When I think of things that celebrate evil, I think of the Shape of the Water (or whatever the fuck that was) that turned a Lovecraftian (In nature) story into a love story. I think that sort of thing celebrates evil. This childish notion that 'Everybody just wants love maaaaaaaaaaaan'.
Embrace the borderline feral beast man because he is hot and his powers are totally sweet. Anybody that says otherwise is just a authoritarian fascist.
You are also a fish man and thats actually a GOOD thing.

It borderline feels like Deep One propaganda from an alternate universe.

Vampires can at the very least form a fucking sentance. This is just one mans scaley fetish porn.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 27, 2022, 06:23:03 PM
When I think of things that celebrate evil, I think of the Shape of the Water (or whatever the fuck that was) that turned a Lovecraftian (In nature) story into a love story. I think that sort of thing celebrates evil. This childish notion that 'Everybody just wants love maaaaaaaaaaaan'.
Embrace the borderline feral beast man because he is hot and his powers are totally sweet. Anybody that says otherwise is just a authoritarian fascist.
You are also a fish man and thats actually a GOOD thing.

It borderline feels like Deep One propaganda from an alternate universe.

Vampires can at the very least form a fucking sentance. This is just one mans scaley fetish porn.

I though the Shape of Water was bizarre nonsense that got a bizarre amount of attention for no apparent reason, but I never got much of a deep one vibe from Mr. Fishdick. It seemed more like weird fetishism combined with a complete failure explore the alien, than anything else. Which, except for the fishsex, wasn't really that unusual. It's a romance, after all, and most romantic stories tend to be at least a little fetishistic and all the aliens or weird beings are really just human bad boys, with extra powers or slight anatomical changes. Romance isn't about exploring the alien, but exploring human relationships. And with a heavy focus on a very specific subset of those human relationships, which is basically the exotic boyfriend. Giving the boyfriend pointy ears or gills instead of making them Persian or something is a cosmetic change.

Quote from: Pat on February 27, 2022, 09:47:29 PMI though the Shape of Water was bizarre nonsense that got a bizarre amount of attention for no apparent reason, but I never got much of a deep one vibe from Mr. Fishdick.

Hes modelled after Black Lagoon creature, which was a fish that wanted to abduct a woman to his cave because its lonely, and the director on seeing said creature thought 'Man, I wish they fucked'. The original was more 'Be ecologically concious' in minor thematic elements, rather then 'Its hip to fuck fish'.
Its not a literal Deep One, but with the worship and magical healing powers, he becomes more Deep One like.

Its taking the alien and saying 'If you don't have sex with it, you can only be a monster'.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 27, 2022, 10:25:18 PM

Quote from: Pat on February 27, 2022, 09:47:29 PMI though the Shape of Water was bizarre nonsense that got a bizarre amount of attention for no apparent reason, but I never got much of a deep one vibe from Mr. Fishdick.

Hes modelled after Black Lagoon creature, which was a fish that wanted to abduct a woman to his cave because its lonely, and the director on seeing said creature thought 'Man, I wish they fucked'. The original was more 'Be ecologically concious' in minor thematic elements, rather then 'Its hip to fuck fish'.
Its not a literal Deep One, but with the worship and magical healing powers, he becomes more Deep One like.

Its taking the alien and saying 'If you don't have sex with it, you can only be a monster'.

It's not really exploring the concept of the alien, though. It's just a form of anthropomorphization, or projecting the human onto things that aren't. Though since this is fiction, that's inverted. Since the writer defines the world, there's no underlying reality that's being projected on. Instead, the projection becomes the in-fiction reality, and the alien becomes the gloss. The fish-with-benefits is a just a human, with some exotic visual elements and minor quirks.

Quote from: Pat on February 28, 2022, 08:36:39 AMIt's not really exploring the concept of the alien, though.

...Well its denying it as a concept. Not really exploring it.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 28, 2022, 09:53:40 AM

Quote from: Pat on February 28, 2022, 08:36:39 AMIt's not really exploring the concept of the alien, though.

...Well its denying it as a concept. Not really exploring it.

Agreed.

  I have to admit I skipped out on that movie because I knew the lady was going to bang the monster.   Maybe I am scarred from "Humanoids from the Deep", but that being in the movie was a hard pass for me.  It seemed to be trying to push something that honestly, is just out right creepy.

You have to consider what was happening when Lovecraft wrote those stories. It was a crazy time with "old stuff" being trashed in favor of things we don't think twice about now.

In Lovecraft's world everything was big, cold, and just plain nasty. Humans were bits of spit in a cosmic toilet, ready to be flushed down any moment. Oh sometimes humans won small victories sure, but if those gods and demons from his world ever REALLY came back we'd be screwed a billion times over.

So if I ran a Cthulhu type dungeon the heroes would only stall evil. That's it. Buying us some more time.

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't. The United States is an example of part of a civilization that seems on the brink of destruction or dissolution periodically and yet manages to pull it out of the fire, in combination with adherence to proper principles of economics. Leaders and the people who support them have the free will needed to adjust the system as needed to respond to marginal resource depletion; I don't know if there are any political-economic structures strong enough to wholly prevent those needed adjustments.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 28, 2022, 10:06:34 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't.

The second law of thermodynamics seems pretty clear on the subject! 

ETA: Actually, that's not just a throwaway line. The implications of the 2nd law for the fate of the cosmos shook the intellectual world back in the day. In some sense Lovecraft is one of the reverberations of that quake.

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 28, 2022, 10:24:50 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 28, 2022, 10:06:34 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't.

The second law of thermodynamics seems pretty clear on the subject! 

ETA: Actually, that's not just a throwaway line. The implications of the 2nd law for the fate of the cosmos shook the intellectual world back in the day. In some sense Lovecraft is one of the reverberations of that quake.

Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 10:22:47 AM
Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

  "Fiat lux."   

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 10:22:47 AM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 28, 2022, 10:24:50 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 28, 2022, 10:06:34 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't.

The second law of thermodynamics seems pretty clear on the subject! 

ETA: Actually, that's not just a throwaway line. The implications of the 2nd law for the fate of the cosmos shook the intellectual world back in the day. In some sense Lovecraft is one of the reverberations of that quake.

Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

I mean, there could be, but note that you countered S'mon by saying "there's no discovered principle" that says civilizations can't last indefinitely, I pointed out that "well, ackshually, there is," and now you're appealing to a principle that might exist but that have we haven't discovered yet!

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on March 01, 2022, 10:58:18 AM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 10:22:47 AM
Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

  "Fiat lux."   

"Fiat lux" and even within cause and effect you eventually run into an unmoved mover or first cause that set everything in motion. How did we get that massive point of energy that exploded into our universe? If it was just a massive vacuum fluctuation in the quantum field (with the negative energy component exploding out in the opposite direction in spacetime accounting for its relative absence in our universe) then where did the quantum field come from? Et cetera.

The Mythos actually makes more sense Pre-Einstein when it was believed our universe was a steady-state that had always existed and always would. The Big Bang made Fiat Lux a far more plausible answer for the meaning behind the universe than the random happenstance of an unthinking universe (for those who don't know, the scientist who first proposed The Big Bang, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest).

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 01, 2022, 01:09:37 PM
The Mythos actually makes more sense Pre-Einstein when it was believed our universe was a steady-state that had always existed and always would. The Big Bang made Fiat Lux a far more plausible answer for the meaning behind the universe than the random happenstance of an unthinking universe (for those who don't know, the scientist who first proposed The Big Bang, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest).

   I keep saying that the Mythos is a product of its time--too much earlier, and the atheism it presupposes is absent; too much later, and you don't have the faith in an ordered and rational universe that it spends so much time undercutting to produce the horrific effect.