sanity has no
meaning in
this place.

if there's one thing i truly love in this world, it's horror games.
specficially, survival horror ones. there's something so deeply touching
in horror as a medium. it can tear you apart and re-piece you back
together. to say my life has been defined by horror is an understatement.
from a young age i was exposed to horror content to the point that i do not
get scaared or cry often at scary things. yet, despite horror not being
scary anymore, i still find myself absorbed into horror as if it's more
than just being scared that i want. i guess that's true. horror has a unique
ability to tap into what i feel, is the human psyche in a way that most
genres cannot. due to horror being about what the individual is afraid of
horror is the most personal genre.

i'm going to talk about a few games that prove my point. i'll list them
here before getting into it. the games that have changed me in some way
are the following: SIGNALIS, Pathologic, Cry of Fear, Silent Hill (3)
Fear and Hunger, We Know the Devil.

let's start wuth signalis. signalis is a survival horror, yes, but
it's also a tragedy-- but not one i can relate to. i consider myself to
be aromantic and aplatonic. signalis is inherently about love, how can
someone who rejects love as a concept be affected by a game about love?
i don't love in the usual sense, i care about people though, the most
important of that being my family. my friends. i, much like ariane,
have lost. i do not want to go into it, but loss has been a defining
feature in my life. getting through grief, i find myself relating to...
well. ariane and adler. this is weird, because they are so opposite
but they're very similiar to me. both of them cannot handle their
grief. whereas ariane cannot move on and creates the dream, adler
is but an innocent bystander caught in it. however, adler is stuck
because he cannot move on from falke. this is why i love signalis-
it's a game about having to move on from your grief. which i was
and still am not able to do to this day-- but one day may. i might
find peace one day. isn't that nice to think about? and the themes of
chronic/terminal illness touch me in a way most medias cannot. i am chronically
ill. the mourning period of your physical ability is most seen in ariane
which is why i love her so much. she is an example of an ill character
that i feel sums up what it's like to wake up and be unsure if your body
decides to hurt or not. decides to give out or not.

pathologic has been on my radar for over 3 years now. it's been a
game that defined me during quarantine and changed my life in every
goddamn way. this is because of one characer- klara. or clara. i
prefer klara, so i will call her that. again, i do not want to get
into it, but klara's story with the themes of parental abuse and
being good/bad really appealed to younger me. as i get older, i see
myself growing more and more with klara, and in turn, my perception
of her changes. okay, so klara is a story about being accepted by
parental figures. the saburovs are abusive fucks who treat her
like garbage if she cannot fit what they believe, is a perfect
child. she even states she is afraid to go home. she can't trust
adults, and for the longest time, i could not either. going
home was something scary. horrifying even-- and in her, i felt
a sense of kinship in that. secondly, her themes of good/evil.
when we were a teenager, we all felt like we were the bane, scum
of the earth, that you can only be good or bad. klara is that theme
incarnate. with her evil twin sister her themes are literally that.
she believes she is bad to the point that she makes herself an evil
doppelganger. come on, how do you not see that?!

cry of fear and silent hill 3 sort of go hand in hand to me. they're the
stories about teenage angst. cry of fear, mental illness and disability,
and silent hill 3 grief and loss, being abandoned. i can relate to all
of these topics, my grief and loss causing mental illness and bad genes
causing disability (different from simon, who gained a disability due to
an accident he could not control). these games tackle what it's like to be
mentally ill or in a bad state- heather is impulsive and quick to anger.
simon is fucking... he's simon. i see myself relating to both, though i find
myself drawn to heather much much more- again- her themes of loss.
both of these games mean A LOT to me and i do not think i would be the same
if i did not have these two titles.

i'll talk about fear and hunger some other time when i am able to.

we know the devil means A LOT to me. like the rest of the games, i find
myself drawn to a specific character. this one happens to be jupiter.
jupiter is the stereotypical mean girl yet it comes out of this rebellion-
a rebellion from being quiet and soft. what a girl is supposed to be.
she is loud, hateful, angry and all the things a girl should not be.
and i too find myself wanting to be loud and angry at the world--
but i cannot. jupiter is who i want to be. free from what society
deems is "ok" and able to express myself away from what i'm allowed
to be...


horror literally means a fuckton to me. i cannot even get into words how
much horror media has changed my life- so this page is a forever WIP of sorts.
updated when a new media grips me by the brain and says "you're fucking ill about this"
the end.