When I was sixteen, my best friend at the time had a little brother. Roo was 6 years old, and he scared me more than anyone in the world at the time. He was - properly - nuts. His entire life seemed a whirlwind of bounding energy and extreme violence, more often than not directed at one or other or our testicles. He would regularly throw himself from great heights, start fights with his Alsatian and shout hysterical abuse at passing gangs of gnarly teenagers, all before breakfast.
His favourite video game at the time was Resident Evil 2 for the original Playstation. You may have heard of it. For the uninitiated, it involved a generic rookie cop with impossibly perfect hair - Leon - and a generic college student - Claire - complete with impractical shorts and a ballsy attitude. They shuffled through the aftermath of a biological weapon test, avoiding shambling zombies, spitting spiders and grotesque mutant man-things, looking for survivors, with all the dramatic conviction of a primary school play. Limbs are severed, heads go boom, and scary things lurk silently in the dark, yet still the protagonists like the Virgin Mary (who wet herself just before she had to come on stage) and the Angel Gabriel (the one with the squint and one permanently blocked nostril) - stilted, and loud, wanting mum to hear because she turned up late after her sunbed session ran over due to a faulty hinge, so had to stand at the back behind all the other parents, crippled by the crab-in-a-wine-bottle posture of sitting in a chair meant for one a quarter of their size.
(nb. This was not my own experience. My biggest ever nativity role was Mary's donkey's hooves. I was not meant for the stage)
ANYWAY. The point. The point was, Resident Evil, for all its clunky dialogue and giroscope-on-a-shaggy-carpet controls, was at times, fucking scary, even then as a sixteen year old. And i find myself now, at the practically geriatric age of 32, playing the 6th installment of the series. Well I say sixth. That's not true. There have been new RE games every year, with reimaginings, reboots, Christmas specials, compilation games, not to mention the re-releases, spin-offs, Happy Meal versions and ultra-rare diamond editions with Genuine Rotting Flesh VR gloves. By my estimation the last fourteen years have provided us with, ballpark figure, one billion Resident Evil games. But apparently, this one is Number Six.
It's not scary. You all know that. The series has been heading from 'survival horror' to 'fuck it, guns and muscles sell games, man' for some time now, and I experience more trepidation collecting my 2 year old from nursery than barging my way through groaning, directionless, hungry bodies to collect my 2 year old form nur - ah you get the lame joke I'm trying to make. But it got me thinking - what IS scary anymore? I don't remember being scared by a game since Silent Hill back in '99, and the last film that had me quietly wibbling in a corner was Blair Witch. Since then I've had my stomach turned and my patience flayed by the likes of Saw's eternal sequels, Hostel and The Human Centipede (I mean, really). I've jumped at Paranormal Activity and Final Destination (but then I've had to immediately apply a hot water bottle to the crick in my neck. I'm getting old, y'see) but I've not experienced genuine, exciting fear since childhood.
I've been lucky enough to grow up in Britain, in relative comfort and peace. As I've grown older, 'fear' is about the mundane - money, work, relationships, family. My childhood had no such worries, and therefore the things that scared me were almost exclusively defined by culture and media. I was reading horror stories at the age of 7, watching Poltergeist at 11. I went to a primary school fancy dress party as Freddie Krueger. I loved it all, loved being scared witless. It's a far more real fear, to me, than wondering where next week's hopping is going to come from. Visceral, that's what it is. And it's a fear that makes you feel so alive. It is inextricably linked to all those childhood emotions that are so much more raw, before they have those years of maturing, because apparently when you age you have to see and react to the world in a much more rational way. Emotions like separation anxiety, guilt, shame, sexual curiosity, all of which are either satiated, or abandoned or have simply become a natural part of our lives by the time we reach adulthood. Certainly Stephen King's 'It', possibly my favourite 'horror' movie from my youth, explored all those themes, and more, and to this day I find it less of a scary movie and more (in conjunction with the book) an interesting look at the nature of fear, how it can define us and betray us, restrict us and yet spur us on to do great things. Are things less scary than they used to be? No, but the way we perceive and react to fear does change, and this is not necessarily a good thing. Childhood innocence is easily lost and near impossible to replace.
And I guess, in a roundabout way, that is what this blog is about. I want to write. I love to write. I'm writing a book at the moment, it's all there in my head, and a good chunk of it comes in the form of real words, on a page and everything. But I know I'll never finish it, because I'll always be scared of what other people think of it and what they'll say. Or maybe more scared that I'll spend years writing the bastarding thing and then for nobody to read it except my mum and my wife (I'm kidding - my mum wouldn't bother to finish it). So I need to get used to writing not just for pleasure, but for other people to see it, and (hopefully) enjoy it, or at the very least not hate it and spit on my face. I'd be quite happy for people just to read and go "oh" and then have a cup
of tea. I'm not your go-to for controversy or strong opinions, I'm just someone who want to write about things that interest me. I'm not particularly well-informed, and I argue poorly. I'm a nice bloke, who is sometimes wrong about stuff. If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best. No, wait, that's someone else.
Cod philosophy at its worst then. Up there with 'Keep Calm and Carry On', 'Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway' is the rather excruciating mantra i must now live by. Write, write and write again, to improve, to maintain, and just because much like hiding under my covers from Pennywise the Clown, it's something all the years of budgeting, nappy-changing and slaving for a wage have made me forget how to really enjoy. And all the while, I will keep searching for things that properly scare me. .Because I'd rather be bitten by a drooling zombie than another bloody gas bill.
