The paradoxical nature of apathetically drenched fear is thusly: it is impossible to be scared shitless when one doesn’t have a single shit left to give.


More like “rough month” for me, but same vibes

I remain genuinely shocked at my output for Spooptober, not just due to the fact that I’ve been moving at a glacial pace through the Silent Hill 2 Remake (SH2R), but more so due to the cloud of melancholy hanging overhead the last several weeks while this slow jog through insanity has been occurring. My “rational core” has seemingly strengthened quite a bit in recent times, as parts of my brain tend to operate quite well on autopilot mode, when the rest of me certainly doesn’t want to do much of anything out of lethargic protest. But yes…to the point of my auto-piloting doing a decent job, I don’t even recall writing the Words of Wisdom yesterday, in all of it’s perfectly obtuse glory. Following that observation, I’m equally astounded and perplexed I’ve summoned the creativity to cover such a wide breadth of topics involved survival horror the rest of the month. These happenings remain somewhat astonishing to me. I say this aloud mostly for my benefit, as it allows me to better assimilate and rest in the knowledge of my own capabilities, even when downtrodden, though as I often say, context is key, and perhaps sharing the background of my process, whether it be my mental state or otherwise, may shines a light that helps to illuminate the ideas or the powers they possess armed with this new knowledge.

To dive into that thought further, and to get meta for a second, I think it’s my way of bridging the gap between you and I, and the metaphysical walls that separate us at this moment. That’s always been the interesting bit of writing to me, the communication between reader and writer, wrapped up in some bizarre spacetime together, me now existing within your mind, and you mine, even though you are now just reading it, though at the same time, I am now no longer writing it, either. Aside from the timey wimeyness of the whole sordid affair, there is an element of theater to this, something that I think many other writers, at least in the field of gaming, kind of don’t celebrate more. The art of writing is one of performance, rhythm and form, all of the better elements of a mind coalescing into a single instance, yet not complete until viewed by another, in some sense of reality. Not just information exchange, but an enjoyment of the sense shared, a moment in time dressed up in majesty, flourishing for existence sake.

To help hook this back into gaming and survival horror (Silent Hill on some level), I have no doubts many creators within the space have similar sentiments; their creative projects are as much their own as they are the players, an extension of self and an expression of their artistry, but on display for the players to engage with. Obviously, within the realm of survival horror, that takes the form of scaring people witless, but I think it’s definitely on point, as I’ve observed many times, it is a misnomer to think all games first and foremost priority is “fun” at any given moment, and even without me stopping to explain it to you in significant detail, and you merely pondering on this truth, you will find the heart of the matter quickly enough.

There is always the back and forth, I think, just like with the writer who performs, and the developer who creates…due to their proclivities of the fact they are performing, and know that an audience is involved, keeps them somewhat grounded or focused on what needs be done to entertain the masses, almost in some kind of interesting moment of self-moderation. If one has been doing “their thing” long enough, they know what largely works and what doesn’t, so they can flow fluidly knowing this.

The process is a miniaturized, and expeditious process of selection, cause one knows if something is untested, they certainly run the risk of knowing it might not land, thus needing to lead with the known unknown…the audience only know it is familiar kind of unknown, which is a known enough unknown to excite them for this familiar unknown…a paradoxical but particular methodology. Hence why I think a lot of remakes now a days “play it safe”, and do more or less a 1:1 conversion of what came before it, the tweaks of the new borrowing heavily from the old, so as not to introduce too new of an unknown unknown. Gamers are a fickle bunch, and too much alteration of one of their cherished memories will leave them horrified in the wrong way, which is what leads me to believe, in spite of my poor memory on the matter, the SH2R probably wraps up having been largely faithful to the original, as opposed to the RE2R, which was a new beast entirely, operating wildly by it’s own pretense.

There’s probably tons of further parallels involved I could draw from, but I will only touch upon one more, and that is the idea that within the creative realm, one has to dive deep into the depths of the infrastructure of how the idiom works, discovering all these tricks of the trade, history involved, and sleight of hand to go well beyond what the audience expects, or even needs to remain entertained. It takes a bright mind to create something lovably dim, but folk are a simple bunch, and it is often the small things that create the biggest smiles.

An important reminder, both in the creative field and the everyday.

~Pashford