Why Cosmic Horror isn't Scary

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Okay, so maybe you're not afraid of Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth or the host of other tentacled Lovecraftian space-things. But maybe you don't... have to be?

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[TheTaleFoundry]

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[LivingFire_BurningFlame]

Saw something like "Fear is knowing you're in a monster-filled forest. Terror is seeing one run at you. Horror is realizing your feet are glued to the ground" and I think that applies pretty well here. Jumpscares and stuff would fit under the spike of terror, where true horror is more a constant realization that there's nothing you can do about the terror.

[kwahoo]

The cosmic doesn't make me feel small, it makes the universe feel grand and wondrous. It's something to explore and discover, not to cower and hide from.

[gbothitachi]

Ironically, the concept of cosmic "bliss" instills a lot of fear to me by framing cosmic experiences as pleasure and gift in exchange of your puny life is very haunting. Imagine how many would fall for it if one should appear in current times where most feel worthless. Millions would just be gone in an instant like a snap.

[cevichelife]

"Behold, cosmic horrors beyond your comprehension!"
"..."
"What, are you not afraid?"
"I don't get it"

[trashpanda]

Ironically, I find the "hopeful" cosmic horror to be infinitely more terrifying than the one that's actually supposed to scare me. It's often said that the way the characters react to a situation changes how the audience perceives it. Generally, this is meant to imply that if the characters are scared, sad, happy, etc., then the audience will be, too. In this case, at least for me, I think it works the opposite. In a lot of cosmic horror, where the people go "mad, " I think they're too self-aware of their madness for it to really be scary. Like... they're scared, they're trembling, that is the reaction they're supposed to have, which makes them sane, and that sanity makes it easy to stomach as an audience member. But if they react with bliss, hope, etc. to their own annihilation, which is contrary not just to their nature but their own established personalities beforehand, then doesn't that actually make them insane? I personally find that genuinely horrifying (never mind the parallels this has to severe depression, though that adds another layer, too). Like, what kind of horrific entity could essentially rewrite their way of thinking such that they abandon themselves in favor of death over some fleeting, meaningless feeling, event, or thing, especially because it makes them *happy* somehow? Not to mention just how cultish that is, which is perfectly in line with what you'd expect out of cosmic horror.

I think this video sought out to establish a hopeful alternate to cosmic horror but instead showed me what actual effective cosmic horror looks like.

[animagkrasver]

That's very interesting, because i literally had a nightmare, where some kind of otherworldy buzzing noise and echoed whisper tried to enter my mind and drive me crazy and i was so terrified that i decided that i should give in to it, because i thought "if i give in and become insane it won't terrify and hurt anymore" so i did it and it stopped.
But then i woke up and realized it was my alarm clock lol.

[Huspree]

People forget that H.P. Lovecraft was not a Horror author. He wrote weird tales, for a weird tales magazine. It is a credit to Lovecraft that we think of him as a Horror writer.

[owenwhite]

growing up in an abusive household kind of ruined horror for me, I usually fear the things that are known, because the unknown was always an escape for me.

[leamubiu]

To me the lack of fear from cosmic horror stuff is akin to walking alongside a highway. You can coexist quite (or almost) serenely with dangerously fast vehicles a couple of meters away from you, and only truly freak out when one really steers into you. No use losing one’s mind before anything’s happened. You can get queasy imagining the worst stuff, but you still got to move on.

[Tyrany]

I love cosmic horror, but whenever my thoughts drift to how much I don’t matter in the vast expanse of the universe, it’s immediately followed by “why does it matter that I don’t matter? If I can never possibly be as great as the universe, why worry about it? All that matters to me is me and the people around me”

[Cosmic-Sorceress-]

When I was explaining my taste for very surreal and sublime styles in fiction and even in the way I want to present myself, a friend of mine coined the term "Eldritch Majesty" and it stuck with me since. This idea of being so grand, so immense, so powerful, that witnessing your beauty is so overwhelmingly shocking you can't turn away; while so beautiful you don't even want to, has really stuck with me.

I don't fear the scale of the cosmos and my smallness compared to it. I see only wonder at the vastness and strangeness of it all: the potential that it holds is literally limitless. I want, in some way, to channel some of that beauty: to be something alien, something sublime. There is no such thing as oblivion, only change: no direction to go in life but forward.

Even weighed down by burnout, I still dream of it. That my discovery of self will lead me to a form of transcendence. Way to influence a world I've felt powerless towards for too long.

This really did inspire me and I've finally pushed past my anxiety to mention this.

[Kayachlata]

As soon as you said "blissful" it clicked! I remember listening to a lot of cosmic horror a while back, and I strangely found the thought of an inevitable cosmic truth of futility comforting. It made me strangely stop worrying about the little things, zooming out to feel bliss

[sheepgrass]

I feel like another way to describe cosmic bliss could be awe, when I go to the museum and see a skeleton of a dinosaur I feel in awe that it ever existed at all, if it was alive it could easily kill me and I would feel very scared but the fear goes away when you think about how beutiful of an animal it must have been when it was alive

[sunflower_seeeds]

I get so much more horrified when this “cosmic bliss” concept is used. It freaks me out more than regular horror. Watching somebody lose their sense of self, and autonomy is terrifying. And the seeing them be joyful about it!? Ugh it gives me chills. I never perceive it as bliss. I perceive it as someone on their last rope giving it all up to madness. Not even trying to live

[geoshark]

I find the singing flame far more terrifying, unlike the cosmic horror with indifference and driving you insane in which you lose yourself, cosmic bliss seems to start with the death of the self, altering of who you are . Half the time in cosmic horror you have the capacity to stop digging and leave the cosmic bliss draws you in even when you stepped away like a sirens song

[CrazyFlyingMonk]

Cosmic bliss is a pretty good descriptor of how i feel in adoration. Combined with disbelief and joy that such an entity actually cares about humanity let alone an individual

[endgame]

I felt that "Sublime" sensation when I was going home from college one day just when a typhoon dropped. The torrential rain, the whipping wind, and the sudden pause of human activity around as everyone fled and cars piled. I felt miniscule, but also excited, that I'm enduring a powerful storm just to reach home. It's was almost meditative because all I can hear was the rain on my umbrella and all I can feel was wet and cold. Every step forward felt like I'm defying it, and it was a formative experience.

[MarshmallowRadiation]

Honestly I find the Singing Flame _scarier_ than the Nameless City. To me it feels more insidious and more terrifying. The fact that its victims are _happy_ about destroying themselves just makes the horror worse, because that happiness isn't theirs. It's the flame itself, reaching into their mind, violating the sovereignty that a person has over their own life and self (something that is important but already tenuous, and for some must be fought hard for every day in order to maintain). They don't want it, it _makes_ them want it. There is no reason for them to want it other than its own hunger, if you can call it that.

I guess it comes down to trust, or faith: whether you believe that the sublime object really is a blissful release, or if its compulsion is something more sinister. Personally, I can't bring myself to place that kind of trust in something, especially something alien and unknown. Maybe it's colored by the fact that I'm viewing it through the lens of someone who has grappled with suicidal ideation, but entities that promise sweet release from existence itself can be nothing but monstrous.

[ethanschenck]

For me, a lot of cosmic horror doesn't get to me because I simply never related to the idea that we were ever on the top of the cosmic totem pole, and never actually got the whole ant analogy. Life is life, its scale doesnt matter, and as an animist I'm also a believer in spirits of everything right down to the wider universe and everything connecting together, and also fully accepted us just being a small part of a greater universe, and that we need to cherish our little speck.

That said, I do find stories like that fungis horrifying, although that feelsore like body horror. Also, the Reapers from Mass Effect. The fact that those bastards essentially made the galaxy into their own free range garden to harvest every 50 millennia and that we inadvertently fell right into their trap hook line and sinker was... Something