#<- never apologize for writing me a meta essay on themes and takeaways

[peliginspeaks]

Extremely good addition. Would like to bring special attention to:

The primary parties spreading the message that the doom is unavoidable are the ones who are orchestrating it, and need us out of the way.

And

Sometimes the love you put into the present moment and into finding those moments with each other is the hope.

I think part of the reason horror is so important, especially in dark times, is that it deals with the question: When you can't stop what's coming for you, what do you do instead?

When the horror is cosmic, when the dread is too big to be changed, the things that the characters in a well-written horror do still matter, even if it doesn't change the resolution. We feel in an instinctive narrative way that they matter. Small ways of fighting back, forming relationships in the midst of it all, a character picking a tiny goal like keeping one person safe for as long as they can and throwing their life at it again and again, another finding beauty and pointing it out between one calamity and the next... It matters to them, and it matters to the other characters. The middle part matters, even if it doesn't change the ending.

It's not about hope. You don't have to have hope - you can feel in your bones that everything's fucked, and it can be 100% true, but the middle part still matters. I think, in times when it's hard to reach a bar as high as hope, that's what makes horror more accessible. Sometimes you need hope, but sometimes you just need to know that the middle part matters.