The Tropes of Horror

Off the top of my head, here are the top horror movie tropes:

Moody lighting
Bad VFX
Jumpscares, more recently
Teenagers with no adult supervision being somewhere they shouldn't
Someone 'mad' (scientists, doctors, killers...)
A monster of some sort (zombies, vampires, werewolves...)
Anything that's abandoned! If people haven't been there in years it's fair game!

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Interview With The Vampire's Apeirophobia And Why Everyone But The Vampire Ignores It

One of the many revisited tropes in media is immortality. The idea of seeing and personally experiencing all the world’s disasters in history captivates us, I guess. Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire establishes immortality as an integral plot point (the only reason the interview can take place). The narrative, therefore, advances some heavy opinions about the topic, as well as those who seek it. Rice’s novel leaves no doubt about it: being and becoming an immortal is gross. A freak bites your neck, you drink said freak’s blood, and your body slowly shuts down. What remains is your consciousness and blood flow, which you have to supplement in order to survive (which kind of takes away the meaning of immortality). The blood-sucking itself is graphically sensual in Interview With The Vampire, revealing their killing as the last real joy that vampires have - there’s a pun on ‘flirting with death’ somewhere in there. Oh, and you can never see the sun again, so get some spray tan. The...

Insights into Bloodchild

The short story Bloodchild by Octavia Butler perfectly combines disgust and intrigue, as well as a big heap of detachment. My first thought after reading was it’s an interesting take on the parasitic alien trope; more domestic, more normalized, just as traumatizing. It’s obvious the race of the Tlic is based on insects, which of most organisms looks the most alien to humans as well as having members that are parasitic in nature, so the connection makes sense. As in certain insect species as well, it seems as though the Tlic are matriarchal - which adds to the interesting role reversal to the men who bear Tlic children. The Terrans in this short story are implied to be minorities, as T'Gatoi mentions them leaving the planet due to subjugation. Terrans are thought to be given an equivalent exchange, as they have access to shelter as well as nonfertilized eggs, which make the Terrans live longer lives. Of course, objectively, being put on a preserve like they are and having to b...

Frankenstein, Literature's Worst Parent

If one needs a guide on how to be the most oblivious of deadbeat parents, they need only to look to the actions of Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . There’s nothing that says “World’s Worst Dad” like running out of the house, screaming after finding your eight-foot-something child looming over your sleeping form. Shelley’s entire novel, in essence, is about parenting and the relationships between fathers and their children - with the added element of being the first work of science fiction. Before getting into the analysis of the various facts, which point this towards being a parental “how-to”, it’s important to briefly mention Shelley’s own upbringing and how it relates to said analysis. Shelly was born to William Godwin, a philosopher, and novelist, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a well-known English suffragette who penned “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, in 1797. Two weeks after Shelley’s birth, Wollstonecraft died due to postpartum infections. Shelley’s rigor...

Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction

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