More like cosmic niceness.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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"cosmic horror... is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock... themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries... the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale..."
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If I was more of a writer, a less fearful take on human insignificance in the same light as Lovecraft would be my first project.
Well, would you look at that...
Though I think that leans more towards niceness than eldritch horror.
Yeah, I'd still go creepy (how can a universe that allows billion year old starlight not be, looked at viscerally?), but I'd try to do it in a way that makes you wonder if the human perspective is necessarily the right one. Lovecraft has a way of including all kinds of adjectives to make you know how you're supposed to feel. He had (ahem) strong feelings about unfamiliar people and practices in real life, so it was kind of inevitable.
Come to think of it, Parasyte had some of the same energy I'm picturing.
You're thinking of The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
The Outside by Ada Hoffmann
Nice, i'll add it to my list. 👍
One for the reading list!
Edit:
There's degrees you can go to with this, though. Lovecraft is a philosophical pessimist in his Mythos, while the other main take on "the absurd" is the Existentialist one, where the lack of meaning is an opportunity to be treasured. I land right in the middle, personally.
Lovecraft redid the deluge myth, in a way, with his Great Race of Yith. God brought a world-ending calamity (more than once), but this time for no specific reason, and saved nothing each time, because why would he when our world isn't important?
He basically just doomers about this, so it's horror. An Existentialist work might have the characters pass up an opportunity to stop it, because the cycle of destruction is a good thing and needed for the Cleopterans to evolve and have their day in the distant future. I'd take more of a survive-in-spite approach, so maybe there's a secret society of astral projectors across the eons, who make a living by leaving relics for each other in long-lasting caves. It's not good that the world keeps ending, but it brings silver linings too, and we make our way in life none-the-less.
Sadly, once the world building ends I'm clueless about building a laying out a narrative that doesn't suck. I'll have to see where Ada Hoffman goes.
maybe should i start a serie: Eldritch Niceness
The real monsters are inside us. Your art style is amazing.
It's a comics. I wish i was that good, lol 😆 👍
The pretty fingers bit is creepier than their transformation.
I wish the girl would have made the comment. Plenty of opportunities to make a compliment, too.
Yes, as I was reading it I was sure that would be her reply, but no, fancy fingers too good for that. It nice to be nice, be nice.
Super realistic though. Pretty much all of my friends who are women have dealt with at least a few doctors making weird ass "compliments" and other inappropriate comments. Literally just heard from a friend that her old podiatrist asked her for her cell phone number 😑 (and no, not for administrative purposes....)
What just happened
I think he took a splinter out of her finger. Then he was told he was next at some sort of clinic.
This is somehow less terrifying than AI generated human faces.
That's by design. The uncanny valley is meant to guard us against things that are close to human, but not quite. Specifically corpses/dead things or extremely sickly people.
This is intentionally drawn as a monster, and doesn't resemble a human as much as an AI generated image is trying to.
Our brain is, subconsciously, able to discern the difference.
One is only a threat in our head (the monster) and the other is a potential disease carrier (AI Generated)
It's kind of disappointing that I haven't seen more deliberate uses of bad AI imagery. I think it's just too powerfully uncanny for people to voluntarily stomach.
My running rule (that i ALWAYS ignore) is to never zoom in on ai faces. It's horrifying.
That was fantastic.
#notallmonsters
Thats all good and nice, but bro could easily use a noise shave.
Still, hope he gets the harvest going.