Tired Trope Kick-out

I was watching what was a great series of horror shorts when one of the pieces comes out of the blue with an excessively overused trope that I am really sick of seeing. You know it very well too I bet. A person has information that could help the police once they get past the fact that it is a supernatural perpetrator. This in and of itself is not a story problem even as often I've seen it. Now, this informant meets with the detective on the case and starts in about how the detective will think the informant is crazy. Mistake number one. Certainly the informant is intelligent enough to know that it's hard to believe so why don't they think ahead to find a way around that? This is way too often made worse by how the informant came into this information about the supernatural, which is a part of the trope--and the worst of it all--that there was a previous case involving just such a modus operandi as the current crimes.

In the particular case of this series there is a further bit of information. The informant knows about the particulars not only because of the previous case, but also because a relative was directly involved in the old investigation. Yet, the informant never does what any reasonably intelligent mammal would do and start off the conversation with "Hi, my name is Clara and I have something to tell you about your case because my deceased grandfather was a crime scene photographer and I found old case files that seem just like what I saw in the news papers." No, instead the conversation goes, "You'll think I'm crazy... there's something unnatural going on... the victims eyes are missing..." and the detective immediately has suspect number one right in front of him because no one not on the case is supposed to know anything about the missing eyes.

Instead, why can't script writers--I have no idea if this trope is repeated in novels but I have to imagine it is--sidestep this tired, and frankly pretty lame from the first instance whenever that was trope? What happens if this and other overused plot devices are put aside? How will the stories differ? Sometimes movies with tongue firmly planted in cheek, or with an attitude that all of their competition sucks flaunt these ideas. Sometimes they even knock these scenarios with flare and style. Not all tropes are bad, just like stereotypes. The word trope itself refers to different things with the meaning I have here being in line with the idea of "TV tropes" rather than traditional literary tropes. I'm personally fond of a trope I like to call "heritage speaking" where intelligent, somewhat socially awkward, characters speak as if they come from an older time period, but it is instead actually a matter of their family's status and its link to stuffy archaic thought and speech.

Mood: breezy.
Music: Phantom of the Opera by Iron Maiden and The Phantom Opera Ghost by Iced Earth.

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We're All Going to Die Terribly

One of the important parts of planning and running a role-playing game is the same as plotting a novel or writing a script. It is about managing threat levels. Doing this has a cascade effect that impacts pacing, tension, horror--if that is your angle--and mood. Take the ever-popular zombie apocalypse. The threat level is high any time that the characters are out in the world rather than sitting in their safety zones. Even in the safety of their sanctuaries all of the dangers of the old world loom around every corner. A pall hangs over everything because the walking dead dominate the mental landscape as much as the external one. This makes for constant inescapable tension. The dark mood is always an instant away only to be forgotten briefly.

This general look at the threat level of the setting is just that, only an overview. Scaling down to the level of specific encounters the danger presented to the protagonists can only reach a certain pitch. The protagonists must be able to survive--at least until the end, since they can only be killed once. There must be some way out of every situation. Something natural or organic and not forced or contrived. By the same token it should not be a cakewalk either. A balance must be struck. In a game luck can be a factor that brings disastrous results with even the most balance encounter. An author or scriptwriter can bend luck to their will on the other hand, again only in a way that seems genuine. Either way there needs to be room for adjustment.

A threat level system became a part of AD&D recently--in terms of the game's long history--to the joy of some and derision of others. It is a quick and easy way to say this many player characters of this level of power should fight these, these or those. It can be rigid and by the nature of its existence can drain away some of the tension, especially if the players know the Game Master is sticking by it. The player will likely even be familiar enough that they can tell an encounter is safely balanced. This tension draining phenomena can happen even with fiction, and especially scripts for television. Certain characters just aren't going to die. There will be an out to almost any situation that seems hopeless. Some things just are not going to change or come to an end.

Mood: open.

Music: Too Much, Too Soon by Green Day and It ('s A Monster) by Extreme.

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13 Nights 2008 Aftermath

I hope everyone had a great Hallowe’en and enjoyed the thirteen nights as much as I did. On one of the nights I revealed that there was an unintended connection between several of the movies. Most of them were made by a writer/director. This trend is most common with horror movies. It doesn’t matter whether these are all scriptwriters that want to be directors, or need to be to maintain the vision of their script. It doesn’t matter whether these are all directors who happen to write scripts, or need to as a matter of getting to direct the sort of movies that they want to direct. The first name in horror writer/directors is of course Wes Craven. Right behind him is John Carpenter. Oddly enough the thirteen nights did not involve either of these giants. This wasn’t the only trend.

The list of movies intentionally included several that were victims of bad press. They were written off as rip-offs, or in some cases declared unwatchable. This must be disheartening to everyone involved in their production. It is discouraging enough as a fan of some of these films to see them so maligned. This is further true with good movies that are not campy. At least with camp and a high cheese factor there are people who will flock to be fans for a movie because it is so bad that it’s good. Horror is a good genre for not being dismissive of low budget films. Some of the lowest budget horror movies gained great fame, from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” to Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” to the granddaddy of modern horror George A. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead”.

One last thing that was apparent from the selection of movies is that good horror comes from many different places. Some comes, naturally, from Hollywood. Others can come from a world away like New Zealand. The inspiration for horror movies has just as wide a spread. Some come straight from the scriptwriter’s imagination. Others come from the literary world. Yet others come from other media altogether such as video games. Then there are always the horrors that come from real life. One movie even came about because of one of horror’s most lucrative film genres, the slasher. Life spawns books and movies, books spawn movies, a genre spawns video games that spawn movies, and a genre even spawns parts of itself in a widening family tree. Isn’t horror grand?

Mood: exhilarated.
Music: Breakin' in the Gun by Vince Neil and Harbinger of Fate by Iced Earth.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #16: Too Much Information

One of the big deal breakers for the mood of a psychic horror setting is having too much of the right kind of information. It is especially contentious in the arena of role-playing games. It puts a great onus on the game master to, not only develop the information to be gleaned by psychic methods as is the case with authors or scriptwriters, but also to deal in a more hands on way with balancing how much information to pass on and when, notably without the safety net of re-writes. This manner of information handling is directly a result of abilities such as precognition, post-cognition, to a lesser degree remote viewing, and the like. Limitations placed on these powers and the additions of the vagaries of chance are thankfully in keeping with reports of such abilities in the real world.

There is a connection between this idea of too much information and the topic of evidence as discussed previously. A story's psychic who can see the influence of another psychic on a person has a certain amount of comfort that extends not only to the character, but also the audience. The ability as it serves the purpose of pushing the story in a particular direction mitigates its effect on the mood somewhat. In contrast if such an ability were able to identify the psychic responsible then things change drastically. At the level where this power is akin to reading a psychic fingerprint there is too much comfort afforded and the horror is lost. There is some suspense when the fingerprint isn't recognised by the psychic but beyond that it quickly reaches a point of diminishing horrific returns.

Another ability that effects comfort level is the sixth sense that warns a psychic of danger. Again, it has its uses, but can also quickly deflate the horror. The danger sense works best when it is vague. It is also most effective at the far ends of the timescale, but less so in the middle. When the sense comes on quickly with little, to practically no time, to act on it then the urgency and immediacy drives the horror through suspense. Likewise, if the warning arrives well ahead of the trigger event then tension builds and dread mounts until it is resolved. Of course that ratcheting tension and the swell of foreboding needs to be cultivated with a certain amount of finesse. All of this simply highlights two old adages; knowledge is power, and all good things in moderation.

Mood: lustre.
Music: F.I.N.E. by Aerosmith and Pump by Quiet Riot.

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