Greetings fellow board members. After exploring the dreamland’s and chatting it up with Hastur and Nyarlathotep, I came to realization that we need a topic for the Cthulhu Mythos.
Feel free to discuss any aspect of the Cthulhu mythos here. It can be H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, stories done by other authors, books, comics, video games, movies, etc. As long as it is related to the Cthulhu Mythos, it’s welcome here.
And yes, you can mention Tren Krom and Anonna here. They were inspired by the mythos, so it is only fair to include them.
And on a side note: You can say either Cthulhu or Cthullu. But I will state that every form of media I have seen has used “Cthulhu.”
And before we get into the discussion, I would like to say one thing:
Rule number one of H.P. Lovecraft stories: NEVER READ THEM RIGHT BEFORE BEDTIME. They will mess with your dreams.
Penguin Classics H.P. Lovecraft: The Call of Cthulhu and Other weird stories has a good collection and the preface states that the stories have been restored based on Lovecraft’s notes. and I have to say it is pretty dang good so far
Oh the Cthulhu Mythos. Nobody had ever conceived anything quite like it before good old Howard put his pen to paper to adapt the weird dreams he had. Most if not all fiction before him posited that humanity was the end all be all of all things before he emerged to turn that notion completely on its head.
What makes us so special in the cosmos? Nothing. we are but insignificant, irrelevant little microbes on a tiny speck circling the sun like electrons orbiting the nucleus of an atom, and our puny little galaxy might as well be an atom compared to the endless, perpetually expanding, void of a callous universe. Our race and all its accomplishments and values mean little if anything at all to the greater universe and are ultimately transient, doomed to inevitably fade away before the inexorable forces of time and change.
These concepts were embodied by the various beings and races of the Mythos. Like cosmic forces instead of living creatures, they defied all man’s laws and their mere presence or appearance were enough to drive anyone completely insane. They could exterminate us all with barely any effort, but it is likely they know we’re not even worth the effort, they’re in a state of slumber or imprisonment like the Great Old Ones and probably eventually will, or simply don’t notice us at all.
Of course, there were other little touches that made Lovecraft’s work unique like his penchant for using more colourful adjectives like “eldritch”, “blasphemous”, and “squamous”, but these things are only the tip of the iceberg of Lovecraft. What made his writing truly unique was his ability to create and convey things completely alien and remote from our experience along with the opposite ability to create atmosphere by hinting at the indescribable without completely describing it. This leaves the horror of his work very ambiguous, but Lovecraft still included more directly chilling settings and situations like being pursued by flying polyps through subterranean ruins in his stories. Allusions to terrible things like the Necronomicon and terrible beings like Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth created atmosphere and connections between his stories, giving them a scale larger-than-life.
per adonai eloim, adonai jehova, adonai sabaoth, metraton on agla mathon, verbum pythonicum, mysterium salamandrae, conventus sylvorum, antra gnomorum, daemonia coeli gad, almousin, gibor, jehosua, evam, zariatnatmik, veni, veni, veni.
Zcreew it; lets go crazy
With some music first
Heh heh. Praise Cthulhu.