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elanya at 10:26pm on 04/02/2016 under cthulhu mythos, february talk meme, lovecraft, meme, tumblr crosspost, twitter crosspost
elanya at 10:26pm on 04/02/2016 under cthulhu mythos, february talk meme, lovecraft, meme, tumblr crosspost, twitter crosspostToday, naryrising asked me to talk about the Cthulhu Mythos.
I have a lot of things to say, but I have spend a lot of Brain today already, so I make no promises.
I find the concept of cosmic horror really appealing, but it is difficult to engage with it without running up against Lovecraft's Cthuhu Mythos. He was not the first, but at this point it is really hard to write 'unknown horrors from beyond our scope of understanding that the mind can't process and keep hold of itself' without people assuming you are drawing on Lovecraft directly. Ask the Night Vale writers about this.
A lot of the stuff Lovecraft wrote was problematic as all get out. It was incredibly racist and anti-immigrant, written very much from a fear of the loss of white power to the unfamiliar - and to Lovecraft, culture so unfathomably unfamiliar he couldn't even recognize it as civilized or entirely human. He was terrible, and it is in the work, and there is no getting around that.
But some of the terrors he created that went truly beyond man, like Cthulhu, Azathoth, Yog-sothoth, were just really cool. He wasn't always the best writter from a technical standpoint, and a lot of people can't stand his style, but I feel like the obfuscating language works with reference to the unknowable. It's atmospheric. The cosmic entities are interesting (some more than others). And it is vague - so vague. A lot of it had to do with exploring the last frontiers, space and the sea, and we are still exploring those today in new and different ways.
Later writers did a lot to crystallize things that were obtuse in the original stories, drawing specific relationships between the gods, making their roles explicit. Making them knowable. It is a lot less interesting to me that way.
I think there is still a lot of stuff to play with in what he left us, and that stripping away the racism and sexism and bigotry leaves us with things that are even more interesting to work with, so when I'm playing with mythos concepts, that's what I like to do. Where do these things fit into a modern world and/or a contemporary setting? What effects and meaning do they have for people other than white cis men? What are other perspectives and contexts than can complicate a world in which these forces have an effect?
There are other authors out these still playing with this stuff - no less than three collections of Lovecraftian stories have come out in the last year *that I know of* and two of them centered explicitly on women (characters and authors). Some follow up on things I think are cool, some.... do not. But it is encouraging to me that there is still a market for these sorts of things.... maybe, someday, I will ever sell another story >.>
naryrising asked me to talk about the Cthulhu Mythos.I have a lot of things to say, but I have spend a lot of Brain today already, so I make no promises.
I find the concept of cosmic horror really appealing, but it is difficult to engage with it without running up against Lovecraft's Cthuhu Mythos. He was not the first, but at this point it is really hard to write 'unknown horrors from beyond our scope of understanding that the mind can't process and keep hold of itself' without people assuming you are drawing on Lovecraft directly. Ask the Night Vale writers about this.
A lot of the stuff Lovecraft wrote was problematic as all get out. It was incredibly racist and anti-immigrant, written very much from a fear of the loss of white power to the unfamiliar - and to Lovecraft, culture so unfathomably unfamiliar he couldn't even recognize it as civilized or entirely human. He was terrible, and it is in the work, and there is no getting around that.
But some of the terrors he created that went truly beyond man, like Cthulhu, Azathoth, Yog-sothoth, were just really cool. He wasn't always the best writter from a technical standpoint, and a lot of people can't stand his style, but I feel like the obfuscating language works with reference to the unknowable. It's atmospheric. The cosmic entities are interesting (some more than others). And it is vague - so vague. A lot of it had to do with exploring the last frontiers, space and the sea, and we are still exploring those today in new and different ways.
Later writers did a lot to crystallize things that were obtuse in the original stories, drawing specific relationships between the gods, making their roles explicit. Making them knowable. It is a lot less interesting to me that way.
I think there is still a lot of stuff to play with in what he left us, and that stripping away the racism and sexism and bigotry leaves us with things that are even more interesting to work with, so when I'm playing with mythos concepts, that's what I like to do. Where do these things fit into a modern world and/or a contemporary setting? What effects and meaning do they have for people other than white cis men? What are other perspectives and contexts than can complicate a world in which these forces have an effect?
There are other authors out these still playing with this stuff - no less than three collections of Lovecraftian stories have come out in the last year *that I know of* and two of them centered explicitly on women (characters and authors). Some follow up on things I think are cool, some.... do not. But it is encouraging to me that there is still a market for these sorts of things.... maybe, someday, I will ever sell another story >.>
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