When I was young, my older siblings watched Child’s Play on the big CRT television in our living room. It scared me to death. I was, and still am, a doll collector. In my childhood mind, the idea of a doll, one of my dolls who I cared for and played with gently, ‘coming to life’ to hurt me or my family was terrifying. My siblings and my mom (lovingly) teased me relentlessly for it. But from that night on, I began my journey to become a horror lover. It really took no time at all. Starting with the Goosebumps books of my elementary school library to jumping into top-10-banned-movies lists, I’ve loved and respected this genre in (most) of its forms since.
Despite Michael Myers appearing as this page’s mascot under my shrines, my favorite horror movies are actually Scream and Jacob’s Ladder. My movie preferences admittedly lie mostly with slasher flicks, although I love psychological horror when I really want to sink my teeth into a movie. Despite my love of the slasher genre, I actually do very poorly with realistic gore or torture scenes, which means Terrifier and the later Saw movies were off the table for me. But the golden period where slashers had just begun, the 70s and 80s, hold some of my favorite movies of all time.
Interestingly, while I love the slasher genre on the screen, when it comes to games and books I tend to prefer a more psychological route than anything overly silly or splattery. One of my favorite games, maybe even number 1, is the original Silent Hill 2. It was very important to me during a very hard place in my life, and so I feel very passionate about it. (And am prone to arguing over the moral character of James Sunderland, because people love to misunderstand him.) These days, I struggle to find horror novels to read due to the rising popularity of ‘extreme horror.’ I have no interest in questioning the moral character of people who like it–do what you want, safely, but to me it is simply unpleasant.
Preamble aside, the contents of this page will serve as dedications, love letters, and analyses of the genre and the works within it. I hope to create lists of subgenres and simple to understand talks on the history of the genre for anyone coming across this to enjoy.
WIP!
WIP!
