Urban Fantasy and Horror

Shadow_Ferret said:

And the Rollcall thread got me thinking about this thing we call Urban Fantasy.

I wonder why some of it isn't called Urban HORROR? Vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosties, and such, are traditionally MONSTERS, and would traditionally be horror. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Exorcist. The Wolfman. Those were all horror.

Why did someone decide to brand it Fantasy? To me fantasy has other elements in it, elfs, trolls, fairies, dragons, wizards, magic, swordsmen, and things like that.

So to me, Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time is a true Urban Fantasy.

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Cause it's not scary! Horror is meant to freak you out. So if you're reading it home alone, you have to turn on all the lights and the tv. Urban fantasy is just adventure.

Fantasy itself is just stuff that doesn't exist IRL. It doesn't have to be specifically things that one can find in a D&D manual.

Shadow_Ferret said:

And the Rollcall thread got me thinking about this thing we call Urban Fantasy.

I wonder why some of it isn't called Urban HORROR? Vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosties, and such, are traditionally MONSTERS, and would traditionally be horror. Frankenstein. Dracula. The Exorcist. The Wolfman. Those were all horror.

Why did someone decide to brand it Fantasy? To me fantasy has other elements in it, elfs, trolls, fairies, dragons, wizards, magic, swordsmen, and things like that.

So to me, Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time is a true Urban Fantasy.

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My take on it is that the monster is the hero/heroine and there's usually some magic/psychic/supernatural phenomenon happening.

It's not considered horror because it's not meant to be scary/horrifying.

Also, I tend to think of contemporary fantasy as elves, trolls, dragons, wizards, etc. in the modern day. Whereas, I think of urban fantasy as mages, hunters, shapeshifters, psychics, vampires, etc. in the modern day, whether it takes place in an urban setting or not. And, I consider it paranormal romance when the romance consists of more than half the plot, where the romance is the plot. But then these are just my definitions of these closely related sub-genres.

Yttar

Kitty Pryde said:

Cause it's not scary!

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But it can be.

While true horror is very different from urban fantasy, I've read many UF's with horror elements in them. I mean, we are talking about monsters who want to eat you, demons who want your soul, or vampires who are trying to suck your blood.

Horror tries to elicit a visceral, negative reaction in the reader. It wants to shock and scare you. Urban fantasy is often action/adventure, but there are also elements of humor, romance, and horror mixed in by varying degrees. I don't know that Urban Horror Fantasy would work, exactly, because for me, horror is horror.

But I like some horror elements mixed into my UF's.

SPOILERS FOR A FEW BOOKS - Highlight to read

Iron Kissed, by Patricia Briggs - near the end, Mercy is drugged, raped, and her arm is crushed. More than just the awfulness of the rape, the description of her arm made me shudder and wince. Horror.

Child of Fire, by Harry Connolly - One of the character's hands are burned and horribly disfigured by magic. Ew, ow, and gross, but effective and visceral. Horror.

Red, by Jordan Summers - A take on the Little Red Riding Hood myth. The werewolf transformation is described as bones popping, joints re-shaping, skin splitting, hair growing, muscles tearing, and blood spurting. It's messy and painful and had me squirming in my seat. Horror.

I use horrific elements in my own books, as well. I was reading a review of Three Days to Dead earlier today, and the reader was talking about some of the things I wrote that made him squirm in his seat.



ETA: this discussion deserves a thread of its own, I think

ChaosTitan said:

But it can be.

While true horror is very different from urban fantasy, I've read many UF's with horror elements in them. I mean, we are talking about monsters who want to eat you, demons who want your soul, or vampires who are trying to suck your blood.

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It's also a matter of tone. Horror is meant to disturb and upset you, to make your skin crawl or your heart race. Uf can contain a lot of the same tropes -- vampires, werewolves, etc, but the tone can range anywhere from matter of fact to totally tongue in cheek.

If the MC cracks a joke when faced with death, it's not horror.

And certainly terrible things can happen to characters in UF, and many of them aren't funny at all, but the tone is still distinctly different, imo.

rugcat said:

It's also a matter of tone. Horror is meant to disturb and upset you, to make your skin crawl or your heart race. Uf can contain a lot of the same tropes -- vampires, werewolves, etc, but the tone can range anywhere from matter of fact to totally tongue in cheek.

If the MC cracks a joke when faced with death, it's not horror.

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Agreed. Tone is definitely important, and there is a tendency for the Buffy-influenced one-liner during the scarier moments that alleviates a lot of the "horror" of the moment. And it has its place.

The books that shy away from the darker tone, that avoid the quips and snarkiness, are much more rare. And may be closer to the "urban fantasy horror" that Shadow was asking about. I'd love to find more UF's like this.

Of course, quips have been in horror since before Buffy. Just look at Freddy Krueger.

Shadow_Ferret said:

That's how I describe it in mine.

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Cool! Nothing to worry about. There are only so many ways a human can transform into a wolf, right? In my reading experience, the truly messy and painful method is extremely rare.*


*In Rachel Vincent's Shifters series, the transformation from human to cat takes several minutes and is painful, but without the blood sprays and skin splitting.

I think Clive Barker is the master at melding urban fantasy and horror, and he even does it without the usual tropes of vampires, ghosts, or werewolves. While he might be best known for his straight-up horror books like 'Hellraiser,' his more fantastical novels like 'Weaveworld' and 'The Thief of Always' still managed to freak me out (and the last one was a kid's book!).

I think yttar is right that it's really a matter of intent. If the author's main aim is to scare (and succeed) then I think that pushes the book into horror territory.

I think it's a matter of the power imbalance between the protagonist and the villain, provided other elements of conflict, setting and tone are included. If the protagonist is wildly over-matched, like Jonathan Harker is by Count Dracula, you get horror. If the protagonist is Buffy, then it moves into the contemporary fantasy genre.

Urban fantasy heros take on baddies that are more powerful than them all the time (the antagonist in most every genre is a tremendous challenge to the protagonist). But when the villain is overwhelmingly powerful, you get horror instead of contemporary fantasy.

HConn said:

. Urban fantasy heros take on baddies that are more powerful than them all the time (the antagonist in most every genre is a tremendous challenge to the protagonist). But when the villain is overwhelmingly powerful, you get horror instead of contemporary fantasy.

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I never thought of it that way, and an astute observation. Even in non supernatural horror, where the bad guy is only another human, the victims are almost always in a position of being absolutely powerless, under the control of the baddie (i.e. Saw, etc. )

Maybe that says something about our fears of loss of control over our lives.

I think I may have posted this in the other thread, or another thread somewhere, but, Tanya Huff said on a UF panel at VCON (and I paraphrase) : the goal of fantasy is to triumph, the goal of horror is to survive.

SWickham said:

I think I may have posted this in the other thread, or another thread somewhere, but, Tanya Huff said on a UF panel at VCON (and I paraphrase) : the goal of fantasy is to triumph, the goal of horror is to survive.

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Hmm...makes me wonder if I do write horror, after all.

I think my distinction between the two comes in the treatment of the supernatural/extraordinary elements. (I think I talked about this in the original UF thread, once upon a time)

In UF, the supernatural/extraordinary stuff is part of the world. The creatures, the magic, the what-have-you is there, but the plot itself is a mystery, or a romance, or political maneuvering, or whatever, set against this fantastic backdrop.

In horror, the supernatural/extraordinary stuff IS the plot. It's all about defeating the monster or overcoming the adverse factor (like Shadowferret said above)

Methinks we could make a further distinction: the people in horror stories are prey. Nothing scares the bejesus out of us more than losing our primacy atop the food chain.

But to respond to surviving vs. triumph: while you could certainly count surviving as a personal triumph, I think Huff's point was that the heroes triumph by routing evil, not merely surviving it, and restoring the kingdom/wee village or whatever or perhaps ushering in a golden age where people get fat and happy and forget what war is. (Aragorn crowned in LOTR; Ender and Valentine leading a colonization push in Ender's Game, etc.) In horror stories there's none of that; people just come down shakily off their adrenaline highs and go get a drink.

This is an interesting discussion which I think proves just how hard it is to make distinctions and categorize.

Every time I want to say, horror is this and urban fantasy is that...I run into a road block. There is so much crossover.

But I guess what helps me determine between the two if focus. I see horror as focusing more on tone, mood, and atmosphere with a tendency to have endings where the antagonist - whatever it might be - triumphs more than the protagonist. There tends to be a you vs me or an us vs them type of theme. But that's not the say the protagonist doesn't have a victory. But that victory is not happy or even bittersweet. The loss far outweighs anything.

With urban fantasy, I see the focus more on action, adventure, and a bit of subverting horror tropes. In the end, while it may not be a happy ending, the protagonist triumphs more than the antagonist. Usually there is a good vs evil theme, and the good outweighs the bad, even if bittersweet. I find UF more hopeful.

That's not to say that you can't have exceptions and I wouldn't dare say these are absolutes. But I think a lot depends on tone and just how much focus you have on particular threads of the story.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Right. I know it's not scary. But why? Is that unintentional? Or are the authors deliberately trying to downplay the horror and focusing on the action/adventure aspect with a little humor?

If you did make a true horror Urban Fantasy, would people be interested? Is it even possible?

Do people even want to be scared any more? (I thought I actually read somewhere that people today don't like being scared. I'm too tired to hunt it down.)

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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158548&highlight=werewolves

Just finger through that thread. My theory: Human "bad-boy" stereotypes no longer exist. Instead, people need a new type of "bad-boy" and they get that through "scary" humanoids. So it shows up in paranormal situations like fantasy, urban fantasy, and obviously paranormal romance.

I guess it's just more romantic if someone loves you that is supposed to eat you. >.>

Shadow_Ferret said:

And sorry, but sex with werewolves, isn't that bestiality? Stop making them just horny animals and make them savage, out-of-control beasts.

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Well, now that's an interesting question. Perhaps it deserves its own thread, though I sure wouldn't want to be the one to come up with the title for it.

I'd argue that it's not bestiality, because they're humans first and wolves second. The wolves (in most stories) come out either only at the full moon or in times of great stress. The human is always dominant...so they're human and not beasts when they have sex, UNLESS they're in wolf form, but in that case it's always with another wolf form, right? Still not bestiality--it's just the Discovery Channel. Nobody's writing about humans mating with a wolf form--that would be bestiality.

As for them being horny animals...well, humans are horny too, and we're animals...so it's tough for me to see a distinction. Sorry if I opened a can o' worms, I just thought it was an interesting bit to comment on.

Shadow_Ferret said:

If I recall with LKH, weren't the werethings in the transition period when she had sex with them? Not full werethings, but a cross between human and thing.

Anyway, as far as the humans being horny, too. Yes. I guess I was including humans, since it takes two to weretango.

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Gadzooks, I didn't know that about LKH! I haven't read her...and now I don't think I will. I'd have to agree that what you describe sounds like crossing the line...ew. Not my cup o' tea, but obviously she's found a niche there and she has a lot of happy readers, so, uh, good for them.

Shadow_Ferret said:

To be honest, I'd like to see a return to scary monsters. I'd like vampires not to be sexy hunks, but return them to the living corpses they are. Make them ugly. Scary. With a stench of the grave.

And sorry, but sex with werewolves, isn't that bestiality? Stop making them just horny animals and make them savage, out-of-control beasts.

And we're the prey, we're cows, meat, not a sex toy.

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100% agree. I just don't understand it.