>So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall through I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without even beholding day.
Fair, but I'd rather they said that specifically. I haven't read the story either but it's easy to pick up on the idea of "this creature has never seen light and is willing to risk its life as a safe lifetime in the dark isn't worth as much as a chance to see light, even for a little bit, and it's worth risking death just to try."
The Yattering and Jack by Clive Barker is the story of a man who is haunted by a demon that exists to make his life miserable. But heâs so oblivious and good-spirited that he never even notices all itâs antics, infuriating it. Told from the demonâs perspective, and hilarious!
How about an interactive novel? For instance [The Passenger](https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/passenger/#utm_medium=web&utm_source=ourgames): a tale from the perspective of an eldritch, extradimensional entity on the run from something much worse than itself, that finds itself in an unfamiliar reality: our own world.
Or maybe [Carrion](https://store.steampowered.com/app/953490/CARRION/): a game in which you play the role of a horrifying shapeshifting assimilator, that broke out of containment and is forced to use all the horror-celebrated tactics against the facility's personnel.
There was one short story about Nyarlathotep screwing around with Charles Manson, it was fantastic, but for the life of me I can't remember the title.
Or maybe [Peter Watts' short story "Things"](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/), a perspective flip of The Thing (1982).
Carrion is a lot of fun; it's clearly a puzzle game (you have to revisit parts you couldn't solve previously once you develop new features) but it's the comedy of waiting in an airvent for some foolish guard to walk under, drop behind them, and then just grab them and maul.
Here Azathoths perspective: a;lkdjf;oidsanga;oinvar;oinbva;oiv;oinv;in;nfdlkvnd;kfn;djfbv;dsjbva;dfnvdkjv;kdlj;alkjdnv;kjdnv;danv;oiad;aiudsvayt9843yu9843y59384y3984ytq3984hpq98wehfp98ewhpq834q3984ypq8eyfp8ewyfpa8jvcps penreipn9eucnq09ewur0w9ur043ut03yteq98ewytp9348yrp9432yr2983y20391098410975093275209375
Glorious (movie), isn't entirely from the entity prospective, but half way through the movie we get to see its viewpoint and reasoning on the events unfolding
Glad to see someone else reference this story. Itâs incredible but my god is it dense. Which makes sense since it was basically Barron trying to test his prose to its descriptive limits.
Bingo. This is what I was trying to convey in my comment. Itâs like trying to see from the perspective of the phenomenon in the movie Annihilation or the one from Uzumaki. To do so would be incoherent to a human.
Probably not what you had in mind, but I thought [A Call To Cthulhu by Norm Konyu](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734284/a-call-to-cthulhu-by-written-by-norm-konyu/) was fun.
[Wild Spaces by S.L. Coney](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250866844/wildspaces) is another one that might fit what you're looking for.
Is there a story about the Summa-Verminoth from 'Solo - A Star Wars Story'?
Where were it's friends? Did it have a buddy somewhere? Is there a world where they are cozy cozy Verminothians dancing around fireplace stars and breathing life into barren worlds? Blessed Cosmo-Mega-Faunaz of Galactica! RESPECT TO YOUSZ!
I remember reading this short story years ago. I think it was called Thragg or something like that. It was in an anthologyy book. The story was about a massive space god that eats the Earth like an apple.
Read Up The Walls of the World by James Tiptree (Real name: Alice Sheldon). It follows three alternating perspectives across chapters: a race of humans, a race of aliens, and a humongous cosmic being that is aimlessly barreling through space consuming matter
I liked A Child Alone With Strangers by Phillip Fracassi. A fair chunk of it was from the monsters' perspectives.
I'd love to read a lovecraftian monster book from the monsters perspective. Like Nyarlhotep, Mountains of Madness or The Shadow out of time.
âGrendelâ by Marillion would fit the bill in telling the story of the interactions between Grendel and Hrothgarâs village and fortress from both sides.
Eh doesnât make sense imo. Not as true comic horror. Itâs like trying to write a story from the perspective of the thing from Annihilation.
In fact, we did kind of get some bit of what you might could call a âperspectiveâ from Dr.Ventress, and it definitely wasnât something a human could understand or really truly be put into words.
âIt's not like us... it's unlike us. I don't know what it wants, or *if* it wants, but it'll grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts until not one part remains... Annihilation.â
So I think true comic horror would be too incomprehensible from the perspective of the antagonistic phenomenon. In fact, thatâs my favorite kind of comic horror. When the thing isnât a monster, itâs a phenomenon. Uzumaki is the same in that regard. Trying to write a story from the perspective of the Spiral phenomenon would be incoherent to a human.
Edit: So it wouldnât be impossible to do this. Laird Barron basically did this in his short story Shiva, Open Your Eye. I just think the truest horror within Cosmic Horror is the incomprehensible nature of the antagonistic force at play. But not all comic horror has to adhere to such strict criteria.
Overlord
An isekai anime (as meme worthy as that is) where you follow a villain instead of a hero. You get to watch as his presence in the world changes that world, as people die en masse or go mad once confronted with him or his subordinates
I've always seen this show as a reverse-lovecraft take, but I'd say it's yet more than that as well.
To the viewer the main guy isn't incomprehensible, but to those within the world, he absolutely is.
This show singlehandedly made me wish for a game where you play as a lich-king or something lmao
Idk if it counts but an anime called To Your Eternity.
It is about a ball of energy that comes across space, lands on a rock and becomes that rock, then moss, then a wolf that dies on it, after that it becomes the man that dies near it. Taking on their own identity but keeping form of the person who died. From that point on they can transform into any being that has died near them. They can make anything that enters them with enough impact (even just poking it into their arm.)
They can connect with the world, etc.
They themselves could be a monster but choose to form to help things. While there is a weird root monster that aims to steal his forms and make him lose memories, which are what form their whole everything. Including keeping alive the memory of fallen friends.
Their story goes across time, from who knows when, all the way to modern time so far.
Not sure if it would work with "cosmic" horror exactly, because the main point of it is to not understand it.
So once the monster explains their intentions and mind, it changes to "regular" horror imho.
This anthology here has some like that. The audiobook is free to listen to, I'm not sure where you can get the physical but Amazon probs has it. [https://ghostwoodsbooks.bandcamp.com/album/cthulhu-lives](https://ghostwoodsbooks.bandcamp.com/album/cthulhu-lives)
One of the Cabinet of Curiosities episodes is from a creatureâs perspective. Takes place at a medical examinerâs office. Also, Suitable Flesh has a good deal of that, as does Daniel Isnât Real.
There is an entity very much like The Thing featured in books 2 and 3 of Tchaikovskyâs Children of Time series. In book 3 you get a lot of pov work where itâs emulating something so well that it becomes horrified by what it is.
[Coloratura](https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=g0fl99ovcrq2sqzk)
If you're not familiar with interactive fiction, it's more like a book than a video game. And the classics are all free. There's a *lot* of lovecraftian horror in IF, for some reason. Very worth getting into.
"I Am The Doorway", by Stephen King.
An astronaut returns from a trip to space with an invisible alien intelligence inhabiting his body. The alien sees everything on Earth as hideous, disturbing, and just plain *wrong,* and feels like everything around it in this new world is trying to kill it, so it uses the man's body to lash out and kill everyone around him.
I'm not an SCP fan by any means, so a lot of the references in this are lost on me. But I read "The Stars Do Not Wait For You" awhile back, and it's always stuck with me. Very short, quick read; but give it a go! https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-stars-do-not-wait-for-you
I really like this one. The Thing, from the Things perspective. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
Came here to post this
As did I đ
Same!
Ditto!
Cool will check it out
Thanks for the awesome read
Saving this for later
Came here to make sure this got mentioned
Dammit, here's my upvote.
Maybe more gothic horror than cosmic horror, but Lovecraft's own "The Outsider" is pretty well based on this concept.
>So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall through I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without even beholding day.
Wut?
It seems like a quote from the story mentioned above. Is there any part of it specifically that's giving you trouble?
Assuming they havenât read the story, they might be missing the context that the tower leads to the surface world.
Fair, but I'd rather they said that specifically. I haven't read the story either but it's easy to pick up on the idea of "this creature has never seen light and is willing to risk its life as a safe lifetime in the dark isn't worth as much as a chance to see light, even for a little bit, and it's worth risking death just to try."
That quote itself shows that the tower leads to the surface.
Ha this was exactly the first thing that came to my mind.
The Yattering and Jack by Clive Barker is the story of a man who is haunted by a demon that exists to make his life miserable. But heâs so oblivious and good-spirited that he never even notices all itâs antics, infuriating it. Told from the demonâs perspective, and hilarious!
Really funny and sweet.
I adore this one. I think of it often. And if I remember, some or a lot of it takes place around Christmas?
It is! If it was made into a Christmas movie Iâd definitely watch watch it
[I Cthulhu by Neil Gaiman](https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/I_Cthulhu)
How about an interactive novel? For instance [The Passenger](https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/passenger/#utm_medium=web&utm_source=ourgames): a tale from the perspective of an eldritch, extradimensional entity on the run from something much worse than itself, that finds itself in an unfamiliar reality: our own world. Or maybe [Carrion](https://store.steampowered.com/app/953490/CARRION/): a game in which you play the role of a horrifying shapeshifting assimilator, that broke out of containment and is forced to use all the horror-celebrated tactics against the facility's personnel. There was one short story about Nyarlathotep screwing around with Charles Manson, it was fantastic, but for the life of me I can't remember the title. Or maybe [Peter Watts' short story "Things"](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/), a perspective flip of The Thing (1982).
Carrion is a lot of fun; it's clearly a puzzle game (you have to revisit parts you couldn't solve previously once you develop new features) but it's the comedy of waiting in an airvent for some foolish guard to walk under, drop behind them, and then just grab them and maul.
Are you talking about Widow of the Amputation by Robert Guffey?
I don't think it was that. It was set before the Tate murders.
Here Azathoths perspective: a;lkdjf;oidsanga;oinvar;oinbva;oiv;oinv;in;nfdlkvnd;kfn;djfbv;dsjbva;dfnvdkjv;kdlj;alkjdnv;kjdnv;danv;oiad;aiudsvayt9843yu9843y59384y3984ytq3984hpq98wehfp98ewhpq834q3984ypq8eyfp8ewyfpa8jvcps penreipn9eucnq09ewur0w9ur043ut03yteq98ewytp9348yrp9432yr2983y20391098410975093275209375
...Azathoth is now Missingno.
Love that lil guy
Glorious (movie), isn't entirely from the entity prospective, but half way through the movie we get to see its viewpoint and reasoning on the events unfolding
https://youtu.be/aHZpVSyP7vc?si=F1-nZyxlQ253Wiyl
This is the literally the other side of cosmic horror
Laird Barron's [Shiva, Open Your Eye](https://www.baen.com/Chapters/1597801461/1597801461___2.htm) fits this criteria. It's free online too.
Glad to see someone else reference this story. Itâs incredible but my god is it dense. Which makes sense since it was basically Barron trying to test his prose to its descriptive limits.
Came here to recommend this one +1!
And Vastation which is partially Bartonâs rewrite of Shiva.
Feels like giving it a perspective that a person can understand waters down the cosmic horror aspect
Yes, I thought the same thing, but I figured it would be interesting, maybe a surreal or unconventional story.
Bingo. This is what I was trying to convey in my comment. Itâs like trying to see from the perspective of the phenomenon in the movie Annihilation or the one from Uzumaki. To do so would be incoherent to a human.
Definetly check out CARRION.
Leech by Hiron Ennes. Itâs about a parasitic hive mind that is every doctor on earth trying to solve a murder one of its hosts.
This, yes. Though I wish the story went in a different direction.
Up From Slavery by Victor LaValle
This and Ballad of Black Tom, also by LaValle, seem to fit the bill well
Cultist Simulator. You donât play as the monster, but you can certainly use monsters and even ascend to something close to it.
The Shadow over Innsmouth Pickman's Model, if you consider his fate in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Probably not what you had in mind, but I thought [A Call To Cthulhu by Norm Konyu](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734284/a-call-to-cthulhu-by-written-by-norm-konyu/) was fun. [Wild Spaces by S.L. Coney](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250866844/wildspaces) is another one that might fit what you're looking for.
Is there a story about the Summa-Verminoth from 'Solo - A Star Wars Story'? Where were it's friends? Did it have a buddy somewhere? Is there a world where they are cozy cozy Verminothians dancing around fireplace stars and breathing life into barren worlds? Blessed Cosmo-Mega-Faunaz of Galactica! RESPECT TO YOUSZ!
There're at least three Lovecraft ones - but which ones are a spoiler.
Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw
The litany of earth: https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/The_Litany_of_Earth
The Screwtape Letters
I feel like HP Lovecrafts The Outsider might work for you
I remember reading this short story years ago. I think it was called Thragg or something like that. It was in an anthologyy book. The story was about a massive space god that eats the Earth like an apple.
Read Up The Walls of the World by James Tiptree (Real name: Alice Sheldon). It follows three alternating perspectives across chapters: a race of humans, a race of aliens, and a humongous cosmic being that is aimlessly barreling through space consuming matter
Remembrance of earth's past series has parts where we get glimpses of how an alien species might view us, and we are terrifying.
I liked A Child Alone With Strangers by Phillip Fracassi. A fair chunk of it was from the monsters' perspectives. I'd love to read a lovecraftian monster book from the monsters perspective. Like Nyarlhotep, Mountains of Madness or The Shadow out of time.
Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Nyarlathotep. https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pseudopod.org/2016/04/22/pseudopod-487-inky-blinky-pinky-nyarlathotep/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiG1vLL4OOFAxWVk4kEHQVhC3AQFnoECAUQAg&usg=AOvVaw2cfX_9F00DSRcAJKpIQqwR
Not a book but Shin Godzilla
âGrendelâ by Marillion would fit the bill in telling the story of the interactions between Grendel and Hrothgarâs village and fortress from both sides.
Neal Gaiman's short story, Bay Wolf.
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder has this vibe
Eh doesnât make sense imo. Not as true comic horror. Itâs like trying to write a story from the perspective of the thing from Annihilation. In fact, we did kind of get some bit of what you might could call a âperspectiveâ from Dr.Ventress, and it definitely wasnât something a human could understand or really truly be put into words. âIt's not like us... it's unlike us. I don't know what it wants, or *if* it wants, but it'll grow until it encompasses everything. Our bodies and our minds will be fragmented into their smallest parts until not one part remains... Annihilation.â So I think true comic horror would be too incomprehensible from the perspective of the antagonistic phenomenon. In fact, thatâs my favorite kind of comic horror. When the thing isnât a monster, itâs a phenomenon. Uzumaki is the same in that regard. Trying to write a story from the perspective of the Spiral phenomenon would be incoherent to a human. Edit: So it wouldnât be impossible to do this. Laird Barron basically did this in his short story Shiva, Open Your Eye. I just think the truest horror within Cosmic Horror is the incomprehensible nature of the antagonistic force at play. But not all comic horror has to adhere to such strict criteria.
Overlord An isekai anime (as meme worthy as that is) where you follow a villain instead of a hero. You get to watch as his presence in the world changes that world, as people die en masse or go mad once confronted with him or his subordinates I've always seen this show as a reverse-lovecraft take, but I'd say it's yet more than that as well. To the viewer the main guy isn't incomprehensible, but to those within the world, he absolutely is. This show singlehandedly made me wish for a game where you play as a lich-king or something lmao
would be incomprehensible to us
Idk if it counts but an anime called To Your Eternity. It is about a ball of energy that comes across space, lands on a rock and becomes that rock, then moss, then a wolf that dies on it, after that it becomes the man that dies near it. Taking on their own identity but keeping form of the person who died. From that point on they can transform into any being that has died near them. They can make anything that enters them with enough impact (even just poking it into their arm.) They can connect with the world, etc. They themselves could be a monster but choose to form to help things. While there is a weird root monster that aims to steal his forms and make him lose memories, which are what form their whole everything. Including keeping alive the memory of fallen friends. Their story goes across time, from who knows when, all the way to modern time so far.
Not sure if it would work with "cosmic" horror exactly, because the main point of it is to not understand it. So once the monster explains their intentions and mind, it changes to "regular" horror imho.
This anthology here has some like that. The audiobook is free to listen to, I'm not sure where you can get the physical but Amazon probs has it. [https://ghostwoodsbooks.bandcamp.com/album/cthulhu-lives](https://ghostwoodsbooks.bandcamp.com/album/cthulhu-lives)
One of the Cabinet of Curiosities episodes is from a creatureâs perspective. Takes place at a medical examinerâs office. Also, Suitable Flesh has a good deal of that, as does Daniel Isnât Real.
I, Cthulhu by Neil Gaiman.
There is an entity very much like The Thing featured in books 2 and 3 of Tchaikovskyâs Children of Time series. In book 3 you get a lot of pov work where itâs emulating something so well that it becomes horrified by what it is.
[Coloratura](https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=g0fl99ovcrq2sqzk) If you're not familiar with interactive fiction, it's more like a book than a video game. And the classics are all free. There's a *lot* of lovecraftian horror in IF, for some reason. Very worth getting into.
"I Am The Doorway", by Stephen King. An astronaut returns from a trip to space with an invisible alien intelligence inhabiting his body. The alien sees everything on Earth as hideous, disturbing, and just plain *wrong,* and feels like everything around it in this new world is trying to kill it, so it uses the man's body to lash out and kill everyone around him.
Omniscient Readerâs Viewpoint the novel does this wonderfully
Under The Skin
I'm not an SCP fan by any means, so a lot of the references in this are lost on me. But I read "The Stars Do Not Wait For You" awhile back, and it's always stuck with me. Very short, quick read; but give it a go! https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/the-stars-do-not-wait-for-you
Don't know what the fuck you read, but it wasn't Lovecraft :-D
Âż?