This is Lovecraft's fault. Dude loved to describe his horrors as having super advanced alien minds way above our own... and then make them act like simplistic wild animlas. Cthulhu rising out of the sea to destroy the world isn't in any meaningful way different than God Zilla rising out of the sea to destroy Tokyo.

>>92619143
>Cthulhu rising out of the sea to destroy the world isn't in any meaningful way different than God Zilla rising out of the sea to destroy Tokyo.
Other than the fact that Godzilla won't make billions his eternal servants, or devour their very souls.

>>92619151
>>92619360
Bot replies.

>>92619143
>make them act like simplistic wild animlas
For the intelligent ones, motives beyond our understanding, or being in our world which they do not fully understand, or a total disregard for us and our environs.

Let me take a look at some of his stories that feature his own creations that are not and were not human.

>The Call of Cthulhu
We don't know exactly what he wants, only that it entails the overturning of our order for something more powerful.

>The Colour out of Space
The Colour (Yes, he spelled it the english way) is so alien as to be impossible to describe, incompatible with our world in some way. It feeds and leaves. How intelligent it is is not possible to assess, since it cannot communicate, and has a form so far removed from one we understand that we cannot even use clues like eyes or posture.

>At the Mountains of Madness
The Elder Things are not met, only their creations the Shoggoths, which were created as dumb servitors and later attained some degree of independence.

>The Whisperer in Darkness
This one very clearly is unlike what you've said. The Mi-Go that's replaced a human is capable of holding a conversation, of deception, of understanding a human enough to gain its trust and then betray that trust.

In short it's not that these things are simplistic, it's that many of them are detached, far removed. For something to be alien, it should be difficult or impossible to fully grasp the mind of it. Lovecraft was famously a man motivated and driven by fear, and he was great at coming up with new ways to be afraid. His xenophobia was truly a fear of the alien, the outside. Not just limited to "fear or hatred of other cultures", though that was definitely a part of it, but fear of anything that might overcome or erase what he knew and found comfortable. He loved the history and architecture of the areas he was native to and familiar with, and I think that helps to put his fear of the alien into an understandable form.

>>92619005
>hobby meant for doing what you want
>he isn't doing what he wants

>>92620351
>hobby meant for doing what you want
According to whom?

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>OP
>it's just an homosexual

>>92619363
Not how cthulhu (or anything in Lovecraft's cosmology) works, the Dreamers have souls, they're just under his spell. Moreover, all aspects of reality are co-equally part of Azathoth's dream, so a single retarded Dreamer is of equal import to the universe as Cthulhu himself or even Azathoth. Lovecraft's setting is pantheistic and only the most small souled bug men would consider the Mythos entities to be superior to humanity.

>>92620391
Anyone who has ever played a TTRPG game. Doesn't seem to include you.

>>92620391
According to D&Dfags who can't handle criticism against their system.

>>92620465
But I thought DnDrones just followed their modules instead of doing what they want?

>>92620462
I know you like Critical Role and all, but that's simply not the case.

>>92619005
Mp, that's just what hentai fetish kids wish and believe because they've never read Lovecraft.
Like this faggot: >>92619143

>>92620520
They'll tell you to rewrite what you don't like when you bring up any issues.
That, or they'll say shit like "every TTRPG has these issues" or "no game is perfect" or will screech about trolling/hating.

>>92620591
Yeah 'cuz Lovecraft sucked at writing.
>One sight of the thing had been enough to throw the assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they lost no time in crowding around him to gaze at the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas.
That should be five words, max. It's fucking fifty-three. That's what shitty writing looks like.

>>92619471
Good-tier post. I definitely think the physical shapes of Lovecraftian monsters is the least important thing, and to paraphrase the Delta Green Handler's Guide, it is in your best interest as a GM to change the physical description of a beast to confuse players who expect mythos entity to definable. I think it is perfectly reasonable to describe them on a scene-by-scene basis, be inconsistent, and play into what a player is personally afraid of. Mix it up and first and foremost convey that this thing is [unknown] and [dangerous], and leaving the rest up to interpretation and guesswork. Once you establish that the localised tornado is both incredibly dangerous and impossible to safely be around, they tend to stop thinking "what is this?" and start thinking "how do we deal with this?"

>>92620391
>>92620532
Are you suggesting that TTRPGs are primarily about following instructions? If so you're going to have your mind fucking blown when you first play them, it's going to be an apotheosis of an experience.

>>92620446
azathoth doesn't dream reality

>>92620955
>he thinks libertarian free will exists
Oh boy...

>>92620861

I don't consider Lovecraft to be a particularly good writer, but that's not a particularly useful criticism. Please put that sentence into 5 words and keep the meaning intact.

Lovecraft's bigger problem is on the macro-scale, where he'll draw things out too long, since he was, y'know, writing for money. His characters and dialogue also tend to suffer, especially if he goes outside his comfort zones on them.

However, his description is quite good, or at least, arresting, and there's a reason he's considered a touchpoint in the genre. When he's writing about New England, he tends to nail the mood and tone. Personally, I much prefer CAS, who was probably just as wordy.

I think you just might have a bit of the brainrot and are struggling with different eras of writing where being verbose was more in style - especially since, compared to some of his contemporaries, Lovecraft is in many ways deliberately anachronistic.

>>92621093
>Please put that sentence into 5 words and keep the meaning intact.
That's not possible because the sentence is total fucking nonsense.
>the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas.
What the fuck is he even pretending he's talking about? How the fuck can it look so strange that "abysmal antiquity" tells them about "unopened and archaic vistas?" What the fuck is he even pretending to say? That's flailing hackish blah-blah.

Lovecraft's problem is that he's a really shitty writer who just tossed word spaghetti at the wall and hoped enough would stick that the reader would think it meant something.

>>92621171
>this should be five words max
>it's nonsense so five words isn't possible
Which one?

>>92621070
Are you alright?

>>92621194
The sentence should be "They crowded behind and looked." It's 53 words because he threw a meaningless word salad onto it that conveys no information to the reader because it makes no sense.

Are you as dumb as lovecraft was, that you're having trouble following?

>>92621171
He's saying that because the figure is strange, it implies a link to an ancient time and place that is unknown to the speaker.

I don't see how this is complicated.

>>92621171
1. It's the strangeness AND antiquity that hint at the unopened and archaic vistas, not the strangeness itself.
2. Things can look old. There are certain styles that evoke a sense of being old, there are certain features of evolution that are characteristically older than others. Describing these as archaic give the implication that they possibly predate the middle ages.
"Unopened vistas" sounds strikingly like "unopened doors/windows", which are common turns of phrase for potential opportunities, discoveries, etc.
So then it stands to reason that these men of science get a feeling that the horrific creature that looks old hints at opportunities for discoveries that haven't been made yet.
Having a grasp on the English language and not immediately dismissing something you don't understand at first are key to reading comprehension, in case you weren't aware.
3. It's still quite awkwardly written; it abuses adverbs and uses worthless emphatics (genuinely, actually, truly, really, etc.), and the scene would be better served as showing us the scientists' reactions, rather than telling us how they feel.
If the rest of Lovecraft's writing is of this caliber, it doesn't fill me with much confidence in his legitimacy as an author.

>>92621484
>I don't see how this is complicated.
It's not that it's complicated. It's that it's nonsensical.

"air of genuinely abysmal antiquity" doesn't mean anything.
"hinted so potently" is blah-blah language.
"unopened and archaic vistas" is meaningless if you're looking at something from them.
"One sight of the thing had been enough to throw the assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they lost no time in crowding around him to gaze at the" conveys the same information as "the excited men looked."

This is bad writing. It's hackery. It's adding words for the sake of adding words. Which, in case you're not aware because you're half-literate, is specifically what "hackery" refers to.

It's flatly bad writing, on the exact same scale that you typed a paper as double-spaced in highschool because that made the paper look longer and you thought that made it more meaningful.

>>92621513
If you feel like that about that sample of his writing, then heed the dedication of House of Leaves: This is not for you.

I don't mean that in a mean way, either. Not every style works for everyone. I enjoy the pace and denseness of lovecraft when he's being driven by the flame of fear that burns inside of him, feeding it and letting the discomfort bring out that kind of prose.

But it's not normal and it's not something everyone enjoys. He was not just influential because of his stories, though - he was also influential because he was a dementedly prolific letter-writer, and despite being known as a recluse he liked to have a web of friends, talk to them, write to them, write with them. He was the mildly insane serial collaborator in a network of writers, and thus had a lot of influence by dint of making everyone read his ideas, spreading ideas of other people between them, etc.

>>92621299
You forgot to include a description for how strange and ancient the creature is.
Five words.
Go.

>>92621564
>House of Leaves
Holy shit it's like you're college sophomore in 2003. Next tell me details about the exciting life and times of Nikolai Tesla. Your taste is fucking trash.

>>92621543
We get it.
You want your literature to be just a series of linked Twitter posts.
Calm your tits.

>>92621615
I want my authors to use words well, rather than just using as many of them as he can find in a thesaurus.

>>92621564
>This is not for you.
Yeah, no kidding.
It doesn't engage me when an author tells me something is really, truly strange I swear, I'd rather be made to vicariously feel that strangeness through the character's words and behaviors.

>>92621620
Your skill issue with English reading comprehension isn't any author's problem.

>>92621653
I'm the guy who just defended lovecraft, but it is entirely possible to write sentences that are stupidly hard to comprehend. Pick up some James Joyce and then when you put it down I'll yell "skill issue"

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>>92621698
>James Joyce
Sounds like some works I'd really enjoy, if this description is to be trusted.

>>92619005
>''incomprehensible''
>can be comprehended

lies and deceit

>>92621741
He's the kind of man who should have been drowned at birth but unfortunately was allowed to pollute literature. His works track better as shitposts than experimental works.

>>92621764
>He's the kind of man who should have been drowned at birth
Honestly, who ISN'T?

>>92619005
What tabletop game is this in reference to, OP?

>>92621698
Joyce is a good writer with a shitty fanbase. he is popular for the wrong reasons. what do you think about House of Leaves?
>>92621764
>His works track better as shitposts than experimental works.
i think Joyce is a very honest and very selfish writer, and that is the true experimentation.
>>92621741
read his early works. if you havent heard of him till now you wont like his late works.

>>92621764
Found the bitter englishman

>>92622034
Pretty much all of them. It's harder to come up with games that have no lovecraft influence.

>>92622240
>what do you think about House of Leaves
Fascinating, very fun, only works if you go into it wanting and expecting it to fuck with you. It's a "set-and-setting define the trip" book. I loved it, I've not reread it since, and I fully fucking embrace anyone's right to call it pretentious drivel and won't get mad.

Mostly I enjoyed the fact that it forces you to repeatedly remind yourself that it's a book, an object. Pulling you out of the groove, and then making the fact that you're interacting with that object a part of the horror via the layer-smushing theme. If you simultaneously are made afraid by its narrative and remember that it's just an object, it's working.

And that's pretentious as fuck.

>>92619005
>"Lovecraftian"
>its a being who's presence and motives can be contemplated, quantified, and categorized by a normal, baseline human mind

>>92622406
Try to comprehed it after catching a glimpse of fish people

>>92622406
A fair number of his stories include such things. The Alchemist, He, Herbert West, a fair amount of the dream cycle, the Thing on the Doorstep, Cool Air, the Case of Charles Dexter Ward...

"It's wholly beyond comprehension" isn't all he did, he just tended to play up how much people would freak out at the suggestion of a thing that disagrees with our mundane acceptance of reality.

>>92622406
>big things scary
*tips fedora*

>>92619471
>Cthulhu's desires are unknown, but it wants to overturn our order
And it does this by rising out of the water and mindlessly smashing the first sign of humanity it can find, a tiny ship of nothing that should be beneath the notice of a living god.

>The Colour feeds and leaves
Like a tiger, or any other simple predator. It's goal is sating hunger.

>The Shoggoths
Dumb compared to Elder Things, arguably at least as smart as a human if they were able to understand independence enough to rebell. Presenting as a lurking boogieman that opposes the human interlopers in its home without tactics or planning, and lets them escape.

>The Mi-Go
Sure I'll concede this point. The Mi-Go and the Elder Things and the Deep Ones and a couple of the other are presented as being greater than humans, but in a way that they can interract with humans and that humans can sorta interract with them. You know, like elves.

>>92622453
All of the best Lovecraft stories have comprehensible pulpy monsters. Hell, Innsmouth is totally comprehensible, it's just a pact.

>>92623060
If I'm picking favourites, Colour is a strong one because it almost reads like he was terrified of modern radiological disasters before such a thing had even been discovered, and also because it showcases his "scientists as wise-men" view fairly well.

If I'm picking for shits and giggles, The Alchemist is a great one because spoiler There's not a magical curse on the protagonist and his family, and yet there is. An evil alchemist cursed his bloodline generations ago, and has been sustaining his life with alchemy and just murdering the men of the bloodline at the appointed age the old fashioned, club to the head way. It's a curse, of sorts, but only insofar as the guy who made it is also the guy enforcing it, using magic to stay alive. I laughed.

>>92619471
Based

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>>92620351

>>92622839
>tiny ship of nothing that should be beneath the notice of a living god.
Why?

>>92622839
Cthulhu isn’t a god. He’s just the high priest of… I can’t remember who.
Point is, he’s sorta just a guy.

>>92623482
I may be talking out my ass here, but I am 90% sure that is Derleth's addition to the mythos.
Lovecraft himself did a lot of allusion that all these things are linked, but didn't tie them down so discretely, whereas August Derleth liked to categorise and detail the setting. Cthulhu is in X faction and relates to this element. Hastur is in Y faction and relates to that element. Nüütez is the child of Suqq'ma and Choukan, and so on. Lovecraft tended to leave the exact cosmology more vague.

Also, being the high priest of the Great Old Ones (as opposed to the Elder Gods) doesn't proscribe him also being a god in his own right, same as being a god doesn't mean he can't be KO'd by a motherfucking paddlesteamer or whatever kind of boat it was they ran his head over with.

Lovecraft mostly liked things to be a bit vague, a bit hard to grasp the exact details of.

But I'm still 90% sure the GOO/Elder God split and cthulhu's place in that power system is Derleth.

>>92619005
>ancient city built by unfathomable incredibly advanced entities
>it's made of stone

>>92623092
What's really funny is how the protagonist is so stupid that he can't put two and two together so the bad guy has to spell it out for him while he's on the floor dying. Dude must have been so pissed that it all ended like that.

>>92619143
>wake up
>see a bunch of bugs building a nest in my living room
>smash it
Clearly I'm fucking retarded for taking such a simple primal action

>>92620991
He very explicitly does, that is why his waking would mean the obliteration of reality and why he is lulled into his continued slumber by his court.

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One glaring paradox in the commonly used adjectives for both Azathoth and the Other Gods (as they are pretty much described the in the same manner) is the repeated insistence of the word "mindless". This choice of word is rather confusing and rather contradictory with the characterization of the Other Gods throughout The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, as they demonstrate a definite sense of agency and will over the Great Ones of earth's Dreamlands, which can also be seen in the story "The Other Gods". Even this following excerpt seems immediately contradictory:
>" It is understood in the land of dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their hideous soul and messenger*, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. "*
They have a will and a messenger who carries out that will, however incomprehensible or alien it may be. Is it, therefore, a blunder or oversight of Lovecraft's in using this description, or is it more "symbolic" of their chaotic nature rather than a literal and direct statement to their ontology? I have heard it said that even the commonly used "chaos"-associated word of "idiot" is used in a more classical way, rooted in the Greek meaning of the word.

What do you anons think on this matter?

>>92628202
Chinese room, probably how most non human life works in the Mythos

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>>92621171
>>92621543
>he thinks good writing should be the literary equivalent of Brutalist architecture - minimalistic, bland and straight to the point
Shoo shoo, purple prose is based

>>92628238
Then that would indicate consciousness is something special to the human-race, which seems antithetical to the themes of cosmicism and human insignificance.

>>92619005
I like roadside picinic’s depiction of “le beyond our understanding” aliens/monsters. They didn’t leave behind hints or technology to help us advance, they left behind literal garbage. Eldritch horrors should be akin to how animals would view humans.

>Aliens show up, hide in a bush, kill a seemingly random person and leave behind their advanced cloaked base made of super materials
>Clearly they assassinated this person for some deep and important reason and left this base for us to discover how to advance our society
>Literally just rednecks in a stand who shot a good sized buck and left their stand and some empty beer can and ammo casing behind

>>92628254
Those themes are how you read the setting if you're already predisposed towards nihilism. See
>>92620446

And anyway, humanity's consciousness being an aberration is a form of alienation from nature which is far more in keeping with cosmicism. Humanity cannot be less significant than anything else because significance is subjective. We are weak and fragile but also very dangerous and adaptable. More than all that though, what separates us from the Mythos entities is our sense of right and wrong. Mi-go do not have morality, nor do the Elder Things, and they are the only real candidates for potentially having minds similar to ours.

>>92628202
I attempted once in a post to try and explain my thoughts on how Azathoth works and why he is proclaimed "mindless" (an unusually diminishing adjective) which I'll post here in parts:

It is important to note that almost all descriptions of Azathoth and by extension the Other Gods are full of allegory, allusion, symbolism and imagery, with the most consistent outbursts of failing-description as "blind, voiceless, tenebrous and mindless", as well as "idiot" thrown about here and there. Concerning Azathoth as mentioned in "The Whisperer in Darkness, it is revealed:

>and I started with loathing when told of the monstrous nuclear chaos beyond angled space which the Necronomicon had mercifully cloaked under the name of Azathoth.

So the name "Azathoth" is merely a cover, a concealing signifier for a deeper and more terrifying Chaos. All the other descriptions are dark allusions. It is also important to note that these descriptions apply to all the entities associated with this Chaos outside time and dimensioned space, as the Other Gods are also referred to in exactly the same way as Azathoth.

>shocking final peril which gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity—the boundless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic ultimate gods, the blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other Gods whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep

The strange thing about the Other Gods is that, despite being constantly alluded to as "mindless", they exhibit quite a degree of agency, especially in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath:

>>92628307
CONTINUED.
>With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters would be much worse; for although earth's gods may sometimes be surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other Gods from Outside, whom it is better not to discuss. At least twice in the world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon earth's primal granite; once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and once on Hatheg-Kla when Barzai the Wise tried to see earth's gods dancing by moonlight

>But few had seen the stone face of the god, because it is on a very difficult side of Ngranek, which overlooks only sheer crags and a valley of sinister lava. Once the gods were angered with men on that side, and spoke of the matter to the Other Gods.

>It is understood in the land of dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return for the favour of their hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

>Never before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts.

>>92628316
CONTINUED:
>Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he strongly advised against any attempt to see them; declaring that they are testy and capricious, and subject to strange protection from the mindless Other Gods from Outside, whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

>Kuranes did not know where Kadath was, or the marvellous sunset city; but he did know that the Great Ones were very dangerous creatures to seek out, and that the Other Gods had strange ways of protecting them from impertinent curiosity. He had learned much of the Other Gods in distant parts of space, especially in that region where form does not exist, and coloured gases study the innermost secrets. The violet gas S'ngac had told him terrible things of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the central void where the daemon-sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark.

>And even were unexpected things to come from the Other Gods, who are prone to oversee the affairs of earth's milder gods, the night-gaunts need not fear; for the outer hells are indifferent matters to such silent and slippery flyers as own not Nyarlathotep for their master, but bow only to potent and archaic Nodens.

>But now he saw that supernal Kadath in its cold waste is indeed girt with dark wonders and nameless sentinels, and that the Other Gods are of a surety vigilant in guarding the mild, feeble gods of earth. Void as they are of lordship over ghouls and night-gaunts, the mindless, shapeless blasphemies of outer space can yet control them when they must

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>>92628202
From the human perspective they're mindless, nothing they do is ever going to make human-sense, they look more like celestial bodies following their own incomprehensible orbits.
Dreamland entities are sort of intermediary, as is Nyarly, as is the mad arab and any other human with a high understanding of mythos lore (note that humans with a high understanding of mythos lore are stark raving insane, this is important). Intermediary entities seem to be telling us that there's a hierarchy with the old ones at the top, but they rarely try to explain the details of that hierarchy, and even when they do we can't understand it.

>>92628324
CONTINUED:
So here we have multiple references to some kind of agency and intentional action attributed to the Other Gods, who are even stated to have a "will". The closest thing we have to some kind of ontological insight into their natures is the quote about their "nameless larvae", who are like the Other Gods in that they are "blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers and thirsts" - the word "singular" here is a very 19th century adjective meaning something like "strange, unusual, out-of-the-ordinary, peculiar". So the Other Gods (who are strongly associated with Azathoth and described in the same vague terms) are "without mind", yet possess strange/unusual "hungers and thirsts" - a suggestion of primal desires and instincts. So overall we can infer that these beings are driven by various strange, possibly chaotic impulses that don't account for what we would term a "mind" - a "mind" being an ordered construct that makes sense of the world, something that would be antithetical to such an an existence in "Ultimate Chaos", an unfathomable existence that lies outside the ordered universe, dimensioned space and time.

>>92628330
CONTINUED:
The question of how "intelligent" Azathoth and his dancing horde of fluting and drumming Other Gods is seems like the wrong perspective, as these beings are an entirely alien in their ontology than ordered beings with rational, structured minds. I don't think them being "mindless" should necessarily indicate a deficiency or weakness, just a profound difference that is approximated through allusion and allegories we can grasp, and I don't think this word in regards to the Other Gods and Azathoth, should necessarily be defined here as a total lack of consciousness or awareness as people seem to think, but more along the lines of lacking any relatable logical/reasoned thought processes. They are entities representing pure, extra-cosmic Chaos, governed by their own alien and most likely incomprehensible principles and desires. A completely chaotic and alien kind of being, but still possessing some kind of potent "will" that is enacted by their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep.

>>92627890
>>92628293
The idea of everything being part of Azathoth's dream is an idea developed by later authors and Chaosium. There are explicitly TWO references to Azathoth being asleep in Lovecraft's own works, those being the "Fungi from Yuggoth" sonnet where "here the vast Lord of All mutters things he had dreamed but could not understand" and the mention in Haunter of the Dark which states "He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws."

From these it may be gleaned that the basis of cosmic laws may originate from Azathoth's own chaotic dreams, and not that reality itself is WITHIN his dream.

>>92621171
>That's not possible because the sentence is total fucking nonsense.
>the scientists are astounded, and crowded around the strange figure, intrigued by it's mysteries
>nonsense

>>92628240
Why do redditors hate brutalist architecture?

>>92621299
Kek, btfo by yourself

>>92621642
>I can't into writing styles as a medium for expression, everything just be literal and as hemingway as possible
It really isn't for you. Maybe Brandon sanderson will be more your speed.

>>92619005
the lovecraftian and cthullu shitck of humanity going insane from the cosmic horrors/demons/whatever never sat right with me. always preferred the s.t.a.l.k.e.r./quasimorph approach where humanity finds these entities and are either recklessly curious or tries to find some way to profit off them

>>92630711
That's how it'd be for most people. Lovecraft was a genuinely unusual man in how he thought. He basically loved the idea that things work how he expects them to, history is how he believed it to be, etc. He was deeply, massively horrified by the idea that something might come along and upset that, and he pretty much extrapolated out from there.

If they discovered the remains of some human-like but not human creature living in caves, most humans would either go "Neat" or "Wow, that means we've got a lot of history to re-examine" or some other historical/scientific question. Or they might approach it from a religious perspective, but we know from historical examples that dinosaur fossils caused some turbulence but didn't destroy religion as an institution.

Lovecraft, meanwhile, would react to something like that by freaking out because suddenly all of the foundation, the bedrock of his understanding of history and society and ecology has been DESTROYED, RIPPED FROM UNDER HIM. The same is true of other bits of science, of human history, of religion, all the way up to his horrible mythos doom-gods.

The average person is not lovecraft, but the average character in a lovecraft story IS lovecraft.

The only good thing about Lovecraft is Cthulhu Tech.

>>92632381
That is a bold statement, anon.
I disagree, but I am here for you. If you want to pour your heart out ranting about this, I will listen and I will validate you with (You)s.

I'm not shitposting, if you want to passionately rant I will be here all night.

>>92632381
I wish the mechanics were as good as the setting

>>92620861
>Lovecraft sucked

Uh oh, looks like we got ourselves a contrarian edgelord here. Anon, we all know the only reason you are saying this is because Lovecraft's writing is popular and you want to appear like you aren't a "normie" so you just automatically shit on anything that is considered popular or mainstream.

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>>92621171
>Being this deep spectrum

>>92623685
Derleth fucking ruined the mythos. The catholic piece of shit just couldn't cope with things not being black-and-white good or evil. Everything he's ever done should be completely disregarded.

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>>92623685
No, the original Call of Cthulhu described Cthulhu as being the high priest of the Great Old Ones.
> They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died. This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready, and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him.
Later authors made him the priest specifically of Yog-Sothoth. And yes, Derleth did make the categories of Outer Gods, Great Old Ones and Elder Gods, but even Lovecraft placed Cthulhu lower on the hierarchy than some of his other entities. Just look at the family tree he put in a letter.

>>92632989
>This union was an hellish and nameless tragedy
I see the "I hate my wife" -brand of comedy was alive and well even back then.

>>92628240
Redditors love brutalism because it's modern.

>>92632989
Well I stand partially corrected then. And I failed to consider that it might be spelled out more in the VAST FUCKING MOUNTAIN of supplementel material that is lovecraft's shittons of letters, even though I've mentioned ITT that he wrote to everyone about everything. Thanks for the legwork.

Unrelated, but I was quite fond of both "Where Yidhra Walks" as a modern, differently-located "outsider normie stumbles upon cult-town" story, and another Yidhra story, "Predator" as an example of the 'many minor notes pieced together' mythos story format. The latter is readable online if you google Walt Debill Predator.

>>92628202
Just a term he thought was cool

>>92632381
>The only good thing about Lovecraft is
Reading Lovecraft and realizing that no one else has read it and everyone is just regurgitating the opinions of someone who hasn't read the books either

>>92634022
>implying

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>>92629668
Any logical person should hate brutalist architecture. It's fucking ugly, and there are far better alternatives

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I only skimmed this thread so I apologize if someone said something about the time Lovecraft was writing his stories.

Keep in mind, a lot of his work is from the 1910s and 20s which was at the height of the development of quantum theory. Einstein had published his general theory of relativity in 1915 and it was confirmed in 1919. The concept of space being a static empty backdrop is wrong. Our day to day experience of distance and the passage of time being static was demonstrated to be wrong. The Call of Cthulhu was publish in the same year that Heisenberg (et al) developed is uncertainty principle for particles. So, the science fiction zeitgeist was all about how the Universe is strange and stranger than you can understand. We still live in the shadow of those theories; they are true and useful but they tell us very strange things about our world and ourselves. Tables are no longer solid, time can stop, there are other universes (that one didn't come until the 60s but still)

The concept of things so strange that they can't be understood except for a handful of initiates is kind of meaningful and certainly has more depth than OP says it does.

>>92634542
Oh also, there were jews, black people, and eurotrash. That has and always will be terrifying for white America.

>>92633246
>VAST FUCKING MOUNTAIN of supplementel material that is lovecraft's shittons of letters
I think it is estimated he made about 10,000 letters, with only about half being available. Later this year Hippocampus Press should release his letters to Frank Belknap Long, as S.T Joshi has stated.

>>92633246
Guy was a shitposter of his time

>>92620861
>>92632651
NTA but HPL's prose actually is bad, read other authors' contributions to the mythos and realize it was literally just him. That's not a condemnation, his stories were clearly still strong the fact that they survive in current year is a damn miracle.

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>>92633246
>"Predator" as an example of the 'many minor notes pieced together' mythos story format
I don't know, the story seemed pretty focused to me

>>92629668
>>92634480
Redditors basedjak over brutalist architecture. It's where I originally heard about it.
I enjoy it in a morbid sort of way. It's almost spiteful in its anti-sentimentality and faux austerity. The book "From Bauhaus to Our House" is a really good read about it.
I utterly reject the idea that concise writing is brutalist.

>>92621171
I don't think im particularly smart, but I personally have no problem understanding that sentence.

>the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas.

Strange archaic being shows up, and all the science guys go "Wow, there's a lot of other shit out there we dun seen/know about yet"

Is that not obvious?

>>92638619
Over half of Americans read at or below an 8th grade reading level tops. This thread just proves all it takes is two or three SAT level words to blue screen the average person and make them reject whatever they’re reading.

>>92619005
>"tentacle" in ealy 20th century english just refered to a limb
>onions in the 21st century: ZOMG INCOMPREHENSIBLE COSMIC LOVECRAFTIAN BIG SQUIGLY SQUID MONSTERS!!!11

>>92619005
>>92619143
Yeah, if you want real lovecraftian horror just look to Well's War of the Worlds.

>>92619471
>>The Colour out of Space
>The Colour (Yes, he spelled it the english way) is so alien as to be impossible to describe, incompatible with our world in some way. It feeds and leaves. How intelligent it is is not possible to assess, since it cannot communicate, and has a form so far removed from one we understand that we cannot even use clues like eyes or posture.
He's literally just describing a radioactive meteor. This is what happens when a sci-fi writer has "too delicate of a constitution for mathematics." He heard about "injurious wavelengths of light that the human eye cannot see" and the fact that it was too far removed from his hyper-concrete anglo--humano-centric worldview made him feel small and insignificant (he was) and thus terrified.

just like Shadow Over Innsmouth is a thinly veiled analogy about the unfathomable existential horror of finding out you have a single african ancestor like 12 generations back, or in Lovecraft's lived experience that probably inspired it, I think it was Irish.

As much as I conceptually love "how does it feel, human, to encounter something that is to you what you are to the beasts of the wild. That reminds you despite your meager accomplishments and over-inflated ego that you aren't the center of the universe and actually understand very little?" Lovecraft's execution is consistently a massive fucking joke. I see him as a tragic figure, caged by his own agoraphobia and xenophobia in the truest meanings of the word, deathly afraid of everything that existed beyond his aunt, his apartment or his little cat niggerman.

>>92642404
>He's literally just describing a radioactive meteor. This is what happens when a sci-fi writer has "too delicate of a constitution for mathematics." He heard about "injurious wavelengths of light that the human eye cannot see" and the fact that it was too far removed from his hyper-concrete anglo--humano-centric worldview made him feel small and insignificant (he was) and thus terrified.

just like Shadow Over Innsmouth is a thinly veiled analogy about the unfathomable existential horror of finding out you have a single african ancestor like 12 generations back, or in Lovecraft's lived experience that probably inspired it, I think it was Irish.

As much as I conceptually love "how does it feel, human, to encounter something that is to you what you are to the beasts of the wild. That reminds you despite your meager accomplishments and over-inflated ego that you aren't the center of the universe and actually understand very little?" Lovecraft's execution is consistently a massive fucking joke. I see him as a tragic figure, caged by his own agoraphobia and xenophobia in the truest meanings of the word, deathly afraid of everything that existed beyond his aunt, his apartment or his little cat niggerman.


>>92634022

>>92641754
>Tentacle
>First known use circa 1762, in the meaning defined at sense 1
>1: any of various elongate flexible usually tactile or prehensile processes borne by invertebrate animals chiefly on the head or about the mouth
I know it's 4chan, but why lie about easily verifiable facts?

Besides, if you tally up descriptions, more of lovecraft's monsters end up crustacean not mollusk.

>>92642431
It was on audiobook, but I have read both of those books, and maintain my stance.

If you have an actual contradiction or refutation you'd like to make instead of ad hominem, I'm all ears.

>>92642493
NTA, but I feel like you’re severely undercutting Lovecraft’s originality and contribution to literature relative to his day and age.
Yes, today, we understand the universe to be a vast thing of which our solar system is only an infinitesimally small part, and concepts like evolution and the relativity of time are commonly accepted. But in Lovecraft’s day, that shit was controversial and far from commonplace among most people.
Here was a man writing in a time when creationism was still widely believed writing about how not only is mankind not the first civilization on Earth, but is not the last. We’re just a middle generation of little imports, which will be wiped away and forgotten down the long aeons of the universe. Here is a man, when acceptance of a kind and loving God was by far the norm, writing about deities who aren’t just dangerous to mankind’s existence, but also don’t even know/care that they exist. The Devil at least cares enough about you to try tempting you into doing evil and trying to steal your soul. The Outer Gods, by and large, have never even heard of a human, much less care that they exist.
Also, what’s wrong with taking inspiration from real life things to shape your fiction? You write about the Colour Out of Space as just being a radioactive meteor, and I won’t deny radiation is an obvious inspiration. But the Colour is beyond that. It shows signs of sentience. It moves under its own power, flees back into space at the end. It animates the plantlife around the farm. It’s clearly doing more than just being radioactive.

>>92642431
It was Welsh, not Irish.
>deathly afraid of everything that existed beyond his aunt, his apartment or his little cat niggerman.
This is the part where you reveal you don't actually know anything about him but the memes.

>>92644187
Man was a living meme.

>>92642404
Why are you like this? Why do you come in a thread pretending to know anything about a person you clearly know nothing about?

>>92634480
The anon you're replying to is an NPC. Everybody, even normies, know Redditors love brutalist things because they love modern things because it reminds them that beauty can be replaced with ugly.
You need to make your games beautiful.

>>92620861
>I must break you.png
peak bait

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>>92645736

>>92645736
>normies
Redditor

>>92643288
Some people have this really bizarre compulsion to try and shit on Lovecraft for daring to write something creative and unusual. It has the same energy as an insecure undergrad constantly piping up to try and wreck their lecturer.

>All good people must trash HPL!
>Games? What games?
It's all so tiring...

>>92644210
He was surprisingly well travelled around certain areas. He loved certain kinds of architecture, he loved the regional history that came post-settlement.

Yes, outsiders to his corner of the world filled him with a sense of "not-me", but he would make trips by train and bus and coach to visit towns and soak in the atmosphere sometimes.

>>92628202
They're like an AI - mindless but with objectives. Sapient but not sentient. They couldn't carry on a conversation. Nobody's home.

>>92621543
Ok then you can write differently if you want. Lovecraft found that style came naturally to him. He knew his stuff was unpolished, he didn't live long enough to find his style. Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath wasn't even published in his lifetime, he felt it was far from ready for publication. He was very obscure in his lifetime.

>>92632381
Please die.

>>92650766
For a good example of this, read Blindsight. It's free online, too.
Full length novel and a good teardown of how not-alien the usual "alien" thought process in fiction is.
Every character has something fucked up about their perception or cognition, from the narrator who had a hemispherectomy to the woman with surgically-induced split personalities to the guy who had most of the nerves in his face and hands rewired to use digital feedback for scientific instruments (and as a result has to wear feedback gloves just to feel with his hands for normal everyday tasks).

>>92620861
Angloamerican prose is lengthy and verbose. Even if it's sophomoric, it's meant to be long, it's conversational syntax. This adds weight to succinct sentences and more choice language.
Here's an example of it in other works of the American canon.
Huckleberry Finn:
>The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it.
Could be 10 words at most, ends up being 31.
Uncle Tom's Cabin:
>He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world.
Could easily be truncated to 7-10 words and keep all the meaning, sits at 32.
The Great Gatsby:
>Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
Could be just 9 words and yet it's 35!

Is the prose better than Lovecraft's? Without argument, but the issue isn't the verbosity, it's just the vocabulary. Verbosity is just standard to the era and style Lovecraft was immersed in, it's neither abnormal nor the problem.

>>92619143
1: Cthulhu did not arise to destroy the world, nobody fucking knows what he arose to do.

2: There is a very important difference also, which is about 30 fucking years. Godzilla was made in the 50s, with a very cool for the time but ultimately not super realistic looking suit.

CoC was written, what in the 1920s? This was not a small thing, to basically describe all of enlightenment rationalism to be fake bullshit and that actually Gods are real, they just hate us or view us with contempt if they even notice human existence at all.

Lovecraft is fascinating because he utterly rejected Humanism as surely as the Christian faith of his own people, he found the self-importance of human beings to be deliriously stupid and his racism was sort of an outgrowth of that. Imagine being from New England where everyone is a tool, but your society functions perfectly because everyone is a tool, but also an autistic Angloid who jacks off with Icy Hot.

Then you move to New York and it's this vile fleshpot of 75 IQ swarthoids murdering each other in the street, Dutchmen skinning cats for pay, Jews charging everyone else rent and the Irish enforcing it all. Big surprise nothing functions but don't worry at least the Wops are here to break your legs if you don't pay then 20% on top of the already punitive and absurd taxes. New York was (and is) a shithole and Lovecraft was right about it, but if, as he clearly did, you view in microcosm all things as indicative of the macrocosmos, then you must also look at the absurd grandeur and pomp of this same city, its pretensions at glory, its absurd laying of claim to liberty, and the pride that accompanies its total dysfunction, how could you not conclude that human beings are totally delusional vermin?

>>92642404
>or in Lovecraft's lived experience that probably inspired it, I think it was Irish.
I believe it was a welsh grandma

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This is a very good thread, I wish I could contribute but I think everything has been said already.
Maybe I would just add that, as far as the original lovecraft's works go, not all, but most of his gods were just names he used to sound ominous and evoke the feeling of the unknown: Azathoth, Shub-niggurath, Yog-sothoth and Nyarlathotep are just that. Names to fill in the gaps. Whenever he used them twice it was as a way of referencing his previous work.
The fact that he literally just had a repertoire of scary names to use whenerver needed would explain the many inconsistencies between these deities: he never expected the magazine readers to have read his previous work and try to connect the dots.
It's a fun thought experiment to try to connect it all and think about a shared world, but I highly doubt this is what Lovecraft had in mind. Chaosium attempts, nonetheless, are very admirable.
It's also very funny how you can getter better discussion on lovecraft here than in /lit/. Heck, there are more in depth discussions on lovecraft on /x/ than in /lit/

>>92657777
>This is a very good thread
/tg/ is doomed

>>92619363
yeah, but he said meaningfully different

>>92619471
>For the intelligent ones, motives beyond our understanding, or being in our world which they do not fully understand, or a total disregard for us and our environs.
which is narratively identical to wild animals

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>Gm claims it'll be a cosmic horror story
>The writing is completely pedestrian
>All he does is use zalgo text

>>92657829
kids who were born back when tg was good are now in high school

>>92619143
Godzilla is an apt comparison because Lovecraft's horror often touched on the hubris of man. Elder Gods, shoggoths and other monsters generally are a threat because fools seek them out, not because they are actively trying to end humanity.

>>92619005
Make Lovecraft, not Warcraft!

>>92620436
>filename
Shit, time to go fuck space monstergirls.

>>92658417
You might be disappointed.

>>92658417
You explicitly play as a woman in that game. There will be no fucking unless you get an eldritch strap-on.

>>92619005
It annoys me despite having tentacle aliens... they're just mulluscoids my guy.
Not the eldritch horrors of the setting
Those I am trying to make a lot more of an out of context problem for my setting.

>>92622839
That ship was also the only possible threat to him in the area. Understand that something like Cthulhu is only in true danger of destruction when he is stuck in a universe "where the stars aren't right" and is juuustt not quite fully corporealized. Doesnt matter if the stars are wrong if he completes the process. That little ship he tried to smash is the exact weapon that put him back to sleep when it crashed into his chest before he was done materializing and fucked him up possibly permanently.

Cthulhu is a Great Old One, consider it a super-highly advanced species that utilizes science we would perceive as magic due to it relying on laws of Physics that are not currently active in our eddy of the universe. If we where to drag terminology from another ficitonal universe into it. Think of Cthulhu as a Primarch of the Deep Ones, the Star Spawn are his SpaceMarines and Dagon is his Emperor.

Cthulhu's presence drives humans to madness as we cannot comprehend him and begin to psychologically unravel into a primalistic state.

Its not that Cthulhu is innately evil, although by our perception he could be, Cthulhu's existence is something that humans cannot handle because compared to the things that came before, we where created weak as a cruel joke of what "life" technically still is to the things that came before us.

Its like you touching a Petri Dish and killing the Amoeba's inside with the salt on your skin.

>>92632989
>Yeb
>Pls Clap

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>>92664652
The boat didn't do shit to Cthulhu though. His form instantly returned to its previous state after the boat went through him. It was R'lyeh sinking again that stopped him (evidently the stars were only right for about 10 minutes).
>The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.

> Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy.

>>92632989
So is Cthulhu not a Great Old One himself? If not, his existence isn't really accounted for in that passage.

>>92668558
IIRC, in The Dunwich horror, in the necronomicon passage, old good Abdul says that Cthulhu is "cousin of the old ones", whatever that means.

>>92668586
Then it sounds to me like he probably also came to the ancient world from the sky with them, since the bit about the influence of their 'dead' bodies is also clearly relevant to him in the story.

>>92619005
>”derlethian”
>it just has tentacles and is worse

>>92668626
Yeah. I always interpreted it like Cthulhu is kind of a special old one in the sense that he's their priest/leader/herald. Once he awakes, he will awake all the other great ones. But probably he is not as powerful as them. Maybe he's even some kind of biological construct of sorts, or just a powerful alien cultist.
I also wonder if the "Spawn of Cthulhu" mentioned in At the mountains of madness are those very old ones sleeping under R'yleh, the same old ones that Old Castro says his cult worships. It would make sense. Maybe the star headed race of At the mountains of madness interpreted this "spawn" as his children, when in reality they were other old ones from outside time and space, summoned by Cthulhu.

>>92658051
You son of a bitch.

>>92664652
Cthulhu is clearly above Dagon, what the fuck are you on about?

>>92642475
>Posts a modern definition
>Still proves my point
>"y u lyin do?? where are my upvotes reddit"

>>92669419
You had no point.

>>92669419
That definition is accordong to its first known use, tho

>>92620616
its literally one guy on this board. most d&d players are so casual they care.
"oh you think dnd is the worst ttrpg? I know there is pathfinder too, but i didn't play it, so i guess its a matter of opinion"
If you keep going after that they will disengage from the conversation.
Imagine you watch a baseball game every once in a while and call a player kinda good, only for a wild baseball buff to get all up in your face about that player's stats and how he is actually below average (we are the baseball buff in this case).

>>92668700
The thing with Cthulhu is that he’s the Great Old One with the largest cult. The original Call of Cthulhu makes his cult a globe-spanning, vast conspiracy with eyes everywhere and who assassinates people who learn of and oppose the cult. Compared to that, even the cults of Outer Gods come up short. So that’s why he’s a big deal among the GOO, even if he’s nowhere near the top of the cosmic power ladder.

>>92620861
Sure, he was not the best of writers, but your complains seems to be that you have a 2-second attention span.

You are the kind of person who reads the wiki instead of the actual book, aren't you?

>>92628307
>>92628316
>>92628324
>>92628330
>>92628336
Let me float another idea by you and see what you think, since you've clearly put some thought into this. Azathoth is the nuclear chaos. Yog-Sothoh is the gate and the key, and seems to be essentially everywhere. Shub-Niggurath is the black goat of the wood with a thousand young. What meaning can we draw from those titles? It's a bit of a stretch, but perhaps "nuclear chaos" is a reference to the developing quantum theory. Yog-Sothoth is generally understood as something like the personification of spacetime. Shub-Niggurath is the mother of monsters, but couldn't that be read as a very pessimistic reading of a principle like evolution, or the drive to survive and reproduce? What I'm suggesting is that the gods and their offspring are "idiots" with "singular hungers and thirsts" because the gods are, in a much more literal than usual way, personifications of fundamental forces. Azathoth, as a personification of quantum uncertainty, "wants" to remain "asleep" in a "chaotic" state of overlapped probabilities, rather than "awakening" as a collapsed wave function. But what does it mean for Azathoth to want to remain asleep, when He's really just quantum uncertainty in general? What does it mean that gravity "wants" to attract objects based on their mass and distance? From our perspective those are certainly singular desires. But from the perspective of a fundamental principle embodied as a sort of living thing, it makes a lot more sense.
TL;DR The outer gods are just personifications of fundamental physical forces, and their desires are so singular because how can a human grasp what gravity "wants".

>>92671295
see >>92668586 and >>92632989
Cthulhu is not a GOO but rather some kind of priest/summoner of them

>>92635512
>>92635512
>>92635512
Isn't one thread enough OP?

>>92672720
The "nuclear" in "nuclear chaos" is almost certainly just to mean "central chaos", and not anything to do with quantum physics or nuclei of atoms, (Lovecraft used the word "atomic" for these ideas)

>>92642404
You have a specific defect in your amygdala that makes you the way you are. If you have a cat, I suggest you get tested for toxoplasmosis. If not, then it was probably some childhood sexual abuse that you pass off as you discovering you were gay.

>>92642404
Niggerman was a cat he had in his childhood, shows how much you know about him. That famous picture of him holding a cat is actually one of his friends cats (Frank Belknap Long's)

>>92679278
>YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE LIFE STORY OF HIS PETS

>>92679183
>>92672720
yeah, nuclear wasn't connected to atomics back then yet

>>92674463
I’m the one who posted the excerpt from The Call of Cthulhu. He’s commonly accepted as a Great Old One. The whole “transmitting their desires via dreams while their bodies are dead” is exactly what Cthulhu does. Hell, that’s what the “Call” in “The Call of Cthulhu” is.
Also, Tsathoggua is a Great Old One and he’s on the same level as Cthulhu on the family tree.

>>92647829
Did you know the guy who penned the theory of projection hated the teachings of the Catholic Church so much for converting the nanny he was into?

>>92681967
That sounds like a legitimate grievance which has nothing to do with projection.

>>92681967
and?

>>92619005
Going out of your way to subvert expectations isn't cool or creative. While you can make creatures lovecraftian without tentacles, going out of your way to do so is pretty lame.

>>92619143
His horror was the show the Gods were so beyond humanity, our lives, planet, or anything else is so meaningless that we're an annoyance at best. That's good horror. A threat that doesn't hate you, doesn't acknowledge you, doesn't even realize you're sentient.

>>92621171
No you just haven't read anything older than a decade. He's saying:

"The scientists were nervous, but quickly came and looked at the creature. It was so different from anything they'd ever seen, that it just being real implied the existence of an ecosystem, if not a world, completely different from anything ever seen, the realisation of this, and the realisation of how much history there was to uncover there, was awe-inspiring."

There. Easy.

>>92621299
What shit writing. His version made me want to look up his story to find a description of the creature in question. It made me feel.

Yours was nothing. Purple prose is a problem but there was a period were poetic descriptions was normal, you can't judge it by modern standards any more than the clothes the characters wear.

>>92621543
Yes but 'the excited men looked' is fucking boring.

"Frodo got a ring, it was bad, he threw it in a mountain." - shit story.

"I put my penis in her vagina and then orgasmed then left." - shit sex.

>>92621580
Nta, but what's your opinion on Tolkein?

>>92672720
>>92679183
Nuclear also refers to origin as well as center, so "nuclear chaos" probably refers to the common ancient idea that the entire universe was birthed from a sea of dark chaotic waters. It can stand for the idea that the universe is not only unknowable and unpredictable, but actively hostile to knowledge and predictability and constantly seeks to erode into chaotic entropy.

There's another factor too, seen by people going insane so often and easily. It's that they're not going insane at all, they're just realizing they always were! Humans live in a world birthed from and controlled by inhuman unknowable horrors and don't notice because we're all totally nuts and just invent our own imaginary reality regardless of what's actually going on. What we think of as "normal" is no less insane and horrible than any other alien or monster, we just don't notice. Like that description of a man from the point of view of a shoggoth as a shrieking, flailing, rubbery pile of hoses covered in bristles and suckers.

>>92672720
I appreciate this post and mostly agree with it. Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth are fuzzy (which is appropriate) but Shub-Niggurath is definitely biology. You can nitpick the details, like how "nuclear chaos" probably meant "center-chaos", but to put it baldly Lovecraft's gods are the gods of science. That's why they're blind idiots who also have goals, they don't have "minds" as we understand a mind, they don't "reason" as we understand reason, they just do what they do and we just have to deal with it.

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>>92689099 #
I mean, it’s not like Lovecraft himself didn’t create cosmic horrors without tentacles. Mi-Go don’t have tentacles, for example. Yog-Sothoth is implied to be a bunch of interlocked spheres. Deep Ones don’t have tentacles. Shoggoths can look like anything, and the original art of them didn’t give them tentacles. And a bunch of Lovecraft Circle authors have written in gods and entities without tentacles (Atlach-Natcha, Ithaqua, Y’Golonac, Tsathoggua, Chaugnar Faugn, the Hounds of Tindalos, etc.)

>>92690991
It's mostly just Cthulhu's popularity that leads to that image, surely. Although there's this really consistent depiction of Nyarlathotep with a tentacle for a head and I don't know where it originated from.

>>92692605
That originated from a dream Lovecraft had, though it was August Derleth who turned it into a form of Nyarlathotep. Lovecraft wrote about the dream in a letter and it got published as a short story after his death called “The Thing in the Moonlight.”
It’s called the God of the Bloody Tongue, and Chaosium made it Nyarlathotep’s combat form. Or at least it’s the form he’s in at his most hostile.

>>92692780
Huh, neat.

>>92619005
>>"lovecraftian"
>>it just has tentacles

You ever seen an Escher painting? kinda like that; shit that logically can't make sense, but yet, still is. /x/ tier body horror; uncanny valley type shit. Everything has eyes... the walls, the ceiling, your hands... eyes.... EVERYWHERE, but they aren't really there.

Individual campaign parts, that have vague temporal similarity to earlier or later parts of the campaign.

Dream sequence nightmares that cause actual HP damage, and leave "clues".

Mirrors that don't "Just" reflect. Telephones where you talk to yourself earlier in the campaign with lots of static and random disconnects. Ghosts that turn into people, people that turn into ghosts, but it was all just "in your mind".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru21bZ3B8KY

NPC's mind-broken and *acting* like zombies en mass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLwKMkdVMnQ

Vapors, phantasms, specters, spirits, spooks, haunts, ghasts, whights, wraiths, poltergeists, monsters in the closets, under the bed, on the roof, under the floorboards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3Uy9wsfkok

and yes....

toilet tentacles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DpPicOZOig