i appreciate the amount of people reblogging this despite me not really tagging this at all. im glad many of people feel the same anger i do.

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.

You know what? Unironically, I think this is the best comment I’ve seen on this post.

imagine forcibly sending your second in command to space and erasing his memory and having made peace with it for 26 years but then you finally get the back the information that will save the world and you find out that he woke up all alone because the other two died on the way and he didn't know what was going on and he was so scared but he manages to make first contact and he figures it all out anyway AND he might be able to go home with the astrophysics the alien gives him and you feel a part of your heart that hasn't felt alive in decades start to beat again because he might come back in just a few months if what he's saying is right and then you watch the last log and it turns out he needs to go back to save an alien species and he is going to starve to death and you feel the grief all over again.