#steamhorror | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

endcant · 1 year

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i was just thinking about how steampunk can be too optimistic (or even euphemistic) considering sometimes steam engine just means Coal Engine and invoking the name of coal elicits more horror than steam. and then i thought about how steam-related disasters are incredibly scary and the ghosts thereof should be haunting the fuck out of steampunk environments. and then it’s like, well at that point it’s steam horror. which i suppose would be its own genre. (a genre which i would enjoy more than steam punk)

that in turn reminded me of my recent thoughts about architectural horror, which is a genre i’ve been idly into since i read house of leaves for the first time in like 7th grade. i’ve been thinking lately that a lot (though NOT all) of new architectural “horror” content that i’ve seen specifically on social media has hardly been horror. to be clear, there is a lot of good new architectural horror media and content, but there’s also something else that i see developing once less-horror-y creators get ahold of the mental vocabulary that comes from thinking about and feeling about the role of architecture and “the house” itself in hauntings or other narrative situations around strange environments and lingering energy

i guess my thought there is like, well. the solution to me is a genre that is less horror and more just mentally rotating the concept of architecture-driven narratives and worldbuilding logic. which at a point could just be architecturecore or architecturepunk or some shit. which both sound much stupider than steamhorror but i still like the concept.

also btw homestuck doesn’t count to me because it abandoned/overlooked the concept of defiling/contorting/adapting a childhood home to be a platform or tool. and i won’t forgive or forget

more than coining anything new i am just taking the vibes from each genre and attaching them surgically to one another. what if steam horror without the euphemistic baggage of steampunk? what if a work (read: being) of architecture as a genre fixture without the expectation-based baggage of horror?

that is all

#mine #architectural horror

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