Yicheng Liu's Blog, page 2

On Fantastic Horror and Cosmic Nihil

A pretty good summary of Cosmic Horror over here…

Break The Code

[image error]

The Fantastic is situated between the Marvelous and the Uncanny… Horror lives in that space that draws from all three: and presents the faces of the sublime and disgust, beauty and the ugly.

The Sublime was originally the elevation of that which is so horrible and fascinating at the same time that it cannot be described nor reduced to the images of mundane existence, but rather must enter into the music of the word, the dance or gleam on the edge of things, the invisible that becomes almost for a moment visible; not to our sight, our eyes, but rather to our mind.

The ugly and the distasteful or disgusting bring us back down into the revolting mass of our toxic envelopment in the Real, in the bodily farce of existence itself. Disgust reminds us of that which surrounds us and would deign to kill us at each and every…

View original post 103 more words

On Suicide…

I don’t know how you made it here. Maybe you’re contemplating about it, or maybe you had stumbled onto this page by accident. It doesn’t matter, it never does. After all, the only thing that does matter is what you take away from this article and how this influences you. If you’re contemplating suicide, please don’t do it.

Life is hard. You don’t need to experience the extremes harshness of it to know that. When someone stubbed their toe and goes ‘Ouch! That hurts!’, you understand that. Life, by nature, is difficult and filled with pain and displeasure. The only way to live without ever experiencing any form of social ridicule, personal loss, or any form of negative emotions is to segregate oneself from humans in general. Humanity’s biggest source of emotion welled from pain. Philosophers from many aeons ago contemplated the nature of Pain, and what it meant on a spiritual level.

Medieval Priests rationalised all the pain and evil to be a punishment inflicted for their own sins. As some sort of test of faith. As such, the word ‘Contrition’ was born. They cannot fathom why they were born or for what purpose were they there for. In an misguided attempt to pursue perfection, they decreed the only way to exonerate oneself from sin and to be purified is through suffering. All have sinned, and every little thing must be punished. The nature of suicide became abhorred and reviled by the priests and preachers of the Middle Ages in Europe, for they reasoned that Suicide is to turn away from God, from the good things in life.

Pain hurts in ways that doesn’t always display itself physically. Those who contemplates suicide usually do not contemplate so purely based off of physical suffering. What pushes them towards that edge is the emotions and the stress. It has been the same since the sawn of time. When people sees no hope and despair blots out the positive aspects of life…they found themselves trapped without a choice. Fundamentally, the nature of choice is not always the totality of their previous actions, but rather actions outside of their own control. Such things inspires despair and such things drives people to experience negative emotions more.

The illusion of this lack of choice came from repetition and stress. Breaking this cycle is far from easy. It is not a simple task, but it can be done. Even when life seems hopeless and no one seems to agree with your worldview or loves you…know that someone out there shares your pain. Someone out there wants to hear your story. Don’t give up in a hopeless situation.

The death of one influences many. People will mourn. Even those who only knew you in passing. To your family members, you are usually an intimate connection. A story that they share and they will be the first to grieve for you. your friends, those who knew you, they too, will grieve. Your teachers, your students, your employers, your employees, they will feel sadness when you leave. Don’t shut yourself off, rediscover the loved and the things you loved to hate. The passions and dreams that you chase.

It does not matter whether Life is meaningful. Empower yourself to make this decision to live. Discover your identity in the swirling miasmic sea that we call the internet. Start small, doodle in your sketchbook, sleep earlier. Drink tasteful tea. Take control because no one else is steering the boat. Everything is pointless; there are no rules. This. Is your freedom, and yours alone.

Choose Life. It may change.

Death.

Death is almost alway something that feels scary, and something that’ll make a normal person recoil in fear every time. The very idea of non-existence is…viscerally mortifying. As much as you hated to admit it, you know this. It’s hidden deep inside your heart. Every time you ponders suicide or see someone suffering, your psyche will inevitably be tickled by the concept of death.

That niggling sensation of fear, dread, and endless subliminal despair towards the literal antithesis of life is something that mere words cannot express; since that feeling will differ from individual to individual. Every one is qualified to talk about it; yet, at the same time, no one truly understands it. People may be capable of staring death in the eye, but they aren’t always capable of letting go of their attachments. If you die, wouldn’t your family, friends, and loved ones be sad? If you were to die, would you ever a chance to try eating chocolate-chip ice cream again? The answer to former is almost certainly a yes, and the latter is almost certainly a no. Everyone have some regrets buried deep within the psyches and it will become the source of your neurosis whether you like it or not. Comprehending death requires an understanding of the concept of non-existence and a complete detachment to life as we know it.

People fear dying because it is slow and painful. But I believe it is impossible to fear something that exists so far outside of your comprehension that even the very thought of such a concept is impossible. Close your eyes and picture death; are you picturing a pitch-black world of nothingness? Yes? Then you’re doing it wrong. Darkness is merely the absence of light; nothing more, nothing less. Without eyes or brains to even perceive the concept of light, how can you perceive darkness? Is that confusing? Good. It’s meant to be confusing. Does that sounddepressing? Good. It’s meant to sound depressing.

We are all stupid monkeys orbiting around a flaming ball of hydrogen destined to blow up in a few billion years’ time on an insignificant piece of solidified cosmic fart. The human race is confined within a prison of stars that we are destined to never escape fro due to the rapid expansion of the universe. We can’t even plan and organise a manned journey to Mars yet, and we know more about the ecological makeup of exoplanets hundreds upon hundreds of light years away than we do about our own oceans. There’s so much to do, there’s so many things we are capable of despite the fact that we are imprisoned on a tiny rock floating in middle of nothingness. Close this tab, do something productive with your day, and live your life to the fullest.

Life is just death in slow motion, when time comes, embrace it with a smile on your face and try not to leave too many regrets behind. There’s so little time left, yet there’s still so may thing to do….

Write a gripping mystery adventure in four steps

Amazing for both mystery writers and TRPG fans alike!