/ot/ - Off-Topic

I'll start. I would like to recommend the manhua Aisha. It's a reimagining of Ayesha's Secret. I love how unsettling the art is. The story is pretty heavily based on fairy tales but in the realm of reality and do be warned there is an implied father/daughter sexual relationship. It's never shown in detail and it's obviously portrayed negatively. It's still ongoing, but I read Ayesha's Secret (completed) and loved it. Aisha is more fleshed out so far and I can't wait to see where it goes.
>Last horror you watched/read/listened to, and would you recommend it?
I watched the Korean Sweet Home when it came out and recently just finished it. The first season was definitely the peak, but the second and third seasons weren't too bad. Left me with a lot of questions though.
>How'd you get into horror?
My dad loves horror movies and would watch them regularly growing up. Scared the hell out of me when he watched War of the Worlds one day, but I loved that movie growing up.

I have a couple of recommendations in mind, but I'll just write about one for now. It's called The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter. It's a novella (about 100 pages) about a young monk developing a very unhealthy obsession with a girl he meets on his pilgrimage. I absolutely love a narrator with a unique perspective, and this book has this in spades. I especially love horror stories where you watch the narrator slowly lose his or her mind, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, you'll love this. If you're worried the prose is too archaic because the book was written in the 1890s, don't be. It felt incredibly readable, and that's one of the reasons I chose to make a post about it instead of Henry James's horror stories or something. I probably didn't do a great job of selling it, but this book was so compelling, and managed to accomplish SO MUCH in a short amount of time.
>Last horror you watched/read/listened to, and would you recommend it?
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer was the last piece of horror fiction I've read. I wouldn't exactly recommend it, though. I did not find it compelling or enjoyable. It wasn't especially bad or anything. I was just… underwhelmed. It wound up feeling like a discount version of Roadside Picnic, and I couldn't stop making the comparison in my head when I read it. I might eventually finish the series, but I also don't feel a particular desire to do so, aside from the fact that I don't like dropping series without finishing them.
>How'd you get into horror?
I was always an easily-frightened kid, but for some reason, I would consistently seek out scary stories and retell them to people (difficult to say if my constant desire to read more horror CAUSED me to be frightened all the time, or if I sought out horror BECAUSE I was always scared kek). I'd add embellishments to make them more suited to my taste, or to make them "scarier." I think the first story I ever heard was the one that ends with the line, "aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" That one and the story about the lady with the guy flashing his brights while tailgating her, only for it to be revealed that there was a killer in her back seat, were the main reasons I got into horror as a whole.
>Any comments on the horror genre meta
I love denpa games, and I find it very interesting how the genre seems to be very limited to VNs. You could argue movies like Jacob's Ladder, Cure, or most of David Lynch's filmography qualify as a part of the genre, but it's still a very limited scope. I know the genre was popularized by VNs (and I think Shizuku was considered its origin, although I could be mistaken), but it's a genre I'd love to see outside of VNs.

>>6107
I sort of wish the sisters had a relationship going on, whether its one-sided or requited, it wouldve added an extra layer of fucked up since they only have each other and Aida would have a warped perception of love due to the abuse from her father.

I know the story is likely set on having Sean/Aisha be endgame, though I hope Aida chooses her sister first and foremost, despite her hopeless crush on the boys.

<threadpic
I LOVE Gyo movie! Changing main role to the girl was the good idea

Going to rec Godchild as a good BL horror manga. It's a gothic horror in particular taking place in 19 century London and has episodic spooky and mysterious cases.

Technically its a sequel of Count Cain which I would also recommend, but the main series isn't explicitly BL and Godchild is. Both could be read independently of each other.

If you suffer from claustrophobia and a fear of getting stuck in narrow spaces I recommend the finale of British film The Borderlands. The actors also hate it so their reactions are fairly genuine. Otherwise, it has some great slowburn build up with the characters, a group of men sent by the Vatican to investigate supernatural occurrences in an old church, but suffers from the usual "shit we gotta end the movie, let's just do one big scary sequence".

>>6124
Oh wow, I loved that manga so much, thanks for reminding me!

>>6154
Yay! I'm glad I'm not the only one who liked it back in the day. It's so underrated imo, gothic works in general don't get enough love and Kaori Yuki's art is gorgeous.

Does Litchi Light Club count as horror?

>>6164
i'd say so, very aesthetic manga
Jaibo deserved better than a bihet like Zera but alas
also if you enjoy LLC i recommend innocent boy crusaders by the same author, more cute boys being impaled and it has a Jabio-esce character

>>6183
Never heard of it before but everything I've read by Usamaru Furuya has been great so no doubt it is too. Very pretty cover liking the medieval vibes.

I read Dark Matter recently. It was an atmospheric horror story. I was surprised because I was led to believe the homoerotic nature of the protagonist's relationship with his friend was entirely unintentional, but no. It was real. I'd highly recommend it to Fujochan for that reason alone.

>>7451
Artic horror? Interesting, so it the subtext explicitly stated in the book or did the author later say it was intentional?

>>7452
Minor spoilers The protagonist explicitly states that he has romantic feelings for the other character within the story itself, so the subtext becomes literal text. I'd spent the majority of the book under the impression I was being Fujobrained about it, since I'd gone into it thinking it was just a horror novel, so it was kind of surprising lol. I do not know if the author has elaborated further in any interviews, as I have not yet looked that deeply into it. It is, of course, a horror story, so I wouldn't anticipate things necessarily ending WELL for the characters, but the romantic feelings are acknowledged by the protagonist himself. It was just a pleasant surprise after spending so much of the book like, "god damn, this man is obsessed. In competent hands, this would be a romantic obsession because there's literally no heterosexual explanation for this."

I have an awkward relationship with horror. I love all sorts of scary stories and psychological horror but I can be rather squeamish with gore so I don't watch horror movies or play horror games for the most part. Actually as far as games go I can't really handle being chased and jumpscared in a game either. I can deal with drawn gore better but it all just depends.