Neckbeards ruined lovecraft for me

So basically

normies get out reeee

I think he would be fine with it if they actually understood lovecraft's stories and have read them/more then just call of cthulhu.

The feeling of dread of acknowledging how insignificant your existence really is? And that you're so small that you can't comprehend the expansive unknown without going mad?

Yeah that's the good shit.

>Every thread on Veeky Forums

Nice blog, OP.
Also why do you care?

There are better eldritch horror stories, though.

The problem of the Lovecraftian stories is that they are usually about incomprehensible horrors. Like, "these ancient ruins have four-dimensional architecture so I'm going crazy just by looking at it" kind of incomprehensible.
Horror stories should be simple. There's no need for the "fly from the outer space" plot that Lovecraft used. The most relatable horror comes from very simple (yet strange) things, like "a monster under your bed" plot that just works when executed properly.
If you want a Veeky Forums example, then it isn't Call of Cthulhu that is scary. It is Delta Green and Unknown Armies that are scary.

So basically what is learned at school usually between ages 10 an 14.

I like the dream-quest to unknown kadath more to be frank.

Oh man those stories were really cool.

Hipster opinion: The Strange High House in the Mist is my personal favourite.

Arguably one of the key parts of the horror has been absorbed into modern thinking. We know that we are small and insignificant in the universe, but to someone of his era this would have been more novel and horrifying. Granted, the fact that the universe just doesn't give any shits about our entire solar system does offer some small comfort if you make an awkward joke.

>I have a hardcopy of The Complete Lovecraft
>read it occasionally
>one day, while I'm reading it on the bus this girl comes up to me
>7/10 cutie, blue eyes, dark hair, kind of chubby, covered in trendy buttons and "nerdy" clothes
>"Oh my gawd! You like lovecraft?! Don't you just love *insert ten minutes of nonsensical rambling*"
>she's still talking, and I'm just staring into the vacant flapping meat hole in her face
>every other sentence is peppered with the hippest nerd slang she can come up with
>people around me are visibly gawking as I'm staring slack-jawed into yawning abyss
>after an eternity, tell her it's my stop and I have to go
>she's still talking, gets off at the same stop as me
>I go to a local pizza place to grab some lunch
>she understood this as a formal date and awkwardly followed me to my table, sat across from me
>I'm eating in silence as she can barely make time to breath
>I come to the realization that this experience will never end unless I do something drastic
>ask her for her phone number
>she immediately spills spaghetti everywhere, tells me this insanely convoluted story about every single relationship she's ever had
>after what felt like an eternity, finally get her phone number, and she immediately leaves
>praise all variety of old gods for ending this torment
>go home, put my lovecraft book on a shelf, never read it outside again
>text this girl back one day when I'm piss drunk, got to see some boobies, but it was absolutely not worth listening to her again

i hear that neckbeards and gamergirls are really into breathing oxygen. maybe you should lose interest in that.

Those people aren't intolerable, but they're exhausting and always make me want to be a better, more concise person.

Overall I think you did the right thing rather than telling her to fuck off. Some people need to talk shit to randoms some time and you probably gave her a confidence boost by feigning interest in her.

Unknown armies is, to some extent, the opposite of Lovecraft. If Lovecraft is "nothing we do matters," UA is EVERYTHING we do matters.

Both that and DG are tits tho.

But he was clearly annoyed by it. While I can agree on where you're coming from, it's still not right for some people to act this way.
And what if feigning interest, hell in this case to the point of romantic interest, only goes to fuel such efforts in people?
Isn't that a little irresponsible? You don't have to be rude, but it isn't wrong to tell people when they're acting infavorably for themselves.

The Rats in the Walls it patrician taste

OP reporting in:

Yes, it is absolutely irresponsible to feign romantic interest in these people, because it validates their insanity. That being said, you should at least be nice to them because they don't understand how overbearing they're being. If you tell someone like that to their face that they're being socially awkward, they're going to be emotionally devastated, cry about it online, then receive the unwarranted praise that only a very specific combination of cleavage, emotional instability, and autism can provide.

On the other hand, I have a weak spot for cute thick girls with blue eyes and long dark hair. If someone is physically compatible with you, and romantically interested in you, there's nothing wrong with asking for their number, or even drunken texting them for a booty call. I'm significantly older now than I was, so I know better, and would steer clear of those people in the future, but at 20? Go for it. That might even break the tension and help them lead a normal life.

I used to be the exact same type of sperg, and because I'm not extremely awful to look at, tons of girls would pretend to be interested in my hobbies just to bang me. But, if I never experienced shitty relationships, I wouldn't appreciate that my current girlfriend has an insane collection of late 80's horror movies, or can play Dark Souls 1 as good as anyone I've ever met, while not being an unbearable chatterbox.

Yes it is.

Huh. So in the end we can elaborate on this matter endlessly, though we'll never know if any harm was done when on the other hand none seemingly was.

And isn't that the point in general? Things are always as they'll seem and we are to make the best of it (just as OP did) instead of postulating on the internet about it.

Negro eggs, amirite guise?

Why does lovecraft always look so angry?

Because of all the niggers and he just found out that inhuman Welsh blood flows through his veins and he will never feel clean again.

I wouldn't want to be part sheep either to be honest.

I don't know why everybody's shitting this thread up with feeble defenses like predicted, but anyway, that's faggotry and you're right, OP.

What really ruined it for me was all the HURR CUTE PLUSH CTHULHU, LOOK AT MY FUCKING HASTUR-PRINT JEGGINGS dogshit. Even goth bitches who cut themselves apparently have an insuperable urge to cutify and commercialize everything including their own angst and thus ruin it, I guess that's why The Night Before Christmas ever pushed even one single piece of merchandise.

>she's still talking, and I'm just staring into the vacant flapping meat hole in her face
So in other words she really manifested the horror stylings of Lovecraft for you.

I've never read a Lovecraft story because they all seem boring as shit, but people can't get enough of my Call of Cthulhu games.

I like to throw steampunk elements into the mix. Players like that.

HPL was pretty keen on making fun of his own shit though. He had a fake "eldritich correspondance" with Ashton Smith about a statuette the latter gave to him, pretending it was an evil artefact giving him nightmares.

I like to think he has a good laugh at Nyaruko and plush Cthulhu in his kingdom in Ilek-vad right now. Though he'd like people to get what he actually meant to wrote a little more, I guess.

unlike JRRT, who was nofunallowed personified

>buy myself the complete antology of HPL for my birthday when I'm 14
>bring a couple of books on summer vacation with me
>spend a couple of weeks in this remote small town in the italian alps
>my house is the last one on the road that brings you to the top of the mountain
>overlooks the whole town and from it you can see the whole valley and the mountain in front
>read the books for a week straight because the weather was cold and rainy that summer

Man being far away from technology and isolated in a suggestive atmosphere really ingrained those stories in my mind.

Too bad I was a fat nerd and didn't get to fuck the qt blondie that lived in the next appartment.

>fat nerd
>Italian
This must be suffering, I've literally never seen a fat Italian under the age of 40. Maybe 50 actually.

The number is growing thanks to Mcdonald.

But yeah it was pretty bad, I didn't even have any Veeky Forums friends back then,
or at all for that matter.

>McDonalds is even able to fat up the nation that invented Nutella and pizza and still didn't turn into a band of hambeasts
I don't even know what to say about that, except maybe "fucking hell, Anglos suck".

It's the kids and teens mostly, the problem is not really Mcdonald itself but the fact that americans have been exporting their filthy lifestyle all around the world for at least 20 years now.

> I'm a huge fan
> but I'm also a hipster and can't like it if other people I don't like do.
No, you aren't and weren't.

Oh, look, how surprising:

-A bunch of obsessive fans who worry too much about the content ruin a work for others.

-A bunch of normies who don't get the central appeal of the content ruin a work for others.

Sometimes I feel like people discussing things they like should be bad because it leads to the worsening of a work.

DUDE TENTACLES LMAO
DUDE "ELDRITCH" EVERYTHING LMAO
YOG-SOTHOTH? NYARLATHOTEP? AZATHOTH? DREAMLANDS? WHO'S THAT?
#CTHULHUFORPRESIDENT2016

He's faking it. He's usually containing his laughter

no stare at squid

10/thread

At the Mountains of Madness may or may not have convinced me to major in geology. Still my favorite.

Don't you know neckbeards ruin pretty much everything?

TCooS is my favorite too.

A Shadow Over Innsmouth is a classic for a reason, user.

You've got to realize that at the time this was written, society was kind of just coming to terms with this stuff- how truly insignificant humanity was on a cosmic scale, how there are things both on earth and out there in space that could eradicate our species in moments at any moment, whether it be some dormant supervolcano or an asteroid or a gamma ray burst from the depths of space.

Fuck man, that's another great one. Same with the dream-quest to unknown kadath.

Dude, just don't care what those people do or say. Your own experiences and opinions, and those of the people that matter to you, are the only ones that you should consider worthwhile. Everyone else doesn't really matter. Lovecraft has some absolutely amazing material, don't let a bunch of fake 'nerds' ruin it for you.

>i have never read a lovecraft book

Fuck off.

I love experiences like that. I had a similar one with the novel 'It' by Stephen King.
>inb4 people argue about the merits of that story or of King's works in general
Was staying at a cabin on a lake with family as a kid of about 11, got the book at a little used book store in town to read during the stay, but it absolutely poured rain one day and I wound up sitting at a window looking out over the lake and reading almost the whole thing in one sitting. I've read it probably three more times through since then, and it remains one of my favorite horror stories of all time.

And we came to terms with the super volcanoes and gamma rays and we didn't roll for san loss. Instead we buy tickets to watch nuclear tests and sip champagne.

>play Delta Green with a bunch of normies
>they all talk exactly like this

Dream Cycle the best.

And what is going on in that. I read it before bed a few months ago and am confused. What the hell is the deal the house accessing the dreamland? What was the scary thing that made him leave the house? Was it just the lovecraftian general unknowable horror?

Yeah, eventually we did. In most of Lovecraft's works, though, the whole 'looking at (thing) causes insanity' thing never happens. That's something that Derleth and others added in. A few people sort of become a bit unhinged over periods of time, but it takes a while and a lot of pretty extreme mental stress. Doesn't help that sometimes the things characters come upon are literally physically incomprehensible to them, like the four-dimensional noneuclidiean ruins in At the Mountains of Madness.

Tl;dr san loss isn't really a Lovecraft thing

Why? You could always catch a better one in the future. And worst case scenario a 7/10 who likes love craft ain't bad.

How about saying "well guys, you need to have read the man, if not we're gonna play something else"?

It doesn't seem too hard, if your really want this shit to be faithful. Which basically means no Delta Green, but that's another story altogether.

It's like I present to people The One Ring: "you dont' really need to know the fine print of the elven clans*, but you probably need to feel pretty excited and even honoured to encounter Bilbo".

*= the fact the JRRT didn't really make up his mind doesn't help anyway.

>And we came to terms with the super volcanoes and gamma rays and we didn't roll for san loss.
You are retarded.

The moment scientists are 100% sure that next week the Siberian Volcanic Traps explode and will keep exploding for the next 1 million years or a gamma ray burst will exterminate all land-based life by intense cancer rays, society will go absolute batshit insane.

There is a difference between knowing how fucking insane and dangerous life really is, and having it play out right in front of you.

Warcraft did it better

Nukes are firework crackers against super vulcanos tho.

Why can one of them double kill you?

What.

Is it wrong for me to say The Picture in The House is my fave. I love the more eldritch-y stuff, but something as simple as a cannibal in a creepy house really gets me. Probably because I live in the Country and there are a fuckton of old abandoned houses here

Is that crop from Blacksad?

Lackadaisy, mate.

Derleth and Smith are the true ruiners of Lovecraft's work.

lovecraft having /pol/s mindset ruined lovecraft for me

Oh shut the fuck up.
People are retarded, this is an established fact. Just because retards act retarded about something you like, doesn't mean that it is retarded by association.

What bothers me a lot about people whose perception of Lovecraft has been shaped through the odd short story and primarily pop culture is their tendency to believe that the beings encountered in his stories are impossible to fight, and that it's somehow "the point". Sure, beings like Azathoth can't really be fought by humanity and ultimately we're irrelevant specs of shit, but he's not really an issue as such. Cthulhu's not the true big bad either; he's "just" a cosmic cardinal of the true outer gods. Same goes for Dagon and his fishboys; the latter got fucked up good in one of the navy's attempts to exterminate them by god damn depth charges.

The problem doesn't lie with making fun of Lovecraft, I think that's fine (though I am not the user you replied to) It's that social groups like "goths" "gamers" and "nerds" dilute the things that they enjoy by commercializing them.

I love Doctor Who, but every time i see a Tardis dress I cringe.

Nightmare before Christmas is (alright) but if you wear clothing that is branded with anything Tim Burton you're signalling to the world that you're a basic.

Memes die when the real world discovers them, and the list goes on.

Lovecraft is great, but people oversaturating culture with depictions of cthulhu changes our perception of a man who should be an irrefutable titan of the horror genre.

Post your favourite fish dudes.

>I think I went mad then.

But user, if you date someone you actually have to care about their opinions. Yes, you can lease that nonsense, but if you're talking to a vapid trendy idiot, and they realize you aren't interested in their every syllable, eventually the sheer volume of unadulterated insanity will consume you. The saying goes, never stick your dick in crazy, and that advice rings doubly true for someone who won't shut up about their hobbies, or their past relationships.

Wow, idiots misunderstand thing, I must hate thing now.

Stop being weak.

If you think Delta Green isn't faithful because you can shoot and kill the baddies, you're dead wrong. There were plenty of times where Mythos creatures were killed by conventional weaponry, only gods and certain other creatures in the lore are really unkillable.

Every "universal" author goes through this. Isn't Melville mostly known for whales's dicks and Ahab grumpyness?

I actually loathe COC in every form, to the point that I think Chtuhlhutech in its "reimagining" is better, because COC is unfaithful, unfunny and it actually taints HPL's perception for many people, something which dank memes will not do. People will not associate HPL with romcoms through Nyaruko, but they will associate it with investigators and "sanity rolls" through COC, and that's like associating romantic "feelgood" love stories with vampires through motherfucking Twilight.
The fact that Delta Green it is one step further from what HPL is about... I'm not sure it makes it a little worse or a little better, but basically it's unimportant.

Praise Hastur, at least now we have Lovecraftesque after thirty years of bullshit from Chaosium AND other games with genuine love for the man that still just don't get it. And reading some pulp stories it's not fucking rocket science.

>The fact that Delta Green it is one step further from what HPL is about.
I'd argue that outside of the sanity check stuff, DG is pretty true to Lovecraft. That ultimately what they're doing doesn't matter and it's best if no one knows what is really going on.

I liked the one about the violinist. It's fun trying to imagine what his music was like.

>"well guys, you need to have read the man, if not we're gonna play something else"
In my experience if that's how I handled things I would never get a chance to run anything besides generic fantasy setting D&D. 99% of players I've encountered hate getting homework from their GMs.

He got off lucky then, he should rightfully be known for horrendous wordplay.

And yet there are still people out there who lose their shit at the idea of evolution, and even people who have regressed into flat-earthery and other shitty beliefs because the modern world and not being God's special little project is too much for them to handle

I am fairly certain it was ghost written. The fuckin Poseidon lookin dude just really took me out of the moment..

user, I don't want to sound like the COC hater that I admit I am, but... no.

HPL doesn't really put the inevitability up as people think he did. Or to be more precise: apparently we can't do shit if the stars are right and Cthulhu wakes up right now, but even if that's supposed to be forever (I don't think the latter, more "sci-fi" HPL would be that sure about that) that's totally not true for many threats.
Deep Ones? Call the g-men. Redneck sorcerers? Who you're gonna call, Arkham academics, of course.
Shit does happen in HPL world, but the absolute powerlessness is a myth. We ARE ants, but we might not built our ant nests at the side of the road, so to speak.

But that wasn't the point. The structure of the story is radically different from not only action movies, but detective stories as well. The party thing is pretty much antithetical to HPL in which everything is seen only from the eyes of a single protagonist (most interestingly, even when there COULD be a party: Rats in the Wall, Mountains of Madness) and his ramblings. It's not about conflicts with external forces, it's about the lure of these things - in anything the conflict is internal, between the disgust/unacceaptance of truth and the awe that come from the same source.
Notice that basically none is hurt in HPL stories, aside from the very end and "NPCS"?

HPL is not a mistery nor an action flick, is a helluva trip.

I thought the ruins in Mountains of Madness were not really all that bad. Some of them escaped from there and they managed to somehow find a wall fresco with the entire history of the species compressed for them on the way down.

>But that wasn't the point. The structure of the story is radically different from not only action movies, but detective stories as well. The party thing is pretty much antithetical to HPL in which everything is seen only from the eyes of a single protagonist (most interestingly, even when there COULD be a party: Rats in the Wall, Mountains of Madness
The Redneck sorcery thing did actually have a party go up against them.

Search better players.

Do you even Dunsany user?

Read the whole sentence, user.

True, but I still feel that when fighting the redneck gigabeast they all put their heads together and worked as a team.

...

I prefer the strange case of charles dexter ward

THIS

I think it was just professor Armitage's expertise . That being said, what I was trying to say is that when there is a "party", you have different personalities in which you're interested to get into their heads. And this doesn't happen in HPL, which is interesting if you consider that the point IS actually going with ther protagonist's toughts.

Interestingly, RE Howard kinda shares this trait. Conan has the girl of the day and not really any companions. I mean, yeah, he does have some colleagues, but they don't even have action scenes to speak of.

You haven't read hpl, it seems, if you contend that unfathomable cosmic horror ain't him......and single protagonist? Um, no. practically never. No external conflict?? Read moar!!!!!

>HPL doesn't really put the inevitability up as people think he did.
The Shadow Out of Time pretty clearly gives us an experation date.
>Or to be more precise: apparently we can't do shit if the stars are right and Cthulhu wakes up right now, but even if that's supposed to be forever
Except even in Call of Cthluhu, when the stars were right enough for him to be awake and R'lyeh raised, a steamboat took him down. Had no one been there to thwart the Dunedin who knows? I akin that to some people pushing back something terrible, while not ultimately fixing the problem a la DG.

>(I don't think the latter, more "sci-fi" HPL would be that sure about that) that's totally not true for many threats.
I agree with you on that.

>Shit does happen in HPL world, but the absolute powerlessness is a myth. We ARE ants, but we might not built our ant nests at the side of the road, so to speak.
Also agreed.
>But that wasn't the point. The structure of the story is radically different from not only action movies, but detective stories as well. The party thing is pretty much antithetical to HPL in which everything is seen only from the eyes of a single protagonist (most interestingly, even when there COULD be a party: Rats in the Wall, Mountains of Madness) and his ramblings. It's not about conflicts with external forces, it's about the lure of these things - in anything the conflict is internal, between the disgust/unacceaptance of truth and the awe that come from the same source.
That's the problem with adopting the source into a game played by multiple people. While it might be a bit inherently antithetical to a Lovecraft story it isn't antithetical to the setting.

No, user pretty clearly has. While there are often other characters in Lovecraft's work, the focus is almost entirely on the narrator and always feels pretty isolated in fact.