{"id":162657755,"date":"2025-10-29T07:26:48","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T12:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657755"},"modified":"2025-10-29T07:26:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T12:26:48","slug":"sub-genre-slam-cosmic-horror-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=162657755","title":{"rendered":"Sub-Genre Slam! Cosmic Horror Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI’ll take Cthulhu over you devils any day.\u201d – Victor LaValle, ‘The Ballad Of Black Tom’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the last week of Behind With Knife<\/em>! We’ve had chapter 21<\/a>, chapter 22<\/a>, and chapter 23<\/a> so far this week. Big stuff happening tomorrow and Friday! Who will survive? Check back with your old friends at Lazy & Entitled dot org. Here’s chapter 1<\/a> if you need to start at the beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of friends, The Line Break<\/em> came out this week, with dear friend and Cotton Xenomorph<\/em> co-founder Teo Shannon. Teo is the author of the excellent new book, a chronology of blood<\/em>, which you can buy here<\/a> and read my thoughts about here<\/a>. Podcast is at Apple<\/a> | Spotify<\/a> | Soundcloud<\/a> and I assume elsewhere but those are the three I know about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, the sub-genre I am most obsessed with in the year 2025: cosmic horror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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pasted from Wikimedia Commons<\/a>: “The Madness from the Sea” is Sofyan Syarief’s artwork based on H. P. Lovecraft’s story “The Call of Cthulhu.” This ‘Cute’ version satirizes Lovecraftian horror by giving the subject Syarief’s big, expressive eyes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Do you ever feel like the world has, imperceptibly and over time, become irrevocably different without you noticing? Do you ever feel as though your life is governed by unknowable and uncontrollable forces that are indifferent to the suffering they cause you? Do you ever look at news of resurgent American Nazis<\/a>, mask-wearing goons racially profiling brown people<\/a>, and active resegregation policies<\/a> and think, \u2018I thought those monsters were defeated and yet here they are crawling back from their weird holes?\u2019 Do you ever consider how a novel coronavirus popped up seemingly out of nowhere to kill millions and shut down the world for a year plus, and there’s also the theoretical threat of ancient diseases thawing out of the ice caps<\/a>? Do you ever worry about how global warming is a literal existential threat to all us, we keep doing nothing about it, and the planet is changing in ways we can\u2019t reverse<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cosmic horror might be for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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credit: New Line Cinema<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am relatively new to the genre. I haven\u2019t really read that old racist, \u201cthe H.P. stands for Hating People\u201d Lovecraft, beyond a few short stories. I\u2019ve sure spent a lot of time reading people influenced by him. Still, of the books on my shelf that can be listed as cosmic horror, we don\u2019t have much: Sister Maiden Monster<\/em> by Lucy A. Snyder, North American Lake Monsters<\/em> by Nathan Ballingrud, The Ballad Of Black Tom<\/em> by Victor LaValle, Extended Stay<\/em> by Juan Martinez, No Gods For Drowning<\/em> by Hailey Piper, three books of The Southern Reach<\/em> series by Jeff VanderMeer. Wow, look how many nonwhite dudes! There\u2019s even a woman! Scared-of-his-own-shadow-because-it\u2019s-black Howie Lovecraft would be aghast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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is The Little Mermaid responsible for Millennials’ turn to cosmic horror? (credit: Fantastic Factory)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So I\u2019m a novice. I especially feel like a novice because I know people really get into this stuff. Anytime there\u2019s a mythos, I\u2019m nervous about how much earlier others have gotten out of bed. Still, it\u2019s worth rehearsing some basics: cosmic horror, as I understand it, usually involves a character learning that the world is much bigger than they had previously thought. Maybe it\u2019s monsters existing, maybe it\u2019s sleeping Old Gods awakening, maybe it\u2019s a descent to madness, maybe it\u2019s the world fundamentally changing in ways that are scary. If you\u2019ve seen the movie Annihilation<\/em>, think about how everything is so strangely different once the characters are inside Area X. Think about how off Oscar Isaac\u2019s character is when he returns. In The Ballad Of Black Tom<\/em>, there is the big flashy goal, which is awakening The Sleeping King, but the truest horror is the police\u2019s indifference to committing murder. That is the action that makes Black Tom. It’s not unlike True Detective<\/em> Season One, where you have to ask if the specter of The King In Yellow is more horrifying, or the downstream effects of what takes place in Carcosa. By the way, maybe those are spoilers1<\/a><\/sup>, but I don\u2019t really believe those are the biggest deal in cosmic horror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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often, it all comes down to this guy showing up (credit: Wikimedia Commons, Dominique Signoret<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cosmic horror is the horror most akin to poetry, because it is that which cannot be paraphrased. When I saw Juan Martinez read at Sandra Marchetti\u2019s Diorama<\/em> launch, he cheerfully described his book as \u201cthe hotel that eats people.\u201d It\u2019s not simply that<\/em>, though. The horror happens to Alvaro on a sentence level. Switching books, but I can\u2019t tell you how unsettling it was the first time that the biologist narrator of Annihilation<\/em> directly addressed the reader. You have to experience it. That’s also why I’m less interested in the Old Gods or whomever. The horrifying thing is, by the time the tentacles have shown up? You’re kinda fine with it, or at the very least resigned to your fate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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what’s scarier? Knowing what’s inside the temple, or standing on the outside and wondering what’s inside? (credit: Wikimedia Commons, Mihail Bila<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Does Twin Peaks<\/em> count as cosmic horror? I experience it that way. 2025 has been a year of obsessing over Twin Peaks<\/em>. The “Got A Light” episode in The Return<\/em> is a metaphor for the evil unleashed on the world by the development of the atom bomb, but it feels like more than a metaphor, it feels deeply, purely true<\/em>.2<\/a><\/sup> As I started getting more and more into it, untangling the mysteries or whatever, explanations for things started to make sense in the real world. Not in any way that would hold up in court, but on an intuitive level. Sometimes, a certain geographic point can be a vector for evil<\/em>. Sure, yeah. There are unseen forces that we cannot comprehend and they do not have our best interests at heart<\/em>. Obviously. The world is larger, more confusing, and more poisonous than you previously conceptualized<\/em>. Yes, I am constantly learning this. Sometimes people aren’t even in control of their own actions, so moved are they by these unseen forces<\/em>. Hey, if theoretical physicists who study quantum mechanics are unsure that humans are capable of free will<\/a>, so am I. Well, I sorta think the free will\/determinism debate is useless anyway, but that’s another column. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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