Description: a catalogue
I started reading a webnovel yesterday (I’ve been trying to explore new media frontiers and my trip into the world of Webtoons and the app Tapas has proved to be full of all kinds of semi-familiar culture objects), and I think I’m finally starting to really understand the “cozy horror” trope.
I’ve spent the last few years being deeply perplexed by the people who seem to be interested in the topics most traditionally associated with the horror genre (ghosts, magic, eternity, death, life, suffering, despair, helplessness, hopelessness, etc) but also seemed perturbed by the tone or outcome of stories which make up the usual style of the genre. (The word I’m talking around here is the often pejorative “tenderqueer” — those who seem to want access to the monstrousness and outsider territory of horror
But I’m reading this webnovel and I’m enjoying it quite thoroughly, but I keep being somewhat charmingly surprised by the way that what I would consider a somewhat “slice-of-life” slow-burn queer romance story keeps folding in these elements which are so familiar to me from my other literary pursuits. Tangling with issues of what it is like to be separated from the corporeal world, loneliness in the face of eternity, the violence we do to ourselves and others when we cannot see a way out, loss, grief, etc.