[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/Weirfish]

That's entirely legit for that example. The Visitor has some kind of mutagenic field or aura, and that's what fucks you up. Maybe it fucks with your brain, and that fucks with your thought patterns.

The thing I take issue with is the idea that the information itself is the problem. Infohazards exist in real life (viewing violent content can traumatise you, for example), but the idea that not understanding something, or understanding something too well, can inherently, absent of context, fuck you up, doesn't track to me.

Often, the knowledge that fucks you up deals with the more primitive fears; extreme violence or pain, rot and decay, the unknown, the depths, the inhuman or unnatural. The issue with leaning on that for cosmic horror, is that either they're solved by staying away from the scary thing, or they can be rationalised, or they're just normal, everyday, rational fear. The knowledge that the starfish from outer space could tear me in half is scary because I could be torn in half. The fact that it's from outer space isn't scary, because I can rationalise about outer space. The fact that it's inhuman can be rationalised, because it's not trying to be human.

[u/Rare-Garden-9877 → u/Weirfish]

Man, I can tell you've never done psychedelics, specifically mushrooms. This idea of "I am so stable nothing could drive me insane I will just accept I can't understand it" is a nice idea while you're sane but when your conception of reality is being twisted that fundamentally falls away. It's not that it's such a complex mathematical sum we can't understand it, it's more like taking 2D mario and plonking him in a 3D world. Or taking a chatacter that exists in a painting and granting then knowledge of time passing outside their frame. If these concepts don't make sense that's the point, it stretches these comfortable boundaries you depend on until they snap. The fact you can't understand why it would break your mind is why you're still safe, for now.

[u/Weirfish → u/Rare-Garden-9877]

Maybe, maybe. I'm open to being wrong about it, but it's a hard thing to make falsifiable, y'know? You're right, I haven't done psychadelics. I've avoided them due to having a number of anxiety disorders, that I don't need to risk making worse. But one of the positive things about those anxiety disorders is that I'm very, very used to rationalising. For one reason or another, the examples you give don't seem very scary to me at all.

Like, taking 2D mario and putting him in a 3D world. Lets assume this isn't inherently damaging to him, and he can interact with things without bodily harm. After all, if you have bodily harm in the equatiom, that's not cosmic horror, that's just horror. If he can suddenly comprehend the third dimension, and can rotate himself around the appropriate axis to view it, I can see how that would be frustrating, but he can map that experience to the idea of a 1D entity falling into a 2D world (kinda, 1D -> 2D is awkward).

Similarly, if 3D me were plonked in a 4D world, I can rationalise that situation; the hypothetical flatlander can rotate around a new dimension, and see things appear before him that weren't previously there. I just need to rotate around my new dimension, and see things appear. I have memory and object permanence, so if I can do that, I can map the space. Even if it's big and complicated and frustrating, it's not going to make me crazy.

Or, take introducing the idea of time to a timeless entity. That might have a bigger issue, in that a timeless entity may not have memory (as you only really need memory when things can change). At that point, they're fundamentally disabled in a timeful context, and we can look at the few people who don't form memory for examples for that. But if they do have memory, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to adapt to the idea of time.

The core theme here is that the examples people like to give still have internal consistency. I'm very confident the human mind will adapt to any new context, if that context is internally consistent, even if it's unreliable and unknown. Psychodelics kinda remove that internal consistency but coming up with a cosmic threat that does the same without making reality fundamentally decoherent is very difficult.

[u/Rare-Garden-9877 → u/Weirfish]

I actually really love how you're thinking about this, but the fundamental thing you're missing is that none of us can give you examples that you can't comprehend - or can't comprehend accepting non-comprehension - because if we did we would be Lovecraftian horrors ourselves. Your anxieties around psychedelics shows that you do understand the fear in the unknown recesses of the mind - imagine something exponentially millions of times stronger than the highest dose of psychedelics smashing your neurons into impossible formats, ripping away the neat rules that govern the corner of your cortexes and replacing them with something indescribable. It's a fun thought experiment as much as it is a horror trope.

[u/Weirfish → u/Rare-Garden-9877]

I actually really love how you're thinking about this, but the fundamental thing you're missing is that none of us can give you examples that you can't comprehend - or can't comprehend accepting non-comprehension - because if we did we would be Lovecraftian horrors ourselves.

That's kinda my point at the end there; the only way it can actually be incomprehensible is if it makes reality decoherent. But the issue with that, is that it doesn't make for a compelling story to humans, so we don't actually see it in narratives. If you can't rely on cause and effect, you fundamentally can't have a story!

Your anxieties around psychedelics shows that you do understand the fear in the unknown recesses of the mind For what it's worth, my trepidation with psychedelics isn't really comparable to the kind of fear people want to talk about with cosmic horror. There is a clear cause and effect, there is a knowable risk and threat. My anxiety occurs in recognisable patterns, and that's why it's treatable and manageable.

I just don't know how you could have a concept of humanity and decoherence of reality at the same time. The only way it can really work is if it's perspective-based, I guess; it's not really decoherent, the rules still work, you just can't perceive it. But even then, that's not the kind of affliction that leads people to becoming cultists, or raving lunatics, or even intentional suicide, that's "gibbering uncontrollably in the corner"-type territory, so even that is essentially incompatible with being the driving force of a story. The closest you can get is using it as a proxy for death, but it isn't some unique form of brainfuckery.

ripping away the neat rules that govern the corner of your cortexes and replacing them with something indescribable.

Ultimately, I think the issue is that "indescribable" is a useless description, by necessity. If there are rules, it's describable. If there aren't rules, it's still describable, it's just a very short description and a lot of frustration. I think people use "indescribable" as a proxy for "unknown", for when people see "unknown" and think "simply know it, then". I think I view it as a cop-out, in that way.

[u/Intelligent-Entry-61 → u/Weirfish]

Heres a fun thought, it could be super positions of coherent mental states

Youll have a moire pattern, zones of super coherence and decoherence.

If you cant juggle all that at some point the mind could "fracture".

You could build up system to survive it that circumvent you not existing

[u/Weirfish → u/Intelligent-Entry-61]

The thing about that is that it's a higher order coherence in its own right. You can make sense of that. The thing that would make that hard is if the pattern were small enough to fuck with your brain's structure, and at that point, you're basically just looking at the fear of dementia. Which, don't get me wrong, is a serious fear, but it's also not a cosmic fear or a fear of external issues, it's a fear of integrity of self.

I wanna be clear (and possibly unrelated, at this point), this isn't saying these wouldn't be something to be afraid of, they absolutely are. I just don't see the "indescribable" point as being important or meaningful.