The video masterfully argues that cosmic horror thrives on the limits of human understanding, where over-explanation inevitably kills the sense of dread. It’s a sharp reminder that the most terrifying monsters are those that refuse to be demystified by a lore dump.
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Can We Explain COSMIC HORROR Without Ruining It? | @feralhistorianAdded:
Don't confuse incomprehensible with incoherent.
The information you give has to make sense. It's like in a way the universe decided with raw laws of physics and it made some few things and then these things just don't really respond to any of that. Yeah, throw something in there that just does not comply with everything you said the rules were.
In that description Bugs Bunny would fit, right? In that description Bugs Bunny would fit also, I would think as a cosmic horror. Probably, yeah.
It's like say I am the alpha and the omega moment where Krishna reveals that he is this cosmic thing >> [music] >> and that reveal is represented in a again a very Cthulhuian cosmic horror way where this guy is wondered by the whole thing but is also okay go back to that funny guy.
>> [laughter] >> Go back.
Change back, please. Change back. I Yeah, he was fun. Nothing makes sense anymore.
What's up, dogs? Welcome to a very special episode of Swat Dudes Talk and today it's all about tentacles and the placid ignorance of the human mind to comprehend the horrors from beyond.
Yes, cosmic horrors has been a fascinating trope that I really enjoyed reading and I do want to do an episode on it where you can offer you somewhat of a guide on writing cosmic horrors while I ponder the concept of cosmic horror itself and also the unwritten rule of explaining cosmic horrors ruins it which never really sat right with me. So, I'm going to ponder that heavily. So, I'm not going to be doing this alone. I have a conversation partner who is the man from the mountains himself. He is a renaissance man, I want to say. I don't know why I used the word renaissance. I should say he's a man who's well versed in all sorts of fiction, literature and all sorts of media and he is the man from the mountain himself, Mr. Pharaoh Historian.
Matt, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be here. Uh how are you doing?
Oh, pretty good. It's a midday for me so uh For the first time in my life I'm seeing you without trees and mountains behind you which is weird.
Yeah, it's a it's a little strange.
>> [laughter] >> You're becoming more civilized, I would say.
Yeah, it's in the little bunker where the editing happens.
>> [laughter] >> Okay, so uh first off let's start with actually defining cosmic horror. Like how would you in your opinion define cosmic horror?
Yeah, and this is fair warning probably going to ramble a little bit. It's okay. I'm all all for rambling. Because Yeah, it's one of those where you know you ask a dozen people and you get 15 different answers. Yeah. Because it's kind of hard to really pin down exactly.
I would say that to truly tell a story about cosmic horror is actually kind of difficult because on the one hand you need to have kind of a truly unknowable and unstoppable force.
You're facing something that is incomprehensible to the human mind but that alone just makes for bad stories.
Like "Oh, we were going to work one day and everything was normal and then the sun turned black and we all died. The end." You know, like "Well, what the hell is that?" So, part of it has to be that there's this thing this incomprehensible thing that will destroy you not necessarily out of malice or even necessarily indifference but just by nature of what it is and there's really nothing that you can do about it. You know, less there's a big monster and more like gamma rays or cancer. It's just this horrific thing that like you can't talk to it, you can't fight it. It's just there. Maybe it'll come for you, maybe it won't.
And I kind of think about um I was trying to find the source for where I read about this years ago and I couldn't but uh something where Lovecraft was talking about it and he kind of framed it in terms of blasphemy in the sense of you have life that is blasphemous in the sense that it shouldn't exist but it does. So, you have this sort of It's an unnatural >> it's some Yeah, that it's like It exists by its own rules. It shouldn't be here. The thing shouldn't work. It's like in a way the universe decided with raw laws of physics and it made some few things and then these things just don't really respond to any of that. It's it's kind of like an anti-universe thing.
Yeah, throw something in there that just does not comply with everything you said the rules were.
In that description Bugs Bunny would fit, right? In that description Bugs Bunny would fit also, I would think as a cosmic horror.
>> [laughter] >> I know this defies the law of gravity but you see I never studied law.
Definitely something to that, just you know optional physics.
But um Yeah, so now it's kind of got me thinking of you know some of the Lovecraftian creatures you have.
You know, Cthulhu living within the non-Euclidean space or you have shoggoths and things like this where it's like in a sense it's you can explain it scientifically and yet it's still incomprehensible because it doesn't actually fit within Yeah.
>> the context of how you're explaining it.
It's like okay, you tell me that the city has non-Euclidean geometry. I understand conceptually what that means.
But I can't picture it.
>> I don't know how to walk through it.
>> [laughter] >> Which Which is like that kind of a Which is the funniest thing because like I I know we'll get to this like about the rule and everything but I remember listening to Call of Cthulhu and one of the first thing we get is that the artist trying to describe R'lyeh, the city where Cthulhu sleeps and I was like all right, that's a description and and it's coming from an artist which again the fun thing about Lovecraft is that he knows how to put key characters in is like again more profession based than any sort of like personal life based. It's always profession based and it's perfectly suited to that scenario even though they're trying to explain the unknowable which I think it's it's the opening line probably is what probably broaderly refined it for a lot of people. It's the incomprehensible thing so don't comprehend it. Don't even try to comprehend it.
That's how everyone kind of put a general basis on it which again I I can't completely agree with it because like even though it's cosmic horror and you get the horror element from you're not being able to understand it but the genre has evolved so much where again Scooby-Doo has cosmic horror in in a somewhat comedic way. They they make jokes and we can even consider Bugs Bunny as a cosmic horror. So, >> [laughter] >> it is it is broad to actually say it but I kind of agree with that we we can define those whatever you're writing in cosmic horror is that the concept itself is something that is anti-universe or opposite to the universe that the rules that you live by which I think is a good description of like defining cosmic horror. So, again it's a it's going to be really hard when you're writing it because you're kind of trying to create something that is uncreatable by the laws of physics that we have.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah.
And you have to explain enough of it to make it scary. Yeah.
That that I'm going to get to the heart of the scroll because like I've not heard any Lovecraft have said that. It could be my [ __ ] maybe you could have said it or other cosmic writers have said it but what I hear this rule like don't explain cosmic horror because that will ruin the whole story. I've only heard this by literally analysts in YouTube and maybe people who make videos about cosmic horror say this and also when they're dumping on a franchise which we we will also get to later which is one of my favorites I'm looking forward to.
Uh but I never heard like any sort of cosmic uh horror writers say that don't explain cosmic horror. So, why do you think this rule even exists and like what sort of franchise kind of ruined it by breaking this rule?
Yeah, well I think it might be just kind of the genre specific version of the old novelist advice of you know, show don't tell and it's like well, okay, great but I'm writing so I have [laughter] to tell you a little bit and you know, sometimes trying to describe the action of what's happening will take four pages and it's just better for everybody if I say he did this.
Moving on.
>> [laughter] >> And it's kind of a much more complicated version of that with the whole cosmic horror thing because it's like I have to explain a little bit or it's not scary.
But if I do you know, dozens of pages of world building and explain all of it then it's boring. Yeah.
You you you don't want this thing to become well, there's a big monster with a squid face and he lives in this city and I know exactly where it is and how big he is and what kind of meat he's made out of and what he's going to do and when he's going to wake up and it's like well, okay, then this is a manageable problem.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, this is like this is Swat Team preparing for an operation more than someone discovering the unknowable.
Yeah.
It's like well, you go over there, you drop some depth charges on this thing when it wakes up and it's like this is not Yeah, [laughter] this is a problem but it's not horrifying.
The funniest thing is that like right now I mean even in Call of Cthulhu is that they just ram it with a boat but I'm assuming it's just a fishing fishing boat. So, you know, how about a carrier?
>> [laughter] >> How would Cthulhu respond to that?
I always have to wonder like I also wonder what if Cthulhu wakes up and goes, "Shit, they they they got big.
They got big guns now.
>> [laughter] >> I'm going back."
Yeah, he's used to little canoes and all of a sudden >> [laughter] >> this big iron thing slams into him. What the hell is this? I'm taking another nap. I'm out.
But so you're saying it's just a show don't tell just kind of morphed into this don't explain cosmic horror.
I think yeah, that's kind of the essence of it where it's it's kind of amateur advice where it's Uh Okay, sure, but to do it well you have to move beyond that.
It even in the broader show don't tell like I agree with you when you you have actually written a lot of good books as well. So like I I never really understood that rule again like show don't Well, I am telling you as a narrator to whatever >> [laughter] >> Like it's happening. I think it's much more entertaining if the character speak it more than if I I add a description to it cuz again, this could be my lack of talent where I can describe certain things using like very colorful words. I would rather have put it to do a character vision. So I write a somewhat of an intelligent character who matches my intelligence. So when he describes it it doesn't really sound dumb as me as an incapable writer more like that character's defining it.
I was just going to say I think maybe the key to it is to and this is hard to do.
To find a way to work in just enough information that the audience figures out the rest of it. So it kind of seems like they discovered it even though you you kind of laid the path out. You didn't have to handhold through it. So it's you they get where you need them to go but not in a way like come along and let me explain where we're going and what you're going to see but more of a like Okay, here's a little breadcrumb.
And then by the time they get there they figured it out for themselves and it's almost like it was their idea.
It's instead of Gandalf >> that's a lot more satisfying if you can pull it off. Instead of Gandalf taking them straight to Mordor he's like, "Fly, you fools. I'm going to fight the big thing. Bye-bye. Figure it out for yourself." Yep.
You're on your own for a bit. That's actually a good thing to actually ponder upon because when I think of like early Lovecraft novel So I've only read like Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness. I tried listen to Nyarlathotep thing. It I couldn't understand it. So I was like I it was very different. The other two were written in very plain English and the Nyarlathotep was like a poem that thing and I was like, "Okay, poems never my best suit." So I never did understood it. I read The King I listened to The King in Yellow which was inspiration for Lovecraft apparently but I didn't like it. Again, my my favorites were the two ones At the Mountains of Madness and also Call of Cthulhu.
>> Color Out of Space I listened to audio drama which which was fun but again I will put to Call of Cthulhu and things like that. And what you said about like carrying things because at the end of the day Lovecraft books were kind of like detective novels. They were kind of mysteries that you were kind of unraveling. Yeah. And you kind of piece together like a good Sherlock Holmes novel. As you read and read you try to make all the clues sense and fit in and you go, "Ah, I I yes, eureka."
>> [laughter] >> SO AT THE END OF THE DAY you're you you kind of did most of the work as well and you kind of able to ponder about certain thing than easily just saying, "Okay, this is this. This is Sauron. This is the whole shtick is from Valar and all the details matter."
I was like, "Ah, okay. So I just need to poke him with the sword." Kind of boring in a book, you know. Visually nice but in a book >> [laughter] >> So that's why I think that is good like consider the fact that it is kind of written in mysteries. Although right now there are a lot of cosmic horrors which are not mysteries. They're comedies, action movies with cosmic horrors and things like that.
But if you're going off the mystery route again follow what Feral Historian did is with you leave enough breadcrumbs for the audience to fill but I don't know if you should leave it to interpretation because that kind of Why I'm saying this is because I recently played a few Sherlock Holmes There was old Sherlock Holmes games which were good because you solve the case and at the end of the game you you the credits will tell you if you did make the right call if you right the arrested the right person. And then the later Sherlock games were like Whatever you clues did you put in and charge people with it's fine. It's like it's up to you. And I was like, "No, I don't know. I need to know what I did was right."
>> totally unsatisfying ending. It's like I could have come up with that at the beginning. What am I like [laughter] It's like my my lame brain thought this guy was the killer and I don't get a definition.
Did I get it even right? So it's I I I hate that left to interpretation things unless I'm reading something really profound and conceptual. But other than that I would hated that. How about you? What do you consider that one when when they give you up to you, I guess?
Yeah, I mean I guess it really is a a genre specific thing. I've read some science fiction stories that the whole thing is about pondering the greater idea behind the story and surely that hanging but yeah, if you're going to write a murder mystery for example and then you're just going to leave it it's like, "Well, I don't know. Maybe it was this guy. Maybe it was that guy. We never really figured it out." Yeah. And you go like >> It's like, "Well, why did I bother with this then?"
>> [laughter] >> I read through 200 pages for >> to figure it out and and then at the end find out if you were right.
My my favorite is Scooby-Doo. Scooby-Doo had books which I found in in our school library weirdly and I really enjoyed it because before you get the answer the Scooby gang will have a meeting with you. Like the book itself is like made to making you travel through the mystery and the meeting the gang will be like, "Did you figure it out for yourself?"
To try to analyze everything that you read and then before you flip that page make sure you wrote that suspect down so you can make sure if you guessed him correctly. I was like, "This is so fun."
That's why I enjoyed reading a Scooby-Doo book which I usually watch.
Yeah.
And I get I I I hate that game because of it.
I think it was the It was a weird two Sherlock games that they did where Watson is some sort of like a imaginary friend that's traveling around you for some reason.
Okay, that's peculiar. It's It's It's an odd I I think like your Sherlock is hallucinating. I don't know about that.
I I Yeah, he he apparently does have some sort of a mental issue and he's not even being a junkie yet and he's some sort of a mental >> [laughter] >> is it death of his mother and at the end of the day you get to shoot your childhood friend or your big brother or you forgive yourself for some weird reason. It was a weird fever dream and I thought even Sherlock is not even high.
What am I playing this game for?
>> [laughter] >> But now I do want to ask you what are the sci-fi stories in various medias have broken this rule and totally have crashed their whole story by explaining this? Hm.
You know, that's kind of an odd one because when I think about that I think I have this automatic reaction where if I'm reading bad cosmic horror that does that I don't think of it as cosmic horror because it's like as soon as you've put the parameters on what the danger is then it's Okay, this is something else.
This is you know, this is we're fighting a plague or we're fighting aliens or it's Okay, it's a very specific supernatural sort of phenomenon that you have clearly defined within a box that Okay.
Get some silver bullets. Problem solved.
>> Yeah, it's like, "Okay, this is a manageable problem. It's a threat assessment. You analyze the weaknesses of your opponent and figure out how to kill it." This is not cosmic horror.
This is just a big wolf thing. Yeah.
That is it's that thing like the genre kind of breaks itself, doesn't it, when they completely like give you the whole bre Of course we have a very specific example that we will hammer in now about a game that is like probably five or 10 years long now old now.
But we're still pissed about it.
>> [laughter] >> Uh Other than that I have to I I also think Heart of Darkness where they explain cos I mean like any sort of representation of cosmic horror in media is usually kind of ends up being boring because all movies kind of end up like beat the big monster or the big monster devour you.
It's either this always these two things and it's always very underwhelming at the think about.
>> [laughter] >> Which which is weird because like I know everybody kind of hated this adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but I thought the film was amazing. Like >> [clears throat] >> Like I mean like they're not doing a cosmic horror. They're doing absurdist sci-fi and I was more profound and absolutely wondered by the whole experience than anything anything [laughter] else.
It certainly had some great moments.
It's one of those where it was like is it a good adaptation of the book? No.
But is it a bad movie?
Hell, I don't I don't know.
It It Yeah, >> of like it. Because [laughter] it's it's a weird thing. It can get very annoying.
Again, a lot of the problems with with the lot of book stuff is that when you put into screen it gets very annoying certain traits which reading about it is fine but actually looking at it kind of it gets old pretty fast. But Yeah, well.
The big concept idea >> going to say it's like Yeah. No, go on.
Go on. I was just going to say it's like the old argument about when they did the Lord of the Rings movies where the hardcore fans are saying, "You cut out Tom Bombadil." It's like, "Well, of course because it completely derails the momentum of the story. You You don't put that in a movie. That's insane. Just stop."
This is This explains every adaptation of Terry Pratchett's books. Like, I can't stand I mean Going Postal was not that bad, but I can't even stand the Hogfather. I can't stand Soul Music, the cartoon. It has few scenes and it's a good, but other than that it's just No, just give me the books.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah. It's terrible to look at in film.
Uh but of course we we will now >> We will now actually bash the thing that we're eagerly to bash is Mass Effect.
One of the biggest fumbles in video game history due to a lot of reasons, but we'll focus on first the cosmic horror reasons. So, what do you think Mass [laughter] Effect did terribly wrong with the cosmic horror that are the Reapers?
Well, I will preface this by saying that Mass Effect had to walk several lines.
And it had to balance that cosmic horror element with having a good narrative structure for a game. So, it's even more difficult to do than just writing a story because you have that interactive element and it kind of it has to stay engaging.
You have to keep getting more information, but you also have to maintain that cosmic horror aspect of it.
And so like the first game when you have that conversation with Sovereign, Mhm.
that was a big risk.
>> [laughter] >> It worked. It ends up being one of the most memorable elements of the game, but there are a lot of ways that that could have gone wrong.
And I was I kind of like replayed a video of it just to refresh myself on it and was thinking about why did this work when so many other times didn't and what it kind of struck me as is in that instance it wasn't like, "Okay, this supposedly incomprehensible entity is going to sit down and have a conversation with Shepard." It was more like first addressing the group that was there.
So, it kind of had the sense of like, "Oh, hey, the ants want to talk.
Hi, I'm here to mow the galaxy. It sucks to be you." And then that's the end of the conversation. It was just like it had this moment of amused interest.
Like, "Oh, look.
And this These little things I'm here to get rid of want to talk.
It I It is >> usually do that. I think SpongeBob kind of ruined this for me as well because like I I went when the Reapers says to you like, "Our intentions are incomprehensible to you." And I go like, "It's Squidward kind of saying, 'My machinations of my mind is incomprehensible.'" [laughter] Right now it's ruined now that I talk about the SpongeBob thing, but other than that it was like, "HUH?
WHAT IS THIS?" [laughter] AGAIN, YOU'RE NOT really scared. I think Mass Effect is never There are some elements horror elements in Mass Effect I would say kind will scare you, but it to be honest I was not really that scared when I was like playing Mass Effect 1.
Mass Effect 3 and 2 did does have some very good scary elements to it which I thought, "Okay, we're building up to a really good one."
And then at the end of the game we'll get to that one, but I also have to say the challenge of Mass Effect being is that I think it was doing too much.
It It had It was doing too much because it wants to be an action game and I action RPG, but it also wants to be a cosmic horror story while you have Shepard dancing in the nightclub.
So, it's It's [laughter] It's managing a a lot and it also depends on make your own story kind of game where you play as a hopeful hero or a complete psychopath. I don't know how many people have played that one.
>> [laughter] >> I didn't even play one session of the Renegade path. I only did Paragon. Which Which right I never never fit into Mass Effect being like a complete cosmic horror. It never felt that way for me mainly because Yeah.
I played it as a Paragon and I always felt this more of a hopeful story. It never felt like we are moving towards our demise and all is lost. Even at the third one where they overdramatized everything and I still went I can just still go dance in the nightclub and I can still Oh, they took out Miranda. I can't get laid with Miranda. Well, that sucks.
I thought one of the interesting things with Mass Effect like all through the series that probably helped balance all those elements is that they set it up using a lot of cosmic horror tropes. This These things coming from outside the galaxy and they're going to purge us all. And look, they even practically have tentacles.
But even right from the start they aren't omnipotent. They're still working through proxies.
Mhm. So, like in the first one you had Saren and it made sense because that single Reaper is almost kind of like a scout that's coming out to Okay, target assessment or whatever. So, it makes sense that when it finds some minion that's willing to serve it, it's like, "Oh, okay, I can use you. You're going to save me time and effort. Cool."
It's not like they're equal entities making some kind of a deal. It's just like, "Okay, you're a labor saving thing for right now. So, good on you."
Like really undermined that in Mass Effect 2 I thought with the constant thing with the Collectors taunting you whenever the Ah, they turned it into a personal thing.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, and it's like then it's like a they have a personal interest in Shepard. Yeah. And that brings it down several layers from this nearly omnipotent god thing that's going to destroy us to this guy you pissed off.
Yeah, and it's >> It's like Enough to model a Reaper on just that guy. It's like, "That guy That guy Shepard is that guy."
>> [laughter] >> In that sense I have to give Halo >> have done without that. In that In that sense I have to give Halo some props because Halo for me was never a hopeful story when I played it. It never sounded as a hopeful story from the start. I mean [laughter] like at start you get an action out of the alien the Covenant you're the super soldier you're going to beat it. As long as you land on Halo, all things how freakishly small you are and this weird history that you're a part of and what you might awaken that will destroy It was always the soldier fighting against the dying of the light and none of them really cared about Mass Effect until Sorry, not Mass Effect until Master Chief until you get to like Halo 4 where he becomes the chosen one for some weird reason, but even still >> Yeah.
it was always fighting against the dying of the light. It's It's never the like, "Let's go dance in the nightclub." That like I will solve all problems.
[laughter] That That really is an interesting element. I mean, in a way it it works really well with Mass Effect because you get more of a sense that this guy isn't actually a human being. And you know, you can't be on full alert all the time. You have to have these moments even when your entire civilization is crashing down in ruins around you to like, "You know what?
I'm just going to hang out and have a drink and you know, not worry about this for a couple hours."
But I could I definitely think that in like a game or story context it can be an odd shift of tone.
It's like, "Oh, then Again, they kept it up even in the third By the way, I love the whole I mean like probably not the dancing in the nightclub thing because Shepard's moves sucks, but I would say I love the He dances like me.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, he's pretty good.
Shepard, everybody knows you can't dance.
Uh I I love the Again, the best reason why I kept up with Mass Effect is because of the character interactions because like for me the Reapers kind of got old bad, but I was still kind of interested enough, but mostly I was playing it for the characters. That's why my favorite was the Citadel DLC. I really enjoyed that one. That should have happened after we finished off the Reapers, but for some reason it happens before.
>> [laughter] >> Uh but I guess let's let's get to the crux of it. In my opinion, one of the one of the main problem with Mass Effect again it's that it is a hopeful story. At the end of the day Mass Effect is a very hopeful story of different species coming together and building this galactic civilization. There are problems, but at the end of the day things are still functioning and there's always diplomatic actions happening between all the people. The only thing that was not happening was the geth and even Shepard solved that cuz charisma check I win everything and then he basically yelled at the two warring sides and they're shake hands now.
And that's where it really hit me the ending was. At the end they turned Spoilers for Mass Effect 3. At the At the end it turned out to be the Reapers were flawed AI and I was like, "But I just solved this problem. I just brokered peace between geth and >> [laughter] >> and the turians. Of course there will be conflict, but they're talking now. So, they're probably not going to completely go crazy and kill each other. Always when you establish a diplomatic connection, there's always chance for hope. It's a civilization issue that we kind of fixed.
Why are you still want to want me to kill myself and kill the geth or turn into this weird synchronized ending?
Nothing makes sense. You You [laughter] make it make sense.
I know you're wrong, but you don't make sense.
>> [laughter] >> It really became stupid in my opinion.
At least what was it for you, your experience when you got to the child?
Yeah, well, my initial thought and like this was my first playthrough when that kid comes out and I was like, oh, it's that pointless kid from the ventilation duct at the beginning of the game.
Um I would feel a lot more right now if it was Kaidan because he was the one that died in Mass Effect 1 for me. So, it was like if it would have been like whichever one of them died, then this this avatar forms and it's like somebody that's a s- personal loss to Shepard and so you would have all that connection and that implied emotional connection I thought would have made a lot more sense then, you know, the child that random kid at that opening sequence. Yeah.
And that was the other thing that like one of the dangers with anything that has cosmic horror elements as a core element of its story is that you either have to explain it all at some point at the end if you're going to win, in which case it kind of collapses and feels a little bit disappointing because it gets all built up and then you're like, oh, they're malfunctioning AIs that are going to save us from being destroyed by our robots by sending robots to destroy us.
Okay, I'm sure.
Or you do what Lovecraft does a lot where they manage to narrowly escape, but it's a temporary reprieve. They haven't defeated the thing, it's still there and it's going to come back and it's just like you've bought yourself a little bit of time to worry about it.
It's [snorts] And it's several thousand years other people's problem now. This This is what we did, you figured out later.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it's Here's our notes, it's on you now. I'm out.
And and it's so much of a flaw is because like unless the geth situation didn't happen, I would have been at least relatively fine with it, but I just did what you couldn't do all this millennia. Like I You never THOUGHT OF THIS?
>> [laughter] >> GETH AND BEINGS talk it out? Never occurred to you all these years when you came in killing people?
I am a dumb [music] bot. It does remind me of what I've um what I thought was one of the best elements in the series dealing with the geth and it does kind of flip some of the cosmic horror stuff around a little bit was when you are dealing with I think it was in game two where you go into the the geth ship and you have the the rogue or the renegade ones and you're you have that choice of are you going to destroy them or are you going to reprogram them so that they'll be your allies then? And I always thought it was really bizarre that reprogramming is the paragon choice.
They could have just left it gray, but it's like putting that value judgment on like no, if you kill them, you're the bad guy, but if you change the essence of who they are so that they will help you, you're the good guy. And I'm like, no, that is the horrifying thing. That's the >> [laughter] >> Mind wipe, you which is always the best choice.
>> You will serve us now and you will like it. Oh, yes, I'm the good guy. Mind control is awesome. Have you know about like the leaked endings about like what it could have been? Have you heard of that?
A little bit, yeah. I haven't dug into it in a whole lot of detail, but yeah, I remember reading some kind of breakdowns of it. They They did have >> the original writers on.
>> [laughter] >> They did have this good idea of like so the whole Reapers They Again, this again does is not good cosmic horror because you explain what the Reapers are when and then and they're their problem is much more of a bigger problem than they were, which is they were trying to solve the heat death of the universe for some reason. It's like using the mass effect fields for some reason always expands the universe in X-rays in the far right. So, they're like, oh, we need to figure this [ __ ] out and we need to stop using these relays often. So, we'll turn our civilization into one Reaper so we become this mega computation machine they'll probably think of a solution and they went off in the far galaxy somewhere thinking about and they're like, wait, what do you mean these ants are growing up and then they're using the relays. [ __ ] we need to turn them too. We need to make them into us.
And then At the At the end of the day the again that that's also good concept that I would enjoyed it, but still again, it will be not be cosmic horror for me because well, the Reapers aren't scary anymore because they were afraid of something that is a conceptual idea.
Like >> [laughter] >> they are literally afraid of But at least with the at least with that though, you create this bind where it's like, oh, well, they're not entirely wrong. Mhm. It's like, well, okay, if you're going to wipe yourselves out without their intervention unless you understand what's happening, then there's a little bit of wiggle room for them. They're still acting rationally, whereas with the ending they went with, it's like, um okay, so what if we just break all the robots, then can you just, you know, go on your way and we're good?
Like no no civilization thought of this?
Like the Protheans are the most warring things I know. They probably would have been like, yeah, we'll kill the robots.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it's like we don't actually need these AIs. We'll just uh we're There is room for only one order of consciousness in the galaxy, the perfection of the machines or the chaos of the organics.
Throw the machine out of the airlock, Commander.
Uh This is why you don't go Skynet. Okay, I'm I'm going to put this rule out there. Probably you can write cosmic horror with technology, but I say don't go Skynet. Never go Skynet. It never works for cosmic horror. [laughter] Yeah, it's a it's a little too grounded. Mhm. And it it's going to get worse by the worst when we have real AI right now. So, it's yeah, you can't you can't use AI anymore. It's It's become a common >> [laughter] >> getting more common than it used to.
Oh. Well, I'm looking forward to the first time AI writes cosmic horror.
Oh my god.
>> [laughter] >> So, let's say you have the ultimate authority. Like you You are now you have Cthulhu's power in your fingertips and you can fix the Mass Effect franchise.
How would [laughter] you do it?
Let's see. So, well, I mean, the first thing, the giant skeleton Reapers right out. Just like, you're gone.
But I think really where it starts going wrong is that Mass Effect 2 starts with kind of a soft reboot.
Where they they have to bring it back to everybody conveniently kind of forgets what happened at the end of the previous game where it's like it's like everybody saw this, but it's back to nobody believes you, so go do this other thing.
I'm kind of wondering how well it would have worked if they would have come up with a instead of that, they would have been able to fudge it a little bit more with having Shepard out there where he's trying to coordinate defenses between some of the different powers against the Reapers like way on the edge of the galaxy.
But he's lacking resources. He's there on official assignment as a Spectre, but all the council races are having they have different priorities, they're arguing with each other, there's limited resources to go around, and there's this undercurrent that the threat is so overwhelming that they don't know how to face it, so they keep turning their attention back to problems that they can actually deal with and it ends up being this almost willful blindness to it. It's like they know and when you confront them directly, they're like, okay, yes, we we're going to send you out there. Yes, we'll send another ship. We'll do this, but they can't They're like mentally incapable of prioritizing it because they don't actually think they can do anything about it.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it That That That's again scary.
Like you know what's coming and yet you can't do anything about it and we have this one guy trying >> there's all this other crap we have to do.
>> [laughter] >> And you have this one guy who's running around trying to fix the whole universe.
So, yeah, I That That It's like you know he's right, but you also kind of wish he would go away because he keeps reminding you that Hey, the Grim Reaper is at the next door. And I'm like, I know.
>> [laughter] >> Just go.
Uh so, you're you would start up >> actually deal with the plumbing on the Citadel right now, so that's my focus.
One of the things I would say about the happy about the cosmic horror elements when they finally went when we got to the Citadel and they the keepers of the Citadel thing started doing weird stuff. I was like, with cosmic I again a lot of people might disagree with this. I think going visually with cosmic horror is a very fantastical idea. I would appreciate seeing like uh I mean, get a very good artist to give you some mind illusions with visuals and it would often most of the time you would go like, whoa, that was a good trip.
I always appreciate that when they try to visualize something that is unvisualizable even though they're using cheap tricks, but you kind of got in the moment with it because there is a certain wonder and horror with cosmic horror and that's why I always like in Call of Cthulhu, it was the artist is the one who's trying to describe Cthulhu's play. That I always thought that's genius. Like that's what I want.
Like what an artist would represent this unrepresentable thing in because we've seen artist people trying to craft mental illness into art and sort of weird concepts and it always fascinates you and it's always fascinating to go the visual route. A lot of people will encourage you not to go to that, but I would say go to that.
Get some artist and do some weird stuff.
Uh Yeah, and it's really if you get an artist that like will really kind of dive into it and give a lot of thought to how all the pieces of it fit together even though strictly speaking they don't, which is kind of the point. You can get some really interesting stuff and just thinking about that just now reminds me of another element that I think is kind of interesting is that like periodically I'll talk to people who like it's like cosmic horror doesn't work on them.
Like it's like I I don't get it. This is boring. Whatever. What's this about? And I kind of think that it's I mean since such a big part of it is that you have this assumed understanding of how the world you exist within actually functions.
And with cosmic horror you get this little glimpse behind the facade of what you know.
And it's it's not enough to explain you what to you and not enough that you can understand what's really happening, but it's enough that you understand that you know [ __ ] about the reality that you live in.
And for that to actually have any kind of horror potential requires a certain level of intellectual investment in the world and the models that we have for understanding it.
And so it's if you really don't think about things that much or you're just not too concerned about it, it becomes this very abstract thing that even if it's true, it doesn't really matter because you're not interacting with it on that level. And it's kind of and I kind of understand the mindset because I mean a little I have a little bit of that on some things too. Like sometimes people will be talking about very deep philosophical concepts and I'm like, okay, well that's all well and good, but there reaches a point where it becomes largely irrelevant to actually doing anything in the world.
But there's that extreme case of I mean you know, people that think that, oh, the room is hot, so I'm going to open the refrigerator and it's going to cool the room. Well, no, that's not how things work.
Well, Lovecraft kind of thought it. I think didn't he write a weird book about refrigerating turning people into living zombies or something like that?
Something that sounds vaguely familiar, but I I know I know he I know I'm not sure if it's refrigerator or air conditioning when air conditioner or something with thing Lovecraft kind of freaked out and wrote a story where a guy who's sitting in the refrigerator apartment or something kind of turned into a corpse man.
He's got a little Stephen King Yeah.
Ooh, that also reminds me um a Stephen King story that I think does a really good job with this in a you know like you say cosmic horror and a lot of people think Lovecraft and Cthulhu monsters and stuff, but are you familiar with the Stephen King story 1408?
It was a short story in one of his collections. No, I'm not. It's um the premise of it is is that there's this author who writes um like paranormal investigation books. And he makes a lot of money doing it, but he doesn't believe in any of it. So he just does it as a like it's his job and he goes to this hotel.
I've seen the movie. I've seen the movie.
Oh, okay.
I've seen the movie. But yeah, so he he insists on like staying the night in this room and when he's in there it's just it is completely messing with him in ways that are like I'm trying to think of examples.
It's been a long time since I've read it, but King's descriptions of things just have this eerie sort of creepiness about it. And of course this guy eventually gets out of the room and it has that that element that works so well in some of the better Lovecraft stories where he has escaped, but he's permanently scarred by this thing.
He still doesn't understand what it was.
It's not like some malicious demon that's deliberately trying to torture him and it's not some ghost that's trying to tell him anything or get revenge for something. It's just this non-human consciousness of some sort that resides within the confines of that room.
And he just never can really recover from that brief interaction with this thing. Yeah.
Another good you know, important element I think for cosmic horror is that it has to be almost hopeless.
But not completely hopeless because then it's just like, well, it's over. It doesn't matter what I do.
But when you have that there's a narrow chance that you can get away from this.
And if you don't it's probably your fault somehow.
>> [laughter] >> And so you get all of that kind of coming together. Run that boat and run.
>> [laughter] >> I In many ways I think that is true because like in both Lovecraft story and also in Mountain of Madness the protagonists narrowly do escape and like that Stephen King character, they are permanently scarred by it and they just can't comprehend what they just been through. [laughter] They didn't see their life flash before their eyes. They saw something flash before their eyes that they brain does not compute.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, never quite come back from that.
Yeah.
I think that that is again, that's the very good management of like wonder and horror. And that's why cosmic horror is usually said in space because you both have the wonder of the explorer spirit and the scary ness aspect of the unknown. Again, a fine balance to walk upon.
Which Yeah. My my answer to the whole again, we start with this particular one with Mass Effect and I would say if I had the power to fix Mass Effect, I would say again, the earlier suggestion that you did with the they they being something of an something that we never know is a problem that goes away, but it's just always comes back or it comes back even bigger. And Shepard only yes.
You can even end it profoundly with relatively with death. We sometimes escape it through medical treatment, but we all know it's coming sometime or later, but hey, now I can drink something and have fun with my friends.
So [laughter] I'm I fought enough to do that. So I can have that thing because at the end of the day for me Mass Effect was always been a very hopeful story. So narrowly escape it for a million years and next game comes out I guess where they think of another dumb thing.
>> [laughter] >> Now they're going to do Mass Effect Yeah, I'm curious to see how they handle that. Yeah, it's not going to be good.
It's just I I I have no >> Yeah, I am I am skeptical. Yeah, I'm I [laughter] I have no faith.
Unless unless they like uh let's do the three over again.
>> [laughter] >> We'll figure out from there. The opening sequence is we're fixing the three right now.
>> [laughter] >> Uh Yeah. But I won't be pre-ordering.
That's all I'm going to say.
Uh with the state of BioWare you you really shouldn't.
>> [laughter] >> My Yeah.
My funniest thing was >> probably boot like it and try it out.
Depending on the graphics card I guess.
Uh the games games and graphics cards.
But Yeah. It as being a cosmic horror story and again being the Reaper. But for my favorite bits of the cosmic elements in the Reaper stuff was always the mind control aspect of it. And the one where I was truly kind of had that same Master Chief moment when he's fighting against the flood is that one DLC where he ends up ship or a facility where everyone is controlled by the Reaper and as long as he stays there he's going to get controlled by the Reaper. And oh wait, they're coming. And like that the crappiest and the most rushiest the section of the game that I was so locked in. It's like that was the fisherman escaping from Cthulhu. That was like for me like oh, this is is this is the note we're ending the second game? Okay, so the third game's going to be awesome. It was not.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah. I think they probably could have saved >> Some of it was and so it was this weird mix of great and awful. Like >> [laughter] >> Uh But at least it wasn't average and forgettable. So Yeah, that's true. At least we're still talking about it.
>> [laughter] >> About the good things and the bad things.
Uh it's just like it again, like I said, even as a hopeful game, it had so much hope and so much potential. Uh maybe it's maybe it's that. It's like we have so much potential we will always be able to ponder about it. Which I say about a lot of stuff that I watch most days.
Like a lot of the TV shows like I watched Teen the reboot of Teen Wolfs.
And I went and up saying like you [clears throat] know, there was so much potential there.
That could have >> [laughter] >> every season there was so much potential there, but I was completely thrown off by your execution of the whole >> [laughter] >> thing.
Yeah, I feel like that a lot watching stuff last I don't know, 15 or 20 years.
Join the club, pal. Join the club. So what do you think that stories have actually broken this rule of explaining cosmic horror where they again, they do enough to provide you is the sense in a detective sense. Like how Lovecraft did, how other cosmic horrors have can you think of any examples where that has actually been good?
I can think of three are coming to mind that give you quite a bit of information but it still works and like they're three very different stories.
And the first one I suppose might be a little surprising but I've always thought that the chaos gods in Warhammer 40K did a really good job of that where it's even though they're kind of framed as almost personal beings and they have understood realms and they have understood motives that you can explain to people they're still always just there.
Whatever you're doing they're aware of it and they're just always looking for an opening and you have to let them in some way.
And so it captures that idea that we're talking about earlier with you know like your entire worldview being shattered.
And you it works really well with a lore that you had this age of technology and mankind's out colonizing the galaxy and we're making alliance with all these different xenos races and it's you know Star Trek fun times and everything's great.
And then it collapses and all of a sudden there are evil gods that we have to deal with and it's like >> [laughter] >> what just happened? It's like you know the entire you know materialist scientific worldview that we see everything within just suddenly evaporates and it's like there's demons in the warp and they're going to come out and get you so you just And then emperor and emperor emperor over there is still telling you no there no there isn't. No you're not seeing a demon. Don't believe in demons. I told you not to believe in demons.
Uber atheism Uber atheism.
Be very disciplined in your thinking or the demons will get in.
But you don't believe in them.
We should do it we should do a Warhammer episode as well but I I agree with you on that.
I agree with you on the the chaos gods.
I always thought that was one of the best modern interpret things of cosmic They always blame the C'tan and the Necrons as this cosmic horror thing but for me it's like the chaos gods so far is so good.
>> absolutely chaos. Yeah it's because at the end of the day again the explanation I never actually the books I read in 40K were Ciaphas Cain and also one Necron book Infinite and the Divine. Other ones I watched through YouTube and things like that and there was a good series called TTS text to speech where they actually explain chaos in a comedic way but at the end of the day you go with oh we are screwed.
>> [laughter] >> The the so so Slaanesh is also the god of debauchery but she's also she or they is also the pleasure of existence itself. You cannot have you cannot completely eradicate it without eradicating your soul so And that's one of the interesting things about all of them is that you have to fight them every day to hold them off but the act of fighting them fuels them so you're like caught in this loop.
>> [laughter] >> Again raging against the dying of the light the the the the emotion still goes there but you know at least I at least I guess it's like all psychiatrists are right like all our fears are rooted on death and we're always trying to the inevitable our trying to fight our inevitable fate as long as we can do it.
So so other than Warhammer what are the other two examples that you have?
I recently read a book called The Dance of the Fool by Ilaryon Pavlyuk. It was I hope I'm pronouncing that right. It's a Ukrainian book which to my knowledge isn't actually there's not a published English translation of it but somebody did a translation just on their own and sent me a a digital copy of it which I thought was really cool so I recently read it. At some point I want to do a video about it. I'm going to have to write it back.
But it's a a science fiction story on the face of it. This guy he joins some private military company and they send him off to this colony world and with they've got a little scientific base set up and some you know these mercs are there doing the security for it.
And gradually like these strange things keep happening happening and he discovers that people are being replaced kind of a body snatcher sort of thing happening.
But throughout the story it's revealed that all the life on this planet is really just this one thing. It was this like fungus kind of thing that landed there at some point and it started like what it does is it just replaces entire ecosystems by copying them. So if you're looking at it from outside you wouldn't you have no way of knowing that the entire ecosystem of this planet has been replaced by this one entity.
But then when it starts doing it to the humans that land it takes on some of that self-awareness that you know the animals didn't have so it it's it becomes a conscious active threat and it's trying to get on one of the ships and come to Earth so it can spread itself to another biosphere.
And so it kind of had this interesting question that rises up through it that if you can't tell and it has all your memories is there a difference between you and a copy of you that thinks it's you?
But it's really just part of a big fungus.
Which of course also means that you will never watch Avatar the same way again once you have read this book.
It's kind of like oh wait a minute this is like that same thing.
Yeah never never a big fan of Avatar.
I'm one of those people.
Yeah.
It's it's never going to be one of the greats.
Again it would have been fine it would have been fine if people didn't build it up so much. Like I would have been fine with it it's just it's again the build up was too much and I was like I was very disappointed.
>> [laughter] >> The hype was insane and then it probably would have been better a better legacy if it was just the one movie. Yeah.
Just you know let it stand as what it is.
And um the third one that kind of comes to mind is I'm currently reading a book.
I'm only about halfway through it called The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch.
And it's got cosmic horror elements on two levels.
And it's the basic story of it it's kind of a time travel thing where you have this woman she's a an agent working with the Navy because it's got a a whole it riffs on the whole secret space program stuff.
I don't know if you're familiar with that rabbit hole but this idea Yeah.
Go on go on. It's this idea it's a lot of like the fringes of the UFO investigation movement kind of talk about this a lot. It's like really wacky conspiracy [clears throat] stuff and yet they can pull out these threads. Well what about this? But the idea of it is that there's this breakaway civilization almost in that several government organizations including the United States Navy actually operate a fleet of interstellar ships and they're engaging with you know it's basically like if Stargate SG-1 was real that's the premise of like the whole secret space program story.
And so it this book kind of takes that and weaves it into its premise but they also have some time travel too and when they're going forward to the future they find this event they call the terminus where like a big white hole appears in the sky and people go into these catatonic states and telekinetic forces crucify them and it's just craziness. So on the surface you have that cosmic horror thing and every time somebody goes into the future to study it it's closer.
It keeps jumping a few hundred years closer every time so it's like That again again yeah that that that thing is like it's when you try to stop it or trying to fight the thin line of it it's like a spider getting closer to you as you step. [laughter] That you know every effort you take to try and understand this thing just brings the doom closer.
But it's also got this more subtle element where the way it handles the time travel is interesting where you know you don't have paradoxes and branching timelines and all this stuff.
It's just like the present is what's real and you can't travel back to the past because it's over it's done. It's not there anymore.
And whenever they travel to the future it's a potential future. It's like the wave function just collapses based on the vast you know arrangement of conditions at the very moment that they travel through so according to the math the traveler is the only person that is real in that time and when they leave and go back to their own time that particular future just blinks out and ceases to exist.
So of course you have people that are involved in the program that understand this. So when the travelers go forward there is always a risk that someone is going to capture them and try to keep them alive for as long as possible so that they don't blink out of existence.
Oh my god this is a nice horror story Doctor Who.
Yeah.
And so you get this idea that you everything you know can suddenly end by the actions of a person that you've never met who has There's no malice toward you. They're just going about their lives doing what they're supposed to do and just believe and done.
>> [laughter] >> Which you know, it's like a slower burn cosmic horror element, but this so far this book's working really well with the two things kind of working in concert with each other. Now I'm picturing every Doctor Who episode where the doctor finally leaves and the white light it doesn't go away and it was like, "Hey, isn't that getting bigger? Oh shit." And then he just flips out as the doctor leaves.
>> [laughter] >> Doctor Who is also a very a cosmic horror protagonist which I don't know how they pulled it off, but they pulled it off. Um I mean I I I I never committed to like it. So my with Doctor Who experience one of my British friends will tell me a good episode and I would go watch it and I will definitely not follow the series cuz I know if I do, it'll be ruined for me because I just go like, "Hey, check out the weeping angels episode." And I think it's the greatest thing ever.
And the next episode is like, "Nah."
Tell me when there's a good one that you recommend to me with this sub vibe and I'll watch it because like I did the bad thing where I watch it and I watched the next weeping angel episode with Matt Smith and it completely ruined it for me. So I was like Yeah, yeah.
That was one of those where it's they are one-off characters. The weeping angels, the silence, they're just like They tell their story and then move on.
>> [laughter] >> Which the doctor should have been the same way as follow because like one of my favorite moments with the doctor is that you don't know who this man is.
Like what is this thing that's [laughter] been going around being is basically being a Bugs Bunny person, but even when you >> Yeah. I think some people did it on YouTube where they imagined Scooby-Doo as this cosmic horror thing who's just been using these kids to concept scenarios where it plays people playing mysteries and Velma is always the person that figures out. So it keeps rebooting the franchise into different iterations.
It just keep going. And I thought, "That's so freaky and I highly appreciate [laughter] that it's semi-heaven. And right now it's way better than the stoner theory of Shaggy imagining the whole thing.
Yeah.
It's a more fun theory for the observer anyway. Yeah.
And then from what you said like the three elements I got was like get all all these have this common the inevitability of your efforts are futile. Maybe you can push it into a day, maybe you can push it to a thousand years, but the inevitability is futile.
Uh and the other thing is that the big question it asks ourselves whether what if you if you're a copy of yourself that has all your memories, is that the same you? Identity crisis.
So at the end of the day cosmic horrors are basically existential crises wrapped up into different creatures or as concepts.
With What do you consider that as?
>> of. Yeah.
I I think that's the most best definition to put whatever this thing is is that basically your existential crisis just manifested into this creature. [laughter] Yeah.
>> Which is also the gods of 40K which is like, "Yeah, you like self-discipline?
You like training? Yeah, push that a little bit harder, you get corn. You get war, you get battle lust and all that stuff. That determined rocky feeling that you got, that's awesome, but push it a little far, it's it's mass murder.
Yeah. [laughter] The The thing >> that's one of the really cool things with the the chaos gods is that it's not even some external thing exactly. It's like you're kind of bringing this.
>> [laughter] >> The thing you fear is you.
Which chaos god would you fall to if I really if you're going to fall to something like what would you What would your round pick would be?
Oh yeah, if I was going to fall it would be totally Slaanesh.
Slaanesh is the funnest thing, but Slaanesh is the most scariest thing.
>> [laughter] >> You You don't know what you're going to get.
>> [laughter] >> Nope.
It's like cosmic lotto.
So with corn, I know what I'm getting with corn. I just have to be murder baby all the time.
>> [laughter] >> I don't want I mean I mean Slaanesh is the most scariest thing because like you almost most people would say, "Slaanesh doesn't sound that bad."
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it's like I'm going to stop you right there.
Let me introduce you to Drukhari. Oh [laughter] no.
Good point. VERY GOOD POINT.
>> GET BAD real quick.
It's like forget kissing, how about turning yourself into a couch while you're alive?
>> [laughter] >> Speaking of like what I can think of as a good example, I can really couldn't really think of it like any sort of cartoon in media example, but I can approach it from a mythological standpoint of view is for like uh some person actually made this here. I've been telling about it for years, but someone actually made a website about all things like Lovecraft based his whole thing on Hindu mythology. And I always said that. Uh people might take it wrong. They think, "Oh, you think Hindu gods are monsters?" No. That's not what I'm saying is that Yeah.
the the idea of most Hindu mythology stories is that well, there are some silly stories as well like with any mythology, but the concept of Hindu mythology mostly with like the big deities is that they are these incomprehensible things that visually and philosophically always meant to challenge you in ways that you will never understand. This way you can't never put good evil with these kind of thing because we worship Shiva even though he is the god of destruction.
Uh is no malice toward is just a function of the universe. It just has happened to it.
>> Um it always had that vibe. There's a person who made a website about it. He would break down the the power elements that he got from each Hindu god to his deities like Yogsothoth, the idea of Brahma of Hindu mythology. It does a fantastic site. I would recommend it. Uh but I always had that theory cuz >> down.
in in my in my head they were like completely because like one of the big section in the Bhagavad Gita is when the Krishna Have you heard of Have you knowledge of like Hindu mythology a little bit at least?
It's pretty basic, yeah. I like know the broad strokes of it. Yeah, so you with the one of the big epics is Mahabharata and where one of the like one of our favorite deities is Krishna because he's the one who always comes down to earth and resets the balance and this sort of thing. And in here he's he's Krishna.
He's not he's not Vishnu, the god of preservation. Yeah. And they're about to go on this war and this This is the line that usually that Oppenheimer quotes. Everything comes from this section where Arjuna basically says is that I can't kill my family because they're they're literally fighting against family and they're like, "I can't kill my cousins. I don't know what I'm doing here." And then this guy who's a charioteer who we always knew this kind of weird Bugs Bunny sort of character who pulls off these weird cosmic stunts, but we never fully grasped at least the characters don't grasp it yet where at that moment Vishnu freezes time and he gives a philosophical speech to Arjuna. And that's where he explains the meaning of the universe in the concept of what they think of. But all their teachings in the Mahabharata in general is meant to be very vague which performs our later philosophy just Advaita Vedanta where we get to well, everything in the universe is the universe. You are the universe experiencing your own self in various ways. Vishnu is you as well as Arjuna as you as well. You were that bird and the worm being eaten by that bird at the same time.
This was the whole crux of it. And when it's I've seen one YouTuber did this.
I'm not really sure this is from his his animation work or it's it's a from an animated movie where where Arjuna is like, "Okay, how do you know all this stuff?" And when it's like saying, "I am the alpha and the omega moment where Krishna reveals that he is this cosmic thing.
And that reveal is represented in a again a very Cthulhuian cosmic horror way where this guy is wondered by the whole thing, but it's also Okay, go back to THAT FUNNY GUY.
>> [laughter] >> CHANGE BACK, PLEASE. Change back. I Yeah, he was fun.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
That I always thought as like the best example of like cosmic horror. Yeah.
And I always stick to the fact that even though cosmic horror are part of sci-fi, you always lean into mythos because with mythos you don't have all the answers, just enough to go by.
So that that would be my examples of like good cosmic which is kind of a cop out because I literally made it mythology, but I think most mythologies probably have this thing.
My knowledge is Hindu mythology, but I know there's some bit of Greek and things like that where the gods are just mean for some apparent reason.
Uh But Sometimes they'll tell you why, sometimes they won't.
They're just mean.
They're just mean.
The gods of Olympus have decided that Zeus is a jerk. Tis you who are jerks.
Uh but speaking of that sense like with cosmic, what is your favorite cosmic horror book like either Lovecraft or what is there a book? Mhm.
Yeah, well I mean for Lovecraft it's definitely at the Mountains of Madness.
Mhm.
>> like to revisit that one every few years.
I It's a a fun read. I always Like I know I know every aspect of it now. I listened to it like three times already, but it's so fun this Again, it's written in a very intellectual but it's like the scientist describing things. It's like so I I can't even I liked it. But maybe what you can.
Yeah, just that that slow build that it's like oh, we found some ruins. They shouldn't be here. Okay, I understand that. We're entering the ruins.
Huh, things look weird. Okay, there's these carvings. All right, I still understand that.
There's giant albino penguins.
Okay, I have questions.
And then by the time you get into the like dead old ones and all this stuff you're like What?
>> [laughter] >> Should we be here? Like Maybe we should just leave it ice this over again and just never speak of it.
That I I'm not sure I'm not sure if if if they Lovecraft did it first, but I feel like uh maybe Frankenstein did for like the thing like the the whole Arctic expedition thing, the thing and all the cartoons and movies that came afterwards weirdly like oh, did they just copy Mountains of Madness?
>> [laughter] >> I don't know. Then did their own spin on it?
I'm sure a lot of it borrows stuff from the Shackleton expedition. I don't know if you're familiar with No, I don't really know.
I don't know. Well, it was the very very short version of it. I can't remember the year that this happened, but it was this guy Ernest Shackleton. He was in a very famous British explorer.
And he wanted to go down there and like take an expedition to the South Pole be the first to do it.
So he hires a crew for the ship and there's this apocryphal story that he put an ad in the newspaper and it was something like you know, wanted men for low pay almost certain death hardship and terrible conditions, you know.
>> [laughter] >> And that they were flooded with applicants. There's I don't think that it was actually a real ad. There's nobody's been able to actually document like it ran in this paper on this particular day. It's always kind of just a story that circulated around. But the basic idea of it that they got people to go on this expedition and everybody was pretty enthusiastic about it, but everything starts going wrong. The boat gets stuck in the ice.
So they have to get off the ship cuz the ice is slowly moving once it's stuck and they're crushing the ship's hull and it's Uh And they're stuck there in Antarctica and and a group of them got on one of the lifeboats and they were going to try to head out towards uh where they knew some island with a whaling station was. It was like hundreds of miles away. So they're going across like open ocean in off [snorts] the Antarctic coast on this rowboat trying to get to this whaling station in the hope that they'll be able to find somebody there.
And eventually they did make contact and the rest of the crew was rescued, but it was a year a year and a half later or something by which point a whole bunch of them had died and it was the whole thing was just a complete disaster.
>> why did I picture the whole island being a tomb of the old ones? I don't know why.
It's just when you describe it I FEEL LIKE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY MISSED OUT ON? It was quite horrific for them as it was.
But just this idea that you you get there and the everything in the environment seems like it's conspiring to kill you.
>> [laughter] >> Like like oh, you just thought you were going to sail over here and land on the coast and then take some dog sleds across the snow and have a good time and plant a flag. Well, let me tell you what's up.
Proba- probably every explorer ever landing on a tropical island going oh damn, it's hot. I think I'm going to faint. Oh damn, it's hot. I think I'm going to faint.
>> [laughter] >> Well, at least I'm not those guys.
Well, this sucks.
>> [laughter] >> Uh I I even though I enjoyed Mountains of Madness most of the time, I'm going to say weirdly enough I would still put Call Call of Cthulhu as a favorite. I think I think the big concept ideas he literally defined it. It was like the genre when he says like the inplac ignorance of the human minds and then you go like I'm in for something really big when I'm reading this. Uh it it just had that big picture feel which Yeah. I I I think lot lot of things is like because it kind of ends in a very very dull way where it's just a bunch of fishermen who's finding the Cthulhu not the intellectual [clears throat] professor or the policeman or the artist or the one who's actually finding this. It's just a bunch of fishermen who's the one who's finally finding [laughter] it. Uh but for me that that I have to still put it on like the big picture idea and it's it's it's in a good way these very intellectual minds trying to make sense of like very simple people if the cult to worship Cthulhu, the artist who trying to magnize in the this and the scientific mind trying to ponder it over and over again. And the final they ended with the next essential crisis where they go oh god.
>> [laughter] >> What did I Why did I push away the curtain? I should have just left it up.
>> [laughter] >> I think maybe I think we ignored that point. Probably it's just the price of knowledge itself is that is the main horror idea behind cosmic horror is like well, now you know, you can never think >> [laughter] >> outthink it.
Yeah.
There's that, you know, the old line that knowledge is power and it's like well, only if you can do something with the knowledge.
>> [laughter] >> If you learn something and there's nothing you can do about it, it's kind of a burden. Yeah.
>> [laughter] >> And other people don't understand you, it's extra burden. Yeah.
Yeah.
Then you sound like a lunatic and they put you in a little room.
Probably every quantum physicist right now is like I've been telling you all these people.
My question, do you think Cthulhu got knocked out or it's just he went okay, it's not that time yet.
At the end of the Lovecraft >> Yeah, it's it's been a quite a few years since I read Call of Cthulhu, but that was always my impression that he was just kind of like all right.
Not ripe yet.
Taking a nap. [laughter] He took a one sniff of the sailors and like uh uh uh >> [laughter] >> not good.
Yeah, they need a little more time.
And also your introduction to cosmic horror is a very good thing because like my first introduction to cosmic horror is again by a comedy. My first ever Hollywood [snorts] movies were these three movies Stuart Little, Men in Black II, and Van Helsing.
And Men in Black II is the one that's really stuck with me and and later I go oh, it's cosmic horror.
>> [laughter] >> So when you go to the real station.
So I'm more open to the idea >> [laughter] >> YEAH, GO ON.
I WAS JUST saying that's kind of an interesting lineup as the intro like >> [laughter] >> I That was my first three Hollywood movies by the way. Before that uh I didn't even speak that much English at that point when I got into those three movies. I've only seen Tamil movies and again kind >> [laughter] >> All my friends who grew up in that era actually come to me and then one of my friends who's again he watched Hollywood movies in Tamil dub, but he would come to me and says like he literally asked me in Tamil was like dude, why are Hollywood movies so lame now? What happened to the Men in Blacks and Van Helsing and that sort of stuff? It's so lame.
>> [laughter] >> So it's not it's not just us. It's [laughter] not just Everyone looks at Hollywood movies like that nowadays.
Uh uh I also want to bring in Do you think True Detective is a good cosmic horror story?
Yeah, that's an interesting case cuz I mean it's it has Yeah, how would I even frame it because it's it has like all the the element of it except for the actual supernatural thing. So it's like it's really interesting with that like the cosmic horror build up, but then it's like oh, it's some some murderous hick and his stick for it. Well, okay, I guess all the philosophical musing is still valid.
>> [laughter] >> It's just It's just It's a really interesting kind of like almost Yeah, like deconstructing it almost.
Yeah, I mean people might be hate me for this, but I say it's like Some people claim it as the greatest TV show ever. Well, that's more of a biased take I would say, but it's a good TV show. But in my opinion, I wouldn't consider it as good cosmic horror cuz at the end of the day I wanted Call of Cthulhu.
>> [laughter] >> You gave me a painting.
Like I think the main character sees a weird cosmic painting or something before he gets axed and then later on he talks about his lost daughter and I was like ha.
So That bubkis? Is that what you're saying?
Bubkis? All of this for bubkis?
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, it get the ending there at it gave us all the answers and it's like okay, well, I'm always in a weird battle with people who like really religiously like True Detective season 1 and me going at the end of the day going, "Yeah, it's good. It's just not that good."
>> [laughter] >> I thought of like season 1 was I would go so far as to say that season 1 was a great show for what it is.
It's I mean the character the characterization in it, the way that they kind of wove everything through the storyline, getting the little clues so you get toward the end there you start to get that, you know, unexpected but inevitable kind of thing like, "Oh, how did I not notice that?" Like, of course.
But yeah, I've trying to frame it as cosmic horror. It's like, "Well, I mean it it feels like it for a little while, but not really cuz it's this guy." Yeah.
But and of course I'm saying, you know, True Detective season 1 as its own thing. I don't really count the subsequent ones where it was like, "Okay, >> even seen I haven't even seen those. I haven't even seen those. I haven't even seen those. Yeah, they're they're skippable. The the if you were disappointed by the ending in season 1, the ending of all the other seasons is like >> [sighs and gasps] >> really?
That's it? That that's it.
That doesn't even make sense. At least season 1 it's like it makes logical sense and all the pieces fit. It's like the other ones you're like what?
Why would anybody do that? Like I mean Batman villains made more sense.
>> [laughter] >> Yes.
A Batman did a uh at the Mountains of Madness mixed with cosmic different entity invading Gotham thing one movie. Uh one of the interesting Batman movies I've seen.
Again, not that great but I would recommend it. It was weird.
Sometimes it's weird enough. And it's for me True Detective ending was not weird.
You know, you could still make that guy like the whole thing you did with him is like the real aspect of the whole thing's fine.
You know, at least make him like a king of yellow. Maybe as give us a little bit of glimpse go keep could be the king of yellow kind of things. Like, I got none of that.
>> [laughter] >> Or even like some kind of a hint that he was, you know, a vessel for something that was then abandoned at the end because he was no longer useful and it was just kind of like this this grand almost parasitical sort of thing that you don't know why it's doing this, but it'll just like grab people and use them for a while and then like, "Okay, done with you."
>> [laughter] >> And so then he's like standing there like he doesn't even know what the hell's going on. I know for a show that monologues a lot, they missed a really care moment when the guy who was possessed by this great being or something left behind by this great being. That's a great monologue moment for any character.
Do something with that, people.
>> [laughter] >> Like instead of a ghost possessing someone and then giving us a monologue, I want a cosmic entity possess you and you're left with it and you give a monologue.
It would be so good. That's a concept that people should explore more.
And it's like not even like straight possession but just like exerting influence but it's this completely alien thing. So it's like it's not trying to get you to do things, at least not things that you can comprehend and you don't know what it's like weird compulsions are. So you're like trying to act on it in the best way you can understand and it you just end up with this confused mess and like that could be something interesting to work with on something. Yeah.
Every [clears throat] every chaos Yeah, write another book.
>> [laughter] >> Uh so at the crux of it I do want to ask what is your best advice for someone who's writing cosmic horror at this moment?
I think I would probably, you know, keeping it simple and actionable.
Um I guess the first thing would be to explain the thing but in a way that makes it scarier. Give just enough information to like give some vague form to the terror but not actually explain how it works or what what it wants. Give us information about it that highlights how unlike us it is.
So it's like like you don't understand what it wants.
You're not going to because you can't.
But this is what it's doing.
>> [laughter] >> You and I guess >> [snorts] >> Go on. Related to that would be, you know, don't confuse incomprehensible with incoherent.
The information you give has to make sense.
You put it in a so such a beautiful funny way.
>> [laughter] >> Don't be funny.
How I would describe Mass Effect 3.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, that would be fair.
I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions.
So which of course reminds me we'll have to see what Amazon does with their uh Mass Effect series. Apparently they're developing that. So that could be horrifying in its own way. That's not good cosmic horror, just bad.
I don't know why I cringe like this whenever they pronounce something. I mean like they did it a few episodes I think one episode of like Warhammer stuff and I thought that was Okay, that was pretty awesome. That was badass.
Uh but I'm always wary of like I mean you can anyone can make a fun animation of Space Marine kicking ass, but can you get into the crux of it?
That's it.
>> [laughter] >> That's it.
I mean with Mass Effect that's what really bothered Can you even comprehend? You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence.
A big thing that was on social media I guess last week or the week before how people were like one of the people on the Amazon crew had said, "Oh, like we need to make it, you know, less less focused on gamers." I think was the advice they gave to the script writer writers for it. And of course a lot of people lost their minds about it like, "Oh, it's going to be horrible." And I'm still thinking like, "Well, I mean that I haven't seen those scripts. It depends.
If it was advice like this is referencing too much, you know, gameplay kind of stuff, then okay, maybe. Like I'm I'm going to reserve judgment. I'm going to give them a chance.
It's Yeah. I don't even know why they even put out that's like the PR of current TV show makers and things like that. It's it's never that good. So it's like why would you even say that? You could have just said, "Oh, this is for the fans." and then shut up about the whole thing instead of just saying, "We're not making for the gamers."
>> [laughter] >> Why would you even say it?
Now it's just a little hunch, Kowalski, but maybe you should shut your fish hole, please. But so your two points notes were to writing cosmic horror is that again, the best line incomprehensible not incoherent and give enough but don't explain the drive of it. Don't don't make don't make the creature a character in a sense. Don't make a commentary. No, you can do commentary but in a theoretical sense but never interspectual study. Never do that with cosmic horror cuz again, they are in my opinion they're meant to be existential crisis that you just throw your inconsequential thoughts to it. And my advice would be read mythology.
Yeah. I think that's the best basis for you to come up with your own idea of like incomprehensible. Ignore the stories where the gods just being mean because that's sometimes they have family drama for some reason, but read stories where they go, "Huh?" Like >> [laughter] >> that stuff happens in a lot of mythology. Yes. I don't even know what you're trying to tell me.
>> [laughter] >> Uh I mean I guess that would be just like good like if you're trying to tell stories advice just generally. It's like go way back.
Read mythology because that will like give you a lot of stuff that works. Some of the classic themes. It'll also give you some things that probably shouldn't try to emulate, but >> [laughter] >> it'll be informative all the way around.
I I'm always >> work anymore, but Yeah, I'm always surprised by that. Like sometimes like again uh a lot of people say don't read Call of Cthulhu because of the language is different so outdated in different ways so you probably won't even be able to enjoy it.
I wouldn't say that. Call of Cthulhu was very entertaining.
Uh Mountain of the Madness is very big.
The King in Yellow was not. The King in Yellow was not.
Yeah, I would agree with that. Uh I think that one was usually I actually read things, but I think that one I put on as audio while I was painting my house.
So it's like whenever I think of the various stories from that one I'm like picturing certain rooms and certain colors because it's just like forever linked.
If they did cosmic horror right, every time you look at those walls you think of stuff. But they didn't do it right so you probably won't. You just think of the walls.
>> [laughter] >> Yep, it's just colors.
It's not just a wall. It's even a freshly painted wall. We're watching paint dry? That's the most boring thing in the world. Yeah. Any sort of books that you've recently written or anything that you want to promote I would the floor is yours, sir.
Uh well, I could do a quick promo of a Stellar Drift. It's a Nice.
>> not cosmic horror, but it's cool, you know, sci-fi sort of a you win the war and now what do you do?
Cuz you have to make a functioning society. Ooh.
I I always like >> There's a lot going on. Also, it might stop bullets. It's very thick, so it could save your life.
How many days did you spend in the mountains for that one?
Oh, this one has been in the works for a long time.
The um I have been working on this for a great many years. There is a scene in there, one of the like midway through it, that the very first draft of that scene I was writing on a plane on the way to San Francisco in August of 2001.
I was uh forming my first sentences.
Date only sticks in my head cuz I remember sitting in the uh sit it well, sitting in O'Hare Airport.
The flight had been delayed because the toilet was broken.
And everybody's in a panic trying to catch the flight, and I'm sitting there and one other guy that was making that connecting flight, and we just kind of look at each other.
Make eye contact, and I shrug, and he just like, "I'm on the clock. I don't give a shit."
So, we started talking about >> [laughter] >> and it stuck in my head because, of course, a few days later 9/11 happened, and the world got stupid, and then Ah. I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad I got this trip out of the way."
Now, just Oh my god. Wow. Okay, now I understand why it just stuck I always astonished by people I have written a one bad book, uh but then afterwards I write try to write stories and things like that, but I'm always the the quick person. I can never I never really thought how you authors really, you know, ponder on ideas a little bit, and then maybe that's why you guys write good books because you ponder it a lot more than I generally do.
Yeah, probably depends on who you ask.
It's like author authors that write a lot will say you need to outline stuff, and then you have a plan going into book. I should have done that.
>> [laughter] >> So, you're one of the take your characters to an I'm one of those this people. I I role play it, and then start writing it, and sometimes I lose interest because I already role played it.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah.
I think of the thing that was uh something Tolkien talked about when he was writing first starting to write Lord of the Rings, where he would say he would write he wrote it like in waves, and he would say he would write it up to a certain point, and then decide that's not right, and then go back to the beginning and start writing it again and get a little further. Ah. And then that's not right, and then start again and get a little further, and it's kind of like >> [laughter] >> So, uh thank you so much for joining us with me on this uh cosmic horror talk, uh Feral Historian. I really appreciate it. I highly recommend uh Feral Historian's channel if you want more literary analysis, and also, of course, so get insight into a lot of various of fictional storytellings, so you can write your own, also form an opinion on certain ways in different ways, and look at things that you never looked at in the same way.
So, like the video if you liked it, subscribe if you haven't already, and I will see you all in the next video.
That's all tentacle, folks. Perhaps there are some things man was never meant to tamper with.
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