I think the problem with torture in media is when you make it more realistic, it just becomes sad and a bummer. Martyrs is less gory than Terrifier but the movie is just an overall bummer and leaves you feeling sad

a lot of splatterpunk books just end up turning into itchy and scratchy cartoons that you can read

I think there’s a real power in vagueness. Your mind can come up with all kinds of terrible scenarios when it’s left to fill in blanks and deduce meanings and explicit descriptions don’t always leave room for the mind to work. Explicit descriptions can absolutely be horrifying, I do love some extreme horror so I’m not knocking it, but we all have the things that scare us personally and sometimes being able to insert our own fears makes for a more effective story.

“The lottery” reminds me of a vault within fallout new Vegas where the inhabitants were convinced to sacrifice one of their own every year and it eventually got to a point where there was a whole political apparatus based on “electing” who was going to be sacrificed

It resulted in a civil war that left only 4 people left who decided to die together only to find out that nobody had to be sacrificed and they were let out only for all but 1 of them to commit suicide

I don't have kids but I've heard a lot of parents say their tolerance for horror changed drastically after they had children, I'm interested in the psychology of why that happens to some. Thought-provoking topic, overall! I enjoyed this video.

Lake mungo actually got to me too despite me being desensitized to horror. I remember having nightmares that my own corpse would walk into my room and seeing it from both perspectives.

This reminds me of this quote by Stephen King: “The 3 types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it's when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm.

The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it's when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.

And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It's when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there's nothing there...”

I feel like gore isn't inherently scary. The reason why people don't like gore isn't because its so heart stoppingly terrifying, but because its deeply disgusting, and hard to look at.

When I see something gory, I'm grossed out, and unsettled, but it doesn't stick, at least not in a way that makes me scared, at least when its done poorly.

My reaction to gore is the same as my reaction to watching someone drink vomit. I feel sick, but not necessarily scared.

Lake Mungo scared me as much as it made me feel profoundly sad. The secrets she felt she needed to keep, the pain of loss the family felt. The ending gave me goosebumps as well as made me cry a lil bit 🥹 I love that movie so much

The sock mic goes hard

One story I will always recommend to people who like more subtle horror is A Collapse of Horses by Brian Evenson. It’s about a guy who gets a brain injury, and it’s all told from his perspective as he starts to lose his grip on reality. It’s super short and available online, definitely worth the read

1:00 im so glad someone finally mentions how theyre ACTUALLY scared😭 everybody always pretends theyre descencitized like whats even the point of consuming horror media then

I feel like a lot of book youtubers talk mainly about books they hate, so your channel is like a breath of fresh air. Don't get me wrong, negativity can be fun sometimes, but so can positivity

Good to know that Wendigoon’s Petscop video is a universal experience on this side of the internet now, lol

My general feelings on "extreme" horror is generally that they are disturbing & upsetting, but it often relies too much on just in-your-face pain & suffering & gore & blatantly horrible things. It ends up being too over the top to the point where it's gross and upsetting, but not *scary*.

I much prefer horror that has some thought put into it to really poke at your fears. I think extreme horror can absolutely be done well, just like jumpscares can be done well, it's just that they both often get used to get scares or disturb people without putting in the work to earn those scares/disturbed feelings.

15:45 I think a big part of why extreme horror doesn't hit as hard as something like the lottery is that it is difficult to imagine someone being so evil as to set up something like the Playground in real life, yet we know all too well that horrors similar to the Lottery can, have, and will happen all the time.

I love how Shirley Jackson’s “horror” novels aren’t explicit in depicting any gore in it- instead it’s much more insightful and introspective. I definitely recommend reading some of her short stories and lesser known novels! Some of my favorites include “The Witch” and The Sundial or Hangsmen

I really didn't like Terrifier. I usually enjoy horror movies, but Terrifier just made me upset and mad. The protagonist does that "stab him once, dont check that he's dead, run away" thing so many times I was sure it was a gag but it still pissed me off. It bothered me that there was a massive imbalance between how much graphic mutilation we saw being done to female characters vs male characters-- the women had their breasts cut off and got stripped naked and sawed in the vag and stuff, while the men who died just got stabbed or whatever. That made me uncomfortable. The most extreme violence and torture on-screen was reserved for women, and special attention was given to mutilating their sexual characteristics. It left a bad taste. And then also, it pissed me off that the clown somehow came back from the dead at the end and was revealed to be supernatural-- my biggest pet peeve in horror is when villains don't follow any rules. It just makes it seem pointless. If I don't care about the protagonists and the villain is unstoppable, what's the point? It kills the horror for me entirely. For something to feel scary to me, I need to be able to care.

I love horror movies, my mom hates them. She watched Childs Play with me and my dad and the whole time she was trying to like, outrun the scares. Guessing what happens next, rolling her eyes at the characters, asking why they were acting the way they were. I kept trying to encourage her to level with the movie until i realized that she was defending herself from being scared. If she really let herself empathize with the movie she would get too uncomfortable.

I think a big part of art making you feel scared, is your ability to empathize with it. Like you explained, The Lottery is more disturbing because it's easier to place yourself in the story.

0:35 this is so real, I hate saying when I don’t find some horror thing scary or that like, saw doesn’t bother me at all. Like, I’m not an edgelord, I’m just genuinely not affected by that type of horror, but put some cheap bullshit found footage jumpscare in the dark and I’m loosing my mind 😭