Gonna recommend The Hound for something a little outside his normal cosmic horror stories. It's one of the few horror stories to give me legitimate goosebumps at the end.
What the hell was up with HP lovecraft and those Cthulu mythos/deities
- Thread starter DragonSJG
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Very few, because that's much of why horror works. You show just enough to spark the imagination, and the audience fills in the gaps of what could be with things that they are afraid of. If you see or know too much about a monster or whatever then it becomes less scary. For example, the xenomorph in the first Alien movie only had 4 minutes of screen time. Less is more.
To an extent. I feel most of these in film were simply restrictions of the time, see Jaws and Alien. If you see the whole thing, it looks bad because they lacked the technology to not make it look bad. Sometimes the reveal is the best part of a horror movie as well, you finally see what's been doing the deeds and go "holy shit". I prefer psychological horror too, but it's not the only horror genre.
That list is also missing the absolute best mythos game, which is Arkham Horror: The Card Game.
Yes.
Underwater with Kristen Stewart.
Holy fucking shit. I was already interested in the movie when I heard it was basically alien underwater and incredibly well-made, but this just put it into the must see category.
I agree to an extent. I mean, most horror movies and fiction work still work on this principle unless they are bad or intentionally throw all subtlety out the window, even now not limited by special effects. The reveal is the best part unless it doesn't live up to what you had imagined, which is why it was wise for Lovecraft to keep the descriptions of his monsters relatively vague and brief even when he unmasks them at the climax of the tales. That way the mystery isn't dispelled, and you are left continuing to wonder.
Oh, good receipts. I stand corrected.
Edit: holy fuck it's worse than I thought possible (and yes, I am completely familiar with Lovecraft's racism, lol... that's saying something)
My ironic favorite Lovecraft story is this one, because it reads like a parody of himself; what is utterly mundane to me and most people causes the most horrifying of purple prose in Lovecraft. I particularly like the vision of a hellish future New York populated by dancing Asian people.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/he.aspx
http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/he.aspx
Hey you know what, that's fair, and I'll take back what I said. It's been a while since I've read some of his stuff (The Dunwhich Horror was probably my favourite), but holy fuck those descriptions are dull as hell. I still think there have been more recent stories that have done cosmic horror better than he has though.
Oh no no. As you saw, he was also incredibly anti-Semitic.
Yes, he did meet and marry a Jewish lady, while he was living in New York. But i always saw that as him fetishising his bigotry.
I was only using "Lovecraftian" to kind of be an ass to Lovecraft. Eldritch horror is the better genre term. I think other writers have used Eldritch horror better.
And I don't want to take credit away from Lovecraft because the C'thulu mythos has done a lot for Eldritch horror.
Is it multiplayer? I'll look into it. I can't find anyone to play anything with me that's not Cards Against Humanity or Speak Out. Nothing wrong with those games , I really enjoy them, especially speak out, but I have other interests that no one around me shares.I've heard good things about this game:
"Have you seen The Yellow Sign?"
The Yellow King RPG
The book has been written. The book has been read. Now it rewrites you. Across time it spreads, creating dread new realities. And you’re in all of them.site.pelgranepress.com
I'll check these out. Never heard of them.
Yup. Its a more streamlined story game type system, based on the Gumshoe (I believe). Perfect for online games. Maybe try Roll20.net, there are open RPG games around.
Oh and the willows is awesome: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Willows
I heard that about Italians at the time, but the Irish and Slavic people too?
Racists are alway coming up with crazy conspiracy theories.
So I've read. Lots of stuff out around the internet about it. All race science and bigoty nonsense.
The COVIDiot thing is a bit of a sensational stretch for the sake of being topical/comedic, admittedly; if you wanted a really brass tacks take I'd say he's more like the writers of Black Mirror with added racism: his stock-in-trade was to take any story from the news, whether it was about explorers setting foot in Antarctica, a new tomb being unearthed in Egypt, a device that could detect and visualize the ultraviolet spectrum, or just the general doings of Vermont, and imagine some manner in which it represented a dire threat to, if perhaps not always life as we know it, at the very least the quiet and unassuming singular life of his quiet academic protagonist.
That said, I would caution restraint in conflating his self-professed atheism with any sort of break from superstition or turn toward scientifically-minded rationalism. It's important to note that in his time and place "atheism" most likely meant simply "not being devout Christian", as he was known in childhood to be given to flights of fancy where he imagined himself of the Arabic faith and in his few actual scholarly pursuits actually did some reasonably deep dives into Greek and Roman paganism.
To whit, there is nothing in his writing that indicates a break from religious thought: he describes things often using terms like "antediluvian" (meaning literally "before the Biblical Flood", a description completely lacking merit if your world view doesn't hold Biblical events as being historical fact); his aliens, even when they're transposing brains into jars connected to phonographs, are constantly engaged in "unspeakable rites" in hilltop circles of standing stones where they chant ancient litanies in sonorous tones; his stories are full of dead civilizations whose ancient gods were every bit real and influential on their world and whose grim monoliths beckon them still; and of course, he imagines no greater proof against evil in his universe than what basically amounts to overt religious symbolism (The Elder Sign).
I think the most generous reading of Lovecraft's "atheism" is that he was, in fact, quite open to the idea of many different modes of religious thought, not that he was in any sense against spiritualism or belief in the supernatural; in essence he uses "atheist" here closer to the way we would define "agnostic" today, or even further as "specifically non-Christian". A less charitable reading would be that he, in fact, self-identifies as such with all the ardor and significance of a rebellious teenager casting off the oppression of familial ways, with no particular intent beyond identifying himself as not being the product of his upbringing.
So I'm sure many of us are familiar with the Cthulu and I just have to ask, just what the absolute hell was up with all that
Like how do you even come up with this and all the lore behind it?
Mind flayer!
Many of them? People say he doesn't describe the creatures and entities he came up with and there are for sure examples of ones left incredibly nebulous in terms of their looks, or they shape shift constantly, but he goes into some pretty extensive detail on creatures like the Mi-Go, The Great Old Ones, Cthulhu and so on.
Yeah, his description of The Elder Things in At the Mountains of Madness is honestly some of the longest-winded bits in any of his stories. There's more description given to their supple, plant-like tuberous form than to entire alien-versus-farmer shootouts and zombie resurrections in some of his other works.
It's also the only time I've fallen asleep reading Lovecraft, but, eh.
Yes.
Underwater with Kristen Stewart.
What the... I had no idea this was actually what the movie was about!
I'd seen the trailer before and kept thinking, man how cool would it be if a movie like this actually implemented the mythos. Seeing as it's something that no big budget movie has ever attempted, I didn't give it a second thought and moved on with my day. But this movie actually is a Cthulhu mythos film?! Welp, I know what I'm watching tonight...
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The old ones must be fucking with me! I guess I was just scrolling through with the pictures and didn't recognize it with the custom clue tokens (even though I have seen them before, and have blinged out my game with hundreds of dollars in upgrades).