Substack post

Over the last 18 or so months I’ve been trying to read more ‘horror’, and I’ve mostly been disappointed by what I’ve read. This post is an exploration of my experiences, what types of experiences I’m looking for when I think ‘horror’, and what kinds of books seem to give me that experience.

In my post about what I read in December 2022 I mentioned ‘cognitive horror’ as possibly the best descriptor of what kinds of horror brings me enjoyable experiences (as in, a feeling of creeped out-ness and, well, horror). Most of what is in this post I first sent in messages to some close friends, before realising that I could probably benefit from reflecting about it some more and writing about it. Content Warning: talking about depictions of rape, and other things. There will also be more descriptive passages of “weirder” body horror and other horror.

This came to a head this Christmas break when I read two modern horror collections, as well as the ‘weird horror’ classic “The King in Yellow”. Though I enjoyed the genuinely weird and horrific parts of the King in Yellow, most of it did not capture me. After watching some Youtube videos on it later, it seems that King in Yellow was something that captured the minds of some authors (and it was a “universe” which was later built upon) even though it itself was fairly contained and placid.

I’m also going to preface this part with a list of books that might be mentioned in this post, or which in some way illustrate a point I will be making: Books where I’ve found the horror lacking and/or the book was otherwise also just bad:

Beneath the Rising, Ghouljaw, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, The King in Yellow (less so than the others, this was genuinely weird at times), Blood Will Have its Season. Books where I have at times been genuinely grossed out/had bodily reactions to things described in them:
Pale, Ward, There is no Antimemetics Division, Uzumaki, The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Regardless, the two short story collections were hugely disappointing, and I will here try to explain how and why. The titular story of “Blood Will Have Its Season” was about a man raping his underage daughter, and there was also a story about a man raping and murdering his way across the US in search of some woman. I did not find either of those stories to be either in good taste, scary/horrific, nor good. There were some okay passages at some points but they mostly just felt uninspired.

I have been perceiving a pattern where anything that’s i) even slightly grotesque or off-putting, ii) written in a slightly obtuse style - most often just badly difficult to read -, and iii) the main character is ostensibly either mentally ill and/or under unclear influence, being labelled as existential horror. These are not the things I look for when I look for existential horror.

Similarly with body horror: the things I described above are horrific experiences, but in a piece of fiction writing that has strong (but obtuse and badly written) allusions to the supernatural it is possible to write something more compelling than “man with slightly distorted grip on reality thinks thing to do is rape women”. It seems almost like “perpetrate sexual violence” is the first and worst idea that comes to the mind of the author when creating a mentally unstable character. And I’m not saying that’s categorically wrong in all instances, just that what I read, and especially in those two collections, was doing it badly. After all, the eldritch creatures causing these distortions are just humans in funny suits.

Contrast these horror tales with things that I find to in fact be genuinely horrifying. In Wildbow’s work there are a lot of examples I could draw from. There are times when I have physically SQUIRMED when reading Wildbow serials. Take it as indicative that none of these will be from Twig, a serial inspired by the original horror story: Frankenstein. Twig has a lot of body horror, in a world where everyone does Dr. Frankenstein-like modifications on poor unwitting urchins. Anyways, slight Ward spoilers (doesn’t spoil Worm nor Ward plot points): In the opening arc of Ward there’s a villain called Nursery. Her power is to infuse the area around her, slowly creating out of it a “womb”, infested with pustules that after some time spawn various goblin-likes. She has taken hostage a building and is slowly creating out of it a horror house our protagonist has to walk through to reach Nursery. As time passes, and they get closer to Nursery, more and more creatures start to literally appear out of the woodwork, still covered in amniotic-like fluid, and the walls and corridors start looking more and more like the insides of someone’s intestines or womb. In this passage, there’s a clear progression where the characters are slowly becoming detached from normal reality, they wonder whether Nursery can control their entire environment, and what/which of their senses they can control. No one is deranged just for the sake of introducing an unreliable narrator, the environment the characters are moving in makes the narration unreliable in and of itself.

The other clear example of horror I’ve enjoyed was “There is No Anti-Memetics Division”, which I don’t want to divulge any details of because of how short and easy-to-read it is. Please, take a couple of hours/days to read it yourself, you will not regret it: https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/antimemetics-division-hub.

There is No Anti-Memetics Division probably represents the core of what types of horror I enjoy. There are other things, which e.g. the Ward passage above describes that are also similar to normal horror, and I still enjoyed that, but Anti-Memetics brings forward some things that much improve the odds of me enjoying a horror bit. And those core things is what I would call “cognitive horror”.

But before I get to that I want to talk about what I actually dislike about the horror collections previously mentioned. Why did I feel the need to write out my thoughts like this? Over the course of messaging with my friends I came to the conclusion that I was disappointed - and maybe even annoyed - that this material was what was called existential/body horror (these days), because of the reasons i)-iii) listed earlier. These collections felt like badly written true crime with a sprinkling of mental illness and obtuse writing. They did not evoke any feelings of the unknowable, or make me imagine fleshy corridors pulsing with grotesque, supernatural un-life. They were just kind of mundane stories about people doing bad things. But those bad things were, of course, in the context of normal life, pretty horrific. So why wasn’t I horrified?

For one, I think that with the two stories from Blood Will Have its Season that I talked about earlier (the incest one and the “rape across America” one), they were mostly told from the perspective of the man perpetrating the acts. And acting like that isn’t a thing that grosses me out. Acting like that isn’t a thing I would find horrific because it’s so far from my lived experience that just being “in the head” of those men did not produce a horrific experience in me. And I can imagine ways it would have, I’m not saying there are no human mind-configurations that would be, just that I wasn’t. For me, I think I would be way more affected if the story was told from a different perspective, like the daughter’s.

Second, and now we’re getting onto why I like Wildbow and qntm’s stuff, those authors actually give their characters agency while horrific things are happening to them. In the novella collections I didn’t like, the characters just…do stuff??..because reasons??? Where often the reasons are a mix of “mentally ill”/came across a dangerous eldritch thing. In Wildbow/qntm stories, if the characters are mentally ill or in an eldritch situation, they still employ their agency to try to figure out the situation, and if the situation/environment is hostile in a way to specifically target their intelligence or senses etc., that is genuinely horrifying. And there doesn’t have to be a directed force behind the adversary - though there often is - in qntm’s Ra there is a “dream world” that people can get stuck in if they’re not careful, and the dream world does in some ways inhibit people’s ability to be careful.

My point here is probably just that I am a sucker for PoV characters with agency, and that in most contemporary “existential horror” the characters have no perceivable agency. I think Lovecraft originally did this fairly well - his stories had good length, good progression of realisations, a fair amount of agency, but Lovecraft-derived/inspired doesn’t get the balance correct. In the face of a cosmic eldritch entity, you’re meant to be powerless, and Lovecraft hit the note well between powerless and actually-effecting plot-relevant-change, while those other stories just don’t.

Some might argue that Wildbow/qntm stories lean too long the other way, and they might have a point: but those stories are not primarily and singularly “horror”: they have a fantasy or science fiction plot that overarches the passages of horror.

I think it’s possible for a contemporary horror story to get this balance right, and I think also that if there’s a story with a main character with a personality that stands out clearly enough, I would still enjoy it, but I haven’t found it yet. I think also I might reduce my horror-reading for the next year. I have explored, and finding little of interest, I go back to exploiting known hunting grounds in sf/f.

To conclude, I think what constitutes most contemporary ‘existential horror’ completely misses the mark for me in creating believable, horrific, relatable situations, and that what I deem ‘cognitive horror’ - marked by intelligent, agentic characters facing eldritch entity-level odds or even just incredibly inventive body horror - much more is the kind of story I enjoy reading.

Raws from Insta:

Reading the King in Yellow really makes me appreciate “there is no anti-memetics division” more. It is the only thing so far that has really really covered some kind of horror that I find appealing.
Wouldn’t even call it existential horror…maybe cognitive horror? in actually appealing to a character trying to struggle against the interpretations their own mind makes

The titular story in the first of the horror collections I got in Belfast was about a guy raping his underage daughter… So I put that on hold and started rereading Anti-memetics (hence the scp link above)

There was also a story about a man raping and murdering his way across the US in sesrch of some woman…

I’m pretty tired of anything that’s i) even slightly grotesque or off-putting, ii) written in a slightly obtuse style (most often just badly difficult to read), and iii) the main character is ostensibly either mentally ill and/or under unclear influence, being labelled as existential horror

Worm, and to an even larger extent Twig and Ward, does grotesque and especially body horror, extremely well I have physically SQUIRMED while reading some passages of Wildbow writing

Ward opening spoilers: There’s a bit in the opening arc of Ward where there’s a villain called Nursery. Her superpower? Infusing the area around her with energy, slowly creating out of it a “womb”, infested with pustules that, after some time, spawn various goblins and gollum-liked and trolls Compared to that, reading some passage of a man raping his daughter, comes off as very uninspired

I guess I’m complaining about it being called existential horror When in actuality it feels like bad true crime with a sprinkling of mental illness and obtuse writing

the whole point of existential horror is that it’s one step removed

I think anti-memetics division (start from the scp link above) Is the very best I’ve ever read of that Like i think it’s actually peak cognitive horror

Like, with that story it was following the man most of it , and like, acting like that isn’t a thing that grosses me out? I think I would be way more affected from a different perspective, like the daughter’s Anti-memetics and Wildbow also gives its characters actual intelligence and acts, while most existential horror I’ve read… The characters just…do stuff?…because reasons??? Often the reasons being a mix of “mentally ill” / came across a dangerous eldritch thing Yeah. I think Lovecraft-inspired stuff gets hit by this hard because - they’re meant to be cosmic eldritch entities, you’re meant to be powerless But then you get a main character who stuff just happens to and they’re just swept up in some tide I think Lovecraft did it fairly well - correct length of stories, good progression of realisations - but nothing else I’ve read has Except anti-memetics and Wildbow (Twig, partially Ward) I think it could be interesting, in a pure existential horror, if the character was strong enough? But mostly they’re not, in the things I’ve read. Strong being, good, not “strong personality”