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[firecat]

Today's great thread on fictional_fans discusses what counts as horror:

https://fictional-fans.dreamwidth.org/62889.html

My comment (very rambly and poorly written):

There are many different kinds of horror. I think some are fun and some are "huh?" and some are "no way am I going there."

For example one of my "huh?" types is certain kinds of body horror. I remember reading a Simon R Green story where at one point a house turns all squishy and mucusy, and I'm like "why is this horrific?" Maybe I have cleaned too many cat cages at the animal shelter, but body productions don't really horrify me. But Simon R Green does other kinds of horror that work for me (e.g., characters that the protagonist has to deal with to achieve a goal, but they are dangerous and unpredictable).

One thing that distinguishes horror from other fiction for me is that a world that feels chaotic and semi-inexplicable feels horrific in a way that, say, science fiction or fantasy where there are understandable rules for how the world works does not.

I'm especially noticing this now, because I've stopped being able to read horror (sorry, N. K. Jemisin's new series), and I think it's because the world feels too chaotic to me right now.

The "chaotic and semi-inexplicable" definition might explain why some typical horror tropes done in certain ways don't read as horror to me. For example, Mira Grant's Feed doesn't, because although zombies are a horror trope, her world makes a lot of sense. People know how the zombies work, how the infection is passed on. If the plot turns on "we know how things work, but we run out of resources to deal with them," that's not horror to me, it's something else.

Anyway, this all works out to my not being able to rely on a genre label to tell whether I'll react to something as horror or as something else.

Comments

[ironed_orchid]

Thanks for linking to an interesting discussion!

I find my tolerance for stuff has changed as I get older. I have much less tolerance for gore than I did in my teens and early 20s, but I can deal with it in certain contexts better than others.

I find that zombies usually work for me when they are a metaphor for something, and this is clearly the case in Feed as well as in Romero movies, and I like zombies in some comedies like Santa Clarita Diet . But in some media, it feels like zombies are used for their own sake, or for pure grossness/fear, and that doesn't work for me.

[firecat]

I have more tolerance for gore than I used to. I usually don't like it, but it doesn't nope me out.

Good distinctions among the various uses of the zombie trope.