jumpingjacktrash:

kyraneko:

neurophilosophaster:

funereal-disease:

dagny-hashtaggart:

Basically what I’m saying is “thing that moves like a distorted gif, but in meatspace” works much better than “thing with tons of tentacles” as a visual representation of cosmic horror, IMHO.

Nowadays, sure, but human depictions of cosmic ineffability are always informed by time and place. In the early days of deep-sea exploration, “thing with tons of tentacles” was the very pinnacle of “holy shit what is that”; it’s just that the symbol has aged in a way that the substance has not.

CEPHALOPODS IN 1918: horrors from the unknowable depths of blackness only made only the more horrific by animate motions suggesting a flicker of intelligence within their shapeless, fleshy coils

CEPHALOPODS IN 2018: squashy frends 🐙😍 

The Uncanny Valley migrates … 

seriously, yeah. the reason everyone thinks octopuses are cute is because we get to see videos of them in their home environment. you remember that gif of the basket star squirming on a deck railing and everyone was like OH FUCK THE OCEAN because it looked super super wrong? and then folks posted a followup pointing out that underwater the basket starfish looks like a super curly art nouveau flower and we all love it.

it’s like that. before the internet, most people only ever saw things with tentacles when they were dead and on land. which is not flattering to the tentacles.

by 2118 we’ll all be used to glitchy things being used as art, because technology will be too good to actually glitch anymore, and horror will be represented by something we can’t even imagine today because the thing it’s a broken approximation of hasn’t been invented/discovered/explored yet.