Why so many settings use lovecraftian meme themes? Lovecraft was a fucking hack most of his stories go like this
>There was an indescribable being crawling around blasphemously as I pondered about the meaningless of my existence, surely the niggers are behind this.
i
Julian Hill
>Invents the genre of modern horror >A hack
It's past your bedtime user.
Joseph Harris
>Invents the genre of modern horror
Lets slow down there a bit bucko. I don't think Lovecraft is a hack but you need to get off his dick.
Parker Ward
You know until 60's he wasn't even considered particularly good right? And I knew someone will post fucking Cthulhu. I bet you're the kind of fuck who believes ''Lovecraftian = le tentaclez rite? xD'' kill yourself.
Ryder Lopez
Great minds in horror are often ahead of their time. John Carpenter's The Thing flopped on release and was considered a failure by critics and the public alike. Now it's considered one of the best horror films ever made and one of the great classics of the genre.
Owen Morris
>surely the niggers are behind this.
Blake Baker
Thanks for reminding me to buy a Cthulhu plushie, OP!
Nathan Butler
wow someone just looked at the TVTropes page about HPL and decided to call it a day
Jose Bailey
...
Brandon Lee
The US audience was pretty much indifferent to Lovecraft's work until some french editor published an article titled "Lovecraft is alive and well in Paris" circa 1970 (iirc) and the mainstream public rediscovered him.
To me the real genius is the invention of the Necronomicon and the legend that grew around it, the other books other authors invented, the cross-referencing, and reusing by other authors, Clark A. Smith and the Book of Eibon, Robert E. Howard and the Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Bloch for De Vermis Mysterii and the Cult of Ghouls, it grew into something blurring the lines of reality and fiction quite nicely and i'm quite certain each and every one of them, including Lovecraft had some good fun with that. Lovecraft even had to explain to people that the Necronomicon wasn't real after some people contacted him saying they found a seller, which was very likely a hoax by Bloch.
Now, for the stories themselves, well, you like his style or not, but you have to realise his very arid style is absolutely voluntary, see the first few paragraphs of the Dream-Quest of Unkown Kadath to realize how flamboyant his prose could be.
Chase Jackson
>I bet you're the kind of fuck who believes ''Lovecraftian = le tentaclez rite? xD'' kill yourself. So do you dislike Lovecraft or are you bitter about people oversimplifying his work?
If you're gonna start pointless bitching threads at least be consistent.
Carson Hernandez
I have a problem with the amount Lovecraftian things are used in settings but not because I think they are bad.
I'm tired of GM's who think Lovecraft stuff is cool or scary just putting it in their game and thinking it will be equally scary. 90% of the time we beat the shit out of and kill these Lovecraftian beasties, and guess what? There was literally no reason to use a Lovecraftian beast instead of any generic fantasy creature. Having tentacles and "being indescribable" isn't a description and it isn't going to scare me without any proper build up or context.
Jayden Parker
Why do so many people describe Lovecraftian stuff as being indescribable and mysterious? Lovecraft always autistically describes every single tiny detail on his monsters. People go crazy because of what they ARE, not what they simply look like.
you know he used none of those words as often as people think he did
Brandon Jenkins
>Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes - viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells - rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile - slaves of suggestion, builders of cities - more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and more amphibious, more and more imitative! Great God! What madness made even those blasphemous Old Ones willing to use and carve such things?
such fucking detail lmao
Jason Perez
>surely the niggers are behind this.
Lovecraft's racism been greatly overblown in the last couple of years. Even if you disregard the whole "it was a different time" argument, his work became gradually less racist toward the end of his career, and several members of his private correspondence circle were ethnic Jews (as was his wife). Branding Lovecraft as a "racist"--not to mention entirely dismissing his work because of that notion--is completely shallow-minded.
tl;dr go back to humping your Octavia Butler body pillow, OP.
Hudson Ross
>Invented modern horror What? Son, Lovecraft's writing was atrocious. He was the horror equivalent of Poe. His fame has more to do with a public misconception than anything of literary merit.
His infamy arose from his challenging the popular, optimistic image of humanity of his time period, which placed man at the center of the universe and said the sky's the limit.
Fucker couldn't write for shit.
Christian Baker
I don't dismiss Lovecraft because of it, but he was a flaming racist even for his time. Not acknowledging that is just as myopic as saying "oh we can't name this literary award after Lovecraft because he said the word 'nigger'!"
Kayden Powell
I bet you're the kind of fuck who believes "Unpopular=le pour kwalitty rite? xD" kill yourself.
Justin Martin
>"Unpopular=le pour kwalitty rite? xD" That's the exact line of reasoning that drove Lovecraft's work to popularity.
Jordan James
Unpopular things are unpopular for a reason but Lovecraft is overrated if anything you daft cuntard imbecilic shitstain if I wasn't jerking off at this very moment while writing this post and had two free hands I would write quite a lenghty essay about the sheer retardation of your thought process but as for know let me tell you that you're a walking, living proof that abortion is a good thing.
John Cruz
> He was the horror equivalent of Poe
Now that I think of it, Lovecraft really is similar to Poe.
Poe's writing is fucking bland even by old literature standards. But he had some really cool ideas and played with his tropes is pretty interesting ways.
"The Raven" and "Tell-Tale Heart" are almost unreadable but at least they had cool imagery. Lovecraft is kind of the same way.
Jason Scott
>Not acknowledging that is just as myopic No, it's really not. Just because you're losing an argument doesn't magically make it ok to use the "middle ground" fallacy to save face.
This new trend of trying to demonize renowned writers (and the occasional wrestling star) because of some bullshit hurt fee-fees is ridiculous.
Cooper Stewart
>Poe's writing is fucking bland
Try "So bad it's actually kind of funny."
Xavier Richardson
I have to agree with this. There was really nothing about Lovecraft's prose that stood out. He frankly had a terrible writing style paired with an even worse vocabulary. There's no denying the last influence his works had on fantasy roleplaying, but I can't imagine he ever managed to garner much of a serious following back in his day.
Logan Carter
>BRING ME A HIGHA LOVE!
Elijah James
Let's be honest most people dickriding Lovecraft or Poe didn't even read any of their works it's just le Cthulhu and Raven memery.
King in Yellow is older than Lovecraft works yet better so muh age means fuck all Lovecraft was just a fucking /r9k/ meets /pol/ shut in with nightmares I mean boofuckinghoo I had plenty of nightmares myself but didn't write them down to torture readers with this shit.
Christian Rogers
>All those elitists
Well, you should enlight us plebians, then. What is decent and memorable horror?
David Parker
Yet 60% of our horror film industry uses his work as the basis. The other 40% is slasher and ghost stories.
Sorry. as much as you like trying to be edgy, tryhard SJW shills, his writing made modern non-slasher horror what it is today. Nothing you can say can negate this fact.
Sebastian Bennett
Different guy, big Lovecraft nerd here. You've got some good points, but I don't think they invalidate the fact that he was racist.
While he was indeed married to a Jewish lady, he also lost said Jewish lady because she eventually got fed up with his "YOU'RE ONE A THE GOOD ONES" mentality. He definitely started to reevaluate all his views in the wake of that event, but "On the creation of Niggers", Red Hook, and his letters admiring Birth of a Nation were pretty telling.
There's no shame in liking the guy or his writing, and I'll happily defend him, but denying the racism as a whole is silly. It was definitely there, and sadly the guy died before we could see the extent of the change-of-heart he was going through.
Eli Thomas
>our horror film industry
you live in Zimbabwe or something?
Carter Hall
If you're not Anglo there is no point in reading his works kinda like how Robert. E . Howard fucking bashed mediterrean people in his works and dickrided scandinavians. Like what the fuck was that all about what's wrong with Spain and Greece?
Noah Phillips
The problem is a lot of classical horror is actaully incredibly dense, boring, and not scary. This goes for Lovecraft, Poe, Stroker, Shelly, etc. The reason these works have the staying power they have is because for every ten pages describing gothic arches or Mina's dress or some shit like that there was a paragraph or two which was thematic lightning in a bottle.
And because Universal Studios managed to take those dense works and turn them into memorable films.
Personally, I've found horror more than most genres has the "diamond in the rough" problem. Like 95% of it across all mediums is utter crap.
Brayden Turner
>pretty telling.
OTOH, he wrote Asa and Hannah in CDW, who are both admirable characters and black. Guy's views shifted over time, clearly.
Saging for a shitty bait thread.
Nathaniel Carter
>Criticizing prose >Edgy SJW shills
I don't think you know exactly who you're arguing with.
>Yet 60% of our horror film industry uses his work as the basis.
And 100% of modern horror is utter shit. Surprise surprise.
Dracula. Frankenstein. Turn of the Screw.
Just off the top of my head.
Charles Cook
What do you mean by terrible writing style? What specifically about his writing style was terrible, and how did the vocabulary play into that? Educate me, user.
Mason Torres
>And 100% of modern horror is utter shit. Surprise surprise.
>Implying Green Room wasn't the best film of the year
Luis Brown
What work of Poe's or Lovecraft's was Green Room based on?
Mason Bell
He used cyclopean pretty fucking often. But the others the not so much.
Austin Roberts
Well, can we all just agree on one thing?
Borkug is best Lovecraft god and the last of the OGs.
Samuel Parker
Lovecraft wasn't a bad writer; what usually gets condemned as poor prose is actually a more experimental style that mixes a lot of different modes in an attempt to give the supernatural aspects of his work more grounding. He's writing intellectuals and gentry who are themselves obsessed with the status of difficult prose; have you ever read academic work? These are people who go out of their way to make themselves hard to understand, and Lovecraft manages to capture that tone so well.
Landon Brown
>And 100% of modern horror is utter shit. So do you not watch much horror or do you have a serious case of nostalgia goggles?
Blake Robinson
None, but it's modern horror and not shit, ergo your statement was false. QED
Anthony Rogers
why would I spit on my hands before doing those am I some sort of fuckin degenerate?
Camden Murphy
This.
I get being turned off by Lovecraft because his writing can be dense or boring but to write him off as bad because you don't like the tone he was pretty successfully emulating you're missing the point.
Hunter Anderson
Why does most """""""""Lovecraftian"""""""" stuff suck so bad? >You can kill monsters like they were big animals >Hack writers confuse cosmic indifference with the universe being out to kill you >Look at weird things = insta-insanity
Zachary Johnson
The quote is from HL Mencken. I'm surprised more people who use the word "degenerate" aren't familiar with his work.
Ayden Williams
>There was an indescribable being crawling around blasphemously as I pondered about the meaningless of my existence, surely the niggers are behind this.
topkek. you surely ain't a retard, op
Jackson Lee
As is the case with most later works inspired by some codifier, people only took the barest surface elements and treated them as the core themes of the original.
Why do you think people call D&D "Tolkien-esque" fantasy when the shit you find in a D&D game has fuck-all to do with Lord of the Rings?
Cameron Morgan
They aren't Lovecraft; thus they can only attempt to ape his writing style. Most fail at it.
Caleb Jenkins
i feel lovecraft is about the fear of the unknown. lovecraft and his popularity have created a pop cultural mentality where everyone associates lovecraftin themes with the mysterious and unknown without ever actually having read his works. Just like the original alien movie its scary because of how little you see the alien, the less you have read lovecraft's works the more scary they are.
Noah Jackson
When have niggers actually been behind ANYTHING in Lovecraft's writings? They are just semisentient critters that fill the little crevices of society in the background. Sure, there were a few nignogs in side roles and various mentions of various kinds of interbreeding leading to things like those white gorillas in the caves and whatnot but niggers rarely did anything actually meaningful storywise
Kayden Morgan
I like how most people complaining about his writing in this thread haven't actually read any of it, just the usual suspects that are only the most well kn own and most heavily 'troped' stories.
Charles Gutierrez
>90% of the time we beat the shit out of and kill these Lovecraftian beasties play more Trail of Cthulhu purist scenarios. Final Revelation is highly recommended.
Samuel Stewart
While, we're on the subject, what's everyone's favorite story of his? Mine is the Colour Out of Space.
Eli Cook
KINGS QUEENS DRAGONS DWARVES HORSES FORTRESSES MAGIC AND SWORDS!
Anthony King
Mine is the one where he didn't suck but it wasn't published yet.
Ayden Brown
OP is trolling. Despite being a racist, Lovecraft didn't overtly let that influence his works. There is a definite sense of the white man's superiority, specifically the learned, British type, but not much more than that.
Ryan Martin
>What is Shadow over Innsmouth
Ryder Green
what people don't get is that lovecraft is only partially (cosmic) horror. i doubt his goals was to frighten his readers to death with every short story. many of his stories are just plain WEIRD. kinda like a non-lighthearted doctor who of his time. weirdness for the love of the weird. i love it.
Easton Campbell
The Music of Erich Zaan
Colton Nelson
Its simple.
Dude was just lucky to create orginal theme and it stuck.
So I love the concept.
I don't like the Lovecraft.
Ian Lopez
Pickman's Model. Color Out of Space is fine too.
Isaac Hernandez
Ooh, that's a good one. Rats in the Walls is probably my favorite.
Evan Johnson
But those were fishmen and ugly fishneckbeards I don't recall ever having eaten niggerfingers instead of fishfingers.
Hunter Lee
>A bumfuck coastal town where white people interbreed with fishfucks to make degenerate fish people.
Colton Perez
I like that one. Also like At the Mountains of Madness and the Shadow out of Time. I mostly like the ones with heavier ancient "aliens"/space civilizations implications.
Asher Hall
Fucking this. I'm tired of people saying Lovecraft thought the universe cold and uncaring and evil and blah blah blah. I don't think he ever made his universe so malevolent as much as indifferent
Anthony Bailey
>overtly It's a story about fish people, user.
Carter Morales
Thing on the Doorstep.
Grayson Gutierrez
The entire story is a miscegenation allegory with fish people instead of non-whites. Have you actually read it? I don't think you have, it's extremely obvious providing your IQ is over room temperature.
Nolan Williams
Colour ot of space for me too It is hard to choose a single favorite instead of half a dozen top ones
Mason Peterson
I'm gonna be a stereotype and say Call of Cthulhu
>A mountain walked or shambled
That line still creeps me out
Brody Butler
What? Breeding with niggers gives you gold and makes your children have an urge to go skinnydipping among the reefs?
Well, I suppose that it would have worked with niggers too. Oh no, there is a creepy fishing village full of ugly people and some librarian said that I looked like one of them. My cousin is crazy but turns out it is just because we are half-niggers. Now I must go swimming
Cooper Richardson
Walking mountains are so scary o.0
EDIT: Omg thanks for gold Reddit! xD
Christian Murphy
Strangely enough I never really liked Call of Cthulhu. It wasn't bad but it certainly wasn't one of his best ones either.
Matthew Ross
Why is Veeky Forums so racist? It was funny at first but now it's getting tiresome. Were you cucked by a nigger or something?
Elijah Kelly
Fuck off.
Hudson Stewart
>It's an allegory. Look up what an allegory is. Lovecraft wasn't trying to make a grand metaphor with that story, you gigantic, self-opinionated twat. He was writing a story that would, from his point of view, frighten and disturb the reader of his time. And yes, marrying and procreating outside of your race would have been thought of as disturbing. Fuck, you're stupid.
Thomas Sullivan
Veeky Forums is a facet of internet counterculture.
Right now political correctness, feminist, social justice, and other progressive mores are in vogue in mainstream internet culture. So Veeky Forums responds by swinging the other way.
Julian Miller
Or what? Gonna cry about it on /pol/?
Gavin Murphy
Who's crying?
Aaron Brown
Explains why Veeky Forums is the only site to consider that pile of fucking shit Warhammer 40k any good while civilized world mocks it.
Parker Nelson
>Oh no, there is a creepy fishing village full of ugly people and some librarian said that I looked like one of them. My cousin is crazy but turns out it is just because we are half-niggers. Now I must go swimming zomg, it's like lovecraft reborn
Samuel Wilson
>Lovecraft's writing was atrocious What
Lovecraft's prose is some of the most wonderful purple prose ever, comparable to Kubla Khan. If you hate Lovecraft's prose, it's purely because you can't read for shit. Lovecraft is easy as shit to read.
Connor Powell
>while civilized world mocks it. The civilized world doesn't even know it exists you cunt.
David Price
Wow Lovecraft sucks.
Robert Edwards
>Lovecraft's writing was atrocious Man I hate this meme. His dialogue is atrocious, his descriptions and prose ranges from decent to fantastic, never bad.
Dominic Butler
Different guy here, but my problem with "acknowledging" his racism is that "acknowledging" often means the same as "condemning", which naturally has to happen according to modern definitions of racism.
My issue with this is illustrated through the response to the award names after him: Two black writers (I believe it were two) accepted the award and then complained about it. But earlier, a Lovecraft fan refused to accept the award on account of considering the bust an offensive charicature. That's what those offended people should have done. But they want to have their cake and eat it, too. And that same impression is what I get from this phony "acknowledgement". You (this is the royal "you" i'm using here) want acknowledgement? The word "nigger" is right there in his work. You already have it.
What these people rather want is to forever attach it as a footnote. Oh, BTW, he was racist, don't you know? Like OP is doing. And that's what I consider to be tarnishing a man's character posthumously for the sheer pettiness of getting back at him for shit he said almost a century ago. In the end, the man was racist, but he was not defined by his racism.
I always think about my grandfather in these cases, because he was a colonial gentleman who seemed to consider black people less intelligent than white people. But he also gave up what these people would call "white privilege" because he hated racists. And I do mean quite a sizable family fortune. So if someone would want me to "acknowledge" his racism every time I mention him, that would offend me. The man was declared persona non grata in South Africa, for fuck's sake. Bigotry did not define him, even if he said offensive shit from time to time.
Similarly, horror writing is what defined Lovecraft. And even if he was a racist cunt, he was not so much of a racist cunt it occupied his every thought. So why should it occupy ours every fucking time his name is mentioned?
Landon Morales
Threads like this are why every board needs IDs and flags.
I wouldn't say his dialogue is atrocious. The problem is that there's very little of it.
Connor Gonzalez
Everyone outside of Veeky Forums knows 40K as ''oh that game about oversized guys fighting Orcs only neckbeards play?'' Sorry to burst your bubble but your epic grimdark setting is seen as childish, cringeworthy pile of shit for children just like anime. In real world outside of your basement shit like yelling ''for the Emperor'' while hugging an anime pillow and moving a plastic toy is not socially acceptable.
Levi Jones
>Everyone outside of Veeky Forums knows 40K Yet again, everyone outside of Veeky Forums doesn't even know it exists. Try harder.
Leo Brooks
Go to Reddit that's where everyone has nicknames so you can avoid people violating your safe space.
Luke Martinez
Nobody actually dies in Lovecraft's writing. Death doesn't exist in Yog-Sothothery, it's just a change of a state in being. When you die in Lovecraft-verse, you consciousness isn't lost, but changes its perception.
Aiden Nguyen
Someone doesn't know how IDs work.
David Watson
Or /pol/. Wait a minute...
Tyler Lee
>calls HP out on boring prose >cites Frankenstein and Dracula as counterpointa
Frankenstein literally has a chapter right before the final confrontation where Victor fucks off to the country and Shelly describes a vacation she had in excruciating detail. You chose probably the two densest horror stories as examples of "good prose"
Ryan Thomas
No no go ahead and tell me how much your feelings got hurt because people don't enjoy your hack shut in autistic writer who wrote about racemixing fish and squids with dragon wings.