Afterword Fave (Interviewee)

After thinking more about GeoH3x’s videos, I wanted to share an observation from our discussion. The television screen reads to me as a liminal space where otherworldly entities can pass through. It seems only observable to viewers whose mental state is altered, especially by sleep deprivation, which leads to perceptions that feel like hallucinations.

The cozy and nostalgic late 90s to early 2000s living room, with its specific furniture and glow, feels like an allegory for the subconscious and the conscious mind, particularly during the transition from one to the other. I keep coming back to the idea that one of the main themes of GeoH3x’s work is exactly this liminal space that bridges dreams and reality. Even in the latest video, we see Salem drifting toward sleep before being jolted awake by knocking at the door at the top of the staircase (video).

In my past, I studied the process of sleep and the stages of REM and deeper dreaming, largely because I dealt with repeated sleep paralysis when I was growing up. That run of episodes eventually ended with a demonic visit during one of the last ones. With that background, this thematic reading feels right to me and only deepens my love for the channel.

Author (Interviewer)

VHS-style aesthetics remind me of my family’s home videos. We had a handicam for a year or two, and because I was very young, those tapes are the only way I have memories of myself from that period. They sit like an island within the swath of time that is usually lost. Now there are phones everywhere and social media (which I distance myself from). It can produce a crystal-clear, 4K image of an idyllic childhood because it tends to present only the best moments. The grain, errors, and distortion were part of the home video itself, the medium-specific noise we mentioned in the paper. Our handicam clips were never more than a few minutes at a time, but they were enough for those scenes to feel like real memories. My mind rebuilt the rest from what the footage gave me.

In that sense, this PS1 art style recreates the aesthetic of a bygone era. Much like the tapes recovering memories for me, today’s low poly (and VHS) textures are a purposeful attempt to recover that era. It is the same era we explored in this document, and it is wonderful to see it lovingly rebuilt by fans, in interpretations that range from cozy to creepy, or even toe the line in between.