This is the working vocabulary Portal Avalon uses when we talk about the kind of fiction we publish — the terms editors and writers reach for, the labels Google uses, and the older Gothic words that still describe what is actually happening on the page. Some entries are clinical (gaslighting, narcissistic supply); some are critical (the uncanny, dramatic irony); some are simply the trade names of moods (gothic, noir, slow burn). Use the alphabetical jumps below or read straight through. Each term ends with an example from our library.
Jump to: A · B · C · D · F · G · L · M · N · O · P · S · T · U
A
Atmosphere
The ambient pressure of a story — the weather, the silences, the recurring images. In dark fiction, atmosphere is load-bearing: it does the work that plot does in other genres. See Mystical Horror.
B
Betrayal narrative
A story whose central event is the breach of an explicit or implicit trust — marital, professional, fraternal. The interest is in the architecture before the breach and the wreckage after. See Betrayal & Secrets.
C
Coercive control
A pattern of behaviour that limits another person’s autonomy through isolation, monitoring, financial constraint, and the systematic erosion of self-trust. Coercive control is broader than physical abuse and is the structural subject of much of our dark-psychology tag.
Cognitive bias
A systematic pattern of deviation from rational judgement. Dark fiction exploits cognitive biases — confirmation, sunk-cost, optimism — as plot mechanics: the protagonist sees what she expects to see until the story refuses to let her keep seeing it.
D
Dark romance
Romance with the lights turned down. The genre that refuses to lie about what longing actually feels like — the dependence, the asymmetry, the moment when wanting someone becomes indistinguishable from being remade by them. See Dark Romance.
Dramatic irony
When the reader knows something the protagonist does not. In dark fiction this is rarely a comic device; it is the engine of dread. The reader watches the character walk into the room and has to keep reading because they already know what is in it.
F
Forbidden desire
Attraction that collides with a rule the character would otherwise keep — a marriage, a profession, an oath, a friendship. See the forbidden-desire tag.
G
Gaslighting
A sustained pattern in which one person makes another doubt their own perception, memory, or sanity. Not a single lie but a long-term campaign that replaces the target’s reality with the perpetrator’s preferred version. Example: The Perfect Victim.
Gothic
The oldest mode in dark fiction. Inherited houses, secret passages, ancestral guilt, weather that knows things. The Gothic register does not require ghosts; it requires the sense that the architecture is keeping a record.
L
Liminal space
A threshold — literal or psychological — where ordinary rules do not apply: a hotel corridor at three in the morning, a salt marsh at twilight, a portal between worlds. Dark fiction is structurally interested in liminality because that is where transformation is permitted.
Love bombing
The opening move of a particular kind of coercive relationship: a flood of attention, generosity, and intimacy designed to short-circuit the target’s ordinary caution. Followed, characteristically, by withdrawal. Example: Love Bombing.
M
Manipulation
The broad family of techniques by which one person obtains compliance from another without using either honest persuasion or open force. Includes gaslighting, love-bombing, triangulation, and intermittent reinforcement. See the manipulation tag.
Modern Gothic
Contemporary fiction that imports Gothic structures into present-day settings — corporate offices, suburban houses, hotel chains, university faculties. The portal is still there; it just has a key-card reader.
N
Narcissistic supply
In clinical literature, the attention, admiration, or emotional reaction that a narcissistic personality requires from others in order to maintain self-cohesion. Dark fiction treats supply as the hidden currency in coercive relationships: the protagonist eventually realises that what she is producing for her partner is not love but fuel.
Noir
A tonal register: morally compromised protagonists, urban or interior settings, fatalism. Noir overlaps with dark fiction at the level of mood but tends to prefer first-person voices and city geographies.
O
Obsession
Desire that has refused to negotiate with reality. In dark fiction, obsession is rarely glamorous; it is the slow narrowing of a life around an impossible object. See Obsession & Control.
P
Psychological thriller
A thriller whose stakes are interior — sanity, memory, identity — rather than physical. Most of Portal Avalon’s Dark Psychology collection sits in this register.
S
Slow burn
A pacing strategy that delays gratification — sexual, violent, or revelatory — in favour of accumulated pressure. Dark fiction is structurally inclined to slow burn because dread is a sustained register; jump-scares interrupt it.
Supernatural
Forces, beings, or events that operate outside the laws of the natural world. Distinguished from horror by emphasis: the supernatural mode includes folklore, omens, and ritual without necessarily aiming at terror. See supernatural tag.
T
Triangulation
A manipulation technique in which a third party — real or invented — is introduced into a two-person relationship to provoke jealousy, competition, or insecurity in the target. Common in narcissistic and coercive dynamics.
U
Uncanny
Freud’s term, after Schelling: the sensation produced when the familiar is rendered subtly strange. The room is yours; one chair has moved. The husband is yours; one sentence is wrong. The uncanny is dark fiction’s house frequency.
Unreliable narrator
A first-person voice whose account the reader is given reason to mistrust — through inconsistencies, gaps, or revealed motives. In dark psychology the unreliable narrator is sometimes the victim; in gothic fiction, sometimes the witness; in our blog on the technique, both at once.
Frequently Asked
Why a glossary on a fiction site?
Because the vocabulary genuinely organises the work. Readers searching for “love bombing” or “coercive control” deserve to land somewhere that takes the term seriously. The glossary is a doorway into our library, not a substitute for it.
Are these clinical definitions?
Entries that map onto psychological literature (gaslighting, coercive control, narcissistic supply) are written in alignment with that literature without using clinical jargon. Literary and Gothic terms (uncanny, slow burn, modern Gothic) are written in their critical-tradition sense.
Will the glossary expand?
Yes. New terms are added when at least three published stories warrant the entry and no existing term covers the same ground.