Not A Bot, Just A Lurker

Not a bot, just a lurker

[torstherapy]

[captain-price-returns]

[wordpress-blaze-187510332]

Horror Subgenres Explained: A Beginner's Guide to the Many Faces of Fear

The Many Tales of Terror

I've said this many times and I'll keep saying it -- horror is the most diverse genre out there. There are dozens, if not hundreds (or even thousands!) of subgenres and ways to divide up the genre. And that means there is absolutely a subgenre for everyone. Whether it's a spooky midnight tale, a bloody mess of flesh and limbs, a tongue-in-cheek perspective on the world, or a mystery waiting to be solved, every subgenre has something special about it that keeps fans coming back. Below is a non-exhaustive list of horror subgenres outlining what makes that topic tick. Seasoned horror fans can browse it to start a new chapter in their horror fandom, and people new to the scary stuff can use it to help them find what they love.

Slasher

Defining Characteristics: A (probably) human killer, high body count, creative kills, the "Final Girl"

Common Themes: Youth culture (decade-dependent), moral panic, survival, revenge

Starter Films: Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream

Why Fans Love It: Slashers are a favorite and arguably one of the most recognizable subgenres of horror. The villain is memorable and chase scenes are top tier. And now that Slashers are a solid, constant choice to watch, audience participation is added to the mix; how many times have you screamed "Don't go in there!" or "He's behind you!" at your screen?

Supernatural Horror

Defining Characteristics: Ghosts, possessions, paranormal activity, curses, objects moving without anyone touching them

Common Themes: Life after death, religious conflict

Starter Films: The Ring, Poltergeist, The Shining

Why Fans Love It: We will likely never know what happens after we die, and that leads us straight into fear of the unknown. Oftentimes supernatural horror movies involve an extremely atmospheric setting, sometimes with fog or darkened hallways. A lingering dread is thick in the air as you wait, frightened, for an unseen force about to attack.

Psychological Horror

Defining Characteristics: Gaslighting, unreliable narrators, blurred reality, highly emotional/stressful situations

Common Themes: Isolation, identity, obsession, madness

Starter Films: The Babadook, Jacob's Ladder

Why Fans Love It: No one wants to be proven to be crazy, right? Psychological movies poke and prod at that thing we call a brain and beg the question "Is what you're seeing really there?" Perhaps you will guess the ending, but more often you're left with a major twist.

Found Footage

Defining Characteristics: Handheld perspective, faux realism, minimalist filmmaking, literally "found" and played back for an audience

Common Themes: Authenticity, voyeurism

Starter Films: The Blair Witch Project, Hell House LLC, Cloverfield

Why Fans Love It: Found Footage (or "POV") films are highly immersive and a great escape from the more fantastical subgenres because they offer the most real depictions of what a horror movie could be like (besides documentaries). By forcing the audience perspective through the camera lens themselves, viewers become part of the story -- and are also unable to look away.

Folk Horror

Defining Characteristics: Ancient traditions, rural settings, isolated communities, Paganism

Common Themes: Nature, tradition, communal pressures

Starter Films: The Witch, The Wicker Man, Midsommar

Why Fans Love It: Folk horror lulls you into a false sense of security with beautiful settings and family structures that don't actually have your best interests in mind. Ancient powers are at hand, and a slow-building dread soon covers the surface. You have no escape -- there's a reason these traditions have lasted millennia.

Anthology Horror

Defining Characteristics: Self-contained/episodic stories, multiple stories in one movie, framing/wraparound narrative

Common Themes: Literally any and all of them, depends on the overarching theme of the movie

Starter Films: Creepshow, V/H/S, Tales of Halloween, Trick 'r Treat, Black Sabbath

Why Fans Love It: One of my favorites, Anthologies offer the most variety in a feature-length setting. They often feature bite-sides scares with shorter stories, always leaving you wanting more. For this reason, Anthologies are a great entry point for newbies to horror.

Body Horror

Defining Characteristics: Physical transformation, mutation or disease, loss of bodily autonomy

Common Themes: Illness, identity, control

Starter Films: The Fly, Videodrome, The Substance

Why Fans Love It: Body horror makes people squirm because we can identify with pain and transformation (on some level, at least). Though many Body horror movies have exaggerated, impossible outcomes, we can safely explore real-world anxieties through them.

Creature Features

Defining Characteristics: Monsters or animals, predatory threats, survival

Common Themes: Nature striking back, fear of predators, human audacity vs. nature's supremacy

Starter Films: Jaws, Alien, Tremors

Why Fans Love It: Like Slashers, Creature Features have thrills and kills. Always with a memorable creature design, scares range from normal (but oversized) animals to completely alien monstrosities, making us scared of the wild once again.

Mystery Horror

Defining Characteristics: The mysterious (obviously), investigation, puzzles

Common Themes: Secrets, conspiracies, hidden identities

Starter Films: The Others, The Changeling, Session 9

Why Fans Love It: Often intertwined with Psychological horror, Mystery horror lets fans explore horror through thought. Being able to solve puzzles and figure out the issue before they die is key. This also encourages rewatches, as after the ending is revealed, viewers can watch again under a new light.

Horror Comedy

Defining Characteristics: Blending scares and laughs, self-aware tone, parodies/satire

Common Themes: Social commentary, celebration of common horror tropes

Starter Films: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Deadstream, Cooties,

Why Fans Love It: Horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin: both rely heavily on timing. Horror-comedies not only provide a safe outlet to talk about social (and often taboo) commentary, but make it fun at the same time. You can be scared one moment and release tension with a joke the next, or vice versa with jumpscares being more effective when you're not expecting them.

Zombies/Infected

Defining Characteristics: The dead (duh!) but also those who are "infected"

Common Themes: Disease, mob mentality, survival (more so against other humans, rather than the zombies themselves)

Starter Films: Night of the Living Dead, 28 Days Later, World War Z

Why Fans Love It: Everyone likes to think they'd survive a Zombie apocalypse, but that's highly dependent on what kind of zombies they are. We have walkers, runners, infected, voodoo zombies, and many other kinds, giving a sort of sub-sub-genre authority to Zombie films.

Celia's Personal Horror Sub-Genre Analysis

My most common viewing habits and subgenres: Supernatural, Folk, J-horror, Anthologies, Psychological, Halloween-based, nostalgia (primarily 90s)

Common Themes: Atmosphere over gore, mystery over action, dread over shock, folklore, curses, the unknown. Horror that stays with you long after the credits roll.

What I Tend to Lean Towards: Looking at my own viewing habits, I tend to gravitate toward atmospheric horror, particularly supernatural stories, Japanese horror, folk horror, and anthologies; this doubles if it's also centered around Halloween or the general Fall time. While I enjoy a good slasher or creature feature from time to time, the movies that stay with me are usually the ones built on mystery, dread, and the fear of the unknown. The older I get, the more I realize that what scares me isn't necessarily what jumps out from the shadows -- it's what lingers there long after the movie ends.

Source: Horror Subgenres Explained: A Beginner's Guide to the Many Faces of Fear

[captain-price-returns]

[interquad]

Super disappointing to finally see artwork accurately representing my body and realize it’s being reposted on subreddits like “awful taste but great execution” and “diwhy” :( Like this is so cool

(Note- none of the people reposting it to make fun are posting a source and I haven’t been able to find one after an hour of searching, so I can’t say for certain what the artist’s intentions are/if it’s intended to be about intersex genitals or embryonic genital development or both)

[bogeyworman]

The artist is Sonia Rose aka Rose Grown. It is captioned "Biology is not binary".

Sonia Rose (@rosegrown) • Instagram photos and videos

152K Followers, 676 Following, 550 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Sonia Rose (@rosegrown)

@interquad

[viewtiful-kim-deactivated202105]

Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube

[animatedamerican]

… I am unironically here for this

[oldfilmsflicker]

this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life

[kabesattic]

This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?

Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.

So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.

[spicedtealeaves]

A post about this went round recently, and I’m delighted to announce she’s since come out as trans and goes by Jasmine 🏳️‍⚧️

Jasmine Brimsmayd

Actor and Writer

There’s a whole series of the Hamlet videos on her YouTube, as well as a bunch of other films she’s made

[kingpin-of-steel-act3]

[ihatenearlyeverything]

its ok theyre Gods lil helpers

[oatmealbrain]

And boy are they clumsy

[hydrangeafae]

Hi, these bees are babies! They’re not clumsy at all, this is what is called orientation flights. After birth and before beginning their careers as foragers (as all Honey bees cycle through all the jobs in the Hive throughout their lifespan), Honey bees take short flights back and forth, to and from the Hive, to orient themselves with their wings and their home so they can learn its location and how to get back home after foraging! Everyone has to learn, these are just smol little baby turkeys. Bees use the angle of the sun for location so adults have a better and more direct sense of location than any human

[polar-solstice]

IM SO PLEASED TO LEARN THIS!!!

They are just!!! Student drivers!!! 😭

[sindri42]

BONK!

[should-be-sleeping]

[explicitlyrics]

many on here need to be learning this lesson

[lutalical]

[vraska-theunseen]

DID YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU CAN DO WHATEVER UOU WANT WHEN YOURW MAKING ART ISNT THAT WILD

[vraska-theunseen]

i have no defense against this. you've got me

[delinquentbookworm]

one time I went over to a friend's house and their housemate was making paper in the living room, and we saw this big tub full of water they were using to dissolve old scrap paper into a slurry, and everyone was immediately like "oh, you need scrap paper?" and started turning out their jacket pockets and producing expired coupons and bus tickets and crumpled receipts and old shopping lists and whatever else they'd been carrying round with them for no good reason, and passing it all to the paper-making housemate to make sure it was suitable before it got torn up and dropped into the tub, while people took turns stirring the slurry with a big wooden stick. it was strangely ritualistic, like presenting an offering to some kind of temple elder for inspection before placing it in a watery shrine to be devoured and reformed. pulp for the pulp god.

[badassdemonsword]

You couldnt come up with a jollier name for a bird if you tried

[minmos]

this thang has one of my favorite ebird descriptions of all time

[innerchildabortionclinic]

interesting kink assortment on the dash

[blackjame]

[mulchmouth]

Im going to hold your hand when I say this. It is not realistic to expect yourself or your family to be able to survive solely off of food you have foraged or grown in a garden. People with more knowledge and experience have tried and failed. What do you think happened to all of those communes in the 60s? Most of them failed. Famine and malnutrition have been constant companions to humanity until industrialized farming and food supply lines came along.

It feels like a uniquely American capitalist take to assume these traditions will make you completely self sufficient. You need a lot of people, a lot of time, a lot of knowledge across a lot of subjects, and a lot of luck to provide for everyone's nutritional needs.

So should you even bother trying to be more self sufficient with your food? I argue yes. Foraging and gardening are fun and will teach you so much about many things. They are deeply rewarding activities that can supplement your diet. There are herbs I haven't bought in years because I grow my own. There are dishes I can only make with foraged ingredients because I can't get them in stores.

You may not have the power to do everything, but that doesn't mean your efforts are wasted. Getting 5% of your nutritional needs from food you have grown or foraged, even for a season, is a massive accomplishment.

[mulchmouth]

I still have this post muted, but there was something I wanted to add.

There are a number of people asking about what do we do if the food supply lines breakdown? The simple answer is A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO DIE.

Not all land is tillable, not all harvests go well, there are so many areas ravaged by ecological disaster after ecological disaster they cannot support enough biodiversity presently to support us. Even the people who right now who live entirely off of what they and their community grow and harvest from the wild are probably uncomfortable with the idea of having zero back up plan if there is a bad season.

Does that mean learning how to grow food, forage, or hunt are meaningless? Absolutely not. Learning these skills now does make you more self sufficient, it reconnects you to the food web, and it will absolutely make you more aware of what industrialized food supply lines offer. These are good, rewarding, and meaningful skills to have that often align with many people's personal values. I may not get along with my MAHA in laws, but we are always excited to give each other garden updates and share our harvests when we can.

That is all basically just a rehash of the first post. I truthfully cannot dismiss the anxiety people have about supply line failures. I remember during covid lock down when it was hard to just get flour and toilet paper, let alone fresh produce.

So what would I recommend people do with that anxiety? Find community.

You are never going to survive the apocalypse on your own, that is a myth. Humans are a social species. We evolved to help each other, we have survived because we help each other. Even in hunter gatherer societies, trade was a massive, massive benefit that kept people from dying of malnutrition.

If it's any consolation, I really doubt that society is going to crumble over night. You may as well plan for the rapture happening. At least in the states, I think it's much more likely we are going to face rising food costs, and have highly questionable food safety standards. Learning how to garden, forage, or hunt with a community is a much more reliable safety net.

I'm not saying any of this to demotivate people, I'm in fact trying to do the opposite. YES, learn how to make a charcoal filter for water. YES, learn how to grow your favorite herbs. YES, learn about the plants and animals in your area and how to responsibly harvest them. And if you want these foods to be a bigger part of your diet that is awesome! Maybe find or form a community with the same goal so you can all pool your resources together.

[soup-mother]

Sober as fuck at the back of the club going onto Wikipedia and typing "List of birds"

[kuttithevangu]

Being a calm, gentle, non-reactive person is really hard work, which is probably why many people are none of these things. Personally I think it’s worth it but sometimes one does want to just roll around on the floor wailing at the top of one’s lungs

[kuttithevangu]

People in my notes who think I’m repressed or dissociating: you will feel better when you learn emotions are not a binary of Not Feeling It vs Being Overwhelmed By It

[blorbospinninhouseplant]

Ok but How Do I Do That

[kuttithevangu]

Self-regulation for adults: Strategies for getting a handle on emotions and behavior - Harvard Health

Learn strategies for enhancing self-regulation skills, and discover the benefits of mastering this essential life skill to help emotional dy

There are many techniques (also, there are drugs)

[kuttithevangu]

Emotional Regulation: 5 Evidence-Based Regulation Techniques

Emotional regulation is about managing emotions to maintain balance.

A little meatier than the Harvard page but covering the same ground. These pages will give you additional phrases to google for advice