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Horror stories
So, any thoughts?
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- Thefirstone
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Horror is a bit of an interesting beast. On one hand it's the polar opposite of our genre, since it requires the heroes to be very vulnerable, on the other it opens up a lot of possibilities.
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- Woodclaw
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First is the movie (movie series, in fact) Species. Sil is at least somewhat superhuman, the degree depends on what the plot requires, and is certainly a horror movie monster when she's not busy being a gorgeous blond woman.
Second is a Conceptfan story, Beautiful Monster. Most Conceptfan stories are more classically bad girl than horror, but Beautiful Monster is more into the horror genre, although the line can blur quite a bit. Here is the link .
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- Jabbrwock
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I was re-inspired by shardars little vignette about a super burning down a man with her heat vision. I had a video early on with Randy as a villian where she rips an arm off. I've also done kryptonite shared with blood in SuperMichaela and a bullet wound in her hand. I'm looking to expand on that.
I agree it opens up some fun possibilities.
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- Random321
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Haunting: www.superwomenmania.com/index.php?option...-haunting&Itemid=231
Haunting II: www.superwomenmania.com/index.php?option...unting-ii&Itemid=231
Njoy
ElF
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- lfan
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From a psychological standpoint, it is a miracle that Superman comes out as kindhearted and well-adjusted as he does in the comics. Brightburn is probably a little closer to how such a kid might easily turn into if he discovered that kind of power.
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- willow
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Roz and the Goddess are [un]questionably horror stories more than anything else. And The Pinnacle Reaction, which I fair dinkum thought you guys would enjoy a lot more than I think anybody actually ever did, I [used to] think could be best described as a horror story.
I [stupidly] think there's a LOT of horror stories in the library here.
And don't forget...Stephen King's Carrie was superhuman horror. One of his best.
[EDIT: Nevermind any of this...turns out my stories are not horror. Just horrible.)
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- Dru1076
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Come and See by Draight also has a horror element, but it’s subtle until the end.
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- circes_cup
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This ^willow wrote: I think the real horror would be having to live on the same planet as a young adult who has the powers of Superman and does whatever
he orshe pleases with. The idea that this person has the power of a god and there is nothing on the planet to stop them. They cannot be harmed. No aliens are coming to save us from this person. We are just stuck with some teenager who cannot be stopped, punished, and can happily indulge any and every whim that comes to mind.
3 total classics of the genre right there.Dru1076 wrote: There's certainly elements of horror in Mob Girl, Not the One, Constantines Portal, and all the others too
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- conceptfan
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conceptfan wrote:
3 total classics of the genre right there.Dru1076 wrote: There's certainly elements of horror in Mob Girl, Not the One, Constantines Portal, and all the others too
Very true and I enjoyed Pinnacle as well, although I don't see too much of a horror element.
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- Woodclaw
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Woodclaw wrote:
conceptfan wrote:
3 total classics of the genre right there.Dru1076 wrote: There's certainly elements of horror in Mob Girl, Not the One, Constantines Portal, and all the others too
Very true and I enjoyed Pinnacle as well, although I don't see too much of a horror element.
If there's no horror in what Vicki does, and what she becomes at the end of the story....much more a doom than a saviour...then I've really posted in this thread entirely in error.
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- Dru1076
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Dru1076 wrote:
Woodclaw wrote:
conceptfan wrote:
3 total classics of the genre right there.Dru1076 wrote: There's certainly elements of horror in Mob Girl, Not the One, Constantines Portal, and all the others too
Very true and I enjoyed Pinnacle as well, although I don't see too much of a horror element.
If there's no horror in what Vicki does, and what she becomes at the end of the story....much more a doom than a saviour...then I've really posted in this thread entirely in error.
There sure is, but I'm not sure if I would classify that as a horror tale (keep in mind that it took me a long time to file Alien as a horror movie). Thanks to some bad cinematography, in my mind, horror is often played for easy jumpscares or twist endings. The concept of the 'slow horror', where the monstrous elements trickle down in a slow fashion is something I have very little experience of.
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- Woodclaw
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Woodclaw wrote:
Dru1076 wrote:
Woodclaw wrote:
conceptfan wrote:
3 total classics of the genre right there.Dru1076 wrote: There's certainly elements of horror in Mob Girl, Not the One, Constantines Portal, and all the others too
Very true and I enjoyed Pinnacle as well, although I don't see too much of a horror element.
If there's no horror in what Vicki does, and what she becomes at the end of the story....much more a doom than a saviour...then I've really posted in this thread entirely in error.
There sure is, but I'm not sure if I would classify that as a horror tale (keep in mind that it took me a long time to file Alien as a horror movie). Thanks to some bad cinematography, in my mind, horror is often played for easy jumpscares or twist endings. The concept of the 'slow horror', where the monstrous elements trickle down in a slow fashion is something I have very little experience of.
I wish you'd just let me have this one. I dont even know why we're debating this, but I DO know every time I bring up Vicki I end up wishing I hadn't.
Okay...it isnt horror. Not sure about the others now either.
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- Dru1076
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Dru1076 wrote:
Woodclaw wrote: There sure is, but I'm not sure if I would classify that as a horror tale (keep in mind that it took me a long time to file Alien as a horror movie). Thanks to some bad cinematography, in my mind, horror is often played for easy jumpscares or twist endings. The concept of the 'slow horror', where the monstrous elements trickle down in a slow fashion is something I have very little experience of.
I wish you'd just let me have this one. I dont even know why we're debating this, but I DO know every time I bring up Vicki I end up wishing I hadn't.
Okay...it isnt horror. Not sure about the others now either.
Maybe it's a language thing, but I was actually giving up with my last post. Horror is a fairly new taste for me, I haven't experienced much of it due to some childhood issues, so my opinion matters less than zero.
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- Woodclaw
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Woodclaw wrote:
Maybe it's a language thing, but I was actually giving up with my last post. Horror is a fairly new taste for me, I haven't experienced much of it due to some childhood issues, so my opinion matters less than zero.
I guess I'm still pretty raw when it comes to Vicki. But don't sell yourself short Woodclaw. I value your opinions greatly.
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- Dru1076
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What is the definition of a horror story? What must a story do/contain to be classed as horror? Which elements disqualify certain stories from counting as horror?
Genuine, open questions.
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- conceptfan
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- slim36
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conceptfan wrote: I'm confused now.
What is the definition of a horror story? What must a story do/contain to be classed as horror? Which elements disqualify certain stories from counting as horror?
Genuine, open questions.
It's a very worthwhile question.
To me, horror lies in the sense of dealing with something inhuman and other. It's the difference between dealing with an awful person and a monster. In many super bad girl stories, the other-ness begins and ends with whatever gives the character her power. After that, she's just a bad person with unstoppable power, which is horrible, but doesn't feel like horror. If the story doesn't have some focus on whatever strange power granted her those powers, and how unstoppable and incomprehensible it is, it doesn't feel like a horror story to me. On the other hand, in some stories - like your own Beautiful Monster - the superwoman doesn't act like a human given unstoppable power. Her actions are beyond rational analysis. She is the monster, and the story conveys it quite well.
That's just my take on it. Often, a horror story is resolved when the characters finally manage to understand their foe. At that point, they've won, or at least made the first step to winning, and the rest is just the wrap-up.
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- Jabbrwock
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- Agent00Soul
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Jabbrwock wrote:
conceptfan wrote: I'm confused now.
What is the definition of a horror story? What must a story do/contain to be classed as horror? Which elements disqualify certain stories from counting as horror?
Genuine, open questions.
It's a very worthwhile question.
To me, horror lies in the sense of dealing with something inhuman and other. It's the difference between dealing with an awful person and a monster. In many super bad girl stories, the other-ness begins and ends with whatever gives the character her power. After that, she's just a bad person with unstoppable power, which is horrible, but doesn't feel like horror. If the story doesn't have some focus on whatever strange power granted her those powers, and how unstoppable and incomprehensible it is, it doesn't feel like a horror story to me. On the other hand, in some stories - like your own Beautiful Monster - the superwoman doesn't act like a human given unstoppable power. Her actions are beyond rational analysis. She is the monster, and the story conveys it quite well.
That's just my take on it. Often, a horror story is resolved when the characters finally manage to understand their foe. At that point, they've won, or at least made the first step to winning, and the rest is just the wrap-up.
I think this is a good assessment, but I think there's another kind of horror, which is the one where one character accepts his/hers own monstrosity as a fact.
For example, in Frankenstein the Creature, who is actually a highly intelligent and positive character accepts its own monstrosity because of how people react to it. From that moment on the Creature acts like a force of nature, rather than a human being.
Stoker's Dracula is very similar. The original story never dwells upon Dracula's motives or intentions, he's a monster from an ancient time, whose motivations are either purely animalistic or completely impossible to understand.
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- Woodclaw
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Personally, I have a literary background and inclination, so I tend to think in terms of genre tropes. From that perspective, very little of what is published here falls into the category of horror- usually the protagonist is the monster, and, if she's not, she never faces any sort of significant threat. For that matter, even when she is the monster, the typical evil supergirl story has her as so completely overpowering that there's never any real question about her eventual and complete victory.
There are no relateable underdog, either, which, again, removes it from the horror genre in my mind. The underdogs are, for the most part, either cardboard or thoroughly unlikeable.
For a little more insight into my own standards for horror, I'd recommend a little outside reading: storygrid.com/secrets-of-the-horror-genre/
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- stmercy2020
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stmercy2020 wrote: After reading through this thread, I'm left wondering what, precisely, people mean when they say or think horror.
Personally, I have a literary background and inclination, so I tend to think in terms of genre tropes. From that perspective, very little of what is published here falls into the category of horror- usually the protagonist is the monster, and, if she's not, she never faces any sort of significant threat. For that matter, even when she is the monster, the typical evil supergirl story has her as so completely overpowering that there's never any real question about her eventual and complete victory.
There are no relateable underdog, either, which, again, removes it from the horror genre in my mind. The underdogs are, for the most part, either cardboard or thoroughly unlikeable.
For a little more insight into my own standards for horror, I'd recommend a little outside reading: storygrid.com/secrets-of-the-horror-genre/
I was thinking along the same line. Seems to me that the horror genre tropes are pretty narrow and clearly defined, and different from anything I've read here.
My introduction to horror was H.P. Lovecraft, specifically Mountains of Madness, which scared the crap out of me when I was young and living on the side of an ancient volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (Terceira Island, Azores). Those of us on the midnight shift at a radio transmitter site were all reading Lovecraft and freaking ourselves out given the creapy, isolated surroundings up on the volcano. Some guys couldn't handle it.
Shadar
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- ace191
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Woodclaw wrote: I think this is a good assessment, but I think there's another kind of horror, which is the one where one character accepts his/hers own monstrosity as a fact.
For example, in Frankenstein the Creature, who is actually a highly intelligent and positive character accepts its own monstrosity because of how people react to it. From that moment on the Creature acts like a force of nature, rather than a human being.
Stoker's Dracula is very similar. The original story never dwells upon Dracula's motives or intentions, he's a monster from an ancient time, whose motivations are either purely animalistic or completely impossible to understand.
My definition does not really encompass psychological horror. There are a variety of stories that involve plainly human - at least internally - people being destroyed psychologically by the situations in which they find themselves. Edgar Allen Poe had quite a few such stories. Frankenstein is, as you pointed out, also one. It is a very different kind of horror, psychological and even existential.
I don't think Dracula qualifies. Dracula is a classical monster, unknown and unknowable. Even when the rules of his existence are stated and his weaknesses exploited, neither the rules nor the existence they define actually make sense. At least that's how it looks from my perspective. That said, I'm far from an expert. I'm just trying to state my not particularly clear understanding of what differentiates a story I perceive as horror from another story that to me is plainly horrible, but not horror.
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- Jabbrwock
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ace191 wrote: Out of curiosity Shadar, do you hold an amateur or commercial radio lic?
I was a Ham a long time ago, but haven't messed around with amateur radio in many decades now.
I was on the side of that volcano I mentioned (reading Lovecraft) back in the the very early 70's, but my role wasn't running Ops on the transmitter or a technician, but rather the cryptography side of things. Back in the days when only government/military encrypted stuff.
As far as radio, we had several really powerful HF transmitters on site. Big enough that the tubes that made up the final stage of the transmitter emitted so much power that they'd immediately fry you if you stepped inside the Farraday cage they operated in. Big voltages too. We had a technician get zapped while I was there. He was dead and crispy in seconds. That kind of powerful.
Military HF was used for point-to-point ground communication on a global scale, as well as aircraft communication on a global scale.
The military in those days had access to a LOT of frequencies. Not like Hams with little slices here and there.
Anyway, the cool part was living on the volcano with everyone reading Lovecraft in the middle of the night when on duty, scaring the hell out of ourselves. The usual Air Force-trained kids -- late teens, early twenties -- doing big jobs and just glad we weren't in Vietnam. The entire site was often inside clouds so thick that they felt heavy. Visibility zero a lot of the time. Zero as in feeling our way from building to building, often unable to see the road well enough to drive at all. Trapped up there, sometimes for days in the winter, because we couldn't see the road even when standing on it. That thick. Mid-Atlantic weather on top of the Mid-Atlantic ridge a few thousand feet up. Freaky place in the winter. Mountain of Madness we called it. If the Cthulhi or Shoggoths ever came, we were all screwed.
Still, techs had to climb towers and do whatever had to be done to stay on-line in that weather. Me, I was always nice and cozy given that my workstation was inside a vault room in the basement. What with codes and special equipment and all.
Shadar
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