/lit/ - Literature

He's a fucking squid headed bat monster. How more recognizable is even possible.

>>6412946
There are like 8,000 different ____ headed ____ monsters.

Because Lovecraft was vague and therefore mythos became squidverse. Not even From Software managed to concoct any new twist on the formula.

>>6412935
Derleth completely fucked everything up after HP popped his clogs by turning Cthulhu into the main figure of the mythos and making it all about good vs evil which just completely misses the point.

>>6412935
All the others are >could not be described

>>6412935
>a very big guy
>lives underwater (fucking spooky as shit)
>looks like a giant octopus (again spooky)
>...while looking like a man
>...while looking like a dragon (what the fuck)
>simple design, yet hundreds of different Cthulhu pictures can be found

Who else could be the face of the Mythos? Yog-Sothoth, a bunch of bubbles?
Kek.

>>6413205
I thought Azathoth was a bunch of bubbles

yog sothoth is pretty much INDESCRIBABLE HORROR FUCK FUCK

I think a lot of people like cthulhu and don't even read the stories, which is a damn shame. Figures though, youngest generation rn a shit.

>>6412935
No idea, I found Dagon way more marking (personally)

>>6413360
Nah it's the other way around. Azathoth was never described IIRC, Yog-Sothoth I'm positive is a bunch of bubbles (a bunch of horrible, scary and plain wrong bubbles).

>I think a lot of people like cthulhu and don't even read the stories, which is a damn shame. Figures though, youngest generation rn a shit.
True.

Why is sexual immorality considered so evil and abominable within Christianity?

>>6413205
>>a very big guy
for you

>>6412935

>my face while reading the shit ton of different creatures created in the cthulhu mythos
>85% of them are living clouds/bubbles/slug piles/fireballs of gas

how is that appealing? Why did autists write so much about those and have humanoid ones fall more to the waste side?

>>6413755
Lovecraft's work was all fundamentally about fear of the unknown. Humanoids are not as alien.

I hope you're trolling, this is like entry-tier lovecraft.

How do you prnounce Cthulhu? I know it is impossible to pronounce and such but what is your preferred pronunciation?

>>6413783

we as humans are fundamentally more afraid of creatures that look more humanoid by nature. There was a study for this. Thats why Alien is scary and kind of weird to think what happened in humans past long ago that is instilled in our bodies to fear such things.

Almost all of Lovecraft's stories are about things that are literally beyond human comprehension; a color that doesn't exist on Earth, spooky music, a monster that's never actually directly seen or described by the narrator. Many of his stories are also either racist or feature a monster that's kind of goofy-looking or both. Cthulhu, meanwhile, is a giant dragon/squid/man hybrid that's going to rise out the sea and take over the planet. The Call of Cthulhu is much more pleb friendly than most of H. P.'s work.

>>6413817
Whom are you more afraid of: a dog or a viking raiding your village?

>>6413847

vikings why?

>>6412935
He became a meme on le reddit

Nyarlathotep > Everything

>>6413882
Was Lovecraft a le reddit cat-person :3 or did he just like the whole "Witches have cats so my stories are going to have cats. It's gold man." he had going on?

>>6413916
>Nyarlathotep > Everything
Fucking this.

>>6413755
>>6413783

He is trolling, his image title is 'the yellow king' aka 'the king in yellow', which was a book of short stories by lawrence chambers that is often seen as a precursor to lovecraft's monsters.

I think lovecraft's horror, especially in his world with the Great Old Ones is more characterized by a fear of things living in the sea and which look like they live in the sea than the unknown itself: most of his monsters look like something from the sea, Old Ones have radial symmetry and are pretty much spoopy anemone/starfish/octopus hybrids.

However his better and more standalone stories like the music of erich zann and the colour out of space do simply deal with the unknown.

>>6413943
>that early lovecraft story where everyone decides to pull on a rope with a sea monster on the other end and don't let go until they're sucked into an unbelievably dark abyss of darkness

The notion of sea power was still very prevalent after WWI due to the influence of Mahan and others.

Plus he was easier to brand.

>>6413969
That was a goodun

>>6413969
Im sure there was also something fundamentally wrong and unsettling with the geometry of the cyclopean abyss too

>>6413943
>Old Ones have radial symmetry and are pretty much spoopy anemone/starfish/octopus hybrids
The crazy part is that Old Ones are the MOST comprehensible Lovecraft monster, though.

They are freaky flying starfish monsters but are very recognizably "human", they have families and friends and clans and civilizations, thoughts and feelings and fears, they're even made out of terrestrial matter. Shit, eventually most of them died out of a catastrophe caused by sheer greed and laziness, it doesn't get more human than that. If they didn't tend to murder humans on sight because they saw us as intruders, I'd say they would be our best bros fairly easily.

I wonder how conventional creatures like them were supposed to have fought the actual "Lovecraftian" space gods and won, whereas it's always clear that humanity would be utterly helpless in the same situation?

when are we gonna get a good lovecraft film

>>6412935
Whats a good start to Lovecraft?
Is there a good path to through his lit?

>>6414251
why do i see this question so much when the combs ones are great

>>6413842
>Many of his stories are also either racist
Very few of his stories are racist, as in written with racism in mind.

>>6414242
>supposed to have fought the actual "Lovecraftian" space gods and won,
You're confusing the Elder Things with the Old Ones that are the "good" gods. The closest Elder Things got to fight with space gods was fighting with the Star-spawn of Cthulhu.

>Shit, eventually most of them died out of a catastrophe caused by sheer greed and laziness, it doesn't get more human than that.
They died because the ice age fucked them over.
>If they didn't tend to murder humans on sight because they saw us as intruders, I'd say they would be our best bros fairly easily.
They created humans in the first place and if I remember correctly engaged in population culling for the sake of their science.

>>6414251
A direct adaptation or a good Lovecraftian film? In the case of the latter we recently had Absentia, The Borderlands/Final Prayer and Banshee Chapter.

>>6414259
Opinions will vary, but IMO start with Dagon and the Call of Cthulhu. Then read whatever story has a cool sounding name, but don't delve into Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward right off the bat.

>>6413787
Kuh-TOO-loo according to the RED, but every fetid cult calls him something different. Tch-Tcho for eg.

>>6413882
Cthulu was a meme long before the Internet m8

>>6413787
K't'hool'hoo

>>6415031
Apologies for the naming mixup although the Elder Things are referred to as "old ones" a few times.

The ice age was the straw that broke the camel's back but their society was already collapsing because they had become utterly dependent on their Shoggoth tool/slaves. The Shoggoths were intelligent enough to perform complex tasks when commanded but had no inner thoughts or desires of their own - until they developed them, and then went to war with their masters in a bid for freedom.

Your post has q simple fascinating idea I hadn't considered. You suppose the Elder Things are made so explicitly relatable in the trappings of their lives (compared to the average unfathomable monster) BECAUSE humans basically behave like Elder Things? That was the whole subtext, that we subconsciously mimic our creators?

I mean how often do you find a creature in Lovecraft who's depicted as desiring to read a book, create a painting and chill out with his friends on a comfy couch?

>>6412935
He isn't.

>Brown Jenkin

Because he is a nigger.

>>6415100
>You suppose the Elder Things are made so explicitly relatable in the trappings of their lives (compared to the average unfathomable monster) BECAUSE humans basically behave like Elder Things? That was the whole subtext, that we subconsciously mimic our creators?
>I mean how often do you find a creature in Lovecraft who's depicted as desiring to read a book, create a painting and chill out with his friends on a comfy couch?
Interesting idea, I suppose it's possible. Didn't the protagonist say something like "they were men!" when he understood what exactly the Elder Things had been doing? He really empathized with their situation in any case.

>>6413916
>Nyarlathotep > Everything
this

>>6413969
I want to read it now, do you remember the title pls?

>>6412969
At least they got the themes down right instead of just 'lol giant squid monster XD' that most Lovecraft inspired fiction seems to be.

>>6413787
Kuh-tho-loo is the official BBC pronunciation.

Apparently Lovecraft wasn't a big fan of Kant

In order for the human mind to be able to process something, or for something to be represented in sensibility and/or understanding, it would have conform to a pure form of intuiton. Cthulhu apparently defies this however, he is a walking talking ding an sich so terrifying he is beyond the structure of the human mind. But to be beyond the structure of the human mind is to be beyond judgment, and so to be beyond horror etc.

>>6415402
>But to be beyond the structure of the human mind is to be beyond judgment, and so to be beyond horror etc.
But the mind nevertheless still grasps at Cthulhu and tries to understand it, which causes terror.

>>6415031
>>6415100

'Old ones' is used to refer to the beings usually called 'Elder things' in more than one story, so you're not actually wrong anon.

Nodens was the only 'Old Ones' esque character Lovecraft ever wrote anything about. You can blame Derleth for the rest.

>>6415402
>>6415506

concept of the sublime, bingadingadongbong

>>6415031

God I hated the Case of Charles Dexter Ward so much.

The Hound, Rats in the Wall, Dagon and The Cats of Ulthar are good starting points. Maybe The Dunwich Horror? Dream Quest is the pinnacle anyway.

One of the nice things about reading chronologically is you get a better sense of the mythos interspersed amongst all his other stories. I felt like it help me understand more instead of "who is this? Who is that? What is rueozkfndkskHhdn'i?"

>>6414291
which ones?

More importantly, how did Lovecraft get away with such a glaring misspelling. Motherfucker has made it virtually impossible for me to spell chthonic correctly.

Always felt Call of Cthulhus ending was a bit of a let down, he does such a great job building him up and revealing him, to have him knocked out by a boat is a bit deflating.

Because a book, and then a lot, has its name in the title.

>>6412952
Yes, but only one squid headed bat monster. Your point?

>>6412935
Hes the least "eldritch" and therefore the easiest to market and make pictures of while pretending he is. Lovecraft tried to write this really grand scale that comprehending these beings would be like an ant comprehending a large hydrogen collider, but it gets lost in translation when you try and make it so the reader/viewer can comprehend *that*. So a lot of things are either vague or the descriptions don't really make sense or they're just things like "Spooky bubbly ghost thing with eyes" which maybe would have done it when he wrote them but is just kind of boring now.

Take Mountains of Madness, when you really get yourself in the story, you can get the horror of it, but the "beings" themselves are just big ass pitcher plant things with tentacles or whatever.

>>6415829
See I kind of liked the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. It was just too long I felt, I know that most of HP Lovecraft still falls well under short story length, but many things still just feel like they drag on and on.

>>6413916

tell me how this isn't the same shit as the x files for meganerds

>>6415031
>>6415829
thanks based lit bros

>>6415265
The Horror at Martin's Beach.

>>6417786
Shitty Cliches the Anime. Couldn't even finish it.

>>6417217
I just wish ATMOM was the story everyone remembered rather than big C. Cthulu is easily the lamest and least dangerous mythos creature.

He'll destroy the earth at some point in the distant future if literally everything else doesn't destroy us first. All he does is wake up, get high by a boat, and go back to sleep because LOL STARS NOT RIGHT.

>>6417786
I played a demo game of Cthulu wars as Narthy. The only remarkable thing I did in that game was kill Cthulu himself with my hunting horrors, thus preventing him (the furthest ahead player) from obtaining the conditions he needed to not die at the end of the game.

It was kind of a dumb game and I probably won't ever play again, but I consider that a success.

Did anyone else particularly like Pickman's Model?

>Lovecraft was a prodigy, reciting poetry at the age of three, and writing complete poems by six. His grandfather encouraged his reading, providing him with classics such as The Arabian Nights, Bulfinch's Age of Fable, and children's versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey. His grandfather also stirred the boy's interest in the weird by telling him his own original tales of Gothic horror.[6]

>He lived in constant pain until his death on March 15, 1937, in Providence.

In the mainstream? Because of South Park

>>6418422
I honestly would never have guessed this from reading his works.

>>6413099
So which Cthulhu mythos authors should I read besides Lovecraft, which ones pretend do not exist?

>>6413787
K'thooloo. Th instead of t adds some mysterious quality, if you ask me.

>>6413842
The Call of Cthulhu is racist as fuck, though. >Dat negro conspiracy

>>6415031
>Very few of his stories are racist, as in written with racism in mind
Top wut m8. So one has to be consciously racist to be racist?

>>6417808
The X-Files aren't nihilistic. Also, no womenz

>>6417139
Elder Things.

excuse the bad english,cthulu became popular due to the rise of ''internet atheism'',so ssome of these dudes used him as a parody god like the sphaggeti thing.


the only true scary shit in his writings were the various mongoloid mixed niggers and yizidi devil worshipers.

shit like that does truly happen.

>>6415031
>Very few of his stories are racist, as in written with racism in mind.
a lot of his work can very easily be interpreted as xenophobic

Only read Cthulhu, Erich Zann, Colour out of Space and Rats in the Walls.

Am I good to read ATMOM? I will I miss any of the mythos references? Nyarlathotep was mentioned in Rats and I had no idea who he was since I hadn't read the poem or Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.

>>6419684
Read The Dunwich Horror and The Shadow Over Innsmouth

>>6419837
Shall do, thanks.

>>6418661
Catatafish tale soon will be told...

>>6415292
>'lol giant squid monster XD'
That's what it boils down to, though.

>>6413362
Nyarlathotep and Azathoth are the best

>>6418725
Bloch, Long and Smith, the rest is shit

>>6413362
>Dagon
>we know jackshit about him
>literally all he does is hug a monolith
>he might not even be canonical within the Cthulhu Mythos (which was created by August Derleth, so who cares?)