𝐂𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐎, SPAM ¹

* . 35 ━ ʰᵒʳʳᵒʳ ˢᶜᵉⁿᵉˢ.

nothing hypes me up and fucks me off more than writing horror scenes in my fics (for non-australians, "fucks me off" means pisses me off / screws me over). i love it so much but oh my god it's so hard.

for cherry bomb it's the nightmare man, for static electricity it's the many-eyed monsters and the end, and for elegy of the hyacinth it's obviously pennywise. now two (three if you count se's the end) are my own original creation which is great because it means i can create whatever backstory for them i want, but for eoth it's obviously way more restricted because i have to work with what the films and book gave me.

and like, i'm currently trying to write chapter eight for cherry bomb which first introduces the nightmare man (technically) in full and i'm trying to make it scary and i'm just, like, lowkey so shit at it. like how tf do you introduce a new horror monster without it coming across as dumb ??? i know exactly how this bitch looks in my head (spidery legs with human fingers at the ends, but the fingers are bent backwards; an upside-down almost human-like head with a wide sharp-tooth-ridden smile and eyes that are kind of just gaping holes in its head; a twisted body that can change and twist around depending on how it wants to move) and i KNOW all this but getting it out on the page while trying to write suspense is like ??? so hard ???? i might create one of carrie's creepy drawings as an example to put in the author's note. because everything i write introducing the first real appearance of the nightmare man just sounds dumb ??

and at the same time i'm writing the scene for chapter six of elegy of the hyacinth where pennywise is described in full, and i just cannot get the monster that it changes into right. again, i know EXACTLY how it looks when i imagine it (the stitching together, voodoo-doll-ness of it; the way its a stuck together combination of anyone she's ever known; multiple arms and legs; almost a little bit nightmare man -ish) but no matter HOW i describe it, it just comes across as weird ?? like i see it as totally fucking terrifying but it's so hard to describe it.

the many-eyed monsters and the end in static electricity are so much easier. number one, because i've drawn them before (i've drawn the nightmare man too, but he's just way harder to describe), and number two, because the many-eyed monsters are very much like the demogorgon in terms of the shape of its body (their head is the exception). and it's humanoid too. plus i think i got the description kind of down in the first appearance of it. the lore and it haunting tea i have down easy, and their first appearance into the actual world i also have down. plus, even though i would consider them more on the horror-angle — there are some fucking creepy-ass scenes — they're on absolutely no level to that of the nightmare man. i had a fucking nightmare about the nightmare man being in my house after i wrote a few chapters on it, and it was totally fucking terrifying. so i suppose even tho static electricity is more on the horror-side, i could classify it more as just sci-fi thriller.

and, jesus, the scene i have coming up of the nightmare man and carrie in her bedroom with the drawings i really fucking love. it is pretty inspired by that one westworld scene and i'm glad because that was one of the most chilling, goosebump-raising, oh fucking shit moments i've seen on tv, and probably one of my favourite moments of the show (at least season one). and it 100% makes sense in the case of carrie and the nightmare man so i'm so glad for everyone to read it. i hope it comes off as creepy and horrifying as i'm imagining it.

so yeah, even though i'm not all that good at them, writing horror is one of my favourite guilty pleasures. i have a pretty overactive imagination when it comes to being scared irl at night and stuff (a creature perched on the shelves above my bed; a hand grasping my ankle from beneath the sink; an elongated creature in the dark corner of my room; the bathroom mirror not really showing what's in it, etc.) so it's not hard coming up with scary af material. all it needs is me thinking omfg what if the thing that haunted you, you could never remember and them BAM story.

also, the fact that i learned that if you stare at your face in a mirror for about 10 minutes without moving and with the lights dim, you'll start to hallucinate your face warping and morphing horrifically or other things appearing in the reflection because your brain stops associating your reflection with what's real has fucking terrified me to my core and i cannot wait to use that in a story. like that's real, it's a psychological phenomenon that has been tested in participant experiments and shit and it's real, and now i refuse to stare at the mirror for too long at night in case i see something horrifying happen to my face. it's suspected to be due to peripheral fading or the troxler effect, or a "dissociative identity effect", or something along those lines, but the idea of it absolutely scares the shit out of me. this is why mirrors scare me so much.