Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-25326117-20180304103810/@comment-9041013-20180319005322

JohnathanNash wrote: @Bloodyspghetti, fist let me say a couple of things: 1) I'm enjoying this discussion, it seems to be a good way of looking at different things. 2) Ants scare me, so that could have been a reason why that story scared me so much.

With that being said, it's still subjective, because not too many people are scared of ants. If it was a bear, lion, or even spiders the story wouldn't have such a silly premise. All of those things can kill a person. Ants, not so much, though there are a few species that could, but those aren't kind used in the story. At least I don't think the author was writing about driver ants or army ants, it was fire ants or something like that. As for Godzilla, it's a giant lizard that can shoot laser beams from its mouth. Not to mention, one of the most know monsters it ends up fighting is a giant moth with three women who sing to it. That's quite a bit different than finding a bear, or any other animal that could do some harm.

The revenge stories I've mentioned are over the top, with the exception of Lord of the Flies. Lord of the Flies could really happen, hopefully it never does, but it's very likely that it could. Besides, the fact that there are so many revenge stories, that are good, even if they are over the top, is because people can relate to it. A lot of people have been bullied, and I'm going to assume, many of those people have wished to get revenge. Carrie doesn't really deal too much with her powers until the end, but it deals more on how she was bullied at school and home. Besides, what's the difference if she is using her psychokinetic powers, or a knife to kill the people? I'm sure if she grabbed a gun it wouldn't be as good, but there are stories where a person uses a gun instead.

Shit, basically look at all of Stephen King's work and it deals with bullying in one way or another. It's because people can relate to it, and it works well as a plot device. Look at Rage. A kid goes and shoots up his teachers at school. Granted he is a bit of a dick for most of the story, it reveals that he also had a fucked up past. Nothing more than that.

As for Anaconda, I don't really remember the plot for that movie. I think they were looking for some lost treasure or something, but the snake was protecting it. I don't remember, because the most memorable part of that story, for me at least, was when the guy swallowed the wasp. To be honest, I didn't care for that movie, but that's just because I don't find snakes scary. But since we're talking about snakes, what about Snakes on a Plane? That's a silly concept, and a silly movie, but it was entertaining because of how silly it was. And Jackson's performance, that shit was great.

It all goes back to being subjective. Godzilla was more of a fear because of the time period, it came out after the nukes were dropped and people feared that the radiation would have some crazy side effects. Like Hellhound said, the birds is a silly idea, but it's a pretty good movie and terrified people when it came out. It all depends on the writing on how good of a story it will be.

The same can be said about good ideas, look at how many horrible horror movies are on Netflix. Most of them have ideas that are tried and true, but the writing is so bad that they suck. (The acting in a lot of them isn't that good either, but that's an entirely different topic.) One last thing about Netflix movies, check out Zombeavers, it's a very stupid idea, but pretty funny.

EDIT: It was army ants that attacked Leiningen. So there is some validity to that, but they don't go out of their way to hunt people down. Just wanted to make that known. Sure this is a nice conversation.

I stand by my point regardless, personally, the idea of revenge killing seems awefully silly to me. It's far more redundant silly than it is scary. I read this nice story on NoSleep the other day about the guy who goes from being a fat kid at school who was being bullied by the hot girls to a honk who runs the best restaurant in NYC and it's about him getting revenge over one of these girls by feeding her the people (and her pet dog) she loves unbeknownst to her, until the punch is his revelation to her that he did so. It's not a bad story, to me though, it just lost it's edge when I saw it being a "revenge on bully by murder" type of story.

Just a little side note, from a psychological stand point bullying is a "verbal abuse" perpetrated to assert dominance, and the way to beat the bully is by not taking their words to heart.

Anyhow, aside from the stupid way in which the girl kills herself in a stupidly random psychotic fit over finding out she was fed her own parents, this story was pretty good, but I would like it more if it wasn't centered around the idea of "revenge killing my bully".

Sure, it relatable, like most horror themes you've mentioned, since, most successful horror "stories" have something to do with something that tends to scare or throw off people, and relatability and realism seem to work best with that, but again, in my social circle, revenge murder that is committed by a sane and none criminal person is silly and somewhat counterintuitive to the reasoning behind the killing in the first place (which is to make the former bully/abuser suffer as much as possible).