Anatomy of a Horror Setting #13: Spying; Influence; Abuse

Welcome to the thirteenth topic in this series, brought to you on the thirteenth day. I would like to stress that though I make comparisons below I am not equating any of these things, or viewing them as being the same level of terrible, whether they be real or fictional.

There are ties between knowledge and power, power and control, and control and abuse of another. It can all be one vicious circle, or a tangled knot where all of these elements bleed together into one. Today, this very instant, people are using the usually annoying, sometimes costly to the target, technical tools of spyware and adware to enforce their control over spouses, significant others, and children whom they are also abusing in physical, sexual, and other psychological manners. They are also using tracking means such as GPS units, medical implants such as RFID chips, and other physical media of the same type. This is frightening stuff, terrible abuses, of not only the people, but also the technology of the modern world, tainting it with such hideous connotations.

These additional forms of control and abuse are easier to spot than other signs, especially after criminal investigation is begun. Enter the psychic to once more hide and obfuscate these heinous acts. A psychic with the right powers can perform these same intrusions of privacy and forms of indirect manipulation. As well, the psychic can subject the victim to more direct methods. Both of these can also be done with much less to actually no evidence. Take the venerable hypnosis as an example. It's amusing to convince galactic militants that the robots they seek aren't the ones standing to the left. It's entirely a nightmare to be incapable of speaking of the torment inflicted upon oneself, or to have criminal investigators unable to see the bruises and scars.

From a control point of view there are several psychic options. The victim can have their mind read for imagined transgressions--the cornerstone of abuse excuses--while the psychic was absent, or to determine plans to escape, or to patrol for impure or improper thoughts. Similarly, remote viewing can be used to monitor and check in on the victim. Changing gears, abusers will often distance their victim from family and friends. What better way to do that than false emotion transmission, altered memories of slights or grievous betrayals, or memory blocks that prevent the person from remembering the victim? Worse yet perhaps, these same techniques can be used to alienate the victim from loved ones, or to not remember them, leaving the victim truly alone with their abuser.

Mood: content.
Music: Laughing in the Hiding Bush by Bruce Dickinson and More Than a Feeling by Boston.

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Suspense from the Known

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

Every good scary story, and this includes novels, movies, and games, needs suspense. An obvious thing. Often times as much as there is a need to be mysterious, even aside from leaving things to the imagination, some things do work better when they are obvious after a fashion.

The idea that needs to be approached here is that there are a few select times where revealing the horror doesn't lessen it, but instead increases it. A lot of these revelations are in scenes usually not involving the main characters. This is useful in a gaming context as well. For example, there is the type of scene where a monster stalks its victim. It is seen through the victim's eyes as much as from an outside point. While it does not give everything away, maybe even not a lot, it does make some things clear. For instance, the monster chases its victim, but yet on occasion, sometimes, somehow, gets ahead of the victim and they run right smack into it. This adds suspense in the fashion that the monster could pop up anywhere at any time.

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

There are mode insidious methods of ratcheting up the horror. The monster corners its prey. As it begins to do whatever it does to them, there is a flash of green light, and the scene goes to black. Now later, the audience, in this case the players, knows about this little tidbit out of character. Then the characters are somewhere, and they see a flash of green light, say in an alleyway, or behind an only partially closed door. Now the players start to sweat buckets, just like the movie audience does, because they know what is going on. At the same time there is nothing they can do about it, just as the movie character that is ignorant of what is happening cannot do anything.

Another example could go something like this... "Hey, what's this ash here?" It's one of the missing people being sought out for a clue, or they need to verify is indeed missing, and not just out of town. The players know this and they are biting their nails bloody, the characters have no idea as of yet. There are a number of different ways to express similar ideas, and beyond that there is a myriad of different concepts making use of this same principle of revealing things but not spoiling the suspense with a "look it's a werewolf" sort of let down.

R.G. Male ©2007 Excerpted from "Unnamed Psychic Horror Game"

Mood: melty.
Music: All I Want Is Everything by Def Leppard and Riders Of The Storm by Hammerfall.

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