Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 14, 2021, 08:11:56 PMWhen the villain was utterly baffled by the suggestion that being an immortal fish mutant was something to be feared or despised.

Why do people keep saying that the Innsmouth fishmen are immortal? I don't think the story went into that much detail (the main dude just ran away and didn't stop to discuss their life cycle).

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 13, 2021, 12:05:43 AM
The Shape of the Water, while a film is woke Cthulu if you want to see how that would be in practice.

Which is to say the monsters are all misunderstood and oppressed by evil 1950s governments.

I haven't seen it, but from what is known about Del Toro long suffering "At the Mountains of Madness" project, it will never take off because he wants an hard "R" rating, the bleak conclusion and $200m. Not even James Cameron's support lifted it off the ground (even if after "Terminator: Woke Fate" I'm unsure about the current mental stability of JC).

Re: Woke Cthulhu, the "Arkham Reporter" is not worried:

Quote from: hedgehobbit on November 14, 2021, 08:22:54 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 14, 2021, 08:11:56 PMWhen the villain was utterly baffled by the suggestion that being an immortal fish mutant was something to be feared or despised.

Why do people keep saying that the Innsmouth fishmen are immortal? I don't think the story went into that much detail (the main dude just ran away and didn't stop to discuss their life cycle).

I think that it is similar to the reason that people thought Shark Cartilage prevents cancer - because no on has seen a shark with cancer.

Therefore, if no one has seen a fishman die of old age then they must be immortal.

Quote from: Shasarak on November 14, 2021, 10:24:56 PM

Quote from: hedgehobbit on November 14, 2021, 08:22:54 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 14, 2021, 08:11:56 PMWhen the villain was utterly baffled by the suggestion that being an immortal fish mutant was something to be feared or despised.

Why do people keep saying that the Innsmouth fishmen are immortal? I don't think the story went into that much detail (the main dude just ran away and didn't stop to discuss their life cycle).

I think that it is similar to the reason that people thought Shark Cartilage prevents cancer - because no on has seen a shark with cancer.

Therefore, if no one has seen a fishman die of old age then they must be immortal.

I can't remember if sharks not getting cancer was a function of them being large animals (something that happens; humans get cancer less than say, cats and mice, and blue whales and elephants basically never get it) or was a special thing with sharks.

I haven't read Shadow Over Innsmouth, but I remember hearing that the half-fish people were long lived? I can't remember.

Quote from: Reckall on November 14, 2021, 09:58:01 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 13, 2021, 12:05:43 AM
The Shape of the Water, while a film is woke Cthulu if you want to see how that would be in practice.

Which is to say the monsters are all misunderstood and oppressed by evil 1950s governments.

I haven't seen it, but from what is known about Del Toro long suffering "At the Mountains of Madness" project, it will never take off because he wants an hard "R" rating, the bleak conclusion and $200m. Not even James Cameron's support lifted it off the ground (even if after "Terminator: Woke Fate" I'm unsure about the current mental stability of JC).

Re: Woke Cthulhu, the "Arkham Reporter" is not worried:

Lovecraft versus Woke can be summed up in a single image: man versus tentacle. Men are unlike tentacles. Men have rules to how they bend. Tentacles have no rules and don't understand that men have and need rules to thrive.

Lovecraft is the tentacle. Woke is the man. It is in the nature of men to fight tentacles, using craft. It is in the tentacle's nature to strangle men, using sheer strength of undulation.

Men tell themselves that history is a process of men winning against tentacles. Tentacles believe whatever they want to believe.

If Lovecraft was right, the tentacle will win in the end. If Lovecraft was wrong, men will win.

In other words, there is no psychological escape if you're a tentacle. Either you accept the full force of the meaninglessness of the cosmos, or you believe that justice and compassion are real, which, today, defaults to the world men make for themselves. Or, if a just and compassionate alternative to woke can be postulated and promulgated with sufficiently compelling cogency and passion, tentacles will permanently fall out of fashion, banished from the anthroponormative demesne.

Because of this I hypothesize that Lovecraft is doomed.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on November 14, 2021, 11:21:47 PM
If Lovecraft was right, the tentacle will win in the end. If Lovecraft was wrong, men will win.

If my take on Lovecraft is correct then the unrelenting grinding of eternity will kill both men and tentacles with no care for who gets killed first or second.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 13, 2021, 12:05:43 AM
The Shape of the Water, while a film is woke Cthulu if you want to see how that would be in practice.

Which is to say the monsters are all misunderstood and oppressed by evil 1950s governments.

I think of "The Shape of Water" as an Abe Sapien movie from Mike Mignola's universe (Hellboy, etc.). In fact, I suspect it might have had a subtitle to that effect before final release, or would not be surprised if it did. There is a lot of Abe Sapien comics similarities.

Quote from: Reckall on November 14, 2021, 09:58:01 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 13, 2021, 12:05:43 AM
The Shape of the Water, while a film is woke Cthulu if you want to see how that would be in practice.

Which is to say the monsters are all misunderstood and oppressed by evil 1950s governments.

I haven't seen it, but from what is known about Del Toro long suffering "At the Mountains of Madness" project, it will never take off because he wants an hard "R" rating, the bleak conclusion and $200m. Not even James Cameron's support lifted it off the ground (even if after "Terminator: Woke Fate" I'm unsure about the current mental stability of JC).

Re: Woke Cthulhu, the "Arkham Reporter" is not worried:

As I understand it, del Toro's project was the result of several much-hyped 'oddball' films flopping in succession, particularly Scott Pilgrim. Universal Pictures had taken several gambles and lost spectacularly each time; as a result, they weren't interested in ATMOM.

Which is a shame, because I like del Toro's stuff and I think he's got a good grasp on how to portray it.

Quote from: PsyXypher on November 14, 2021, 11:18:31 PM
I haven't read Shadow Over Innsmouth

A situation well worth remedy!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 13, 2021, 02:55:23 PM
I like Hahn's analyses. The analysis of "The Dunwich Horror" was quite fascinating and terrifying. They're much more creative than anything in the Chaosium-propagated "canon."

She's thoughtful but I don't think she's reading stories all that closely based on her analysis of Dagon.

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-27#post-9769644

She seems to think that the narrator is reliable during his retelling of the tale and it matters if the creature is telepathic or not.

The narrator is insane. He's a complete drug addict, out of his drugs, about to kill himself, and imagining a giant creature's footsteps coming up the stairs and a creature's hand at the upstairs window.  Now it isn't clear that the character is still in San Francisco or not, but the description of the location sounds like an upstairs room or apartment in a city building. I think the appearance of such a creature, even in the  Tenderloin, would be unusual.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on November 14, 2021, 08:22:54 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 14, 2021, 08:11:56 PMWhen the villain was utterly baffled by the suggestion that being an immortal fish mutant was something to be feared or despised.

Why do people keep saying that the Innsmouth fishmen are immortal? I don't think the story went into that much detail (the main dude just ran away and didn't stop to discuss their life cycle).

Main character's fish granny is stated to be 80,000 years old. Assuming the statement is reliable.

Even if they're not immortal, they live for spans that are unimaginable to the human mind.

Quote from: Reckall on November 14, 2021, 09:58:01 PM

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on November 13, 2021, 12:05:43 AM
The Shape of the Water, while a film is woke Cthulu if you want to see how that would be in practice.

Which is to say the monsters are all misunderstood and oppressed by evil 1950s governments.

I haven't seen it, but from what is known about Del Toro long suffering "At the Mountains of Madness" project, it will never take off because he wants an hard "R" rating, the bleak conclusion and $200m. Not even James Cameron's support lifted it off the ground (even if after "Terminator: Woke Fate" I'm unsure about the current mental stability of JC).

Re: Woke Cthulhu, the "Arkham Reporter" is not worried:

I assume that the Lovecraft mythos is "protected" by virtue of the fact that it's public domain and therefore no authority owns it and can be bullied into submission?

Quote from: Lynn on November 15, 2021, 12:11:35 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on November 13, 2021, 02:55:23 PM
I like Hahn's analyses. The analysis of "The Dunwich Horror" was quite fascinating and terrifying. They're much more creative than anything in the Chaosium-propagated "canon."

She's thoughtful but I don't think she's reading stories all that closely based on her analysis of Dagon.

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-27#post-9769644

She seems to think that the narrator is reliable during his retelling of the tale and it matters if the creature is telepathic or not.

The narrator is insane. He's a complete drug addict, out of his drugs, about to kill himself, and imagining a giant creature's footsteps coming up the stairs and a creature's hand at the upstairs window.  Now it isn't clear that the character is still in San Francisco or not, but the description of the location sounds like an upstairs room or apartment in a city building. I think the appearance of such a creature, even in the  Tenderloin, would be unusual.

Nobody's perfect.

I find many of the analyses novel, as opposed to the "canon" promulgated by Chaosium.

The analysis of "The Whisperer in the Darkness" is pretty funny. The Chaosium canon takes the story at face value, but Hahn notes how the actual events are very silly and bizarre and basically read like HPL was trying to write an episode of Invader Zim.

Hahn gets a plus in my book precisely for NOT demonizing HPL as a literal hitler who needs to be erased from history. She notes several times that he was probably a loopy nutjob, but gives him the benefit of the doubt every time. Which is more than I can say for the wokies.

She doesn't describe the deep ones as a persecuted minority, as tempting as that is for wokies. She goes out of her way to explain their behavior in a way that doesn't reduce them to simple mooks, doesn't make them a persecuted minority, and doesn't make them funny looking humans or space elves.

The surrounding comments are full of chuckleheads who completely miss her points. She goes on for pages about how the deep ones behave in very inhuman and quite frankly irrational ways (they're repelled by swastikas for goodness' sake), but the peanuts gallery goes "hurr durr the fish people are a metaphor for blacks!"

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on November 14, 2021, 11:21:47 PM
Lovecraft versus Woke can be summed up in a single image: man versus tentacle. Men are unlike tentacles. Men have rules to how they bend. Tentacles have no rules and don't understand that men have and need rules to thrive.

Lovecraft is the tentacle. Woke is the man. It is in the nature of men to fight tentacles, using craft. It is in the tentacle's nature to strangle men, using sheer strength of undulation.

Men tell themselves that history is a process of men winning against tentacles. Tentacles believe whatever they want to believe.

If Lovecraft was right, the tentacle will win in the end. If Lovecraft was wrong, men will win.

In other words, there is no psychological escape if you're a tentacle. Either you accept the full force of the meaninglessness of the cosmos, or you believe that justice and compassion are real, which, today, defaults to the world men make for themselves. Or, if a just and compassionate alternative to woke can be postulated and promulgated with sufficiently compelling cogency and passion, tentacles will permanently fall out of fashion, banished from the anthroponormative demesne.

Because of this I hypothesize that Lovecraft is doomed.

Most underrated comment right here.

IMO, the main difference between Lovecraft and modern online progressivism is that one believes in the meaninglessness of the universe and the eventual extinction or transformation of humanity into inhuman, amoral, immortal creatures. Lovecraft, by contrast, didn't think that was a good thing.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on November 15, 2021, 06:10:23 PM
IMO, the main difference between Lovecraft and modern online progressivism is that one believes in the meaninglessness of the universe and the eventual extinction or transformation of humanity into inhuman, amoral, immortal creatures. Lovecraft, by contrast, didn't think that was a good thing.

I'm gonna quote that in the future. 

Quote from: Opaopajr on November 15, 2021, 02:17:19 AMI think of "The Shape of Water" as an Abe Sapien movie from Mike Mignola's universe (Hellboy, etc.). In fact, I suspect it might have had a subtitle to that effect before final release, or would not be surprised if it did. There is a lot of Abe Sapien comics similarities.

Whereas I think of The Shape of Water as an unofficial prequel to Pacific Rim, based on the fact that the River Man has exactly the same kind of blue-glowing veins as the Kaiju; I think that the River Man is actually from the Kaiju-Builders' dimension, and when he took Elisa home he crossed back over there -- where his kin promptly saw Elisa as the monster and him as the mentally ill paraphiliac, captured and tortured Elisa, found out about our dimension and started plotting invasion.

"So I hope you're happy, Elisa," I think to myself, "because your willingness to give up on your own species is going to get millions of us killed."