I know what it is.

A mistake. :V

Anyway wall of text over. If you've survived to read this far, let it be known I'm (finally) returning to streaming this month and will have a new PNGtuber rig and overlay. Oh also I'll be playing Eternal Darkness for the first time. More details soon-ish.

There are people who get me, and people who won't, and that's not anyone's fault. The people who do truly know and appreciate me for who I am are all the more dear to me because of that fact. I don't need to pretend to be anyone else. If me being me drives you insane? Skill issue. :)

I play an eldritch character online because to me, it's second nature. My username here is sort of the way I see myself these days. A "local Eldritch Abomination": an unusual thing, but still your neighbor, mundane in my own strange way.

I'm older now, and in a much better place. I've slowly relearned how to open up to people after years of therapy, and whereas truly being known is still a terrifying concept to me, I've become more open to the idea. I often still feel like this unknowable thing, but now there are people who care.

What if the people were just as strange to it as it is to them? A creature like that would have no choice but to be alone. I realize now a lot of this was me projecting my own experiences onto these fictional beings, but that fact hasn't diminished my appreciation for them.

I didn't immediately understand why, but I found that to be sad. I got the sense that being so incomprehensible that anyone trying to learn about you would be driven mad, would be a uniquely lonely existence. What if the horrible monster wasn't malicious? What if it just wanted to be understood?

The lack of description beyond words like "unknowable" was the point, of course. Your imagination is supposed to fill in the blanks. Not knowing what a thing wants, let alone what it is, is terrifying to most people. This big powerful thing might not even know you exist even as it kills you.

When I was still definitely too young to be reading it, I managed to get my hands on a collection of short stories by H.P. Lovecraft. I'd read other horror books before, but none that seemed so disinterested in explaining to the reader the monsters the stories revolved around.

You can even begin to fool yourself if you do it long enough. You construct an illusion so convincing you lose sight of your own emotional needs. That's pretty much how I grew up. Isolated out of a sense of self preservation, unable to connect with the people around me. So I buried myself in books.

Eventually it gets to the point that the simple act of allowing yourself to be truly known by someone else becomes terrifying. So you purposely obscure yourself, make yourself unapproachable and unknowable, or pretend to be someone people would be more accepting of.

The problem is, that kind of isolation when you're young compounds fast. You stop understanding how to interact with people your own age, which in turn makes you a larger target for bullying and isolates you even further. It's a vicious cycle.

When you grow up the target of relentless bullying, you tend to learn some coping mechanisms. You talk to people less, try to stay out of the way, and minimize your own presence to avoid drawing the wrong kind of attention. You learn to be comfortable on your own.

And if anyone just wants to donate you can do so at ko-fi.com/local_eldrit...

Obviously not necessary but very appreciated. Trying to get together $150 total.

I'll be offering custom twitch notifications packs for $20 with three different sounds. I can do either music or sfx if that's more your style. I also do music production at $100 per 30 seconds of audio. If you're interested, shoot me a message and we can go over the details.