At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I am going to talk a little more about dark coping and the idea that certain types of horror films and literature help some people manage feelings of anxiety during times of uncertainty. First, I need to come clean about something. Yes, I am a dark coper or was during the pandemic/cancer chapter of my life–but I am a lightweight. I don’t like films that have a lot of violence in them, even against monsters. I think a lot of dark copers watch things that would scare the bejesus out of me and cause distress. I am more of a scary fairy tale kind of person and I like the Hitchcock approach to scary movie making. Don’t show me. Just suggest the scary thing! I guess you could say that I am a fan of good storytelling and not a fan of gratuitous violence and gore. I don’t really do mean and ugly horror. I need to be very clear about that. I like a nuanced monster movie with something positive woven into the story or at least something that tugs at my heart strings and makes me think about the human condition. I might even go so far as to say I like a little romance. I love a good misunderstood monster story. I think a good psychological thriller with a pinch of mystery thrown in helps me cope with my anxieties about manipulative people and a good old fashioned ghost story goes a long way in helping work through sadness and loss. There are so many different genres of horror out there and I just needed to put that out there because I am a delicate flower and you should probably know that before I ramble on about this topic anymore. Ha!

Of course, as I have told you, I have watched a lot of zombie movies and no, there is certainly not a lot of subtlety, romance and implied scary stuff in most zombie movies. It’s hard to be subtle about flesh eating monsters, I guess. Sheesh! So, why did I watch zombie movies? I think I was bumped up a level on the scary scale temporarily during the pandemic and while my husband was ill with cancer because I was coping with some pretty awful and sometimes scary and gruesome real life hospital horror stuff. I will spare you the details but I can tell you it was rough and somehow scrolling through the Netflix catalog during that time, I figured out that watching people fight off zombies helped me walk through hospital hallways during the pandemic without freaking out and in some weird way that maybe no one else can understand, it helped me handle what was happening to my husband’s cancer ravaged body. Crazy, I know. Crazy times called for crazy measures of self care. I was surprised too.

My zombie catalog is admittedly limited. I soon realized that could only handle television zombies. I am not really not a hardcore Night of the Living Dead kind of zombie girl. The sort of movie makes me feel queasy. See? Lightweight. So, since we’ve established that there are varying degrees of scary out there and that not all fans of horror are the same or look for the same things in horror movies, I need to stress that even though I watched scary movies during a very scary time in my life, I am, by no means a jump scare or slasher film sort of dark coper. I am more of a scary fairy tale, romantic monster and gothic ghost story, occasional psychological thriller and hopeful post-apocalyptic fiction kind of dark coper –and those are the horror flavors that have helped me process and protect myself from anxiety over the past few challenging years.

And why did I bring this up again?? I am trying to figure out how to bring this into the studio. I am feeling a little stuck right now and I don’t really make pretty feel good art anymore (if I ever really did). I am trying to find ways to make art that feels like those hopeful post-apocalyptic stories that I like so much. I will write more about those later and why I am trying to weave this into my creative process. This is 2025 ya’ll and there are still a lot of monsters out there. I need a new creative process game plan.