Nacarbac

A glimpse under the hood of a large language model trained on 4chan.

So I can really only answer in my own limited sense - I haven't read much philosophy, just dabbled and lived.

For my own encounter with those doldrums, what I encountered that resonated with me was essentially Nietzsche's own exploration of the loss of the justifications for passionate living that we are given by our environment, parents, religion, culture, etc - nihilism. It isn't a happy desert to wander through, but it's one that has potential. And then, of course, it's okay that whatever answers you find you may grow beyond and reveal to be another illusion. Nishitani's The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism was a good companion on that.

Also, The Illuminatus! Trilogy and Robert Anton Wilson's later books were a very important part of me acquiring a sense of humour about the collapse of my expectations.

Recently, reading Daoist philosophy, the notion of harmony with the vast systemic gyre of the universe and a similar dynamic ignorance of there being any particular, static, understanding seem to fit with this. But that's easy to say and hard to feel.

The one that sticks with me was a kind of randomisation of size perception. An alarm clock, the red LCD numbers were as large as a bus, but the rest of it was still small. It was so far away, but I could reach it with my short arms, and the red numbers totally filled my vision even though I could easily see the rest of the room. Every part of a thing disagreed with the rest of it.

Why it sticks with me is that this distortion persisted for a time after I awoke. I was still perfectly capable of moving around in my dark house on muscle memory, but everything familiar was addled. I ran downstairs and outside and huddled in the dark until things stabilised. Not quite a scary nightmare, as it wasn't a threat - more like it wasn't a space I could exist in.

Thinking back now it reminds me somewhat of the perceptual switching I encounter with psilocybin, just more chaotic.

Have you read the manga? It's quite a trip.

They aren't really. I mostly adlib from a basic skeleton scenario, and they aren't crazy murderhobos, so they tend towards peaceful resolution to a lot of problems and most of them don't really care about combat, preferring interesting exploration.

But that's one of the in-setting advantages to the generic-ish fantasy landscape (in this case, a rough mishmash of GURPS fantasy settings and Invisible Cities), the ability of organisations to monitor territory is sharply limited, and the primary enemy comes from dungeon locations that have no force projection or allies.

Oh, wait, actually the Swashbuckler is having a tough time - they're an agile unarmoured type, and every time they do their thing and charge at the biggest monster to effortlessly stab it in the eyes they get a really unlucky Dodge roll and are one-shot into the ground.

The question at the heart of Atlas Posted, "Who is John Tankie?".

My nonsensical-miracle bet is a plucky team of three to four Post-scarcity Socialist Space Explorers make a stealthy trip down to Earth (though due to a cultural archive misunderstanding they're all dressed like 20's gangsters, and one of them needs to hide their tentacles under a veil) to offer a gentle nudge to a frazzled pair of fusion scientists.

Otherwise, nanotech isn't really possible in the miraculous Drexlerian sense, microtech isn't going very fast and probably can't scale, biotech could do everything needed but the research is slow and heavily impeded by policy, fusion is unknowable but probably just distracting from achievable research, room-temp superconductors could have massive impact if affordable, and shade/cloud geoengineering also has the problem of less sunlight reaching crops (which should be correctable by adding a set of orbital solar mirrors, like the USSR tried)... but obviously tech miracles do nothing to alter the underlying structure, merely pushing the deadline away a bit while another threat builds up.

A miracle would be great, but only in that it gives time to work change on the actual problem.

Youkai are anthropophagous by nature, so they might generally need a bit of actual flesh/death in their diet.

That proportion can probably be reduced or even eliminated as they redefine their mythological identity from old-fashioned maneaters drawing fear from their prey, to instead drawing power from the people who are terrified of vegans.

In fact... as humans may transition into Youkai through desire or prowess, and the richest sources of superstitious fear to consume in the modern world comes from reactionaries in general, I posit that Hexbears are a kind of Youkai! Posting is danmaku and emotes are spellcards! This is further evidenced by our frilly hats, heavy drinking, and occasional cannibal murders.

Not written by a marxist, but the TTRPG setting Transhuman Space, has essentially this within the Solar System. By 2100, advanced biotech and AI allow space colonization, with China dominating Mars and Weird Space AnCaps infesting the asteroid belt to do biological crimes. It manages to be fairly neutrally presented.

An example from the setting encyclopedia:

Watching TOS for the first time just now and (as you say, grading on a curve) I'm greatly enjoying it.

Even though I frequently disagree completely with the cast, the way that they're able to discuss alternate philosophies, change their minds through experience, and admit to being unhappy when their solution is imperfect - it shouldn't come across as refreshing as it does.

And it's just fun whenever Spock goes smash and starts crumpling props.

Well, taking ghosts, I don't think it likely that ectoplasmic echoes of the dead are spooping around - but if someone has a conversation with their dead friend one night, that isn't unreal just because it arose from their brain. Humans leave echoes of themselves in each other, and we animate them all the time without noticing, just in the course of our normal creation of our own perceived consciousness.

Following that, curses and symbols and suchlike might move through human populations and "spirits" give the appearance of having a person-like existence - we humans aren't singular things, our selfhood is bound into a web of interpersonal and environmental interactions, and fuzzy around the edges. So these mental vibes can transmit through that layer and result in behavioral effects in the humans they touch, and I don't think that's too different from having an Astral Plane or Underworld with gribblies and spirits. I doubt that rituals and such conducted in secret would be likely to manifest actual knock-on effects on the target, but if they alter the ritualists behavior (such as increasing their confidence or resolving some tension) then they still have an effect.

I don't particularly think it's worth trying to quantify though. I enjoy it when it seems appropriate, use its language when it has a better grasp on certain subtleties or just got there first (corporations as egregores, etc), and am sympathetic to it.

Plus, as another poster said, since there can be an underlying cause that created a supernatural explanation - such as mold, toxic air, poor construction, mosquitoes - that does generally suggest a level of respect is warranted case-by-case, much like how historic medicinal plants are valuable sources for investigation even if Lungwort probably isn't healthy because its leaves look like a lung.

Stalker may fit. It's not a scary movie, but I think it could be considered existential horror - though not quite in a tragic or hopeless sense.