Horror types by motivation, source of evil and emotion
What humankind fears the most (after the unknown)
How to create a new story? We sometimes attempt to write a story only to find ourselves repeating old tropes. Outlining tropes and types should either exhaustive. The second best is to show some contradictions and binariesthat can be bridged to create novelty. I haven’t found such typology so far, so the one I make will be as good as any. This is akin to the typology of folk tales.
Motivation types
By the human protagonist:
1) exploration reaches too far - Vahtek story in knowledge and sexuality, explorers of the sea / space, maidens in old houses, Justine by de Sade, Castle of Otranto (ancient curse is filled by actions of a despot to avoid it and stay in power)
2) attempt at peaceful life is thwarted by evil forces from the old, taking revenge at descendants of wrongdoers
A conclusion forces itself. Both are about feedback loops. Gnon watches over your actions. There are local constraints, negative feedback loops that keep some sort of equilibrium. Now you start some sort of positive feedback loop. These are powerful. You break the local negative loop, destroying the equilibrium. And for that you are punished by something yet more powerful than you relative to these local walls. The second kind is how the pendulum of negative feedback can strike even from old times. The reach of karmic effect in time has no limits.
Gnon watches over your actions. You break the local negative loop, destroying the equilibrium. And for that you are punished by something yet more powerful than you relative to these local walls.
Typology of horrid evil
Types of evil creatures / objects by motivation:
1) Lovecraftian - inhuman from the deep past, does not care about people, gives insanity by its nature. If attacks it’s because it’s interfered with.
2) Frankenstein’s monster - an artificial creation rises against its creator
3) succubic - evil that promises some good value - succubi, rusalka, yandere, American Psycho (incubic variant)
4) parasitic - deep relationship with humanity: zombies, werewolves, vampires, the Borg
5) a human with murderous passions and inhuman power (be it by denial of morality): witches, sorcerers, psychopaths, serial killers, Sith Lords
6) pure pain / fear / revenge monster - variants ghosts, IT, much of Japanese and Corean input to the genre, also a guardian of nature attacking intruders
Distributed on axes, we have
- caring about the protagonist or humanity in general
- valence of that caring, positive (succubic on the first meeting, others in variations of the genre) through netural (Lovecraft) to negative (purposeful action against humans: serial killers, revenge ghosts, etc.)
Antithesis
Possible holes in this typology - assignment to more than one type
- Deep space necromorphs have features of both the vampiric and Lovecraftian types
- zombies are Frankenstein’s monsters (if human created) and parasitic
Synthesis
These types are not exclusive and one phenomenon, objects can feature many motives. Some motives can be more prominent, for instance zombies as Frankenstein monster is weaker than the parasitic relation.
Emotion types
Type of emotion they induce, of the sublime type, not the beautiful. Let’s put them into categories of possible stages of evolutionary appearance:
Reptile brain:
- fear of the unknown (e.g. darkness, deep sea, space)
- fear of bodily harm / pain / death
- horny
Tribal / familial brain:
- fear of losing loved ones
- existential dread
- disgust response - observed in apes
- lust for inhuman power
- fear of strangers - on serial killers, ‘Bluebeard’
Socially advanced
- fear of transformation into an undesired form: getting replaced (Doppelganger), mentally controlled, Bisclavret (French story featuring a man fixed into a lupine form), zombification. The reverse of lust for inhuman power.
- fear for social harmony (East Asia specific) - catharsis into taking exceptional care not to cause any revenge ghosts
These are subproducts of a specific story, each appealing to different parts of the audience. Also unconsciously, to different literal parts of the audience brain. A sentiment analysis could be conducted to find correlations between each feature, and in which kind of audience did it find success.
These seem to exhaust the options for horror stories that I see on the table. Now you can more easily see the different motifs the writers employ to make you shiver.
What kinds of story did I miss? Where does your favourite horror story fit into this scheme?