There is only one story in Hometown... mostly. The Prophecy is Lord of the Hammer is Dragon Blazers is the local religion. All the art that you can really call pop culture – that shapes how kids, or adults, relate to one another – emerges from the Prophecy. One single fairy tale, repeated over and over but still carrying its core ideological payload of destiny, and something terrible at the end.
Susie fundamentally couldn't fit in until she found her place in the Prophecy, and her self-image as someone who really isn't a bully is increasingly reliant on being the girl with hope crossed on her heart instead – reflected in her incidental exposure to Dragon Blazers via a Lost and Found cartridge, such that she's missing context and playing social catch-up compared to her peers.
And this is true of almost all media, but it's not true of horror. Blood Crushers, the movie about a killer severed hand, is the one piece of fiction referenced in any detail that has absolutely nothing to do with the Prophecy; not surprisingly, Noelle hides her interest in it from her family (playing the Glaceir sequence in secret; watching scary movies with Dess, the same scary stuff Kris remembers being interested in in her room), while Susie the outsider loves it openly.
The secret bosses, with their recurring fixation on freedom, are framed via the tropes of horror: killer clowns! Haunted puppets! An Evil Video Game! To break away from the single story that gives our lives structure is a traumatic rupture, which the Dark Worlds – shaped as they are by a culture that has plenty it refuses to look at, in their kids and in their lives – cannot imagine as anything but, well, a horror.
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
snowghoul
2087
ellievsbear
gamechangershow
