I like horror, loved watching horror movies, prefer reading ghost stories and creepypastas as those are the ones that actually get me to look over my shoulder when I am alone. Used to visit Creature Corner website when it was up, collected Fangoria, Cracked Monster Party and so on when I was a kid.
And I do know my limits, some times I try testing them once in a blue moon but often I know I am out of my depth or going too far (or something is handling a situation with butterfingers fingers).

Here's the weird thing is when I was talking to somebody in DnDCirclejerk on Reddit, a subreddit dictated to mocking very out there Dnd and TRPG communities, about the subject of people SAYING they like horror, SAYING they are interested in being scared on some level but in the end turning his game of Vampire The Masquerade into a superhero game instead, this kind of caused me to noticed something.
I joined a Horror lit reddit expecting to talk about horror books, only a good chunk of the topics was about dark fantasy, something about ‘Problematic’ elements of old books, and so much of the recommendations feel like they are more soap operas or John Grisham but with pointer teeth.

I see this a lot in “horror” webcomics, especially focusing on humans, and it was something found in places like Smackjeeves when that was up and now on Webtoon, is often the elements of horror, the fear, the dread, gets pushed back for a BL romance, to the point it feels like the “horror” was false advertisement.

It just brings me to the topic of do people actually like horror?

People do like horror I think. But it's difficult to write good horror. First of all, you have to victimize your characters to a degree and you have to be cruel to them, more or less consistently. That's easier said than done, especially once you get to know them and learn about the variety of things you wish to express through them. Second: in order to give it weight, you need to give them depth, because who cares about some randos in the background, right? But giving them depth, you come to get attached to this and that. That is of course if your horror story has more to offer than some slasher villain or monter killing off your cast one by one. If the story you're telling aims higher than that.

I think horror is more about the mood and aesthetics than writing, but it limits writing a lot. If it's less explicit it can easily pass for a thriller and fan favorite manga / anime that aren't primarily horror can have some of the most memorable horror moments, like Fullmetal Alchemist or Made in Abyss. But these works use horror to give a chilling anything-can-happen / nobody is safe, shockingly dark feeling to their already refined stories. Which is a good way imo to use it.

The single most important asset a horror can utilize is the reader's imagination, turning it “against” them, playing on fears and suspense and only using gore to further that or as some sort of a reward to ease the tension already built up. Where most horror stories fail is that they either suck at building tension / making you invest in the characters or they otherwise lack the qualities to write a good story, that is more than just context and support for the gore they'd present.

Also, it might be just me, but by this point, I think the classic monster-vampire clichés got explored to the point that unless someone can write something amazingly original that steals the show in its own, these by themselves aren't that scary anymore. We've grown culturally accustomed to them to the point where they are a lot more romanticized than feared. If one is primarily interested in telling a love story, it's highly unlikely that they'll bother with building a proper horror atmosphere or going to places that can still shock you. Still, there's blood and murder in it, so they just go with calling it “horror”, which can technically be correct, but people look for different things when approaching the genre. There are exceptions of course, but they're not the rule. That is my two cents on the issue.

IMHO, “true” horror only works as a short novel form, because it is based on mistery and therefore a big reveal at the end, and you can't write a multi-season serie that all turns on a big reveal at the end. For example I love Lovecraft, but he couldn't really write novels, he could only write very long short stories. BTW in terms or tabletop RPGs I think that Call of Cthulhu is a much better horror RPG than Vampires, that is more a dark fantasy one, and the reason is that Call of Cthulhu is more geared towards having the charecters die horribly rather than surviving for the next adventure.

Having lost five characters in my few years playing Call of Cthulhu, the whole point was creating a character that would make it to the next adventure. Had two. The whole thing was not to fight anything, just do the investigation and find the way to close off the portal or whatever without direct confrontation unless you had lots of explosives. I found a way to add some light to the situation to give characters a little bit of a chance. Actually created a group of “gods of light”. Distant and hard to reach without the proper spells but extremely powerful.

That pretty much describes my approach to horror. I like happy endings. I love watching horror and reading horror fiction. (Except Stephen King novels) Short stories work best and you could only have a series like Kolchak the Night Stalker. Each one was a self contained story. It worked because half the show was figuring out what it was and then how to stop it. And sometimes he didn't, he just stopped any chance of future encounters.

Grand series arcs battles of good versus evil are more fantasy than horror. You know what you're fighting unless the horror is extremely multi faceted in which case you're back to episodic short stories.

I first got into writing through fabricating more pleasant conclusions to the horror movies I grew up with in the 1960s-70s. The bad guys kept winning, so I'd work on scenarios where characters could prevail and even rescue what could be retrieved from the previous encounter. That's me. There are horror elements throughout my whole Robofemoid franchise in addition to the pure sci-fi horror of Interstellar Blood Beasts. One theme of horror is the inexorable creeping evil that can engulf you and strip away who you are and make you a part of that evil. Science fiction it'll be aliens or some technological thing. Horror it'll be the supernatural or psychos. And the old dark house or the dark forbidding corridors of a space ship. Isolated, alone and just what can you do?

The long running series are basically fantasy, groups of heroes fighting back the awaken evil and sealing it away for now, and I love that kind of stuff, I would like to do a series like that.
But for horror my favorite kind of horror movies that give me the creeps are anthologies, as it is fast, short and cover the basics quick easily.

I honestly think one huge problem, at least in America because I don't know how they did the cataloguing in other countries (I would like to hear about how this worked in other countries) could have heavily influence what is considered what's what. A thing I remember is there was a lot of urban/dark fantasy being shoved into horror because those genres didn't exist yet, historical fiction like men on horse and swords where the only fantastical thing was changed names of the country was placed into fantasy next to Seven Voyages of Sinbad, stylized gunplay that is more about the nature of life and death goes into action. A Kramer vs Kramer style drama featuring werewolves and vampires would go right into horror under the logic of, “it has monsters, it got to be horror!”

That aside, I do plan on one day making a horror comic styled after those direct to video horror/monster/dark house movies of the 80's/90's. Will it be scary? I don't know, I will try but no promises. I do plan on trying to keep it kind of lean, I do have an ending in mind, and I want to keep it, not short but not an on-going series either.

Also, I tried to read Lovecraft and I like how people used his ideas of horror (Re-animator, Alone in the Dark) but he is just a bog to get through.

Furwerk studio wrote:

I honestly think one huge problem, at least in America because I don't know how they did the cataloguing in other countries (I would like to hear about how this worked in other countries) could have heavily influence what is considered what's what. A thing I remember is there was a lot of urban/dark fantasy being shoved into horror because those genres didn't exist yet, historical fiction like men on horse and swords where the only fantastical thing was changed names of the country was placed into fantasy next to Seven Voyages of Sinbad, stylized gunplay that is more about the nature of life and death goes into action. A Kramer vs Kramer style drama featuring werewolves and vampires would go right into horror under the logic of, “it has monsters, it got to be horror!”

In Italy it was even worse than that, even heroic fantasy wasn't really acknowledged as a genre before the 80s.

Furwerk studio wrote:
Also, I tried to read Lovecraft and I like how people used his ideas of horror (Re-animator, Alone in the Dark) but he is just a bog to get through.

Yes, he really is. He had a very old fashioned, ultra-descriptive style, and often slowed down the action on purpose. Still, he had gread ideas.

Lovecraft was almost the antithesis of Poe. But then he was a lot more descriptive and it could be very explicit. August Derleth and a few others who wrote stories in the Cthulhu mythos were writers with more punch and worth a read.
Remember also that Lovecraft wrote in the 1920s and 30s when such dense prose was a typical style of writing that writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway rebelled against. Pretty sure that Lovecraft styled his prose after Henry James whose “Turn of the Screw ” was nearly unreadable for me.
Three words totally explain the style:
Paid by the word. 😉 ;)

What kind of horror?

Comics, movies, books? Yes love it.

Not sure if there is enough money in my wallet for the bar tab? Nope.

bravo1102 wrote:
Lovecraft was almost the antithesis of Poe. But then he was a lot more descriptive and it could be very explicit. August Derleth and a few others who wrote stories in the Cthulhu mythos were writers with more punch and worth a read.
Remember also that Lovecraft wrote in the 1920s and 30s when such dense prose was a typical style of writing that writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway rebelled against. Pretty sure that Lovecraft styled his prose after Henry James whose “Turn of the Screw ” was nearly unreadable for me.
Three words totally explain the style:
Paid by the word. 😉 ;)

Lovecraft is a famous for his creativity but he was a bad writer. Most of his work is just a wordy description of some ghastly horror. Other writers like RE Howard recognized his talent and presented his ideas i a more digestible format.

I love horror, but I will take Dracula over Friday the 13th.