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The sublime stems from potent awe and terror that stresses someone’s limits, surpassing all other responses and overloading the recipient in both their revulsion and fascination.

In regards to the Romantic view of the environment, the sublime can occur when natural grandeur overwhelms an individual to the point of causing fright or a feeling of helpless insignificance. Overall, approaching the sublime occurs when a sight or experience is “awesome” or ” awful” in the old meaning of both words: characterized by or inspiring awe, and awe is an emotion containing fear, wonder, and reverence. The sublime questions the stark dichotomy between pleasure and pain because a fear-invoking scene can also cause wonder, an odd sort of delight. In a contemporary sense, it could be viewed as watching a train wreck: horrifying, but captivating to the viewer.

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From Nightmare Magazine, Issue 37, October 2015, Queers Destroy Horror!

As queer writers and readers, we find ourselves feeling both at home and deeply unwelcome in the horror genre. Sexual and gender nonconformity are in the genre’s DNA’ queer people began writing horror long before it was a recognizable fiction category, and our ranks include some of the biggest names in the contemporary horror scene. There’s also something thoroughly queer about the themes that preoccupy the genre, the thrilling or threatening friction between outsiders and communities, attraction and revulsion, sex and violence, power and vulnerability. As people who fall on the ever-expanding spectrum of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and nonbinary identities, we think about desire, embodiment, and belonging in ways that are rarely simple and never unexamined. It makes sense that many of us are drawn to fiction that tackles these topics in unexpected and often unsettling ways.

But, as the essays and interviews in this special issue demonstrate, if we often see ourselves reflected in horror stories, it can also feel like the genre wants us gone--or dead. Horror’s queer figures include both monsters and victims: the demonically desirable predator and gender nonconforming serial killer, but also the solitary hitchhiker, the disposible gay or lesbian friend, the young woman who has sex in the wrong way or with the wrong people and is punished with death and dismemberment. Queer writers navigate pockets of homophobia or well-meaning ignorance, where our characters’ queerness is seen as either a moral failing or an acct of exceptional bravery in-and-of itself. Equally frustrating are the readers who dismiss queerness in fiction as an “unnecessary” complication that isn’t “integral to the plot.” If on the one hand, a certain brand of mainstream horror cannot envision anything but monstrosity or victimhood for queer people, there is also a brand of horror criticism that resents the presence of queerness in the first place, viewing it as an intrusion of faddish political rhetoric into horror’s proper sphere. 

Of course, there are many possible responses to those who claim that there is no place for queer people, queer relationships, and queer sexuality in horror. We can point to the genre’s history. We can insist that representation is a moral issue. Personally, I find myself thinking that the readers who place queerness outside of horror’s boundaries are demanding a poorer and duller version of what this genre can be. At its best, queer horror acknowledges the way our vulnerability is shaped by what we desire and how our bodies are recognized. It asks us to dwell in the messy consequences of exclusion and isolation, of family-making and community-building, of finding names for ourselves or coming to recognize that no name fits quite right. It gives us characters with uniquely vexed or uniquely rich connections to their genders, people for whom the body is more than a sack of viscera waiting to be splattered across the walls.

When we say that we belong here, we are insisting above all that this genre can be rich and vibrant--that horror tackles important questions, that it is meaningful to the way we live our lives. Whatever it is that draws you to horror fiction, I hope that these pages remind you why the genre’s queerness is something to celebrate.

-- Megan Arkenberg, Nonfiction Editor