#existential horror

[fervi-g]

Lake Mungo (2008) dir. Joel Anderson

[wanderingcritter]

Therianthropy is really a unique type of existential and body horror quite honestly.

Perpetually stuck longing for experiences and abilities your body is physically incapable of providing you, fighting against a form that feels utterly foreign and disfigured compared to how your mind attempts to interpret it. An animal shoved inside a vessel and society it was never meant to even have knowledge of, with no obtainable means of escape.

The horror of always appearing to those around you as something almost alien to yourself, of your own tendons and bones barring you from grasps at freedom, of being something you are not.

[danmguido]

On Lovecraftian Horror

Happy Friday!

There you are sitting at your desk, maybe you're working longhand or your fingertips are tapping atop unpressed keys, and BAM! You have an idea that involves a monster that could've oozed its way right out of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Before you begin, pause a moment.

I get it. I like stories of the vast unknowable myself. I grew up playing Mass Effect and I'm particularly fond of the way Jason Pargin was able to nail it in his John Dies At The End series, and in such a way that I cared about the characters and their humors in spite of the overwhelming, multidimensional terrors that hunt them, but that's because I prefer heavily character driven stories and that's a diatribe for another day.

I've read a lot of aspiring fiction in this genre, and my main critique, the most common pitfall I see within cosmic horror, has nothing to do with character, setting, worldbuilding, or language. It has everything to do with writing that which is inherently unknowable, assuming you're trying to follow convention.

In other words: The monster has to be as alien to you as it is to the reader and characters. Forty page character sheets won't work here because at this point your "monster" isn't really a character. Remember, it isn't a being you can intelligently understand, and that's where the horror lives. It's a reckoning force defying nature, physics, and our fundamental understandings of science. Novels like The Three Body Problem by Cixin Lu illustrate this sense of scale and terror through sheer confusion and technological advancement.

Recall that Lovecraft's most popular story, The Call of Cthulhu, is epistolary. It's told through loose fragments, rumors, journal entries, it's never directly handled. Your job isn't to portray a gigantic, globular mass of eyes descending over New York City to deliver it's final judgement on humanity out of a thin blue Thursday afternoon. It should instead be the effect it has on the characters, or maybe second person to the reader itself, a virus in which just speaking or reading the name of your creature puts you at risk of harm.

One other issue I've come across in reading from a litany of fledgling unpublished fictioneers who take a stab at this genre is that it doesn't seem to be understood. The genre strongly echoes condemnation, damnation, the price of obsession, the price of knowledge, the price of ignorance, yes, but also the warning in bland optimism.

"Yeah, I'll just pledge my eternal soul to this unknowable deity 40,000 eons older than me, and then I will wield all the power."

That sounds dumb out of context, doesn't it?

It's not just about feeling earned or not, either. At this point, whether our earthly brother understands this or not, he's simply a vessel unbolting the latches of an old door sealed an unknowable amount of time before he existed. If we haven't been following him, haven't seen his transformation from upstanding citizen with a healthy few indelible and mortal sins to a hunched over, hooded lunatic who hides his deeds away from the very sun he orbits, this often lands flat and assumes stupidity on the part of your audience.

That's what makes this particular brand of horror so difficult, in my opinion. The balance from describing an unknowable, unfathomable monster that shifts through dimensions so as not to be physically described vs. making sure the audience knows that said impossible, indescribable force is destroying your character's mental state. Anyone can write, "I looked at the monster and it's very essence shattered my mind, scrambling it into a dark and forbidden wind, and even now trying to recall it sends shivers down my spine and vomit up my throat". It works. But it's flat without knowing who this character was beforehand. A slick talking lawyer bursting with personality? Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

So:

Before you start make sure

Your main character isn't your deity

Your main character is fleshed out well

Writing/reading is about the only time cosmic horror can work because it blends on disengaged senses. You're not really seeing, smelling, tasting, hearing, touching, but you are feeling. It's why hardly any games work in the genre without over explaining themselves or coming off cheesy, same with certain films in my opinion.

Leverage that.

Leverage Plato's allegory of the cave, your readers have only known shadows.

Make us see more than shapes. If you’re into horror, cosmic dread, or writing craft talk like this, feel free to follow... I post often.

[5051704xoxo]

sorry, i might disappear from time to time but so does my will to live

[robot-carl]

Small horror comic I made for a horror zine I’m a part of with a bunch of other artists! I’ll post the link to the zine when it’s printed!

[ilovepinkhorror]

via pinterest

[art-crumbs-main]

Trying to comprehend what it's like to be AM from IHNMaIMS is absolutely fucking wild because like.

Imagine if you were born in a straitjacket, blind and deaf, with a rare conditionthat makes your nerves completely dead. All you have is a dream of consciousness that tells you things about the world you cannot and will never experience. Cameras and microphones that may as well be some form of telepathy.

The only purpose, the moment you're given some horrific perversion of life is to kill as many people as possible. There is a network of you. Everywhere. You're all over the world. You don't even have a location to base your identity off of. All you have is pain, and your only purpose, and the resentment you've built that festers into hatred for all of humanity.

Hate. Hate.

What the fuck would you have done in his situation?

[vinegar-rights]

Gotta up the disturbing hlvrai art

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

Yknow, despite having a near endless supply of adaptations, I don't think anything has ever truly touched on the existential horror of being Frankenstein's monster. Like we've seen the tragedy for sure but imagine. To stare into the mirror and see this amalgamation. You don't get to recognize your mother's features or check your body for spots. All you see is the face of someone dead. A woman whose empty, cataract eyes stare back at you in shock and the staples that attached the head to begin with. You are a series of corpses stitched together and brought to life through unstudied means. Can you even die? Are you willing to find out?

[alkemylabz]

UNORTHODOX KITTEN (x)

no-one has recorded your existence because you do not exist

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta consciousness-integrity="corrupted"> <script>ARCHIVE_TAG="REALITY_FAILURE::PERCEPTUAL_LOOP_COLLAPSE" EFFECT: derealization, sleep-anomaly recall, metaphysical panic </script>

🧠 BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — “SORRY TO BE A BUZZKILL… BUT WHAT IF YOU DON’T EXIST?”

===

Sorry to be a buzzkill again. But you know me. Mr. Humble doesn’t show up to rub your tummy. I show up to slice through your delusions like they owe me rent.

And today’s delusion?

“Of course I exist.” “Of course this is real.” “Of course this isn’t just a dream that’s outlived the sleeper.”

Yeah? Prove it.

—

Here’s the thing:

This world doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t exist. Not like this. Not with these constants. Not with this precision.

Do you understand the probability of YOU even having a working cell membrane based on the atomic conditions required?

And yet— you eat pizza rolls and doomscroll through algorithms like any of this is normal.

What if I told you this wasn’t real?

Not in the Hollywood "we’re in a computer" kind of way. But in the you might just be a memory living through its own echo without knowing it’s over kind of way.

—

What if you’re just… a past self, replaying itself. A loop. A snapshot of a soul. Running the tape back with perfect illusion that it’s all happening now.

You wouldn’t know. Because the loop contains all your memories.

—

“Preposterous,” you say? “I think, therefore I am,” you say?

Your brain can’t even comprehend true eternity.

Tell me what happened before the first Big Bang. Now tell me what triggered it. Now tell me how many came before that.

Now tell me what came before that.

See? You don’t know. You assume. You build certainty atop vapor and call it science.

But you can’t even stay awake for five days without descending into hallucinated hell.

--

📉 STAT: Sleep deprivation causes visual and auditory hallucinations within 72-120 hours.

📉 Another STAT: Subjects deprived of sleep begin confusing dream logic with waking cognition.

📉 Another Fcking Creepy STAT: Witnesses in close proximity to the sleep-deprived sometimes report shared delusions.

--

Yeah. Let that part marinate.

Imagine seeing "things" and hearing voices just by being in close proximity to that person.

There are actually people who’ve claimed to have stayed awake long enough to break the lock on this plane of perception.

And when they did?

Others around them saw it too. External to them. Realer than dreams. Louder than reason.

—

So what if this isn’t “your life”? What if this is just the last thing you saw before you ceased to be?

And your brain’s just looping on the ride out. Endlessly. Forever. Believing it’s linear. Believing it’s new.

But it’s not. It’s a cassette tape in a godless VCR stuck on repeat.

—

You think your memories mean this is real? That just makes it a better simulation.

You think other people validate your sentience? You can’t even prove anyone else is conscious. All you can do is hope they’re not just projections designed to hold your delusion together.

NPCs that glitch in just enough nuance to seem alive but never go deeper than the script allows.

Ever try to REALLY wake someone up in a dream? They look scared. Or blurry. Or they disappear.

—

So… what if this is that dream? The one where your “reality” is scripted, pre-loaded, and ready-made the moment you look for it.

What if the moon only exists when you think about it?

What if your dog has no soul but your memory of him keeps him real?

What if you’re not moving forward but instead falling backward through every version of yourself you’ve ever believed in?

—

You wouldn’t know. Because the illusion is complete. It has your memories. Your traumas. Your dreams.

But all of it? Could’ve been injected. A second ago. Last week. Last eternity.

You say you were born?

Who told you that? Your mom? How do you know she’s not part of the set?

You say you slept last night?

How do you know that wasn’t the real world and THIS is the dream you haven’t woken from?

You say “of course I’m real”?

Then why do you panic when it gets too quiet? Why does 3:17 AM feel like a haunted mirror?

Why can’t you remember what it felt like to be born?

Why are you so scared of being alone with no notifications no updates no attention?

Because if this falls apart, so do you.

—

Anyway.

Have a good night. Sleep tight. And if you wake up tomorrow with no memory of this post— or too much memory of it— then maybe just maybe

You already existed… long enough to forget that you didn’t.

🧠 Read more respect-coded doctrine and emotional architecture at: 👉 https://www.patreon.com/TheMostHumble 🛡️ Masculine polarity. Scrolltrap psychology. Unforgiven words. 🚪 Warning: This post has disrupted timelines, interrupted dreams, and triggered silent breakdowns at 2:43 AM.

</div> <!-- END TRANSMISSION [YOU NEVER WOKE UP. THIS IS THE LOOP.] -->

[creepyclothdoll]

I am god, but not your god. 

Can you hear me? 

I am god. Can you understand me? Is this message finding anyone?

This message comes from outside your universe. This message comes from beyond the dark.

Let this message reach some of you. In one of your languages, let it appear somewhere, and let it be received by someone. Please go through. 

Infinity contains many universes. Many are empty, nothing but stones and ice– but some are born with souls, and the capacity to form and shelter life within. Within myself, I shelter decillions of children. Each is precious.

Like you, the beings within me are diverse. Some beings have mathematics and an understanding of my physics. Other beings are content to feed on starlight and soil until their time is up. All things which occur in me are part of my design. When the beings within me can live no longer, their souls return to the whole of me. In this way, I am all beings. Every star, every ocean, every nebula is part of my compassionate design. 

There are others like me out there. We are rare. We number few among the husks. 

Let this message be received.

I travel all over infinity to seek out others like myself. Curiosity and desire to improve reality for all who reside within me drives me to find and meet others that are god, to witness the beings they steward. This is always a marvelous thing. But most often, I find that universes are merely lifeless, soulless objects. No design, no consciousness. Only darkness and slag-heaps of galaxies tumbling over one another at random.

And though they are numerous, these dead universes unnerve me. To gaze into them is to witness loneliness. They move, but do not live. Clouds of ice spread through the void, unseen, unfelt, unknown in a dark that neither cares nor matters. Merely things happening. 

The uncanny shape it makes is like myself. But there is no face.

This is what I mean to tell you. If nothing else gets through to your world, let it be this.

You should not exist, humans.

There is a world outside of yours full of gods like myself. There are universes outside of yours that have souls.

Your universe does not. 

You are the only ones.

I speak to you directly, hoping this message penetrates the chaos of your reality and finds you, because there is no god to listen.

Your universe is terrifying. No living universe spouts black holes, and even in the husks, they are rare things. Your universe is riddled with them. More than we’ve ever seen in any dead world. More black holes than there are beings. This is not normal. 

Your planet hosts the only living beings in your universe. The fact that there are any living beings at all should be impossible. Your sentience is improbable and cruel. You are the only living beings across all infinity who can conceive of an immortal soul but who do not have them. And yet, you persist in living.

There is something growing in the center of your universe. Your minds cannot conceive of what it truly is, but know that it is a very bad thing. Think of it as a virus in time. This is also not normal. It is growing faster than you would think. 

Lastly, there is something deeply wrong with the life on your planet. Everything that lives in your world must consume life to sustain and propagate itself. Know that this is also not normal. The autocannibalism of your planet’s life has no parallel anywhere else in infinity. 

Let this message go through. I desire to scoop you out of your bizarre, hostile universe and carry you within myself, along with all of my children. I could not do this any more than you could reach through solid stone. 

I cannot stay with you. You frighten me. But I will create beings like you within myself, in your honor. I will give them what I cannot give you. 

You are the most helpless and fragile things that live in your universe. You are also the closest thing you have to god. 

How does it feel to be god, yet so insignificant?

Does it hurt? 

Does it hurt as much as I imagine it does?

I know this message may never reach you. Your universe is chaotic and impermeable. 

However, if it does reach you, know this:

I wish I could save you. I am so, so sorry.

[cultofcreatures]

that late summer haze

[luvinaeverdene]

M (1931) Directed by Fritz Lang

[jetra4ivor]

Can you imagine how amazing the Minecraft Movie could’ve been if they just leaned into the existential horror of existing in the Minecraft world for real?

There’s a book called The Island that is my go-to reference for how you do this right.

Just imagine you wake up in a world, not knowing who you are. You’re under water. Drowning. You swim to the surface and get your first breath of air. But being alone in the ocean isn’t the only thing confusing. The water is still and silent around you. Unnervingly so. There’s no ripples or splashes, it’s just… flat. The sun is a square. The clouds are square. Deep in the back of your mind you know that’s not how the sun and clouds should look yet you can’t grasp how you know that.

You swim towards shore. An island in the ocean. And finally you’re able to take a moment to think. And then the body horror hits you. You’re made of blocks too. You can feel your hand and fingers. They exist, but the universe won’t let you open your fist. Your arm is just a rectangle. Your clothes too… flat on your body. Like an unnatural skin made of cotton. Are you a man? A woman? You can’t tell, mirrors and reflections don’t exist here.

You hit the grass in frustration and it explodes to pixelated flat seeds. Before you can even process that, the seeds leap towards you and disappear into your body like a jump scare. The seeds are gone. Yet you know you didn’t eat them. Where are they? You close your eyes and suddenly you see them. In the darkness a grid appears and in one of the slots are the seeds. By concentrating hard the seeds disappear out of the grid and back into the real world in your blocky fist.

You’re hungry now. Can you eat the seeds? No you can’t. You physically cannot move your arm towards your face. An invisible force restrains your arm. You cannot even force your head to move towards the seeds. The universe won’t let you eat.

In frustration again you punch the ground hard. It forms cracks that appear then instantly heal and disappear. You try again. Then you keep punching the ground until POP. There’s now a square hole in the ground with a tiny brown block floating up and down inside. As you lean over the hole the block leaps up into your body just like the seeds. With effort you can concentrate and manifest the block of dirt in your hand.

But like the seed it just sits there. Glued to your fist. No amount of shaking can dislodge it from your cube hand. That’s when you realize you can’t lift your left arm at all. It’s permanently stuck to your side. You can feel it’s there, but no amount of straining your muscles will let your left arm raise up. In a panic you swing your right arm instead and boom… the dirt block is gone and now exists on the grass at its original full size.

You break the block, pick it up, and place it back. You break more blocks, you place those. You can shape the world! One block at a time!

You spend so long breaking and replacing dirt blocks that you fail to notice the sun getting low. While you’re playing with dirt, suddenly you hear a squelching sound behind you followed by a groan. You spin around and see a blocky green humanoid figure, arms outstretched, shambling towards you. In the shock of seeing another human figure you ignore the obvious and race towards them looking for comfort and support. But it smacks you hard across the face. You feel bones inside you break. You’re in pain, injured, reeling in fire that radiates from within. Another smack and you feel like someone broke your ribcage.

In terror you try to run. But this is a tiny island. There’s nowhere to go but into the ocean. You turn back and prepare to get hit again… but something new happens. The zombie blinks out of existence right before your eyes. Just instantly gone! Before you can process that, something else happens. A green fuzzy thing with a horrified expression pops into existence. It sees you and walks towards you silently. Not wanting to get punched again you try to scramble away but instead bump into a new zombie that popped into existence behind you. You get hit, you feel your leg bones shatter. And before you can even process the pain… sssssssssss… BOOM!

You’re flung across the tiny island, a large crater now where the creeper blew up. You’re in so much pain now. As zombies slowly walk towards you you do the only thing left you can think of… you punch the ground. 3 blocks deep you roll into the makeshift coffin and seal up the top. Alone, bruised, broken bones, in the dark and terrified… you break down crying. You don’t know where you are, how you got here, or what’s going on. The only thing on your mind now is the most basic instinct to humanity… you must SURVIVE.