this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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Cosmic Horror

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A community to discuss Cosmic Horror in it's many forms; books, films, comics, art, TV, music, RPGs, video games etc.

"cosmic horror... is a subgenre of horror fiction and weird fiction that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock... themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries... the sense that ordinary life is a thin shell over a reality that is so alien and abstract in comparison that merely contemplating it would damage the sanity of the ordinary person, insignificance and powerlessness at the cosmic scale..."

For more Lovecraft & Mythos-inspired Cosmic Horror:-!lovecraft_mythos@lemmy.world

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[–] SARGE@startrek.website 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech hits different depending on what you've been consuming lately.

It can be quite inspiring, or quite depressing

Every single thing experienced by all 100ish billion humans who ever lived, all their highs and lows, all the people they knew, all their hopes and dreams..... Could all be destroyed at the speed of light, and we would never have any way to see it coming, or stop it even if we did.

An asteroid could make the planet inhospitable to all but tiny organisms. A Gamma ray burst could pop off dozens of lightyears away. Coronal mass ejection burns the atmosphere. Rogue planet/black hole. False Vacuum decay could destroy baryonic matter.

Your entire life will be experienced, you live and die, and the universe at large will never even notice.

Some people find that depressing. I find it a little comforting. If nothing we do matters, we have to figure out how to make things matter to us. I uh.... I'm still working on that last bit... But it's a nice thought to me.

[–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

We are the rarest form of matter: thinking matter. You have value.

(from a collectible point of view)

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

...but his death had meaning, because he royally things up for the authority that caused the circumstances in which he died. In this, I hope we can be more like him than different, too.


This actually happened at my parents' house when I was a kid. Caused a huge power surge in the house. It destroyed a lot of electronics. Thousands of dollars in damage.

[–] GorGor@startrek.website 11 points 3 days ago

Happened at my folks house in the breaker from the mains. Mr. Rodent's carbon corpse acted as an electrode and blew a hole through the box half an inch in diameter. This happened Christmas Eve. With replacing the panel and making an appointment with the power company to inspect and reconnect, we didn't get power back for over 3 weeks. Since they live on a well, and the booster pump needs electricity to run, we had to draw water from the storage tank a bucket at a time.

[–] Thcdenton@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago
[–] nick@midwest.social 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

This always bums me out when I see it.

I’m soft I guess.

[–] yuri@pawb.social 2 points 2 days ago

i see myself in the mouse, and it gives me a kind of cosmic wonder. there’s a certain comfort to be found in realizing that we’re all just scurrying around and scratching at the walls of a world we’ll never fully understand, being struck down by forces we’ll never fully control.

my brain trends towards “you’re gonna ruin it!” type anxieties. it really calms me down to remember that when you zoom out far enough, there’s nothing there to ruin.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Though unwittingly, they attempted to disrupt the grand order, and for that they paid dearly!

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] ech@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago

Mousopodes.

Somehow I find this quite calming

[–] Carvex@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Pow right in the ventricle