There's so many horror games about having to try to weed out and deal with inhuman imposters, but I want one where the script is flipped. You are something inhuman, you are an imposter, and if you want to survive you have to blend into a world that is trying to hunt you down and destroy you. You aren't human, but you must masquerade as one and infiltrate their world, or you will die.
I actually think we need to start inverting more Horror premises/tropes.
Like "You have to venture into the scary insane asylum!" VS "You're a patient who was admitted by force to an asylum, and you are very clearly in real danger, but everyone is pretending that you're just deluded, and are essentially leaving you to die because they don't really see you as a person."
I feel like there's a lot of Horror tropes built off of the fear of the other, when in reality it's actually often the other who is in danger. Maybe we could start recognising that more.
Interesting how the first half of the post has picked up popularity while the second part, which perhaps clarifies the idea of the original post, hasn't.
It's been interesting to see what media people are recommending based on the first post alone. A lot of recommendations for games/franchises like World of Darkness, Carrion, Kill All Humans, Among Us, etc. It's interesting because these are games that put you into the shoes of the violent other that has to infiltrate, without actually challenging the idea that the other is a threat. They actually parrot the ideas of the other as violent.
Funnily enough, the people recommending the comedy game Octodad understand the post much better than most of the people recommending horror media. A few mentions of Am I Nima, which isn't finished yet but does look like it could be what I am describing, so brownie points to the people recommending that.
But everyone saying stuff like "This is just being Trans/Autistic/Etc" really gets it, like really really gets it. Horror always communicates the fears and anxieties of the people who create it, this post was basically: "What if instead of communicating the fear of the other, we communicated the fears of the others, which are actually vastly more legitimate than the dominant groups fear of the other. We should recognise that it is overwhelmingly the others who are the ones who actually suffer and die, all for the perceived "saftey" and "comfort" of the dominant group."
This idea is about transphobia, it is about ableism, about anti-imigrant rhetoric and white supremacy, about queerphobia, it's about all of it. It is horror from the perspective of minority groups. It is the twisting of a trope built upon reactionary fears and narratives in order to critique them, it is a direct allegory for all those experiences you are describing.
Overall, it's just interesting to see who gets it and who doesn't.
