Non-euclidian fuckery
Comment on You have my consent to kill me
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month ago
Blasphemous geometry
Lovecraft talked about that shit in his stories a lot.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If you look at renderings of what 4D objects would look like intersecting 3D space, this is what I imagine for those. Seeing 3D cross sections morphing continuously but inconceivably into each other without being able to even comprehend the true form of the thing you’re seeing glimpses of would be terrifying.
Natanael@infosec.pub 1 month ago
You should look at higher than 4D renderings, like high dimensional hypercubes, as don’t forget non-euclidean geometry
Gork@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Is there an interactive visualizer on the web for this kind of thing? Not that a 3D perspective projected into a 2D screen would help much, but being able to fiddle with the shapes might help visualize it in our mind.
offspec@lemmy.world 1 month ago
You should check out 4d golf and hyperbolica
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 1 month ago
I believe the idea of eldritch is in being able to comprehent the true form - but only temporarily, since our minds cannot hold that knowledge, only to be left with a frayed hole in our thoughts
But also as people mentioned, there’s some cursed geometries. Hyperbolic and parabolic geometry is interesting (see Hyperholica and Hyperrogue), but things get worse with Nil and Solv
For a more plain existential horror also see Fractal Block World, pretty fun seeing the sense of scale as you shrink yourself ever further revealing detail you couldn’t perceive before, and also the sense of scale, as a tiny room becomes an incomprehensibly vast space you cannot hope to cross in your lifetime.
nialv7@lemmy.world 1 month ago
but this is not impossible or out of ordinary though. you can even imagine stacking a couple cardboard boxes into that shape. i think it’s out of place because it’s too ordinary, because you’d expect some kind of symmetry, regularity, etc. from idealized mathematical shapes, but you didn’t. instead you just get some random looking stack of boxes.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 1 month ago
Fyi this is just the best known packing of 17 squares, there might be a better one. We just haven’t been able to proove it or find a better one since 1998
pennomi@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If killing Cthulhu is all it takes to solve the box-packing problem, Amazon would have already done it. No, this is something far more sinister than that.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I like the concept of Eldritch horror that it is so fearful and alien that its impossible to describe in terms that could make you feel it. The most that words could do would give a view of the shadow of it instead of the horror itself. To finally understand the horror requires surrendering your sanity. If nothing else its a great literary tool.
otacon239@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This makes all the difference between a good Call of Cthulhu DM and a bad one.
capt_wolf@lemmy.world 1 month ago
"This horror that stands before you is no man, nor it anything resembling man in any facsimile other than it stands upon two appendages that could be mistaken for feet. The realization of it’s mere and miserable existence finds you stricken with a cold sweat akin to the feel of a pale and slimy fish at the market. It’s visage strikes in your being a fear that cores your stomach deeper than any forgotten, but suddenly realized promise. "
Shit like that?
otacon239@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Bam. Spot on. That makes for great storytelling. There’s even a sanity mechanic.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 month ago
I think I could be a good DM for it, then. 😃
I literally only sought to read Lovecraft’s stuff because several friends of mine I had shared my own stories with, constantly asked if I was inspired by him and how similarly my writing was.
AnyOldName3@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well is your writing your way of expressing how you felt when you found out your uncle was Welsh? That’s the real key to Lovecraft.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
The ‘firefall’ novels (‘blindsight’ and ‘echopraxia’) are… Not exactly that, but very close, and better written than lovecraft could dream of. ‘Echopraxia’ does not hold your fucking hand at all though.
Hasherm0n@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I’ve been looking for something new to read and this looks like exactly what I’m feeling.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
They’re really good.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
“crikey mate that shit’s fucked, anyway i need to get to work”