| rdfs:comment | - And if I can’t sleep, then neither can any of you. I have this whole playlist on YouTube called “Paranoia Fuel.” This was a snarky, sarcastic reaction to my newfound fascination with serial killers and rapists, and all the great and terrible evils of our world. And then I realized that private playlists on YouTube aren’t necessarily hidden from public view. Yeah. I can explain this if you’ll just give me twenty minutes of your time. A large part of this newfound fascination is my crippling fear of failure, of falling short of my potential. Where does the paranoia fuel come in, you may ask?
- When things that should be harmless, or on the viewer's side, turn nasty, stripping away all sense of safety. THEY CAN SEE YOU. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE! How can a viewer sleep easy in their bed, when they've seen how toys can come alive when all is dark and wreak unspeakable vengeance? What trust can they have that anyone will protect them, when they've just seen some cheerful kid's program where a kid just like them was bloodily slaughtered by his own possessed mother as she sang a sweet lullaby? Other paranoia-inducing concepts include: ... Sleep tight.
|
| abstract | - And if I can’t sleep, then neither can any of you. I have this whole playlist on YouTube called “Paranoia Fuel.” This was a snarky, sarcastic reaction to my newfound fascination with serial killers and rapists, and all the great and terrible evils of our world. And then I realized that private playlists on YouTube aren’t necessarily hidden from public view. Yeah. I can explain this if you’ll just give me twenty minutes of your time. A large part of this newfound fascination is my crippling fear of failure, of falling short of my potential. It springs from a need to study the mistakes of the past, and inform my self-destructive behaviors of the present to, all willing, avert the worst case scenario. This fear has caused me to meditate a lot on lost potential, and I’ve come to realize that lost potential informs a lot of my more tragic fascinations to a degree that, quite frankly, relieves me on several levels. Where does the paranoia fuel come in, you may ask? Imagine if River Phoenix had survived his drug overdose, continued to abuse drugs, and acted like Onision. Look at Richard Ramirez’s boyish face. Imagine he had much shorter hair and a sweet smile. Imagine him approaching one of his young victims, patting her hand, and telling her she was beautiful. Imagine Jeffrey Dahmer as an actor or a chemist. Or hell, while we’re imagining, why not both? Imagine that H.H Holmes wrote horror plays, and imagine that Albert Fish wrote crime stories. Imagine Christian Weston Chandler as a good-natured and enthusiastic ambassador for children with autism. Imagine if James Dean had lived to become the second Marlon Brando. Now imagine he ended up driving himself clinically insane, like Heath Ledger did. Imagine if John Wayne Gacy and Dennis Rader actually gave a shit about their communities. The first wave of Surrealists believed that schizophrenia was not a clinical condition, but simply a perception of life that neurotypicals, a term I begrudgingly fall back on as the best descriptor in this case, simply refused to understand. What if genius, in and of itself, gives you a predisposition towards psychosis, and what if that predisposition increases the more genius you are endowed with? What if all psychotics and sociopaths are just geniuses whose minds haven’t properly formed all the way? Keep imagining, and sleep tight, everyone.
- When things that should be harmless, or on the viewer's side, turn nasty, stripping away all sense of safety. THEY CAN SEE YOU. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE! How can a viewer sleep easy in their bed, when they've seen how toys can come alive when all is dark and wreak unspeakable vengeance? What trust can they have that anyone will protect them, when they've just seen some cheerful kid's program where a kid just like them was bloodily slaughtered by his own possessed mother as she sang a sweet lullaby? This is perhaps the main reason why Monster Clown, and especially Bad Santa, are Tropes unto themselves. He sees you when you're sleeping... To clarify, paranoia, by definition, requires a level of suspicion and distrust. A monster chasing after you in broad daylight is probably not Paranoia Fuel, but a shape shifting murderer targeting you who may be hiding among your friends or family or the clothes in your closet most likely is. A good rule of thumb is if a show or commercial makes you double check the people or objects around you (or triple check, or quadruple check, or...) then it fits here. One of the most psychologically devastating forms of Nightmare Fuel, because of its mental persistence and perception of inescapable omnipresence. Other paranoia-inducing concepts include:
* Invasion of privacy (from Big Brother Is Watching to literal Telepathy): One of the most pervasive forms of Paranoia Fuel, since we basically know they can use our secrets against us (Blackmail, Room 101, etc).
* Hypochondria Fuel: playing on fear of diseases, parasites, medical Body Horror and the fragility of human biology in general. Do you know easy it is to infect you on the microscopic level without you yourself noticing? Or how easy it is for one genetic disorder that can make you go And I Must Scream to suddenly go horribly wrong inside you?
* Slipping a Mickey/Tampering with Food and Drink: Do you know how easy it is to poison you? Goes hand in hand with Hypochondria Fuel above.
* Attack of the Killer Whatever/Everything Trying to Kill You/May Contain Evil: betrayal by everyday items.
* Malevolent Toys: a subtrope of the above, specifically for toys.
* Gaslighting is when someone tries to deliberately provoke a feeling of this upon you by altering your everyday environment without your knowledge.
* Fate Worse Than Death or And I Must Scream: You can suffer one of them anytime, anywhere.
* Good Luck Sleeping: things that attack specifically while you're sleeping.
* They Could Be Anyone: Anybody could be out to get you, even your friends and/or family
* Invisible Jerkass: They're everywhere.
* Sinister Conspiracy: there is a... well, sinister conspiracy at work in the world, and they have it in for you.
* Mind Manipulation: Especially if they control your loved ones, or worse, controlled you, made you do humiliating things and then subjected you to Laser-Guided Amnesia.
* Nothing Is Scarier: Sure that sound could have just been the neighbor's cat, but then again... Fear of the dark is related, but falls under Primal Fears. Through the Eyes of Madness tends to run on this fuel, as part of the nature of the story is that you're never entirely sure of the truth of things. Not directly related to the game Paranoia. Or, at least, that's what they want you to think. Examples of Paranoia Fuel include:
* Advertising
* Anime and Manga
* Comic Books
* Fanfic
* Film
* Literature
* Live Action TV
* Music
* Religion and Mythology
* Tabletop Games
* Video Games
* Webcomics
* Web Original
* Western Animation
* Other ... Sleep tight.
|
