Confronting Horror

Note: Post is only tangentially related to wrestling today.

I am not a fan of horror. I think real life is scary enough as it is, so I have never understood why people want to scare themselves via entertainment. I especially don't like jump scares, so horror movies and games are generally a big no for me. Fortunately, pro-wrestling has never been too terrifying. I always liked the Undertaker, so he never freaked me out, and his storylines with Kane, while creepy, never got too far into the realm of horrifying for me (grossed me out some, but never scared me). Had I been a child when they debuted, I might have found the Wyatt Family scary, but I was already in grad school when they first showed up.

While I am not a fan of horror, I am a fan of good storytelling, a necessary element of good pro-wrestling. As such, I am willing to step outside my comfort zone of non-horror entertainment if I think there is a worthy story to experience, like when I read Dracula as a kid (slept with a rosary for a few nights after that). 

The point of all this is that I managed to put my fears aside two whole times this past week for the sake of enjoying a story. Part of the backlog in my video games playlist was the original "Resident Evil" (the remake version). I've been fascinated by the RE series since summer of 2005, when I watched the family I was staying with in Japan play RE4. I've read about the series and its plot online, watched all the animated movies ("Vendetta" is now one of my comfort movies) and watched all the games be played by other people so I could witness the story actually play out (I'm particularly fond of Maximilian Dood's play-throughs). However, watching is not the same as doing. I figured that I have watched the games be played enough that I wouldn't be too scared, so I decided to give the original RE remake a try. Watching wasn't quite enough to prep me; I hope my walls are thick or my neighbors heard a lot of swearing over the past few days, but I did it. I made it through the game twice. Once as Jill and once as Chris. It was fun. Crimson heads scared me the most, I think just because my reaction time is not what it used to be and those SOBs are FAST. I enjoyed the puzzle elements and exploration though. So, at some point in the near future, I am going to try it again, this time with the game that started it for me. I got the original RE4 (I also got the remake, but that will come if/after I make it through the original) and will try to play it soon. But first, I am going with a long neglected game in my backlog, "Final Fantasy XVI." Expect to hear about that soon.

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