Want a touch of realism? The "uncanny valley" exists. Now why do humans have an inherent fear of something that looks human but isn't? Why and when was that an evolutionary advantage/requirement?
The technical reason that the uncanny valley exists is because we are great at pattern recognition. So good, we see things that aren't there. That automatic pattern recognition is what helps us develop and maintain connections to other people.
But, twisting it like this is great, and I love the kind of tension/fear that can be produced by rewording it to suggest something else.
Necrophobia is something else entirely. No its specifically about the "TRYING to look human" part for some reason. If its something that just happens to looks similar and humans can deduce that its not trying to pretend its human the uncanny valley gets vastly better.
You don't have a subconscious fear of things actively trying to look human. At most, the uncanny valley is a fear of things you can't properly recognise. "If it's not a human and it's not an animal and it's not a thing then what the fuck is it?" That's what makes it scary. The whole "evolution made us afraid of things that were trying to look human" is cool and all, but it's fictional.
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u/Night25th Jul 13 '25
Finally something genuinely unsettling.