Do you lot consider the expanded Lovecraftian lore canon?
>>43793756
YES! Robert Bloch was a Machiavellian master of meticulously-crafted monstrosities!!!
If it doesn't include Nyaruko or Demonbane, yes.
>>43793756
I don't really consider there to be a unified canon in the first place.
I thought the point was that each of the stories was just using thematic elements from the other. There isn't a continued narrative or anything.
>>43793968
>>43793975
I ask because I'm attempting to write a story with some Lovecraft stuff in it (The Great Race of Yith, if you care) But I don't know what I should keep and what should go into the trash
>>43794030
Keep whatever works for the story and trash whatever doesn't.
Sure. You may not like all of it, and you don't have to acknowledge all of it all the time, but it's all equally valid a source of inspiration and referenceRIP Matsurai-san ;_;
>>43793756
>>43794030
Okay, first thing you need to understand, OP, is there's no such thing as canon in Lovecraft. He was a guy writing stories, not world-building. He self-referenced things and referenced stuff his friends, and they referenced him, it was in-jokes and references, not canon.
The problem is a LOT of post-Lovecraft stuff isn't Lovecraftian (looking at you, Derleth). If you want write a Lovecraftian story...read some Lovecraft. You can read literally everything for free online. Read From Beyond, The Music of Erich Zann, Dagon, The Call of Cthulhu, The Picture in the House, The Colour out of Space - the man wrote stinkers, but also amazing stuff. Read that shit, OP.
What matters isn't how many times you use the word cyclopean or nameless or how many tentacles or book names you throw in. You don't need a cool monster, because the monster's design means nothing. That's what people think Lovecraftian means. Lovecraftian means learning you're wrong, that everything you believe about life, the world and the universe is wrong, that it's more complex and intricate and monolithic than you can ever fully grasp. It's not just that it's le spooky scary incomprehensible, it's because there's just so much of it and so much of it is fucked and alien to our understanding of the world and universe. It's different, very, very different.
You can set a story anywhere and once you get across those themes in a manner to how Lovecraft did, you're fine. Dangerous knowledge, human insignificance in a larger, aimlessly hostile universe and monsters as tools to get across these concepts. It's not what Cthulhu IS, it's what Cthulhu MEANS.
>>43794498
This. The thing a lot of people miss about Lovecraft is that, in Lovecraft's lore, knowledge is inherently dangerous. There is not, indeed there CAN NOT BE, an expert in the matters of the mythos who is not insane by the standards of modern man. The very nature of knowing what they know has forever separated them from the mundane concerns of the world of the blissfully ignorant, because their actions are forever warped by what they now know.
Even those who have had just a brush with the mythos can end up like this, like the guy who has removed all the angles from his home and refuses to g near corners or edges. All he knows about are the Hounds of Tindalos, but that knowledge alone is enough to damn him and mark him as a functional madman for the rest of his (probably short) life.
Most people who encounter and survive the mythos find that they can never really return to their old lives. They are either the crazy man who jumps at shadows and is haunted by things he dare not explain, dead, or drawn even deeper into the secret world by their own curiosity and go full cultist.
>>43794498
>>43794691
Damn anons.
You really opened my eyes.
I will think on your words. and study the proper material.
Thanks /tg/, I knew I could count on you
>>43795103
Glad to help, anon.
Remember, too, very few people go insane in Lovecraft and when they do, it's because of something incredibly traumatic (or if you're Arthur Jermyn, because your great-great grandfather fucked an apewoman, but let's not dwell on that). Follow the pure example in 'From Beyond' - the world simply isn't the same anymore since he learned what he learned.
You're either blissfully ignorant, or not.
Also! Hounds of Tindalos isn't a Lovecraft story, it's a Frank Belknap Long story, BUT it's a damn fun read and I love it to bits.
>>43794498
>>43794691
>>43795103
>>43796071
A lot of wisdom here. Currently running a game with the three main outer gods being the main threat (deep in the background for the most part). PCs keep etching at their surroundings until a picture and theme seems to emerge but it's not a pleasant one.
>>43793975
>Don't know what Nyaruko is
>Google it
>Find a comedy anime with old ones portrayed as lolis
>MFW
>Regret having the thought of looking this shit up
>Maybe this is how insanity feels like
>>43793756
Absolutely not.
Backing these anons up
>>43794008
>>43794498
>>43794691
I think at the very best you could do Lovecraft stuff with Evil Dead style continuity. There are similar characters, places and even events but each iteration is a distinct entity. While each instalment enlightens the audience to the next, they are not required reading to understand any given instalment.
>There are very real and powerful entities that could destroy us at any moment
(Call of Cthulhu)
>We are not the first, last or most important being to occupy this world
(Mountains of Maddness)
>Every day our fate is in the balance
(Music of Enrich Zann, The Dunwich Horror)
>Even your own identity is not yours to command
(Shadow Over Innsmouth, Rats in the Walls, The Outsider)
Or in the case of Evil Dead:
>Ash is a scared kid who winds up as the last man standing in a B-horror flick
>Ash is alone, scared, pushed to the brink of insanity. Whether or not he cracks he survives by his own will
>Ash is edgy and out of his element but this time round his a full-out badass
>Ash is a worn-out old dickhead. The only thing he's really good at is the only thing he really doesn't want to do
Each gives new insight into the sort of world and characters these stories come from without setting any unnecessary details in stone.
I think this might be a cool way to run horror games. Each adventure would be sort of a reset. Both the players and the GM can make minor tweeks their stuff, the dead can be brought back, minor characters can be fleshed out, unexploded material can be used. It would allow everyone to grow attached to things and be a little reckless all while maintaining a certain level of mystery. It also helps keep things fresh.
>>43799980
Nyaruko isn't really a loli. Kuuko could be considered one. And Hasuta is a shota.Also don't take Lovecraft so seriously.
>>43794278
Wait, did Nyaruko-san really go the way of ZnT and MM!?
>>43793968
Jesus anon
Did you just get here from reddit or some shit?
>>43794498
>>43794691
>>43800908
This is why I come to /tg/. Eventually, you wade through the rantings about elves and you get some really cool stuff like this. Thanks anons, I'm gonna get into Lovecraft now and start with the Call of Cthulhu
>>43793756
Does it matter? It's become such an overused concept that its identity has fragmented. Instead of worrying about that, just explore the root ideas of the Mythos - isolation, fear of the universe and how vast and murderous it is (aaaaaaaany second now a gamma ray bur- I mean Azathoth could just wipe the earth and everything in the solar system in seconds!), fear of discovery, degeneration due to society's callous nature to the sick or those in need of understanding, terror at the idea of sex and intimacy, or a sort of revulsion for the base processes of life, and essentially anything else that invokes the feeling of "I'm human, I'm flesh, I'm going to die soon and painfully and there's nothing after death and nothing means anything, and I'm going to die alone and screaming on a filthy rock nobody else in the universe knows exists, and most importantly, they don't CARE it exists"
Then dress it up in really nasty monsters and people acting like shitheels to one another, or being suicidal heroes who accomplish nothing and die because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, no matter how powerful they are. Make sure you do this to the monsters sometimes too, to help convey that they're also meaningless trash who are going to burn up with the heat death of the universe before all of existence becomes an empty unending blackness that never had any reason to happen in the first place.
>>43801892
TLDR: yes, yes it does and Derleth was a fucking hack. It matters for the reasons you cited, the thematic ones.
Any given work should be accorded respect to the extent it understands or at very least meaningfully expands or comments upon this. This presupposes a basic understanding of what is being communicated by Lovecraft, and many derivative authors lack even this.
>>43799980
You know the show's actually a pretty solid parody of the mythos, right?
Like, it's underlying themes both mock and yet enforce the concepts of the Cthulthu mythos.
>>43801935
I'm saying it doesn't matter because the expanded universe has covered so many angles of the concept that asking the question is useless. Read the material, and then decide for yourself what you want to convey with horror through the concepts of the Mythos. I'm just as happy to convey crushing universe-swallowing suicide as I am a sense of faint hope with the ideas it uses.
>>43801935
>Derleth was a fucking hack
The only real "canon" part of the Mythos
>>43793756
As much as Lovecraft himself did.
>>43793756
Canon to what, dumb ass? To Star Wars? No.
>>43793756
I honestly don't care. I don't even really canon to be a thing for something like the works of Lovecraft.
As long as whatever product you use it for is good and internally consistent, it really doesn't matter.
If I was just talking about the game books, no. I have a friend who has read a lot of a (not Call of) Cthulhu game and keeps referencing it as fact at length in the campaign I'm running. Irritating as shit.
>>43801700
Not exactly. Kuuko's seiyuu died last month.
>>43802379
WHAT?!?
>>43802372
Does he realize he's completely missing the point?
>>43802419
Pneumonia. It had been chronic for months at that point, but she tried to power through it to work on Shimoneta.
She was also Hisui in Melty Blood and Carninval Phantasm (and by extension Sapphire in Fate/Kaleid Liner), so TMfags were pretty bummed too.
>>43801892
Sort of this but also kind of not.
A lot of the appeal of HPL's stuff comes from the it's roots in the gothic tradition. Sure nihilism and the world being crap are imortant themes but even those are wraped in heavy layers of musty beauty and melodramatic monolages. Ture Lovecraftian fiction is almost romantic intae way it treats bleakness.
Dark secrets are tantalising, mysteries are titilating, even if it fucks you up in the end the journey itself was irrasistable. There has to be pull to the unkown no matter how terrible it may be.
Rainsoaked alleys should open onto ancient shoppes of exotic goods. There should be the curousities unnamable amoung which keys may be found. Keys which may be used by those of canny wit and macabe facsination to glimpse into vistas unimagined.
It's not enough to be shitty, you got to be grotesque. You got to have style
>>43793756
>lovecraft
>canon
choose1
>>43793975
Demonbane's cool. Though definitely more Derlethian than Lovecraftian.
>>43802501
Who did she play on Shimoneta again?
>>43795103
And one more thing, make sure to read Hypnos. That shit actually gave me nightmares, and I swear I heard a buzzing sound for a few nights afterwards.
I dimly remember a story of a Roman General killing and eating the heart of an eldritch abomination, but I can't remember the title. Can you help me /tg/?
>>43802501
The human water fountain.
>>43805288
oops meant for >>43804836
>>43805201
Isn't that from Eternal Darkness?
>>43805313
Sadly, it isn't. It's from a short Story, where that guy and his chapter Hunger, because of Winter in the alps or something like that. He goes in kills the beast and they eat it.
Eternal Darkness is awesome, though.
>>43803004
Here be truth. Lovecraft was pretty fond of Decadent/Aestheticist crowd and, of course, Poe.
Hell, The Hound reads like Lovecraft Does Gothic Horror.
Campbell, Bloch, Lin Carter, Robert Chambers & Sandy Peterson are my only additions.
Fuck derelth
>>43793756
No, but I consider the Conan references canon and vice versa
Nerds really need to let go of the idea of "canon." It serves no purpose other than to give people something to argue about on the internet.
Or at least, people need to learn it's a wholly subjective term.
The way OP uses the word makes no sense.
