with only your own pounding heart beat and the unknown can drive a person to do terrible and drastic things.

Let's look at Amnesia: The Dark Descent. This game is touted as being terrifying, and while I feel it is a bit over hyped, I can appreciate how well it implements the feeling of all three aforementioned facets.

SOMA, by the same studio, is an even more powerful example. Deep in the ocean, most of humanity dead, trapped and alone except for the bare remnants of humanity. The feeling of isolation in such an alien circumstance can make a person weep.

Or, they can become desperate.

Desperation

 

AKA the best of the worst situation. I equate this to being forced to kill people in a desperate bid to survive, to leave people behind, to go as far as cannibalism. The Saw series, when it was still OK, implemented this feeling quite well.

But I feel that System Shock II did it in one of the best ways possible.

Alone, in space, with a malevolent, insane AI that constantly taunts you? Fuck. All of your former crew absorbed into a hive mind? FUCK.

And the only one you can rely on is the AI.

This is the equivalent of being with a mother. A mother who calls you an insect, a mother who is a sociopath. You have no one else, you're trapped, and this is your one desperate bid to maybe escape with your life.

Ah, horror. How I love thee. 
.

Sutcher - A horror game by two sisters

How do I design game? 

Sutcher is a game my sister and I, as well as several other talented individuals, are working on at present. The game takes place in a decrepit Southern Plantation home deep in the bayou, with a crazed grandmother, a bedridden grandfather and a house full of secrets.

Intro cut scene:

The art for the titular monster is done by the crazy skilled Jimmy Nijs, as featured below:

Like I said, we're beginning game designers, so we're learning as we go. We're hoping to make it a great game, but for now, I just wanted to share my excitement (and brag a little about my design influence. Durr hurr)

As a final note, you can check out Pinny being fucking terrifying below:

Love you <3

Moms Against The Media

I can't even. 

OK, I get that this is 'Murica, land where you can usually say whatever stupid shit you want. One thing that really capsizes my cunt is when groups go on uninformed crusades - sort of like Moms Against the Media.

You know, those people that tried to cancel a show because it had LGBT tones. The people that boycotted Ellen Degeneres as the JC Penny spokesperson.

Those twats. Oh no, swears!

Listen. I don't care for kids. They usually like me, but I think it's because I don't bullshit them and act like that cool big sister that lets them play Cards Against Humanity and 'viddya games'.

Still, I don't think the little crotch spawns deserve to have their mothers go embarrassing them by being against any form of expression they don't agree with. Homosexuality has existed probably longer the original term for mother has. It's a thing that happens. It's a thing that people are now unafraid (mostly) to come out and admit.

Your kids, whether you like it or not, are going to go out into the world someday. They're going to be hit in the face with reality. They're going to have to learn to form their own opinions and how to be a human being. Filling their heads with bias, stunting their exposure and trying to make them feel guilty constantly is a really good way to make that process even more horrible.

Sure, you can go off on tangents, rant, bitch, sit at home trying to repress your own feelings and feel dirty if you want. You can cower from the old guy upstairs who apparently thinks we're all awful unless we follow his exact orders. I don't get that, by the way. If a leader killed most of the world, taunted people into almost killing their kids and pretty much brought down constant wrath to those that didn't obey, wouldn't we call him a tyrant? I find it hard to believe that that is benevolence. But, whatever, religious ranting aside.

What really gets me is think of how much good these groups could do. Think of how much we would get done if we stopped worrying about shit we can't control. These same moms could be organizing food drives for poor students or educating their children about this incredible rock that we live on.

But no. Media is the devil.

We are the real monsters in horror movies and games

Damn you, humanity! I shake my fist at thee! 

Ha, ha, you thought I was going to get preachy, didn't you?

No, no. Actually, when I say that we are the real monsters, I am talking about projecting. Projecting one's self into various forms of media is nothing new. Whether it is in fanfics where the writer introduces their original character or themselves to seduce hot anime boys, or where directors project themselves into a character. Sort of like James Nguyen, the director of Birdemic 1 and 2, who makes one main character a director (hurr) and another one a software engineer (which is his day job). I Hate Everything talks about it in his Search For the Worst review of Birdemic 2, and he is hilarious, so check him out.

Now, let's take it a step further. Why do you think so many slasher films have unstoppable monsters and killers going after idiotic teens?

Well, because those teens are dicks. Sluts, jocks, idiots, etc. They're the people that probably picked on the director or writer while they were in school. It's easy to loathe them and even cathartic to watch them die. At the hands of who? Their creator that is hiding behind a hockey mask.

Rob Schrab makes a poignant point with this quote:

There's a little monster inside all of us, a little wolf-faced monkey that needs to be satiated. As people, we mustn't ignore that monster. If we do, we cheat ourselves. We deny an emotion, a feeling.
Think of someone who pissed you off. Some yutz who cut you in traffic; a prick-ass Kinko's employee who took three hours to copy your resume; the big bully who in your face when you were eight. Now, in your head, relive that moment. This time, however, don't just stand their and take it. This time you've got a knife. Pull it out from behind your back and watch the status flip-flop. Suddenly, Mr. Kinko isn't so cocky. The playground bully is crying for his mother. Smell their fear. Then, kill them. Kill them like you see in the movies. Make it as horrible as possible. Release that monster and stab that knife deep into their face.
As humans, we are taught to forget that we are animals. Animals kill to survive and its just as natural for us. To deny nature is to deny life. Now that you've committed murder in our dream world, relax. Take a deep breath, give your monster a high five and put him away. You've just used an evil fantasy to keep you civilized and sane.
Some may call this irresponsible advice. They kid themselves that their monster doesn't exist. And when a person lies to themselves, there is a less chance for spiritual growth. More than likely, their monster will step out of the Dreamworld and into the Realworld. That's how a society gets messy. Lots of neglected, hungry monsters.

Really, those monsters manifest in the media. We're the idiot teen facing down the worst parts of ourselves -- and we typically lose. Why? Because we don't want to deny that nature, that catharsis. We're made to feel so helpless and guilty for being angry, for indulging in any kind of violent release, even if it doesn't hurt people. There's always some self-righteous soccer mom that doesn't get laid enough ready to scream about how her snotty little crotch welts are being corrupted.

Don't buy them GTA then, you dumb twatiron.

We're the hunter and the hunted. Deep down, we want to kill that idiot in us and become the hunter, the monster.

So, be a monster on the inside and a nice person on the outside. If it gets to be where you're doing nothing but violently fantasizing, then it might be time to see a shrink. 

Sex scenes in movies are bullshit

Nitpicking porn - awww yeah

OK, but seriously. Every time I've ever seen an uncomfortable sex scene, there's so many things that are wrong with it.

First, virgins. Listen, you might be the one in a million women that has a fantastic first time with no pain, but the rest of us don't. Those muscles are tight and probably not used to accepting anything larger or wider than a tampon. Proper lubrication can help with that, but the way most movie depictions happen, they just slide right on in as though the woman is obviously gushing love juice.

Also, don't feed me that shit that they're instantly moaning in pleasure. You don't have fifteen G spots, and to become that sensitive takes a long regiment of masturbation and exploration. Cliturbation, as an example, helps make the G spot more sensitive and thus makes penetrative sex more enjoyable and pleasurable.

Pleasurable, pleasurable, pleasurable...

Needless to say, you got to get a lady warmed up. Dudes too. Cramming your various bits into holes is not exactly a welcome thing without a warm-up (usually).

With that in mind, foreplay is SERIOUSLY stupid in movies. Boobies > oral > blowjob for fifteen minutes > sex > maybe anal if we're in a porn.

There's more areas on humans to heat them up. The neck, the ears, the inner thigh. That's one of the biggest drawbacks -- Hollywood and porno Hollywood aren't very good at depicting, you know, romance.

I can't even tell you how many movies I've seen that use that "quirky romantic comedy" formula. Nor how many times that crap makes me want to barf. It's especially bad when people try to make it "poetic" or "deep". Real romance is hard to depict, because it's the little moments that make it, the chemistry, the memories. In movies where two people have to bang by the end of it, that's probably not going to happen.

"Dude is sexy and dangerous. Opening vagina in 3...2..."

I think media needs a bit of an evolution in their depiction of sex and romance. For the whored!