I hope this is the right place to ask this, I don't normally post here. I'm hoping you guys can help me settle a debate. I say Lovecraft's stories were written so that the world he made was Neutral or Grim-Neutral due to most of the Eldar Gods,etc being indifferent to humans and their actions were more like destructive acts of nature because they don't care about humanity while a friend says the world Lovecraft wrote about was more Grim Dark or Neutral Dark due to the stories being about humanity's powerlessness. What do you think?
>>98851914Novel discussion belongs on /lit/.
>>98851914This runs right past being bait into just leaving me speechless.
Lovecraft stories are primitive compared to the full extent of what later authors would do by extrapolating on his ideas, ideas he probably didn't think about beyond "this sounds cool and mysterious". As a brief note, I've read all of his fiction works, which was much easier than I expected it would be since the list is quite long but it's primarily composed of short stories.Lovecraft's own "Great Old Ones" are little more than powerful mindless space brats who act like dicks because that's how the stories need them to act, with their motives being incomprehensible because who fucking cares why they make horrible things happen, the only thing that matters is horrible things happen. They are largely evil despite lofty language used to describe them as being above that, and they were powerful enough to rule Earth long ago but their power waned, and ultimately really don't have that good of a reason to consider themselves beyond human comprehension.The Elder Gods of later writers however make morality irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. They actually make everything irrelevant. The Elder Gods are so cosmic and so powerful that humanity and even the entire Earth could genuinely be beneath their notice, like a speck of dust in the wind covered by millions of microbes might be to us. it's not Grim-Neutral or Neutral-Dark, just Apathy taken to its extreme where you can't even find any humor in the absurdity of how pointless it all is. It's Neutral in a way that less a mix of all the colors and more of an absence of all of them.
That chart doesn't apply to horror stories.In standard fantasy, there's a clear vibe in the worldbuilding. A grimdark world is grimdark 24/7, everything is grimdark and you can easily place the setting somewhere in that chart. The positive side of that is that it helps to establish the tone of the story since that tone is consistent through it.Horror is different. Check Stephen King stories: they're always set in a realistic world to the point it could be a realism/drama. And then something dark happens, and the characters get lost in their particular dark corner of reality. Horror works because everything is fine... until it's not. Lovecraft is not different: the world itself is bright, thrilling, but... something extremely dark hides in remote areas and people get crazy once they realize there's something terrible behind the normal world, hidden and waiting. Imagine you discovered there's a hidden room in your perfectly normal house filled with dozens of hungry rats, and you can't do nothing about it but hoping they don't get loose, would you be able to sleep? That's why people in Call of Cthulhu lose sanity.By the way, the original Ravenloft was like that too. Modern Ravenloft "reimagined" make it into a grimdark setting, but the original one was bright and thriving. It was a nice place to live... unless you weren't one of the few unlucky ones that met the dark that was hidden in the castle.
>>98851914Mate half the things Warhammer, the supposed "inventor" of grimdark is known for are things Lovecraft, Howard and E.R.B. pioneered. You're a retard if you think a setting where people are doomed to get stomped on by space monsters or eaten by deep ones isn't dark. Totally pointless genre name, just say dark fantasy or you know, lovecraftian.
Is the board so filled with newfags that no one remembers the setting alignment chart anymore?
>>98852581No, it's just that like with the regular alignment chart and the million variations of it, everybody thinks it's worthless.
>>98852656And because everybody agrees with you, it's frequently posted and used? Interesting stance...
>>98852714Like a wise man(me) once(just now) said: "It takes everybody not to post something stupid on /tg/, it only takes a couple braindead retards to break the trend."
Something I've always wondered but couldn't find an answer for: why is the opposite of grim "noble"? Shouldn't it be "hopeful"?
>>98851914The axis of Grim-Noble is about the protagonist/humanity's ability to change the setting.The axis of Bright-Dark is about the positivity of the setting as a whole.Therefore Lovecraft is GrimNeutral.Humanity has no hope of changing the setting as a whole, and little hope of even changing protagonist level events. However, the setting is not actively shitting on humanity, or even the protagonists. Just doing so by happenstance. Most of Lovecraft's protagonists could even have just cut and run and not experienced The Horrors. The Horrors generally do not actively seek to cause damage, they are usually content in their little corner of whatever. Big N the notable exception of course.Your friend is definitely wrong about GrimDark. Lovecraft's world is not intentionally shitty enough for that. Neither is he right about NeutralDark. The Noble-Grim axis is power axis. How much people can change the setting. So his own argument defeats him. If Lovecraft's stories are abotu humanity's powerlessness they absolutely fall in the Grim category.
>>98856200I've never heard a better way to put that. Thanks, saved.
>>98851914Lovecraft's works, for the most part, are best plugged into that grid as Grim-neutral. The ideas behind most of his works were based on things he was afraid of and didn't know how to handle, and it reflects into how most of the world he created is beyond Humanity's ability to change or affect for the better. It's not about how everything is awful and there's no way to make the world better, unlike some famous Grimdark settings, and it's not improving the world through the existence of the Elder Gods, so it cannot be Grimbright. It's just Grim, as nothing you can do will change the situation.Now, the Henderson campaign responsible for the Henderson scale of Plot Derailment would be the Neutral version of the setting, as in that tale it's possible to affect change upon the setting despite it needing immense amounts of effort to pull it off (though the characters involved all died doing it).
>>98851914The main concete of lovecraft is that the world is vastly more than what people imagine or pretend to imagine and that not only are you just a speck of dust in the cosmic order you're not even the only ones who have/had a "great" civilization and will go the way all the ones that came before you did.Not only that, you'll inevitably be changed by it and it's suppose to appeal to the sense of existential dread about your self worth and identity.
>>98851914nobledark is wilderlands of high fantasy in a nutshell
