Black Paradox

Written by Junji Ito

Horror, Manga

Warning: The core theme of this book is suicide. 

Black Paradox is a manga written and drawn by famous horror artist Junji Ito. It is about four people who meet up online through a suicide website called Black Paradox to commit group suicide.

Now I will say I was initially swindled by the book's presence. I flipped through a couple pages and saw a man being pulled out of what looked like water and being resuscitated. On the back of the book it says that the four try to find a way to achieve a "perfect death". Through my folly I had mistakenly misinterpreted this book as four individuals obsessed with thanatology reaching what they believe to be a perfect, absolute death within their philosophical confines.  

Macabre, off-putting, surreal - that was the mindset I was initially entering the book with. Instead I got four people who fight over each other to collect a bundle of rare gemstones that offer unlimited energy that emerge from the dead while remaining pursued by their unresolved pasts.

The difference between my expectations and what I received does not mean that this is not a good book. In fact, I reread this book for 

my review. As with most books, you are not going to get exactly what's written on the back. 

So with that in mind, take the review with a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper. Read the first few bits of the review and see for yourself if the plot sounds like your cup of tea.

The Cast of Our Misfortunes

Who are the central characters of the story, and why are they here?

(These are not spoilers, by the way. All of this is stated in the first ten pages of the book)

Maruso - a girl suffering from a foreboding dread which she fears predicts a series of disasters lying in her near future. She worries that this sensation is a premonition of misfortune to come, and wishes to avoid an unpleasant fate. She is anxious, reserved, and skittish of what is to come.

Taburo - a boy who claims to have seen his doppelganger. One common folktale is that if you see your doppelganger, it means you are going to die soon. Taburo wishes to expedite the process instead of slowly waiting for his own death. He is flippant, arrogant, and apathetic.

Pi-tan - a man who invented a robot designed after himself. As the robot was "better" in every way and universally celebrated by his peers, Pi-tan felt that his own existence is threatened by the "other him" and wishes to die before a public press announcement of the robot's existence is made. He is melancholic, academic, and reserved.

Barrachi - a woman who was born with half of her face scarred. She cannot bear the given perception of herself, and as a result joined the group primarily from self-loathing. She is cynical, shrewd, and adamant.

It is hard to come up with descriptors for Junji Ito's characters. Usually characters in Junji Ito's works are purposely designed to be bland without personality, or resemble a generic "everyday person" trope. The reasoning for this is that the less details a protagonist or character has, the easier it feels to project onto them. Furthermore it's hard to condense character development in a graphic-based novel with limited space and words. Also, if the characters had complex personalities, we would feel bad when a character we personally relate to or enjoy suffers or experiences hardship. Vice versa, when a character we hate experiences misfortune we experience catharsis.

In this book however we have the four same characters throughout the entire book. Their lives are not completely laid out for us but their motivations and rationalizations are; a stark difference from other Junji Ito anthologies. 

The general plot of the book is that one of the characters starts throwing up never-before-seen gemstones called Paradonite. These gemstones are astonishingly beautiful and release a tremendous amount of energy when struck. The group believes these gemstones are from some form of spirit world and are split being those who believe the gemstones should be left alone and those who wish to monopolize them for their own profit. The book is a fairly short read and only takes about two hours to finish. Overall, the book is divided between chapters where the group initially meets up to die, the discovery and monopolization of the gemstones, and the investigation into how to acquire more of them by travelling to this spirit world. 

The narrative flow of the book is smooth. The only significant portion of the book that is significantly crunched together is the ending which gives exposition towards what the spirit world is, what the gemstones are, and a predictive epilogue for what will happen to the characters. However I'd say the ending is still enjoyable, one of the most enjoyable factors of the book in fact, despite it being 90% exposition. This could be that I personally liked the ideas introduced in the ending and their implications, as well as being given details and answers to some of the more significant questions proposed in the book. It also ties up some themes from the beginning of the book, which I will discuss later on. I don't want to spoil the entire plot, if you are still planning on reading it.

I don't know how every one of these circles is perfectly handdrawn - still impressive even if a Shape Tool was used.

Recommendations:

I would not say that this was my absolute favorite book by Junji Ito (Tomie and Hellstar Remina), but just because it's not my favorite does not mean I disliked it. I enjoyed the book, more so the second-time rereading it than the first; it does not have an extensive amount of body horror compared to Junji Ito's other works and instead shifts its focus more towards the plot and characters.

Note: Spoilers ahead for the first chapter, ending, and other random plot points in the book. If you want to read the book, do so first.

There are several themes in the book that reoccur throughout the beginning and end. I will go through each one that I personally noticed, and what I think they mean in the story itself.

Double or Nothing: The Doubles of Our Characters

You may have noticed from the character's descriptions (and the first chapter) that three of our four characters have a "double" in some shape or form that initially presses them into suicide. Barrachi has her reflection, Pi-tan has a robot designed to look like him, and Taburo has his doppelganger. 

In the first chapter, Maruso accidentally enters a car with these doubles who plan to kill themselves and the originals - this is done from a plot-standpoint to prevent our cast from committing suicide and drive home the idea of the doubles existing in the novel. While all three of the doubles "die" in this first chapter, they do reappear and play what I believe to be a significant role throughout the remainder of the book.

Towards the latter half of the book the main cast are slowly recruited to travel to the spirit world through their respective portals. As a rule each character can only travel through a portal made from their own designated portal or they will die. During these scenes of the characters gradually travelling to and from the spirit world, there is something of particular interest. That being that every time a character decides to travel to the spirit world, they reflect their double.

For example: 

The Pi-tan that goes into the spirit world is actually the Pi-tan robot being piloted by his soul

The Barrachi that goes into the spirit world has had surgery to fix the birthmark on the left side of her face. At the beginning of the novel we see that Barrachis double, her reflection, has her birthmark on her right side. It is mentioned in the second chapter that the reflection could just change what side of her face has the birthmark if the reflection was two mirrors facing each other. Therefore it could be argued that Barrachi is therefore an extension of her reflection by the end of a novel, her reflection and herself overlapping.

Taburo just gets visited by his doppelganger, fears that his shadow is also his doppelganger, then the next time we see him is him walking out of his own shadow. We could view all of these as their doubles becoming "one" with the cast and characters.

Maruso's double isn't really a double, it's just her anxiety and fears for the future which disappear later on in the book and instead coalesce as an acceptance of the future, no matter how horrible it appears.

 This comes into the idea that all of the characters, despite being initially pushed to suicide due to the appearance of their "doubles" or sources of conflict, eventually loop back around towards embodying or embracing some aspect of their double by the end of the story. 

It is also insinuated that the doubles have some form of connection with the spirit world and why the characters act as gateways. Barrachi has spirit stones fall out of her birthmark, Taburo has spirit stones fall out of his shadow (the only thing that resembles him to the closest extent, like a doppelganger), and Maruso has her gateway in the part of the brain that controls fear (which initially drove her to suicide in the first place).

The Cost of Eternity

This comparison is short and sweet. It is revealed at the ending of the book that Paradonite isn't just a gem that contains the souls of those who go to the afterlife. Instead, it is a soul for everything and anything that is living; the soul, personality, and spirit of a person are stored inside of the gemstone while they physically exist on Earth, and when they die they presumably reincarnate with their spirit entering a new body. To put it in simpler terms, imagine your brain was in a jar but it could still move your body even though your body itself may not be aware of the brains existence or its influence.

  It is speculated that as Paradonite is harvested and consumed for energy, people on Earth will "vanish" as their soul's are consumed. It draws parallels with modern day climate change with discussion whether humanity will still use Paradonite once they realize the cost of its energy and that the immediate benefits and resources are impacting their lives and safety long-term.

The Afterlife and Back

Another theme that is mentioned at the end of the book is the reason this all happened in the first place. At the beginning of the book, all of the characters want to die. In the ending of the book the characters technically achieve this by travelling to and from the afterlife to collect Paradonite, thus fulfilling their goal at the beginning of the book without reaching finality. The only exception to this is Pi-tan, who DOES end up dying at the beginning, but possesses Pi-tan's robot. The characters also end up subverting the reason they wanted to die in the first place; Maruso no longer experiences dread about the future, Pi-tan now IS his robot, Barrachi had her birthmark removed... 

In all instances the characters achieved not only their initial goal of dying, but also in removing the cause that incited their death in the first place.

I thought this was a neat detail, even if it is told directly to us in the book.

The Paradox in Black Paradox

So what is the paradox in Black Paradox. I am not sure. I am guessing for this. This is a sleep-deprived, one-off guess that I cooked up in a primordial stew of neurons and tap water. My guess is that the paradox in Black Paradox (asides from it being merely a name) is that the source of the entire story (the doubles, and Maruso's foreboding for the future) would not have even occurred without the doubles appearing. Maruso wouldn't have had any foreboding about the future, so she wouldn't be there. Many of the doubles seem to share the same goal of dying at the beginning of the film; indeed, Pi-tans robot expresses the wish to die even before Pi-tan's soul begins possessing it. It is likely, given that some of the doubles like Tashuro's doppelganger keep coming back, that these doubles are either a manifestation of the cast's trauma, personal self-loathing, or a representation of their deaths. I don't really know though. These doubles existences are unexplained. However, they do end up subverting the characters deaths multiple times - thus removing any reason for their existence in the first place. The doppelganger doesn't show up after Tashuro begins journeying into the afterlife, nor does anyone else's double once they visit the spirit world (Pi-tan's robot doesn't count because it IS Pi-tan.). Where am I going with this? I don't know. It's been a long day and I am 1400 words into this review and frankly not awake enough to solve a paradox which may or may not exist. It could be that there IS no paradox and Black Paradox is a name that was only picked out. Gyo (another of Junji Ito's works) wasn't about climate change or the devastating drawbacks that meddling with nature can bring, it solely written to be about fish with legs.

That is all for the review. If you have ANY theories, or sources of what the paradox in Black Paradox is, post it in the comments please. I may be confuddling myself in the shadow of Occam's Razor.

 

No Through Road (2009)

Written by Steve Chamberlain

Horror

No Through Road is a collection of four found-footage videos where a group of teens driving in the United Kingdom get stuck in a space-time loop after driving through an abandoned through road. Each of these videos are mostly in chronological order, with a single narrative plot tying them all together.

I HIGHLY recommend watching this with a group of friends if you ever want a short film where you all can speculate on what is happening, why it's happening, and what will happen next. All of the videos are only around 30 minutes combined, so give them a watch if you're curious.

This is a bit of a shorter review compared to others on this blog as I can't write a ton of stuff that hasn't already been covered by other online sources. The writer, Steve Chamberlain, has given a few interviews about its development, stating that the first video was initially written without a script, with dialogue being mostly improvised. Later videos did use a script, which was repeatedly rewritten due to fears of the plot being too complex or too simple. Additionally, No Through Roads has provided several spin-offs inspired by it.

There isn't an exceptionally wide berth of things I can say about the film itself; the effects and acting is spectacular, the video and audio quality is low but this was made on a very small budget and it works in the films favor given its a found footage film, I thoroughly enjoyed how the plot ties together and purposely leaves some plot points unanswered, and I like how they repeatedly foreshadow events that will happen or already have happened in previous loops.  

If you enjoyed No Through Roads and the concept of space loops or found footage, you may also enjoy Cat in The Box (game), and the Blair Witch Project (film).

Quick Overview of Each Episode:

No Through Road 1: A group of teenage boys drive through a broken down through road and end up in what I like to call a space loop. A space loop is a time loop, but with space instead of time. Imagine you are in your bedroom, open up the door to leave, and instead of finding your hallway its just an identical bedroom on the other end. Space loop. While in this space loop, the group is stalked by a masked man with a knife.

No Through Road 2: Three years later the sole survivor from the previous video, and his friend, visit the accursed road to pay their respects but end up getting stuck in a space loop in a field. They also meet one of the boys who went missing in the previous video, who is unaware three years have passed.

No Through Road 3: Two minutes of driving down a peaceful road where nothing of significance happens.

No Through Road 4: The three find themselves back in the first loop from video one, but this time watching themselves from the first loop as outsiders. Each try to find their own way to break the loop.

I find the final episode to be the most interesting because of this. The fourth video ends with the sole survivor from the second video running away with a mask in his hands, presumably to ensure that some part of Loop 1 comes to pass and allow his escape (its left up to speculation).  Meanwhile, the missing boy that was found in Loop 3 remembers being attacked in Loop 1 and believes that if he can prevent or alter this outcome, he can break the loop as a whole. This, as you may have just watched, backfires as his past self panics and kills his future self before running off, likely to video 2. 

8 Tips to Make D&D Enemies and Combat Encounters Scary

 

8 Tips to Make D&D Enemies and Combat Encounters Scary (and Other TTRPGs)

D&D is a difficult game to make scary. From a mechanical standpoint, D&D combat is often subject to frequent pauses where the players take turns describing their actions, filing out spell slots, and crunching the numbers. From a narrative standpoint, it's difficult to its hard to make monsters "fit" in a horror campaign when all of the players are either capable of rending the universe asunder or killing gods.

To compensate for these drawbacks a few considerations need to be made surrounding:

a. The narrative theme of the game and enemies (the world, the setting, the ambience)

b. The mechanical effects of the enemies (attacks, stats, numbers)

This article will be focusing on the mechanical side of things, as this is the prime section of combat, and what additions can be made to make combat and enemies more frightening.

1. Add Damage Thresholds to Hitpoints

A few times I have played games where a boss monster had a Damage Threshold. A Damage Threshold is a static number where all damage the monster receives is subtracted from the Damage Threshold before affecting Hit Points. 

For example, if Monster A had 15 Hitpoints and a Damage Threshold of 5, and was then hit for 3 points of damage, 7 points of damage, and 2 points of damage, then:

Per Hit Threshold

x - y = z

x = Damage Dealt

y = Damage Threshold

= Damage Received

3 -  5 = 0

7 - 5 = 2

2 - 5 = 0

Monster A would receive only 2 Hitpoints worth of damage.

This is an example of a Damage Threshold that triggers every time damage is received. For more fair Damage Thresholds (and ones that promote party cooperation instead of "only ones who matter are the ones that give out giant damage numbers"), set it so that the Damage Threshold tallies all damage and then marks off the damage at the end of the turn.

Per Turn Threshold

x - y = z

x = All Damage Dealt this turn

y = Damage Threshold

= Damage Received

3 + 7 + 2 -  5 = 7

Monster A would receive 7 Hitpoints worth of damage.

Damage Thresholds are best used in conjunction with other features mentioned on this list, and sparingly used for only a select few reoccurring monsters or singular boss monsters.

2. Devastating Attacks and Roulette Stacks

Have you ever played Fear and Hunger? Or looked at some stat blocks in the Monster Manual? A common trend between the two is that a few monsters have abilities which can only be used once every couple of turns. When a party member is hit by a Devastating Attack, they are usually subjected to:

a. Multiple debuffs and status effects

b. High amounts of damage

c. Lingering Injuries (see Lingering Injuries later in review)

d. Multiple of the above 

Devastating Attacks are power abilities that can change the tide of the battle, or cause serious problems or unsuspecting players in the immediate or long term. As a result, the following rules of thumb should be used whenever a Devastating Attack is usable:

a. The Devastating Attack should ALWAYS be foreshadowed in the turns leading up to its use. The monster spends its turn doing nothing but convulsing, a strange buzzing starts emerging from its throat - something is needed to signal to the players that their enemy is about to do something that will inflict dramatic injury unto them. Devastating Attacks should NEVER be something the players would not be able to reasonably foresee based on the monsters actions. Foreshadowing Devastating Attacks also gives players an opportunity to hide, run, or prepare instead of simply attacking and tanking the damage.

b. There should be a "wind-up" or "recharge" time in-between Devastating Attacks. Devastating Attacks are not something which should be used every turn. About 4-6 turns should be spent in-between each Devastating Attack, and at least 1 to 2 of those turns the monster should use its action to foreshadow the Devastating Attacks use. There are exceptions to this, but usually with severe limitations (i.e, a monster spending one turn using a Devastating Attack, and one turn charging, constantly).

c. Devastating Attacks should not be used by every single enemy. Bosses or rare monsters are fine, but not every single enemy.

d. Devastating Attacks should be severe. They are not meant to be something that can be shrugged off without consequence. Look at other items on this article for ideas as to what consequences a Devastating Attack can cause.

e. What if my players don't run/hide/dodge/prepare for the Devastating Attack, even though I foreshadowed it and let them know the attack will bring terrible consequence unto them? Well, as long as you foreshadowed it, you did warn them. It will be a learning lesson I suppose.

How to Determine If a Devastating Attack Hits?

Having your players roll a d20 wouldn't be stressful enough, no no no no no. You could do that though, I'm not running your campaign.

What I like to do is set a Roulette Stack. Its simple. Pick a die from your pool; d2, d4, or d8 are good choices. Then give the player a number to represent their "Roulette" (if you have any Luck stat in your game, you can use that as well). The Roulette represents the number of "numbers" that the player can pick from the die. Ideally, the Roulette should be 30 - 60% of the total faces on the chosen die.

For example:

We are using a D8 to represent the Devastating attack.

The Roulette is 4.

The player picks 4 numbers on the d8, and chooses 1, 2, 3, 4

After that, roll the dice. If the dice lands on a number that the Player chose from their Roulette, the attack misses. If it doesn't, the attack hits in full.

While I agree this system can be needlessly complicated, you could also just keep it simple and flip a coin (or do d20 + AC).

3. Lingering Injuries

Lingering Injuries. They are fairly straightforwards. Whenever a character goes Down, roll a Constitution saving throw. On a failure (DC10), suffer a Lingering Injury by rolling on an Injury table. Some tables recommend rolling on every critical hit, or in my case if a Devastating Attack ever lands, but its up to you. Lingering Injuries are good to prevent situations where the party goes down to 0 HP, is healed back to 1, then goes down again in an endless loop. There are numerous Lingering Injury tables online, and in the DMG so if you don't like one you can always shuffle them around.

As a house rule, injuries should affect players regardless of class (otherwise, why even bother healing an injury as a rogue if it's only going to affect wizards), should have some costly way to heal them (usually a high-leveled healing spell, special materials, or simply time), and should have an impact outside of merely "Reduce stat by 1". 

4. Evolving Enemies

One tool, while tricky, are evolving enemies. This doesn't mean levelling up enemies CR as the party does - while you can do that, it might be a bit tedious after a while, especially if you have to figure it out on the fly. Rather, evolving enemies means that part way through combat, the enemy can change their statblock to add more attacks and spells, or change their stats. Usually, this is done through an item or regular action.

One drawback to this approach is that it requires you to build a template statblock for evolved enemies in advance. However, once you've outlined the changes you can simply drag-and-drop the changes from one statblock to another with ease.

Example for changes to evolved enemies can include stats, attacks, spells, feats, creature types,

Example of item that can induce evolved enemies:

Use an action to stick a needle in your body. If you are an Insectfolk, for every needle, reduce up to 5 points from your Int, Wis, and Cha scores and add them to your Str, Dex, and Con scores. If you are pierced with an Antimagic Needle unwillingly, you remove the max number of points (5) from your scores. If your stats (Int, Wis, Cha) ever go below their designated scores of (3,5, and 4), you immediately must roll a Wisdom Saving throw or act as if under the effects of Antimagic (see Effects). For Plantfolk and Thumblings, they reduce their respective decreased stats by 5. No increase is made.

5. Changing Statblocks

This is a short and simple one; change your stat blocks. Or at the very least, don't broadcast to your players the name of the creature they are fighting. If you are in a swamp, say something like "the lumbering beast rises, a limb wrapped in warped iron and blistered skin, a roar, a sigh, a sight of eyes drift into yours. Run, run, the beast has awoken.", or something similar. Don't say, "you find a troll", because then everyone is going to say, "ah yes, a troll is weak to fire and does x and y.". Realistically, the characters don't know the ins-and-outs of every monster they come across, so the players shouldn't either.

In short, don't put a name to the monsters face. Swap the original statblock with the statblock with another monster, and keep focusing on descriptors rather than a short and simple name (unless the characters have reason to know what the monster is).

6. High Damage Attacks

Another short one. Bit of a repeat. Make your creatures deadlier. 

Have attacks be complimented by feats.

Have damage be deadly.

Example: An Excerpt of Part of the Insectoid Statblock

For Bite, choose one of the following depending on the insect. Use the T-Rex Stat block as a template.

Small Bite. *Melee Weapon Attack*: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit*: (1d6 + 3 + Strength Mod) piercing damage. If the creature is flanked by an enemy who has also hit them, they must roll a Strength save or be knocked prone.

Large Bite. *Melee Weapon Attack*: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit*: (1d8 + 5 + Strength Mod) piercing damage. The creature is Grappled with disadvantage while being Grappled this way. If the creature is smaller than the attacker, it is Restrained. You cannot attack with Bite while the creature is grappled by it.

Tearing: *Melee Weapon Attack*: +2 to hit. If a creature is Grappled, Tearing can be used a reaction against the Grappled opponent. *Hit*: 1d4 + Strength Mod Slashing damage. If the creature is being Grappled by this character through a Large Bite attack, remove the disadvantage caused for escaping the Grapple.

7. Exhaustion and Status Effects

Have your monsters inflict status effects. This is one aspect of D&D many DM's choose to ignore; either they don't want to keep track of every individual status effect on each character, or the effect doesn't have an overbearing impact on the characters.

If you don't want to have anything to do with status effects, skip this section.

If you do, read on.

Make enemies inflict status effects.

That's it. That's all you need to do.

A million low-level monsters that focus exclusively on speed and Grapple.

Wizards that look towards Grease and Proning characters.

Poison. Elemental damage. Flying.

Fear effects and restrictive hallways with few exits.

A goblin that inflicts a single level of Exhaustion is more terrifying than any other creature your players will face.

8. OSR and Unbalancing Your Encounters

To make anything truly terrifying in D&D, you need to be acutely aware that the difficulty is centered around numbers. While I disagree with the notion of having the viewpoint of a cooperative narrative game being solely numbers-driven, it does play a significant role in the game's exploration, skills, and combat. 

One method that helps players start playing a bit more careful is utilizing tricks from the OSR rulebook; random encounters, and mismatched difficulty. 

Random encounters is exactly as it sounds like. Parties will get ambushed when camping out in the middle of the night, or travelling the road. A party can find and open a random dungeon in a tranquil pasture, or investigate a haunted castle where the BBEG resides. What will they will face? Well, thats up to them, you, and mostly the dice.

A common quote is that not every fight is winnable, and sometimes it is better to run than to die.

Random encounter tables force characters to deal with enemies that may be stronger, have more than expected, think about supplies, where they are, and how long they will be travelling,

Also, build scalable dungeons. What I mean is, when you make a dungeon then don't make the entire dungeon custom-built for a certain level. Have some parts of the dungeon be for higher level, some for lower level. Sure, your low level party can choose to leave the dungeon and come back at a higher level when they think they're prepared, risking loot to be taken and more monsters to flood the dungeon, or they could risk going into more dangerous areas for greater reward.

This is more of a design standpoint around dungeons rather than a mechanical improvement, but it fits just the same.

And that's it! You should be ready now to make monsters mechanically scary to your party. 

One thing that also helps (narratively) is to add ambience and weird sound effects. You can always freak people out by playing recordings of chicken noises. Trust me, I've done it before.