mithen

I'm a big fan of his work and genuinely think there's something for every horror fan in his bibliography.

One

Decay Inevitable

The Unblemished

London Revenant

All really worth a read and there's little information about any of them online! Wondered if anyone else is aware of his work. He seems to have given up on horror now unfortunately.

Aside from Penance by Eliza Clark (2023), does anyone know of any horror or horror adjacent novels that feature Sylvanian Families toys? Or Tamagotchis?

I dunno how to articulate it in a way people can easily understand, but there is a weird form of emotional catharsis I can get from Romance stories that could be considered disturbing.

The BellaDonna of Sadness is not a Horror movie, but it is a Surrealist Medieval Fantasy Tragedy with beautiful watercolor painting style animation, as well as some pretty disturbing moments that a few cross lines that most mainstream films (even the disturbing kind) won’t do.

But it also in it’s own strange way is a beautiful movie in the same way a Dark Mythologic Story or Greek Tragedy is, being that it has themes that are macebre, yet it doesn’t feel edgy in a sense of shock, it feels naturally disturbing in a way that it is a brutally honest art-piece.

I feel this way about the first album by Swedish Depressive Black Metal band Lifelover, which has very macebre & saddening themes, yet it can be played in such a musically vibrant way with sexual undertones to it.

Whatever it maybe, I’m just interested in checking out an emotional macabre love/erotic story to feel vulnerable while reading.

The best example for me is We Need to Talk About Kevin.

A majority of the book is the character going on and on, or sharing what matters or what's on her mind. The things that actively happen or happened are sometimes short and sweet and are very easy to imagine. Regardless of what mood I am, I enjoy it because if I'm sick or tired I can just gloss over the text without actively thinking and then I can go think about it later, and if I'm really in the mood to read I have whole paragraphs of someone else's brain to pick through.

With these books, especially We Need to Talk About Kevin, the narrator presents herself the way that she wants to be seen. She says a lot of things that I either agree with or disagree with or things I can think about, and the distance makes it so there's less room for interpretation and there's only so much room for my opinions. . I am not ever going to be able to help her or educate her or put my own two cents in. I'm stuck in my own brain, which is great when I need cathartic stress and it's an aspect of horror that many things don't maintain. It adds a layer to unreliable narrator as well. If she ever backpedals or refers back to something and tries to weave, I have to accept it. If she turns a situation into something it must likely isn't, it is the way it is and that's the only way it can be. In the case where she is lying, she's just going to lie to herself for 400 pages straight to the point where she believes herself and since she has 400 pages to work with, she often gets close to convincing me that my beliefs aren't truly my beliefs or making me feel bad for her when I am upset with her. She is completely in control, I can't ask questions and I can't try to predict or infer.

(But at the same time, the story is more in my control than a normal story would be just because information is presented in a way where I'm not always going to get an answer for something that happens or I just have to take it as presented or I take only what is given and we're probably not coming back to said topic in a pivotal way, so I can use my imagination and build my own story.)

In general for books that are based on diary entries or based on a character's recollection of events, passive is good. it is much easier to actually believe the character and get immersed. For one, the character is more fleshed out and two, I can 100% believe the main character or narrator telling me about their life or feelings or general vibes with a few key events mixed in compared to a character remembering a whole day or a whole month or an entire set of events. The latter only works when there is indeed an unreliable narrator, the narrator has a condition that allows superior memory or the character's intentionally trying to tell the story and they're going to fabricate the hell out of it and pull it out of pocket. For me personally, the story has to be really well done and I have to care quite a bit to actually follow something like that.

Like an entity chasing hard after the protagonist kind of horror thriller but it's more horror than thriller? In the vein of Running Man by King, but I just want a legit scary supernatural villain and the final girl or boy who's just one step ahead, maybe desperate but smart and capable without being panicky.

Ngl, I fell into craving for this after seeing a Jurassic World movie scene where the guy throws a killer dino off his scent by dousing himself in gasoline.