I’m coining the genre ‘Existential Dread’ - not sure if it’s a thing, but it’s a narrative concept. It’s rather dark and spooky like indie/emo, and it’s not likely to inspire positivity, just a vague sense of unease… therefore dread.
I’ve kind of mixed in a range of different artistic and philosophical subtypes, and it’s using both intuited knowing and depth psychology analysis.
I figure it’s a way of discussing the dark shadow underneath the conscious society, but in a subtle and hopefully disarming way.
Not sure how long before I get bored with it and go off on a different train of thought entirely; but I kind of like how I can blend genres and themes to elicit a subconscious response from both the reader and their own shadow.
So, as such, my proto theory is that it will get the reader’s shadow to know that it’s been seen. Much like the courier in the dream?
At the very least, it’s a way of running a thought experiment on myself, seeing if I can apply what I’ve figured out in a way that helps me to run the cultural scenarios that I can see going on in society that aren’t really being objectively examined by anyone else, really…
So, rather than just sitting on the sidelines being triggered by the stupidity and ignorance out there and turning into a raving conspiracy theorist or cynical cyborg, I don’t have to wait for a dream to incidentally occur?
I can see how people are just responding to their monkey brain elements, and even rat brain in the current decade. Rather than internalizing the various existential threats as paranoia, anxiety or fatalism etc, it’s a way of testing the narrative of the different scenarios, at least the human sociocultural tropes.
I plan to stay alive for a few decades yet, so may as well find the dark humor inherent in the irony of no longer giving up on humanity in general?
