User blog:EtherBot/Random Writers' Show: Channel Zero Pastas Special

[HORROR MOVIE SCREAM FROM THE DISTANCE ]

Ladies and gentleman, was that the sound of Channel Zero Season 3 I heard, being murdered and risen again into a gross writhing mass in the distance? Oh it may be in the distance, but it knows where we are, and its looking at us through the walls. Well, while its coming, lets watch the first three episodes of Channel Zero Season 3 together, as well as discuss the creepypasta its based on. In fact, while we're at it, why not explore the whole show, and all the creepypasta in question? Consider this a longer lasting but different flavor to the standard "Random Writer's Showcase", focusing less on individual writers in liu of the binding topic of the seasons they inspired. Or perhaps a whole bunch of tiny showcases for three writers. Take your pick. We will also discuss the seasons themselves.

Channel Zero is currently a three season anthology horror show created by Nick Antosca -- that's Ant-O-Sca -- and airing on SyFy. Elevator pitch is a show spending 6 episode seasons "adapting" or rather "expanding upon" (massive air quotes) various popular creepypasta into full-cast character dramas. I don't want to pretend its been a total critical success. It's recieved some backlash, notably from Chris Wolf of Abandoned By Disney fame who made two 30 minute takedowns of the first two seasons around the times they both finished up. Other than that, though, I suspect most people either like this show or are ambivalent toward it.

If you watch the show looking for reasons to not enjoy yourself, you'll find them. Even well intentioned creative decisions, or at least well delivered ones, can be made cynical sounding or amaturish if you try to force them into that. Of course, cynical and amaturish intentions and dellivery will look that way too, but I state this to give you, the reader, a clear understanding of my frame of mind. I went into Channel Zero looking for a good time, and I found it.

Lets discuss this, each story and season, starting with the first one and working our way up.

'''For those of you reading without having read the original works, be warned, there be dragons. And by dragons, I mean spoilers, a whole butt-ton of them, for every story as well as each season. If the brief summaries I give intrigue you, stop reading my dumb internet words and read these lovely peoples' smart internet words instead, m'kay? Everything I say from this point onwards has the potential to be a MASSIVE SPOILER and might ruin the story involved.'''

(Pennywise comes back in the second movie*)

Candle Cove
Candle Cove is a very short horror story written by Kris Straub, who also wrote the webcomicBroodhollow and a few other published stories in Candle Cove and Other Stories. He's also submitted some stories to his own site, ichorfalls.com. If you're interested, he also had a podcast about horror alongisde The Last Halloween visionary Abby Howard, although the last update was december of 2016, so take it lightly.

Candle Cove proper takes the form of a forum thread discussing some lost-to-time children's show, one that only exists in their memories at this point. The memories only get weider and weirder as they keep reminiscing, however, to the point where this possibly can't be real. But, how could the others remember these things too??

Micropasta at its finest standard. This story waltzes in wearing an interesting looking hat, grabs your attention, delicately places a cardboard box with a scary looking photo taped to it on a table under a big spotlight, clears its throat, proclaims: "There is something absolutely terrifying inside this box," ...lingers a moment. Then, without another word, it proceeds to scoop up the box and leave without explanation. It's up to the viewer of this event to conclude what was ever in the box.

The Show
When I heard this would be getting a televised adaptation, I was skeptical although still intrigued. One cannot do the box trick for more than maybe a few minutes or else the mystery runs dry and the viewer is left frustrated, but the show was only 6 episodes long, which might still leave the confusion intact, and well handled, if handled well, and intact.

I ultimately watched it with an ultimatum, I'd made up my mind. If they managed to make it the same kind of creepy, and they didn't explain anything, I'd probably wind up liking it. If they tried to explain the backstory in a meaningful way, I knew I'd probably end up getting turned off. In the end, the show explained the mystery, and I loved it.

I was so utterly sold by its atmosphere and by the different and interesting direction it took the story in. It took the parts I didn't particularly value and made me value them. This was the good kind of fishing, and I was the fish. I was caught in its hooks, flailed around in terror, and then let go, back to drown in the water around me, traumatized. But satisfied!

The six episodes, while short for a show like it, was perfectly right. It had a small enough story to allow for odd character dialogue and long tracking shots. It's all about slow horror, Channel Zero is completely about the slow horror. They let you stare at the terror for so long you get confounded by the fact that you still can't tell what you're looking at, as opposed to the easier, much cheaper, "very familar and easy to understand scary thing flashes up for maybe a single second. Usually with a big noise." you might find in other horror shows.

So Mike Painter moves back to his childhood town, the one where his identical twin brother died, and also there was a weird puppet show that most of the kids liked alright but said twin REALLY liked, after some dreams compell him too return. Its sort of awkward but he almost gets a chance to settle in...until suddenly the adults discover the show has started airing again from a pirate broadcast and several murders begin to unleash upon the town. As tensions rise, everyone starts to wonder: Who's made the puppet show?

So the twist is that his twin brother made up the show but since he basically had the shining it manifest as a real TV show that other kids can watch. After he died young, his ghost returned, as well as the show, with one ultimatum: He wants his life back, one way or another.

The story was, as I said, an It ripoff, in a way. It's about a guy coming back to the town he lived at as a kid because some horror that plagued him returned. Sort of. See, although he and everyone else was scared of Candle Cove, the TV show, he's not returning because its airing again. The fact that its airing again at all is almost a twist in the show. The show is really more about the mystery that unfolds when all this unrelated terrible events occur that all seem to be linked with the puppet show, and with the struggle of characters dealing with illogical things happening in a logical world. Some characters go along with the nightmares, other deny them entirely, instead crafting conspiracy theories to force them into the natural world. The show itself even does this, you spend a long time being invested in a story-arch some certain character having, themselves, created and aired the show, but it all turns out to be a wild goose chase, and then later, a red herring entirely.

There's a scene at some point where certain characters have a breakdown, kidnapping the main character and tying him to a chair, threatening him with death if he doesn't admit to being behind the entire affair. Having moved back for apparently no reason right before a string of murders is suspicious enough to pin it on him. The alternative is that, when the protagonist says Now You's gotta listen to me, I may not understand it meself but something's weird's going on around here he's actually right, which doesn't fit in their perception of reality.

The terror of discovering you were wrong about everything you've ever known is a resonant and fascinating kind of horror, very lovecraftian, although Channel Zero feels less like Lovecraft and more like Stephen King mixed with Guillermo Del Toro...with the same sort of ice cold "freshness" as Silent Hill 2.

On The Other Hand...
The show seemingly struggles as an adaptation. Surely everything I just said is interesting and presenting brimmingly, and cohesively, but it all has absolutely nothing to do with Candle Cove, the creepypasta.

And could it have been any other way? We're talking 2-3 hundered words being turned into a 6-Hour Moving picture, with acompanying sound. Everything aside from the spooky puppets and childhood memories was utterly and completely made up for this production.

ON THE OTHER HAND...
Candle Cove the creepypasta is, at heart, a horror story about the fragility of memory and the terror of childhood experience. Kids see the world so differently that trying to remember your own life can feel like digging through the ash-covered half-false diary of a total stranger. Channel Zero certainly has a passing interest in those things but most of its heart really does lie on these individual characters and in watching them cope with the killings.

How does the police officer react as she digs further into the case? How does the teacher react? How does the protagonist himself react?

Let's not forget the central twist of Candle Cove in pasta form. Everything was made up, by each kid, individually. They all stared at a static screen and "pretended" for a half hour every day at the same time. You go along with the coincidences up until that part too, and so do the forum dwellers, but that moment recontextualizes everything. It's one step too far.

Is this not questioning your own reality? Is it not terrifying to think that, perhaps, all of this was true? That perhaps more things you remember from your childhood really were that way? Maybe that episode of Sesame Street really was as scary as you remembered, even after revisiting it? That that mall Santa was as scary as you thought?

That there really was a monster waiting in the hallway?

These questions are scary for the same reasons as the show itself. I'm not even saying it's intentional, I'm just saying its consistent and compelling. This is good television.

NoEnd House / No-End House
NoEnd House is a slightly longer creepypasta by Brian Russell, who's since written a few sequels for those so inclined. I read his first story a while back but read all three again in preperation for this blog. The three of them all involve different characters and circumstances but all center around the same spooky house.

NoEnd I
I already wrote [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:EtherBot/Let%27s_Talk:_No-End_House! a more in-depth blog about NoEnd House], so I won't linger on it too much here. The first story is in essence an exercise in scary imagery and ideas with a setting that allows for total creative freedom. It is a whirlwind of tacky halloween decorations, rooms with chairs, forests wth bugs, the devil, little girls, both of those last two at once, vague monsterous entities chasing the protagonist, naked mutilated parent corpses, blithering clones, and total darkness. It does have a decent acceleration and nice pacing overall. I'm a big fan of room 4's panic followed by the slow build up into room 5. Overall, although I might recommend this pasta, I wouldn't say I like it overall, for the reasons I detailed in the blog. Everything being considered it is well written, but I only wish its good ideas and imagery were there to support a more interesting story.

The ultimate twist of the story is, in my opinion, really kind of a non-ending. The narrator never left the house, bloowowooooogohooooOOOOOoooooghuldeeboooo!

This story doesn't work for me because there's nothing to make me feel anything aside from the scares and there's no aspect of the scares that make me feel anything after the read. Sure, bugs and devil girls can be nice and creepy, and obviously I wouldn't like seeing my parents hacked up on the floor, but if all this terror is confined to a house that apparently only stoners and idiots go inside, all I have to do is tell myself "don't go to the noend house" and suddenly there's nothing in this tale that can haunt me. If they absolutely needed this ending where he just stays in the house forever and gets spooked for scar-eternity boo than what this tale desperately needs is some kind of heart or central statement to impact me in some other way. Ultimately, and I'll get to that later, that's what the adaptation added, and probably the biggest thing it does right.

NoEnd II: Maggie
But SyFy wasn't the only creative force to try and revitalize this story. Russel himself gave it a bloody stab with his sequel, Maggie, in which a girl named Maggie manages to pry from the drug-friend where the house is and goes to find David, the guy from the first one.

I am immediately let down by the piss poor dialogue between Maggie and the drug-friend. Peter, the drug-friend, is okay enough but Maggie's lines are genuinely difficult to get through and that's not helped by her narration being the central difference between the two works.

That's really all there is to this one. It plays like a rewrite of the first one with a girl protagonist and although I think that's neat and although some of the scares were interesting there's not enough here to either save the first one, or even save itself. Its a slow hollow retread of an already repetitive story. The original ones brevity was ultimately what made it readable; everything was always happening even when it never lead up to anything.

I suppose that happens here too but it feels so similar in tone that I ultimately fail to find myself engaged. If I were the one writing this I would probably have made this take place more than just "three weeks" after the first story, but rather, three years. The Missing-David case is generally well known and Maggie can't help but feel bad for how it all happened but ultimately feels as though she's moved on. That is until Peter sends her those messages about the NoEnd House, and she goes not to see if Davids just hanging around but instead to investigate. Make the house look abandoned, have it slowly jump to life and turn on, save the messages on the walls and notes and texts for later. It should start out with her breaking in and then slowly finding out she'd actually be better off breaking out. Ditch the numbered rooms, this is more organic freeflowing nightmare, with her exploring the hallways and windows of this house.

But that's just what I would've done. What did I like? I like the narration, occasionally. For as much as she sort of bothers me, at least Maggie has a different voice to Dave, which helps it feel at least a little bit different. I like the new characterization of the house as an entity, taunting Maggie with messages and such, it adds a different sort of vibe which i legitimately did find kind of cool.

There are parts of the story where Maggie kind of does something that goes against any sort of "logic" or natural arch in liu of something that would be nice and spooky and make for a good scene transition....yeah, I really cringed at the bit where she slices her wrists to make a scene feel darker, and not in the way I was probably supposed to.

It ultimately left me with a bad taste in my mouth, a sequel that perhaps raises some actual questions and gives hints to a few of them, but didn't really have anything to say about anything, other than itself that is. I would probably not recommend this, even as a medium tier pasta.

NoEnd III: Origin of Ending
Well, the last story kind of lowered my expectations for this third one and the title of a tacky direct-dvd horror movie didn't help.

Probably a lot more dialogue than the last one, and it hasn't really improved. The pasta, which is unreasonably short, consists mainly of a single conversation between a teenager and David and it's not very compelling, more of an exposition dump than anything. An exposition dump, that is, that ends on a cliffhanger, and doesn't really amount to anything. What a downer of a third part, more like a few flash-cards than a pasta, and not a micropasta either, not even close. This a "chapter one" released before the rest of the book, and probably doesn't deserve to be on the wiki for that very reason.

But, for what it's worth, I liked that they finally ditched the "numbered doors" format, and instead had a more fluid approach, and the underground flesh maze was nice and spooky and showed the potential for a more visceral adventure-game-like structure almost, with puzzles being solved and fun creepy imagery. It ultimately seems like that's where Russell wants to go with this series, and I'll admit I'm curious to see what he does with Part Four, assuming it ever comes out. It's been long enough since he wrote it that I'd be legitimately curious to see what kind of finale he could put out with this much time to think about it / hone his writing skills. Unfortunately, for now, there's just not much to talk about with this part.

The Show
So, having been thoroughly impressed by the first season, I actually read NoEnd House in preperation for the second season...and I didn't like it.

This was an interesting situation for me, because I had already been a fan of Kris Straub and Candle Cove before I heard of Channel Zero, that's what got me into the show in the first place. I hadn't anticipated not liking one of the pasta's adapted for the show, and as such didn't really know what to expect going into Season 2. You can probably see this in [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:EtherBot/Let%27s_Talk:_Channel_ZERO:_No-End_House! my three] [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:EtherBot/Let%27s_Talk:_Channel_Zero:_No-End_House_PART_TWO! prediction/observation] [http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:EtherBot/Let%27s_Talk:_Channel_Zero:_No-End_House_PART_TWO! blogs I made] for the show as it came out. It started off somewhat structured with refering to the different rooms as they came up, and a lot of my predictions just latched onto my preconcieved notion that the show would follow the "room by room" format of the original pasta. The first episode really did play out like this, and as such I was totally caught off guard by how the show played out in the following 5 epsodes.

So whereas the original pastas were about an evil warlock brother summoning demons and possessing a house to eat teenagers, I think, the adaptation is about a house that's also, like, a weird sort of tiny pocket universe that forms itself out of the memories of the teenagers that enter it. I think. Memories of people become archetyped into this sort of sentient beings that only know as much as the teenagers already knew about them, and can only survive long-term by eating the memories of whoever's head they were made from.

People the teenagers only sort of knew, like the neighbors or schoolteachers are still created but without any of the depth given to their main friends or family. Neighbors stand on their lawns watering forever because, ffft, isn't that kinda how you imagine your neighbors? Teachers huff around the school going SHHHHHHH and not having any common sense cause isn't that how you remember your teachers?

This "memory" angle is gold and it totally helps to mend the flaws I had with the original story -- it gives a context to the scares, and furthermore, the scares say something. The main character Margot is mostly a blank slate except for being sort of anti-social and having never overcome the death of her father. Her memory of her dad is the thing that she struggles to get past in real life so it makes sense from a writing perspective that the memory of her dad becomes the central antagonist for the season.

The show also pulls the same "gross dead parent" imagery but in here its actually scary because a) you get an image of what life is supposed to be like with that parent whereas the pasta took place entirely in the confines of the house, and b) the dead parent actually comes into play and isnt just a cheap plot gimmick.

John Carroll Lynch gives a stunning performance as the father here, loving when he needs to be, confused when he needs to be, and most importantly, terrifying when he needs to be. You get the impression that this actor fully understands both the menace of his character as well as the simpleminded tragedy -- he really doesn't understand why he can't just live with his daughter, but some relative part of him absolutely does and it tears him apart. After a turning point in the show were he gets his wish and manages to nearly suck Margot's mind dry after a full cycle spent living with her you can see and feel everything about how how feels about both himself and his daughter, and its compelling.

Let's not give the other actors a short stick here, they all do their parts and they do it well. Amy Forsyth manages to carry some episodes purely by herself and Jeff Ward plays a perfect sociopathic red herring. His being evil isn't by any stretch a twist but its definitely entertaining and believable and at every point where I thought the writing kind of let me down, the delivery more than made up for it.

I also really liked Seamus Patterson as JD, but more for his character than anything else. He has to play simultaneously the childhood friend as well as, later on, the memory of that friend, who murdered the real person, but is pretending to be him. If not for Lynch as the dad Patterson would have been the blow out performance, but he manages to hold his own just fine. You get the impression that he really does care for his friends, at least as much as the real JD did, but it's complicated. Ultimately he just wants to explore the real world without hurting anyone else, and its a shame that he never gets to live this dream out.

I feel like the writers wanted the viewer to peg JD as this adaptations "Peter" given that he's the friend that turned the rest of the crew onto the house and also seems the most likely of the group to be doing drugs, expept maybe Jules, ( or Tracy, if you read those blog posts I linked earlier ;) ) but ultimately that honor goes to Seth to nobody's surprise ever.

This season is a good example for what I think this show wants to be, it takes the creepypasta's condensed horror packages and uses their, usually a little shallow, horror imagery and ideas as a jumping off point for some more out-there sci-fi horror premises. I'm glad they did this to a story like NoEnd House, and not a really really long story that is also really good...

Search And Rescue Woods / Butchers Block
Search and Rescue Woods  by searchandrescuewoods  is a story about a Search and Rescue worker working in the Search and Rescue Woods searching for and rescuing people who got lost in the Search and Rescue Woods.

...alright, I suppose that's not entrely true. They never specify which woods the stories take place in, and, of course, not everyone gets rescued. Its really more of a search and rescuers diary dump of sorts talking about the weird stuff him and his colleagues have seen while out on the job. Its a compelling idea and is totally sold by the fact that its a reddit thread with realistic narration and a great "nothing too weird" attitude to its ideas. It's genuinely well written with some nice frightening ideas and decent research put into it to sell believability. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to check it out, its fairly short at about 5 pages if you only skim it.

"Skim it", since its written rather technically without much intention planted in the actual prose. If you have about 1-2 hours free you could listen to a narration of it in the background, or instead just lightly read it on your own. Its nice easy reading with scary hard ideas, probably perfect for the short attention spans of the internet age.

This story as a piece of horror does a great and uncanny job at tapping into the fear of uncharted territory, of unexplainable events, of disappearances, of the forest...of the things that wait in the trees. It's an enjoyable ride of spooky showcases being presented one after the other but unlike NoEnd House it works because its not just random intense nonsense, it's subtle grounded ideas that are all scary for the same reasons: Uncharted territory, unexplainable events, disappearences, things that wait in the trees.

That unifying theory of scares is what makes the creepiness addicting and keeps you clicking for the next post. I can only hope the show managed to tap into that, like it did with Candle Cove.

The Show
So, Season 1 was scary for the same reasons the pasta was. Season 2 "was scary for reasons" and the pasta wasn't. Season 3 is weird. It's scary for reasons that have nothing to do with the pasta.

The whole show, from just the first three episodes, is about two sisters moving to a new town to work in social services. Both sisters have serious emotional trauma and one of the sisters has schizophrenia which she inherited from her mother. An above-human race of interdimensional cannibals who used to own the town kidnap and eat people and also gave the schizo sister a lobotomy which "cured" her ailments...for a price.

...What!?

So far, although I am throughly enjoying this show, it has literally, and I mean this, literally nothing to do with the pasta. The closest thing to it in the original story is a sculpture of a man made of dog-meat, or something, I haven't read it in a while. But what!? Space cannibals?? The only thing inherited so far are twofold: a thick pervasive forest where lots of the scares happen and people go missing, and there are big staircases in the woods. These staircases lead into, like, fun jaunty heaven doors, wherease the pasta made great pains to explain how these were just staircases, but whatever, I can allow at least that much.

What works? I'm liking the writing a lot more in this season as well as the sound editing which was real spotty in the previous two seasons. There's a scene with a gross puppet named "Mr. Schizophrenia" or something to that effect that was absolutely twisted in a way that I couldn't help but laugh uncomfortably to myself for basically the entire following scene. It felt like something out Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, and the contrast between this beautiful almost angelic, overwhelming overscore and a character I won't mention's soothing voice placed on this terrifying cruel and manipulative imagery made me feel vaguely unclean and did a good job an putting me in the character involved's headspace.

I don't want to give too much away because this season is still going, but so far its shaping up to be a terrifying, fascinating, beautifully edited, inteligently written horror show that has absolutely nothing to do with the pasta it's based on, and in that sense it's probably the worst season so far.

I'm not even talking about the fact that its plot is so different because the other two seasons' were too, but its not even scary for the right reasons. This show's central horror-ic theme is about the fear of being put down a peg on the food chain -- the idea that we can't justify the double standard of not wanting to be killed and eaten by a higher being despite relishing without a second thought in storebought slaughter-chow is an uncomfortable thing to think about and come to terms with and the idea that, logically, the antagonist has an idealistic point about eating people is very interesting, and scary. But that isn't uncharted territory, disappearances, or things hiding in the trees. Sure, all of those things do happen at some point in the show, but they played too fast and loose with this season's reinterpretation, and it's a worse adaptation for it.

On the other hand, if you can look past it as an adaptation and just watch it as a trippy horror show, its a pretty fun time. I just hope the next seasons more stictly adhere to the source material, if not in plot, at least in tone.

In Conclusion
So, we've been here for a while. I've had this cooking for some time now, and, I think I can hear Channel Zero's gross corpse still slamming its legs against the ground as it belts towards us, with a terrifying determination. Well, since any moment it'll arrive at our door to knock quietly until one of us either answers it or, worse, tries to leave, I probably don't have much time to wrap this up.

Why don't you all share your thoughts on these pastas? Were you also put off by the NoEnd House Sequels? Did you think the adaptations the show made, even for the first two pastas, were too far off the mark? Are you excited for the rest of season 3 or do you just wish the whole thing would move to some scarier idea? Let me know your thoughts down below!