@LivingFire_BurningFlame
Saw something like "Fear is knowing you're in a monster-filled forest. Terror is seeing one run at you. Horror is realizing your feet are glued to the ground" and I think that applies pretty well here. Jumpscares and stuff would fit under the spike of terror, where true horror is more a constant realization that there's nothing you can do about the terror.
@gbot94hitachi
Ironically, the concept of cosmic "bliss" instills a lot of fear to me by framing cosmic experiences as pleasure and gift in exchange of your puny life is very haunting. Imagine how many would fall for it if one should appear in current times where most feel worthless. Millions would just be gone in an instant like a snap.
@leamubiu
To me the lack of fear from cosmic horror stuff is akin to walking alongside a highway. You can coexist quite (or almost) serenely with dangerously fast vehicles a couple of meters away from you, and only truly freak out when one really steers into you. No use losing one’s mind before anything’s happened. You can get queasy imagining the worst stuff, but you still got to move on.
@Kayachlata
As soon as you said "blissful" it clicked! I remember listening to a lot of cosmic horror a while back, and I strangely found the thought of an inevitable cosmic truth of futility comforting. It made me strangely stop worrying about the little things, zooming out to feel bliss
@ceviche4life951
"Behold, cosmic horrors beyond your comprehension!" "..." "What, are you not afraid?" "I don't get it"
@animagkrasver9872
That's very interesting, because i literally had a nightmare, where some kind of otherworldy buzzing noise and echoed whisper tried to enter my mind and drive me crazy and i was so terrified that i decided that i should give in to it, because i thought "if i give in and become insane it won't terrify and hurt anymore" so i did it and it stopped. But then i woke up and realized it was my alarm clock lol.
@sheepgrass500
I feel like another way to describe cosmic bliss could be awe, when I go to the museum and see a skeleton of a dinosaur I feel in awe that it ever existed at all, if it was alive it could easily kill me and I would feel very scared but the fear goes away when you think about how beutiful of an animal it must have been when it was alive
@trashpanda684
Ironically, I find the "hopeful" cosmic horror to be infinitely more terrifying than the one that's actually supposed to scare me. It's often said that the way the characters react to a situation changes how the audience perceives it. Generally, this is meant to imply that if the characters are scared, sad, happy, etc., then the audience will be, too. In this case, at least for me, I think it works the opposite. In a lot of cosmic horror, where the people go "mad," I think they're too self-aware of their madness for it to really be scary. Like... they're scared, they're trembling, that is the reaction they're supposed to have, which makes them sane, and that sanity makes it easy to stomach as an audience member. But if they react with bliss, hope, etc. to their own annihilation, which is contrary not just to their nature but their own established personalities beforehand, then doesn't that actually make them insane? I personally find that genuinely horrifying (never mind the parallels this has to severe depression, though that adds another layer, too). Like, what kind of horrific entity could essentially rewrite their way of thinking such that they abandon themselves in favor of death over some fleeting, meaningless feeling, event, or thing, especially because it makes them happy somehow? Not to mention just how cultish that is, which is perfectly in line with what you'd expect out of cosmic horror. I think this video sought out to establish a hopeful alternate to cosmic horror but instead showed me what actual effective cosmic horror looks like.
@Blue14113
I guess the best example of "Cosmic Bliss" I can think of off the top of my head is "Mother Void, the Maker" from the Eldertubbies series. She is an unfathomable cosmic being and yet she isn't malicious or even indifferent. She views all things as her children and seeks to protect them, broadcasting a "signal" to comfort those in sorrow. When she arrived, she pulled all dispair and evil into her event horizon, freeing the world from negativity. A nice addon someone said about her is when a man asked her to teach him her word, she said:" My word is... that you are loved." Truly sublime.
@L0g0Z0g0
I might be a bit insane but I've always felt bliss from those, especially the liminal spaces, like all this neverending halls, empty abandoned, or just something gigantic, but so beautiful I understand that it is a threat, but I have to appreciate the beauty of it
@kwahoo
The cosmic doesn't make me feel small, it makes the universe feel grand and wondrous. It's something to explore and discover, not to cower and hide from.
@endgame7874
I felt that "Sublime" sensation when I was going home from college one day just when a typhoon dropped. The torrential rain, the whipping wind, and the sudden pause of human activity around as everyone fled and cars piled. I felt miniscule, but also excited, that I'm enduring a powerful storm just to reach home. It's was almost meditative because all I can hear was the rain on my umbrella and all I can feel was wet and cold. Every step forward felt like I'm defying it, and it was a formative experience.
@aaroncunningham8307
If anything, the Singing Flame sounds more terrifying than the Radiant Void ever was. We are not designed to interact with the void, but neither is it with us. The danger it poses is one of circumstance. The Flame draws us in, robs us of the choice of existence with the vague promise of something grander, yet in the end only brings inescapable destruction. It's description brings to mind the anglerfish, a bright beacon of promised salvation that is nothing but a lure, the tool of something hiding in the dark, willing to strip us of everything we are just to feed itself.
@CrazyFlyingMonk
Cosmic bliss is a pretty good descriptor of how i feel in adoration. Combined with disbelief and joy that such an entity actually cares about humanity let alone an individual
@Ivytheherbert
I think it's worth noting that for HP Lovecraft and contemporary readers, they were living through a time when science and our understanding of the universe were being turned upside-down,. For them, quantum physics and relativity were new and exciting discoveries, and humanity's perceived position in the cosmos had shifted. There's a reason that non-Euclidean geometry appears as a recurring theme in Lovecraft. Modern readers have grown up with relativity and quantum mechanics as part of established science though, so their mysteries don't create the same sense of dread.
@alejotassile6441
there's a certain calmness in acepting chaos as is, and not trying to comprehend it, just experience it That's why I never found cosmic horror scary, but calming, the idea of having some primordial form of chaos is... relaxing? I don't know why, it just is
@Cosmic-Sorceress-17
When I was explaining my taste for very surreal and sublime styles in fiction and even in the way I want to present myself, a friend of mine coined the term "Eldritch Majesty" and it stuck with me since. This idea of being so grand, so immense, so powerful, that witnessing your beauty is so overwhelmingly shocking you can't turn away; while so beautiful you don't even want to, has really stuck with me. I don't fear the scale of the cosmos and my smallness compared to it. I see only wonder at the vastness and strangeness of it all: the potential that it holds is literally limitless. I want, in some way, to channel some of that beauty: to be something alien, something sublime. There is no such thing as oblivion, only change: no direction to go in life but forward. Even weighed down by burnout, I still dream of it. That my discovery of self will lead me to a form of transcendence. Way to influence a world I've felt powerless towards for too long. This really did inspire me and I've finally pushed past my anxiety to mention this.
@Tyrany42
I love cosmic horror, but whenever my thoughts drift to how much I don’t matter in the vast expanse of the universe, it’s immediately followed by “why does it matter that I don’t matter? If I can never possibly be as great as the universe, why worry about it? All that matters to me is me and the people around me”
@owenwhite366
growing up in an abusive household kind of ruined horror for me, I usually fear the things that are known, because the unknown was always an escape for me.
@TheTaleFoundry