#the cthulhu mythos

[petermorwood]

Howdy Boss!

I saw a recent post about Weird Tales, and the Cth mythos. Which made me curious, have you ever heard of DART - Dark Adventure Radio Theatre? (https://store.hplhs.org/collections/dark-adventure-radio-theatre)

Its adaptions of a lot of the older works, done in the 30-50s style radio seriels, with adverts, voice casts, sound effects etc. Its been a lot of fun and an interesting throwback to older style

I hadn't heard of them, but I have now! :->

(Also noting, with interest, that -re spelling rather than the more usual US -er.)

Here's a trailer for one of them, "The Thing on the Doorstep".

TBH I'm not surprised to see it's a part of the H.P. Lovecraft Historial Society - they've made a couple of Cthulhu movies In Period Style which have been very well received.

Indeed, it was our friend Donal and his father who translated the title cards for the first one, a silent-era recreation of "The Call of Cthulhu", into Irish.

For a completely different view of this author and his stories, here's Overly Sarcastic Productions:

[titleknown]

I made a joke to @dj-bayeux-tapestry about having a dumb idea for a new installment of the Sonic storybook Series (The one with Sonic & the Secret Rings and Sonic & the Black Knight) based on the works of Lovecraft, since they're PD and all, and she actually made a convincing argument that that would be a legit good idea.

Quoting her, with her permission:

the sonic storybook games are kind of about like... sonic breaking and undermining the outdated themes of these stories by just being himself turning one thousand and one nights into a story about telling your abusive boyfriend to fuck off, and turning the arthurian cycle into a story about moving on and letting the glorious past die so i could easily see sonic storybook lovecraft being a story about pushing through fear of the unknown and welcoming those different from yourself whole section where he like stops to talk to the innsmouth people and realizes theyre actually totally chill

Like, I kinda would love that now. Someone at Sega should make that.

[windsweptinred]

@ibrithir-was-here, we've talked about The Sandman - The Cthulhu Mythos before and playing with the notion of the Dreamlands.

Is it just me or does Dream's (we're assuming) very first facet, that precieved by the Outer Gods... Seem very King in Yellow coded? That image of the tattered cloak and tentacles is synonymous with 'Hastur'. It's a intriguing possible connection considering how heavily both beings are associated with the arts, stories and the power of the written word. That and the duel narrative around the King in Yellow being both dred feaster and benign shepard. A god that was never part of the lovecraftian mythos but incorporated in...

It could be very fun to play with? That the Dreaming in its infancy, at the conception of the universe, made up of the dreams of eldritch deities and young stars, could be Carcosa? The identity of Cassilda and Camilla. The Yellow sign being Dream's earliest sigil. And it and the novel/plays sanity warping properties, are a result of this being an aspect of Dream of the Endless humanity was NEVER meant to know. Let alone try and comprehend.

[hplovecraftmuseum]

The question has been asked by several fiction writer hopefulls, as to whether there are currently any restrictions on using characters or place names, etc. that were invented by H. P. Lovecraft or writers of the "Lovecraft Circle". The answer is almost certainly, No. Though there are some highly complex questions regarding who actually 'owns' Lovecraft's works, other writers using Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, etc. in stories of their own certainly is not an issue. August Derleth moved quickly after HPL's death to claim control of Lovecraft's legacy. Through bluster and intimidation alone Derleth was able to dissuade almost anyone from using Lovecraft's name, quotes, stories, without his permission. Derleth was particularly impressed with Lovecraft's story, THE CALL OF CTHULHU. Perhaps because the tale read somewhat like a detective story, Derleth - and admittedly several others among the surviving Lovecraft Circle who were fans also - believed TCoC was a hard and fast turning point in Lovecraft's fiction. That attitude continued to be popular for many years. For demonstrable reasons they were wrong! There is currently no official controlling authority making rules for what is or is not legitimately Lovecraftian or even acceptably 'Cthulhu Mythos'. It's a free for all. Though your curator of this site, Richard Gilman Huber, believes that it is a mistake to try and understand the complex meaning of any of Lovecraft's works by considering ANYTHING written by anyone else, I also accept that the 'Cthulhu Mythos' - a term Lovecraft never used, never defined, and never condoned (because it didn't even exist till after his death) is open to anyone to play with and expand as they see fit. (Exhibit 425)

[theinkedknight]

Having professionally worked on two "obligatory Lovecraft editions" of games, I'm kinda over it. I love cosmic horror, but maybe we can drop Cthulhu and the rest? Make new things rather than old? I could see if it was a genre we were taking back from an asshole, in the way that Joanne didn't invent the magical school concept. You can write magic schools that aren't hogwarts. Lovecraft didn't invent cosmic horror. The King in Yellow was 25 years old when the first Lovecraft fiction was published. We can do this without the Mythos.

[void-acolyte]

Vorvadoss, the Flaming One.

[velvetvexations]

Lovecraft wrote down all the ideas that came to him to do something with later and there are some real bangers in there

[witchmarsh]

We are always saying that.

🧙 Wishlist on Steam now 🧙

[mai-col]

Mystic, Seeker, Survivor

Hmmmm, another species of brainworms (apart from the Malevolent ones, but can you see a pattern ?) have been hard at work, recently, so have some random drawings of the Arkham Horror Girlies (Core Set Edition).

[thestuffedalligator]

I read Fat Face by Michael Shea last month and it was. Fine? It was a Cthulhu Mythos story written in the 80s, it was very edgy and it had a lot of tropes I’m not a fan of, I don’t really recommend it, but I have to talk about one detail I have not stopped thinking about since I read it.

So. I knew Fat Face through reputation because it was the story that inspired Shoggoth Lords from the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG, shoggoths that can control their cellular makeup to look like humans. And the twist in Fat Face is that shoggoths have been hiding amongst humans in Los Angeles, and at the end of the story one of them eats the protagonist.

The tone of the story is grit. It’s grime. It’s sleaze and sexual violence and drug abuse on top of cosmic horror. It wants to be taken seriously so bad.

But here’s the thing about the shoggoths: they have a business.

They have two businesses they run out of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. A shoggoth is a primordial blob of eyes and mouths and flesh and hunger, and the idea of one of them at the LA Office of Finance registering an LLC is already. Great. Perfect. No notes.

The business is a front — and again, that’s great, a shoggoth went, “I want to do some nefarious deeds and not get caught by humans; I know, I’ll register a fake business that’ll be a front, and no human will ever suspect” — because the actual interior of this office is a room of pools of water made from black and ancient Antarctic rocks so that shoggoths can relax in their original blobby forms and eat stray animals that they’ve caught.

So it’s basically just. A place for shoggoths to unwind after a long day of pretending to be human. It’s portrayed as cosmic horror, but it’s shoggoth Cheers. Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your shape.

Here’s the kicker. The front of the business is a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

When they decided to make a front for their secret lair in an LA office building where they hang out in pools of water and eat stray animals — the front they prominently display and advertise — they decided to go with a hydrotherapy clinic and stray pet rescue.

That is Goosebumps shit. The rest of the story reads like a tone poem about the sleaze and violence of Los Angeles, and the main twist of the story reads like R.L. Stine.

But that’s not even the detail I can’t stop thinking about. Because the story reveals that this business — which again, is a front made by alien blobs to eat stray animals like an ALF-themed buffet and hang out in jacuzzi tubs of Antarctic rocks in an LA office — has a flyer.

Which means there’s a shoggoth with a passion for graphic design

[arthur-lesters-right-arm]

H.P Lovecraft invented guys then Harlan Guthrie realized he could give them anxiety

[gilf-ahab]

"you should be at the club" i do NOT belong at the club i’ll be in there telling everyone about the king of carcosa

[doomreturn]

[saspitite]

ive been thinking about this question for a while so i wanted to make a poll and see other people’s opinions:

reblog for himb

do it for he ^

[hplovecraftmuseum]

Using the term 'CTHULHU MYTHOS' at any time when writing of anything specific to H. P. Lovecraft himself is potentially confusing and obfuscating at its essence. The association's of the term are so steeped in misconceptions and falsehoods that using it in any scholarly evaluations of HPL must require disclaimers! Use of the term 'Indians' when referring to the 'First Nation's peoples of what is now called North America is the closest analogy I can think of offhand. The very term 'Indians' emerged from the mistaken belief of early European explorers that they had found a trans-Atlantic route to East India! Despite the realization that the term was steeped in falsehood, 'Indians' as an all inclusive term for all the peoples native to "The New World" stuck for centuries. We now know that Lovecraft never used "Cthulhu Mythos" as a proper term in his life. Even Yog-Sothothery which HPL did use infrequently was never really defined. I suppose associating the term 'Cthulhu Mythos' with the offensive term 'Indians' will cause some folks to react with outrage, but I only use the analogy out of personal lack of imagination to come up with something more appropriate! I apologize ahead of time! (Exhibit 262)

[salmonpiffy]

Cover art and character size comparison for my TFP AU