Spoopy season has a lot of proper competition this year in having to up its game to be recognized as a legitimate threat in a crowded field of contenders.

The United States of Absolutely Horrifying

I’ve now become accustomed to what has come to be deemed the “Saturday Sorrows”, as every passing week has the vibe sink ever deeper into regular certainty. Others have referenced other emotional integrities of the week in a similar manner: the “Sunday Scaries” being of particular relevance in this regard, and even as someone who does not suffer the cruel reality of anxiety, I must concur I see worth in this posit, even within acknowledging the simultaneity that perception helps to warp reality around the perceiver.

My writing voice tends to slip into self-reference without much effort, and the reality of my filter when contemplating existence lends itself quite easily to the power of a metafictional sort, for better or worse. I suppose I bring this up now, in self-reflection on the articles I’ve written during spoopy season thus far, the ones detailing thoughts I’ve had involving Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and their inherent problem I feel they possess. Something has been bothering me about their worth every time I consider them, and I think I’ve landed on the notion as to why; they do not seem to capture or compliment the vibe of the games themselves. One of my articles, where I even discuss the ‘je ne sais quoi‘ of what makes survival horror games tick, is perhaps the exact same quality that my articles are lacking, ironically resulting in the lack of a lack, if we are to predicate on the premise involved.

We are unable to crib from the broken, perverted rules of languages mischievous beatacratic standards in this regard: the lacking lack does not in turn equivocate to a double negative, and hence become a positive in the same moment. It is just a defining lack with regards to the original lack, one interestingly enough, being a lack possessing a negative quality, and the other being a lack involving a positive quality. This luckily, does turn out to be a delightful scenario predicated on the delicious nature of metaphysical reality, and how “the lack of” can in fact differ in form, even though what I reference is formless in and of itself. How perfectly marvelous.

My knee jerk reaction as to why this has come to pass, I.E. my articles on these games feeling off on some level, in elaborating further upon failing the vibe check, and “lacking the lack” as it were, possibly lends itself to the idea that survival horror is contingent on irrationality, fear being predicated upon the notion of an emotional state run amok by catalysts and triggers of malicious intent. When one has phobias based off of irrationality, the mind races about what isn’t there instead of what is, and the brain starts concocting conspiracy theories of how one may be ripped asunder in a moments notice, it is then when fear starts to truly take hold, and every facet of calm safety leaves our body, draining us of all logical pretense that safe respite is an arms length away, and we are not in fact surrounded by an endless abyss of despair as we believe ourselves to be, this is when fear truly takes us.

Compartmentalizing that thought further, it would seem my articles lack the atmosphere the games themselves seek to enforce: one of woe and weary, and perhaps my citation of them helps to trivialize these notions, talking shop in reference to them as if measuring their metaphysical qualities in kitchen utensils in the guise of sizing up the proper ingredients necessary in preparation for our ideally mouth watering bundt cake of fear, and all of its malevolent textures that come oozing with terrifyingly tasty texture. I may seemingly be depriving Silent Hill and Resident Evil of a “mouthfeel” of sorts, but I suppose since they are games, this would be more akin to violating the sense related to the “fingerfeel” they relate to, a topic I’ve touched upon before, and one I’m surprised on some level I’ve never encountered discussed in the gaming wilds online.

I understand the compulsion other writers have in this regard: most are taken by the notion of creating their own little miniaturized version of a haunted house tour with their own vivid descriptions, writers in this space often come off as slaves to writing rigid derivatives of copy or falling victim to replicating press releases without much enthusiasm injected thereafter, so to be able to jump at the chance to jazz up the place with prose that comes with some actual teeth? A delight to them, indeed, and one that I have little doubt comes off in a similar manner to the readers at large. In a rare moment of unrepentant bloviation, however, I posit the simple notion that when one regularly bares their fangs in the field of the sharply poignant and pointedly descriptive, the attempt is a pedestrian affair, and one closely akin to chewing the proverbial fat, as it were.

For some, a playthrough of their favorite survival horror game may be one of a harrowing ordeal, and an experience that leaves them absolutely devastated with horrific revulsion and soul shattering devastation upon reaching the blood curdling finale.

For me, it was a Tuesday.

-Pashford