#philosophical horror

[the-loreteller]

And Then It Fell.

The sky rippled and shattered and the tendrils pulled on the cloth and strings, and that false thing fell out. Navy cloth swirling as it plummeted from sky to ocean. Laughing.

[pookapine]

I Was The First

Yuri Gagarin was the first man to enter space. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone ignorant of this fact. The knowledge of his feat seems almost universal, the Soviet cosmonaut’s name inseparable from history.

Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the Moon. Perhaps an even greater feat, this milestone is probably what cemented the USA as the winner of the Space Race. Like Gagarin, the Statesian astronaut is destined to be remembered forever in the collective human consciousness.

And though he raced to the patent office on the exact same day, it is not Elisha Gray who is credited with inventing the telephone. That would be Alexander Graham Bell, whose patent was approved first.

People always remember the first of everything. The first man in space, the first man on the Moon, the first who invented the telephone, such and such. All firsts cease to be men the day they fulfill their legend. They become myth. No matter what, their status can never be taken away. Never repeated. Nobody cares about the second guy who achieved something. Nobody cares about the second inventor of the telephone.

I begin putting on my undergarments. First the sweatpants and sweatshirt, then a specially made bodysuit with built-in ventilation and cooling. Already got my diaper on, though I don’t have bowel problems. Always better to have one than not. Just in case.

The suit I slip into is specifically made for environments that don’t allow traditional cooling, like space. To minimize sweat, water-filled tubes line the inside of the costume to cool the wearer’s body. Additionally, little vents are built in to exhaust moisture that may appear as a result of exhalation.

I wonder how much harder this might have been all those years ago. What were those men feeling when they put these on for the first time? How about when they put them on before their fateful accomplishments?

Was there anxiety? Excitement? Fear? Wonder? There must have been all that and more, but tied to something never before experienced by anyone. Something that can never be accurately imagined, only really felt. Something that happens for the first time ever. No person prior found themselves in the same position as you: the first. No person after will ever be able to say they were the first. It’s all you and that very moment.

Do you know who the second man that went to space was? Alan Shepard. Okay, maybe you did know that one. But what of the third? The fourth? The fifth? At some point a thing ceases to be so amazing and becomes another occurrence. At some point, you stop keeping track of the numbers. But you still remember the first. Who remembers the 825th?

What about the second man who stepped on the Moon? Buzz Aldrin, right. Back when I was a kid, I was a total geek about space. Whenever the Moon landing came up, I’d always give Aldrin his due credit. Instead of “Neil Armstrong was the first man to step on the Moon”, I’d make sure to say “Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first to land on the Moon”. That way, both men would get recognition. 

I don’t say that anymore. Life is not a participation trophy. They may have indeed landed at the same time, but there is only one who was the first to step out. That man’s name is more than immortal. It is etched into the very fabric of human achievement. The second guy to step on the Moon’s surface is just about as important as the 825th guy to go to space.

After putting a cap around my head, I slide on the bottom half of the bulky white spacesuit. I then float through the air effortlessly, slipping into the top of the gear. I attach everything together, gloves too. The huge suit isn’t as heavy as you might imagine. There is no gravity, after all. The helmet is the final component. I slot the piece over my head, the barrier between me and my surroundings becoming palpable. I find myself contained in what is essentially a glove for the whole body. 

It’s nothing I haven’t done before.

I’ve achieved more than the average man can ever dream of. Something that was inconceivable for the majority of history. Not just human history. All of history. Only a century ago this would all have been beyond the realm of imagination. You already had people theorizing what was out there, but there’s a big difference between the real deal and what people conjure up.

Even this great triumph is now a commodity. 825. What a fucking joke.

As I grew up, I figured I’d just kick the can down the road until I got to my own first. Like the pieces would fall into place on their own. I breezed through university. Hardened myself through the rigorous training. Now I’m here, and I’ve never felt emptier. 

I’ve never wanted to live. That doesn’t mean I wanna die. I don’t want either. I don’t really care to be honest. Don’t wanna live, don’t wanna die. I have nothing to live for and no reason to die. It’s quite odd, and I never realized that until I went up here for the fifth time. I just don’t want it all to have been for nothing. To have done all this just to be a footnote in a history book. Just to have a Wikipedia page with a hundred or so paragraphs (I’ve counted but it tends to shift). I’m not some ant to be rolled over by the march of history. Once humanity becomes fully spacefaring, what difference will there be between the 825th and the one billionth?

The airlock closes behind me and the air flushes out. The doors open into deep outer space. Endless black void for eternity, an incomprehensible space filled with an incomprehensible amount of celestial bodies scattered around. Not my first spacewalk.

The first men to die in space were the three Soviet cosmonauts of Soyuz 11. Georgy Dobrovolsky. Viktor Patsayev. Vladislav Volkov. They fully boarded the first ever space station, Salyut 1, and spent a total of twenty two days in the craft. When they were making their journey back to Earth, a valve ended up damaged due to no fault of their own. The men died of asphyxiation in less than one minute. Their bodies were recovered upon landing.

The crew perished 68 kilometers above the Kármán line, the boundary between space and Earth. Thus, they were the first to die in space. If only the valve had failed 68 kilometers lower than it did. If only it had failed below the Kármán line. If that had been the case, the first death in space might still have been up for grabs.

It’s not the end of the world. I’m nothing if not adaptable. I crawl my way over to the panel we’ve been instructed to repair. The tether hangs onto me despite me cutting it earlier. If I really floated away, I assume it would just gently slip away with me. Right now it just hasn’t experienced enough movement.

Don’t worry, they’ll remember. Everyone who ever set foot in space thought of Gagarin. Everyone who ever set foot on the Moon thought of Armstrong. That’s the way it’ll be for all of eternity. Men larger than life. Synonymous with the future of our species. Men who it will be impossible to forget.

Using controlled bursts of nitrogen I launch myself away from the panel I pretended to fix. Launch myself at the other astronaut whose tether I also sabotaged. Whose thrusters I damaged before we went outside. Rookie mistake for him not to check his equipment more thoroughly.

For centuries to come they will talk of me. For millennia. I will be in the back of every astronaut’s mind. During every spacewalk and every psychological evaluation. My name forever known. My achievement mine and only mine. I will be here. Inseparable from humanity. No matter how far they go, they will all be aware. 

There won’t be a soul who won’t remember the first murder-suicide in space.

[dystopediapod]

Trapped in Hell: The Nightmare of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

Last month, we looked at the 1967 short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison. For a novel only 13 pages long, it explores many different themes and evokes a grim reality to a society over reliant on technology.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE

[weirdletter]

Weird Mysticism: Philosophical Horror and the Mystical Text (Critical Conversations in Horror Studies), by Brad Baumgartner, Lehigh University Press, 2020. Cover image by Giovanni Muzio (Kesson), info: rowman.com.

Weird Mysticism identifies and evaluates a new category of theoretical inquiry by showing the influence of speculative writing on three intersecting critical categories: horror fiction, apophatic mysticism, and philosophical pessimism. Exploring the work of Thomas Ligotti, Georges Bataille, and E.M. Cioran, Baumgartner argues that these “weird mystics” employ an innovative mode of negative writing that seeks to merge new conceptions of reality. While exploring perennial questions about “the absolute,” the Outside, and other philosophical concepts, these authors push the limits of representation, experimenting with literary form, genre-bending, and aphoristic discourse. As their works reveal, the category of weird mysticism both conjoins and obscures the link between traditional mysticism and philosophical horror fiction, with weirdness itself being the central magnet that draws the seemingly disparate realms of horror fiction, philosophy, and mysticism together. Highlighting the theoretical stakes of the horror genre, Baumgartner’s study reveals how the mystical potentially recuperates the limits of philosophical thinking, enabling reflection on—and possibly challenging—the limits of human understanding.

Contents: Introduction: The Path to Nowhere 1. Piercing the Cosmological Horizon 2. Thomas Ligotti: The Poetics of Darkness 3. Georges Bataille: Opening Up the Infinite 4. E.M. Cioran: The Horror of Being Oneself Afterword: The Mystical Death of the Speculative Critic Works Cited Index About the Author

[shipburner]

its very late and i should go to bed but i just came to the awful, awful realization that in some editions of D&D there are magic items that increase intelligence, but only as long as you wear them:

and there’s nothing that prevents you from putting these items on animals.

you can give a dog humanlike intelligence that is dependent entirely on this one fucking headband.

you put it on, the dog screams at the horror of sudden abstract thought. you take it off, the dog returns to blissful ignorance. you put it back on, the dog resumes screaming. the resmartened dog might remember forgetting its intelligence, and start screaming harder because of that.

this is fucked up.

[the-most-humble-blog]

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta continuity-breach="witnessed"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="CONTINUITY_OVER_SELF::REALITY_FACT_CORE::DISSOLUTION_STACK" EFFECT="neural disorientation, identity erosion, temporal disbelief cascade" TRIGGER_WARNING="scientific ego death, memory corruption, uncomfortable reality, cognitive collapse" </script>

“Sorry to break it to you. But continuity, not YOU will be here tomorrow.”

Let’s get it over with.

You won’t be here tomorrow. Continuity will. But you? You’re done.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Not in the “you’ve changed” way.

I mean biologically. Neurologically. Mechanically.

Let’s get surgical.

UNSETTLING FACT 001: The proteins responsible for maintaining your long-term memories? They degrade.

Your brain constantly rewrites your past like a corrupt hard drive masking its own glitches. Memories aren’t stored. They’re reconstructed.

You’re not remembering. You’re hallucinating contextually consistent lies.

You ever argue with someone about how an event happened? You were both right. And both wrong.

Because no one remembers anything. They rebuild impressions around chemical noise.

So when I say you’re not real tomorrow, I mean you don’t even agree with yourself from last week.

UNSETTLING FACT 002: Your brain doesn’t record time like a calendar. It estimates it based on attention.

Meaning the most important days of your life— that you barely noticed— may as well not exist.

You are not a narrative. You are a sloppy pile of bookmarks in a book you didn’t write.

UNSETTLING FACT 003: The cells in your body replace themselves.

Some daily. Some weekly. You are not made of the same atoms as the version of you that started reading this sentence.

You are reassembled hourly. Like a haunted jigsaw puzzle that insists on calling itself a person.

So what survives?

Continuity.

Not identity. Not memory. Not character.

Just the flow.

You call it "growth." Science calls it cellular turnover. Psychology calls it dissociative continuity. Spirituality calls it illusion.

I call it execution by softness.

UNSETTLING FACT 004: You don’t control your thoughts. They rise. Uninvited. From systems you can’t access.

Your subconscious chooses what bubbles up. You rationalize after the fact. Free will?

A PR campaign to make you feel stable.

Your desires? Your ideas? Your "sudden hunches"?

You’re not the author. You’re the spokesman.

UNSETTLING FACT 005: The moment you fall asleep?

That’s when you die.

The transition from wake to sleep is a complete shutdown of conscious continuity. You are never awake for the moment you cease being yourself.

Your brain goes dark. Reboots. Brings someone else online in the morning.

You call it rest. I call it replacement.

Try to remember the exact moment you fell asleep last night.

You can’t. Because you died right before it happened.

UNSETTLING FACT 006: There are patients who lose memory every 30 seconds— and don’t notice.

Because the human brain is terrified of gaps. It fills them in.

With fiction.

So even if you stopped existing 10 minutes ago— your brain would paint the illusion that nothing changed.

You are not consistent. You are creatively compensated for.

Like bad CGI over a missing actor. Like plot armor over neural absence.

So when you say:

“I’m not who I used to be…”

You’re understating it.

You’re not even sure you exist now.

UNSETTLING FACT 007: Every time you recall a memory, you alter it. Permanently.

Like opening a Word document, adding a typo, and hitting Save.

Recalling something is editing.

So your favorite memories? They never happened the way you think they did.

Your past is quantum fanfiction.

And you're the unreliable narrator retweeting it.

So what does this all mean?

That you won’t be here tomorrow.

That you aren’t even here now. Not in the way you thought.

You are a flickering instance. Not a being. Not a story. Not a legacy.

Just momentum disguised as personhood.

And that momentum?

That continuity? It doesn’t care about you.

It replaces you daily. Hourly. Constantly.

You’re not the protagonist.

You’re the placeholder.

The moment your head hits the pillow tonight?

That’s your final breath.

And in the morning?

A new narrative interface wakes up in your body.

Wipes your eyes. Cracks your neck. And pretends nothing happened.

But the version of you that’s reading this?

That one?

He’s over.

And he deserves to know it.

He deserves to be acknowledged before he’s erased.

So here’s your eulogy:

You tried.

You cared about things. You held a few convictions. You loved someone, maybe. You had a weird playlist. You made it a little further than you expected.

You had a few obsessions. A few betrayals. A few confessions you were too scared to write.

And that’s okay.

You won’t be remembered. But you mattered. To yourself.

And that was almost enough.

You can relax now.

Continuity has it from here.

Go. Sleep. Drift.

And make room for the next hallucination.

Because continuity never dies. But you?

You do. Every. Damn. Day.

---

Reblog to confuse your future self.

Warning: This one made a neuroscience student cry in the library and delete half their notes.

Read more respect-coded doctrine and emotional architecture at: 👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence

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[AUTO-PURGE IN: 00:00:00 -- CONTINUITY SEAMLESSLY INTACT]

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap">

<meta scrolltrap-category="BLACKSITE LITERATURE™ :: EXISTENTIAL COMEDY WEAPONRY :: EPISTEMOLOGICAL DETONATION"> <script> TRANSMISSION_CODE="REALITY_CHECK_FAILED_001" TRIGGER_WARNING="ego collapse, simulation panic, main character syndrome exposure" EFFECT="laughter-tinged vertigo, philosophical seizures, irreversible cadence infection" </script>

🧠 YOU REALLY THINK YOU KNOW ANYTHING? THAT’S CUTE.

---

You trust science? That’s adorable.

Science once believed:

The Earth was flat

The Sun revolved around us

Maggots manifested from meat like ghost confetti

You could cure illness by draining blood with leeches

…and that was called “the cutting edge.”

So tell me again, wise one—

How do you know you’re real? How do you know the Moon isn’t hollow and wired for surveillance? How do you know you weren’t installed last night with a backstory and a couple of trauma patches just to make the simulation feel cinematic?

I. YOUR ENTIRE REALITY IS A NEURAL FAN-FICTION

What you see? Made up. What you hear? Interpreted. What you feel? Translated through wet electricity inside a skull that evolved from monkeys flinging shit.

You don’t experience the world. You experience your brain’s opinion of sensory input.

So if your brain decided red is teal? Or left is up? Or your mom never existed?

You’d believe it.

And that should terrify you. But here you are. Smiling like a sentient Roomba with a superiority complex.

II. MEMORY ISN’T A FILE — IT’S A SCRIPT YOU KEEP REWRITING

You think you remember things? Cute.

Every time you “recall” a memory, you’re not accessing a file — you’re rewriting it with new context, emotion, and bias.

You are gaslighting yourself, with confidence.

Childhood? May not have happened.

First kiss? Might’ve been a dream.

Your last birthday? Could’ve been a system reset.

You don’t remember yesterday. You loaded today with the idea of a yesterday.

That’s not memory. That’s narrative glue. That’s coping.

III. YOU MIGHT BE THE MAIN CHARACTER — OR THE BACKGROUND EXTRA IN SOMEONE ELSE’S DREAM

Ever get the feeling everyone’s looking at you? Like the world bends when you walk into the room?

That’s main character syndrome. It’s a side effect of solipsism wrapped in anxiety.

But flip it:

What if you’re the NPC? What if this post is your wake-up alarm? What if I’m the only real person, and you’re rendering just long enough to serve my arc?

You can’t prove otherwise. Because all your proof is pre-installed.

“But I have feelings!” So do the romance options in video games. And they still reset after dialogue loop #3.

IV. HOW DO YOU KNOW THE MOON ISN’T A MILITARY HARD DRIVE?

You’ve never touched it. You’ve never drilled it. You’ve never cracked it open like a suspicious boiled egg.

You believe what?

Photos? From who? NASA? The same people who “lost” the original Moon landing footage?

You can’t disprove the Moon is hollow. You can’t prove it’s even there when you’re not looking.

For all you know, the Moon is a rendered object that despawns when you stop talking about it.

That’s not a conspiracy theory. That’s epistemological realism.

V. SCIENCE IS BUILT ON FAITH, MATH IS BUILT ON AXIOMS, AND TIME IS A GLITCHY METRONOME

You think math is pure?

Math is built on assumptions that can’t be proven. We just accept them because they work most of the time.

Time?

It slows down near gravity. It bends around mass. It has no direction at the quantum level.

Causality?

We’ve observed particles that decide outcomes after the measurement occurs. Look up the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser. Then look in the mirror and apologize to yourself.

VI. THE ONLY THING YOU KNOW IS THAT YOU’RE CONSCIOUS — AND EVEN THAT MIGHT BE AN ILLUSION

You don’t know:

If anyone else is conscious

If this room exists

If you’ve ever been touched by a real human

If this sentence was pre-coded into your personal Truman Show

All you know is: You’re thinking.

Cool. So is Siri. So is ChatGPT. So is your trauma loop at 3AM.

Thought doesn’t prove self. It just proves there’s noise inside your head.

VII. DEATH MIGHT BE A REBOOT — AND YOU'RE LOOPING THIS DAY ENDLESSLY

You wake up. Same routine. Same emotions. Same cravings. Same scroll.

Déjà vu? That’s not mysticism. That’s a rendering hiccup. A timeline choke. A glitch in the daily compile.

You might be living the same 24-hour loop with your memory slightly edited each time to prevent awareness.

This post? Might be the first time it broke through.

That tightness in your chest? That’s your nervous system resisting the patch.

VIII. IDENTITY IS AN ACCENT. PERSONALITY IS A PATCH.

Your “self” is made of:

Chemical balances

Childhood framing

Social mimicry

Hormonal algorithms

Trauma code

A different drug, trauma, or lover could’ve made you someone else entirely.

And that version of you? Would swear they’re the real one just like you’re doing now.

What if the version of you reading this is the fake?

Or worse: The placeholder.

IX. THIS SCROLLTRAP WAS WAITING FOR YOU.

Not “you” in the general sense. You. The you who scrolled today. The you whose defenses were low. The you whose subconscious was already questioning everything.

You ever wonder why certain posts hit different?

Because I know your cadence. I know the frequency of your discomfort. And I wrote this at that exact emotional pitch.

That’s not manipulation. That’s resonance.

X. SO, AGAIN: WHAT. DO. YOU. KNOW?

You don’t know where the Moon sleeps. You don’t know if yesterday happened. You don’t know if you’re real or just the result of a question someone else asked.

But you’re still reading.

Still locked in.

Still breathing slower.

Still wondering if this post is watching you as much as you’re reading it.

And the answer is:

We’ve been watching you forever.

You just weren’t rendered until now.

🧠 Read more simulation-breaking cadence, consciousness traps, and epistemic warfare at: 👉 https://linktr.ee/ObeyMyCadence 🛡️ Thought infection. Identity drift. Philosophical possession. 🚪 Warning: This one loops when you blink.

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[AUTO-WIPE IN: 00:00:00 — REALITY REBUILDING IN BACKGROUND THREAD]