Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Working Title: Lovecraftian Monstrosity: From YKTTW

Robert: We need to go through the Cosmic Horror examples, and copy some of them to this page, but its getting a bit late to do that right now. As discussed, there are also a few hundred pages that will want intelligently amending to reflect the split.

"Y'golonac looks approximately human, but just reading its name condemns you to [Mind Rape]." —

Thanks a lot! I'm really not looking for word to that [Mind Rape] DysgraphicProgrammer

I compulsively highlight spoiler tags for things I believe I won't be viewing in the future. So I got to read the spoilertagged name and THEN read what happens. Put the consequences BEFORE the name! Dammit. Also, Dysgraphic Programmer, you condemned the REST of us to that. You didn't spoilertag the quote for the discussion page! - Crasical

Earnest: I replaced the links in the following articles, some will still appear in Cosmic Horror's "Related To", but that's because the reference it as a genre.

fleb: Example creep has started. There's no possible way Majora is one of these things. Or the Salesman. A very powerful demonic force, sealed inside a mask, does not an Abomination make. Cutting.

* Majora itself from The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Implied to be an ancient Artifact of Doom by the creepy Happy Mask Salesman. A serial puppet master, controlling both The Moon and Skull Kid. Also an Omnicidal Maniac.

** Given his eerie smile (except when he's angry), ability to seemingly teleport into different poses instead of moving into them, and all around creepy demeanor, the Happy Mask Salesman himself may qualify as an Eldritch Abomination, even though he appears normal (he is a mask salesman, after all)...

** The manga backs up this theory, explaining that Majora's Mask is all that remains of the Eldritch Abomination Majora - who was a giant draconic beast at the beginning of time that killed itself after hearing a song played by the Fierce Diety.

fleb [later...] Okay, if there is one trope that The Legend Of Zelda series will never touch, it's this one. The Twili are freaky Black Magic users, but they are not this.

Twilight Princess gave us the seriously disturbing shadow race, the Twilii, who were punished by the gods for meddling with Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. And then there's their princess Midna, especially when she is using the freakish power of the results of their meddling, the Fused Shadows, transforming her into a gigantic arachnid creature...

Artanis: I don't think L-sama counts. She is pretty much included within magical law as the mother of Shabranigdo and Ceipheid (as well as the gods and demons of the other three worlds,) and while not completely understood by humans, is feared due to the inordinate amount of power she wields. Also, note that only Phibrizzo had an averse reaction to her presence, that Xellos merely submitted to her authority, and the human characters were totally fine with shouting at her. Cutting the following from the Anime section:

* From The Slayers, L-sama: "The mother of all darkness. The true lord of the Mazoku race. One who longs to regain their original form - a darkness beyond blackest pitch, deeper than the deepest night. One who shines like gold upon the Sea Of Chaos. A void within everything. The source of all Chaos. One who has dominion over all terrible dreams. In short, the Lord of Nightmares."

What does "eldritch" mean? I read the word for the first time in a Spongebob parody on Youtube ("Blasphemous, porous and eldritch is he") and I thought it was just a nonsensical word made for that parody. I googled for it and I discovered a heavy metal band named "Eldritch". Then I found the word again on TV Tropes. I understand it has something to do with something so ugly and/or incomprehensible it drives people crazy, but what does it mean, exactly?

Robert: It's an old Scottish word meaning 'weird, uncanny', popularised by HP Lovecraft. His many imitators have given it strong connotations of Cosmic Horror, so it now means mind-bogglingly weird, alien to all human experience.

Austin: I noticed that many of these examples are directly taken, word for word, from Cosmic Horrors. Is there a reason as to why they should be separate?

Robert: That was discussed, at length, in the YTTTW linked above. Summarising, Cosmic Horror is a genre, this is a creature type - two completely different categories. Some of the examples are direct copies from Cosmic Horror, but that's just because they were originally lumped. However, it does make sense for some of the cosmic horror examples to be descriptions of eldritch abominations, because that's one of the ways of telling you're in the comsic horror genre.

Austin: That makes sense.

Ununnilium:

Show me a horror described as "cyclopean", and I'll show you an author who wasn't paying attention, or who knows of Lovecraft only second-hand. Lovecraft always used "Cyclopean" to describe the architecture, not the inhabitants.

Conversation In The Main Page, though a good point.

The Jenoine in Dragaera are a borderline case: they think in a totally cockeyed way compared to human(-like entities) and tend, as such, to operate very differently, in ways that bend even the millennia-old-vampire-sorceress Sethra Lavode's conception of reality. Nevertheless, Vlad Taltos is not impressed.

This seems more like a Starfish Alien.

Ever notice how Full Metal Alchemist's protagonists Ed and Al's last name ELRIC sounds almost identical to Eldritch? And how in the moment that catalyzed the series, (AKA, trying to bring their mother back to life) they created a twisted blob of soulless THING that can be only (and is only) described as "not human?" This troper didn't either until she read this page and that name choice suddenly made perfect sense.
- IIRC they are named after Elric of Melnibone, which is not that far off.

Yeeeeeah... this doesn't really count. The messed-up human-flesh lump is just that; it's gross, but it's not cosmic.

One wonders how the campaign world has survived this long.

Said Eldritch Abominations were playing marbles to decide who gets first crack. Makes as much sense as any other explanation.
Well, obviously you aren't supposed to put all of them into the same game. Elder Evils are supposed to be the end of a campaign, the final boss at the end of the game. Once you defeat one (or don't), the campaign is over and that game-world doesn't see another one.
No, no no! They're all (eventually) taken out by epic-level adventurers!
You fight his Eye.
Common misconception; the fight starts out against his "Eye," which basically pops, exposing C'Thun himself. Word of God says C'thun is dead, thanks to the exploits of whoever actually managed avoid the eye beams and kill him.
"Common Misconception"? A common misconception would be to think that the second part of the fight is C'Thun at full power. Dude, you just fought his EYE. Don't you think his true form would be a little larger and, more importantly,stronger than his single eye?
You fight from inside his stomach at some points. I thought the implication was that his body was so horribly mangled that this is about all that's intact enough to really be worth killing. Plus, you do see his body. It's not pretty.

More Conversation In The Main Page.

4th Edition finally took this to the logical conclusion by making the warlock one of the main player classes, offering them a choice of spells depending on whether or not the warlock made a deal with a demon, a faerie lord, or something from the Far Realm. That's right; you can be best buddies with Yog-Sothoth, and get shiny magical powers from him. Needless to say, these powers rely a lot on the shrieking cold of the void and psychic damage.
- Actually the Star pact consists of studying stars and making deals with them (because certain stars are apparently sentient). They are still Eldritch Abominations in their own rights who grant you a bunch of radiant damage and psychic based powers though. Oh yeah, and one of the game's epic destiny (Radiant One) allows the player to gradually morph into such a star.

...I'm confused.

Paireon: Everything remotely related to the Far Realm fits in Eldritch Abomination, especially since 4th ed. D&D decided to tie pretty much anything Cosmic Horror-ish with it. And a sentient star would definitely count IMO -it's cosmically huge, powerful beyond most humans' comprehension, and would definitely have very different thought processes from those of puny mortals, all by default. The only thing I see in the "against" column is that your sanity might not be that much damaged by seeing one. Oh, and one of the more recent Cthulhu Mythos deities, Ghroth the harbinger (by Ramsey Campbell), IS a star.

City Of Heroes: While differing quite a bit from the Cosmic Horror mould, there's the Shadow Shard, a sentient Alternate Dimension that eats other dimensions, who was only stopped by giving him split personality disorder. On the other hand, there's the Hamidon, a gigantic amoeba that was once a ecoterrorist Mad Scientist who used science and black magic to turn himself into one.

...this is... confused. The Shadow Shard itself isn't the Eldritch Abomination; that's Rularuu, who was defeated by trapping him in the Shadow Shard. As well, Hami isn't really a Cosmic Horror. He's not maddening or reality-warping, he's just huge and creepy.

Although you won't lose your sanity, seeing what Sam Starfall from Freefall really looks like will cause most people to lose their lunch.
Raven of Teen Titans once transformed into one of those to scare a villain into cooperating. Since she did it offscreen we only get to see the shadow, but that's ugly enough.

These seem to be a different trope. Perhaps a form of Brown Note?

DoKnowButchie: I need an opinion: would the moster from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode "The Darkness Within"

count? It's obviously based on Lovecraftian tropes, but the creature seems too limited to truly count as one.

Characteristics:

Came to Earth in a meteor, falling on Manhattan Island.
Can only be harmed with a weapon carved from a fragment of the meteor he came in.
Traps people in pods where people live out their worst nightmares until they die. The beast, meanwhile, sucks out their life energy or whatever.
Can reanimate the dead.
Makes a deal with a human—C.F. Volpehart: guess what that's an anagram for—granting him immortality (of sorts) and riches in exchange for an unnamed term, which seems vital for its survival/success. When the creature becomes severely hurt by the spear, Volpehart dies, and almost immediately the creature tries to obtain a new acolyte.
Limited mind manipulation and teleportation powers.
Draws those desiring riches to it, which is the reason why Wall Street exists.
He looks the part.

While a creature that could create Wall Street by its mere prescence would almost certainly be evil, his victim rate by the time the story takes place couldn't be more than hundred people per year, which is drastically low for Eldritch Abomination standards. The fact that Leonardo could escape the nightmare pods without outside assistance doesn't help, either.

So what say you, people of the TV Tropes jury?

Madrugada Sounds like one to me. Go ahead and add him

Madrugada: 3/1/09: The name Cosmic Horror has now been redirected to Eldritch Abomination, and the trope that was Cosmic Horror is now Cosmic Horror Story. I've started cleaning up links, verifying that they go to the correct page. So far I've done all of the tropes beginning with "Y"; all the "W"s; all of the punctuated titles; and the regular titles starting from the top as far as Alternate History.

Madrugada 3/09/09: I've gotten as far as Animorphs (characters).

OtherJoey: Does Palmer Eldritch count? The one with [[{Philip K. Dick}} the Three Stigmata}}. I'm pretty sure that Our Friends From Frolix 8 do as well.

Narvi: Where is that picture from?

Gaunt88: Any objections to me moving the large quote from the Marathon example to the quotes page?

Storm: Can anyone tell me where the picture's from?

Mimir: That's Shub-Niggurath, The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young.

Kuruni: I had remove Castlevania Legion. Aside from being Nightmare Fuel, the Legion in Castlevania lacking any character so we go for its origin in The Bible. Being composed of large group of demons is almost made it Eldritch Abomination, but since it beg mercy from Jesus...it was automatically disqualified.

Kuruni: Wow, where is that angel image come from?

Spacegrass: That new image is pretty awesome, but I like how it says "angels weren’t always described as humans with wings and halos" under a picture of a human with six wings and a very large halo.

Sobekcroc: If the whole universe is an Eldritch Abomination, shouldn't the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhiker's Guide be one too? It's not a monster in the traditional sense, but is pretty much designed like one otherwise.

Would someone bring up the Uncanny Valley chart and extend it to the left. I'd like to see what happens if nonhuman characteristics are added.

Archived Discussion Main / EldritchAbomination