These are Petty Literary Gripes Man was not Meant to Hear!

[harp_of_israfel]

There is a fiction trope I don't care for. It was driven home while watching Event Horizon with folks last night. I'm sure this is a matter of opinion but I have issues with the horror/fantasy premise of "things man was not meant to know."

One issue is it isn't really very scary. Vampires are scary because they play on fears of contamination and

Comments

[3rdragon]

Don't forget 4) Eve gets all the blame when Adam was there the whole time. (This story was one of the scriptures last Sunday, and it definitely says, " . . . somethingsomething Adam, who was with her.")

And, yeah, I hear you on 'WHAT primal fear of knowing things?' Because really, if something terrifyingly scary is rustling around behind my back, I'm turning around, because one concrete possibility of terrifyingly scary just doesn't scare me as much as the varyingly immutable possibilities that my imagination can come up with.

[3rdragon]

*one concrete instance

[harp_of_israfel]

Yes, point four is also prescient. Amazing how that sentence has completely disappeared from the consciousness of so many people who claim that story is important, or even "literally true."

I'm glad I'm not the only one who isn't wired to be scared of thinking about stuff, though.

[daybreak_a]

Conversely, there's the stories where some mortal goes 'I want to know ALL the things' and a deity/wizard/other mysterious mystical figure goes 'You can't know all the things! Stop trying!' And then the mortal goes 'I'm gonna drink this potion/read this magic text/ insist you tell me anyway'. And then the mortal goes insane, dies, ages rapidly into a withered old hermit, or some combination of the above. Personally, I enjoy those stories, which take a kind of 'dude, it's physically impossible for you to know all that. Learn your limitations and stop being stupid' approach to the TMWNMTK plot

[phantomcranefly]

Yeah, I hadn't thought about this, but 'primal fear of knowing things' is kind of alien to me too. :) I like this essaything.