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The Two Types of "Mysterious Small Town" Stories
🕑 Added 2020-09-15 15:59:48 +0000 UTCI think this is a pretty funny and interesting juxtaposition, though finding a pithy way to describe it for the title was hard.
This is another one of those cases where the comparison comes a little more from gleaned information than from an extremely in-depth knowledge of both story types; the former is obviously based off H.P Lovecraft and his contemporaries, including people like Thomas Ligotti and Steven King; I'm sure you could find no shortage of stories about various academics investigating various areas of New England and ending up with more than they bargained for. Something about the dreary skies and closeness to the vast void of the ocean, perhaps? In such stories, the protagonist is often more of a stand-in for the reader or perhaps the author, a victim, perhaps not as stupid and incompetent as your standard slasher villain, who nonetheless can't help but find themselves at the mercy of this town's nefarious eldritch forces, for the spooky entertainment of the reader.
The latter, obviously, is largely based off twin peaks and its main contemporary, deadly premonition, though I'm sure there are some other series that might fit the bill, though not quite as closely; Dale Cooper and Francis York Morgan are pretty iconic for their quirky, cheery personalities. I haven't read a ton of mysteries, but I'd be curious if that is as much of an archetype as the spooky New England town. In any case, in these types of stories the focus is more on the mystery solving, and as such our protagonist is typically a more competent, heroic type, and rarely simply a vessel for madness and calamity.
While writing jokes for this comic, I actually ended up really coming to love both these archetypes; you might see a short story in a similar vein in the future.
Comments
petrichor
Having played both Bloodborne and Deadly Premonition recently, I get big vibes from this
WORMVESSEL. .š I'm dying, here in a small new england village.
I love genre deconstructions that come from a place of affection & this comic totally hits that mark! I would read the hell out of your take on a āmysterious small townā story :)
