People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.
An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.
Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.
It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…
It’s an ant again.
Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.
This is madness.
Thank you for this good PSA because I’m still seeing sincere, published, professional writers doing “ahhhhh oh no this monster was SO UGLY i’m mentally ill now!”
forms of eldritch horror include but are not limited to
- nobody will ever believe you, you must live alone with this knowledge
- you will never feel safe again, and you realize you were never safe before
- everything that was familiar is now strange and abhorrent to the point anything that now seems normal should be held in utmost suspicion
- having this new knowledge has opened doors that will continually reveal new equally cursed knowledge without end
guillermo de la cruz is literally THE most character of all time. hes gay. hes latino. hes fat. hes badass. hes a serial killer. hes a mamas boy. hes insane. hes the most normal one here. hes by birth and lineage a vampire killer. hes spent 13 years trying to become a vampire. hes my best friend hes my pal, my homeboy, my rotten soldier, hes my sweet cheese my good time boy
