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Mors Rattus posted:His cat's name involves the N-word. He also wrote that poem.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:03
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Mors Rattus posted:His cat's name involves the N-word. Same with the dog in Dam Busters. It's a shame. It's a good old-school action movie about a WWII raid, which arguably inspired a lot of the "trench run" sequence in the first Star Wars. But I'm not going to play that movie for my kids, what with the Squadron Leader calling for his dog in too many scenes. AlphaDog posted:white sailors "breeding" with Chinese women Another one I don't think I'll introduce my kids to. (I'm white, my wife is US-born Chinese.)
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Dec 6, 2018 22:10
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IMO Lovecraftian horror is inherently overrated because if you strip out the xenophobia, the entire horror is 'things larger than you exist and can and will destroy you without knowing or caring about you, because they have bigger plans that you don't have any way to know or influence.' Which, like, yeah. That's...that's a thing that is true of the world in general. I ain't the center of existence, and capitalism exists, and any number of other things.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:15
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Mors Rattus posted:IMO Lovecraftian horror is inherently overrated because if you strip out the xenophobia, the entire horror is 'things larger than you exist and can and will destroy you without knowing or caring about you, because they have bigger plans that you don't have any way to know or influence.' Ovverated or not, it's still going strong as a subgenre.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:19
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Existential horror isn't going anywhere but it doesn't need to be explicitly racist.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:24
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Mors Rattus posted:IMO Lovecraftian horror is inherently overrated because if you strip out the xenophobia, the entire horror is 'things larger than you exist and can and will destroy you without knowing or caring about you, because they have bigger plans that you don't have any way to know or influence.' I mean, the question then is what you do with it, right? Also, there's the possibility that the modern audience finds cosmic horror, i.e. 'we are not the center of the universe' horror, much less powerful because we're inured to it. We're post-modern, and no longer start off thinking we matter in that way. That's one argument, in any case. On the other hand, there's also Lovecraftiana - Cultist Simulator*, for example, is vaguely Lovecraft-inspired in that it's an occult fantasy story set in the 20s-ish, and it has basically none of the themes you'd associate with Lovecraft or any of the monsters. And then there's a bunch of work pointlessly replicating Lovecraft monsters because they're familiar and nostalgic for some nerds. Not that much of this isn't overrated, but it's not quite the case that the Lovecraft influence is a simple one. Unfortunately. I'd prefer to see a Lovecraft-less slate of occult and cosmic horror fantasy, but he's in there deep like a splinter, and his particular coded and explicit racism pops up unfortunately often as a result. *Which has very good lore, I think the Lovecraft element is basically vestigial, given the real influence is 'What if TS Eliot's the Wasteland was about occult secrets?'
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Dec 6, 2018 22:29
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And going strong even outside of genre fiction. Conspiracy theories, for example. No matter how absurd they can seem, to some its more comforting to imagine a malevolent group of globalist elites behind every tragedy than to accept that a lot of things are just random, because it at least posits some meaning and organization behind bad things happening. Some people really find the idea of a universe without inherent meaning beyond what we ascribe it to be really scary. Or they become Buddhists and just go with it.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:31
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I will never not find someone like Zak seeing SA as some kind of bogeyman funny. At best, we exist to point and laugh at idiots, like the aforementioned writer and bitcoiners.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:40
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That Old Tree posted:I have faith in people in general to consume even the most blatant media without grasping its themes both purposeful and accidental. Why, good sir, isn't there a whole site dedicated to that sort of business? I think they call it "tee vee tropes". Mmm. Yes.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:50
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Bloodborne is the answer to a lot of the questions you're all posing about the state of cosmic horror. It's an unsettling story about menstruation and childbirth that isn't sexist, isn't racist, and is genuinely creepy. Games are arguably the best way to experience a cosmic horror story anyway. Reading about some shlub realizing he's not the center of the universe because he got spooked by geometry is a wildly different beast from having that creeping realization inflicted on you directly.
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Dec 6, 2018 22:57
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It's easy for us to laugh off our insignificance, both as individuals and as a species, because we were born and raised in a world where these ideas were old hat. Lovecraft was not, and a lot of those themes in his work were the product of somebody who was raised with really retrograde values also having a fascination with then cutting-edge science and watching everything he wanted to believe in be torn apart. Extreme anthropocentrism dominated the cosmology of the world he was born into, and he spent a lot of his time learning that it was bullshit. (I would also note that a lot of people even today still think the universe exists because a god wanted to create them and needed a place for them to live, but that's neither here nor there.)
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Dec 6, 2018 23:13
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grassy gnoll posted:Bloodborne is the answer to a lot of the questions you're all posing about the state of cosmic horror. It's an unsettling story about menstruation and childbirth that isn't sexist, isn't racist, and is genuinely creepy.  Bloodborne is extremely good, and one of the few works to ever really effectively merge gothic and cosmic horror in a way that I found conceptually and thematically satisfying. Also, broadly on topic, I once witnessed a poster on the Exalted forum defend Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror as a thought experiment for 'what an atheistic universe would definitely really look like' and valued it because it let them, a Christian, experience the absolute horror of atheism. With a strong implication that specifically Cthulhoid monstrosities sort of naturally would exist in a non-Christian universe, and racism would be true? It was very weird.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:17
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The Exalted forum was and is a haven for extremely weird and bad posts.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:20
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Why, good sir, isn't there a whole site dedicated to that sort of business? I think they call it "tee vee tropes". Mmm. Yes. Ah, you see ARB is enacting the trope known as the Deadpan Snarker ha ha kill me.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:21
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The story of Lovecraft's ongoing correspondence with contemporary Robert E. Howard is interesting, in that while they both admired and respected (and influenced) each other's works, they were starkly opposed on matters of mankind's nature. Howard proposed that the natural status of humanity was savagery, within which civilization represented an aberration and often a horrible one; whereas Lovecraft proposed that civilization was the central value of humanity (and you may take it as a given that by "civilization" he meant white male european civilization) and the most horrible thing possible was its degradation and collapse. Hence Howard's Conan stories are about how an intelligent, capable savage whose only moral code is his own conscience tears rear end through one corrupt, rotten society after another, ultimately becoming king only to be betrayed by his own court, because civilization is fundamentally corrupt and corrupting. And Lovecraft's stories are mostly about the terrors and threats that claw and tear at (white european male dominated) civilization, and even upon those men's minds (which can be taken as a metaphor for civilization itself). Both of these authors were informed and influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's worthwhile to consider how their worldviews compare to that espoused in the Tarzan stories. When I was a teenager reading Howard, all this stuff went over my head, I was just engaged with the power fantasy and thrilling adventure. As an adult, I've gone back and re-read Howard's Conan, and I can see all the cases of sexism, racism, and the underlying themes for what they are. I'm still willing to read those stories, and I still enjoy them; Howard's writing style is engaging, he's brilliant at evoking a scene, his turns of phrase are masterful; and across his writing, he is sometimes quite racist (Conan seems to be happy to agree with a white noble who rules over a "savage" black people about the deficiencies and necessities of harsh rule) and sometimes surprisingly progressive for his time - Conan seems quite happy to make friends with, and view as an equal, a black man whose experience and skills are similar to his own. (Of course that man dies.) And Conan encounters Belit, a woman who is captain in firm and iron command of a crew of pirates. (Of course she's half-naked and throws herself at Conan, and the crew are all black men, albeit capable.) In addition to exercising one's own judgement about an author (or other content creator), and whether or not to support them by paying for their works, I think it's also possible to accept works that fit into a historical context for what they are, appreciate their strengths, and be mindful of their failings.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:28
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It's not like Lovecraft was the sole proprietor and codifier of cosmic horror as a concept, and most of it was popularized long after his death by August Derleth publishing his stuff for him. It was a shared setting even at its start, with multiple authors contributing, and there were plenty of works before the Cthulhu Mythos that explored the same themes and that Lovecraft drew from, like the King in Yellow or the House on the Borderland. I'm not sure why there needs to be an attempt to say that Cosmic Horror as a genre must account for Lovecraft's racist views when the most you can say about Lovecraft is that he helped popularize this poo poo. We don't have any trouble imagining that detective stories are more than just the themes and ideas established by Arthur Conan Doyle, for ex.Mors Rattus posted:The Exalted forum was and is a haven for extremely weird and bad posts. I'm pretty sure that even ten minutes skimming through the goons.txt twitter will immediately put things back into perspective: https://twitter.com/Goons_TXT Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 23:39
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While Alexis Kennedy tends to hit kinda the same note a lot, it's a good note, of "there are cosmic beings far more massive then us, and oh, they care so much about you, and their love isn't exactly a good thing."
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Dec 6, 2018 23:41
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Mors Rattus posted:IMO Lovecraftian horror is inherently overrated because if you strip out the xenophobia, the entire horror is 'things larger than you exist and can and will destroy you without knowing or caring about you, because they have bigger plans that you don't have any way to know or influence.' One of my favorite bits of cosmic horror is one where said cosmic horror actually represents capitalism; it's not only more relatable (assuming you aren't also a sheltered white dude who is afraid of basically everything, including the existential horror of oblivion, the ocean, people who don't look like you, people who don't look like you having sex with people who do look like you, the possibility that you might be related to people who don't look like you, Nikola Tesla, round architecture, the non-visible electromagnetic spectrum, and air conditioning) and an actual threat to people, but it also actually fits things better, such as the "enormous monster obliterating people without noticing or caring" stuff. Night in the Woods is a good game, is what I'm saying. Play it if you haven't. Also if you have.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:51
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ProfessorCirno posted:While Alexis Kennedy tends to hit kinda the same note a lot, it's a good note, of "there are cosmic beings far more massive then us, and oh, they care so much about you, and their love isn't exactly a good thing." I'd argue that they don't love you, really. You can love them, maybe, but they're guilty of the exact same abusive tendencies that got them into this mess in the first place. They ignore your affections or they try to exploit them.
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Dec 6, 2018 23:51
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ProfessorCirno posted:While Alexis Kennedy tends to hit kinda the same note a lot, it's a good note, of "there are cosmic beings far more massive then us, and oh, they care so much about you, and their love isn't exactly a good thing."
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Dec 7, 2018 00:03
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Bedlamdan posted:I'd argue that they don't love you, really. You can love them, maybe, but they're guilty of the exact same abusive tendencies that got them into this mess in the first place. They ignore your affections or they try to exploit them. Fallen London is definitely more like this. I think Cirno is talking about the Horizon Signal event Kennedy wrote for Stellaris, where the cosmic being's "love" is indeed directed at you.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:20
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Roland Jones posted:Fallen London is definitely more like this. I think Cirno is talking about the Horizon Signal event Kennedy wrote for Stellaris, where the cosmic being's "love" is indeed directed at you. Ah, I never picked that up.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:25
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Cultist Simulator has a very complex relationship with its alien gods, that involves extremely intense emotions and interesting metaphysical fuckery. It also holds together really well, which is aesthetically pleasing. I did, however, just have my first actually bad experience with it, where I ransacked an entire new subsystem for hours (avoiding stuff I should have been doing in actual life) only to discover that the secret hinted at was not actually linked to the things the lore would imply, but to something else entirely, via word of mouth. It's the first time the lore really didn't work for me, and we'll see how I feel when i get over this and go back to find out more about it.
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Dec 7, 2018 00:25
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Lovecraft was no doubt a hosed up racist, but why is it so perplexing to have racism be a theme in horror? The horror genre is full of vile stuff, and that does not stop most fans from enjoying it. You don't have to agree with the dude.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:01
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Biomute posted:Lovecraft was no doubt a hosed up racist, but why is it so perplexing to have racism be a theme in horror? The horror genre is full of vile stuff, and that does not stop most fans from enjoying it. You don't have to agree with the dude. By 'racism be a theme' do you mean 'the horror is black people' or 'the horror writing is also racist' or 'racism is a source of horror within the text'? There's some post-Lovecraft stories where Racism is a cosmic monster, metaphorically, rather than Non-Whites being a cosmic monster. e: and it should be clear why 'the horror is black people' is a bankrupt theme for a horror story. It's not perplexing, it's just bad. If the writing is racist in an ancillary way, that's not a theme so much as an unfortunate symptom, like in the Conan stories as mentioned above.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:03
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It's a little bit like how every 80s movie had a token black person. It's an improvement on no black people at all, and even in some cases an improvement on black people only being portrayed in a super-racist way (Amos & Andy), but it's still tokenism and thus problematic. Especially when the token black person inevitably sacrifices themselves to save the white protagonists. Does that make all those movies unwatchable? Eehhh. Maybe, for some folks, and that's understandable. Maybe not for others, and that's OK too. If you were watching a movie like that with your kids, you could take some time to explain what tokenism is, and why it's bad, and that would be a teaching moment, cool.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:By 'racism be a theme' do you mean 'the horror is black people' or 'the horror writing is also racist' or 'racism is a source of horror within the text'? Sure, and those were his worst stories. The Horror at Red Hook is the worst because it is literally just a racist screed, and there is nothing more to it, but one can contextualize fears that you may not share (of pregnancy if you are a cis dude for instance) and still have the stories be powerful. People know how racism works, they know the narratives, even if they are not racist themselves. Additionally, I think that even the wokest among us have hosed up and irrationally feared the other at one time or another. It's territory ripe for mining, even if coming at it from the other side like Get Out is a lot more socially conscious. thotsky fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:23
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Biomute posted:Sure, and those were his worst stories. The Horror at Red Hook is the worst because it is literally just a racist screed, and there is nothing more to it, but one can contextualize fears that you may not share (of pregnancy if you are a cis dude for instance) and still have the stories be powerful. People know how racism works, they know the narratives, even if they are not racist themselves. Additionally, I think that even the wokest among gently caress up and irrationally fear the other st one time or another. It's territory ripe for mining, even if coming at it from the other side like Get Out is a lot more socially conscious. Okay so your latest contrarian thing is t literally defend xenophobia as a good theme in 2018, got it.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:25
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It's as "good" as rape is as a theme. By which I mean it obviously depends on the story and your subjective opinion on the story.
thotsky fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 01:30
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So, I will defend 'xenophobia' as a theme in precisely one way: Bloodborne does it very well. Notably, most of the xenophobia is why you get attacked on sight by angry mobs! And generally the spectrum of xenophobia to xenophilia is a defining duality in Bloodborne. However: I don't think a racism narrative is actually likely to ever be a good one, because one of the inherent qualities of racism is that it's pretty drat bad at thinking about itself or the world.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:30
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Why do people keep bringing their loving takes on how a dude who died before WW2 started turned out to be a raging racist. Like why is this poo poo only brought out for loving Lovecraft and not Walt Disney or Robert E. Howard or another popular author/artist from the early 20th century but only that loving guy.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:33
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Because the dude is a culturally relevant (and sometimes good) writer. Oh, and also a volcel racist weaboo
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Dec 7, 2018 01:36
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Plutonis posted:Why do people keep bringing their loving takes on how a dude who died before WW2 started turned out to be a raging racist. Like why is this poo poo only brought out for loving Lovecraft and not Walt Disney or Robert E. Howard or another popular author/artist from the early 20th century but only that loving guy. Because Lovecraft's writing itself was often basically just racism expressed pretty explicitly and implicitly in its themes, and Lovecraftiana is a huge part of nerd culture. Robert E. Howard's Conan stories have deeply racist elements, but the core conceit of swords and sandals isn't isomorphic to xenophobia the way HPL's cosmic horror is. So he's the best possible example of the influence a creator's racism can have on the wider popular culture inspired by his work. Nobody would accuse Swords Without Master of being inherently racist, but a Lovecraft-based game is always going to need to be checked for extremely racist underpinnings.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:37
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Plutonis posted:Why do people keep bringing their loving takes on how a dude who died before WW2 started turned out to be a raging racist. Like why is this poo poo only brought out for loving Lovecraft and not Walt Disney or Robert E. Howard or another popular author/artist from the early 20th century but only that loving guy. why does the TG as an Industry thread talk about Lovecraft (and Howard, who I brought up on this very page) but not Disney? Gosh, I can't imagine
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Dec 7, 2018 01:38
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Biomute posted:culturally relevant The examples I mentioned above include the founder of the biggest entertainment corporation on earth and the man who codified an entire genre.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:38
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I played Toon in high school, but I forget if it was racist
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Dec 7, 2018 01:38
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Plutonis posted:The examples I mentioned above include the founder of the biggest entertainment corporation on earth and the man who codified an entire genre. Nobody makes Conan plushies. ...oh and there are droves of Walt Disney takes
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Dec 7, 2018 01:42
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Biomute posted:Nobody makes Conan plushies. From a TG perspective Disney's racism is less concerning than how maintaining the copyright on the mouse has hosed everyone.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:54
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Good lord, there aren't Conan plushies. What an incredible missed opportunity!
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Dec 7, 2018 01:55
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Also, at least from my reading as the whitest person ever who knows nothing, Howard was racist in the sense of "grew up up in the South in the early 20th century" and was as about as not poo poo about it as you could expect for the time from someone not super progressive. Like, nothing to be lauded, he certainly has some baggage, but more explaining to someone "Yeah it was a different time and he had some hosed up views. Like really hosed up. But the swordfights are cool." As opposed to Lovecraft's umm everything. Like you can pretty trivially point to characters in the Conan series from several ethnic backgrounds (sort of? weird pre-history poo poo) being considered good and competent, but then there's also tons of bad poo poo. With a very favorable view, I'd like to say he was vaguely kind of aiming in a progressive direction but just didn't have the framework to even start. See also his take on women where he kind of sort of gives them agency maybe sometimes but then doesn't. Robert E. Howard is basically a new born giraffe trying and failing to take its first steps to not being a crap human, is what I'm saying, I think. Meanwhile Lovecraft is so loving puerile but also terrible with his views that I both loathe him and can't take him seriously at the same time.
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