A bit of a semi-offtopic ramble from me...
/x/...
Yes, you need to choose your preferred flavor of nightmare fuel with care. Here's an example where I didn't.
Last night, encouraged by the consistently high quality of this thread's subject, I made the mistake of staying up really late while being engrossed in reading the SCP descriptions. Bad idea, Archduke.
I mean it was a
great read, but I had a lot of difficulty falling asleep afterwards. Many of the SCP articles are written with content and tone that comprises a special kind of what I'll call "philosophical horror", which is
far worse for me than mere gore or suspense. I think that kind of modern updating of a Lovecraftian style is very powerful, on account of its corrosive effect on the fundamental human belief that we inhabit a universe that
does make sense and
can be understood. The SCP wiki skillfully shreds that belief and bakes it into a pie which is served for your dessert.
The only other works of fiction I've encountered which equal (and exceed) this are the brilliant
Xeelee Sequence of novels by Stephen Baxter. Awwww yeah.....that's science fiction which, in a broader sense, is often stunningly pure, bleak existential horror at the same time. In fact, that's the same flavor of background setting in Starfarer which oddly drew me towards this game. Our one unprepared, resource-poor, now-permanently isolated Sector is also a kind of horror setting.
Baxter's novels load it on a hundred times heavier, what with
every single frakkin' star in the universe which could support human life --
being extinguished.....
intentionally.
