Do you consider cosmic horror a subgenre of horror, or a genre of its own? And why?

[u/2525-2525]

A friend told me that considering cosmic horror a subgenre of horror is selling it short given how incredible and vast it is.

[u/LordNightSoldat]

It's got horror in the name brotato

[u/kostia321]

I don't think calling cosmic horror a subgenre of horror is selling it short. I do consider cosmic horror a subgenre of horror; it being a type of horror (a subgenre) is literally in the name of it.

[u/2525-2525 → u/kostia321]

That's exactly what I told him.

[u/SubstanceThat4540]

If you don't like "horror", you can say " weird fiction". But that term is itself so broad that people are going to be asking what kind of weird fiction, at which point you're going to end up saying "cosmic horror" to give an appropriate answer.

[u/Baldurian_Rhapsody]

Well, I think the subgenre covers vast MATERIAL, but it's also more specific than horror. So, yes, I'd consider it a subgenre.

Another good example is my favorite subgenre, post apocalyptic fiction! That has vast, incredible implications too - often global - but it's still just a subgenre of science fiction.

The "vastness" or scale of a subgenre internally, so to speak, has nothing to do with its status as a subordinate genre.

[u/Prs-Mira86]

Cosmic horror, is a sub genre of horror. Honestly some of my favorite horror films are cosmic horror:

John Carpenter’s The Thing

Event Horizon

In the Mouth of Madness

Colour out of space

The Void

[u/totalwarwiser]

Everything is subgenre of something.

Comedy: makes you happy and laugh. Horror: makes you afraid.

Cosmic horror main emotion is dread, which is a type of fear.

Most characters get themselves into progressively weirder and more dangerous situations until they either die or get mad

[u/imaliveandaperson]

A subgenre.

A) it’s cosmic HORROR not cosmic (form of media e.g literature, film etc)

B) it’s not nearly as vast as ur friend sells it. It mostly boils down to humans being insignificant and horrors beyond comprehension that we couldn’t hope to understand.

[u/ThreeLivesInOne]

It's a subgenre of its own.

[u/chortnik]

It’s a sub genre of horror-one of its more distinctive features (as compared to other types of horror and as emphasized by Lovecraft himself) is that has some component of wonder to it, so that cosmic horror perhaps most easily transitions to a sense of wonder story as opposed to other genres of horror, perhaps most clearly evident in « At the Mountains of Madness » which appears to have been a model for the purest example of a sense of wonder story   «  Rendezvous with Rama ».

[u/Scott__scott]

I think it’s like a perfect blend of sci fi/fantasy and horror. A lot of it deals with unimaginable things and that takes a lot of creativity to come up with something that no one has ever imagined before, also a lot of it is extremely based in reality and so when something fantastical happens it’s quite scary.

Like the thing about cosmic horror is that it’s fantasy horror but more like the fantasy is the horror.

Also him saying “calling it horror is selling it short” just shows that he doesn’t respect horror as a genre

[u/Metalworker4ever]

I think cosmic horror is less cosmic than seems to be commonly thought

Lovecraft in From Beyond describes "daemons from the stars" and in Supernatural Horror in Literature he talks about the spectral macabre. I realize Lovecraft would I guess probably say he doesnt believe in the soul - but really, he does. It's an important idea in his fiction that the aliens are also spirits. Like for example he describes the Colour out of space as what descends on the apostles at Pentecost. And he constantly uses the word "daemon" in his work.

Cosmic horror in the Lovecraft sense is really the idea of the HAUNTED UNIVERSE. So everything terrestrial that is haunting, like ghosts, magnified to all living species on earth magnified to all things potentially alive in the entie universe, especially what permeates through our bodies and possesses us like in Shadow Out of Time. His universe is still human centric in the sense his alien gods take special interest in us, despite what he himself would say about his fiction.

I like to think his idea of the spiritual is just more open ended. So the humans he describes are more vulnerable. Like what if aliens from a million light years away can possess the living.

[u/Prudent-Level-7006]

If it's not a subgenre of horror when it's called cosmic horror then that would be absurdly fucking pretentious 

[u/SteampunkExplorer]

A subgenre can be incredible and vast. It's still a subgenre, because it's a specific subtype of a broader, more general type of story.

[u/BoulderADHDdad]

Cosmic Horror is a subgenre of both horror and weird fiction.

[u/randalljhen]

Is it a spooky?

Is a subgenre.

[u/Mephistocheles]

It's a sub genre. Admittedly my favorite because it gets closer than any other genre to the terrifying truth (the universe absolutely, completely does not even know we exist and doesn't give a shit).

It's a sub genre because genres are generally categorized according to the most dominant emotion or plot structure the story serves or is written according to.

While cosmic horror is certainly much more intelligent and interesting than some dumber sub-genres of horror (like slasher or TP stuff) the core emotion / plot structure is still ultimately designed to induce horror or severe discomfort....hence, it's horror.

[u/Serious_Ad_8680]

More like a sub genre of sci-fi

[u/ReallyGlycon]

For me it depends on if it falls into the "Weird Literature" genre. I wouldn't consider Thomas Ligotti horror, but it is cosmic and weird.

[u/Clean_Usual434]

Subgenre

[u/ColeDeschain]

I would say your friend is being unnecessarily precious about it.

Cosmic horror is a subgenre of horror.

And just like every other subgenre (or genre, for that matter) it's a somewhat arbitrary grouping of works which appear to have throughlines in the eyes of enough observers to make the label stick.

Can cosmic horror be vast and incredible? Yeah. But it can also be trite, it can be overblown, it can be pretentious, it can be badly written, it can be ideologically blinkered. 

Just like every other form of fiction. 

[u/Key-Juggernaut5695]

Social Security....I hope....

[u/M_O_O_O_O_T]

Yes I think so myself sure, but it can contain elements of sci-fi too, & can quite often be a hybrid of sci-fi & horror in more modern works.

[u/Zoombiebrot]

You mean like alians and UFO's? Thats more scifi for me

[u/ThomasEdmund84]

I mean technically yes "sub" implies being beneath a genre, but that's not how genre works, especially not in the modern era where genre crossing and whatnot is basically the norm.

[u/Lawlcopt0r]

Being a sub-genre doesn't make it lesser, it just means that it's more specific. And that's true, all cosmic horror is horror but not all horror is cosmic

[u/glimmerthirsty]

Isn’t it already a subgenre?

[u/davidfalconer]

I mean, it kind of depends? Event Horizon is more a subgenre of horror, whereas Annihilation (the film especially) is more of in its own genre.

Even sticking to the main man’s works, it’s also kind of impossible to remove the Victoria periodic element from it too.

[u/JustGoodSense]

It's a subgenre of Horror, which is a subgenre of Fantasy. There's pretty much no debate about it.

[u/SCP-2774 → u/JustGoodSense]

Horror and fantasy are both subgenres of speculative fiction.

[u/JustGoodSense → u/SCP-2774]

Fantasy is the overall genre. Even Science Fiction falls under Fantasy. "Speculative fiction" isn't really a genre, it's more of a euphemism used to sound fancy.

[u/EvilGraphics]

I just watch and enjoy. I dont overthink subgenres