Horror

:For information about the fandom, see Horror Fandom.
Horror is a media genre intended to frighten or scare the audience for entertainment. Horror often overlaps with other genres and includes a wide range of tropes and elements.
==History==
Horror is as old as fiction itself. Beginning with folklore and superstition, horror elements appeared in religious texts (such as Revelations in the Christian Bible), mythology (the various monsters and heinous acts in Greek, Roman, and Eastern stories) and moved to stories of vampires, werewolves and serial killers in medieval Europe (the war crimes of Prince of Wallachia Vlad III which lead to the story of Dracula; Gilles des Rais as the inspiration for Bluebeard, Elizabeth Bathory). In the 18th century, Gothic Horror emerged, with a few exceptions written by women and marketed towards a female audience. 
This then became what modern readers accept as horror fiction, with books such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Horror is now a multi-media genre, used in any creative media you could name.
== Tropes, Subgenres, and Themes==
=== Supernatural Horror ===
A subgenre of horror fiction, which provokes fear and unsettles the audience through the use of supernatural elements, such as monsters, demons, etc. 
Prevalent elements include: 
* ghosts 
* demons
* vampires 
* monsters 
* zombies
* witchcraft/black magic
* werewolves
* extraterrestrial life
* killer toys
* possession
=== Psychological Horror ===
Another subgenre of horror fiction, which focuses on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle the audience. It overlaps with the thriller and mystery genres and "uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, horror, drama, tension, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.""Psychological horror" at Wikipedia Unlike supernatural horror, psychological horror tends to use more "natural" themes that play off "normal" human fears, such as death, pain and isolation.
*religious traditions
*the afterlife
*dark themes
*serial killers / psychopaths
*sexual deviancy / rape 
*gore / torture 
*evil clowns
*cults
*cannibalism 
*vicious animals 
*the apocalypse
*dystopia
*human-made or natural disasters.  
==Horror in Fanworks==
In fanworks, an emphasis on horror is usually associated with gen. (See the Horror tag at Archive of Our Own. Note that of 3660 fanworks, 45% are labeled gen and only 34% are slash; this is an unusual distribution for an archive with a slight majority of works in the slash category.)Of the 3660 fanworks in the horror tag, 1656 are gen, 1227 are m/m, 783 are het, and 183 are f/f. In contrast, 483404 of 958456 or 50% of the total works on the archive are in the m/m category. Statistics taken from the AO3 on January 12, 2014.
However, some popular fanwork tropes are associated with the horror genre:
*Vampires
*Werewolves and other Werecreatures
*Zombies
*Darkfic
*Gothic Horror
*Survival Horror
*Analog Horror‎ 
*Body Horror
*Mindfuck
===Example Fanworks===
====Fanfiction====
*X-Manson by Dr. Benway (X-Men) – reimages Charles Xavier as the leader of a doomsday cult.
*He Had No Fingers by Gleam (Naruto) – eldritch horror AU
*With Strange Aeons (Black Sails) by Amiril - Cthulhu Mythos AU
*Zogg: The Cuddly Menace - a reinterpretation of the illustrated children's book My Little Golden Book About God, in which the original text is replaced with a science fiction horror story resembling Invasion of the Body Snatchers
*The Dragon by Mairead Triste and Aristide (The Sentinel)
* Snake Oil by Martha (part of a series) (The Sentinel)
* a Crimson Peak AU by fullofleaves (2016, Loki/Tony Stark)
====Fanart====
See Horror Art for more examples.
 
*Slasher Squad by samraw08
*Slashy Birthday by daikuwabara
File:Strange justice interior by edith crowe.jpg|from the story, "Death Angeles," printed in Strange Justice, artist is Edith Crowe (Starsky & Hutch) (1982)
====Fansites====
*, Steve Calvert's fanpage
====Fanvids====
*SLASHSTREET BOYS - “I'LL KILL YOU THAT WAY" - parody video of The Backstreet Boys as the "Slashstreet Boys": Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Ghostface, Michael Myers, and Leatherface.
*Shin Sonic - a 2020s horror animation series by Evanimas. The series follows a demonic entity, Shinic, that has stolen the form of Sonic the Hedgehog.
===Zines===
*Fantastic Films Illustrated (1963) - created by John Carpenter
*Black Oracle (1969-1978)
*Queer Madness (1980s)
*Spirits & Shades (1989)
*Burnt Toast (1990-1992)
*The Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror Fan Resource Book (1994)
*First Light en Masse (1993-2001)
===Challenges===
*Merlin Horror ‎(2012-2015)
*Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020-2021)
*Sufficiently Advanced (2023-onwards)
*Summer of Horror (2022-onwards)
==Further Reading==
* Vampirism as a metaphor for privilege
==External Links==
*Wikipedia: Horror fiction
*Wikipedia: Horror Film
*Horror Film Wiki
*TVTROPES: Horror Genre
*List of Horror Tropes
*Portal: Speculative Fiction/Horror at Wikipedia
==References==
*
Category:Fandoms by Canon Type