Eldritch Abomination/Literature: Difference between revisions

* Proto-example: Robert W. Chambers' book ''[[The King in Yellow]]'', which was an influence on Lovecraft himself, and he made references to it that [[Older Than They Think|are now better known than the original source]]. Filled with [[Mind Screw]] and [[Take Our Word for It]].

* Another proto-example: William Hope Hodgson's ''[[The Night Land]]'', as well as ''[[The House On the Borderland]]'', have quite a few of these, and his descriptions of the [[Eldritch Location|places]] and [[Time Abyss|times]] where such ''things'' would exist helped shape the [[Cosmic Horror Story]].

** And just in case the reader didn't notice the influence, the story is [[Shout Out|mentioned by name]] in that story. Elsewhere, the [[Shout Out|Shout Outs]] are more subtle.

* Algernon Blackwood's [http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/blackwood/stories/willows.htm "The Willows"], which was [http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/essays/supernat/supern10.htm spoken of highly by Lovecraft himself], features an encounter with something so alien that, even by the end, you'll have little idea what they were aside from the notion of complete otherness.

** In ''Ghost Story'', we see Harry's encounter with He Who Walks Behind. It introduces itself by stating its name, which is best described as a paragraph of emotions and sensations relating to contempt and pure alien hatred for mortal life.

{{quote| "That," a cultured British voice whispered in my ear, "is the closest your mind can come to comprehending my name."}}

* [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' series has its own [[Ultimate Evil]]: a galaxy-sized region of total nothingness, where all light and matter are absorbed. Moreover, this nothingness possesses sentience and is capable of movement. Naturally, our galaxy is [[The End of the World As We Know It|in its path]] and only [[The Chosen One]] has any chance of stopping it.

** The same series also gives us the Vom, which, while more on the world-devouring scale than galaxy, fits several of the requisite criteria: inscrutability (it's a huge, black...mass), exponential power growth, alien thought process (it lives only to devour all life on the worlds it comes across), strange origin (possibly extragalactic), immunity to conventional weapons, and [[Mind Control]]/[[Mind Rape]] abilities.

** The resident [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|super-civilization]] of the ''[[Nights Dawn]]'' universe (so powerful that {{spoiler|their empire consists of a ''collar of planets'' orbiting the same star}}) feel ''horrified'' and threatened at the prospect of our Universe intersecting the Dark Continuum. ''That's'' how bad it gets.

* [[Stephen King]] is, as we all know, particularly fond of creepy-ass creatures.

** [[Stephen King]] and [[Peter Straub]] got together to write ''[[The Talisman (Literature)|The Talisman]]'', a horror fantasy novel which is chock full of horrific creatures and mutants, the most disturbing amongst them is probably a mewling tentacle creature that [[Alien Blood|bleeds ichor]] filled with biting white worms.

** The burial ground in [[Pet Sematary]] could very well be one of these outright if it isn't possessed by one. Either way, it's pretty safe to say that it's probably more than just mere haunted ground.

** The short story "I Am The Doorway" is about a former astronaut who becomes the conduit for an [[Eldritch Abomination]], manifesting in the form of golden eyes on his hands. In an unusual spin on the trope, though, said Abomination ''isn't'' malevolent -- it's terrified and disgusted by our world, which is as alien to it as it is alien to us, lashing out violently at the horrors it's forced to witness.

** In ''[[From a Buick 8]]'', the titular car...isn't a car. And ''things'' come out of it...

** And of course "He Who Walks Behind The Rows" from ''[[Children of the Corn]]''.

** And Tak from ''[[Desperation (Literature)|Desperation]]'' and ''[[The Regulators (Literature)|The Regulators]]''; a sadistic, incorporeal monstrosity heavily implied to have no true form, it has no apparent motive other than causing chaos and killing everything it comes across. The effects it has on those it possesses are...[[Body Horror|disconcerting]], to say the least.

** ORT's a funny thing. Infamous in the fandom for being the Strongest Being by [[Word of God]], ORT is only here because it responded to the dying message of Gaia ''before Gaia died'' and decided to wait it out here. ORT changes the laws of the universe around it, which isn't all that impressive on its own since mages can learn spells with the same effect, except when mages do it, the effect only lasts for a few seconds because reality fights back. In ORT's case, ''reality is losing.'' It also technically holds a position as a Dead Apostle vampire, but only because [[You Kill It You Bought It|it instantly obliterated the previous holder]] who wanted to study it (and supposedly has "vampire-like qualities"). Yeah...that's probably a lifetime membership right there.

*** The [[Nasuverse]] is almost a [[Cosmic Horror Story]] if you delve into the [[Backstory]]. Gaia herself is almost exactly the same type of being as ORT. The main difference is that the reality she creates happens to be one where humans evolved and can survive in. She has also not yet created her Ultimate Being, Type Earth, and it is not clear that she can, especially considering that her Blue Marble is the only planet to bear life which tries to exerts its own reality against her own. (It would be interesting to see what Type Earth's reality would be like; probably similar to what Arcueid can do on Earth.)

**** Some of what he ''spawned'', though, are quite terrifying. Dead Apostle Ancestors don't have to be vampiric to be counted, though, like ORT. One of them is a giant padlock, one of them is a kid with a whale, a jellyfish, a golem, and a mouse instead of limbs (well, he usually keeps them looking like actual limbs, mind you), one of them is [[Genius Loci|a forest]], and another is a living curse that looks like Count Dracula. Not all of them are vampires, ''per se''.

**** While Nrvnqsr (Nero) Chaos isn't quite there yet, becoming one is quite obviously his main goal.

*** The Terror is an entity capable of not just destroying planets, but it actually [[Planet Eater|eats suns]] to refuel itself; its mere presence is enough to drive entire planets into insanity.

*** One human esper was so [[Complete Monster|vile and twisted]] that when she was broken into four individual beings, the Uber-Espers, each manifested as an eldritch abomination.

* In [[Ursula K Le Guin]]'s ''[[Earthsea]]'' series, the "Nameless" are entities that the wizards refer to as the dark powers of the Earth, which are the focus of the oldest religion of the Kargad lands in ''The Tombs of Atuan''. And in a later book, the main antagonist turns out to be some crazy wizard who tried to achieve immortality -- by creating a hole which nearly sucked the entire world inside it.

* The ''[[Final Destination]]'' spin-off book ''Dead Reckoning'' has the main character Jess enter what appears to be Death's realm in a dream. There she encounters what is presumably Death's true form - the vaguely humanoid Death is gigantic, composed of constantly shifting, crumbling, and regenerating bones from seemingly "every creature that ever lived", and is covered in what could be loosely described as robes made from what appears to be still living flesh that twitches and squirms. From afar, it just looks like a dark mass, and it's constantly emitting a noise that sounds like static and "thousands of birds all taking flight at the same time", while its eyes are completely blank, dark voids. Also, anything in proximity of it ages rapidly.

** The Morgawr. A warlock of disputable origin, humanoid but with scaly skin and shapeshifting properties, apparent immortality, and other powerful magics, including {{spoiler|the power to reach inside human skulls and tear out the part of the brain that the soul was anchored to and then eat it, this being how he survived.}}

* The parasites that infect the protagonists in ''[[Scorpion Shards]]''.

* The Eidolons from ''[[Bitter Seeds (Literature)|Bitter Seeds]]'' are essentially sentient (and malevolent) chunks of the universal substrate.

* Mother from [[Argo]] is essentially a robotic version of this.

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Eldritch Abomination]]