Needs Help: Eldritch Abomination

The problem with excluding examples that rely on Informed Ability is that the whole trope is itself an Informed Attribute. No being could ever fit this trope's description perfectly, as human writers logically should not be able to conceive of such a being in the first place.

I think we ought to include any example that's clearly intended by the writers to be this trope, as even if we think we're able to comprehend it perfectly our brains may just be simplifying it for our own sanity.

Informed Attribute: "A violation of Show, Don't Tell when fleshing out a fictional tangible."

So, no it is not. I just addressed that. There is an actual difference between "it was unnatural and clearly not of this world" and "things moved and changed and fluttered, and ears tingled to impulses which were not wholly sounds".

And Eldritch Abomination is supposed to be which one, now?

Think it should be the first one.

-_-

The second one is a quote from The Colour Out Of Space.

Are we seriously having an argument about this, of all things? My point is that the first one just says 'it's impossible' while the second one describes it doing something impossible. Compare "Inside was absolutely nothing. Nothing after nothing came bursting out." or "It glared at me with things that were not eyes." or "In his home in R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming."

It's splitting hairs, though, and comes dangerously close to making the trope itself a subtle Take That! by insinuating that any story which doesn't use purple enough prose or show rather than tell can't qualify.

We need a definition that relies on what the thing is, not what writing style it uses.

The problem is that Eldritch Abomination tends to be used as Our Monsters Are Weird/Starfish Aliens + Horrifying(ly fucked up), and they're only occasionally indescribable/unable to be comprehended by our puny human minds.

I think it would be better if we just changed the definition to basically make it Eldritch Icky Thing, while making the current definition of being all incomprehensible and stuff an exaggerated Internal Subtrope. It would save us a lot of time and validate the majority/all of the wicks/examples.

edited 30th Mar '12 5:05:44 PM by Ekuran

I think the current trope should stay what it is, and the Theme Park Version of it should be a different trope.

That wouldn't stop the Trope Decay, as tropers have it ingrained in their heads that it actually is the Theme Park Version.

Altering the description is probably the best thing we can do.

That...is also a good point.

Logic: It works.

If we just alter the description so that Eldritch Abomination is the 'theme park version' we run into the problem of what to call the non-theme-park-version. Leaving them both under the same title is going to make the example pages harder to keep under control.

Or maybe it's just an Evolving Trope. *shrug*

Or we could just come up with a name for what this trope used to be.

The non-theme-park version will still be the same trope, it's just the strangeness/horrifyingness/alieness would be exaggerated to the point of being incomprhensible.

Hell, it's already been stated that "It's really freaking hard to exaggerate an Eldritch Abomination, since it could be interpreted as already being an exaggeration of various alien and monster tropes."

We'd just change the description so it would actually be the alien/monster trope that's being exaggerated.

We should probably have a crowner about this.

edited 30th Mar '12 6:08:03 PM by Ekuran

EDIT: Wrong thread

edited 30th Mar '12 6:26:43 PM by KingZeal

I made a crowner.

Can one of you mods attach it to this thread?

Crowner ia f'thagn.

Ph'nglui you.

edited 30th Mar '12 6:57:38 PM by Ekuran

I like Ekuran's idea. I think it's too late to stop the Trope Decay. The Theme Park Version of this trope has become too widely ingrained in people's minds. It's gotten to the point where Cthulhu himself seems to have decayed into the Theme Park Version of this trope.

Well, Fan Dumb might interpret Cthulhu like that, but it'll always be the original definition of Eldritch Abomination.

Just noting that we do already have Our Monsters Are Weird for weird icky things.

edited 31st Mar '12 11:00:46 PM by troacctid

I don't see how adding a new trope is going to help matters any. Pretty much every individual aspect of Eldritch Abomination already has its own trope. What exactly would the trope description be for Eldritch Icky Thing, and what would make it any different from all the tropes we already have?

That trope is too general, Eldritch Icky Thing is specific for Cosmic Horros Lite.

How about this: make both Eldritch Icky Thing trope and true Eldritch Abomination trope. Eldritch Abomination would be supertrope for both. That way thing could be more easy for tropers confused by this drastic change. And all wiki wicks can be still technically correct.

I would just like to note that Eldritch Icky Thing would be Eldritch Abomination in Downplayed Trope form.

edited 1st Apr '12 12:47:09 PM by MarqFJA