What each Mike Flanagan horror series represents: The Haunting of Hill House (2018) The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) Midnight Mass (2021) The Midnight Club (2022) The Fall of The House of Usher (2023)
Hello! I've been struggling with how to depict and voice an eldritch horror entity. They are far removed from this universe, so I'm at a loss at how they would speak and act when interacting with a host/human. Can you help me and/or give me examples of what that might look like?
How to Give an Eldritch Horror Entity a Voice
-> feel free to edit and adjust pronouns as you see fit.
The entity may observe humans like a scientist would observe test subjects. It is not inherently evil, just so far removed that it doesn't comprehend pain or morality.
Example: "You break so easily. Such a soft mind, blistering with thoughts. Why do you weep?"
Example: "Fear. I recognize the shape of it now. Like heat in the bones."
The entity is aware of its power but it enjoys the chase. It is patient, and speaks low and slow to stretch out the dread.
Example: "I can hear your pulse like music. Louder now. Louder still."
The entity is innocent and sounds sweet and playful, but does not understand the reality of what it is doing.
Example: "You're leaking! Why do you leak like that? Should I put it back in?"
The entity speaks as if it has witnessed countless lives, deaths, and civilization. Everything the human feels is insignificant.
Example: "You are not the first to beg. The first was a king with gold in his mouth."
The entity is just beginning to understand language, humans, and itself.
Example: "Pain. You... do not like it."
Example: "Lonely. That is the word. I have never been lonely before you."
The entity can't (or won't) use grammar like a human. It might communicate in fractured bursts, in symbols, in numbers, etc.
Example: "Lightlightdarkfolding--fold--fold--fleshwrongYES."
Example: "WE--I--MANY come through the not-between. Hello. Hello. Nothello."
The entity doesn't speak in the traditional sense. It communicates via dreams, hallucinations, physical sensations, etc. Words might appear as taste, as pain, or involuntary thoughts in the character's mind.
Example: She smelled salt and rotting roses. Then the message came: "Let me in."
Example: He tasted metal and heard weeping in the back of his mind.
NYT article abt goncharov has comments like 'what is the purpose of this film's existence these kids are just lying' motherfucker how do you think our ancestors survived. how do you think folklore formed. culture. music. art. PURPOSE????? do you think everything must be commodified? sold? weighed to be valued? has the rot in your soul spread so far you cannot find value in anything not spoken in numbers??? it's FUN. THAT'S WHY. THE PURPOSE IS THE ACT, THE MESSAGE IS THE MEDIUM, THE SYMBOL IS THE STORY. it brings people joy for its mere existence and that IS the point. existence is its purpose alone
I crave the kind of hugs when you simply bury your face in the other person's chest and breathe them in, feeling like there is nothing else in the world.
“God's ubiquity evokes oceanic imagery for mystics of all traditions. As a drop of water dissolved into the sea, so we are waves in an ocean of God. And, like fishes unable to comprehend the ocean within which they live, we too must push our language and imagery to describe the divine All. The most common word Jewish mystics choose to describe God is ‘Nothing.’ However, as we shall see, the God they describe is much more than nothing…
[The word Ayin] connotes not the absence of being, but the absence of any boundaries — that is, no ‘thing,’ a nothing that encompasses all creation. Ayin is therefore the font of all being, the substrate of creation. The Kabbalists called God Ayn Sof, endless. Not only can’t you own it, you cannot alter it, change it, or affect it in any way whatsoever. You cannot point to it. You can't even accurately say as much about it as we've already said. It is as if we were waves and it were the ocean. You and I, this book in your hands, the trees, the people we love, even the love itself, all of creation-they are all the waves, yesh, made of that ocean of Ayin, manifestations of that great underlying nothingness and oneness of all being.”
— Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. The Way into Jewish Mystical Tradition, pages 17-18.