gafpromise
13d ago
I’ve been thinking lately about the liminal horror genre. In my internet wanderings I’ve been revisiting a bit of the Backrooms content and Youtubers who dipped into the genre. Just wanted to share some of my random musings.
Liminal spaces are defined as in between, temporary, transitory. Usually what happens is a person somehow gets into a space they’re not supposed to and becomes trapped. Liminal horror often elicits dread from the location itself. Although there may be unsettling creatures or monsters, the location is the main focus. These stories tend to be pretty skimpy on plot but full of atmosphere.
Other people are rarely encountered in the space. If there are multiple people in the story, they have entered the space together. Often the videos are filmed in a first person POV. Besides being immersive, this device means you can’t even see the main character on screen. All the visual imagery tends to be void, empty, lifeless.
One of the aspects of this genre that really appeals to me is the idea of being lost in the middle of civilization. These spaces very often are secret floors of ordinary buildings. Help may be only a few hundred feet away. Somewhere out there are phones, food, people, all the trappings of daily life. But to the person trapped in the in-between space, they might as well be on another planet.
Quick story - I got mildly lost in the suburbs once. The idea of suburbs as liminal spaces is probably not a new one, but it was interesting to encounter this in real life. Think of those self contained suburban neighborhoods which are just endless mazes of roads curving back on themselves. When they’re on a large enough scale, you can wander for miles among identical, neatly trimmed homes without getting to a gas station, a store, a bus stop, or even a park.
So I wandered into one without a phone or a map one time. Walked for a while and realized I had no idea how to get back out to the main road. There was no through road once you got into the neighborhood. There were no distinguishing landmarks, no signposts on the streets.
There was a store that I was trying to get to and for some reason I thought I had found a shortcut. You could see the back of the store maybe a thousand feet away. But you couldn’t get to it because of the culvert and retention pond and the fence in the way. There was no shortcut. The only way to get to this store that was a thousand feet away was to backtrack through a few miles of the suburban labyrinth and work your way around to the main road.
What separates this experience from the strict liminal horror was the presence of people. I did pass a couple of joggers, dog walkers, etc. For them, the environment was comfortable and familiar. The safety of their home was nearby, as was food, water, transportation. For me, I was getting very thirsty and hungry, and safety seemed incredibly remote and unreachable. And I was held back from asking for help by the absurdity of my situation. How embarrassing is it to knock on someone’s door and admit you’re a stranger in the neighborhood and you’re hopelessly lost? How did I even explain how I ended up there to begin with? It’s clearly not the kind of neighborhood you just wander into if you don’t live there. The whole thing had me at quite a loss. Even surrounded by homes where I knew there were people inside, I felt completely alone and without resources.
When you go on an expedition to a cave or a forest, you expect trouble. You pack supplies. You plan your route. The people who get trapped in liminal spaces often get there entirely by accident, or they just planned to take a quick look and get on with their day. Despite civilization being so close, they find themselves without food, tools, or any way to communicate. They are woefully unprepared for this scenario. Who expects to pack survival gear when they are just exploring around town?
Another aspect of liminal horror is the disconnection of spaces not designed for people. Liminal horror is full of spaces that seem to have no purpose, or were designed with some alien or abstract purpose that can’t be fathomed. They are often behind walls, under floors, in maintenance passages. Often they aren’t built with the intention that people would ever be in them except maybe to make repairs. A curious or casual visitor is not welcome, most likely unauthorized to be there, and will be viewed as an intruder.
The space is hostile to trespassers, and indeed to all life. There is nothing growing, no plant or animal life. All is dust and silence. Any thing that could make this space its habitat is surely something outside human knowledge or comprehension.
There are no human comforts like water or food or bathrooms. When there are elements of human activity, they are incongruous in the space and distributed in a haphazard manner, as if someone just needed to store a random assortment of furniture. You can tell it was not placed there with the intent for humans to make use of. If a space has clear signs of being abandoned, then of course that raises the question of why it was abandoned and presents an intriguing hint of where the story could go.
The alien aspect of liminal spaces combines well with megalophobia. While some liminal horror deals with small spaces, a lot of it involves space that is very large. Endless labyrinths extend on and on. Gargantuan walls loom over tiny people. A massive empty hangar or airport terminal extends into the darkness. The size again reinforces the sensation that this space is not designed with humans in mind.
Liminal horror sometimes has an evil entity that is hunting the protagonist, but this element doesn’t seem to be critical. Often the space itself carries its own menace. A massive space destroys small humans just because that is its nature. Humans will be swallowed or crushed without even any awareness or malevolence. It is inevitable and inexorable, and there is no weapon to fight against it.
Backrooms is the classic presentation of liminal horror (check out Kane Pixels) but I would also strongly recommend The Stanley Parable for a game presentation of this topic. Would love to hear your suggestions also!
gafpromise
1mo ago
Question about Lumina, is anyone here a user? I was wondering if there's anyone who's collecting and recording people's self reports about any effects. I have had lifelong issues with my teeth so I'm very interested to try it, but the lack of human trials and official vetting makes me nervous. I don't want to take the risk of permanent damage to my oral environment.
gafpromise
2mo ago
I love this way of framing it. It's like typical mind fallacy, right? You assume your coworker at the water cooler has the same intentions as you for engaging in conversation, but really you could be miles apart. It's one reason it took me so long to get small talk. Why are we saying a thing that's obvious to both of us?
I have a coworker who drives me up the wall sometimes. She's pretty low information and if you tried to tell her about media bubbles, she'd just look at you blankly. But boy does she have opinions based on whatever her media feeds have shown her that day. She once started going on about something that happened three years ago, and for some reason it was trending in her media feeds and I guess it appeared to be a new story. Luckily I do find that she's open to correction and changing her mind if you go about it carefully.
I find it's best not to correct everything she says, because that just paints me as argumentative. So I let 90% of it go. But when there's something that's really egregious, something that's really easy to falsify, something that's one of my pet issues, I'll just gently say something like, "but have you considered that" or "I see it differently because" or "did you know that-". I like that last one a lot because I find people like this do enjoy those listicles of "interesting facts" because it makes them feel smart.
I like what the other commenter said too about gentle pushback and taking political out of the realm of small talk a bit. People use small talk to make what they think are uncontroversial remarks, accepted by everyone. A gentle "I don't see it that way" just lets them know hey, other people have opinions too, and maybe think next time before you assume I will just blandly agree with you.
But going back to the typical mind thing, as others have noted, it is deeply weird that we have this community. Astonishingly rare. But when I see people like my coworker, I understand why. And like I said, she's open to changing her views. What dismays me is around here with people who have spent time deeply considering and analyzing a topic and have come to a different conclusion than I have, and they're sticking to their guns. Just a reminder that we are all in information bubbles too, all of us. We all start with our own priors, our own sacred cows, and the conclusions we're hoping to reach.
gafpromise
3mo ago
Sure, and Fox News hosts have recently suggested things like bombing the UN or giving homeless people involuntary lethal injections. You can nut-pick all day long and both sides do it. Both hosts still have their jobs, by the way.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-fox-news-brian-130000750.html
gafpromise
4mo ago
But what's considered life saving? Say a person has a condition that is chronic and deteriorates their heart over time. Untreated, it will lead to heart failure but this could take years. Treatment is an insanely expensive medication or some kind of invasive procedure that has to be done periodically. Insurance, in its arcane wisdom, decides they don't want to pay for it. Eventually the person ends up in the ER with a heart attack. The heart attack is treated but not the underlying condition. The patient is just sent home. This is a fake example because I'm not a doctor but very easy to imagine something similar playing out. The medication treatment is not "life saving" because the patient was able to live for years without it, therefore it clearly was not that vital, right?
When you think about it, it's similar to the debate about covering "preventative" measures, including counseling on diet and exercise. Some people think it's absurd, but I would argue that by not covering preventative and maintenance types of treatments early on, they're creating much more serious problems down the road.
gafpromise
5mo ago
Let's talk about sources of information. GDP, CPI, Employment data, Inflation - important economic indicators of how the US is doing. Trump fired the BLS head after they published numbers he didn't like. I don't care about the real reason, the point is the perception. If for some reason, people decide the economic data has partisan spin (or is incompetent because it's being done by seriously underqualified people) and is no longer reliable, then what data will economic forecasters begin to rely on? Will they just shrug, report the Trump administration numbers with a giant asterisk? Will other independent orgs spring up to publish similar data but this time it's unbiased?
And are there any of you who think, "Good, the data was biased all along, it was never free from partisan meddling, it's just that now people are aware of it"? In which case my question still stands, what data do you trust and how do you get the right decision makers to use the right data to make sound decisions?
I feel like the question is most pressing with regard to medicine. If RFK's HHS and the CDC formally make recommendations that absolutely go against what the rest of the developed world considers settled science, what are doctors to do? Will insurers stop insuring proven interventions or procedures because the HHS is putting pressure against them? Will doctors no longer be allowed to administer medications even though they know they would work? Or would people instead start citing UK or the EU data on the subject? I guess really my question is, if US economic and public health guidance is no longer seen as trustworthy, which is seeming increasingly likely, where else would that data come from?
Just curious where you are reading that? The NC Newsline article doesn't say that:
"The Governor has been clear since March that the General Assembly needs to fully fund the Medicaid rebase, and he recently reiterated his concern when their Band-Aid budget fell $319 million short of what is needed to fund North Carolinians’ health care,” the spokesperson wrote.
The NC Governor doesn't have much power because the NC legislature has a veto-proof Republican majority so I don't really see how you could lay this at his feet.
Edit: Oh, actually they aren't technically veto-proof anymore by the margin of one seat. One or two Democrat representatives have also been voting in step with the Republicans to override governor's vetos.
gafpromise
5mo ago
Thanks for this, you may have inspired me to make the purchase. I haven't revisited Lewis in a long time. Whatever people think of his arguments, I think his popularity is due to how well he's able to explain things to laypeople, to lead them along a journey, setting out his arguments one step at a time. It's very easy to follow and very accessible. I'm not aware of many high-quality modern authors who can write with that same accessibility AND intellectual rigor.
Of course some of his writings are less dated than others. Stuff like The Abolition of Man and even That Hideous Strength are eerie when they are describing social and intellectual trends that we still see today, although set in a very different time and place.
Every time C.S. Lewis comes up I have to recommend Till We Have Faces. It's not one of his better known ones, apparently, but I think it's one of his fiction works that really doesn't seem dated to me at all. It has a lot to say on the nature of love and possessiveness and what kinds of gods are worthy of worship.
gafpromise
6mo ago
This is entirely beside the point, but Kubo and the Two Strings is a masterpiece and I won't hear any different. I don't think it performed outstanding but it at least made back its budget. Although interestingly, at least in the posters I can find you can't really see the eyepatch. It just looks like he has his hair pulled over one eye.
Marketing (or lack of) certainly didn't do Elio any favors - this is not how a studio promotes something they have faith in and want to support.
But yeah, I hate that bean mouth style also. It looks ridiculous.
gafpromise
7mo ago
To recap how insane this is:
The problem is 100% illegal immigrants on E-bikes and mopeds No solution to control this will be put forward out of sympathy for the illegal immigrants Punishment must be metered out, though, since it’s one of the biggest problems facing the city Therefore, the solution is to punish analog cyclists with social security numbers!
That's quite the assumption to just throw in there, just saying. You have presented zero proof that illegal immigrants make up a large number of hazardous DoorDashers on ebikes.
Honestly it sounds like the problem is that from a regulatory standpoint, ebikes and motorized two-wheeled vehicles are being lumped in with bicycles rather than being regulated as a separate thing.
gafpromise
8mo ago
I appreciate this post as it aligns with some of my own experience. I grew up in a Christian household so I also adopted a Christian-ese framing regarding some of my mental health issues. I had crippling depression and anxiety and low self esteem. I constantly had this voice in my head saying I wasn't worthy, I was a failure, everything I did was wrong, everyone was secretly laughing at me, yadda-yadda. I mean it was nonstop. I was mired in this sticky fog of self-hate and doubt that I couldn't see past and it was making me suicidal.
Looking back on it now, I have some thoughts about where all that stuff came from. But at the time, the way that I got out of it was when I started thinking of it as the Devil's voice or a demon's voice. Well, from what I read in the Bible I should be able to have power over demons. There's this old movie Labyrinth I watched as a kid, and the protagonist gives her speech against the goblin king at the end and she says "You have no power over me." A lot of people think it's cheesy, I guess, but it was exactly like that for me. Giving that voice a name, an identity that was NOT myself, and calling it out and saying, "you are not welcome here" - that was a real turning point for me. I developed my "real" internal voice, someone who could argue against the demon voice, mock it even, provide a counterpoint to the hateful things it said. And eventually I was able to banish it. I mean, of course I still have self-doubt and low points but it's never crippling or oppressive the way it used to be.
I don't think honestly that my experience is all that uncommon either. I've heard other reports from people who give that "evil" voice a name and personify it. Not necessarily with the demon framing, but I think it's just a way to split off that stuff from your core identity, give you a way to grapple with it while building an intact self apart from it.
gafpromise
8mo ago
I would push back on therapy being grouped with the other things. Therapy, broadly speaking, covers an extreme range of practices and modalities. I mean sure, if you're going to stick with DSM-V definitions (which insurance surely requires), those are meant to be more clinical and cleanly defined. This is dysfunctional; that isn't dysfunctional.
But people seek therapy for lots of reasons. Do you consider a life coach a therapist? How about someone to help you get over your fear of public speaking or someone to help you better organize tasks? I'd wager just about everyone has something they wish they were better at, some lack that they feel in their life. It can be hard to match up someone with the right therapist, the right intervention, but when it's successful it's absolutely worth seeking out.
So yes, I would bite the bullet and say that absolutely everyone could benefit from therapy, in the sense that we need someone outside ourselves to encourage, validate, motivate us and point to helpful tools and resources. For many people this is religion. For many people this need can be filled by a close network of friends or family. Those people have a natural, organic source that meets this need, but many other people do not. The need for validation and accountability is nevertheless, I would say, nearly universal.
gafpromise
8mo ago
Not OP but I dug up a single article on MSN - seems like an initiative in the UK designed for men and then in this one local community (chapter?) they decided to admit women. The article is very short on detail about who pushed it through, how much pushback there was, etc. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/we-put-the-pressure-on-to-join-men-in-sheds/ar-AA1Dmt17?ocid=BingNewsVerp
gafpromise
8mo ago
I too am bemused at kids being exposed to drag, it puts me in the same weird headspace as Las Vegas. (Caveat: I'm aware actual people with families live and work in Las Vegas, but I'm talking about the touristy stuff). It always struck me as quite odd that Las Vegas at least in its marketing, had tried to clean up their act and put on a family friendly sort of facade. You can search for family friendly attractions and find official Vegas tourism guides that just pitch Vegas as a fun spot for the whole family. I am still astonished at how many corporations think Vegas is an excellent place to hold their trade shows - and then are somehow caught off guard when the HR reports of inappropriate behavior start piling up.
The thing is, when you are actually there on the Strip, the "family friendly" facade is paper thin. The smell of weed is everywhere. Aside from the many scantily clad costumed characters you'll see roaming around in broad daylight, the many leaflets for various erotic shows, it's common to see tourists themselves cutting loose because, hey, it's Vegas baby!
I went for work events three or four years in a row, and my boss always looked for some attraction or some show we could see for a night out. And no matter how family friendly it was billed (of course the explicit stuff would have been way off limits because work function) I left afterwards wondering if I needed to make a report to HR. There was one occasion where we ventured off the Strip - that was a big mistake. I don't know the name of where we ended up but it was highly awkward to be there with my coworkers, let me tell you.
Drag shows hit me in a similar way. Like it's so clearly designed with particular content for an adult audience. The fact that this one person wants to tone down their act this one time and read little kids a book does not to me, take away from the fact that this is fundamentally an adult-oriented performance art, made for adult consumption. I am absolutely baffled why people want to sanitize it and pretend it's something other than what it is.
gafpromise
9mo ago
Aaand we've got another poster deleting their top-level and comments - same person as before?
gafpromise
9mo ago
Do you like urban fantasy? They're not completed but The Dresden Files are a fun time.
Codex Alera is completed, 6 books - that's a more traditional fantasy from the same author. I don't know about any ideological axes to grind in that one. In fact the political elements are interesting if a bit muddled because the "evil side" is clearly making some good points and the "good side" has failed the citizenry in various ways. But that tends to be more in the background as the main story follows the traditional "peasant has to level up and become a hero" saga.
gafpromise
10mo ago
I didn't care for the character of Bean as a protagonist. He just didn't work for me and I didn't connect to him at all. It was a shame because I actually liked the idea of exploring the geopolitical situation on Earth. But rewriting Bean like that, besides the deficiencies in his character, really ret-conned Ender's Game, and not in a good way.
But if you never continued on to Speaker of the Dead, etc., I do recommend giving it a shot. SotD and its followups go in a very different direction from Ender's Game but really introduce some fascinating ideas about contact between alien species, different modes of consciousness, that kind of thing. And they have one of my favorite Christian characters in fiction, FWIW.
I appreciate the connection you've made and I like the framing of the "gap" concept very much. What is it that draws us to invent mysterious horrors in places outside of our sphere of normal activity? As you said, our sphere of what is "known" has grown and grown but we keep identifying nooks and crannies under the surface of our comfortable bubble. Is it a desire for new things to explore? Do we somehow feel comforted or intrigued that there are still places not yet delved into?
When I was younger I was very much into cryptozoology. My favorite section of the library was the one with all the books about Bigfoot, Loch Ness, UFO encounters, etc. And this was in early internet days too, so the library and TV documentaries were the main source to feed my fascination. These days I'm over it. It's pretty clear that the preponderance of evidence is not on the paranormal investigator's side. But it makes me sad, in a way, because I liked the feeling that there were things Out There that science couldn't explain, that would defy logical certainty, that could still impart a sense of wonder. Even if they are terrifying and implacable, it is a profound loss to come around to, "oh, I guess this is it then. This is all there is."
I have read House of Leaves and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I could have done without the acres of footnotes as I don't think they added anything. But the core concept is brilliant. I just remember being struck by the idea that Zampano is blind and therefore could never have described watching a video recording in such detail and going on and on about the camera work and so forth. The whole existence of the record is an utter impossibility and yet there it is in front of you. I'm afraid I don't remember much though as it's been a while since I read it.
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