Strange Horizons Essay

[orrin]

My essay on monsters and supernatural fiction is up at Strange Horizons this week and I thought it might be of interest to Pseudopod listeners: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2010/20100906/1grey-a.shtml

Hope you enjoy it!

[DKT]

Cool! Thanks for pointing it out, and congrats, Orrin!

[Millenium_King]

Thank you, Orrin, for a wonderful and rather pleasant essay.

I'd like to say that I back up what Orrin writes 100%.  The categorization and deliniation of "monsters" has crippled most young authors' ability to write trully horrific or awesome monsters.  To say "it's a vampire" removes the entity from the realm of the impossible and places it firmly into a yard full of the usual Hollywood clap-trap.  One thing I think Orrin did remarkably well in his own seminal work "The Worm that Gnaws" is portray the malevolent entity not as a knowable quantity, not even as an impossible "monster" but instead to create it in terms of a human "mood."  This is something H. P. Lovecraft references in his own essay about horror fiction: I am paraphrasing, but he basically states that at some point description can (and should) fail.  Beyond this, all horrific entities (all "monsters") become not a description of the thing itself, but of a human mood.  It is the fear, panic, confusion and delerium which make Cthulhu into a nightmare ("...a mountain walked or stumbled...").  In "The Worm that Gnaws" the horific entity is never "cheapened" with description - we know it only through the terrible fear the narrator displays.  In this, it's both unknowable - yet wholly knowable all at once.

Modern zombie stories are a good example where this loss of wonder has occured.  The modern zombie is not some dry, rotting corpse animated by a feocious will that drives its stiff, stumbling limbs ever onward like the fierce tugs of a clumsy marionette-master - the modern zombie is a creature of childish simplicity.  A moaning cartoon that dies with a single well-placed bullet.

Thank you again Orrin for reminding us that there needs to be a sense of granduer, of outre and of incomprehensbile - yet comprehensible - majesty about the creatures which Lovecraft so frequently described as "unspeakable."

[Scattercat]

Sometimes, one needs the rules so that the things that break them become more frightening.  Take "Buffy," which was referenced in the article.  Are the normal everyday vampires frightening?  No; they're far too well understood.  However, that makes it all the more intriguing when something or someone appears who breaks the rules, who is beyond what is known.  The vampires were never supposed to be the scary part of Buffy; the 'fear' in that show came primarily from within, from the sacrifices and choices the characters made.  The vampires served as the "mundane" threats, somewhat ironically.  In Lovecraft, the mundane difficulties of traveling or gaining access to a particular library would be the nearest equivalent.  The vampires were supposed to be "boring," in other words; basic obstacles, not beings of fear.  (Not to mention that "Buffy" is pretty clearly a comedy/action/drama rather than a horror show; it's a bit unfair to pick on it for not being horrific when it wasn't generally trying to be.)

It's worth noting that things work best when they strike a balance between structure and chaos, the rules and the things that break them.  F'r instance, "If you're bitten by a vampire, you become one in three days" can be quite horrifying in its own right; sometimes the rules are a weapon themselves.  It's all in how it's used, I think; I've run sessions of D&D or White Wolf games and scared the heck out of my players, even though they (and their characters) all knew the "rules" of the world.  It was a combination of using the rules that existed effectively, and breaking them judiciously with the unfamiliar.  Establishing the rules allows one to break them to strong effect, and some rules can be effective horror even in their utter clarity and mundanity (c.f. the vampire-in-three-days thing).  There has to be a baseline, in other words, things that are known, so that the things that are unknown stand out from the background.

[orrin]

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful commentary on this. This kind of discussion is exactly the sort of thing I'm hoping to engender with pieces like this.

@Millenium_King: Just... wow. Thank you! I am seriously blushing. I'm also really glad to see people who get what I'm talking about, and who're looking for the same kinds of things in supernatural stories that draw me to them. And thanks for pointing out the "human mood" thing, which I hadn't actually considered in exactly those terms.

@Scattercat: It definitely wasn't my intent to "pick on" Buffy, or really anything. Nor did I really mean to pick on anything for not being horrific. What I wanted to do was illustrate the difference in approaches to supernatural phenomena between a sort of fantasy/superhero style show like Buffy (which I picked mostly because I figured everyone in my audience would be familiar with it, I'm actually quite fond of Buffy) and the kinds of stories that I write, or that Mignola writes, or that Lovecraft wrote, or whatever, even though they all deviate from supernatural tropes.

I think there's definitely a place for Buffy and things like it. My point in introducing them was not to say that they shouldn't exist, but to point out the differences in their approaches. I go to Buffy for one thing, and I go to Mignola's work for something different.

I like your point about keeping some rules so that the ones you break stand out, though. That's definitely an interesting thing, and I think that a modern writer of supernatural fiction has to be aware of the tropes and cliches of the genre, even if he or she is going to flout them.

[Scattercat]

I think you do already know about it, Orrin, at least instinctively.  Taking "The Worm That Gnaws" as an example, there are some rules and patterns that are followed.  The worm-thing doesn't attack at random; it attacks graverobbers, giving some structure to its rampages and allowing the audience a handle on its purpose.  Originally, the acid works against it, and that appears consistent, but then at the end you break that "rule" and let the worm-thing start changing things up.  It's only a short story, so the opportunity for rules and rule-breaking is somewhat limited by space constraints, but the balance is clearly there.  We have a structure, and then we have things that defy that structure. 

I think it's also interesting when *adding* rules makes things more frightening.  To return to "Buffy" (as you say, a well-known example), think about Season 7 and the revelations of the Slayer's origins.  Until then, the Slayer has just been a nebulous mystic thingamabob, without clear source or much in the way of explanation.  There are some "rules," such as the 'pass the torch upon death' thing, and the show has played with those rules a bit, but in general it's just the central conceit and remains largely unexamined.  The revelations about the Slayer's origins simultaneously add more "rules" and a level of understanding and comprehension, and yet also heighten the tension and the stakes; by learning where she came from, Buffy realizes the larger implications of her continued complicity in that ancient devil's pact and becomes horrified at herself, her status as Slayer, and what she now realizes she represents. 

Basically, I agree that when things are nailed down and clear-cut, they become less horrifying.  I'm just saying that this fact is not an inherent negative to a work of horror or fantasy, and that using the rules as an oppressive presence, adding 'rules' that change the game, or establishing rules in order to break them (or highlight other rule-breakings) can also be an effective way to create a sense of fear and wonder.

(Erfworld is a fascinating comic that seems relevant to this discussion.  The central conflict in the comic centers on the idea of rules and control, and how everything in Erfworld follows these well-known and thoroughly documented patterns and is commensurately oddly cute and unthreatening to our sensibilities, and yet within that world there is just as much horror and wonder as ever.  I recommend giving it a look-see from the beginning.)