Carnby Kim and the I.F. Threshold
Through many years of avid reading, I’ve never had a favorite author. I adore many books, but few authors have produced multiple literary books I can proudly label as some of my favorites. As a storyteller and writer, I understand that this is because creativity can be spontaneous; the flash of inspiration that shapes one’s magnum opus cannot be easily reproduced by even the most skilled of storytellers. Many of us storytellers can identify with struggling to continue writing better stories. We often cultivate excellent writing skills, like character development and worldbuilding, but can’t capture the same novelty of previous work. Notwithstanding, Carnby Kim, creator of webtoons Bastard, Sweet Home, Pigpen, Shotgun Boy, and Flawed Almighty has cemented himself as my favorite author with his Midas touch.
I place Kim’s Bastard and Sweet Home in my top 10 list of book series, but his other three webtoons are nothing to scoff at. Although I haven’t finished Pigpen, Shotgun Boy, or Flawed Almighty, they could each be argued to be a masterpiece in their own right. To reiterate, Carnby Kim has consecutively published five masterpieces. I haven’t even read the work that he hasn’t published on Webtoon, meaning this list could be longer. To say I’m impressed would be an understatement.
Kim’s work typically portrays society as a dark, despairing hell from which there is little respite. He excels in crafting exhilarating plots that continue to surprise readers and push their complex, lifelike characters to gripping lengths. The facet of his style that intrigues me the most, however, is his use of what I call the I.F. Threshold.
The I.F. in the phrase stands for Infinitam Facultatem, which is Latin for “infinite power” or “infinite ability”. It’s the concept of a boundary from which nothing about the world can be certain again—an epistemic hellscape. To illustrate, imagine that you’re in your room and an apparition appears, bestowing a teleportation ability upon you. You pinch yourself to ascertain consciousness and test the ability, which miraculously and instantaneously transports you to the grocery store as envisioned. Most of us would perceive the situation as a triumph and perhaps caution not to exploit the ability or be discovered using it. However, such an occurrence that defies the fundamental laws of physics (and/or whichever systems you hold apodictic) is simultaneously one of the greatest forms of horror and an epistemic crisis. Breaching the I.F. Threshold means that anything could happen. Anything. Today you might be teleporting around having fun, but who’s to say that your head won’t explode or that aliens won’t obliterate the planet? Existing principles of epistemology—both scientific and spiritual—surely don’t.
Lovecraftian horror thrives on the I.F. Threshold. Sweet Home in particular constantly employs the I.F. Threshold to evoke a sense of dread as its traumatized characters face horrifying, powerful monstrosities and grope around a world with new unknowns. We’re all familiar with the anxiety of walking downstairs in the dark. Our primordial fear of the unknown, the lingering trepidation that something that defies logic is after us, is terrifying. The breach of an I.F. Threshold realizes this diuretic nightmare.
Furthermore, Kim isolates his characters in enclosed worlds. The same small worlds that bring comfort and reaffirm our priorities in a slice-of-life series (see here) enshroud Kim’s worlds in fear. In Bastard, Jin Seon’s financial dependence on his serial killer father in tandem with his desire to protect his classmate traps him in fear. In Sweet Home and Shotgun Boy, the claustrophobia stems from the apprehension that the characters may never be saved from the monster apocalypse. In Pigpen, the boundaries of the island and the protagonist’s abject lack of information create an analogous feeling. Curiously, Flawed Almighty elicits a sense of confinement by confining its protagonist to his newfound duties. His fetter to the task of filling other people’s wishes also questions if he can change as a person.
The breach of the I.F. Threshold has remained a staple of the horror genre but also has grave implications for politics and academia. Yes, the global political climate and academia have regularly adjusted to disruptions that recontextualize the reality we live in. For instance, the theory of general relativity completely reframed physics and lead to a nuclear threat that features in modern geopolitics. That said, the breach of the I.F. Threshold carries a gravity of its own; it nearly invalidates all existing knowledge with new findings incongruous from the very fundamentals of our conceptualization of reality. Instead of a nuke, imagine that an omnipotent deity materializes in the White House and asks to play chess with Joe Biden. Suddenly, humanity would be faced with discoveries so ridiculous that they defy all forms of reason. It seems farcical, yet remarkable advancements in science and technology serve as a reminder that we could one day face realities unbound by the limits of our comprehension.
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