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Halloween Jack posted:Even then it wasn't entirely graceful--without August Derleth, possibly none of us would ever have read Lovecraft, but Lovecraft fans are super salty at him for writing stories that "clarified" Lovecraft's creations into pantheons of good and evil gods. He also tried to pass off his own stories as being co-written by Lovecraft when they weren't, like The Dark Brotherhood. They're also generally really bad stories with stuff like multiple aliens walking around Baltimore in Edgar Allen Poe suits. Most weird fiction is rough and often terribly racist by today's standards but his are just badly written in a hack kind of way. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 03:31 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 03:25
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There's one very particular thing Derleth did repeatedly in his Lovecraft pastiche that bugs the poo poo out of me: the narrator describes a "crude," "primitive" idol which nonetheless contains an incredible amount of detail in, like, a tiny figurine. Even Lin Carter, whose Lovecraft pastiche was howlingly bad much of the time, steered clear of that. The funny thing is, Derleth's stories are better models for a Call of Cthulhu game than Lovecraft's originals: they often feature characters who have to do such-and-such to stop such-and-such from opening a portal to let the Outer Gods in to destroy the world.
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May 15, 2017 03:53
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Halloween Jack posted:I should have added that STR and CON should also be combined in 4e. Really, STR only deserves to be its own stat if you're playing Very Oldest School D&D 0e, where the game takes place almost entirely in the dungeon, and Melee To-Hit and Door Opening are vital components of the game. Because that's all STR does. Way back when i did my 4e heartbreaker for the contest i killed ability scores off and had fort/ref/will be derived from the skills one took which included might which was basically str check the skill
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May 15, 2017 03:58
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Halloween Jack posted:The funny thing is, Derleth's stories are better models for a Call of Cthulhu game than Lovecraft's originals: they often feature characters who have to do such-and-such to stop such-and-such from opening a portal to let the Outer Gods in to destroy the world. Well, its easy to forget how much Call of Cthulhu is very much a cherry-picking of Mythos material up until that point, to the point where they include the cthonians from The Burrowers Beneath and then go on to essentially ignore most of the book otherwise. (It's hard to blame Petersen for that, I just wonder why Lumley's work was included at all.)
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May 15, 2017 04:06
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Let's be honest here, it was profoundly lucky that CoC was done by who it was as early as it was. Peterson is still one of the more talented figures in the industry, and Stafford's Chaosium was the perfect place to foster him.
Haystack fucked around with this message at 12:03 on May 15, 2017 |
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May 15, 2017 12:00
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Well, its easy to forget how much Call of Cthulhu is very much a cherry-picking of Mythos material up until that point, to the point where they include the cthonians from The Burrowers Beneath and then go on to essentially ignore most of the book otherwise. (It's hard to blame Petersen for that, I just wonder why Lumley's work was included at all.) Because the Cthonians are neat and nothing else from that book is.
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May 15, 2017 12:04
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Haystack posted:Let's be honest here, it was profoundly lucky that CoC was done by who it was as early as it was. I don't think you'd get the levels of Lovecraft fandom that you have today, without the RPG. Just like D&D taxonomised fantasy and made "generic" fantasy popular, there are very few Lovecraftian writers who teens/children in that era who were not influenced by CoC. Look up the bibliographies and interviews of authors, you'll find it lurking around there. The problem is that few people want to acknowledge its influence, like S.T. Joshi, as it's a vulgar non-literary appreciation of Lovecraft, not really rooted in his prose.
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May 15, 2017 12:11
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fez_machine posted:not really rooted in his prose. This can only be a good thing surely?
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May 15, 2017 12:17
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Strom Cuzewon posted:This can only be a good thing surely? Not if your academic reputation is staked on a particular author being worth studying. S. T. Joshi reps quite a bit for the quality of Lovecraft's prose. But yeah, that's what 1970s and 80s RPGs did they rendered down their influences into a slurry that could be re-ingested/interpreted and commanded by the reader/player, never mind the original quality of the influence. GURPS is probably the apotheosis of here's a thing but taxonomised, what other use could exist for a Callahan's Crosstime Saloon RPG, or GURPS New Sun (which is essentially a reading guide/scholar's notes). I have a theory that one of the hidden attractions of RPGs are that they function as a kind of TV-Tropes before TV-Tropes, they just rip apart nerd poo poo into its basic components. Hell, have a look at things like Hamlet's Hitpoints (for a recent example) or how heavily influenced Greg Stafford (one of the co-founders of Chaosium, publisher of CoC) was by Joseph Campbell/Structuralist Anthropology.
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May 15, 2017 12:39
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S.T. "Henry" Joshi
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May 15, 2017 14:37
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I would say Arthurian legend has sprawled out and spawned a lot of pretty good creations even in the modern day--and a lot of crap, of course. I mean, assuming we count Malory as the original creator (which is sort of dicey) many others came after and made something bigger out of the concept. It's in sort of a unique place though, being a thousand years old with a thousand different authors. Sherlock Holmes is another canon that seems enriched by later contributions. A common thread with Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes is that both are popular and beloved, and also in the public domain, so even a flashy failure doesn't have to forestall another attempt at a remake. Also S T Joshi flounced off hilariously when the World Fantasy Award decided a bust of Lovecraft wasn't a good representation for the values of the genre anymore. ETA: That's not true below, there are several kinds of legit non-Euclidean geometry, they're just mostly reserved for extreme math nerds.
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May 15, 2017 15:01
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Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry.
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May 15, 2017 15:01
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Not with that attitude.
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May 15, 2017 15:03
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occamsnailfile posted:I would say Arthurian legend has sprawled out and spawned a lot of pretty good creations even in the modern day--and a lot of crap, of course. I mean, assuming we count Malory as the original creator (which is sort of dicey) many others came after and made something bigger out of the concept. It's in sort of a unique place though, being a thousand years old with a thousand different authors. The Fate/Stay Night extended universe is far superior than the original Arthurian Mythos
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May 15, 2017 15:06
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Waffleman_ posted:Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry. Oh, you sweet summer child.
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May 15, 2017 15:12
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occamsnailfile posted:I would say Arthurian legend has sprawled out and spawned a lot of pretty good creations even in the modern day--and a lot of crap, of course. I mean, assuming we count Malory as the original creator (which is sort of dicey) many others came after and made something bigger out of the concept. It's in sort of a unique place though, being a thousand years old with a thousand different authors. Janos Bolyai's definitely an extreme math nerd, for nineties values of extreme. quote:It is related of him that he was challenged by thirteen officers of his garrison, a thing not unlikely to happen considering how differently he thought from everyone else. He fought them all in succession – making it his only condition that he should be allowed to play on his violin for an interval between meeting each opponent. He disarmed or wounded all his antagonists. It can be easily imagined that a temperament such as his was not one congenial to his military superiors. He was retired in 1833.
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May 15, 2017 15:17
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occamsnailfile posted:Also S T Joshi flounced off hilariously when the World Fantasy Award decided a bust of Lovecraft wasn't a good representation for the values of the genre anymore. Robert M. Price, the editor of Chaosium's fiction anthologies, also gets heat for saying that Lovecraft's godlike entities are not entirely sui generis and have some precedent in world mythology and literature.
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May 15, 2017 15:20
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Waffleman_ posted:Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry. Nope Nope Still nope
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May 15, 2017 15:23
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Waffleman_ posted:Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry.
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May 15, 2017 15:33
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occamsnailfile posted:Sherlock Holmes is another canon that seems enriched by later contributions. A common thread with Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes is that both are popular and beloved, and also in the public domain, so even a flashy failure doesn't have to forestall another attempt at a remake. I'm not really fond of the BBC treatment of Holmes playing up his crippling inability to socialize (with House MD being the harbinger) and loving up all of his relationships. Canon Holmes was "eccentric", but he wasn't a goon. He founded the Baker Street Irregulars for crying out loud. The Robert Downey Jr. movies were, in my opinion, a better depiction.
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May 15, 2017 15:35
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Halloween Jack posted:The funny thing is that whenever I read an excerpt from Joshi, he's ragging on Lovecraft for his plotting and style, which displeases some rabid fans. I've read stuff from Joshi that was interesting and insightful even, he just has this territorial streak where only he gets to criticize Lovecraft, everyone else just "doesn't properly understand his works" and so on. This makes him mild to middling insufferable at least when he's writing about anyone else writing about Lovecraft. Price is right as well, but it doesn't surprise me that fans take any suggestion of what they perceive as criticism personally. It's what nerds do after all.
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May 15, 2017 15:40
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I never saw an original new story to the Holmes canon that surpasses Conan Doyle's stuff though. Maybe some pastiches by Leblanc where Lupin trolls Holmes
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May 15, 2017 15:52
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Arsene Lupin has never crossed paths with Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps you're thinking about Herlock Sholmes, or even Hemlock Shears?
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May 15, 2017 15:54
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occamsnailfile posted:I've read stuff from Joshi that was interesting and insightful even, he just has this territorial streak where only he gets to criticize Lovecraft, everyone else just "doesn't properly understand his works" and so on. This makes him mild to middling insufferable at least when he's writing about anyone else writing about Lovecraft. Of course academic criticism means you also have to deal with people like ST Joshi.
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May 15, 2017 15:57
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Waffleman_ posted:Arsene Lupin has never crossed paths with Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps you're thinking about Herlock Sholmes, or even Hemlock Shears? Not bad.
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May 15, 2017 15:57
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occamsnailfile posted:I've read stuff from Joshi that was interesting and insightful even, he just has this territorial streak where only he gets to criticize Lovecraft, everyone else just "doesn't properly understand his works" and so on. This makes him mild to middling insufferable at least when he's writing about anyone else writing about Lovecraft. To be fair, anybody with a Ph.D in a certain field is going to get very territorial considering the amount of time and specialization that getting a Ph.D entails. They're likely to see anyone without the same level of academic rigor as amateur hacks whose additions to the field, in their view, detract from it as a whole and make his job harder.
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May 15, 2017 16:11
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LuiCypher posted:To be fair, anybody with a Ph.D in a certain field is going to get very territorial considering the amount of time and specialization that getting a Ph.D entails. They're likely to see anyone without the same level of academic rigor as amateur hacks whose additions to the field, in their view, detract from it as a whole and make his job harder. "I was into molecular biology before it was cool. Now, every John, Dick, and Harry are running around like they understand molecular biology. Can't they concede me as the superior ubermench from which all knowledge should be derived?"
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May 15, 2017 16:13
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LuiCypher posted:To be fair, anybody with a Ph.D in a certain field is going to get very territorial considering the amount of time and specialization that getting a Ph.D entails. They're likely to see anyone without the same level of academic rigor as amateur hacks whose additions to the field, in their view, detract from it as a whole and make his job harder. To some degree this is true, but I know other PhDs in literary areas with a lot less ego about the whole enterprise. I mean, we should respect expertise, and getting a PhD is a lot of work. Whatever one may think of the profit involved in the enterprise, these are folks who bothered themselves to learn something very deeply and I get pretty annoyed by people who dismiss the opinions of experts as "just some academic with a piece of paper." It's a really lovely way of dismissing inconvenient truths that our society needs to stop doing. On the other hand, the literary PhDs I knew personally are a lot better at handling clueless commentary as a possible teaching moment, or just picking their battles. I imagine to some degree it's just a matter of personality. Where does expert opinion end and ego begin? I don't even think Joshi is terrible in this regard, but he managed to luck himself into a specialization that can be both popular and seen as 'legitimate literature' so he gets read by more people outside the field than is normal. This does mean he'll have to deal with some really clueless nerds who think TVTropes has something useful to say about Lovecraft's work but he also dismisses more legitimate concerns even from other academics pretty freely. So. IDK. 
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May 15, 2017 16:29
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Waffleman_ posted:Arsene Lupin has never crossed paths with Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps you're thinking about Herlock Sholmes, or even Hemlock Shears? I learned in Persona 5 that the first publishing did have Holmes, but when Conan-Doyle complained it was changed for later ones.
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May 15, 2017 16:40
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To be fair to the academics, there's good reason for them to jealously guard their methodology, as terms like "cultural Marxism" and "virtue signaling" get perverted to mean something very different from their original and obscure meaning when are popularized.
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May 15, 2017 16:41
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Elfface posted:I learned in Persona 5 that the first publishing did have Holmes, but when Conan-Doyle complained it was changed for later ones. 'Twas the joke!
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May 15, 2017 16:42
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Waffleman_ posted:Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry. Someone has never had to answer a maths question that began with the phrase, "Describe a universe"
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May 15, 2017 17:44
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DalaranJ posted:Someone has never had to answer a maths question that began with the phrase, "Describe a universe" "Mostly empty, without purpose, destined to undergo heat death."
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May 15, 2017 17:46
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DalaranJ posted:Someone has never had to answer a maths question that began with the phrase, "Describe a universe" Shaped like a dry toilet, filled with snakes
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May 15, 2017 17:47
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Ominous Jazz posted:Shaped like a dry toilet, filled with snakes And that, my friend, is how you get parallel lines to intersect. Lots and lots of snakes.
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May 15, 2017 17:55
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Halloween Jack posted:To be fair to the academics, there's good reason for them to jealously guard their methodology, as terms like "cultural Marxism" and "virtue signaling" get perverted to mean something very different from their original and obscure meaning when are popularized. "Cultural Marxism" has always been a wild eyed conspiracy theory about the Frankfurt school, as best I can tell.
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May 15, 2017 18:00
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Covok posted:"Mostly empty, without purpose, destined to undergo heat death." Infinite monkeys, all arguing about verisimilitude as described through the lens of 3.5e rules.
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May 15, 2017 18:01
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Plutonis posted:S.T. "Henry" Joshi Waffleman_ posted:Geometry is Euclidian. You can't have non-Euclidian geometry. c'mon guys
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May 15, 2017 18:16
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BrainParasite posted:"Cultural Marxism" has always been a wild eyed conspiracy theory about the Frankfurt school, as best I can tell. Yeah, until recently this was a phrase that was only thrown around by Holocaust deniers and other people of that ilk. It's only gotten widespread use because the Tea Party people adopted it to make their ideology more appealing and intelligent sounding.
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May 15, 2017 18:19
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that vendiagram is a circle
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May 15, 2017 18:27
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