Is lovecraftian mythos the most over-rated, overused and terribly boring fantasy setting yet?

People forget that the tentacle-gods are just stand ins for philosophical ideas. Honestly, I'd say one of the best pieces of ACTUAL Cosmic Horror in the popular eye right now would be Rick & Morty.

Maybe if you could read, you'd realize the true depth of Lovecraft's works and the tons of horror and great game-worthy material you can find.

True Detective S1 nailed the Lovecraft theme so hard that it really didn't need spooky monsters to count.

he's a big borfer

This user knows what he's talking about. Pre-Tolkien fantasy can be super interesting, imao.

I can only parrot what is already said in this thread.

Before reading Well, actually listening to the Wayne June audiobooks 10/10 still relisten Lovecraft's actual works and only seeing it in meme form I the mythos was pretty lame. But that is because it has been a part of niche and eventual pop culture so it gets sort of dumbed down as the memes spread.

And when people say Lovecraftian they usually always mean Cthulhu or Deep Ones. Nobody ever talks about cool shit like Rats in the Wall or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Even more well known ones like The Colour Out of Space or the Reanimator gets forgotten about when people post about Lovecraftian. Its all just tentecles and lol madness.

Protip. Almost none of the protagonists of the main stories go mad. They are usually perfectly sane and know things humans are not supposed to know.

Rick and Morty is amazing, and I might be inclined to agree with you.

>I'd say one of the best pieces of ACTUAL Cosmic Horror in the popular eye right now would be Rick & Morty
I don't think I'd agree. It certainly has elements of it, but it's primarily a comedy.

I'd say is closer to the mark but again it's still only elements of cosmic horror.

It's just not a genre that holds up very well in the modern age. Not to say it couldn't, but most "cosmic horror"esque stories are much too derivative to be effective, since it kind of requires being a new idea for it to work.

kek

I think that's defeatist. Just because something's comedic doens't mean it can't also be horrific. Comedy and horror can be two responses to negative stimulus. Also to say that cosmic horror doesn't hold up well in the modern age, when I see no reason for that not to be true, when we are still aware of our insignificance and probing out into the universe only shows that more and more.

For you.

The Secret World has pretty good Cosmic Horror as a stand in for Stale Memes.

Fuck traditional Lovecraft, post-modern Lovecraft is where it's really at.

Less stale incomprehensible geometry or going insane because you saw a squid and more horrifying revelations that the despair caused by being turned into Brendan Fraser after Tyrone knocked up your wife is in fact the only thing keeping the sleeping death god at the bottom of the sea from waking up, causing you to further propagate an agenda of multiculturalism to keep the apocalypse at bay.

I dunno, I think that cosmic horror should abound in the modern age. We know more about our insignificance than ever before. There are more and more discoveries being made, with huge astronomical phenomena and celestial bodies being mind-crushingly large in scale that are discovered all the time. We matter so little in the grand scheme of things and that's what cosmic horror is about.

Yeah, those are all pretty B-movie stupid but WOULD be quite horrifying if true.

That's the point. It's fucking retarded and unintuitive, to the point where you wouldn't even want to reap the benefits / avoid the consequences if it meant going through with it. That's what makes it terrifying.

I think you need to take a break from /tv/.

>Lovecraft
>Understood

We're *too* aware of our insignificance for Cosmic Horror to work anymore. The idea that the universe does not especially notice or care about humans is no longer horrifying. It's the norm. That's why we get so many hacks reinterpreting it as the cosmos being unfriendly to humanity. The original reveal is no longer surprising enough to hang a story on. The average response to the mi-go having a giant space empire that doesn't even care about us is "okay, so what? Why do we care?" The only people who would be shocked by the idea that humans can't automatically kick the ass of every alien species we encounter are too dense to understand a story where that's the case.

These, uh, aren't really Lovecraftian (except the Mormon one... and the racists element, hah). A few are kinda creepy, but not really "pathetic humanity can NEVER adapt or survive long-term in the nihilistic and soul-crushing cosmos, even when we try and serve the gods who, though infinitely more powerful than mankind, are utterly meaningless themselves".

These horror ideas are too anthropocentric, and the worlds they present, though insane, still give meaning to our existence.

I don't know if it was ever a "reveal". I think at the time most people were pretty earth-centric, but sit alone for too long and you'll eventually start to contemplate your own existence in uncomfortable ways.

We can keep on distracting ourselves and turning the faces of said Cosmic Horror into pop culture plushies, but it doesn't change the face that we're just waiting for someone else to come along and ask the same uncomfortable questions.

Oh, it's another 'Veeky Forums pretends to be intelligent' thread.
Don't worry, anons, you're all smarter and wiser than all other geeks out there.

The gods would take offense, but you are below their notice. I will give you a cursory glance to one of their elements, and you'll be wise to know your place.

Nah.

If you treat it as a fantasy setting it very well might be.

Something most people never realize about the Cthulhu Mythos:

Every single servitor race serves a deity figure which created them, or a deity figure which supports them. Even the Mi-Go receive blessings from the Outer Gods and even the Elder Gods, and know their place in the universe.

Humans have no such ties, no such blessings. they are an accident, and have no place in the universe, have no worth orvalue in the eyes of any deities. Even the Great Race only views them as a momentary byproduct of accidental life caused by the death of the Elder Things, and of no great import in the scheme of things. We're a footnote in their library.

It's not that we're unnoticeable and incapable. It's simply that we don't matter and have no purpose or cause, just a momentary aberration of conscious proteins in the universe. We have no deities to stand for us or protect us from the other forms of life out there. The reason we have so many religions, so many people seeking power and refuge in cults is because there is no deity to protect us save the ones we find, or the ones we make up.

We're orphans in a universe teeming with life forms that have purpose and meaning in their lives. The entire reason the Mi-Go study us is because they can - we're not protected by anything.

Derleth pls leave

Let me guess: your liberal overlords told you that liking HP Lovercraft was BADTOUGHT PSYCOCRIME because he was about as racist as your grandpa.
Once you absorbed the new directives from the hivemind and derived awfull depraved sexual pleasure from being soiled by their corruption and the possibility to help soil western civilization in turn; you decided to search for rationalizations to make your obviously idiotic new orders make sense. You then decided that the least retarded of the options you had was pretending that one of the most creative and innovative people of his era, whose work influenced multiple generations of awesome writers, was actually an useless hack all along.
You came to this idiotic conclusion because like all libertards, you're a retard yourself and being mindlinked/raped to/by milions other retards doesn't make you any smarter.

The general structure of Lovecraft's cosmology is interesting enough but Lovecraft is a really lackluster author in execution, his stories are all very dry and slow-going.

Actually it was Lin Carter and Clark A. Smith that posited that, you know.

Derleth WAS a hack.

Did your alt rightism drive your girlfriend away? It's okay, no one here loves you either.

>>alt rightism.
You tumblrinas should learn to read.

Lovecraft has no cosmology. He drew one chart outlining the relation of a few of his creatures in his notes where he developed ideas long before they entered any story, many were discarded and rightfully so.

The structure of a consistent cosmology that gets referenced reliably is all Derleth. Lovecraft only used unreliable narrators to outline glimpses into lore. And he used lore as a device that molds to the story, not the other way around. His cooperations and inspirations make it obvious that he viewed his stories as a transient individual product in a cultural context and not a canon.

And that's the only way to treat the Mythos in gaming. It is not a canon of things all happening in one reality but a pool of inspirations and references.

For instance when I use Deep Ones, and I do, then I don't try to portray them as that one race that has these certain characteristics and internal structure which the players get to discover again and again with different characters. Instead I use their themes and symbols to create a new mystery each time. In one scenario the investigators might run into an Innsmouth type situation with a thriving culture of secret sea people only mildly interested in mankind as a whole but using individuals to their own cruel and cosmically radical ends. And in the next scenario different investigators discover the last Deep One alive who warns them that a change is coming to the planet. This is totally in keeping with HPL, but not Derleth.

So as much of a faggot as you're acting like, you do have a point. I feel as though a large part of modern sci-fi writers' anti-lovecraft boner is the result of trying to stand out by pointing at popular thing and saying "but he doesn't like blacks, we should judge him by modern standards."
It's less "BADTHOUGHT PSYCHOCRIME" and more "10 things u didn't kno about ur favorite authors, and why that makes u a bad person". You thought it was a greater conspiracy, but ultimately your little war really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and what you observe is merely a side effect of a greater, more insidious social change that hits everyone.

But no, Lovecraft isn't over-rated, it's just frequently abused for name-recognition of a copywrite-free brand.

What True Detective shares with Lovecraftian writing is an entirely nihilistic worldview. That doesn't make it cosmic horror though.

Sure, VO, w/e

To be fair freaking the fuck out just because one of your ancestors was a nigger was pretty racist even for its day.

A Dreamland videogame RPG would be my perfect game. I imagine something contemplative and eerie a la Morrowind.

supposedly, Lovecraft wrote Innsmouth because he freaked out after finding out he was part Welsh, but I somehow doubt that was actually his genuine opinion. I mean, his wife was a jew, and by all accounts they had a sense of humor about it.

Yes.

It's such wank too. Lovecraft wasn't a particularly good writer and his -verse is woefully anemic when it comes to actual substance.

It really is just a bunch of scary things that are scary on the merit that they are apparently supposed to be scary to us, so be afraid now.

No.

It is, however, too often used by people who never actually read Lovecraft and thus frequently misunderstood.

Deifying the Old Ones, as well as ascribing purpose to non-human races, reek of Derleth--or at the very least of completely missing the point of Lovecraft.

In the end, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, and all the other--when compared to us--seemingly omnipotent beings in the universe are just as insignificant and meaningless.

Nope, that would be pure fantasy.

Fantasy is the most over-rated, overused, and terribly boring fantasy setting yet.

What was wrong with the Mountains of Madness picture?

I mostly agree, but I think there are enough recurring elements that keep getting presented similarly enought that there is a basic "cosmology" when it comes to how the world in his stories works. HPL certainly wasn't somebody like Tolkien, though, and he very frequently contradicted himself (like, Cthulhu is described as one of the Great Old Ones and as a similar but not quite the same being, depending on the story).

I rather like that Lovecraft's setting is coherent enough when it comes to a basic theme and outline, but vague enough that you can have your own interpretation on the details and how to use them.

It had the order number from my digital copy of the book. Here's a cropped version

Even as a Lovecraft fan I agree. In terms of "geek culture" anyway.

He needs no cosmology, tho.
One of the themes is that we humans can't get that eagle-eye view from above that would explain things. The cosmic horrors are even more cryptic than devils and demons, with whom magicians at least could talk.
The only ones that explain shit are the aliens that will put your brain in a jar.

It's a little odd because it feels like a lot of fantasy settings have a race or deity or something which is directly inspired by Lovecraft but the setting is almost never designed to accommodate it so it always feels out of place.

Ideally I'd have no HPL references in my general fantasy and maybe a couple cosmic fantasy settings made specifically for that

Yeah, but a lot of fantasy settings, especially those made for gaming, love dem references to geek culture just for the sake of making a reference.

That or he's actually a bad author, which he was. Lovecraft isn't great prose, it's fun, overwrought pulp. That's all there is to it.

You mean 8698OMG?

>everything bad is derived from this group I don't like

>this makes THEM a hivemind

Perfect logic

no, it's the one that utilized the worst

I don't know, I'd say Abrahamic religions, anything-punk, and Asian cultures tend to get used less effectively

I'm pretty left, and I've never heard anyone say we shouldn't like Lovecraft because he's a crazy bigot for his day. I don't like Lovecraft because he's a hack writer who invented the concept of "its too scary guise, I can't describe it!" and seems to end stories by rolling a die to decide where this one ends.

except he wrote really long, detailed descriptions of most of his monsters

Lovecraft fan here, no he didn't. He wrote a lot of lengthy yet vague outlines to express a general feel for the being whilst always reiterating parts are beyond description or comprehension.

That's a)terrible and b)doesn't have anything to do with Lovecraft.

>lovecraftian mythos
>a setting
Don't mix Derleth's fanfics with the original.

b8

No but it's definitely the most misappropriated and misinterpreted setting.
>There are people on this board RIGHT NOW that think Lovecraft's work is overly pessimistic
>These people think themselves good writers

> I don't like something therefore it is objectively bad

Cool shitpost bro

Lovecraft himself describes his mythos cycle as hopeless.

His Dream Cycle and mythos cycle aren't intended to be "canon" with each other.

>So as much of a faggot as you're acting like, you do have a point
It's Veeky Forums. It's either being hyperbolic or being ignored. Envious dogmatic liberals are still ridiculous and envious.
>>"10 things u didn't kno about ur favorite authors, and why that makes u a bad person"
This is an issue of presentation not of content. You still committed psychocrime.
>>You thought it was a greater conspiracy, but ultimately your little war really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and what you observe is merely a side effect of a greater, more insidious social change that hits everyone.
This is were you're wrong. I don't believe in cospiracies. I believe people behave as sheep and virtue signal amongst themselves to belong to a group even and expecially when virtue signaling makes them seem tumb or act dumb, because then their fidelty to The group can't be contested. So when some retard pseudocritic starts some epic bantz against, for instance, HP; The Hive Mind follows.
The fact The ideas of this particular hivemind are self destructive and incompatible with western civilization should be obvious to anyone listening to what it's being said.
>>But no, Lovecraft isn't over-rated, it's just frequently abused for name-recognition of a copywrite-free brand.
We're in perfect agreement here.

>Behave as sheep and virtue signal to belong to a group
The irony of you saying this I imagine being lost on you.

...

>Lovecraft fan here, no he didn't.
It's been a while since I read my last Lovecraftbook but I remember he did it in Dunwich Horror.

over rated no, overused by people who dont know what it is about and tend to go "lololololol chthulu am i right?" yes

Yes I know my Logic is perfect, you don't need to humiliate yourself for my sake.
>>pulp=bad!
>>different prose from Joyce= bad prose
Read some books some day, you might like them.
>>everyone that disagrees with me is Vitual Optim, ALTRIGHT, from /pol/, or pick all three.
Hypocrisy has allways been your strong suit, hasn't it?

No that's fair. But the Dunwich Horror was in general a departure from his typical fomula.

>>irony
To whom am I virtue signaling exactly?Ooh an Image that calls me an AUTIST! That sure showed me what's what!

...

Perhaps I am. I should totally call you an homophobe for that and ruin your life.

To the thread of course. We're so glad you told us repeatedly you aren't liberal. Naturally you're about to say it's not virtue signalling when you do it, call me a cuck, post the image of a masked nu-male, Chuck or Pepe. Or all of the above.

This. The rest of the thread sucks. Let's really dig deep into that fat dog.
Is this the average Veeky Forums poster, just in dog form?

Is the average Veeky Forums poster cute and cuddlesome?

You don't get it. Everyone naturally agrees with him, and the only reason they wouldn't is if they were brainwashed. So when you do something, it's virtue-signalling to your overlords, whereas when he does it, it's bravely fighting against the tyranny of the Hive Mind.

all the ones I've met have been

A-Yup.

>his wife was a jew

Wasn't there a quote where he went on a rant about Jews and his wife reminded him that she was jewish and he just replied "no you're not, you're a Lovecraft" or some such. If true it's got to be one of the weirdest but cute things ever said.

With the whole Lovecraft was racist thing it genuinely wasn't entirely his fault. Lovecraft was slightly autistic and as such liked to neatly categorize things and got upset by things that didn't fit into a niche neatly. He had grow up in a very homogenous society, both culturally and ethnically, and as such had a narrow view of what was typically ladled "A Person". No real harm there. It's just that he freak out slightly at an instinctive level when confronted by something that was close enough to count as a person to a normal person but was enough the wrong colour and shape to not fit neatly into his "A Person" metal box.

No one fucking cares that he was racist. Anyfucking one from before 1940 or even 50 was a racist. Who cares? It's noted, sure, but it's not shocking anyone, even Twain used racial slurs.

Seeing as he used Polynesian ruins to help springboard R'leyth and had Hotep be 'the black guy' he's already more inclusive than LoTR.

Most racists in his day and age didn't believe black people laid eggs.

I wasn't saying we should care. Quite the reverse in fact. If you had also followed the chain of reasoning a little further you would have reached the two sad conclusions I did.

1. Libtards who shit on him for being an insensitive and intolerant are showing no tolerance to an autist for something he can't help.

2. People went nuts from the perspectives of the unaffiliated in his stories because they knew something we didn't and so acted in a manner that when viewed without their knowledge made them look round the bend. Lovecraft lived in a world where everyone acted in a way he didn't quite understand, seemed to follow thought processes subtly different from his own and were quite strange to him as a result. He was to a small extent living the nightmare.

Both of these are slightly funny but also fairly sad.

You're getting mixed up here kid.

You can't really "get" Lovecraft without the understanding he was racist even by standards of his era.

Understanding that. =/= Agreeing with him.

Liking Lovecraft's work =/= You are racist.

Oh boy, here's the virtue signaller again who can't grasp the world except through the lens of his ideology.

>Nobody ever talks about cool shit like Rats in the Wall or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Holy shit yes the Case of Charles Dexter Ward. The idea of a cabal of necromancer wizards trading ressurection materials for famous people from antiquity like Pokemon is fucking ace.

>Hey Big-C, I've got a big blaspheme-off comeing up, what you got in ancient Pharaohs?
>Sup Simon...
>Uh, it's Jed these days.
>Whatever. Anyway, take a look at this, Essential Salts of Ozzy-fucking-Mandius himself Ramses the 2nd. Boom.
>I will fucking trade you three french knights and Maria Antoinette for that shit.
>You haven't got Maria Antoinette. We keep telling you this, we can't exctract the salts if the heads removed. What you have there is a frenchwoman who's good at lying, which makes her incredibly common.
>Fine, 2 French Knights and that Viking with the good singing voice.
>You know what I want "Jed"
>But... fine. Here. You can have my King Arthur.
>Done and done... wait, why is this a woman?
>TOO LATE NO BACKSIES!

>don't conjure up what you can't put down
I always loved that line

Do you have any evidence for that other than a comic parodying him?

> I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.