Surviving Among the Entities

Creepypasta.

A peanut-shaped statue that remains still while being watched, but snaps the neck of the subject and kills them the moment you blink or look away.
An abnormally tall and emaciated figure with no facial features that kidnaps children.
A space behind the stage of this world that you can never escape once you fall into, and so on.

Stories that instill fear through their composition and premise alone, despite not actually existing.
Urban legends fabricated purely out of interest and curiosity.
That is creepypasta.

[“Guys, I made a game, wanna try it out?”]
[“Surviving Among the Entities? What is this? Don’t just randomly upload crap to the indie game gallery.”]

Enjoying horror is an innate human characteristic, and I too am human, so there was a time when I happened to come across creepypasta and became engrossed in it.

I wasn’t an obsessive fan. But at the very least, I gained enough knowledge to understand what creepypasta was.

[“Surprisingly fun, this one lol. But it’s just ripping off SCP and Backrooms lmao”]
[“But why are they called ‘entities’? Couldn’t you have used terms like ‘objects’ or ‘entities’ instead?”]
[“Simple is best.”]
[“‘Simple is best’ my ass, it’s just the Korean word for ‘entity.'”]

Some were powerful monsters whose mere existence destroyed everything.
Some were transcendent beings beyond human cognition.
Some were laws etched into the world, like the physical phenomena that humans blindly believe in.
Some were superhuman, some were spiritual phenomena, and some were extraterrestrial beings.

And some were something that could collapse the human psyche simply by being perceived.

Against such things, humans are powerless and can only struggle to survive, and that very powerlessness is the source of fear and dread. Yet humans can find excitement and pleasure in such situations, which is one reason people enjoy creepypasta.

[“Aren’t you going to update it?”]
[“It takes time since I’m developing it alone. Coming up with the entities’ settings and concepts is difficult too.”]
[“Make a gallery for it. Hold an entity creation contest there. That’s how SCP and Backrooms were made through brainstorming.”]
[“Oh nice”]

Another reason is that people simply find the worldbuilding fun.
However, this can only be enjoyed because it is fiction.

[“Is there no ending? You just survive forever?”]
[“Kinda bland. At least throw in a dead ending or something. If you had unique dead endings for each entity, it might be more popular?”]
[“Oh nice idea”]

A rollercoaster is only fun because it’s safe enough to scream in delight. If you knew right after departing that it was going to derail, those screams would no longer be delightful.

[“The dead endings made it more popular.”]
[“I get dozens of emails every day asking to add their entity creations.”]
[“Lmfao”]
[“You wanna submit one too? I’ll add yours no matter what.”]
[“Nah too much hassle.”]
[“C’mon.”]
[“Hmm, fine add just one then.”]

Fear and dread become instincts for survival avoidance rather than amusement when safety is not guaranteed.

[“Hey, what is this? If you do anything it’s like ‘city annihilation’, ‘nation annihilation’, ‘humanity annihilation’, ‘world annihilation’, ‘earth annihilation’. There’s even ‘universe annihilation’? Half the endings are about annihilation now.”]
[“People keep making overpowered entities so I have no choice.”]
[“C’mon, tone it down a bit. With all these OP ones showing up, the game’s too hard.”]

Creepypasta can only remain an enjoyable pastime when it is fiction.
But who would worry that fiction could become reality?
I certainly didn’t.

“…?”

I didn’t, until I looked up at the sky.

“Why is the moon blue?”