tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post7007063604813889087..comments2024-03-29T00:32:33.920-04:00Comments on GROGNARDIA: Happy Birthday, Ech-Pi-ElJames Maliszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-19451533827828164902009-08-21T00:50:07.745-04:002009-08-21T00:50:07.745-04:00Wow. I had no idea.
Mind you, I had scheduled tod...Wow. I had no idea.<br /><br />Mind you, I had scheduled today's Call of Cthulhu session a month in advance.<br /><br />That's some funky synchronicity.Iglesiashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08416128782481346800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-7671736326235129812009-08-20T22:36:10.245-04:002009-08-20T22:36:10.245-04:00In "The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos&q...In "The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos" S. T. Joshi traces Lovecraft's evolution. In his early years, before he found his voice, he relied more on the visions of writers like Dunsany; his Dreamlands work shows this and is on the whole less cosmic. As his cosmicism (Joshi's term) developed, he turned more towards the bleak, uncaring universe model. There were odd throwbacks--"The Dunwich Horror" springs to mind--but by the time you arrive at "At the Mountains of Madness" you have the pure Lovecraftian, mechanistic, atheistic universe. <br /><br />All this was a long way of saying, I think people appreciate different stages of Lovecraft. Some like the more romantic, fantastic, early work. Others enjoy the pseudo-science fiction of later works (I am one of them). But there is certainly room in gaming for all sorts of Lovecraft's flavors.Andrew Logan Montgomeryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16862829026060203177noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-48381129542008774172009-08-20T15:24:11.082-04:002009-08-20T15:24:11.082-04:00Another funny thing is that the stories really are...Another funny thing is that the stories really aren't as uniformly, unremittingly bleak as they've been made out to be: some of the Randolph Carter stuff gets downright religious/mystical. There's a website that works through the unscreened aftermaths of adventure movies to show how the apparently happy endings actually lead inevitably to tragedy right after the credits roll (can't find right now) - some of HPL's stories seem like the reverse to me. It may be a horrible mistake to call up the dead from their essential salts in <i>Charles Dexter Ward</i>, but the human "essence" remains something like a soul. Yog-Sothoth may be an unsettling, uncongenial Greater Being, but isn't it always supposed to be terrifying to run up against the living God?<br /><br />...that's pretty much why I'm a happy atheist, BTW.richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13517340075234811323noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-8635153422482375992009-08-20T11:53:42.163-04:002009-08-20T11:53:42.163-04:00One funny thing about HPL's world - there is a...One funny thing about HPL's world - there is actually plenty of mythos-butt-kicking going on! Characters in HPL stories are happy to fire torpedoes into the undersea Deep One lairs, or ram Cthulu amidships with their vessel, without being consumed by ennui at the inevitable pointlessness of it all.<br /><br />I guess that pre-1968 or so, that was just what a man did. Nobody questioned it, before Vietnam.Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01173759805310975320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-43840120762231704602009-08-20T10:38:04.103-04:002009-08-20T10:38:04.103-04:00You can be heroic in a Lovecraftian setting but, o...You can be heroic in a Lovecraftian setting but, of course, the point is that it is pointless! A bit of a conundrum!<br /><br />Still, I agree with you, James, that it makes for a great game setting. Even an avowed Catholic like Tolkien made it quite clear that he highly valued the pagan ideal of spitting in the face of inevitable defeat! That certainly would apply in a Lovecraftian world...you need that little bit of non-Lovecraftian "sentiment" to make it work.Keith Sloanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07319879076978887933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-63050653080150863812009-08-20T10:20:27.190-04:002009-08-20T10:20:27.190-04:00Very interesting to see this, after the last blog ...Very interesting to see this, after the last blog I visited, which was honoring Gene Roddenberry's 88th birthday today....Leehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13103472744612438430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-52884200056079687982009-08-20T06:06:11.682-04:002009-08-20T06:06:11.682-04:00Otsp:
"I think one of the big reasons I love ...Otsp:<br />"I think one of the big reasons I love Conan so much is because I just see him as a Nietzschean hero in an uncaring Lovecraftian world"<br /><br />Drat, I was just about to say _exactly the same thing_ myself!<br /><br />Conan is the Nietzschean Value-Creator in HPL's God-is-Dead universe.<br /><br />On a different perspective though, Nietzsche, HPL and REH come across to me rather as asocial loner nihilists detached from the common bulk of humanity (who Nietzsche despised, of course). Most humans are quite capable of creating value for themselves through love - romantic, spousal, familial, friendship et al - without need to trample the jewelled thrones of the Earth beneath their sandled feet.<br /><br />I guess that's partly why in practice I've always tended to prefer Leiber's Fafhrd & Mouser, with their defining friendship, and to a lesser extent Moorcock's heroes with their adolescent romantic loves, to stone-cold Conan, a man complete unto himself.<br /><br />In Tolkien, God is not dead, of course, but he seems pretty far off, and again it is love, most notably the friendship-love in the heart of Samwise, that enables the triumph of good and the defeat of evil.<br /><br />There is no love in the worlds of HPL and REH. I always found that rather sad.Simonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01173759805310975320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-80187767678085801282009-08-20T03:35:10.415-04:002009-08-20T03:35:10.415-04:00Your post gets two fist pumps from me, JM.
; )Your post gets two fist pumps from me, JM.<br /><br />; )JBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08532311924539491087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-46959507691771773882009-08-20T03:34:13.095-04:002009-08-20T03:34:13.095-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.JBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08532311924539491087noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-37536848663917644462009-08-20T01:39:46.583-04:002009-08-20T01:39:46.583-04:00I have to admit to being a bit of a Lovecraft snob...I have to admit to being a bit of a Lovecraft snob. I really like his core philosophy, and think it's a little frustrating how modern Lovecraftian things are all so fundamentally non-Lovecraftian, being all about the name-dropping and the established secular demonic cosmology. I kind of feel like Kafka has more in common with Lovecraft than most modern Lovecraftian fantasy.<br /><br />That said, I really like the interplay between the Conan series and Lovecraft. I think one of the big reasons I love Conan so much is because I just see him as a Nietzschean hero in an uncaring Lovecraftian world. I think it gives a very specific kind of message, but I really think Lovecraft still has a lot to give fantasy as a genre.OtspIIIhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07973637359168779233noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-21279755664210800062009-08-20T01:14:35.575-04:002009-08-20T01:14:35.575-04:00I do believe I hear the sound of idiotic piping an...I do believe I hear the sound of idiotic piping and the flapping of oily wings in the distance...Timeshadowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09952601433965644275noreply@blogger.com