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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42341
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Building on my answer in [**Proven psychological or scientific means of scaring people?**](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/39358/proven-psychological-or-scientific-means-of-scaring-people), I'm working on a universal **horror-theme structure** for a branching-narrative series with an occult detective. I won't discuss the whole system, but the idea is that each story has multiple themes that progress incrementally. Choices take the reader deeper down a particular horror scenario, with branches to other juxtaposed themes.

## One of my universal horror themes is strong, but problematic.

**Body Horror – this theme is a problem** because it plays into universal fears of aging, disability, amputation, disease, birth defects, injury, bad plastic surgery.... It's a legitimate horror theme that I can see escalating to its logical conclusion. Examples are Stephen King's _Thinner_, and Tod Browning's _Freaks_.

**I don't see a PC way to handle body horror tropes.** I don't think horror _needs_ to be PC, but [a recent lecture about zombies by a guy in a wheelchair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IMe4pwJ0X0) has made me question the whole theme as reenforcing a bad message. Nearly every _body horror_ idea I run through my system reflects real world ablism, or a hierarchy that body-shames real people.

I'm not trying to be PC police of an entire genre. Body horror is legitimately scary. I would rather be able to tap into it.

## How can I portray body horror and still be sensitive to people with disabilities?

We have visceral fears about our bodies coming to harm or being consumed. Disease, decay, and body revulsion seem like a big part of horror, definitely one of the few _universal fears_ that everyone shares. I've only identified 8 universal fears – losing 1 knocks out a lot of story possibilities. I could limit it to metaphor and abstraction (a decaying house), but it's not visceral and _personal_ like the body.

Body horror is also the theme that sometimes knocks me out of the genre. Films like _Saw_ become just so much torture porn. I wouldn't indulge in gore, but still the threat and consequences of physical harm works as a logical escalation of a horror theme. Horror without consequences is like Scooby-Doo.

Can I _raise the stakes_ in a body horror theme in a way that avoids an inherently ableist message? Can I tap into this anxiety without simultaneously punching-down on real life disabled, sick, and differently-bodied people? This is not about putting a hero in a wheelchair to make an empowering statement. Rather this is about leveraging a particular universal fear, without crapping on people who already have it rough.

Original score: 38