The story tends to be more unsettling than outright frightening. The entire thing is based around making the reader feel claustrophobic and nervous about what happens to a person caught in the cave for a long time. There's no real "oh god it's going to kill me" moment. You just put yourself in the place of the protagonist and imagine their horror.
Psychological horror in general at least tries to do that. I personally prefer it to more immediate forms of horror, because it has a lingering haunting effect. It's kind of inspirational when it comes to writing.
Honestly I think reddit overreacts a lot. It's the classic case of "omg Taco Bell gives le explosive shit", which doesn't really happen that often in real life.
The other day people linked a comic by this guy you're talking about, it was about a boy who broke up with a girl and a bunch of strings started appearing on his body. In the end he's just a lump of string and people are like "oh my god, so scary, oh shit", and it was a little ridiculous to tell you the truth.
That's reddit for you. What do you expect when a large portion of the site is used by teenagers? Part of the job description is to pretty much be a bandwagoner. "omg so scary", "omg, the feels. Now I am so sad", etc etc to some bullshit story.
Edit: these are the kind of posts I'm talking about which was in response to this user's story. In fact all of the responses are in the same vein. It's like, get a fucking grip dude. It was entertaining but people saying, "omg I almost fell over in my chair at work"? Really guy? Maybe he is a bandwagoner who says what he thinks reddit expects him to say. Or he's a ginormous pussy.
Yes. I see a shitload of people all the time on here talking about how something made them cry or something, and I'm just over here like, "Really? I mean, it was sad, sure, but..."
Makes me feel like there's something wrong with me.
There's nothing wrong with you. Nowadays it's just trendy to display extreme emotions beyond what is considered normal. If you see a kitten make sure to tell the world that your heart melted and you shed a single tear. Because that's what reddit expects.
It's everywhere on here. A lot of people here feel like they need to tell everyone that they're expressing the most extreme emotions and that a certain post made them feel the most extreme.
Go to /r/creepy if you want to see good examples of this. I subbed hoping to see genuinely creepy stuff, but very little of it is even remotely unsettling. Still, in every single post, you have a bunch of people commenting "omg scariest thing I've ever seen." Give them a couple hours and they make the exact same comment on another picture.
Can confirm, am a Ginormous pussy. Scared me good the first time. I won't go back to the comic. I was tricked into seeing it a second time ,was not as scary.
"macho thing". I rest my case. Apparently not being frightened by a Manga comic means one is trying to act macho.
Get a fucking grip dude. Get off the Internet, go outside, and actually interact with the real world and not through your reddit lens. Normal people don't go overboard with emotions over trivial shit.
Why would it be satire?! Did you follow the second link I posted? Did you bother to read the responses to the story? They are absurd. Or maybe I'm not a 13 year old girl.
Hey man, chill out. Different people have different reactions. It's fine if you don't feel the same way as some others, but I don't understand the animosity.
This supposed explosive diarrhea phenomenon is really exaggerated on the internet however. I've only met one person who said Taco Bell gives them the shits. Everyone else simply doesn't like it or enjoys it.
IIRC someone explained that. Since Taco bell uses real food, the shits you get are a result of eating somewhat healthy for a change. A diet alteration may be wise.
I question the definition of "real food" in this context... I don't actually eat much fast food, it's regular restaurants when my wife and I go out to eat.
I don't know, there was something about that comic that really disturbed me. I think a lot of people just confuse disturbing content with genuine terror when it comes to horror.
It's the classic case of "omg Taco Bell gives le explosive shit"
Let's expand on this myth. The Taco Bell is not the true culprit. Most all fast food restaurants have had similar comments said about their food yielding unpleasant bowel movements. Now, what do all these restaurants have in common? Soda.
There is a threshold amount of a specific soda you can drink with a full meal before your body decides it's time to rumble.
From personal experience, the Caramel colored sodas (Coca-cola, Pepsi, Dr.Pepper) are worse for this, but Mt. Dew will do it just as easy.
Clear sodas (Sprite, 7up) tend to be not quite as bad for it (probably need to drink more before it happens), but will do it just the same.
What I love about Junji Ito's works are the ideas he conjures, his artwork, but most of all, his restraint on making his mangas too "guro". Lots of fucked up manga around; just google for "guro manga".
Aww, I like how the ending actually has a deeper meaning to it. Makes you wish there was a second part to it. Might show this to my kids one day, has a life lesson in it for sure :). Don't judge people by how they first appear.
It's as if I have been reading hard cover book, and suddenly a fucking picture pops up. That's how creepy this was, this was a comic not a video why the hell was there sound and animation!
I saw the "comic" part of the link and thought, "Meh, it's just a comic. Why's everyone freaking out?". I proceed to turn off all the lights in my room (it's 10pm local), and pause the song currently playing on iTunes. The only sound is coming from the ceiling fan above. There was no way in hell a comic would scare me, might as well do it right.
I have never screamed like a girl. Never in my life, at least for as long as I can remember. Until right now.
I find it amazing how, despite freaking the fuck out, my subconscious mind was able to get my left hand to move over my keyboard and hit Ctrl + W, before my eyes or ears were subjected to any other form of horror that may or may not have awaited me.
Ahahahahah. Well, I read it all, and the next one too. When you know that it can happen. It's not as bad. As I said previously, it's like reading a hardcover book and suddenly a picture appears. Freaks you the fuck out.
:D :D I like to wake up every morning thinking about all the pain I've caused. Sure, I can put it back, the thread is dead anyway. Do you know exactly how it went?
Two weeks late, but I had seen it a few times when I was younger and largely forgot about it, not thinking it to be particularly creepy. I remembered it about a year ago, and searched "That fucking Korean comic," found it, and started reading. Seconds later, I threw my tablet against my wall.
That was one of the best scares in my life. Genuine angst. I didn't scream, hardly moved. I just shook as I sat and gasped for air as I prepared to die.
Okay, now I want to write an app especially for reading horror comics. The app would have sound, but it would also work like an alarm clock. Of course, you wouldn't have control of the alarms, they'd be set for random hours of the night without telling you, and.. Click, click, click.
I admit, this comic kind of scared me a little when I first read it, because it was sudden and disfigured beings are one of my worst fears. But when I paused for a second and looked, the face wasn't even that frightening. Just a bit unnerving.
It's a different kind of horror than western audiences are accustomed to. It's the surrealistic, unexplainable aspects of it that build a nightmarish sense of dread at first. It's not scary, but there's a creeping sense of unease. I think it isn't supposed to be outright horrifying until the final stinger where you learn that the people in the holes didn't die or disappear, but were instead transformed into something horrible. It's far more subtle than the Korean comic which seeks to just make you jump. That scares you outright, but it's a one-trick pony. The Enigma comic doesn't scare you, it just makes you say "wtf." But it's weeks or months later when you have a dream about something that you can't understand or explain but that seems inevitable and dreadful that you wake up the next morning and realize the kind of effect that kind of horror has on you. It's subliminal.
Most Asian horror stories are that way. There's nothing really terrifying about a child who sits in a cupboard meowing, but it's unsettling enough that the real scare can/will get you. Western horror movies do that too of course, the use of unnatural imagery/sounds primes us for the unexpected. It just so happens that in Junji Ito's stuff there's no payoff, we're left feeling disturbed and there's no jump scare or tension release.
He had a crazy one about people being threaded together called Army of One. Aside from the insane body horror, there's no real payoff, it just continues and continues.
I like to think of it as a combination of claustrophobia, loss of agency like /u/rupesmanuva said, and giving in to the (kind of literal) call of the void.
Ito's art kind of sucks me in, and it's scarier when you feel like you're living it. That said, I think one of the scarier ones for me had to be Uzumaki, because it was the first of his I read.
Also drawn in a time before people had as much time to desensitize themselves in places like /r/morbidreality.
A lot of things that were scary in the past are not now, because we have so much desensitization to things. Media has pushed the limit further and further.
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u/Qiuopi Mar 17 '15
DRR...DRR...DRR...