#ren vs the simon necronomicon

[necropsittacus]

like. my impression of the original mythos, and most takes on cosmic horror in general, has very much been that it’s much less “cosmic struggle between good and evil” and more “the most powerful cosmic forces are at best uncaring and apathetic towards humans and at worst actively hostile”

while this book heavily emphasizes a younger, mostly benevolent generation of gods overthrowing the older, hostile ones, which is fair enough given that they’re trying to connect the mythos to actual mesopotamian myth which in some cases does have that structure to my knowledge (although im not sure that the equation of the primordial gods with death, unspeakable mind-breaking horrors, evil sorcerers, etc, to the degree this author is going for is actually derived from babylonian myth tbh; my memories of the enuma elish are a bit fuzzy, but this particular setup seems like an artifact of “we had to incorporate that element somehow and the older deities seemed an obvious choice”). i’m aware lovecraft also has a distinction between like. my brains blanking on terminology but the elder things and the actual Incomprehensible Horrors. but it’s not emphasized as much in most of his work, and fuck if i honestly understand half of what’s going on there (one of my frustrations with lovecraft’s work, beyond the much bigger problem of his various horrific bigotries, is that he’s too vague on what he’s describing--which i am aware is supposed to be part of the appeal of the genre, that it’s incomprehensible, but it just feels like there IS a cosmology and Abomination Lore, which is usually left so unclear that i genuinely cannot figure a lot of it out just from reading the stories. and that’s frustrating.) 

additionally, the statement of humanity having been created by the younger gods from the blood of the older gods (and thus having ties to both, and draws to the “ancient ones”) is interesting and fun and a cosmological concept i’m honestly quite fond of, but it feels really out of keeping with the cthulhu mythos specifically; i would have to do more research to know if that’s another thing lifted wholesale from babylonian myth or if the author’s drawing on other dualistic or pseudo-dualistic traditions too; it almost reminds me of cathar theology, but that feels like a bit of a reach and again i don’t remember the enuma elish particularly well so it’s entirely possible it’s from there. at any rate, the whole idea of the gods being that involved feels like it’s out of keeping with a lot of the tone of lovecraft’s shit (with the possible exception of the mountains of madness and stuff of that ilk?)

although i do think it’s interesting that the author seems to have seen the conflict between the kind of uncaring, despair-inducing cosmic abyss favored by that genre of horror and the idea of a benevolent pantheon, and tried to resolve that by repeatedly saying that the gods are distant and forgetful, and have to be reminded to protect us--and, additionally, that the older gods will rise again (and presumably re-overthrow their usurpers, though this isn’t stated outright that i recall)

but at the same time, the introduction seems to indicate that the author legitimately does somehow think the cthulhu mythos is dualistic in that sense, and i’m not sure what to make of that

the attempt to rework the cthulhu mythos into something much more dualistic (as far as i can tell without the author thinking of this as a reworking in any way) is really quite odd