I don't remember if I've gone on any philosophical rambles in my news posts before, but I wrote this up after thinking more and more about recent things I've seen and my relationship to horror. Some of it might be poorly expressed or have nuance I didn't think about. Discretion is advised.

I think one of the things that people most commonly don’t understand about me is how I can joyfully embrace such brutal, dark stories and flagrantly evil characters with open arms. Many other people, typically in my age group or younger, feel uncomfortable or alienated from me because of it, because their modus operandi is so different from mine. How could I be so callous as to enjoy fictional horror stories where fictional people get hurt or traumatized?

Well, there’s an answer to that, which I have taken a long time to finally put into words.

The short answer is: Reality is scarier. And to feel brave enough to face it, I must master my fear of things that aren’t real.

At a young age, I was quite easily traumatized, including by fictional scenarios. I would obsess over the things that scared me, to the point where signs of an anxiety disorder cropped up somewhat early in life, and my family knew it. As I’ve gotten older, I still can fall prey to the same obsessive fear if I’m not careful. However, what I strongly believe is that that is no way to live. So how do I keep the fear of hypothetical scenarios from consuming me? For me, the answer is to harness the power of these boogeymen for myself, and study it in safe, controlled environments such as art and writing.

To those who prefer to apply their real-life moral compasses to fiction and treat nonexistent situations hyper-seriously, my very existence is an insult. To you, I am disrespecting your fictional best friends and lovers, and therefore I deserve to be disrespected in return. I’m sorry to break it to you, but characters are not people, they are symbols, snapshots of a creator’s mind and the zeitgeist they came from. But my intent is never to desecrate the symbol, rather to criticize the culture of worship and sacrosanctity you create around stories and characters. Simply put, I don’t think it’s righteous or just that your pseudo-religious practices include sacrificing real people to your fictional gods.

“But what would you do if you were in that same situation?” The important thing to me is that I’m not in that situation. I don’t like to imagine myself in that situation. I like to play God behind the scenes. I’m the dungeon master, if you will. I prefer to freely explore the minds of evil figures, trying to figure out what exactly makes them tick and what kind of brokenness brought them to this point. They provide lessons to you and me, cautionary tales of what not to become.

Somewhere in my cold, dead heart I still have empathy for the characters, yes. But between supporting my loved ones and worrying about myself, I only have so much empathy to waste on people who don’t exist before I get compassion fatigue. As a result, I approach dark fiction from an emotional distance. I try to have a little bit of fun with it while I’m learning.

Yes, there are still some limits I do not find it enjoyable to cross. Even more so if I am trying to write a serious work of fiction - I place a lot of value on not making serious elements feel cheap. But with most other scenarios, it is possible to wrap around to the other end and revel in absurd, cheesy levels of gratuitous darkness. Again, the intent is never to desecrate the symbol.

In summary: I am who I am because I was once afraid like you are. But rather than living in fear and misery, I chose to rise above it as much as I can. I seized its power, I became the master of the madness, because the other option was to let it consume me entirely. Fandom is a cult, and I am a heretic, but I refuse to let you sacrifice me.

I know you feel powerless and weak when it comes to the brutality of the real world. Trust me, I do too. But when it comes to fiction, at least, I have a choice. You have a choice. Join me and we can rule the galaxy, we can captain this ship, we can ascend to godhood on the throne of Ma’habre. I dare you, for once in your life, to not be afraid of being unafraid. It will not cost you your humanity. I am proof of that.

-Theta

Thank you for reading.

I made a BBS post about the subject. Feel free to pitch in.