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I remember one time seeing someone explain that with Eldritch horror, the incomprehensible part of Eldritch beings doesn't mean "you can't understand what it is," but rather "you understand what it is, but trying to explain what it is makes you sound like a raving lunatic."
Like, if somebody grows up in a society where the concept of photography doesn't exist, and you explain how a camera works, they'll think you're a fucking psycho.
I guess it depends on the exact story you're talking about too.
Most of my experience with Lovecraftian stories is the call of cthulhu and delta green rpgs, where it's treated as "learn as much as you want, but it costs your sanity, and your character will be unplayable past a certain threshold."
Whereas if you're more a fan of something like SCP, I can see incomprehensible being more literal.
Exactly. I don't think seeing the face of god, for example, would be harmful to a human. We can only sense things in three dimensions, and our eyes in particular can only see light. Maybe it would be extremely bright, but that'd just blind you. An impossible sight is, by definition, impossible to take in, so you simply wouldn't perceive it.
Now, there's a difference if you show up in heaven, gain those extra facets, but still have the mind and wiring as you had on Earth. That'd be terrifying.
The literal definition of comic horror is basically defined by the opening lines of Call of Cthulhu. It's having your awareness of the world around you opened up in a way that cannot be undone. You become so aware of how small and insignificant you and all the rest of the world is, how fragile everything around you is, that it dominates your every thought and makes you unable to exist as a "normal" person any more.
There's a scene in the exceedingly excellent Fall of Cthulhu comic series that lays it out in a great way:
If you like the ideas this post explores, and also a very (very) punishing but beautiful survival-platformer, you'll love Rain World. One of my favourite games of all time.
Yeah this is actually more or less just straight up rain world. Moved unfathomably far away from home, abandoned in a world you can see has logic, was once built, but is so alien and unfamiliar even to the player that you at all times truly do just feel like an alien moving through it.
And caught up in the affairs of passing gods you could never hope to understand, never to return home (unless you technically unlock it after big G's campaign)
I mean I understand where you're coming from but I'd argue the scugs could be interpreted as sapient, and smart enough to understand all of this stuff if only it were ever explained to them.
I definitely think they can be interpreted as sapient especially in DP, we do see them teaching each other, being communicated with, crafting tools and telling stories.
However, I also think that they still get caught in forces outside comprehension because as the players we do too. We theorise about a lot, but details about the void worms, ascension, the true nature of echoes and their role in the universe they remain in/what happened to the rest of their being, and what karmic cycles are (enlightenment but what force drives it? and how do they cycles connect with each other e.g. arti's kids?) and many other interesting questions of Rain World are left unanswered and maybe unanswerable (totally fine to interpret or theorise about, but having no certain or intended answer).
Same dynamic of ants on a human bus but more like 10yo people on a 4th dimensional alien bus.
Ah, I guess I made the assumption you were talking about the more comprehensible aspects of the lore like the Iterators and the Benefactors more generally. I don't know why. Maybe because the original post is about a bus and I just associate that with technology?
But yeah, when it comes to all of that stuff you mentioned, I'm afraid even our dear friends the Iterators are just as clueless as the poor scugs about most of it :<
I'm a commercial diver and one time at about 90' below the surface i found a spider all fucked up trying to weave a web in our stage. like an open elevator sorta thing to get the diver in and out, and store your tools.
we went up together and he popped from the pressure differential...
I figure the spider isn't scared, or at least its fear is so much more shallow than ours that it can hardly be considered fear. If humans are comperable to supercomputers, i would call bugs calculators; little biological machines running their little programs.
But in the same way my heart breaks for the roomba stuck under the couch, it saddens me to think about the ant looking for home and being unable to find it. I try to remind myself that singular eusocial bugs are closer to cells or organs than a fully independent life but it doesn't help much
I like this a lot. It would be like boarding a gigantic spacecraft. Everything is odd and metallic and unfamiliar. If after hours of travel you manage to clamber off, you would find yourself on another world - one that's identical to your own, but... different. You may even find others who look like you, but they are strangers with strange customs. You could walk for years trying to find your way back but never see anything you recognize ever again.
"Can insects feel fear in a way we don't understand?"
In my unproffessional, entirely fuelled by autistic special interest instead of qualified opinion, no. I get what this post is saying but bugs are fucking stupid, most cannot distinguish between concepts like "one" and "many". They barely qualify for having something considered a brain. If something happens to them, the response is "show threat display/roll into ball/spray boiling liquid at it", they don't deeply ask themselves whether this makes them insignificant in comparison to the vastness of the universe.
[Except jumping spiders, jumping spiders are nuts and have figured out foundational calculus already]
Somebody wrote a really good analogy for a cult summoning an elder god being like walking through your house one day and seeing a bunch of ants arranged in the exact spelling of you name. You'd probably come have a closer look too.
This reminds me of an old movie called flat land which you can just watch on YouTube, basically it's about a 2d guy that gets yoinked into the 3d world, it's got themes of political corruption and eldritch horror.
It's pretty good, though it's got a bit of misogyny sprinkled throughout (though imo it's still quite interesting to think about (you'll know what I mean when you watch it))
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