An precise illustration from Dot and Tot in Merryland. Not creepy in any respect. ​
Going All the way down to Clown City​
The First Valley is the Valley of Clowns, dominated by the sweet-voiced Prince Flippityflop. The day by day routine of the Valley of Clowns is characterised by a misleading, hyperactive cheerfulness. The clown residents observe their athletic routines on the roofs of their houses and carry out all day alongside a foremost road lined with padded platforms. These delicate platforms be sure that the performers by no means undergo bodily harm once they fall; as an alternative, they merely bounce again up, laughing manicly at their very own mishaps.
At evening, the bushes all through the road are illuminated by sensible electrical lights to make sure the performances are clearly seen to spectators. But, on the exact toll of a night bell, the clowns instantly dive into trapdoors constructed into the tops of their platforms to fall asleep. Prince Flippityflop’s personal dwelling, accessed by opening a trapdoor with a silken strap on his efficiency platform, is an underground chamber draped in bright-yellow silk hangings. This subterranean dwelling incorporates a crimson carpet, purple velvet cushions, a blue and silver desk, and portraits of his ancestors—all earlier princes and intelligent clowns. Flippityflop welcomes guests by declaring that the clowns are at all times in service to youngsters, prompting your entire populace to face on their heads and tinkle the silver bells wrapped round their ankles. Nonetheless, the Prince additionally dryly notes that one can not count on knowledge in a rustic of clowns. This whimsy hides a darkish secret: every year, precisely one clown is completely dispatched from the valley to the skin world to work in a circus.
Issues can go two methods right here: enjoyable or creepy. What was enjoyable within the early twentieth century is now creepy; even the pictures of the clowns in Dot and Tot has a touch of menace. So what if we made the Valley of Clowns a horror present?
The Final Harlequin​
Thomas Ligotti’s April 1990 Lovecraftian quick story, “The Final Feast of Harlequin,” first revealed in The Journal of Fantasy & Science Fiction, incorporates a social anthropologist who travels to the city of Mirocaw to check its annual three-day December pageant. Mirocaw is cut up into two distinct, hostile citizenries: the usual populace and a marginalized underclass related to sad-faced clowns. In the course of the pageant, these clowns are publicly humiliated and bodily abused by the townsfolk, a ritual born of communal reminiscence. The anthropologist finally witnesses a pickup truck gathering the clowns and transporting them to an underground community of tunnels. In these pitch-black chambers, a cult devoted to a subterranean creature generally known as “the worm” participates in a ceremonial merging, feasting on a sacrificial Winter Queen. The story concludes with the horrifying psychological revelation that the narrator isn’t an goal observer, however has at all times been considered one of them.
For a Dungeons & Dragons marketing campaign, that is a straightforward change: the annual dispatch of a single clown to the skin world is not a circus profession placement, however a calculated effort by the subterranean worm cult to seed its corruption throughout the Materials Airplane. Prince Flippityflop’s ancestral portraits characterize the lineage of earlier excessive clergymen who served the worm.
One thing Depraved​
The whimsical environment of the First Valley rapidly curdles into psychological dread when infused with the corrupting affect of Cooger & Darkish’s Pandemonium Shadow Present. In Baum’s unique textual content, the clowns are trapped in a cycle of countless, necessary foolishness, performing methods and consuming nonsensical meals just because it’s the regulation of their land. Below the affect of One thing Depraved This Approach Comes, this innocent demand for comedy turns into a grueling curse. The valley’s calliope music performs at an agonizingly gradual tempo, mechanically driving the clowns’ exhausted our bodies to flip, tumble, and scream out hole punchlines towards their will. Their painted smiles disguise cracked lips and weeping eyes, reworking a sunny valley of performers right into a waking nightmare the place the carnival’s sinister forces feed on their complete exhaustion and hidden despair.
Into this setting steps a determine modeled after the Illustrated Man, a Ringmaster whose flesh shifts with dwelling tattoos of the clowns’ failed performances and deepest regrets. Reasonably than consuming fried goldfish out of sheer silliness, the clowns are actually compelled to devour their very own bitter recollections, retaining them completely subservient to the carnival’s whims. The enduring carousel from Bradbury’s lore sits on the lifeless middle of the valley, its calliope gears grinding loudly. On this twisted model of Merryland, the experience provides a terrifying temptation to guests. Surrounded by the suffocating, manic absurdity of the clowns, the PCs are tempted by the Ringmaster to experience the carousel ahead or backwards in time, getting older or de-aging them (a whole journey might be hand with the PCs battling to revive themselves from historic age or youth).
They All Float​
The cheerful, compelled foolishness of Baum’s First Valley undergoes an much more grotesque transformation when contaminated by the cosmic horror of Stephen King’s IT. Within the unique textual content of Dot and Tot in Merryland, the clowns exist in an remoted ecosystem of ceaseless efficiency, however Pennywise twists this right into a literal looking floor. The brilliant, sunny valley turns into suffering from an unnatural fog smelling of iron and stagnant river water, with the cheerful calliope music slowing to a rhythmic heartbeat that echoes from the valley’s drains and sewer grates. The clowns themselves are not simply drained performers; they’ve turn out to be hollowed-out thralls of the entity, their eyes gleaming with a predatory yellow gentle behind their painted faces. Their necessary methods turn out to be jerky and violent, they usually not eat pickled shoelaces out of innocence, however quite to imitate the act of consuming prey, whispering terrifying insider secrets and techniques about Dot and Tot’s private fears as they tumble previous.
Pennywise manifests not simply as a singular monster, however because the very material of the valley itself, manipulating the guests’ sensory actuality. The entity exploits the inherent creepiness of a land completely populated by silent, staring performers, utilizing the clowns as a collective hive-mind to nook the PCs. The purple balloon turns into a recurring omen of doom, drifting lazily towards the Merryland sky, carrying the severed, floating heads of clowns who dared to cease smiling. When Pennywise lastly steps ahead in his most popular type, he masterfully blends into Baum’s world by providing the last word phantasm of security—inviting them to hitch a circus the place nobody ever has to develop up, dealing with the tough realities of the skin world, as a result of down within the valley, “all of them float.”
Clowning Round​
Relating to clown horror, there is no scarcity of inspiration. Terrifier has Artwork the Clown: He blends seamlessly into the gang of performers at first, however his make-up is a stark, monochromatic black-and-white, missing the cheerful main colours of the opposite residents. The horror of Artwork’s presence lies within the abrupt escalation from playful mockery to mindless, visceral brutality; a clown who seems to be pulling a innocent prank all of the sudden reveals a rusty hacksaw or a bag of crude weapons.
Integrating Eli Roth’s Clown introduces a body-horror tragedy centered round a demonic curse embedded within the very identification of the valley. On this model, the clown outfits and painted faces worn by the inhabitants will not be clothes or make-up, however the parasitic pores and skin and hair of an historic demon referred to as the “Cloyne.” The valley acts as a visible lure: the clowns are desperately making an attempt to claw the colourful ruffs from their necks and scrub the greasepaint from their faces, just for their precise flesh to tear away with it. Because the curse progresses, the clowns’ personalities are completely consumed by the demon’s insatiable starvation for kids. On this regard the clowns are primarily lycanthropes, able to infecing PCs who placed on even the slightest make-up (or by chance smear clown greasepaint on them in comba).
The introduction of components from American Horror Story: Freak Present splits the valley into two warring factions of performers: those that are desperately making an attempt to keep up the pure, harmless traditions of Merryland, and a deformed group led by a silent, hulking determine (Twisty the Clown) with a horrific jaw harm hidden behind a smiling prosthetic masks. This faction of “damaged” clowns would not need to carry out; they need revenge on a world that rejected them, kidnapping guests to create their very own twisted viewers.
The Present Should Go On…​
A part of the attraction of clown horror is distinction with normalcy. A whole valley of clowns can virtually be boring if overplayed; hiding a rotten underbelly makes it extra attention-grabbing … and doubtlessly extra horrific. Introducing adults (together with the PCs) offers an opportunity for the clowns to be heroic … or present what each horror film warned us about.
Your Flip: What media do you utilize as inspiration for clown horror?
