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.
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
- death and madness are no longer escapes
I’ve always felt that the idea of madness or sanity in an eldritch horror sense were misnomers. If anything, I feel a better term is a change of perspective. There is nothing inherent in seeing a greater being that “drives you insane”, it’s that this being doesn’t fit into your previous worldview at all and you have to wrestle that. Every character can and should react differently, changing in ways that “make sense” for them. It’s either a change in worldview or attempting to fit the greater being into your preexisting one. Both will have negative results, but will be interesting as hell to explore.
Tyki’s reaction to being slapped fascinates me. This guy gets slapped by a helpless exorcist that's fully at his mercy and he kinda likes it. It wasn’t a weak slap either! Despite the state Allen’s in, it left a mark! But Tyki just laughs it off. Settles down to chat. Lights himself a cigarette.
Let’s face it. It’s charming.
I really like the contrast between Allen’s first meeting with Road and his first meeting with Tyki. Road had no intention of killing Allen from the start, and she wasn't really there to destroy any Innocence, but she gets incredibly rough with him: nailing his arm to the wall, stabbing his eye out, making a pincushion out of him with her candles. She fully delights in the bodily harm.
Tyki’s here to kill Allen and destroy his Innocence. That’s already decided. But he doesn’t brutalize him at any point.
Because Tyki's so casual, you keep thinking: hey, Allen’s going to get out of this totally fine. Someone is going to show up and save him. Lenalee should be looking for him. We haven’t seen the others in a while, so they must be on their way. Someone is going to arrive in the nick of time to save Allen, and everything’s going to be fine. We still have to get to Japan, after all.
But no one comes.
The scene progresses. Tyki keeps talking, he shows off his power a bit, tries to play with Allen like he played with the others. Tries to make him scared, maybe beg a little. He’s fooling around with the prey he’s already caught, like a cat.
But Allen's not scared, and Tyki backs off. The actual physical torture isn't the appeal for him, so if his victim isn't scared there's no reason to get violent.
So now you're thinking, wow, this guy is gonna regret taking his time when someone finally arrives! What a classic villain fumble; failing your mission because you were too busy monologuing.
But no one comes.
Tyki pulls out the card the Earl gave him. And you find out Tyki’s been searching for Allen. Specifically.
That’s bad, but it's okay. It'll be fine. Someone is going—
You turn the page, and Tyki is ripping Allen’s arm off. No warning, no posturing. One second Allen is fine—someone is going to save him, any second now, Tyki hasn’t even hurt him yet—and the next Allen’s fucking Innocence is on the forest floor.
Tyki keeps talking, smiling. Nothing about his demeanor has changed.
He destroys Allen's Innocence. Like it's nothing.
And at this point, you start to realize, maybe no one is coming. Or if they are, it’s already too late.
Tim gets sent away. He can go get help. But, now Allen’s truly alone with the assassin sent to kill him—if anyone’s coming, it has to be now! Where is everyone?!
Right on cue, you finally get to see the other characters.
And they’re still on the fucking ship.
Then maybe Lenalee—
No. Lenalee’s also at the ship. Tyki has his hand hovering over Allen’s chest and Lenalee’s at the goddamn ship.
No one is coming, you realize. No one was ever coming.
And just like that, Tyki kills Allen. Intimately, with a smile. He wants it to be slow, but quiet. He wants Allen to feel how helpless he really is.
Tyki's a serial killer: we've seen him stage his victims before, like leaving Daisya hanging like some kind of grisly ornament. We saw the state he left the General in.
Allen, however, gets more artistic treatment; he's by the far the favorite of Tyki's victims so far, and Tyki doesn't want to disturb the pretty picture he's already made too much, but it needs a little extra flair, doesn't it? A more personal touch.
So he scatters his own gift to Allen over him: a little something to suit his white hair and black coat and red scars, and the last thing we see is the black crescent of despair. Put there quite deliberately; it is not a typical image to appear on a Joker card.
Volume 6 ends, just like that.
It really is a merciless ending. You can't believe that the protagonist will really die here, but even if he somehow survives, his Innocence has been destroyed. The entire scene is built around your expectations as a reader that the protagonist can't die, so someone will save him, or there will be some other interference.
But no. No one was ever coming to save Allen; not this time.
What are you all doing to get stung by bees?? They literally let you pick them up and pet them if you're calm. I've had them land on me loads and just hang out for a while but I've never been stung?? They're just chill lil dudes.
Once was from when I stuck a flower in my face as a little kid without knowing there was a bee in it, another was from trying to rescue one from a pool by fishing it out barehanded.
Had a time where some bees managed to make a hive somewhere by the window or smthn and no matter what i could do somehow they kept getting in the house
So it was like walking into a mine field when going into my kitchen barefoot
i may have stepped on quite a few mines
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