Hi! I'll ask a question! What exactly are the limits of creepypasta? I mean, what is and what isn't one? Because when I set out to write something I end up with a sort of dark fairy tale that feels kind of out of place.
That’s actually a really good question, and one I’ve thoughtabout a fair bit!
Because, I would say, Creepypasta does have a “house style”so-to-speak for its aesthetics, and one of those big things I’d saythat characterizes it is an emphasis on being down-to-earth and; forlack of a better term; gritty.
Not as in ditching fantastical or really goddamn weird concepts mindyou, things like Burgrr show how well even the weirdest stuff canwork in this millieu, but there’s an emphasis on theground-level view, in the intersection of the nightmarish andimpossible with what we percieve as real, that descent intonightmare.
It should feel like something that very well could happen inthose liminal spaces which one might stumble into some dark midnight.That’s why; perhaps; so much of them draw from urban legends,cryptozoology and Lovecraft, because those are all pre-existingmillieus that really do get that sense of versmillitude, ofwhere the possible meets the bizarre. Even Lovecraft, for all hisfaults, was always very good at showing the slow descent of the“normal” into the ghoulish in a way that felt you could slip intoo, walking on an abandoned city street some dark; lonely night.
Buildup is essential for this, which is a thing that one Pasta writerI knew (Before I found out what a douche he was) got very well, theramp from the real into the monstrous should be creeping in terms ofdread; especially in that subgenre, because it lets ones mindlinger on the normality to create that needed baseline, but alsoallows things to feel plausible even when shit gets weird.
Start with realistic; plausible situations you might stumble upon,and then slowly ramp them more and more into something truly strangeis my general rule for the “feel” of it.
And lore and knowability is your enemy. You need to give only enoughinformation needed for a good story, keep the rest under wraps. Ifthere are rules or a cosmology behind it, you should only give hintsand slivers of it, because it ironically feels more plausible thatone doesn’t get the full answers on this bizarre; impossible thing.These Fortean freaks, these cryptids, feel most real in the shadowsin which they hide.
Really, it’s part of what I’d call “Cryptic Horror” on theopposite side of an axis from “Rakuga/Cartoon” horror, twohorrors I’d legit add onto @tyrantisterror’s Four Horrors theory,but that’s for another post...
