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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6462398" data-attributes="member: 4937">It seems like we just had this conversation just a few weeks ago only we've replaced 'scary' with 'dark'.I make note of the lack of concrete and evocative suggestions - which is no doubt why we are repeating this thread because the OP didn't get satisfactory answers last time either.  Further, even the general assertions simply repeat vaguely what demons or devils are, as if the answer to the question was just, "Reiterate the themes you are already using."I'm reminded of the study of artificial intelligence.   For the first 30 or so years people studied artificial intelligence, everyone in the field assumed we were on the edge of a major break through, and that computers as intelligent as people were always just 25 years away.   Finally, someone thought to stop and ask a very important question, "Hold on.  One second here.   Just what do we mean by 'intelligence'?"  And someone else about the same time said, "Wait a minute.  We keep acting like we are about to create human intelligence, but the truth of the matter is that we aren't even close to creating ant intelligence.   Why do we think we are about to create something hard when we can't do anything easy?"   Actually defining intelligence lead to the first real breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, even though it meant giving up the idea that we were close to creating human level AI.Before you get too far into this thread, I think you'd do well to actually define 'dark'.   If you could actually define 'dark', you might end up with some answers to the questions that wouldn't be just restating pop culture demonic tropes."fear is generated by *lack* of understanding."Normally, 99.9% of the time, I'd agree with that statement.  But no one in this thread is actually afraid.  As I pointed out in the last thread, almost no one is actually afraid of the occult.  It's a very rare sort of fear.  Even psychologists would generally classify demonophobia as one of the rarer sorts of fears.   On the contrary, the vast majority of people exhibit the opposite sort of emotion discussing occult things - demonophilia if you will.   Part of the power of HP Lovecraft as a writer is that he was actually a very fearful man with many strong phobias - racism, ichthyophobia, mysophobia.  But even he had no real fear of the occult per say.</blockquote>

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