On Cannibals

Here comes the morbidity, ladies and gents. When it comes to monsters and horror tropes, there really isn't that much that beats the more human threats. Werewolves, vampires and the undead only really go so far for us. And let's be honest: people are fond of humanizing these creatures so that we can either A: relate or B: fear better.

For example. Twilight is really popular because Meyer decided to use the term "vampire" on an immortal, sparkling pasty man who has trouble showing emotion. A far cry from the original vampire: a romantic, charismatic foreigner with a sinister air about him with limitations and rules he has to follow. I'd elaborate about vampire allegories, but one of my friends, Term, is creating a presentation on the history of vampires in popular culture.

As for B, zombies and the undead are feared because of the Uncanny Valley. They were once human, but are now feral, carnivorous husks of people: mindless, autonomous beasts. Zombies are at the juncture in the Uncanny Valley where we recognize them as almost perfectly human in form, but the fear comes from the fact that they aren't human in mind, emotion and reason because those simply cannot apply.

This is where cannibals come in. Humans eating humans because of insanity, necessity or sadism. Cannibals are essentially the perfectly human enemy because they're the closest they can be to an average person. You hear about Dahmer and Albert Fish and things like that, and people never found out what they did because they were just so goddamn normal. Y'know, you see a man on the news who kept a schoolgirl's corpse wrapped in Squeeze-Cheese and taped to the ceiling and his neighbors are like "He was such a normal guy. Always cooking for us, making his special barbecues, and never made any hassle except for the weird smells". Cannibals are the perfect thing to fear for me because they're human, plain and simple.

So that's why I'm making the token cannibal clan as the introductory enemies for the beginning of the BESM Space Campaign. And sure, it'll be easy for me to just coat 'em in blood, shave their heads and make them seem creepy and incestuous. But I'm not gonna take that route. Call it weird, but I pride myself on making complicated human enemies. They're not the type to dance around under the full moon and brandish weapons as the heroes cook. They may be cannibals, but they are a family. And I think that making them a bit more complex and engaging than "EAT MEAT! WANT MEAT NOW!" just makes them scarier and gives the players a better chance to develop what kind of people their characters are. Though at this point I only know there's going to be a xenobiologist who misuses his pets for profit and a cultured man wearing a damn-near indestructible NBC/Spacesuit hybrid. Ah well. Let's see how it turns out.