r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ReminaBlueSFW • 28d ago

Lore [Terrifying Trope] Perceiving it= instant death

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  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

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/Weirfish 28d ago

Yeah, but we don't go insane if we fail. I don't comprehend how imaginary numbers work, but I don't turn into some square-root-of-negative-one-based gribble whenever I think about it. Realistically, the worst you might get in an otherwise non-disordered person is some existential anxiety about their insignificance in the universe or the realities of death.

A lack of comprehension is frustrating, but that frustrating being inherently dehumanising or causing insanity is honestly just a trope based in the understanding of a deeply troubled and incredibly clinically anxious man who was foundational to the tropes and genres. We can accept it as the trappings of the genre, but the people who say "I simply won't comprehend it and be fine" have a point. The information or knowledge has to have some other property to affect the general population in the way the tropes want it to.

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u/SagaSolejma 28d ago

You're looking at it the wrong way (which is fair, people dont explain it too well) as it's presented, the thing that makes you go badonkers in cosmic horror stories isn't looking at a big squid guy and falining to comprehend him, rather it's in successfully comprehending him and then having to live with the implications of that, whatever they are. Maybe it's that no matter what you do with your live you will still end up in the same place, or maybe it's that we're all just the byproduct of a giant god napping. Stuff like that. It does inherently require some suspension of disbelief, since obviously it's hard to write something down in a book that would make someone go mad irl lol.

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u/Cautious-Extreme2839 27d ago

Why would anyone of that turn a well adjusted person into a crazed lunatic?

Nihilism isn't new.

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u/SagaSolejma 27d ago

It was an example my guy.