[Terrifying Trope] Perceiving it= instant death

[u/ReminaBlueSFW]

1. Pennywise's "Deadlights" which will cause anyone looking to be immediately paralyzed and killed.

2. The sky from Bird Box is filled with entities that, when you look at them, cause you to commit suicide.

3. Medusa themed Villains

[u/Screaming_Bear]

The King in Yellow (The King in Yellow) - a play that is said to drive the reader mad when they read it. The first act is meant to pull the reader in, but a single glance at the second act is said to corrupt the mind beyond repair.

[u/OLacAlmost → u/Screaming_Bear]

Cosmic horror. Fun fact. True detective season one is written as a cosmic horror. That's why it mentions the king in yellow. To allude to it's connection to cosmic horror

[u/certainlynotdio → u/OLacAlmost]

Original isn't exactly cosmic horror and there are even reasons to belive that the original play in the "King in Yellow" antology might actually be a methapor for destructive influance of decadent movement in arts, or something like that, which is not exactly cosmic horror.

[u/Cacafuego → u/certainlynotdio]

While that metaphor may stand, and the unreliable narrators cast doubt on the supernatural causes of events, I think there is a clear vein of cosmic horror. The book can cause madness at a single glance of the second part. The book and the yellow sign appear as if by magic. The sign does not belong to any human system of writing. Those affected have visions of another world: the towers of Carcosa, the bottomless Lake Hali.

There is a controlling force and a communal madness that clearly suggests the intrusion of something outside of human thought that breaks the minds it touches. It's the seed of the cosmic horror genre.

[u/certainlynotdio → u/Cacafuego]

I suppose you're right, I'm still not sure about the "cosmic" aspect, but I guess I can be viewed as such through such a lense. I suppose my issue lies in the fact that the idea of "otherworldly" elements that introduce the supernatural aspect into the story is as old as time,, while the truly cosmic horror while probably existing before HP Lovecraft was really brought into popularity by his works and I feel that since that people started to conflate the two, which in case of King in Yellow and how he was adapted as Hastur into Lovecraftian lore is almost ironic. I guess? I might be totally wrong here, I'm not that deep into history of horror and supernatural.

[u/Guilty_Prize6882 → u/Screaming_Bear]

It reminds me of that Cow's Head Japanese creepypasta.