"It's not that there's nowhere to run, there's a whole universe out there. It just won't help you." That's a terrifying line, even beyond the realm of space horror.
"You know the incomprehensibly vast horde of ruthless space locusts from outside the galaxy currently destroying our civilizations? They are _running from something._ "
@@Sorain1 This is one of my favorite tropes! Finding out some severely OP force we can barely even comprehend is really just a small fish in the sea of space, desperately trying to survive, is such an enjoyable way to get the point across that we, like our planet, are meaningless in the vastness of space.
Honestly this sums up why I dislike retro scifi (aside from startrek and something more space-opera-y like starwars) perfectly. A LOT of it is based in (neo) colonialism and Red Scare propeganda and a dash of xenophobia/racism. (Similar hot take for zombies and monster/demon hunting tropes. Ableism and/or suspicion to hostility towards entire groups of people of a different sexuality/gender/skintone/culture/etc. Just. Not a fan.) …more power to people who can enjoy those tropes, anyway, but my disbelief just Isn’t suspended whatsoever. Or, not enough to keep me from, say, rooting for “the BAD guys!” instead. (Especially if they’re sympathetic in any way.)
The flood are a different kind of horror. They are subversive and aberrant. They grab you and painfully warp you into something horrible. The Thing, The Many, The Beast, all of them are scarier than a xenomorph ever could be. The tyranids use a more existential angle. They are always becoming stronger and more dangerous. You can blow them up but there will always be more. They surround the galaxy and soon they will come to feast. I love Alien but the horror of the Xenomorph can’t match the others.
The sheer fact that the flood’s final stage of evolution is to just peace out of our universe to spread to others is both incredibly badass and highly unnerving.
the flood has so much stuff going on, Xenomorphs at least stop after a certain point because they're animals, the flood just keeps growing because its a parasite, Which is why we got my favourite visual for a planet that's "living" and has a giant mouth
@@thecrappycoder tigers are ambush predators that like to climb into trees to jump on their prey, so the line was referring to needing to look up so you don't get jumped
My favorite space trope is “Earth is Space Australia”, which implies that while space is weird, we are also weird, and even if we can’t handle a situation perfectly we can at least survive it.
That trope is kinda a reaction to "space is super hostile", it just flips the script and most races in the galaxy take 1 look at earth and classify it as the most hostile world capable of suporting life. Its often coupled with "humans are space orcs" which makes sense considering humans are also from planet hell/ a death world.
Weird that you didn't mention the sea horror as it's a strong precursor to the space horror. In fact lots of stories that we now think of as space things are taken directly or indirectly from the seafarer stories. We have several stories that directly compare the two, like the treasure planet. Lots of stuff to explore
Yeah i guess, being on the ocean, would feel very isolating, and give the sea shanty tunes, and storys told. It makes sense space horror is a evolution of ghost ship tails.
@@riolu471 I mean, if you consider only The Dunwich Horror & The Call of Cthulhu, you'd be right. But Lovecraft's stories weren't entirely based around sea horror, they were based around the horrors of the unknown.
For me the deep ocean version is the most terrifying "space" story. You still get the crushing loneliness of space mixed with the possibility of a Mt Everest sized spider squid ready to eat you 10 feet away yet you can't see it. Which is why Subnautica is such a great game.
"Experts around the world agree that humans... look up sometimes." Very untrue, I've played enough Dishonored to know that having a Y value greater than your opponent basically makes you invisible
@@dikkie1000 "What's up?" said the FPS gamer. The barnacle burped. (At least it's not Deep Rock Galactic where it's literally impossible to break free of one of those head-eating bastards yourself, and also the tongues angle off to the side to make sure they can eat you.)
“Oh mY GoD tHAT’s noT rEaL LifE” but dumb jokes aside I do wonder if we’re actually like that in real life too cause we don’t perceive the world as it is but rather focus on very specific things, right? I wonder if the same thing actually does happen in real life too
Funnily enough, The Thing is space horror closer to Alien than any other genre. As Jacob Geller said: "The monster may kill them but the cold will" In the thing, there is really no where to run since a few minutes outside will likely kill you
Yes, space horror doesn't mean it has to be cosmic space, but just vast emptiness around you. A sand/rock/ice desert and the ocean (surface or below) deliver a very similar threat
For those who don't know, Jacob Geller is a youtuber who produces some fantastic content and has a love for the horror genre in general. His videos are well thought out and he's clearly a smart guy who knows what he's talking about. Highly recommended you check him out if you haven't already.
@@lordshennington2756 Not really. Quantum communication may be possible even if travel remains difficult. Also humans can't survive a 10,000 year trip, but AI can. It's definitely possible to reach other life, it just takes a while. I won't even entertain the idea that we're alone in the universe though. It's not mathematically likely.
"But 'Up' is more than just a fun direction tigers sometimes come out of." Thanks for the warning, I wouldn't have been prepared for that terrifying realization otherwise.
@@mongooseunleashed Trust me, the feeling is mutual. Even the house cats barely tolerate us clumsy apes fawning over them. There is a SMBC comic that sums up the domestication of cats as follows Human: Hey, are you killing the vermin that's been getting into my grain? Cat: That's none of your damn business.
2001: A Space Odyssey really sold the horror of space with its SILENCE. The sense that you have no idea what could happen, what can be happening right behind you, or even in front of you, and the fact you have no idea until it is far, far too late.
One of my favorite scenes from that movie is when the one astronaut is disconnected from the ship, and the camera holds on him slowly falling away into space.
Vast emptiness/silence is something we have a hard time comprehending. Heck, In “The Martian” the dude had to find many ways to distract himself from the realization that he was alone in the empty desert of Mars
The fear of space its you can see it coming and cant stop it, were alone in the universe, the universe is trying to kill us and SPECIFICALLY THE SUN! Or your alone. And therea nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
Really impressed that you didn't bring up "The Dark Forest" theory of alien life. There is life out there, perhaps lots of it, but not all of it is nice, and nobody knows for sure who's nice, so everyone's metaphorically hiding in the bushes hoping those bad neighbors don't notice you.
Eh, I always thought that theory was flawed because it assumes groups don't team up to beat bad actors, or that bad actors can still cooperate with others for rational self interest. It's the product of a suspicious, paranoid mindset.
@@universalperson Fair point. We're working off of what we assume is "basic human thinking" (aggressive paranoia = survival) but that in itself is flawed because we've only survived due to cooperation, not mindlessly nuking each other.
@@WildFyreful on top of that, aliens wouldn't have any kind of human psychology at all. Or that they would have any psychology in common with other aliens. They could be a parasitic swarm of locusts, they could try to understand others like some of us would. We just don't know. I think a human's perception of aliens can say more about the human.
Actually that kind of makes me feel better. Two (or more) sides mutually scared of each other can poke their heads out and go, “aren’t you going to kill me?” “That depends, are you going to kill me?” “Wasn’t planning on it.” “Oh! Okay then, hi!”
Ah Space Horror: Mysterious colors unlike any seen, terrible gods, unending hordes of flesh eating aliens, and good ole fashion unknown knowledge Such fun :)
Wasn't it also Blue that once said, "The Ocean is terrifying. The deeper you go, the more nightmares there are!"? Space is the same thing except....more
One of my favorite examples of space horror actually comes from D&D. There’s an entity known as Atropus, The World Born Dead. It’s a moon-sized zombified head, said to be the remnants of a stillborn deity. It comes from distant space, and as it approaches a world, the world will slowly start to decay, until it begins orbiting the planet, effectively causing a necromancy-powered apocalypse. I always thought that was a cool usage of space horror in a non-sci-fi setting.
@RobotBlue if you’re interested, the book that contains the most info about it (and other similarly powerful beings) is from the 3rd edition of the game. It’s called “Elder Evils”.
Atropus is REALLY cool tbh and I plan to use it for a campaign once Spelljammer comes out for 5e. I had the idea of a not-yet-at-full-power Atropus that acts like radiation, and as spelljammers go missing near this one area, or those that come back are filled with necrotic energy, you are tasked with navigating this area with the help of protective arcane tech.
@@benjiusofficial It's legitimacy depends on how much you like the Astral Plane and/or space. If you mean to use both, it's just the worst. I'll always miss the days you could blow yourself to kingdom come by using a fire spell in the phlogiston.
@@DDlambchop43 I don't know if Bill Watterson and Terry Pratchett ever read each other's stuff, but I'm fairly confident that, if they had, they would have been fans of each other
"But up is more than just a fun direction that tigers sometimes come out of." Yes, it's also a delightful Pixar movie with one of the saddest openings ever
Space horror can basically be summarized as “Don’t stare in to the abyss. After all it stares back”. Doesn’t mean I don’t still love space.. but if even 1% of the VISIBLE (and real) threats from space come toward earth. We are done for.
with space the threat doesn’t even need to come towards us, it just needs to pull us towards it and we’re already screwed because we would be to far or to close to the sun to survive.
I always love the idea that somethings in the universe aren't just sympathetic or misunderstood. That sometimes if you venture too far into the abyss the abyss finds you.
Yeah there’s a weird modern insistence that everything needs to be sympathetic or misunderstood and it’s kind of off putting. I get making your aliens misunderstood in your setting but like the void demon doesn’t need to be. The evil God doesn’t need a tragic backstory he’s an aspect of evil. You don’t need a reason for why this creature is eating people beyond it’s a predator.
@@thekinginyellowmessiahofha6308 predators aren't gonna target fairly dangerous preys like humans , And when spotted before going at full speed they may desist more ofthen than not , Prey animals on the other hand ... They'll just aggro on every potential treat , and they won't desist until you've stopped moving ...
This is a delightfully creepy way to describe it. A lot of media takes the ‘be sympathetic’ angle, but we’re just a bunch of highly evolved monkeys playing god. There are things out there that we cant even fathom, and that’s how you get Eldritch / Lovecraftian writing.
More so, the excellent examples are diseases, flus, viruses. No agenda, it’s propelled existence driven only by circumstances and logical spirals in events. Some just ‘accidentally’ harms our existence due to how our body works. Thickens blood a bit? Whoops, we can die from that! But the blood thickening itself? Not really sinister, just a chemical reaction+bodily disturbances.
Something that occurs to me about the agoraphobia of space: it seems like it would be much easier to get past this with, say, three ships traveling together instead of one big ship. Weird, maybe, but being able to look to your left or right and see another ship, at least in my mind, kind of makes it better.
It also means you have a better chance of surviving if something does go wrong. If you have two ships and one goes down, you're still flying half your ships.
A story that starts with a whole convey of space ships but slowly the numbers are whittled down one by one with no way to stop it until there's only one ship left
"There are two possibilities: we are alone in this universe, or we are not. Both are terrifying." Xcom has put the fear of space in me for too many years. Good to see someone address it
I just realized that, even after this video, the reason space doesn't scare me nearly as much as it should, is because I grew up near the ocean. The ocean holds all the categories of fears that space does (predators from all directions, completely inhospitable to humans, threats in the form of severe weather, fast currents, crushing pressure, freezing Temps, ect), but to me, the main difference? Why I had thallassaphobia for decade but was never really scared of space? The ocean will kill you slowly, every time. At least in space, you have fast options. ...yeah sorry was just thinking 😅
The ocean is beautifully terrifying in indeed similar ways as space can be, and surprisingly enough, the ocean can be even more hostile than space. Remember that it is relatively easier to sustain a habitat in space than deep under the ocean.
I grew up about a half hour away from the pacific ocean, and I have to be careful when I visit the beach or else I will literally dissociate thinking about how vass the ocean is.
My favorite thing about the hell/warp travel in 40k is that it essentially works by pure luck. It's literally "Hook a psychic up to a computer, wait till he sees a vision of Big E, then floor it and hope nothing gets inside." Also, the same reasons work for Underwater stories too. Our terrestrial oceans are way too deep and way too dangerous for regular people to explore. It's dark, there's barely any life and the pressure will kill or destroy pretty much anything we can build. Shit, even if we *could* breathe down there, there's still pressure and *god knows what* down there. TL;DR: Fuck the ocean and fuck space.
@@Dhips. Pretty much everything in 40k is winging it lol. Kinda what happens when literal demons, magic, and technology so advanced that many people believe their flesh and blood to be weaknesses.
I'm not sure but I feel it's more complicated than that. The emperor hiselft creates psychic beacon that is like a lighthouse in hell. And yes, warp is hell it was peaceful afterlife for souls of those who have psychic powers or at least capabilities, but there was a war so drastic, unrelenting, cruel and long it... *warped* that space, created demons and now it's hell. And wh40k has many more other ways of travel, Eldars use portals left for them by Old Ones, Necrons travel in ther own technology, Tyranids travel with speed of light and I don't know how TAU moves around. But ayway, there are many ways to travel even in the warp, chaos can just go through, humans go around using special psychic shielding, psychic navigators and beacon and orks I think are too stupid to be affected by warp
"Space is scary." As someone who works for a space telescope, the incomprehensible vastness of the universe and the existential dread it brings is just my every day life. Still love my job, though.
The way you said you work "for" the telescope made me think its a sentient being who's also your boss. Like "Yeah I work for the space telescope, he's pretty cool, his space jokes are terrible though." Or something like that
There have also been films like "The Martian," where the hostile environment of space is itself the villain, and more rarely like "Avatar", where the scary aliens prove to be less evil than their human enemies.
"The Martian" isn't space horror, though. At least not primarily -- it's a love letter to ingenuity. Or to use Mark Watney's words, a tribute to the power of "sciencing the sh*t out of this."
Ancient culture: “wow, the sky is beautiful and so helpful for navigation” Normal people now:”wow, space is beautiful and exciting” Scientists and writers: “the universe is fucking terrifying” Edit: thanks for telling me about the spelling mistake.
That typo though. lol I mean space Tarrifs are Terrifying, but mostly because of the implications of who is doing them and why. Also, where's my towel, I suddenly have concerns there might be a space highway building project afoot. ;P
"As a child, I considered such unknowns sinister. Now, though, I understand they bear no ill will. The universe is, and we are. " - Solanum, on the unknowns of space, Outer Wilds.
This is the one game I wish I’d had the hardware to play when I found out about it. I experienced it through a playthrough but even so it was one of the most memorable games I’ve ever seen. Like, not to be dramatic but that game changed my life in a pretty measurable way.
One of the best Space Horror stories I've read is "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. It's about a first contact situation where the crew sent to meet the aliens realize that the aliens lack any form of sentience, and that the sentience that we humans hold so dear is a mistake in evolution that wastes our energy and makes us vulnerable. In this story, humans may be the only intelligent species in the universe with a sense of "self," and it's going to doom them.
The aliens claim sentience is an attack and yet, a few hours after meeting humans, deal effortlessly with it and around it. In the second book they even communicate. It also doesn't explain why so many successfull species on earth have developed a form of it or why it doesn't disappear in humans. The author's main argument is "efficiency" but nature doesn't give a crap about that xompared to "effectiveness". It's an interesting premise, but as an author track it falls pretty flat, pretty fast.
@@brll5733 Sounds like the author came up with an idea that he thought was really clever, but never took a step back to think about if it would actually work according to the fundamental laws that we know. Kind of like how the aliens from 'A Quiet Place' would be completely useless in real life, because in order to have hearing sharp enough to pick up even the slightest noise at long range would mean that something like a handclap would knock them on their ass, to say nothing of a gunshot.
Although this isn't specifically unique to space horror, one of my favorite tropes used in this genre is isolation combined with declining resources. It's terrifying in a very realistic way. The idea of being trapped either alone, or with a small group of people that slowly drives each other crazy with little food and water is a situation that's really easy to insert yourself into. To me, the most scary stories are the ones that feel like they could actually happen.
The Expanse nails a frequently forgotten aspect of space travel: Speed. The acceleration required to actually get anywhere plays havoc on the body. Characters have to go through the ordeal of accelerating to several times Earth's gravity and being crushed into their seat. Characters die just trying to get from A to B in a reasonable time.
The Palladium Wars does this too. The Expanse gives a better idea of the emotional lives of spacers, but PW has good, really thought-through combat and a setting I'd put on par with Expanse.
Space-Horror? PALES in Comparison to the Radicalization-Wave and the horrifying traditional Values of the Right-Wingers and Conservatives! I mean, seriously, have you seen whats going on nowadays? People quote the Handmaid Tales Villains when quoting Conservatives Values, even if we ignore Trumpism and/or Conservativsm right-now this Summer lashin-out against all LGBT.
@@loturzelrestaurant i think the best Horror is the Horror you resonate deepest with, but you are right to say there's ample horrible things in real life. Yes, we have seen what's going on nowadays- I don't know that I'd class it as horror, though. I feel like one of the major purposes of horror is to claim ownership over the emotions of terror and fright. You are choosing to sit here to feel terrified. It would be a fairly enviable hypothetical to treat the real world in the same way- as something to be sat and feared for a movie's runtime, as if a discreet, packagable experience. Can you choose to experience transphobia for just two hours of your choosing a week? Can you choose to experience a tyranny over your reproductive rights for thirty minutes every two days while on the way to work? Horror is a genre of media, and as such, includes intent. Someone intended for this to be frightening. They intended for you to be scared, and likely you did too while watching it. If they make you scared, you have other emotions, too- appreciation of the art, understanding of the fear, maybe even a sense of control: the monster was in your house, on your screen, at your leisure. You chose to be scared, and now maybe you even get catharsis from the story. In real life, there is no safely opting-in to horror. You experience it whether you want to or not, with none of the cushion provided by an experience of a bouquet of emotions. It's just horrible. Not cathartic, but the thing-from-which-catharsis-is-needed. Horror is Horror. Real life can only ever be horrible, never Horror.
An inverse of that the Expanse does well is that a *lack* of constant acceleration completely fucks you up. Even a few months in microgravity wrecks havoc on our bodies, and they do a good job of speculating what developing bodies in 1/6-1/3 of Earth G might look like and what chronic health problems they might have.
The fact that Red effectively made me believe that the entire known cosmos just being _literal, actual Hell_ is a better alternative to what it *really is* makes this my favorite trope talk to date.
I feel like a close relative of the "sh*t goes wrong in space" story is the "sh*t goes wrong on the bottom of the ocean" story. both have the claustrophobia/agoraphobia angle and play with similar themes. Another fun angle to play with in space/deep sea horror is leaning on the idea that we have always been threatened by whatever particular threat the plot is focused on, but are only just now learning about it. Obliviousness of danger can be deeply unsettling
Ocean is scarier. In space there is nothing out there. You can see it. In the ocean you can't see anything and you know there is something out there. You just don't know what it is.
16:26 Here's a fun one: It's actually the _boiling_ void of space! With virtually zero environmental pressure, there's just not a whole lot holding things together. So, the major problem with being exposed to space isn't freezing or suffocating, it's the materials in your body sublimating, hanging around or a while, and then attempting to exit your body by any means available.
_"You ever see a man die in space? You can tell the ones who held their breath. Their lungs rupture from all that gas expanding. Blood from their mouth like a torn pillow stuffed with red BB's. Stab Girl, she was a little thing. Carried switchblades. She knew to exhale. Watched her for a full minute. Puffed up like she had a peanut allergy. Floating by me with her mouth open, screaming, making no sound. Spit on her tongue boiling."_ - Red Death, a loving father
I would like to add one more point to the “space is terrifying column; entropy. That no matter what we do or how smart we evolve into after the remaining millions of years we have left, the sun will burn out, the universe will expand into an even greater infinity ripping everything at an atomic level. Well that was cheery, thanks for the vid
While that is a possibility, the fact that it will happen so, SO far into the future makes it irrelevant to our day-to-day existence and not worth worrying about.
"'Up' is more than just a fun direction tigers sometimes come out of" That line was so funny, it _interrupted_ me. I had to stop working because I was laughing so hard.
The hyperspace "Blind Spot" in Niven's Known Space stories is actually pretty horrifying. One story has the protagonist look into it, and he proceeds to forget what it looked like, forgets how to see, forgets he has eyes until someone manages to close the shutter. The whole moment in just incredibly creepy.
I think it's really interesting that space also kind of became "futuristic ocean" in literature. Treasure Planet is really on the nose with this, but basically the ocean is a vast empty deathtrap that people travel through to discover new things. And so is space. So many of our stories of seafaring can easily be translated to space. "Lost in space" stories are just futuristic castaway stories.
That's always been how I've seen space. To the possibility that space could contain scary things, my kneejerk response has always been "Awesome! I want to see!"
@@bluelfsuma That, and one can at least swim to the nearest lifeboat/raft/driftwood even if they are in their underwear. In space, you need a full astronaut suit just to survive in the open. And 'swimming' in space does not work at all.
That "space itself is scary" reminds me of a certain incident in a dystopian game where there are warp trains that can take you anywhere in only 10 seconds :D How do they work? By opening a portal between dimensions, taking a small detour that takes 20 thousand years, while also stopping time completely inside the train so that no one feels hunger or thirst, nor can they die. After the trip, all passengers get their bodies back, their memories wiped, and are left to think about how amazing technology is :)
@@Dusk_ShadeThe jobs they work for benefit immensely, because their employees can commute near-instantly to arrive on time from anywhere in the world. And it’s not like anyone inside remembers it happening.
@@Dusk_ShadeThe in-universe explanation is that the transportation company, W Corp, has a shady deal with T Corp to collect large quantities of time for them (don’t ask me how one goes about it collecting a metaphysical concept, I have no idea), so it’s in their best interest to keep their warp trains running through the spacetime continuum for as long as possible, and if it gets the unwitting passengers where they’re going 10 real world seconds later anyway, then W Corp has basically printed free time to then sell to T Corp. It is very strange, and the lore of Library of Ruina has a lot of things like this-magical weapons that get stronger the more you dedicate yourself to your goal, giant pendulums that inexplicably predict the future because people believe that they can, a bus that grinds people down into their base elements and then reassembles those elements into fuel, some really crazy sci-fi shit.
Hehehe, the glee behind Red's voice in getting to speak at mild length about astrophysical phenomena was a delight to behold with my ears. It's good when creators are _audibly_ having fun.
It filled me with joy to hear someone rant about how terrifyingly and existentially fascinating space is in the same manner that I would rant about space to the point my friends would tell me to shut up because I’m giving them an existential crisis. Red and I are of the same mind in this video in wondering why there needs to be a content warning because we’re so deep into the horrors of space we forgot it was scary
Meh. She describes space phenomena like it's something truely terrifying. Like, "The Sun is a million times the size of Earth! It could swallow Earth whole and not even notice!" But meanwhile, space enthusiasts (never mind an actual astrophysicist) is like, "Oh please. It's really quite average."
An old favorite HFY story of mine (title was something along the lines of "The Veil of Madness", I think) combined the "space is somehow malevolent" variant of this with the old "to aliens, humans are the aliens" thing - the result was that there was a huge stretch of space that literally nobody could go into without being driven mad and was thought to be totally devoid of life... until humans emerged from it, wearing primitive full-encapsulation space suits and using poor quality "radios" to communicate since unlike everyone else we didn't find an already-spacefaring civilization on our doorstep to standardize from. As a result, the first impression on the galaxy by humanity was a terrifying faceless monster emerging from the Veil of Madness, sending incomprehensible static-filled signals, getting into a bit of a skirmish, and then turning around to return to the area that is so unknowable literally nobody has ever survived going in.
I just went and reread it myself - seems I got a couple of details wrong but the title and general idea were correct. Just a heads up in case people go find it and are confused.
Don't worry, I've always known that space is terrifying beyond belief, in some ways that humans as a species simply didn't evolve to cope with or comprehend at all!
@@Greendalewitch you obviously haven't learned enough about space read "a breif history of time" for some horror and knowledge and try to wrap your head around it whenever you're bored it won't work, but you won't be bored anymore
As basically a lifelong fan of Cosmic/Scifi Horror(the horror genre in general), I enjoy the larger and more diverse scale of terror that space and other unexplored dimensions can offer. Like I just don't find most traditional horror films to be all that scary... just entertaining. The scariest monsters in cinema and literature for me are the ones that I can't really comprehend. I find a creature like the Thing more frightening than Jason as we can humanize Jason but the Thing? We don't even know what it wants, let alone understand it. The cosmic entity in Event Horizon is ten times scarier than some random ghost in some random haunted house for me... as the mere speculation that arises from its existence alone would utterly shatter peoples entire world views in an instant. A scary monster is much more frightening when you can't really give it a motive. Removing the mystery leads to it becoming more mundane. It's just much more terrifying when you don't really know the enemy and it is as alien to you as is possible... just my two cents.
For me what makes humanized or otherwise personified horror entities utterly terrifying sometimes is that I can understand on a fundamental level that they're not that different from me, or from anyone really. Someone like your own mother could have been a horrific monster with just a few changes in her early life, for example. Add to that the fact that real life people can and have committed unthinkable atrocities and I sometimes find myself unable to stomach realistic thrillers and horror films while being fine with things like Lovecraftian evil elder gods.
Technically, aren't spooky ghosts and monsters also shattering our world views? Well, atleast ghosts can. They're (in most cases) spirits of the dead! The dead back alive! I don't know about you, but that's kind of breaking one of the fundamental rules of life as we know it, that death is inevitable and permanent and irreversible. Then again, most horror movies probably wouldn't let that info sink in or fully realize the ramifications of that so you don't really feel that horrified about it. That or we've been super desensitized to it thanks to zillions of ghost horror movies. It's like Zombies, it was scary at first, but now that it's been done a bajillion times, it's more mundane. That and also just good film making, sometimes non-space horror movies can also be scary, it just has to be done right. Psychological horror is a thing. But you do you. I think we'd all scream the same whether it's a ghost, zombie, monster, bad guy or cosmic entity if it happened in real life.
@@TheEpicGalaxy21 agree to an extent. Most things in horror movies if encountered in real life would force us to thoroughly reevaluate our thoughts on the universe. It always kinda bothered me how the protags in these films just... get over it by the end and go off into the sunset as if the afterlife was not just confirmed to be real or that a dream demon didn't just murder all their friends. Like that knowledge and experience should haunt them forever. Never trusting a dark room kinda traumatized. But I still think that Cosmic/Space Horror is more interesting and terrifying, the scale of the threat is so much more amped up. Like encountering the cosmic entity in Event Horizon is basically the equivalent to finding out that not only does God exist, he is also a colossal sadistic Lovecraftian nightmare. Seeing a werewolf would scar me, seeing a cosmic god would destroy my sanity. I mean, space is still mostly unfamiliar to us(the audience) and imagining the horrors it could provide is interesting. Not least of all because who is to say that something as terrifying as the Thing or Alien doesn't actually exist and we've just yet to encounter it? Like cosmic horror can really mess people up on a deep level sometimes just by making them... think very intensely about a subject they otherwise would not have... Years ago a woman who later became my best friend told me that a cosmic horror film involving religion she had seen, not only terrified her when she was younger, but it made her abandon Catholicism. "How do we know for sure who we're praying to, and what if prayers make him stronger?" That was her reasoning for doing so and it took a cosmic horror film to completely change her beliefs and make her question blind obedience to religion. That is something that the majority of more mainstream horror films are not capable of doing. I mean for all we know the cosmic entity in Event Horizon is God and we've all been duped into praying it gets us... that is scary.
So, naturally, the most logical followup will be the "Space is not nearly as scary as we thought" AKA "Humans are Space Orcs"/"Earth is space Australia"?
While I like the concept most of those stories tend to be stories that completely overblow the abilities of humanity and earth to the point it’s kinda cringe. We could very well be Space Orcs, however it’s extremely unlikely we’re Superman and that what those stories tend to boil down to.
Those stories tend to swing too far in the opposite direction to the point it becomes comical. A nice middle ground is needed where yes there are plenty of stuff that can kill you just like anywhere else but we aren't helpless either. That and not everything wants us dead.
"The unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a Velociraptor" is quite possibly the best description of a xenomorph I've ever heard. Simultaneously the kawaii'ing of xenomorph eggs was not what I planned to be the highlight of my day.
@@RvEijndhoven did you know that to make the original costume they used real human teeth and other disturbing materials? I won't go into full detail, but you should look it up.
Space-Horror? PALES in Comparison to the Radicalization-Wave and the horrifying traditional Values of the Right-Wingers and Conservatives! I mean, seriously, have you seen what's going on nowadays? People quote the Handmaid Tales Villains when quoting Conservatives Values, even if we ignore Trumpism and/or Conservativsm right-now this Summer lashin-out against all LGBT. Be my guest: Watch Telltale Fireside Chat, Emma Thorne, Professor Dave and Holy Koolaid document-well the Descend-into-Madness we all have to Face.
@@loturzelrestaurant Yes, right now are world is messed up, but what scares you more? the fact that this world is screwed up? Or the fact that we have nowhere to go if we can't fix it? This is it. This is all we got unless a miracle of science comes up with faster methods of travel.
The content warning had me worried that I would be scared of space by the end of this, but when the talk of black holes, just about the scariest thing that we know about in the cosmos, just made me whisper "space is cool," I realized that my priorities might be broken in the best way possible.
I had the same reaction. Space isn’t terrifying to look at, it’s awe inspiring and interesting. Sure, there are hazards and things to avoid getting close to, but as long as you take those threats seriously and don’t poke at them or take necessary precautions, there’s so much to learn and explore and it’s fascinating!
I started watching a lot of space-related videos during the height of Covid, and I found it reassuring and inspiring. Just the idea of how many wonders we've found from a distant glance at our own solar system, and how it preserves the human spirit of exploration. I mean, I grew up thinking of Pluto as "that boring little ball on the edge of the solar system"....but now, turns out it's got five moons of its own, it has ice volcanoes and a possible subsurface ocean, it's nowhere near the most remote planetoid (Sedna's orbit is CRAZY)....and it's beautiful. And there's so much fascinating stuff being discovered about Saturn, Mars, Venus, the asteroids.....and we're already getting data about the amazing weirdness of extrasolar planets, including several that might have life-friendly conditions.
Never mistake not sharing someone else’s particular fears for something being wrong with you. Some people are terrified of snakes, others gleefully pet them. Some people have existential dread about space, age, or the inevitability of death, and some people just don’t care. Similarly, never assume that your personal fears are universal.
me too! for me it's more like space is utterly terrifying and breath-takingly awesome. those two facts correlate and contribute to each other. space is awesome!!!
Space without the fictional horrors is already scary. Ever read The Martian? A completely scientifically accurate planet from the real world almost kills our protagonist dozens of times by just not being earth.
I think the most harrowing moment in the book comes from the most mundane thing: he's counting potatoes, doing some back of the napkin math, and coming to the realization that he's over a hundred days of food short.
i mean you can easily do the same story on earth. mountains, icy tundra's, deserts, any large body of water. humans aren't tough animals, we're fucking fragile as shit. i think (haven't seen it, just know the premice) the martian is just horrifying because people know he's there, and that he needs help, but to give it will take so much time.
@@bubblesbomb8949 tbf, I didn't learn any physics that I didn't already know, but she put in such an interesting way that it did reframe things a bit. :)
For the record if anyone deals with existential angst, you may or may not want to look these up. No mention of gamma ray bursts, vacuum decay, strange matter, earth turning into a rogue planet by a close encounter with a smaller star, primordial black holes, relativistic kill vihecles, etc etc. I am honestly a bit disappointed.
I love how in Warhammer 40k FTL travel "warp" is so fucked it has a chance to not only kill you or trap you for an indefinite amount of time, but even if you make it out you might not even end up where you wanted to go and might just be lost forever. In 40k dying is a privilege.
Oh and you better hope that the Imperium sacrificed the baseline number of witches that day or else you won't be able to navigate literal Hell. Because the Emperor's psychic light is how humans math out where to go. Not only that, but you just gotta pray your shields work and withstand the onslaught of storms made from literal rage, lust, and despair and not to mention demons just walking around.
I love Warhammer's take with the Tyranids. How they just kinda keep appearing into our galaxy from a different side each time. Implying the milkyway is just sorrounded on all sides by a malignant force of nature that only seeks to consume and according to all evidence has never been unsuccessful.
This guy gets it. You could even say they are, in fact, a Space Man. I understand the vast and unfeeling cosmos have a reputation to maintain, but I have elected to ignore that & instead embrace the wonder which comes from realizing humans on Earth are not even the _beginning_ of scratching the surface
Me, a fan of 40K: Ah, just a regular Tuesday then. Even before you add the sadist space elves, the genocidal grasshoppers, the furious fungi and actual, literal, hell itself.
My favourite work of Space Horror is Metroid Fusion. The premise is that badass Intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran is called in to guard a research team on planet SR-388, which is where the Metroids lived, until she was hired to exterminate them on a previous mission. There, they encounter a strange mutation of a species that previously existed on SR-388, which Samus takes down, but its corpse morphs into a floating blob that infects Samus. Her suit is surgically removed, and sent to a research station out in space, and she is injected with Metroid DNA, as they were what kept this mysterious X Parasite from spreading. This saves her life, and turns her into the only person able to combat them, at the cost of being more frail than normal, and being deathly weak to cold. She is then sent out to the research station that had her infected suit pieces, to look into a breach in the containment bay. Eventually, after witnessing the devastation caused by the X infecting, killing, and mutating everything it touches, she runs into the mysterious saboteur: a full power X version of herself, who hunts her as if she were a Metroid. With that, Fusion has set the stage. You’re trapped on the station, not because the bay doors won’t open, or because your spaceship is busted, but because of your duty. You’re the only one who can do this, and if even a single infected life form gets out, the universe is screwed. She gets more powerful by the end of the game, but at that point, you’re on a time crunch. The X are comparable to the Flood, or the Tyranids, but fortunately, you were lucky enough to catch the beginning of their second attempt at universal assimilation. Because the Metroids weren’t just Xenomorphs, they were essentially Xenomorphs bioengineered to kill the Flood.
I was hoping Red would mention Reboot in this one, everything about The Web in that show messed me up for years. Though I guess that happens when a three-year old is exposed to out-of-nowhere cosmic horror.
5:51: Red mentions that body-snatcher alien invasions got popular around the Red Scare era, but she didn't mention that OG "aliens just park their battleships in orbit and invade" alien invasions got popular as an outgrowth of a genre called "invasion literature," which was basically the same but with German battleships parking in the English Channel instead.
Sometimes the aliens are a reflection of our own colonialism, sometimes the aliens are a reflection of our paranoia about spies, sometimes we're the baddies to the aliens in ways that reflect we're baddies to each other... alien invasion stories are always about real world politics and have always been. Even the ones where we are the scrappy underdogs who fight off invaders, it's still about glorifying aspects of war to deflect from its horrors which is even more political.
@@phastinemoon That is indeed possible. It's also possible that explaining that properly would take a minute or so of context otherwise irrelevant to the video. Either way, I don't care; I only care about explaining this interesting bit of literary history to people who scroll deep enough into the comment section.
I once heard a fictional story about a experiment that was basically how isolation works in space. A few people were sent to space and instructed to all remain in their own rooms, which had lots of stuff to keep your mind off of it, for however long the experiment was(can't remember). mc's door disappeared and over a few years without ever feeling hungry the earth, moon, sun, and everything else in our solar system disappeared until the stars started disappearing too. The mc ended up trying to kill himself by ramming his body into the window of his room several times until the other people on board called off the experiment because they could hear mc trying to kill himself. As soon as they entered the room everything returned and only five minutes had past. Edit: probably Magnus archives
I swear, the Flood is the sole reason I had nightmares about people around me being corrupted or betraying me for YEARS as a kid. I was playing Halo 3 with my best friend at the time, and I had watched him play Halo before so I knew what the Flood was already. I wasn't ready for how different it was watching him defeat the Flood with unwavering confidence and me actually having to face the Flood myself alongside him. It was terrifying.
@@pizza-for-mountainsI know some character artists personally, belive me it's "unfazed". They find some police photos from crime scene and think "oh, neat reference to how layers of skin can separate
I never thought of Majora’s mask as space horror. That’s an interesting horror definition. I only thought of it as monster horror but space horror makes more sense.
I always see Majora's Mask as more existential / eldritch horror since I interpreted the moon as not being from space. I don't think space exists in the Zelda universe, it's like the realm of the gods or something
Yeah, Majora's Mask is more space/cosmic adjacent - the threat is "ancient evil artifact attempts to go nuclear" and dropping the moon is just the chosen method.
It's weird. Space has always been a massive comfort to me. A constant reminder that no matter how big my problems were to me they were objectively nothing in the grand scheme of things. A reminder of how incredibly blessed I am to be alive right here at this moment with the opportunity to learn so much out there. My wife and I fell in love spending hours after hours discussing astronomy and all of our children have space inspired names like Stella Nova, Sagan and Aurora. Space has never been a threat to me. It's always been a promise.
What you're describing is Anti-Nihilism. Ironically, it evolved as a philosophical reaction to Nihilism's, "Your problems are nothing, you don't matter, the earth doesn't matter. So, why bother doing anything at all." It's the Emo Teen phase of philosophy.
I like your comment and you make a good point. The problem, however, is that there is nothing inconsistent in space being both. Eternity is both a promise and a threat, with the bonus that it will get you eventually
I don't know. Accepting the fact that our existence is simply an outcome of many that holds no significance should fill you with a little dread. We place so much importance on the slim probability of our being like it has any sort of real meaning. All traces of our civilisation and all life in our system will vanish eventually and we will have been a grain of sand in an ocean the size of the sun that existed for less than a second. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, or how long you live or what you did. We only live to live and then nothing.
"Space the final frontier is absolutely terrifying." Even William Shatner, of Star Trek's Captain Kirk fame, had this reaction when he went suborbital in a recent Blue Origin flight. His first statement after landing described his feeling of space as just "death."
For a man who has made it his life to be able to talk about things, watching him after he landed was awesome. He was at a loss for words to describe what he just experienced. That, in and of itself, was amazing.
Y'know, of everything in here, the only slight anxiety I actually felt was the one about stuff like meteors because that just seems like a thing that could really happen with our present understanding of the universe. We know it's happened before. So thank you for taking the extra moment to explicitly alleviate worry from that bit lol.
Oh, just fyi, it sometimes happens that a new meteor flies by an unexpected angle so fast that by the time anyone has detected it and figured out its orbit, it's way too late to stop it. These news always end with "Well, we detected it but it _has_ already missed us, so I guess there's nothing to worry about"
@@pandoragoldspan7012 That's true enough. The vast majority of those are small enough that they would either disintegrate in the atmosphere, or only minor damage, like the one that fell in Russia; They're not planet-busters. Or, at least, they haven't been, so far. There's nothing to stop a bigger meteor from having an eccentric enough orbit with a big enough period that the first we ever see of it will be with less time to impact than anyone could use. It's unlikely, sure, but it's not unfeasible. Earth gets peppered with tiny unaccounted rocks all the time. Sure, they're harmless in the vast majority of them. But it only takes one.
Honestly, OP? Same. The fact that space is a relatively hot/cold apathetic vastness that can eat me and spits out objects that can eat me yet makes MOAR objects (some of which can spontaneously be Useful) via splosions and Oh Are They All So So Pretty is *exactly* the appeal of space to me …the only existential dread I get from it is the ol’ theoretical Universal Cold Death where it all just. Ends. No more yo-yo recycling splosions effect. It’s gone. I’m okay with something being too vast to ever be reachable that would apatherically devour me so long as it’s a self-sustaining system. But all the stars blowing out and big chunky rocks and/or gas bubbles being pushed too far apart to ever fuse? THAT’s as depressing as, say, IF humanity is somehow kicking around after the Sun hits its midlife crisis and noms the inner planets like a burger binge for catharsis…there won’t be anything “close” enough to observe beyond our galaxy and/or galaxy arm and/or solar system depending on where whatever rock and bubbles humanity’s still clinging to gets, y’know, ejected. Humanity being very small and very fragile and very, very far away? No issue. All The Stuff that could easily rip us apart if our planet wanders too far from the sun’s toddler leash tether just…ending? THERE’S the existential crisis
We don't need to worry about meteors hitting Earth. A lot of smart people are already making careers out of worrying about it for us. My first existential crisis was when I was learning about space. I was having trouble trying to imagine the distances I was reading about, because they were just so BIG. Then I realized that we talk about an infinite universe, which means that I wasn't even close to understanding the scope of a tiny fraction of the universe. I had a panic attack and avoided thinking about infinity until High School.
I love how The Expanse makes the scary thing your own ship accelerating too quickly. Yeah sure, it has a mysterious force which threatens the solar system, but also consistently you can't run away cause you can't go faster than the enemy or you die. We don't need new and exciting physics to kill people, the ones around are already good enough.
But that bit where it's like. "So the way I see it: I'm still Amos. I just know some things I didn't used to know." "Yeah." "But Cap, one of the things I know now... those things out there in the dark? They're gonna kill us all."
one of more interesting ""horror scenarios" i have seen recently was that scene when guy invented the most efficient engine ever, but didn't knew that yet. there is something poetically cruel in being killed by being a genius and revolutionazing humankind
@@olotocoloalso the fact that in that universe, that engine was so efficient, 200 years later its still accelerating and is now a star in the night sky
@paulsmart4672 "An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here."
Space being "the final frontier" is a gross over underestimation of the almost eldritch vastness of it. And we cannot go there to check. which leaves everything to the imagination, something that is limited by what one knows and fears. And Space is bigger than that.
Exactly. We are currently tackling the frontier of our solar system, which is in itself a speck of sand on an island of matter in the sea of space. I would say the "final" frontier of space would be once we set out to explore a new super cluster. Until then, we are still in our own backyard. Hardly the "final" frontier. And, to be honest, much of the universe might simply by mathematically impossible to explore, meaning the final frontier will be whatever law that exists to stop us between here and there.
Love how the messed up warp drive is the entire premise for The Hitchhiker’s Guide! The original ship they escape on uses the improbability drive, which calculates how improbable it would be to warp through space to their destination, and makes the improbable happen. However, in their getaway they fail to shield the cabin from this, and as a side effect the rest of their lives is highly improbable. For example, every animal the protagonist kills, from an accidental fly to a rabbit for food, is the same person reincarnating! That’s the most minor example I could think of, a lot of the plot revolves around this, without explicitly stating it.
I generally really like this type of horror. The open-ended trapped feeling gives writers a *lot* of leeway to do whatever kind of horror they want. from chaotic "what is the nature of madness" in Pandorum to "slow burn, there is no winning thriller" of Stowaway.
I'm glad I'm not alone in realizing most of what we fear of aliens comes from what we fear about ourselves. Especially the colonizing warmonger part. That's a good chunk of human history right there. And we can look at the crap we do to eachother and look up at the stars and say, "Yeah, can't blame them for social distancing on expert mode. I'd stay away from Earth too."
I mean, this is literally the argument people make about why maybe we shouldn't make contact, we've been unkind to our own species not seeing other people as humans over something as stupid as skin color, so even a intelligent alien race might not see as equals or someone to respect as people.
Fundamentally, is it possible for a human writer to write anything that isn't, at its core, a reflection of humanity? If a writer can imagone something, then that thing is comprehensible by humans, right? So can human writers ever create something truly alien?
@@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109 Maybe, but I haven’t seen it. I mean, the closest species I created to that is the Belowers. A species of individual collections of hiveminds that was born in a planet not an overt lab without emotions. Then One of the hiveminds, Backstabber The Belower “gifted” the Belower species hiveminds emotions and it all went downhill for the Belowers from there. And even then there are some human parallels.
I've already made my peace with "space is scary" and if I were to die in a horrific and unsettling manner up there then that was just my fate that we shouldn't try to change! just LET! ME! UP! THERE!!
the first movie I ever went to was Star Trek:First Contact when I was two months old, and according to my mum it was the first time I was completely quiet and relaxed. I was literally *built* for space is scary, pls NASA just let me up there
Lmao same. It's like Jurassic Park right, If someone asked if I would like to see a real life Jurassic Park but there's a high chance I will be eating by a dinosaur what am I going to say? Count me in! Even if something goes horribly wrong I will be forever known in history books as *The first man ever to be eaten by a dinosaur.* The first man to die on Mars is going to be a legend.
@@Googledeservestodie now all I'm seeing is Jurassic Park In Space. what's a bigger historical honour than first man eaten by dinosaur? first man eaten by dinosaur on the *moon!* all I'm saying is that I'd watch that movie
Something I really liked about The Expanse was how threatening space itself was. Sure there's monster protomolecule and scheming politicians and charismatic space terrorists, but there's also punching a hole in the hull and running out of oxygen and a crack in your space suit and zero grav making minor wounds life threatening and running out of water and having lived so long in space that your body literally cannot handle planetary gravity anymore. The environment is always just as dangerous as whatever else is going on.
I personally think the scene from episode 5.10 where Naomi takes a blind leap out an airlock with only the air in her suit, where the camera is a single shot from insider her helmet and the only audio is what she can hear, ie. only herself, is one of the most terrifying and moving scenes in all television.
The Expanse is the epitome of all space horror genre. Every turn of a new angle or info I was expecting it as an example, but it works as the ultimate MOFO sum off all fears.
I enjoyed a book series called Chaos: Magical Princess. It's a western-style series about a Japanese girl who gets Isekaid into another world and is reborn as... a Cthulu Cosmic Horror. A thing that eats any organic thing. It's a lot like a horror story but from the monster's perspective. And yes, because it's an isekai, it includes a harem. Not a reverse harem. The MC is a female character who enjoys BEING the tentacle monster. It was quite fun to read and I couldn't put any of the books down, now I'm waiting for the last book to release.
I love existential horror and the fear of the unknown. Space being so vast and so empty makes us feel so small and insignificant and I love it. Blue is definitely right about this needing a content warning. I love this kind of stuff but it definitely can and will freak out the unprepared
For anyone interested in the "something very big is falling towards earth" story with a creepy twist, I suggest looking up "Hellstar Remina" by Junji Ito. But like all his mangas, this one really has the potential to mess you up for at least a couple days. [Insert all possible content warnings here - Blue was 100% right to include them in this topic]
Just a Junji Ito content warning is enough. If you know anything about his work, you know what you are dealing with (or you know you have no idea what you are dealing with most likely)
Lmao yeah I was just about to comment about this. Hellstar Remina is a great example of space horror, although ngl some elements of it are unintentionally funny (like near the end when gravity disappears & hundreds of people fly after Remina. That kinda took me out of the horror lol. But Junji Ito's work has always had bizarre/darkly comedic parts tbf) Honestly I think the spin off with the rich people trying to escape to the surface of the Hellstar was probably my favourite, but I think it works best after you read the original story because it really hammers home the hopelessness of the situation.
Hellstar Remina is by far the weakest of any of the junji Ito stories I've read. It wasn't just the gravity part that was goofy, but the absurd speed with which the entire population of earth decided to go on a manhunt for two people based off of only the loosest of connections.
@@talmanesdelovinde302 Ngl I think that was meant to be the point; The story is meant to highlight how futile every single one of humanity's actions are as this planet just gets closer and closer. Imo it would make sense for people to sooner blame the entire event on two innocent people than to confront their own cosmic insignificance. That's cosmic horror 101 That being said, it doesn't necessarily mean it was handled well. I do think that Hellstar Remina had pacing issues, and it was strongest earlier in the story where humanity's reactions to the approaching planet were way more grounded. I think the fact it went off the rails so quickly is just a symptom of how Ito's stories usually go (similar to Uzumaki, although even that had a slightly slower build up to total madness). I think that's why the first half of the story & the mini spin off where they go to the planet's surface are my favourite parts of the story. Imo it could've worked slightly better if the spin off was actually the most out-there part of the story, rather than the anti gravity cult chase. Also as much as I was rooting for Remina I think it should've ended with her being killed by the fanatics, only for it to not affect the planet at all & leave everyone with the horrible realisation that all of it was for nothing. The bunker thing at the end was a kind of weird direction for the story to take, and didn't feel like it fitted tonally speaking.
"It's not that there's nowhere to run, there's a whole universe out there. It just won't help you."
That's a terrifying line, even beyond the realm of space horror.
Such a *RAW* line and I LOVE IT. XD
Indifferent horror is so surreal and immersive
That's why maid in abyss is my favorite anime
"You know the incomprehensibly vast horde of ruthless space locusts from outside the galaxy currently destroying our civilizations? They are _running from something._ "
@@Sorain1 This is one of my favorite tropes! Finding out some severely OP force we can barely even comprehend is really just a small fish in the sea of space, desperately trying to survive, is such an enjoyable way to get the point across that we, like our planet, are meaningless in the vastness of space.
In a similar vein, people tend to say that in space, no one can hear you scream. But the universe can. It just doesn’t care.
Ever thought about how the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs has the largest birds killed to stones thrown ratio of all time?
Flumpty Bumpty killed 1000000 birds with one stone. That stone was an asteroid, and yesterday was the apocalypse.
Nice lol
This has to be one of the observations I’ve read
Mhm, but Dinosaurs aren’t birds, Birds are dinosaurs.
So no birds were killed?
@@ryonalionthunder do we count Archaeopteryx?
"ok now imagine all the fucked up stuff humans do"
"uh-huh"
"now imagine someone DOES IT TO US"
*gasps in the crowd*
Every civilization Europe colonized/invaded:
Honestly this sums up why I dislike retro scifi (aside from startrek and something more space-opera-y like starwars) perfectly. A LOT of it is based in (neo) colonialism and Red Scare propeganda and a dash of xenophobia/racism. (Similar hot take for zombies and monster/demon hunting tropes. Ableism and/or suspicion to hostility towards entire groups of people of a different sexuality/gender/skintone/culture/etc. Just. Not a fan.)
…more power to people who can enjoy those tropes, anyway, but my disbelief just Isn’t suspended whatsoever. Or, not enough to keep me from, say, rooting for “the BAD guys!” instead. (Especially if they’re sympathetic in any way.)
@@salvadortoscano2534 …and Europe-offshoots.
[squints at US, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand.]
@@salvadortoscano2534 Don't be silly, the Global South doesn't get to have a voice in science fiction.
@@salvadortoscano2534 All the nations that were busy enslaving and genociding each other before the Europeans came along:
"The unholy offspring of a gimp-suit and a velociraptor" might be the most hilarious description of any monster I've ever heard.
As space is a place we could go there! Who knows who’s out there.
It became one of my favorite descriptions ever.
Amen!
I wanna like this, but it’s at 666 and I don’t wanna disrupt the satanic perfection
It's apt too. You ever look at HR Giger's other art?
It's... Unique 😅
Ah yes Tyrannids, Xenomorphs, the Flood. Nothing is more terrifying than humanity’s imagination of predators more effective than ourselves.
The flood are a different kind of horror. They are subversive and aberrant. They grab you and painfully warp you into something horrible. The Thing, The Many, The Beast, all of them are scarier than a xenomorph ever could be. The tyranids use a more existential angle. They are always becoming stronger and more dangerous. You can blow them up but there will always be more. They surround the galaxy and soon they will come to feast. I love Alien but the horror of the Xenomorph can’t match the others.
Kinda interesting that all these monsters use a somewhat parasitic relationship with humans (infecting a human to either control them or reproduction)
The sheer fact that the flood’s final stage of evolution is to just peace out of our universe to spread to others is both incredibly badass and highly unnerving.
the flood has so much stuff going on, Xenomorphs at least stop after a certain point because they're animals, the flood just keeps growing because its a parasite, Which is why we got my favourite visual for a planet that's "living" and has a giant mouth
Yeah I think if we encounter another intelligent life form they will be deeply disturbed by our imagination.
“The unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a velociraptor” is now my favorite description of the Xenomorph ever.
This explains too much about H.R. Geiger's creative process.
he loves his phallic bio-mechanical creatures.
best description of anything ever
And it fits so perfectly
Fun fact! Part of the original costume was an actual human skull
"Up is more than just a fun direction Tigers sometimes come out of!" Red throwing out gold lines like this just makes my day
That feels like a red rising reference (speaking of sci-fi)
@@thecrappycoder tigers are ambush predators that like to climb into trees to jump on their prey, so the line was referring to needing to look up so you don't get jumped
This line made me laugh so much I had to Pause the Video 😅
funny, I thought it was a Calvin and Hobbes reference.
or elephants, if anyone's seen that futurama clip
"Unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a velociraptor" is probably the best way I've ever heard someone describe the Xenomorph.
And most unexpectedly true, since the Xenomorph is a metaphorical fear of sex.
Hilarious but also terrifying.
The other description she's used is "the bastard offspring of a blender and a velociraptor." Also quite accurate.
I had to go back and hear it again. Lmao
ridley scott once said "dear god stop with the dragons"
If blue says it needs a content warning it needs a content warning
Yeah
Isn't Blue also scared of the ocean (according to the Atlantis video)?
Yeah
Unless it's just a picture of some cool fish. _(Underwater!)_
With as much war as he talks about he certainly isn't squeamish.
My favorite space trope is “Earth is Space Australia”, which implies that while space is weird, we are also weird, and even if we can’t handle a situation perfectly we can at least survive it.
As an Australian, I am simultaneously offended and stoked that our Great Southern Land is equated to the vast empty void of nightmares
So what you're saying is to shoot a bunch of prisoners into space and see how things shake out? Lol
@@shadowprince4620 We do seem alot more deadly to the outside observer so it adds up
@@shadowprince4620 "vast empty void of nightmares" That might very well describe Australia
That trope is kinda a reaction to "space is super hostile", it just flips the script and most races in the galaxy take 1 look at earth and classify it as the most hostile world capable of suporting life. Its often coupled with "humans are space orcs" which makes sense considering humans are also from planet hell/ a death world.
Weird that you didn't mention the sea horror as it's a strong precursor to the space horror. In fact lots of stories that we now think of as space things are taken directly or indirectly from the seafarer stories. We have several stories that directly compare the two, like the treasure planet. Lots of stuff to explore
Yeah i guess, being on the ocean, would feel very isolating, and give the sea shanty tunes, and storys told. It makes sense space horror is a evolution of ghost ship tails.
Lovecraft, it's called Lovecraft
@@riolu471 nah, Sea Horror substantially predates Lovecraft. It's in things like the original Flying Dutchman legend...
@@AnimeSunglasses I know, Lovecraft just happens to have based his entire genre around sea horror, which makes him a good example.
@@riolu471 I mean, if you consider only The Dunwich Horror & The Call of Cthulhu, you'd be right. But Lovecraft's stories weren't entirely based around sea horror, they were based around the horrors of the unknown.
“Up is more than just a fun direction tigers come from sometimes.” Well. That solidly made this my favorite video yet.
The drawing of the Alien eggs sealed the deal for me.
Space tigers.
I paused and burst out laughing at that one.
"Wha-"
And yet somehow we’re generally terrible at checking above us for threats
For me the deep ocean version is the most terrifying "space" story. You still get the crushing loneliness of space mixed with the possibility of a Mt Everest sized spider squid ready to eat you 10 feet away yet you can't see it. Which is why Subnautica is such a great game.
This! This with giant tentacles!!
And the ocean gives hundreds of times the pressure differential that space can produce.
if your interested in that Horror the magnus archives has a very good episode on that, and many other types of horror
There's a great little horror indie game about this, which actually does play into the space horror aspect too. It's called Iron Lung.
Does "The silent sea" count as space horror?
Iron lung is the perfect mix
Space lore
Ocean gameplay
"Experts around the world agree that humans... look up sometimes." Very untrue, I've played enough Dishonored to know that having a Y value greater than your opponent basically makes you invisible
Anyone who's familiar with 3D video game creation also likely knows how difficult it can be to get *players* to look up, for that matter.
@@danewardlocke9014 It's the reason barnacles were introduced in Half-Life, just to make the "up" more exciting.
@@dikkie1000 "What's up?" said the FPS gamer.
The barnacle burped.
(At least it's not Deep Rock Galactic where it's literally impossible to break free of one of those head-eating bastards yourself, and also the tongues angle off to the side to make sure they can eat you.)
“Oh mY GoD tHAT’s noT rEaL LifE” but dumb jokes aside I do wonder if we’re actually like that in real life too cause we don’t perceive the world as it is but rather focus on very specific things, right? I wonder if the same thing actually does happen in real life too
Least they buff that for sequels... on a high enough difficulty.
Funnily enough, The Thing is space horror closer to Alien than any other genre.
As Jacob Geller said: "The monster may kill them but the cold will"
In the thing, there is really no where to run since a few minutes outside will likely kill you
Yes, space horror doesn't mean it has to be cosmic space, but just vast emptiness around you. A sand/rock/ice desert and the ocean (surface or below) deliver a very similar threat
For those who don't know, Jacob Geller is a youtuber who produces some fantastic content and has a love for the horror genre in general. His videos are well thought out and he's clearly a smart guy who knows what he's talking about. Highly recommended you check him out if you haven't already.
Vaya vaya veo que Danny es un hombre de cultura
Good point.
Seconds out in space will kill you or at least severely and I mean very very very severely disfigure you
"There are only two options: either we are alone in the universe, or we aren't. Both are equally terrifying"
There is a third option. We are not alone in the universe, but any other intelligent species is so far away from us that they may as well not exist.
@@mjbull5156 That's just the first option. . .
Give XCOM a couple years to deal with it, they'll make damn sure there's only one option.
I kinda like Dead Space's take on it, that by the time humanity achieves space travel every other alien civilizations are dead.
@@lordshennington2756 Not really. Quantum communication may be possible even if travel remains difficult. Also humans can't survive a 10,000 year trip, but AI can. It's definitely possible to reach other life, it just takes a while. I won't even entertain the idea that we're alone in the universe though. It's not mathematically likely.
"But 'Up' is more than just a fun direction tigers sometimes come out of."
Thanks for the warning, I wouldn't have been prepared for that terrifying realization otherwise.
I am more scared of hawks and eagles to be honest. Just yesterday they took cousin Jeffrey
Don't worry, tigers are mostly terrestrial. It's the leopards that will attack you from the trees.
@@talroitberg5913 Well now I just hate cats in general.
@@mongooseunleashed Trust me, the feeling is mutual. Even the house cats barely tolerate us clumsy apes fawning over them. There is a SMBC comic that sums up the domestication of cats as follows
Human: Hey, are you killing the vermin that's been getting into my grain?
Cat: That's none of your damn business.
"Have you looked up? THATS WHERE TIGERS COME FROM, YOU IDIOT!
have you read a book? THAT'S WHERE TIGERS SLEEP, YOU IDIOT!"
2001: A Space Odyssey really sold the horror of space with its SILENCE. The sense that you have no idea what could happen, what can be happening right behind you, or even in front of you, and the fact you have no idea until it is far, far too late.
One of my favorite scenes from that movie is when the one astronaut is disconnected from the ship, and the camera holds on him slowly falling away into space.
Alien Isolation also had some neat space scenes
Vast emptiness/silence is something we have a hard time comprehending. Heck, In “The Martian” the dude had to find many ways to distract himself from the realization that he was alone in the empty desert of Mars
@@MatthewCSnow that probably what made him survive
The fear of space its you can see it coming and cant stop it, were alone in the universe, the universe is trying to kill us and SPECIFICALLY THE SUN! Or your alone.
And therea nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
Really impressed that you didn't bring up "The Dark Forest" theory of alien life. There is life out there, perhaps lots of it, but not all of it is nice, and nobody knows for sure who's nice, so everyone's metaphorically hiding in the bushes hoping those bad neighbors don't notice you.
Eh, I always thought that theory was flawed because it assumes groups don't team up to beat bad actors, or that bad actors can still cooperate with others for rational self interest.
It's the product of a suspicious, paranoid mindset.
@@universalperson Fair point. We're working off of what we assume is "basic human thinking" (aggressive paranoia = survival) but that in itself is flawed because we've only survived due to cooperation, not mindlessly nuking each other.
@@WildFyreful on top of that, aliens wouldn't have any kind of human psychology at all. Or that they would have any psychology in common with other aliens. They could be a parasitic swarm of locusts, they could try to understand others like some of us would. We just don't know. I think a human's perception of aliens can say more about the human.
@@universalperson
Alien biochemistry and psychologies brought about by those are not the same as human biochemistry and psychology.
Actually that kind of makes me feel better. Two (or more) sides mutually scared of each other can poke their heads out and go, “aren’t you going to kill me?”
“That depends, are you going to kill me?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Oh! Okay then, hi!”
Space Travel: The *literal* Lovecraftian lovechild between Claustrophobia and Agoraphobia.
Weren't the Mountains Of Madness guys outer space aliens?
@@williamchamberlain2263 yes, colonists that settled on earth eons ago.
"You mean there might be colors out there we've never seen before? _WHAT MIGHT THEY BE CAPABLE OF"_
@@cam4636 Some said HBO's Chernobyl miniseries was the most realistic take we'd get to a Lovecraftian story, and to "The Colour Out of Space" to boot.
@@NobodyC13 I'll just go back to worshipping Cthulhu
Ah Space Horror:
Mysterious colors unlike any seen, terrible gods, unending hordes of flesh eating aliens, and good ole fashion unknown knowledge
Such fun :)
Ahh… typical Friday
Reminds me of the anthology book "space eldritch"
The color is Magenta, actually.
@@AtaMarKat
Pink ja nai, Magenta da.
We can throw Lovecraft into a space shuttle and he'll probably produce a dozen books within the year.
Wasn't it also Blue that once said, "The Ocean is terrifying. The deeper you go, the more nightmares there are!"?
Space is the same thing except....more
Oh no .. your ...more tricked me
@@therebedragons2653 it tricked us all.
We have been fooled.
Space is infinite but far away. The deep is relatively small compared to space but really, really close (compared to space)
The only difference is that the demonic rough drafts deep in the sea are closer than whatever is floating in space.
@@therebedragons2653 yeh its pretty smart if they did that on purpose, got me too
One of my favorite examples of space horror actually comes from D&D. There’s an entity known as Atropus, The World Born Dead. It’s a moon-sized zombified head, said to be the remnants of a stillborn deity. It comes from distant space, and as it approaches a world, the world will slowly start to decay, until it begins orbiting the planet, effectively causing a necromancy-powered apocalypse. I always thought that was a cool usage of space horror in a non-sci-fi setting.
@RobotBlue if you’re interested, the book that contains the most info about it (and other similarly powerful beings) is from the 3rd edition of the game. It’s called “Elder Evils”.
I like how Marvel included the severed head of a Celestial as a locatation.
Atropus is REALLY cool tbh and I plan to use it for a campaign once Spelljammer comes out for 5e. I had the idea of a not-yet-at-full-power Atropus that acts like radiation, and as spelljammers go missing near this one area, or those that come back are filled with necrotic energy, you are tasked with navigating this area with the help of protective arcane tech.
@@dhampir_days Once... Spelljammer... comes out for 5e? Is this legit?
Edit: Oooohhh yeah... Dass nice. It's almost time to put away the 3.5e books.
@@benjiusofficial It's legitimacy depends on how much you like the Astral Plane and/or space. If you mean to use both, it's just the worst. I'll always miss the days you could blow yourself to kingdom come by using a fire spell in the phlogiston.
"Up is more than a fun direction tigers sometimes come out of"
Not even a minute in, and Red's channeling the ghost of Terry Pratchett...
Yeah, that really does read like something he would write. XD
I see that as an absolute win.
I thought it was a Calvin and Hobbes reference.
@@DDlambchop43 I don't know if Bill Watterson and Terry Pratchett ever read each other's stuff, but I'm fairly confident that, if they had, they would have been fans of each other
"But up is more than just a fun direction that tigers sometimes come out of."
Yes, it's also a delightful Pixar movie with one of the saddest openings ever
Where's that God-damned onion cutting ninja?
First thing that came to my mind was when Carl told Russell to hurry or the tigers would eat him
Space horror can basically be summarized as
“Don’t stare in to the abyss. After all it stares back”.
Doesn’t mean I don’t still love space.. but if even 1% of the VISIBLE (and real) threats from space come toward earth. We are done for.
You don't even need %1, all you need is a conveniently placed neutron star
with space the threat doesn’t even need to come towards us, it just needs to pull us towards it and we’re already screwed because we would be to far or to close to the sun to survive.
That line needs to be a tag line for a movie
Come towards? Nah. Come anywhere close at any point.
I looked into the abyss once and it did stare back ... then it said it liked my coat and we went to get lunch . The abyss is a pretty cool dude .
"It's not that there's nowhere to run. There's a whole universe out there. It just won't help you" is such a good line
An environment not helping you is quite scary.
Not gonna lie, I came into this thinking "Man, space ain't that scary"
Then I was reminded that space can still include my one weakness, jump scares
...
*boo*
@@cam4636 hey! Don't scare him like that....
Oooops sorry.
@@cam4636 AAAA-
@@cam4636 “Stop it Patrick! You’re scaring him!”
"It's not that there's nowhere to run, there's a whole universe out there, it just won't help you" is such a raw and horrifying line.
I always love the idea that somethings in the universe aren't just sympathetic or misunderstood. That sometimes if you venture too far into the abyss the abyss finds you.
Yeah there’s a weird modern insistence that everything needs to be sympathetic or misunderstood and it’s kind of off putting. I get making your aliens misunderstood in your setting but like the void demon doesn’t need to be. The evil God doesn’t need a tragic backstory he’s an aspect of evil. You don’t need a reason for why this creature is eating people beyond it’s a predator.
@@thekinginyellowmessiahofha6308 predators aren't gonna target fairly dangerous preys like humans ,
And when spotted before going at full speed they may desist more ofthen than not ,
Prey animals on the other hand ...
They'll just aggro on every potential treat , and they won't desist until you've stopped moving ...
This is a delightfully creepy way to describe it.
A lot of media takes the ‘be sympathetic’ angle, but we’re just a bunch of highly evolved monkeys playing god. There are things out there that we cant even fathom, and that’s how you get Eldritch / Lovecraftian writing.
More so, the excellent examples are diseases, flus, viruses. No agenda, it’s propelled existence driven only by circumstances and logical spirals in events. Some just ‘accidentally’ harms our existence due to how our body works. Thickens blood a bit? Whoops, we can die from that! But the blood thickening itself? Not really sinister, just a chemical reaction+bodily disturbances.
@@thekinginyellowmessiahofha6308 This is one of the reasons how osama rankings ending was underwhelming.
Something that occurs to me about the agoraphobia of space: it seems like it would be much easier to get past this with, say, three ships traveling together instead of one big ship. Weird, maybe, but being able to look to your left or right and see another ship, at least in my mind, kind of makes it better.
It also means you have a better chance of surviving if something does go wrong. If you have two ships and one goes down, you're still flying half your ships.
Ooooo, what's that? Comforts and reassurances to strip away slowly and mysteriously? Don't mind if I do...
A story that starts with a whole convey of space ships but slowly the numbers are whittled down one by one with no way to stop it until there's only one ship left
Read illuminae, start with three ships, definitely doesn't end that way lol
@@kotanightshade8989Battlestar Galactica if the writers were even more eager to make their watchers miserable
"There are two possibilities: we are alone in this universe, or we are not. Both are terrifying."
Xcom has put the fear of space in me for too many years. Good to see someone address it
Good luck, Commander
Mate xcoms one of the nicer scenarios like at least we stand a chance in xcom
Space-Horror?
PALES in Comparison to the Radicalization-Wave and the horrifying
traditional Values of the Right-Wingers and Conservatives!
@@shelleymcrae514 the cannon ending of the fist game (newer ones) is that we loose.
Do not look in to the Warhammer 40 000 universe then, and the Tyranids.
Hearing Red call a xenomorph the “unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a velociraptor” is probably my favorite thing ever
It made me laugh so hard while I was listening to it in the bus
Genuinely the funniest thing I've heard in weeks. The whole vid is amazingly well written. But that's the moment my "like" turned to "love".
I just realized that, even after this video, the reason space doesn't scare me nearly as much as it should, is because I grew up near the ocean.
The ocean holds all the categories of fears that space does (predators from all directions, completely inhospitable to humans, threats in the form of severe weather, fast currents, crushing pressure, freezing Temps, ect), but to me, the main difference? Why I had thallassaphobia for decade but was never really scared of space?
The ocean will kill you slowly, every time. At least in space, you have fast options.
...yeah sorry was just thinking 😅
The ocean is beautifully terrifying in indeed similar ways as space can be, and surprisingly enough, the ocean can be even more hostile than space. Remember that it is relatively easier to sustain a habitat in space than deep under the ocean.
I grew up about a half hour away from the pacific ocean, and I have to be careful when I visit the beach or else I will literally dissociate thinking about how vass the ocean is.
😰
Let’s hope Blue doesn’t look through these comments. He already has thallassaphobia. This might kill him.
Well... that's a glass half full perspective if ever I've seen one :P
My favorite thing about the hell/warp travel in 40k is that it essentially works by pure luck. It's literally "Hook a psychic up to a computer, wait till he sees a vision of Big E, then floor it and hope nothing gets inside."
Also, the same reasons work for Underwater stories too. Our terrestrial oceans are way too deep and way too dangerous for regular people to explore. It's dark, there's barely any life and the pressure will kill or destroy pretty much anything we can build. Shit, even if we *could* breathe down there, there's still pressure and *god knows what* down there.
TL;DR: Fuck the ocean and fuck space.
Imagine the oceans on an icy moon like Europa where there are no shallow areas or land, there is only the vast planet wide 100 km deep ocean... 😅
Yup
Warp in 40k is pretty much just winging it. Everything in 40k is nightmare fuel. It's also metal as fuck and I love it.
@@Dhips. Pretty much everything in 40k is winging it lol.
Kinda what happens when literal demons, magic, and technology so advanced that many people believe their flesh and blood to be weaknesses.
I'm not sure but I feel it's more complicated than that. The emperor hiselft creates psychic beacon that is like a lighthouse in hell. And yes, warp is hell it was peaceful afterlife for souls of those who have psychic powers or at least capabilities, but there was a war so drastic, unrelenting, cruel and long it... *warped* that space, created demons and now it's hell.
And wh40k has many more other ways of travel, Eldars use portals left for them by Old Ones, Necrons travel in ther own technology, Tyranids travel with speed of light and I don't know how TAU moves around.
But ayway, there are many ways to travel even in the warp, chaos can just go through, humans go around using special psychic shielding, psychic navigators and beacon and orks I think are too stupid to be affected by warp
"Space is scary." As someone who works for a space telescope, the incomprehensible vastness of the universe and the existential dread it brings is just my every day life.
Still love my job, though.
How does it feel like to work for a space telescope?
@@justsomejerseydevilwithint4606 Ha, that's pretty much my whole deal these days.
@@bcassalino pretty dope! It's nice contributing to the sum of human knowledge, even in my own small way.
The way you said you work "for" the telescope made me think its a sentient being who's also your boss. Like
"Yeah I work for the space telescope, he's pretty cool, his space jokes are terrible though." Or something like that
@@easterndragon9339 NASA hit Singularity _years_ ago, but it turns out that true AI are also giant nerds.
There have also been films like "The Martian," where the hostile environment of space is itself the villain, and more rarely like "Avatar", where the scary aliens prove to be less evil than their human enemies.
"The Martian" isn't space horror, though. At least not primarily -- it's a love letter to ingenuity. Or to use Mark Watney's words, a tribute to the power of "sciencing the sh*t out of this."
@@MrTmac9k I highly recommend reading Project Hail Mary if you liked The Martian.
@@Galaar I read it. Very noice, amazing cure for space horror
which she did mention, specifically bringing up Klaatu
While i wouldnt consider Avatar to be space horror you could probably spin the concept of human wads being the crushing force into space horror
“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Does "The silent sea" count as space horror?
@@k.5425 Looks like it?
I prefere the silence.
I mean surely we aren't the only life in ever-expanding universe even if it's just microbes there's still some life out there, I'm certain of it
Ancient culture: “wow, the sky is beautiful and so helpful for navigation”
Normal people now:”wow, space is beautiful and exciting”
Scientists and writers: “the universe is fucking terrifying”
Edit: thanks for telling me about the spelling mistake.
Scientists see black holes and think its cool and exciting. But yes writers are like "the universe is scary!"
Oh no, not the Tarrifs, i must escape to the one place uncorrupted by cappitalism: SPACE. Oh wait. NOOOoooo
That typo though. lol
I mean space Tarrifs are Terrifying, but mostly because of the implications of who is doing them and why. Also, where's my towel, I suddenly have concerns there might be a space highway building project afoot. ;P
the typo makes it better 😂
Space is full of things that are basically eldritch abominations, and apparently they want our money.
I love how my brain automatically read “by mysterious colors unlike any seen on earth…” In Red’s voice
To this day, that was one of the bits that made me laugh the most.
🙋🏼♀️
oh my god me too
"As a child, I considered such unknowns sinister. Now, though, I understand they bear no ill will. The universe is, and we are. "
- Solanum, on the unknowns of space, Outer Wilds.
Based
Wisest of the Nomai in my opinion, and definitely my favourite :)
There's a game I wish I could play for the first time again.
@@Oddi0 SAME YO. Gods that game was beautiful and clever.
This is the one game I wish I’d had the hardware to play when I found out about it. I experienced it through a playthrough but even so it was one of the most memorable games I’ve ever seen. Like, not to be dramatic but that game changed my life in a pretty measurable way.
One of the best Space Horror stories I've read is "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. It's about a first contact situation where the crew sent to meet the aliens realize that the aliens lack any form of sentience, and that the sentience that we humans hold so dear is a mistake in evolution that wastes our energy and makes us vulnerable. In this story, humans may be the only intelligent species in the universe with a sense of "self," and it's going to doom them.
I believe it was a love death and robots episode too, the swarm
Oh jeez that’s horrifying
The aliens claim sentience is an attack and yet, a few hours after meeting humans, deal effortlessly with it and around it.
In the second book they even communicate.
It also doesn't explain why so many successfull species on earth have developed a form of it or why it doesn't disappear in humans.
The author's main argument is "efficiency" but nature doesn't give a crap about that xompared to "effectiveness".
It's an interesting premise, but as an author track it falls pretty flat, pretty fast.
@@brll5733 Sounds like the author came up with an idea that he thought was really clever, but never took a step back to think about if it would actually work according to the fundamental laws that we know. Kind of like how the aliens from 'A Quiet Place' would be completely useless in real life, because in order to have hearing sharp enough to pick up even the slightest noise at long range would mean that something like a handclap would knock them on their ass, to say nothing of a gunshot.
@@brll5733 Dont insects do this kinda thing specifically colony insects
Although this isn't specifically unique to space horror, one of my favorite tropes used in this genre is isolation combined with declining resources. It's terrifying in a very realistic way. The idea of being trapped either alone, or with a small group of people that slowly drives each other crazy with little food and water is a situation that's really easy to insert yourself into. To me, the most scary stories are the ones that feel like they could actually happen.
Like the beginning of Endgame?
I need more Structure Gel
Iron Lung
Fun fact: the greek word "anthropos" (the one from "anthropology" and all) is a compound word that means "he who looks up"
Prove it.
@@Ag3nt0fCha0s it's from "ano" (άνω) and "throsko" (θρώσκω), which mean "up" and "to look" respectively
@@Ag3nt0fCha0s did you seriously just ask someone to prove an etymology claim instead of googling it?
@@JohnSmith-dr5zn bet you had to....look that up....
_Distant rimshot_
@@mermaidismyname Can you really expect intelligent discourse from someone whose name is "AgentOfChaos" in leetspeak?
The Expanse nails a frequently forgotten aspect of space travel: Speed. The acceleration required to actually get anywhere plays havoc on the body. Characters have to go through the ordeal of accelerating to several times Earth's gravity and being crushed into their seat. Characters die just trying to get from A to B in a reasonable time.
The Palladium Wars does this too. The Expanse gives a better idea of the emotional lives of spacers, but PW has good, really thought-through combat and a setting I'd put on par with Expanse.
John Hadleman's "The Forever War" also does this as well. In addition to other horrors of having Vietnam IN SPACE!!!
Space-Horror?
PALES in Comparison to the Radicalization-Wave and the horrifying
traditional Values of the Right-Wingers and Conservatives!
I mean, seriously, have you seen whats going on nowadays?
People quote the Handmaid Tales Villains when quoting Conservatives Values,
even if we ignore Trumpism and/or Conservativsm right-now this Summer lashin-out
against all LGBT.
@@loturzelrestaurant i think the best Horror is the Horror you resonate deepest with, but you are right to say there's ample horrible things in real life.
Yes, we have seen what's going on nowadays- I don't know that I'd class it as horror, though. I feel like one of the major purposes of horror is to claim ownership over the emotions of terror and fright. You are choosing to sit here to feel terrified. It would be a fairly enviable hypothetical to treat the real world in the same way- as something to be sat and feared for a movie's runtime, as if a discreet, packagable experience. Can you choose to experience transphobia for just two hours of your choosing a week? Can you choose to experience a tyranny over your reproductive rights for thirty minutes every two days while on the way to work?
Horror is a genre of media, and as such, includes intent. Someone intended for this to be frightening. They intended for you to be scared, and likely you did too while watching it. If they make you scared, you have other emotions, too- appreciation of the art, understanding of the fear, maybe even a sense of control: the monster was in your house, on your screen, at your leisure. You chose to be scared, and now maybe you even get catharsis from the story.
In real life, there is no safely opting-in to horror. You experience it whether you want to or not, with none of the cushion provided by an experience of a bouquet of emotions. It's just horrible. Not cathartic, but the thing-from-which-catharsis-is-needed.
Horror is Horror. Real life can only ever be horrible, never Horror.
An inverse of that the Expanse does well is that a *lack* of constant acceleration completely fucks you up. Even a few months in microgravity wrecks havoc on our bodies, and they do a good job of speculating what developing bodies in 1/6-1/3 of Earth G might look like and what chronic health problems they might have.
The fact that Red effectively made me believe that the entire known cosmos just being _literal, actual Hell_ is a better alternative to what it *really is* makes this my favorite trope talk to date.
IKR
I saw a video that posited that the hell from Event Horizon is The Warp from Warhammer 40K.
I feel like a close relative of the "sh*t goes wrong in space" story is the "sh*t goes wrong on the bottom of the ocean" story. both have the claustrophobia/agoraphobia angle and play with similar themes.
Another fun angle to play with in space/deep sea horror is leaning on the idea that we have always been threatened by whatever particular threat the plot is focused on, but are only just now learning about it. Obliviousness of danger can be deeply unsettling
yeah the ocean one is underrated
Don't forget "Shit goes wrong in a cold wasteland."
Ocean is scarier. In space there is nothing out there. You can see it. In the ocean you can't see anything and you know there is something out there. You just don't know what it is.
So, like The Abyss
Being oblivious of the danger, I think, is a huge part of cosmic horror. Cthulhu has been there all along; he could have woken at any time.
16:26 Here's a fun one: It's actually the _boiling_ void of space! With virtually zero environmental pressure, there's just not a whole lot holding things together. So, the major problem with being exposed to space isn't freezing or suffocating, it's the materials in your body sublimating, hanging around or a while, and then attempting to exit your body by any means available.
Technically speaking, space freezes, boils, and roasts you alive
All at the same time
@@eyald.8252 This is what makes hell a very apt metaphor for space
Oh yeah. You don't freeze in space.
*You boil alive*
_"You ever see a man die in space? You can tell the ones who held their breath. Their lungs rupture from all that gas expanding. Blood from their mouth like a torn pillow stuffed with red BB's. Stab Girl, she was a little thing. Carried switchblades. She knew to exhale. Watched her for a full minute. Puffed up like she had a peanut allergy. Floating by me with her mouth open, screaming, making no sound. Spit on her tongue boiling."_
- Red Death, a loving father
terrifying
“It’s not that there’s no where to run. There’s a whole universe out there. It just *wont help you.* “
Raw as hell line Jesus
Really, it is. It feels like a Villain line.
I would like to add one more point to the “space is terrifying column; entropy. That no matter what we do or how smart we evolve into after the remaining millions of years we have left, the sun will burn out, the universe will expand into an even greater infinity ripping everything at an atomic level. Well that was cheery, thanks for the vid
Embrace the meaninglessness of existence, maaan
While that is a possibility, the fact that it will happen so, SO far into the future makes it irrelevant to our day-to-day existence and not worth worrying about.
I find that part comforting. Death can retire, leave the universe behind, and pursue something else new and exciting.
"'Up' is more than just a fun direction tigers sometimes come out of"
That line was so funny, it _interrupted_ me. I had to stop working because I was laughing so hard.
Such a great way to start the video. Red is so damn funny
Lethal joke
The hyperspace "Blind Spot" in Niven's Known Space stories is actually pretty horrifying. One story has the protagonist look into it, and he proceeds to forget what it looked like, forgets how to see, forgets he has eyes until someone manages to close the shutter. The whole moment in just incredibly creepy.
...“Up is more than just a fun direction tigers come from sometimes.”
Not just tigers, also "drop- bears" in Australia. LOL
A.K.A: how I learned that Koalas aren't the cute things most think they are from my aussie friend!
The animal I most associate with "up" are all birds of prey and leopards.
Leopards can probably be found in trees far more often than tigers.
@@Callyn9x I’m sorry to break to you but you just got pranked by Australia
I think it's really interesting that space also kind of became "futuristic ocean" in literature. Treasure Planet is really on the nose with this, but basically the ocean is a vast empty deathtrap that people travel through to discover new things. And so is space. So many of our stories of seafaring can easily be translated to space. "Lost in space" stories are just futuristic castaway stories.
At least the ocean definitely contains life, that still adheres to the laws of our planet.
That's always been how I've seen space. To the possibility that space could contain scary things, my kneejerk response has always been "Awesome! I want to see!"
@@bluelfsuma That, and one can at least swim to the nearest lifeboat/raft/driftwood even if they are in their underwear.
In space, you need a full astronaut suit just to survive in the open. And 'swimming' in space does not work at all.
just here to declare my undying love for Treasure Planet
That "space itself is scary" reminds me of a certain incident in a dystopian game where there are warp trains that can take you anywhere in only 10 seconds :D
How do they work? By opening a portal between dimensions, taking a small detour that takes 20 thousand years, while also stopping time completely inside the train so that no one feels hunger or thirst, nor can they die. After the trip, all passengers get their bodies back, their memories wiped, and are left to think about how amazing technology is :)
We don't talk about Love Town...
In W Corp, your trip may last 10 seconds but your experience will last a lifetime.
I know you said it was a dystopia, but that honestly just seems _wildly_ inefficient. Like, who does that benefit?
@@Dusk_ShadeThe jobs they work for benefit immensely, because their employees can commute near-instantly to arrive on time from anywhere in the world. And it’s not like anyone inside remembers it happening.
@@Dusk_ShadeThe in-universe explanation is that the transportation company, W Corp, has a shady deal with T Corp to collect large quantities of time for them (don’t ask me how one goes about it collecting a metaphysical concept, I have no idea), so it’s in their best interest to keep their warp trains running through the spacetime continuum for as long as possible, and if it gets the unwitting passengers where they’re going 10 real world seconds later anyway, then W Corp has basically printed free time to then sell to T Corp.
It is very strange, and the lore of Library of Ruina has a lot of things like this-magical weapons that get stronger the more you dedicate yourself to your goal, giant pendulums that inexplicably predict the future because people believe that they can, a bus that grinds people down into their base elements and then reassembles those elements into fuel, some really crazy sci-fi shit.
Hehehe, the glee behind Red's voice in getting to speak at mild length about astrophysical phenomena was a delight to behold with my ears. It's good when creators are _audibly_ having fun.
It filled me with joy to hear someone rant about how terrifyingly and existentially fascinating space is in the same manner that I would rant about space to the point my friends would tell me to shut up because I’m giving them an existential crisis. Red and I are of the same mind in this video in wondering why there needs to be a content warning because we’re so deep into the horrors of space we forgot it was scary
And sh seems a hug atrinomy nerd and , that shows, you feel the passion and nerdiness.
Meh. She describes space phenomena like it's something truely terrifying. Like, "The Sun is a million times the size of Earth! It could swallow Earth whole and not even notice!"
But meanwhile, space enthusiasts (never mind an actual astrophysicist) is like, "Oh please. It's really quite average."
An old favorite HFY story of mine (title was something along the lines of "The Veil of Madness", I think) combined the "space is somehow malevolent" variant of this with the old "to aliens, humans are the aliens" thing - the result was that there was a huge stretch of space that literally nobody could go into without being driven mad and was thought to be totally devoid of life... until humans emerged from it, wearing primitive full-encapsulation space suits and using poor quality "radios" to communicate since unlike everyone else we didn't find an already-spacefaring civilization on our doorstep to standardize from.
As a result, the first impression on the galaxy by humanity was a terrifying faceless monster emerging from the Veil of Madness, sending incomprehensible static-filled signals, getting into a bit of a skirmish, and then turning around to return to the area that is so unknowable literally nobody has ever survived going in.
Holy shit thats badass
*quietly adds this to my reading list*
Neat. :)
Gonna read it tomorrow.
I just went and reread it myself - seems I got a couple of details wrong but the title and general idea were correct. Just a heads up in case people go find it and are confused.
HFY?
Don't worry, I've always known that space is terrifying beyond belief, in some ways that humans as a species simply didn't evolve to cope with or comprehend at all!
@@paulwaltersheherfeministvl521 Have you seen The Yellow Sign?
And Gundam went and said, "Nah, humans were *made* for space" xD
@@paulwaltersheherfeministvl521 I know you're AxxL.
@@Greendalewitch you obviously haven't learned enough about space read "a breif history of time" for some horror and knowledge and try to wrap your head around it whenever you're bored it won't work, but you won't be bored anymore
@@dallindespain5082 So have you seen The Yellow Sign?
As basically a lifelong fan of Cosmic/Scifi Horror(the horror genre in general), I enjoy the larger and more diverse scale of terror that space and other unexplored dimensions can offer. Like I just don't find most traditional horror films to be all that scary... just entertaining.
The scariest monsters in cinema and literature for me are the ones that I can't really comprehend. I find a creature like the Thing more frightening than Jason as we can humanize Jason but the Thing? We don't even know what it wants, let alone understand it.
The cosmic entity in Event Horizon is ten times scarier than some random ghost in some random haunted house for me... as the mere speculation that arises from its existence alone would utterly shatter peoples entire world views in an instant.
A scary monster is much more frightening when you can't really give it a motive. Removing the mystery leads to it becoming more mundane. It's just much more terrifying when you don't really know the enemy and it is as alien to you as is possible... just my two cents.
For me what makes humanized or otherwise personified horror entities utterly terrifying sometimes is that I can understand on a fundamental level that they're not that different from me, or from anyone really. Someone like your own mother could have been a horrific monster with just a few changes in her early life, for example. Add to that the fact that real life people can and have committed unthinkable atrocities and I sometimes find myself unable to stomach realistic thrillers and horror films while being fine with things like Lovecraftian evil elder gods.
Try reading Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky for a really great cosmic scare :)
Technically, aren't spooky ghosts and monsters also shattering our world views? Well, atleast ghosts can. They're (in most cases) spirits of the dead! The dead back alive! I don't know about you, but that's kind of breaking one of the fundamental rules of life as we know it, that death is inevitable and permanent and irreversible. Then again, most horror movies probably wouldn't let that info sink in or fully realize the ramifications of that so you don't really feel that horrified about it. That or we've been super desensitized to it thanks to zillions of ghost horror movies. It's like Zombies, it was scary at first, but now that it's been done a bajillion times, it's more mundane.
That and also just good film making, sometimes non-space horror movies can also be scary, it just has to be done right. Psychological horror is a thing. But you do you. I think we'd all scream the same whether it's a ghost, zombie, monster, bad guy or cosmic entity if it happened in real life.
Its like the idea that some man just wanna watch the world burn
@@TheEpicGalaxy21 agree to an extent. Most things in horror movies if encountered in real life would force us to thoroughly reevaluate our thoughts on the universe. It always kinda bothered me how the protags in these films just... get over it by the end and go off into the sunset as if the afterlife was not just confirmed to be real or that a dream demon didn't just murder all their friends.
Like that knowledge and experience should haunt them forever. Never trusting a dark room kinda traumatized.
But I still think that Cosmic/Space Horror is more interesting and terrifying, the scale of the threat is so much more amped up. Like encountering the cosmic entity in Event Horizon is basically the equivalent to finding out that not only does God exist, he is also a colossal sadistic Lovecraftian nightmare. Seeing a werewolf would scar me, seeing a cosmic god would destroy my sanity.
I mean, space is still mostly unfamiliar to us(the audience) and imagining the horrors it could provide is interesting. Not least of all because who is to say that something as terrifying as the Thing or Alien doesn't actually exist and we've just yet to encounter it?
Like cosmic horror can really mess people up on a deep level sometimes just by making them... think very intensely about a subject they otherwise would not have... Years ago a woman who later became my best friend told me that a cosmic horror film involving religion she had seen, not only terrified her when she was younger, but it made her abandon Catholicism.
"How do we know for sure who we're praying to, and what if prayers make him stronger?"
That was her reasoning for doing so and it took a cosmic horror film to completely change her beliefs and make her question blind obedience to religion. That is something that the majority of more mainstream horror films are not capable of doing. I mean for all we know the cosmic entity in Event Horizon is God and we've all been duped into praying it gets us... that is scary.
So, naturally, the most logical followup will be the "Space is not nearly as scary as we thought" AKA "Humans are Space Orcs"/"Earth is space Australia"?
the thing with space australia, is that earth australia still had problems with invasive species, like rats, or the british.
@@profeseurchemical You just listed the same invasive species twice.
@@blarg2429 this whole thread is gold but that really sent me 😂
While I like the concept most of those stories tend to be stories that completely overblow the abilities of humanity and earth to the point it’s kinda cringe. We could very well be Space Orcs, however it’s extremely unlikely we’re Superman and that what those stories tend to boil down to.
Those stories tend to swing too far in the opposite direction to the point it becomes comical. A nice middle ground is needed where yes there are plenty of stuff that can kill you just like anywhere else but we aren't helpless either. That and not everything wants us dead.
"The unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a Velociraptor" is quite possibly the best description of a xenomorph I've ever heard.
Simultaneously the kawaii'ing of xenomorph eggs was not what I planned to be the highlight of my day.
That description single-handedly eliminated my fear of the xenomorphs. I can no longer take them seriously.
@@RvEijndhoven did you know that to make the original costume they used real human teeth and other disturbing materials?
I won't go into full detail, but you should look it up.
@@masonjones7777 oh ya. There's some fun kinky facts there that really hold up the "gimp" side of the descriptor.
Space-Horror? PALES in Comparison to the Radicalization-Wave and the horrifying traditional Values of the Right-Wingers and Conservatives! I mean, seriously, have you seen what's going on nowadays? People quote the Handmaid Tales Villains when quoting Conservatives Values, even if we ignore Trumpism and/or Conservativsm right-now this Summer lashin-out
against all LGBT.
Be my guest: Watch Telltale Fireside Chat, Emma Thorne, Professor Dave and
Holy Koolaid document-well the Descend-into-Madness
we all have to Face.
@@loturzelrestaurant Yes, right now are world is messed up, but what scares you more?
the fact that this world is screwed up?
Or the fact that we have nowhere to go if we can't fix it?
This is it.
This is all we got unless a miracle of science comes up with faster methods of travel.
The content warning had me worried that I would be scared of space by the end of this, but when the talk of black holes, just about the scariest thing that we know about in the cosmos, just made me whisper "space is cool," I realized that my priorities might be broken in the best way possible.
I had the same reaction. Space isn’t terrifying to look at, it’s awe inspiring and interesting. Sure, there are hazards and things to avoid getting close to, but as long as you take those threats seriously and don’t poke at them or take necessary precautions, there’s so much to learn and explore and it’s fascinating!
I started watching a lot of space-related videos during the height of Covid, and I found it reassuring and inspiring. Just the idea of how many wonders we've found from a distant glance at our own solar system, and how it preserves the human spirit of exploration. I mean, I grew up thinking of Pluto as "that boring little ball on the edge of the solar system"....but now, turns out it's got five moons of its own, it has ice volcanoes and a possible subsurface ocean, it's nowhere near the most remote planetoid (Sedna's orbit is CRAZY)....and it's beautiful. And there's so much fascinating stuff being discovered about Saturn, Mars, Venus, the asteroids.....and we're already getting data about the amazing weirdness of extrasolar planets, including several that might have life-friendly conditions.
Space is cool, isn't it? It's fucked up and terrifying and beautiful, if you know just how to look at it.
Never mistake not sharing someone else’s particular fears for something being wrong with you. Some people are terrified of snakes, others gleefully pet them. Some people have existential dread about space, age, or the inevitability of death, and some people just don’t care.
Similarly, never assume that your personal fears are universal.
me too! for me it's more like space is utterly terrifying and breath-takingly awesome. those two facts correlate and contribute to each other. space is awesome!!!
OSP- "If the heroes have nowhere to run, the audience has nothing to root for."
The Road- "Hold my dad."
Hold My Lore
Space without the fictional horrors is already scary. Ever read The Martian? A completely scientifically accurate planet from the real world almost kills our protagonist dozens of times by just not being earth.
I think the most harrowing moment in the book comes from the most mundane thing: he's counting potatoes, doing some back of the napkin math, and coming to the realization that he's over a hundred days of food short.
Or the real Apollo 13, or what almost happened to Aleksey Leonov.
i mean you can easily do the same story on earth. mountains, icy tundra's, deserts, any large body of water. humans aren't tough animals, we're fucking fragile as shit. i think (haven't seen it, just know the premice) the martian is just horrifying because people know he's there, and that he needs help, but to give it will take so much time.
@@SpottedHares well, wind on Mars is less dense than Earth, so the set up wouldn't happen, but otherwise, yeah.
@@elainegoates9792 "But hey it's just a set up! A movie/book set up! We'll let it slide!"
By stars, Red is on such a roll. You can literally *hear* the excitement.
Specially that little bit about black holes. That joy is fucking infectious
me, an astrophysics student:
*sees trope talk upload*
~it’s about space~
me: *takes out notes binder*
So, what little extra bit of information from your studies helped you go on internal tangent from the conversation of fiction and reality?
SAME
@@bubblesbomb8949 tbf, I didn't learn any physics that I didn't already know, but she put in such an interesting way that it did reframe things a bit. :)
For the record if anyone deals with existential angst, you may or may not want to look these up.
No mention of gamma ray bursts, vacuum decay, strange matter, earth turning into a rogue planet by a close encounter with a smaller star, primordial black holes, relativistic kill vihecles, etc etc. I am honestly a bit disappointed.
@@op4000exe "don't look up"
I love how in Warhammer 40k FTL travel "warp" is so fucked it has a chance to not only kill you or trap you for an indefinite amount of time, but even if you make it out you might not even end up where you wanted to go and might just be lost forever. In 40k dying is a privilege.
Praise the Emperor for lighting our way through The Warp.
Oh and you better hope that the Imperium sacrificed the baseline number of witches that day or else you won't be able to navigate literal Hell. Because the Emperor's psychic light is how humans math out where to go.
Not only that, but you just gotta pray your shields work and withstand the onslaught of storms made from literal rage, lust, and despair and not to mention demons just walking around.
That's so grimdark no wonder why there is always war
Shit, you can have a warp jump that feels like it took ten years, and arrive at your destination before you left.
@@DinsRune
Alternatively, spend five minutes in the warp and come out a thousand years later.
I love Warhammer's take with the Tyranids. How they just kinda keep appearing into our galaxy from a different side each time. Implying the milkyway is just sorrounded on all sides by a malignant force of nature that only seeks to consume and according to all evidence has never been unsuccessful.
Even better: The 'Nids are actually RUNNING from something.
“If you aren’t scared of Space, this Video might Change that”
Me: *You Underestimate My Love Of The Cosmos*
This guy gets it. You could even say they are, in fact, a Space Man.
I understand the vast and unfeeling cosmos have a reputation to maintain, but I have elected to ignore that & instead embrace the wonder which comes from realizing humans on Earth are not even the _beginning_ of scratching the surface
Space is so cool. By Markiplier.
A lovely pallet cleanser if you need one
Me, a fan of 40K: Ah, just a regular Tuesday then.
Even before you add the sadist space elves, the genocidal grasshoppers, the furious fungi and actual, literal, hell itself.
Right, I'm just getting into 40k but space horror is so much fun
Ah, 40k: where everything is a monster.
Don't forget about the body horror techno cultist
Or that the not flood may have already eaten every other galaxy
And they are literally coming from every direction
My favourite work of Space Horror is Metroid Fusion. The premise is that badass Intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran is called in to guard a research team on planet SR-388, which is where the Metroids lived, until she was hired to exterminate them on a previous mission. There, they encounter a strange mutation of a species that previously existed on SR-388, which Samus takes down, but its corpse morphs into a floating blob that infects Samus. Her suit is surgically removed, and sent to a research station out in space, and she is injected with Metroid DNA, as they were what kept this mysterious X Parasite from spreading. This saves her life, and turns her into the only person able to combat them, at the cost of being more frail than normal, and being deathly weak to cold. She is then sent out to the research station that had her infected suit pieces, to look into a breach in the containment bay. Eventually, after witnessing the devastation caused by the X infecting, killing, and mutating everything it touches, she runs into the mysterious saboteur: a full power X version of herself, who hunts her as if she were a Metroid.
With that, Fusion has set the stage. You’re trapped on the station, not because the bay doors won’t open, or because your spaceship is busted, but because of your duty. You’re the only one who can do this, and if even a single infected life form gets out, the universe is screwed. She gets more powerful by the end of the game, but at that point, you’re on a time crunch. The X are comparable to the Flood, or the Tyranids, but fortunately, you were lucky enough to catch the beginning of their second attempt at universal assimilation. Because the Metroids weren’t just Xenomorphs, they were essentially Xenomorphs bioengineered to kill the Flood.
I was hoping Red would mention Reboot in this one, everything about The Web in that show messed me up for years. Though I guess that happens when a three-year old is exposed to out-of-nowhere cosmic horror.
She has to mention either Reboot or ATLA in every video. It's just a law now.
@@miniraptor3211 Don't forget the DCAU
And its not wrong, the internet is an as unimaginable sea of wonders and horrors.
5:51: Red mentions that body-snatcher alien invasions got popular around the Red Scare era, but she didn't mention that OG "aliens just park their battleships in orbit and invade" alien invasions got popular as an outgrowth of a genre called "invasion literature," which was basically the same but with German battleships parking in the English Channel instead.
I wonder how much of the latter was written before, during, and after World War 1.
Or zeppelin motherships
Sometimes the aliens are a reflection of our own colonialism, sometimes the aliens are a reflection of our paranoia about spies, sometimes we're the baddies to the aliens in ways that reflect we're baddies to each other... alien invasion stories are always about real world politics and have always been. Even the ones where we are the scrappy underdogs who fight off invaders, it's still about glorifying aspects of war to deflect from its horrors which is even more political.
She might not have known about that - we already have Lindsay Ellis’ video on Independence Day and War of the Worlds.
@@phastinemoon That is indeed possible. It's also possible that explaining that properly would take a minute or so of context otherwise irrelevant to the video. Either way, I don't care; I only care about explaining this interesting bit of literary history to people who scroll deep enough into the comment section.
I once heard a fictional story about a experiment that was basically how isolation works in space. A few people were sent to space and instructed to all remain in their own rooms, which had lots of stuff to keep your mind off of it, for however long the experiment was(can't remember). mc's door disappeared and over a few years without ever feeling hungry the earth, moon, sun, and everything else in our solar system disappeared until the stars started disappearing too. The mc ended up trying to kill himself by ramming his body into the window of his room several times until the other people on board called off the experiment because they could hear mc trying to kill himself. As soon as they entered the room everything returned and only five minutes had past.
Edit: probably Magnus archives
That makes me think of The Magnus archives, they have a similar story
@@StarshipVGer I thought the same thing
I think that's the plot of the very first Twilight Zone episode, "Where Is Everybody?"
@@StarshipVGer it is almost exactly the plot of episode 57: Personal Space
I swear, the Flood is the sole reason I had nightmares about people around me being corrupted or betraying me for YEARS as a kid. I was playing Halo 3 with my best friend at the time, and I had watched him play Halo before so I knew what the Flood was already. I wasn't ready for how different it was watching him defeat the Flood with unwavering confidence and me actually having to face the Flood myself alongside him. It was terrifying.
The flood was so terrifying I never played past them in the campaign
Whoever animated the Flood infection transformations is either completely unfazed or traumatized. Imagine looking at that for weeks.
@@pizza-for-mountainsI know some character artists personally, belive me it's "unfazed". They find some police photos from crime scene and think "oh, neat reference to how layers of skin can separate
I never thought of Majora’s mask as space horror. That’s an interesting horror definition. I only thought of it as monster horror but space horror makes more sense.
I always see Majora's Mask as more existential / eldritch horror since I interpreted the moon as not being from space. I don't think space exists in the Zelda universe, it's like the realm of the gods or something
@@spacebutterfly2873 There's also the method the "moon" comes down
Yeah, Majora's Mask is more space/cosmic adjacent - the threat is "ancient evil artifact attempts to go nuclear" and dropping the moon is just the chosen method.
I mean, there ARE aliens too... 🤔
@@spacebutterfly2873 It is definitely existential with how they show the reactions of the citizens of clock town.
Is this our first OSP content warning!?
This should be good
No, that would be Queer Coded Villains.
@@xmoore5659 possibly had mini ones in lovecraft
It's weird. Space has always been a massive comfort to me. A constant reminder that no matter how big my problems were to me they were objectively nothing in the grand scheme of things. A reminder of how incredibly blessed I am to be alive right here at this moment with the opportunity to learn so much out there.
My wife and I fell in love spending hours after hours discussing astronomy and all of our children have space inspired names like Stella Nova, Sagan and Aurora.
Space has never been a threat to me. It's always been a promise.
What you're describing is Anti-Nihilism. Ironically, it evolved as a philosophical reaction to Nihilism's, "Your problems are nothing, you don't matter, the earth doesn't matter. So, why bother doing anything at all." It's the Emo Teen phase of philosophy.
Oh my gods someone put it into words!!!
Took the words right out of my mouth
I like your comment and you make a good point. The problem, however, is that there is nothing inconsistent in space being both. Eternity is both a promise and a threat, with the bonus that it will get you eventually
I don't know. Accepting the fact that our existence is simply an outcome of many that holds no significance should fill you with a little dread. We place so much importance on the slim probability of our being like it has any sort of real meaning. All traces of our civilisation and all life in our system will vanish eventually and we will have been a grain of sand in an ocean the size of the sun that existed for less than a second.
It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, or how long you live or what you did. We only live to live and then nothing.
6:50 i just gotta say that this has gotta be my favorite horror mini trope. I love the "...OHHHH NOOOOO" feeling you get when it happens
"Space the final frontier is absolutely terrifying."
Even William Shatner, of Star Trek's Captain Kirk fame, had this reaction when he went suborbital in a recent Blue Origin flight. His first statement after landing described his feeling of space as just "death."
For a man who has made it his life to be able to talk about things, watching him after he landed was awesome. He was at a loss for words to describe what he just experienced. That, in and of itself, was amazing.
Y'know, of everything in here, the only slight anxiety I actually felt was the one about stuff like meteors because that just seems like a thing that could really happen with our present understanding of the universe. We know it's happened before. So thank you for taking the extra moment to explicitly alleviate worry from that bit lol.
Oh, just fyi, it sometimes happens that a new meteor flies by an unexpected angle so fast that by the time anyone has detected it and figured out its orbit, it's way too late to stop it. These news always end with "Well, we detected it but it _has_ already missed us, so I guess there's nothing to worry about"
@@luigivercotti6410 stop trying to scare them those aren't detected in time because they're tiny. anything dangerous we absolutely see in time
@@pandoragoldspan7012 That's true enough. The vast majority of those are small enough that they would either disintegrate in the atmosphere, or only minor damage, like the one that fell in Russia; They're not planet-busters.
Or, at least, they haven't been, so far. There's nothing to stop a bigger meteor from having an eccentric enough orbit with a big enough period that the first we ever see of it will be with less time to impact than anyone could use. It's unlikely, sure, but it's not unfeasible.
Earth gets peppered with tiny unaccounted rocks all the time. Sure, they're harmless in the vast majority of them. But it only takes one.
Honestly, OP? Same.
The fact that space is a relatively hot/cold apathetic vastness that can eat me and spits out objects that can eat me yet makes MOAR objects (some of which can spontaneously be Useful) via splosions and Oh Are They All So So Pretty is *exactly* the appeal of space to me
…the only existential dread I get from it is the ol’ theoretical Universal Cold Death where it all just. Ends. No more yo-yo recycling splosions effect. It’s gone. I’m okay with something being too vast to ever be reachable that would apatherically devour me so long as it’s a self-sustaining system. But all the stars blowing out and big chunky rocks and/or gas bubbles being pushed too far apart to ever fuse? THAT’s as depressing as, say, IF humanity is somehow kicking around after the Sun hits its midlife crisis and noms the inner planets like a burger binge for catharsis…there won’t be anything “close” enough to observe beyond our galaxy and/or galaxy arm and/or solar system depending on where whatever rock and bubbles humanity’s still clinging to gets, y’know, ejected.
Humanity being very small and very fragile and very, very far away? No issue.
All The Stuff that could easily rip us apart if our planet wanders too far from the sun’s toddler leash tether just…ending? THERE’S the existential crisis
We don't need to worry about meteors hitting Earth. A lot of smart people are already making careers out of worrying about it for us.
My first existential crisis was when I was learning about space. I was having trouble trying to imagine the distances I was reading about, because they were just so BIG. Then I realized that we talk about an infinite universe, which means that I wasn't even close to understanding the scope of a tiny fraction of the universe. I had a panic attack and avoided thinking about infinity until High School.
"Unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a velociraptor" sent me into orbit, my god.
orbit… haha…
I love how The Expanse makes the scary thing your own ship accelerating too quickly. Yeah sure, it has a mysterious force which threatens the solar system, but also consistently you can't run away cause you can't go faster than the enemy or you die. We don't need new and exciting physics to kill people, the ones around are already good enough.
I still want my gravity gun tho
But that bit where it's like. "So the way I see it: I'm still Amos. I just know some things I didn't used to know."
"Yeah."
"But Cap, one of the things I know now... those things out there in the dark? They're gonna kill us all."
one of more interesting ""horror scenarios" i have seen recently was that scene when guy invented the most efficient engine ever, but didn't knew that yet. there is something poetically cruel in being killed by being a genius and revolutionazing humankind
@@olotocoloalso the fact that in that universe, that engine was so efficient, 200 years later its still accelerating and is now a star in the night sky
@paulsmart4672 "An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here."
I do like that while Red is expounding about how flipping terrifying space is, she also points out that space is really cool
Space being "the final frontier" is a gross over underestimation of the almost eldritch vastness of it.
And we cannot go there to check. which leaves everything to the imagination, something that is limited by what one knows and fears.
And Space is bigger than that.
Exactly. We are currently tackling the frontier of our solar system, which is in itself a speck of sand on an island of matter in the sea of space. I would say the "final" frontier of space would be once we set out to explore a new super cluster. Until then, we are still in our own backyard. Hardly the "final" frontier. And, to be honest, much of the universe might simply by mathematically impossible to explore, meaning the final frontier will be whatever law that exists to stop us between here and there.
"Ah, yes, 'Reapers'. The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed this claim."
Love how the messed up warp drive is the entire premise for The Hitchhiker’s Guide! The original ship they escape on uses the improbability drive, which calculates how improbable it would be to warp through space to their destination, and makes the improbable happen. However, in their getaway they fail to shield the cabin from this, and as a side effect the rest of their lives is highly improbable. For example, every animal the protagonist kills, from an accidental fly to a rabbit for food, is the same person reincarnating! That’s the most minor example I could think of, a lot of the plot revolves around this, without explicitly stating it.
Doesn't improbability drive simply go through every point in space at the same time?
“The British Navy Special” is way funnier than it has any right to be.
I burst out laughing at that.
*Rule Britannia playing in the distance, slowly becoming louder and louder*
@@Phantom-qr1ug Tally ho it is
@@Phantom-qr1ug *it seems to be coming from outside the spaceship, despite the lack of atmosphere*
I generally really like this type of horror. The open-ended trapped feeling gives writers a *lot* of leeway to do whatever kind of horror they want. from chaotic "what is the nature of madness" in Pandorum to "slow burn, there is no winning thriller" of Stowaway.
I'm glad I'm not alone in realizing most of what we fear of aliens comes from what we fear about ourselves. Especially the colonizing warmonger part. That's a good chunk of human history right there. And we can look at the crap we do to eachother and look up at the stars and say, "Yeah, can't blame them for social distancing on expert mode. I'd stay away from Earth too."
I mean, this is literally the argument people make about why maybe we shouldn't make contact, we've been unkind to our own species not seeing other people as humans over something as stupid as skin color, so even a intelligent alien race might not see as equals or someone to respect as people.
That sounds more like projection. There’s a lot to humanity. A lot more than say, Orks, Klingons, and Daleks.
Yeah can't really blame other life for wanting to stay away from something dangerous
Fundamentally, is it possible for a human writer to write anything that isn't, at its core, a reflection of humanity? If a writer can imagone something, then that thing is comprehensible by humans, right? So can human writers ever create something truly alien?
@@alexandredesbiens-brassard9109 Maybe, but I haven’t seen it. I mean, the closest species I created to that is the Belowers. A species of individual collections of hiveminds that was born in a planet not an overt lab without emotions. Then One of the hiveminds, Backstabber The Belower “gifted” the Belower species hiveminds emotions and it all went downhill for the Belowers from there. And even then there are some human parallels.
I died at 10:13 when you showed a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as passively radioactive objects from space. Well Played.
well Willy Wonka doesn't make sense to just be from earth
That's not Willy Wonka, that's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Yeah bro that’s no Willy wonka.
"Haha, it's just a couple space monsters, how bad can it get"
"I WAS NOT EXPECTING AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS TODAY, LET ALONE FOUR"
I've already made my peace with "space is scary" and if I were to die in a horrific and unsettling manner up there then that was just my fate that we shouldn't try to change! just LET! ME! UP! THERE!!
the first movie I ever went to was Star Trek:First Contact when I was two months old, and according to my mum it was the first time I was completely quiet and relaxed. I was literally *built* for space is scary, pls NASA just let me up there
Lmao same. It's like Jurassic Park right, If someone asked if I would like to see a real life Jurassic Park but there's a high chance I will be eating by a dinosaur what am I going to say? Count me in! Even if something goes horribly wrong I will be forever known in history books as *The first man ever to be eaten by a dinosaur.* The first man to die on Mars is going to be a legend.
DEATH IS THE CONSEQUENCES OF PROGRESS
WE FACE DEATH TOGTHER IN THE INFINITY
@@HellishSpoon FOR THE EMPERORRRRRRRR
@@Googledeservestodie now all I'm seeing is Jurassic Park In Space. what's a bigger historical honour than first man eaten by dinosaur? first man eaten by dinosaur on the *moon!* all I'm saying is that I'd watch that movie
Something I really liked about The Expanse was how threatening space itself was. Sure there's monster protomolecule and scheming politicians and charismatic space terrorists, but there's also punching a hole in the hull and running out of oxygen and a crack in your space suit and zero grav making minor wounds life threatening and running out of water and having lived so long in space that your body literally cannot handle planetary gravity anymore. The environment is always just as dangerous as whatever else is going on.
I personally think the scene from episode 5.10 where Naomi takes a blind leap out an airlock with only the air in her suit, where the camera is a single shot from insider her helmet and the only audio is what she can hear, ie. only herself, is one of the most terrifying and moving scenes in all television.
The Expanse is the epitome of all space horror genre. Every turn of a new angle or info I was expecting it as an example, but it works as the ultimate MOFO sum off all fears.
Belters embracing the Agoraphobia as rockhoppers has got to be one of my favorite bits of speculative anthropology
I enjoyed a book series called Chaos: Magical Princess.
It's a western-style series about a Japanese girl who gets Isekaid into another world and is reborn as... a Cthulu Cosmic Horror. A thing that eats any organic thing. It's a lot like a horror story but from the monster's perspective. And yes, because it's an isekai, it includes a harem. Not a reverse harem. The MC is a female character who enjoys BEING the tentacle monster. It was quite fun to read and I couldn't put any of the books down, now I'm waiting for the last book to release.
Hey uh. What the fuck?
@@Doshee33 Care to make your inquiry more specific?
@@wizardtim8573 no I think "what the fuck" encapsulates everything
@@Doshee33 Not sure you're using that word right.
I wouldn't describe a rapist main character as "fun" but to each their own I guess
I love existential horror and the fear of the unknown. Space being so vast and so empty makes us feel so small and insignificant and I love it. Blue is definitely right about this needing a content warning. I love this kind of stuff but it definitely can and will freak out the unprepared
I'm right there with you, pal. :P
For anyone interested in the "something very big is falling towards earth" story with a creepy twist, I suggest looking up "Hellstar Remina" by Junji Ito. But like all his mangas, this one really has the potential to mess you up for at least a couple days.
[Insert all possible content warnings here - Blue was 100% right to include them in this topic]
Just a Junji Ito content warning is enough. If you know anything about his work, you know what you are dealing with (or you know you have no idea what you are dealing with most likely)
Lmao yeah I was just about to comment about this. Hellstar Remina is a great example of space horror, although ngl some elements of it are unintentionally funny (like near the end when gravity disappears & hundreds of people fly after Remina. That kinda took me out of the horror lol. But Junji Ito's work has always had bizarre/darkly comedic parts tbf)
Honestly I think the spin off with the rich people trying to escape to the surface of the Hellstar was probably my favourite, but I think it works best after you read the original story because it really hammers home the hopelessness of the situation.
Does "The silent sea" count as space horror?
Hellstar Remina is by far the weakest of any of the junji Ito stories I've read. It wasn't just the gravity part that was goofy, but the absurd speed with which the entire population of earth decided to go on a manhunt for two people based off of only the loosest of connections.
@@talmanesdelovinde302 Ngl I think that was meant to be the point; The story is meant to highlight how futile every single one of humanity's actions are as this planet just gets closer and closer. Imo it would make sense for people to sooner blame the entire event on two innocent people than to confront their own cosmic insignificance. That's cosmic horror 101
That being said, it doesn't necessarily mean it was handled well. I do think that Hellstar Remina had pacing issues, and it was strongest earlier in the story where humanity's reactions to the approaching planet were way more grounded. I think the fact it went off the rails so quickly is just a symptom of how Ito's stories usually go (similar to Uzumaki, although even that had a slightly slower build up to total madness).
I think that's why the first half of the story & the mini spin off where they go to the planet's surface are my favourite parts of the story. Imo it could've worked slightly better if the spin off was actually the most out-there part of the story, rather than the anti gravity cult chase.
Also as much as I was rooting for Remina I think it should've ended with her being killed by the fanatics, only for it to not affect the planet at all & leave everyone with the horrible realisation that all of it was for nothing. The bunker thing at the end was a kind of weird direction for the story to take, and didn't feel like it fitted tonally speaking.
I feel like the book “Project Hail Mary” is a perfect example of the first and last ones combined. Astrophages as a concept are terrifying.
Everything Andy weir wrote (except for Artemis) is great for horror
And excluding the Martian
I loved that book. The ending was weird though.
@@jakebrooks7481 nah
"The Nothing wants you dead" is such a good line actually
Worse. It's apathetic to life. Live, die, it doesn't care. It holds you no malice, but it will not hesitate to make any mistakes your last.
“The unholy offspring of a gimp suit and a velociraptor”
Red, you have such a way with words.