A ramble about psychological horror

Imma rant with you @smokesalty for a bit.
I have a couple interesting stories to add since my writing tends to lean towards the darker side.
My mother comes from a lower class Korean family, and while you may have heard about the Korean superstition that writing a person's name in red ink is considered wishing them death, supposedly there is a belief that you want what you write to come true. For example, I GM for a homebrew Call of Cthulhu group, and for one of my scenarios, I had the group explore a house haunted by it's guilt about it's failure to protect it's inhabitants from a home invasion. I used my parents house as an inspiration for the house layout in the game (partially due to stories of squatters having scared off potential buyers in the past) because I liked the layout and surrounding area. Note: I did not borrow my family's likeness in any way, just the house and grounds. My mom got wind of this - presumably by my older brother who I had been bouncing ideas off - and she was livid, claiming I was dishonoring my family and wishing death upon them somehow. She generally wasn't find of us reading horror type books which was a shame since growing up I loved Kafka and Dostoevsky. And yea, she isn't very supportive of my writing and says my little brother is the writer of the family since his stuff fits her sensibilities more. Just interesting how culture can influence these things.

The second story comes from my experience with my lab group. One thing I do appreciate about my advisor is that she does try to get interested in our hobbies. Now there happen to be two people who are 'writers' in the lab: myself and our lab technician. I'm pretty good friends with the lab tech but we're pretty different on the genre side of things. He's writing a power-fantasy high fantasy series, and I write more well horror oriented shorts. My advisor has done quite a bit to support the technician's writing ( getting him writing books, letting him bounce ideas of her). My non-academic writing has come up once - to my knowledge - which immediately ended up with my advisor getting visibly distressed at my choice of genre (she had a hard time understanding why I don't like happy endings) and implying perhaps I should get counseling. I haven't bought the subject up since.

No, I prefer art to not push boundaries, I prefer art to not cause introspection, I prefer art to bring an ease of comfort knowing that we live in a wonderful and caring and loving world. Art shouldn't revolutionize, art should be contemporary. Art shouldn't intimidate me!

(I'm joking, of course, but I feel uncomfortable not leaving this disclaimer here)

PUH-Reeaccchhh!

I wanna rant some too!

I am a huge fan of how different genres can explore all the things that can come up in the human psyche. From sunshine and rainbows to depression and horrific events.

Even in the most idyllic of worlds danger would still exist, existential crises would be a thing, and so would nightmares. Being able to tell stories about such things has many benefits even if it's just for entertainment, that's totally valid. Creative works resonate differently with those who make them to all who engage in them and that's part of the experience.

As writers and artists, we have the ability to take the wild thoughts our minds come up with and make them tangible through what we create. Happy, sad, bright, shady, whatever... we take the intangibilities... feelings, pictures in our heads, of our thoughts, ideas, dreams, curiosities, and wonders and create fiction on canvas, pages, websites, etc. and it's truly a wonderful thing.

Thinking of nightmare scenarios and then illustrating or writing them doesn't mean we want them to happen to anyone, We're just exploring and sharing what we've come across in our minds and environment through our stories and art like many amazing artists and storytellers have done before us and will continue to do after us.

I know folks are scared of being canceled, so folks want to be on the highest moral ground possible so fingers aren't pointed at them, but it all feels so arbitrary when you read a story or ingest some art of the not-so-sunshine and happy and automatically come to the off based conclusions that whoever created it is awful and so I must tell everyone else that this person I do not on even know, just ingested there art/story and it made me feel some kind of way, is morally corrupt for even daring to make such an egregious thing and it's my job to call them.

Like ohh they like stories about death and despair so they condone murder, like what!? Oh, they write abusive characters so they must be abusers...LIKE WHAT?! This also extends to people who enjoy these stories and art being called terrible people who need therapy bc they enjoy exploring the not so sunshine side of life through fiction. It's baffling to me really.

All of this to say psychological horror is just an exploration of another facet of humanity. All genres are an exploration of the shades of humanity to some degree since we make it, whether fantastical or historical inspired and it's wild to see folks literally condemning folks for exploring this through creating fiction :V .

Some folks just have an arrow to shoot and the easiest targets are the ones that make themselves visible so that's folks sharing what they make to the world.

I get so exasperated and angry every time I see a post or video about a creator who is being harassed over a story they told or some art they drew to the point they just stop for fear of being attacked over it or feel they have to make apology or clarification posts to explain that their work doesn't represent who they are as a person and what they condone.

Ok I need to stop bc this is hella long, but I have a lot of thoughts and experience with this and it's frustrating a-f that folks who engage with art and fiction can't separate the creative work from the creator and take it for what it is as entertainment. DX

May I offer you an "Amen!" in these trying times?

Oddly enough, I've never seen this kind of criticism in the wild; I've only heard about it secondhand from people who've had to deal with it. And to be honest, I don't get it, especially since horror movies (and now "true-crime" documentaries) are so popular. Why the stigma towards people who write the content, but not towards the content itself??

I feel like maybe it's like meat-- everyone likes to eat it, but no one wants to hear about how it's produced or where it comes from. I guess the general consensus is that "creepy" stories are made by little fairies in the woods, and not by actual people who take the time to think about these things and how to express them creatively...? o_O

Mmm anyway...personally, I haven't dealt with this much. Although I'm not really a horror writer, I'm known for my love of tragedy; and I often write stories where it's unclear if the 'evil' can ever really be defeated.

I've gotten plenty of jokey comments about 'tormenting' characters (which I enjoy~) but nothing really critical of my apparent sadism. No one has ever seriously asked me to stop writing about bad people and bad things...maybe if I talked about my work IRL, that would change. ^^; But so far I've been met with nothing but support.

how much feel this!!!
my work is about csa and its after-effects in adulthood, I worry so SO god damn much that someone is going to think I'm endorsing it just for fricking mentioning it. Especially since its so personal to me, so being accused of something I'm trying to condemn would probably break me.
but I'm so thankful people have understood where I'm coming from with my story so far, I love my readers ;w;

This is a whole nother thread right here

Short and sweet..psychological horror is the best kind of horror!

I kind of agree with DokiDokiTsuna here in that I don't remember seeing 'in the wild' much of this criticism directed at murderer/cultist/hopeless downer ending type horror ... but I have seen plenty of first hand condemnation of people who write very dark stuff that's more 'personal', so to speak - stuff like CSA, relationship abuse and more visceral depictions of self harm and mental illness. I'm talking literal death threats and suicide baiting.

This has a spillover effect to people with intrusive thoughts as well; it's just harmful all around. I think all content should be allowed to exist, even if some of it should be buried under a mountain of content warnings. As long as the creator never actually went out and harmed anyone, they should not be comdemned.

(EDIT: Though I must say I don't really like the 'it says more about themselves than the people they're condemning' argument. People who actually do condone terrible things use this to gaslight their critics. I remember seeing a video about a guro artist who did this; nothing against guro, it's just according to the video this particular creator directly condoned CSA at some point. And as horrible as death threats and suicide baiting are, I do think it comes from a place of genuine distress)

I am going to say that as someone who tend to not like horror, especially body horror. It generally just bums me out and I end up just feeling sad and sometimes relapse into suicidal thoughts. I feel generally people are less shaming horror and sometimes embracing it in unhealthy ways. I feel like my reaction to horror is not very common.

I think of the popularity of Law & Order SVU and True Crime podcast, I think people sometimes get way too into those types of stories and forget (especially for true crime) that those are real people or with SVU based off of actual news stories. I have also ran into people who had a favorite serial killer, and I was like YIKES. I think some of the criticism of the media is characters who are suppose to be problematic being embrace or idealized by fans. I feel like Joker is a good example of this.

This doesn't mean I want everything to be G rated, I am just mostly sick of sort of shaming people like me who would rather watch things that are not as violent. People have told me that I am way too wholesome despite me liking some dark humor.

I personally found Heartstopper underwhelming mostly because there was no deep conflict and every problem got solved 10 minutes later. I think this show is suppose to be for kids, as in preteen to younger teens, which is why it never gets too intense, edgy, or rude.

I completely understand your reaction @NickRowler, the lab technician in my lab is pretty close and says that's why they can't do general horror/apocalyptic type stories. Despite both of us ironically not favoring the other's genre of choice, we still have a mutual respect for each other's writing and support each other so I do appreciate the critique that both sides can go too far.
There is definitely a group of people who unhealthily obsess over these things and on the flip side overtly shame people for shying away from the material without considering the context of their choices (going off your observation on Joker a trend that's worried me is a weird idolization of abusive relationships using old Joker and Harley Quinn as an inspiration particularly girls who dream of a Mr. J).
I think a part of it is considering the context of the horror elements, because I would be remiss not to admit that careless portrayal can do harm. A study found that there was a significant increase in suicides after the airing of 13 reasons why (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2019/release-of-13-reasons-why-associated-with-increase-in-youth-suicide-rates) while the study doesn't try to stipulate a causal link there has been criticism that the sloppy portrayal of suicide framed as a revenge fantasy on the show gave incorrect context and gravity to the topic particularly to it's younger audience.

Yeah, if people want to write, watch, or read horror, I am not going to stop them.

I mostly want less creepy True Crime fans and I want people to be respectful to those who might not want to watch violent horror due to mental health issues.

This actually made me re-realized how much I hate tsunderes in anime/manga. I hate it not because it is lazy character writing but because it actually promotes abusers. Having characters indulge in this activity and loving it because oh boy, it's a cute anime girl so it's okay. And I say this with first hand experience with a "tsundere" if you will, they ended up being a stalker and it still scares me till this day even years after breaking communication with them.

Psychological horror is a different story since it is usually actually bad things and isn't promoted as okay relationships. So yeah, knowing something is horror is better than not knowing it is horror. The genres already speaks for itself when it comes to horror.

Edit: I realized I sounded like a hypocrite. So to clear it up I don't think tsunderes should go away, I think writers should learn from those stories and their personal experiences and make an effort to having a more persuasive way to tell the audience that that is bad in a relationship. Which is why I love Shakugan No Shana so much, the female main character is a tsundere but she developed in the much human way possible. I love her more than I love my soul, yes I sold my soul to the creator of that story.

Anyway, yeah.

Apparently not for some people

I think it's because you can condemn morally depraved behaviour while also showing it in a very visceral manner, which can come across as being 'indulgent', 'fetishizing', 'exploitative' etc. And the logic is (and this is pretty uncomfortable to think about but I think it needs to be acknowledged) that no-one portrays this stuff in such graphic detail unless they ... get a rush from seeing it. Which one can absolutely do so while wanting it to absolutely never happen in real life (just ask BDSM people), and is often just a catharsis thing anyway. But thought-action fusion is a common cognitive bias, and that's how people get from that to condemnation.

Portraying something graphically isn't endorsing it. Actually endorsing something is like what ShidoDraws said about tsunderes; the abusive behavior is shown but is portrayed as cute/harmless/romantic and no-one ever brings it up as something to be concerned about. A less graphic piece of media showing 'mild' abuse is very much capable of endorsing more terrible things than the darkest of grimdark stories.

Sooo I've had opinions on this for years now, and I'm sure some of the older regulars will see it like a broken record. (Or maybe now, I don't remember if I ever went in depth on my viewpoint here before.) I'm a HUGE horror fan, my dad showed me The Blob... or some classic B horror like that when I was 3-4 in hopes of scaring me. It probably did, but he unintentionally awakened some fascination with the genre in me, and I've been watching horror and violent anime since.

(Warning: Discussion of upsetting topics like CSA, SA, abuse, animal abuse.)

There's a lot of nuances when it comes to horror, and it has some interesting psychology related parallels to it and kink porn in how it can/has been utilized over the years. I'll say right now that this doesn't apply to everyone, there are many people who just like to see character suffrage, and find stress relief from fictional violence. (Totally nothing wrong with that, it's completely natural.) Definitely not exactly what you're talking about, but I love talking about this subject so I'm gonna ramble about it anyway.

So there is a method of self-care that is encouraged by therapists called art and writing therapy where a person basically vents their trauma, thoughts and emotions via art and fiction. (There is some Psychology material you can read on these. Art Therapy studies and Writing Therapy studies.) The subject varies depending on the person, many people will create empowering or escapist works, others create dark and cathartic works, or very sexual stuff. The last two are the ones I'm going to talk about.

Fiction and art are fantastic tools to explore and vent trauma and/or mental health struggles because no real people get hurt in the process, and these tools have no boundaries in the sense that you can literally explore everything in vast amount of ways. That being said there are many people who get into creating horror or tragic and darker works for venting or putting their experiences and thoughts into perspective. It's very much a method of self-care, as I've met people who've created self-harm art or gore to satisfy urges to hurt themselves, people who create art and fiction exploring suicidality and death to help deal with their own depression and suicidal ideations, or to cope with the trauma of loss. There are people who make horror fiction with themes of abuse (Familial, spousal, etc.), generational trauma, cultism and such to explore their own childhood/adulthood trauma. Dark fiction/art and horror are SO good for SO many things, and the reason why it's shared it to 1. Present these experiences to others, it can be seen as a form of coming out and sharing a part of yourself you've been struggling with. 2. Find a community. There are many people out there who struggle with trauma and mental health who can't express themselves the same as a writer or artist can, so they look for those works, and can find safety with those who create and consume fiction the way they do.

The same thing can be said for porn and kink art/fiction. While this doesn't apply to everyone, there are some Psychology studies that show possible links between kinks and trauma. For many creating and/or consuming porn and kink art/fiction it can be a way to reclaim control over their bodies and experiences, I've met many queer people and cis/het women who make ero guro, SA or CSA porn, who were survivors of some kind of sexual violence and use fiction as reclamation because it's a safe way for them to do so. (Oddly enough, there's a similar occurrence with cis/het women making yaoi/BL as a way for them to explore sexuality because the nature of it being fiction, and because women aren't involved, they fell safe. There are some theories that many who do this have seen or been around spousal abuse as children, but those are just theories.) Same with people who are part of the BDSM community, many have experiences some kind of childhood trauma, and doing what they do is a form of therapy for them.

That all being said there are gray areas to these. I won't lie that certain horror works can have a negative impact, or cause harm in some way. Although there are some factors to consider with this such as when or the population's understanding of the subject, who sees it, and why. An example of this is the affect the film Jaws had in the 1970's, it became a huge hit, and upon seeing it there was a massive surge of people hunting sharks. Bringing the specie's population down by the thousands, while on a positive not it brought up interest in scientific studies of sharks, giving us the boost to have the knowledge we do know. That being said if Jaws was made today it would be no different than any other Sci-Fi B horror movie like Sharknado, it wouldn't have the same impact as it did back when so few understood the species. I also won't argue that vent art or certain types of porn can do harm. Children/teens, whose prefrontal cortex' are still developing, generally don't understand nuances yet and can be negatively influenced by certain works. This is where tagging comes in, and honestly I'm very much for teaching kids to separate fiction from reality, as well as teaching them critical thinking and nuances at a young age. (Not porn or horror! Just general stuff for kids to improve those brain skill.) Also parents should really monitor what their kids see, children shouldn't be invading adult spaces anyway, which vent and porn spaces are for adults exclusively.
I also won't lie that this type of work, specifically the kink and porn stuff, can be harmful in another way. Predators can very much get ahold of these works to pray on kids, pedophiles can get off on CSA vent art/fiction, rapists can jerk it to vent SA stuff. I won't lie that there is a minority of mentally unhinged people who will violent fiction or SA porn as an "A-Okay!" to do such things to real people. Many of these instances are so rare, but it's still something a valid reason why vent art/fiction is such a gray topic, do we allow for such works of fiction that help many deal with mental health struggles and trauma (Especially in capitalist countries like the US where getting professional help is off the table for many people due to cost.)? Or do we disallow it all to protect everyone from the few bad people who can potentially use it maliciously?

The predator one specifically is a hard topic because there have been cases of even child friendly media being used to pray on kids, as well as consensual porn of adults, or even pictures of pets. They will use anything to gain a child's interest, doesn't matter what is used.

Personally I'm very anti-censorship with art and fiction. To me, while there is always that possibility of negative influence, I feel the benefits outweigh the bad. Art and fiction have been used practically since their creation for venting, it's how we share thoughts and emotions with the world, it's only natural that not all of it is going to be sunshine and rainbows. It's also very healthy that not all of it is, some people need that outlet, and I'd much rather they use art for that an resort to self-harm or worse. You can also find really interesting commentary/view points you wouldn't if we all made the same stuff all the time.
There are a few things I'm still not sure of. While I'm on the fence about adding real people to fiction, especially in a malicious way, I feel that person still has the right to do it as long as it doesn't promote harm to that person, or they don't intent to go further than fiction. Sometimes the story around it has really interesting commentary too, such as a book that recently got published called Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin. She's a tran woman, and the book is a post apocalyptic story about testosterone turning men into zombies, and has some really interesting stuff relating to transness and all that. It's also vent fiction about terfs, where J.K. Rowling dies in an anti-climactic way while holding herself up in her castle. There's some interesting stuff to be said about how the death came about, and what the author is saying with it. That being said I highly recommend against anyone reading this unless they're adults who like super dank, grindhouse style sex horror. If you want an overall idea of it, Jessie Gender has a great video analyzing the book, and her discussion if it is much more easy to take in.
Interestingly enough, many fans of horror and kink stuff are cis/het women, poc and queer people. I imagine it's because those communities have experiences much more trauma, but that's just a theory.

I love dark stuff and the psychology surrounding it's creation. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't like it since I've been drawing vent stuff since high school, like being a little tmi I used to draw ero guro as a teen as a way to deal with self-loathing and depression while my hormones were going catawampus. It helped a lot with getting negative crap out of my system. My current comic is also a vent thing with me dumping the abuse of my mom, friend and other family that I've held into since childhood, as well as mental health struggles and existential bs. Don't know where I would be if I'd never been able to create vent art/fiction. Horror, heavy fiction and kinks are important, and I imagine have saved/helped a lot of people. (Not meaning to make this all sound Deep™.)

I know this all isn't want you're talking about in the OP, I just wanted to go on a tangent about my thoughts on horror. Again, it's totally alright to like horror and kinks while not being a traumatized individual, and I hate that there are people out there who think there's something wrong with you for enjoying it. As well as people who think it shouldn't be allowed to exist. Shows a great lack in understanding what they're talking about.

Edit: It's probably obvious from the words I mentioned, but be wary when watching Jessie Gender's video, there is a lot of discussion on transphobia. As well as gore and SA.)