Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25326117-20180304103810/@comment-26475800-20180318054755

Hellhound iscariot666 wrote: Don't forget about Birds from Alfred Hitchcock. I don't even know why it is seen as scary. Was it because it had a bunch of birds attacking people for no good reason and killing them along with the shots that were quite impressive at the time? Yet, something like that now in days would just get seen as mediocre or bad. Does time and a sense of authenticity and common sense make a story good?

I think that common sense is missing from most horror stories. How many of us would go on the hunt for a strange noise when we know our friends have been being killed off? Where's the common sense in that? Yet, we all write shit like that, and no one is ever like "hey, this entire story would never had happened if that person wasn't an idiot."

A sense of authenticity doesn't really matter either. How many monsters have you seen in your life? Not like the monsters on the news who do horrible things to people, but like a giant spider, ghost, vampire, or werewolf. Who can claim any of those things are authentic?

Time has a place in stories though. For some reason I'm having a really hard time thinking of a story that would fit into this right now. That could be because I'm thinking too much in books and not movies. I'm sure there are tons of stories that spoke about the time we're living in now that totally missed the mark. Where's the flying cars? If there's one thing that I wish we had it would be flying cars.

Also, 1984 has more meaning in a time when people are scared of the political powers that be, than if everything seemed fine. Look at after the election, 1984, Animal Farm, and for some strange reason, Fahrenheit 451 were selling like hot cakes again. Now, I'm not going to get into anything more political than that, but those books seemed relevant at that time.

What about The Exorcist was terrifying when it first came out, because a lot of people believe in it then, more so than now. Granted, more people saw the movie than the book (if you haven't read the book, do it. That's such a good book and explains so much more than the movie.) Now, a lot of people don't believe in God or the Devil, so it doesn't hold nearly as much weight. And I doubt that the fish people of Innsmouth would really scare too many people now, because we know that there are no fish people and our culture doen't have too many secrets to it. But when that story was published, people thought it was true.

Okay, went a little more than I wanted to there, but I think what I was trying to say went across pretty well. Don't believe in God or the Devil, but be careful of those fucking fish people. That was the whole point of this.