Eldritch Abomination: Difference between revisions

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How to describe these grotesque mockeries of natural law? There are no words that can encompass such disgusting foulness, not in English or any other human tongue. They are The '''''Other.''''' The Inconceivable. [[Starfish Aliens|Alien]] [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|beyond comprehension]], their sole existence [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|is an affront to all reason]]. We could speak of [[Brown Note|painfully dissonant noises and nauseating colours]], [[Freud Was Right|ichor-dripping vermiform tentacles and abyssal yonic voids]], or complex [[Everybody Hates Mathematics|mathematical]] [[Alien Geometries|geometries]], but those are mere superficialities. Monstrous and sick though these stigmata are, they do not define the abominations; they are merely among some of the more common symptoms of their underlying wrongness.

'''Eldritch Abominations''' are not simply creatures that look horrible on a metaphorically cosmic scale. They are alien, madness-inducing [[Reality Warper|reality warpers]] who literally '''are''' horrible on a cosmic scale. Eldritch is not just anything that looks like an ugly mashup of different kinds of [[Body Horror]]. What- what actually defines the Eldritch Abominations (or as we [[Puny Earthlings|puny Homo sapiens]] can only define them) is their defiance of natural law, as humans understand it. They are the things that should not be, the ultimate aliens. It is this that makes them abominable, and it is this that horrifies and [[Go Mad Fromfrom the Revelation|reduces to gibbering madness]] all but the strongest of those who encounter them. Such laws as they do obey, such as [[When the Planets Align]] or [[Sealed Evil in a Can]], are their nature, not ours.

They are native to the genre known asof [[Cosmic Horror Story]], but they are not confined to it. [[Lovecraft Lite|Mild examples]] can be found throughout the [[Horror]] and [[Fantasy]] genres., while Greatergreater abominations can occur in almost any type of fiction, so long as enough [[Cosmic Horror Story]] tropes are used. Usually they derive, at least in inspiration, from [[Mythopoeia|Lovecraft's work]].

Physically, Eldritch Abominations range from [[Uncanny Valley|almost]] [[Humanoid Abomination|human]], [[Starfish Aliens|through big ugly monsters]], to the [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|unimaginably]] [[Mind Screw|bizarre]]. Generally, the weirder they look, the more powerful they are, but this isn't a universal rule. Here, the "ugly" in "big, ugly monster" doesn't just mean that it's horrible to look at -- it means that there's [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form|something about it, about the way it looks]], or the [[Alien Geometries|the spaces through which it moves]], that violates every law of reality]] as you know it. "Big" doesn't just mean that it could use the Empire State Building as a toothpick -- it means that the... thing doing just that is only the barest fraction of the monster's true form, the 3-dimensional tip of a multidimensional iceberg. Eldritch abominations are perhaps the biological equivalent of [[Absolute Comparative]]: they are uglier, they are bigger, and they are more powerful than anything else in existence. Some abominations are so eldritch that even lesser abominations find them abominable. Some look approximately human, but just [[Brown Note|reading their name]] condemns you to [[Mind Rape]]. If you see one of these in the flesh, it's too late to run.

This trope has some overlap with [[Starfish Aliens]]. However, Starfish Aliens aren't necessarily horrific or unnatural; they're alien only because they evolved in a different environment than humanity and can be helpful or neutral, whereas Eldritch Abominations have a deep ''wrongness'' to them, no matter where you find them. For example, while Starfish Aliens are usually willing to take on a [[A Form You Are Comfortable With]] to avoid breaking your mind if they can, most Eldritch Abominations won't even acknowledge/ or realize you have one to break (and the rest either can't or won't care) and are thus more often cast as antagonistic.

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