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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. It evolved out of a conversation about how people deal with problematic people/influences posed in the tabletop gaming forum, and Lovecraft-adjacent stuff is like the biggest racist elephant in the tabletop rpg room besides D&D itself.
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Dec 7, 2018 01:59
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I mean, now there's takes so be careful what you wish for? 
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Dec 7, 2018 02:00
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Xiahou Dun posted: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." Howard was also kind of trapped in that all of his stories were being sold to pulp magazines, and they were sometimes rejected for various reasons. He had to conform to what his editors demanded, which was male power fantasy for an adolescent through young adult male audience in the 1930s. But I also compare him to Tolkien. The two would not have read each other, but were writing at about the same time. Granted Howard was stuck in oil-boom Texas while Tolkien was in the UK, but... yeah, there were fantasy authors during his time who managed to not portray all the black people as savages more recently evolved from apes than the white nobles of atlantean blood, etc. etc.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:01
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Yeah that's what I was trying sort of to get at but said better. Howard is definitely capital P Problematic. But you can sort of kind of see some stuff that in historical context was trying to be better than what he grew up in (if you're being generous). To give a very facile analogy, Huck Finn was super progressive at the time it came out*, but it still had a relatively well-rounded and sympathetic character named friend of the family Jim. It's 2 steps forward, but one step was still super racist. Which only looks "good" if we compare it to contemporary authors. Which is why literature needs to be read in context. *I am glossing so hard over a lot of poo poo, I know, just let me make the analogy.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:17
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Howard's stories have racist elements in them. Lovecraft's stories are about being racist. That's why there's different takes on them. That being said I am of the camp that cosmic horror doesn't inherently have to be racist.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:39
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Also,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. Howard's and even Disney's racism come up nearly every time they come up on this forum. I'm not sure I've ever seen more than three posts in a row on them that didn't include some discussion of it. The reason Lovecraft's racism comes up so much is because he does, because him and his stuff are a big trend in nerd culture.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:49
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And also because he was really just that loving racist. Like you can't talk about Lovecraft and not talk about the racism. Just in terms of content. It'd be like talking about Woody Allen's acting without using the word "awkward". I would have to orchestrate a circumstance where it wouldn't be obvious to talk about Lovecraft's constant racism.
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Dec 7, 2018 02:59
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Joe Slowboat posted: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. What is a Lovecraft based game, precisely? A game with cosmic horror themes? A game that specifically references the Cthulhu Mythos directly? If the former, it's not like Lovecraft is inextricably welded to the genre, people have been exploring similar themes both before him and after him. poo poo, Lovecraft cribbed off of a lot of other authors that came before him as well and as far as I know they weren't especially racist compared to the norm of that time period. If the latter, well, the Mythos was always a shared setting. There were plenty of authors without the racism who contributed to it, and still contribute to it today. It's still a shared IP spread amongst countless authors and writers over a period of decades now, not a single body of works written in the 20's that exists in a vacuum more or less untouched. Compare an rpg based on Tolkien's writings, which has a defined canon solely determined by a single and now long dead author, versus an rpg based around the Peter Jackson movies and whatever Lord of the Rings Extended Universe that WB is trying to create. The Cthulhu Mythos has always been more of the latter and you can argue that it had more to do with Derleth than it did with Lovecraft. That Old Tree posted:The reason Lovecraft's racism comes up so much is because he does, because him and his stuff are a big trend in nerd culture. It's not really his stuff, unless you specifically use material like Nyarlathotep. A story about mysterious and otherworldly beings loving with people, while definitely commonplace in fiction now and a really big trend, isn't necessarily about Cthulhu or Yog-Sototh or the Deep Ones or whatever. People have put enough of a spin on the premise that the genre has sort of evolved beyond Lovecraft's initial contributions. He might have popularized cosmic horror, but it's a genre with more or less a life of its own now.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:06
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Mors Rattus posted:Lovecraft has exactly two fears: and women, and the ocean, and going outside, and architecture, and, like, the general concept of geometric curves
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Dec 7, 2018 03:06
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Lovecraft is also a bit of a weird case because while Lovecraft the person was a gargantuan shitheel and his work was founded on racist views, there's a section of the fandom in queer/minority circles who basically see themselves in the idea of being that 'other' compared to an uncaring society that would rather just pretend those groups don't exist and loses their collective poo poo when confronted with things as they actually are in the world. It's very much a death of the author situation, but it's a take I've seen expressed in my own social circles and in more niche commentary which has contributed to elements of the aesthetic and subgenre getting transformed into other, not ethically horrifying works.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:13
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Quote is not edit
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Dec 7, 2018 03:13
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The Shape of Water is my favorite Shadow Over Innsmouth adaptation by a pretty long shot. Also, the Derlethian mythos version of Lovecraftiana is still aggressively HPL branded in most incarnations. Big green Cthulhus absolutely point to specifically HPL as a figure of influence and therefore a figure of interest.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:18
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Forget the Cthulus, they call Lovecraft out by name pretty much every time. Frankly it's not a good faith argument, even the most basic exposure to cosmic horror in tabletop makes it clear Lovecraft specifically is still a primary tocuhstone.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:37
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We already have works with similar premises that move past what was initially presented by Lovecraft anyways, such as stuff like Bloodborne and Fallen London as mentioned before. Anything with a bunch of mysterious ancient beings who are at best apathetic and indifferently cruel, and at worst actively malevolent, doesn't necessarily have to link itself to HP Lovecraft or his racism. poo poo, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and John Carpenter have also written stories that work off the same premises without being bigoted. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong about that, because at this point I'm pretty sure every public figure on earth has done something horrible that we just aren't aware of yet or isn't yet widely known. Anyways Lovecraft started with an interesting premise that has a broad appeal, which is why many authors are willing to draw on the same themes without being especially racist or bigoted themselves. The premise is still not inextricably tied to his racism, nor is the concept of cosmic horror in and of itself inherently problematic. It is unfortunate that a racist was the person to popularize it as a concept, but it's not as if that concept sprung solely from him either. Comrade Gorbash posted:Frankly it's not a good faith argument, even the most basic exposure to cosmic horror in tabletop makes it clear Lovecraft specifically is still a primary tocuhstone. Arthur Conan Doyle is a primary touchstone in detective novels, but that doesn't mean he is its sole meaningful contributor or that the genre hasn't evolved beyond an omniscient superhuman in a deerstalker cap.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:41
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Bedlamdan posted:We already have works with similar premises that move past what was initially presented by Lovecraft anyways, such as stuff like Bloodborne and Fallen London as mentioned before. Anything with a bunch of mysterious ancient beings who are at best apathetic and indifferently cruel, and at worst actively malevolent, doesn't necessarily have to link itself to HP Lovecraft or his racism. poo poo, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and John Carpenter have also written stories that work off the same premises without being bigoted. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong about that, because at this point I'm pretty sure every public figure on earth has done something horrible that we just aren't aware of yet or isn't yet widely known.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:43
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Comrade Gorbash posted:Then there's no problem with tossing Lovecraft and the works he created aside, since there are other sources to draw from. Yes. You can very easily drop the Cthulhu Mythos and go for a different story about Ancient Horrors Beyond Time and Space, without really having to buy into Lovecraft as a person. It's more genre than fandom now, at least pop-culturally. I mean, poo poo, Mike Mignola probably wrote some of the best cosmic horror/pulp fiction stories out there without doing a 1:1 retread of Lovecraft's short stories. Because Lovecraft's works are also old as hell and pretty cliche to boot now too. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 03:46
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:and women, and the ocean, and going outside, and architecture, and, like, the general concept of geometric curves Don't forget dogs and birds.
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Dec 7, 2018 03:59
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I mean, I've been saying 'Lovecraft is super racist, and Lovecraftiana that's just flatly derivative should have to wrestle with his legacy because they're spraying it everywhere' while also saying 'so people should check out Bloodborne, Hellboy, Cultist Simulator' and so on. I don't know that it adds anything to say 'why are you all so hung up on Lovecraft' when, again, we're talking about how he's been stuck onto everything and direct retreads are common. The exceptions, i.e. the good cosmic horror, are exceptions in terms of the broad genre of 'tastes like alien squid.' Lovecraft, the person and the brand, is far more commonly cited than Lovecraft-less cosmic horror, and that's precisely the problem and one good reason to trouble Lovecraft's memory.
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Dec 7, 2018 04:04
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Ferrinus posted:Don't forget dogs and birds. Lovecraft: Notorious racist and bigot, hated dogs, loved cats. JRR Tolkien: Told nazis to gently caress off, loved dogs, would not stop using cats as a metaphor for the devil. There are some clear conclusions that can be drawn here.
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Dec 7, 2018 04:05
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Joe Slowboat posted:I mean, I've been saying 'Lovecraft is super racist, and Lovecraftiana that's just flatly derivative should have to wrestle with his legacy because they're spraying it everywhere' while also saying 'so people should check out Bloodborne, Hellboy, Cultist Simulator' and so on. All right. I just wasn't sure how you defined Lovecraftiana, exactly, and whether it meant building off of premises he popularized or if it involved actually adapting or retreading his works. Joe Slowboat posted:Lovecraft, the person and the brand, is far more commonly cited than Lovecraft-less cosmic horror, and that's precisely the problem and one good reason to trouble Lovecraft's memory. Thoughtless retreads are always going to be commonplace, it's inevitable when most contributors are largely going to be hacks. I will say that as a shared universe, the cthulhu mythos has also moved a bit further beyond Lovecraft as well, at least insofar as Delta Green is loving rad and doesn't seem to do anything offensive, at least in what I read. I have to argue against the idea that Lovecraftless cosmic horror is somehow less common and prevalent then direct or sincere retreads of his work in mass media, though. Amnesia borrowed from it, World of Warcraft cribs heavily from it, Darkest Dungeon borrowed from it, but they all put a more original spin on things rather than directly rehash it and certainly don't involve his racial views. Lovecraftian elements are commonplace, to the point where anything involving eldritch horror is now called "Lovecraftian," but I can't think of anything culturally relevant that brings up Lovecraft or his works by name recently, aside from kitschy parodies like in South Park, or Cthulhu Saves the World, or a Shoggoth on the Roof. Maybe the Sinking City is an exception, and we'll see how people respond to it when it's out. Bedlamdan fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 04:29
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Dulkor posted:Lovecraft is also a bit of a weird case because while Lovecraft the person was a gargantuan shitheel and his work was founded on racist views, there's a section of the fandom in queer/minority circles who basically see themselves in the idea of being that 'other' compared to an uncaring society that would rather just pretend those groups don't exist and loses their collective poo poo when confronted with things as they actually are in the world. It's very much a death of the author situation, but it's a take I've seen expressed in my own social circles and in more niche commentary which has contributed to elements of the aesthetic and subgenre getting transformed into other, not ethically horrifying works. this is the best way to read Lovecraft IMHO like his whole thing is that the terrifying mind-bending Other built everything that modern man relies on, and that they will inevitably return to reclaim the world and overthrow the order of white, conservative New England it's practically begging you to lean into it and just cheerfully identify with the shoggoths
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Dec 7, 2018 04:51
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like in At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft's protagonist has this moment where he suddenly experiences sympathy with the ten-eyed starfish-headed alien who dissected one of his colleagues because, he thinks "yeah we would have done exactly the same thing" this poo poo practically writes itself
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Dec 7, 2018 04:53
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:and women, and the ocean, and going outside, and architecture, and, like, the general concept of geometric curves He was even afraid of cyclopean architecture. Cyclopean architecture sounds really scary, but it is actually the ancient Mycenaean/Incan/ect. art of fitting large, irregular stones together so tightly that the structure holds without mortar, like so   Real spooky, right?
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Dec 7, 2018 04:54
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People seem to miss a lot of Lovecraft stories also had themes of familial corruption and madness, probably not unrelated to how both of his parents died in insane asylums. Pretty much every indication is he had hereditary mental illness issues, as well as being generally sickly (he seperated from his wife because of financial issues and died in poverty, albeit apparently he kept spending his money on writing supplies instead of food or medicine). He apparently grew up in a wealthy family that lost all their money when he was pretty young and was raised by his aunts, if we're getting into backstory. We're basically looking at borderline outsider art. And a lot of Lovecraft stories strongly imply even anglo-saxon white men are just curious enough to get themselves into trouble dealing with poo poo that 'lesser' races know to leave well enough alone. While apparently Robert E. Howard lived with his mother all of his life, and committed suicide shortly after she died. I also heard Lovecraft is a bit better about women than most of his contemporaries, which is probably a low bar. Most of his protagonists are author-inserts. (funnily enough, what's considered one of his best stories, The Colour Out Of Space, unusually has the POV character for almost all of it be a rural guy)
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Dec 7, 2018 05:02
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I like Chris Spivey's (of Harlem Unbound fame) take on Lovecraft.quote:The ideas that were presented [in Lovecraft's work] resonated with me as an African American male growing up in the deep South. I understand the concepts of cruelty and the uncaring nature of the universe. Yes! I get it! The best man can do is struggle against the insurmountable evil and win for a day or two, and at the very best, delay the maddening doom and protect humanity. Looting Lovecraft for the good bits and leaving the rest behind to rot definitely seems to be the way to go. Haystack fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Dec 7, 2018 |
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Dec 7, 2018 05:03
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Ghost Leviathan posted:(... died in poverty, albeit apparently he kept spending his money on writing supplies instead of food or medicine). okay this part is pretty relatable
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Dec 7, 2018 05:03
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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.
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Dec 7, 2018 05:13
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Speaking of Howard, are people here into Swords Without Master? I'm gonna get a chance to play in a play-by-prose hack at some point and I'm super excited.
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Dec 7, 2018 05:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:And a lot of Lovecraft stories strongly imply even anglo-saxon white men are just curious enough to get themselves into trouble dealing with poo poo that 'lesser' races know to leave well enough alone. this theme (or something close at any rate) is among the reasons John Carpenter's movies, and particularly the Apocalypse Trilogy, own so much they're basically the paranoid nightmares of Enlightenment rationalism as it slowly realizes it isn't an adequate or complete model of reality, covering the sub-topics of religion (Prince of Darkness), science (The Thing) and aesthetics (In the Mouth of Madness) in turn
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Dec 7, 2018 05:24
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Dulkor posted:Lovecraft is also a bit of a weird case because while Lovecraft the person was a gargantuan shitheel and his work was founded on racist views, there's a section of the fandom in queer/minority circles who basically see themselves in the idea of being that 'other' compared to an uncaring society that would rather just pretend those groups don't exist and loses their collective poo poo when confronted with things as they actually are in the world. It's very much a death of the author situation, but it's a take I've seen expressed in my own social circles and in more niche commentary which has contributed to elements of the aesthetic and subgenre getting transformed into other, not ethically horrifying works. Yo I already linked The Litany of Earth and if you haven't read it and you have an opinion on Lovecraft go loving read it. (If you just don't care at all, that's fine too.) Also the entire reread and like Lovecraft Country and Shoggoths in Bloom and and and. You don't need to dig for non-lovely Lovecraft responses now (though you may need to dig yourself out from the vastly more numerous extremely lovely Lovecraft responses).
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Dec 7, 2018 05:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I also heard Lovecraft is a bit better about women than most of his contemporaries, which is probably a low bar. Most of his protagonists are author-inserts. (funnily enough, what's considered one of his best stories, The Colour Out Of Space, unusually has the POV character for almost all of it be a rural guy) Not really, I'd say? Women barely exist in his stories, and most of the prominent ones turn out to be monsters of one shade or another. There are some, to be sure but generally he's only "better" in that he's not as exploitative on account of exclusion and sexfears.
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Dec 7, 2018 05:48
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Not really, I'd say? Women barely exist in his stories, and most of the prominent ones turn out to be monsters of one shade or another. not only that but the most significant woman-monster in Lovecraft's stories that I can think of is actually a dude who knows how to mystically swap bodies
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Dec 7, 2018 05:49
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I'd read litany of earth before and it's great but this is goddamn amazing. Everyone talking about Thing On The Doorstep go read that article right now.
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Dec 7, 2018 05:59
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golden bubble posted:He was even afraid of cyclopean architecture. Cyclopean architecture sounds really scary, but it is actually the ancient Mycenaean/Incan/ect. art of fitting large, irregular stones together so tightly that the structure holds without mortar, like so
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Dec 7, 2018 06:22
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golden bubble posted:He was even afraid of cyclopean architecture. Cyclopean architecture sounds really scary, but it is actually the ancient Mycenaean/Incan/ect. art of fitting large, irregular stones together so tightly that the structure holds without mortar, like so I always read it as less him being afraid of it, and more him being afraid of the implication that such long-ago backwards savages could manage something so complex and painstaking that it seems almost alien to the Modern Man of his day.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:09
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Liquid Communism posted:I always read it as less him being afraid of it, and more him being afraid of the implication that such long-ago backwards savages could manage something so complex and painstaking that it seems almost alien to the Modern Man of his day. Sort of a precursor to the whole ancient aliens thing where obviously the pyramids couldn't have just been made by the Egyptians.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:16
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Hm, I don't know when that idea first surfaced with aliens specifically, but various racist Atlantis-style myths existed to explain 'primitive' people with advanced architecture prior to Lovecraft. The assumption was just that a 'more advanced' people had built it. Great Zimbabwe was declared to have been built by Middle Eastern traders by British archaeologists when they first described it, basically just out of rank racism.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:31
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Joe Slowboat posted:Hm, I don't know when that idea first surfaced with aliens specifically, but various racist Atlantis-style myths existed to explain 'primitive' people with advanced architecture prior to Lovecraft. The assumption was just that a 'more advanced' people had built it. Great Zimbabwe was declared to have been built by Middle Eastern traders by British archaeologists when they first described it, basically just out of rank racism. Yeah you're right, it's sort of always been about in one point or another, Lovecraft certainly isn't the first to touch upon it. Atlantis, aliens, undiscovered lost-historical human migrations from vanished land-bridges, etc.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:35
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The ennie podcast nomination thread is going. As always its local favorites Grognard Files and KARTAS walking away with tons of nominations. System Mastery did get a nod so now I'm curious. If we make it past the judges awareness that we think 4e isn't trash, are they going to send us a request for a 15 minute reel? God I hope so.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:39
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To be fair to Atlantis, there's a lot of different Atlantis stories and ideas in the realm of extremely weird historical ideas. Ancient aliens really only has the one note.
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Dec 7, 2018 07:41
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