>the incomprehensible being with an existence on a plane not even thinkable by human minds with the power of influencing mankind since its beginning to bring itself back from eons of slumber so it may wreck havoc on all of existence
>defeated due to being rammed by a ship
What the fuck was he thinking?
The man was pretty shit at writing satisfying endings. In fact, he was pretty shit at writing interesting plot progressions in general.
He could pretty consistently come up with spooky monsters, a decent atmosphere of slow and lurching terror, and fun, pseudo-religious rhetoric for his made up cults. He could rarely come up with a good story in which to put these things.
>>7820679
Maybe being rammed by a ship has some kind of effective incomprehensible by human thought.
>>7820708
Cosmic unlikelihood > Cosmic creature.
I like to think the idea is so unthinkable, that it broke reality at precise point; because it was supposed to happen.
This doesn't make sense, which is why it does.
Mystery can slay any Beast or God.
Cthulhu was just a doorman for the bigger Old Ones.
>>7820679
>defeated
Didn't Cthulu regenerate from the wound right in front of them?
>>7820789
He got knocked back into his big coffin like a bitch.
>>7820679
>wake up, knowing the monumental task ahead of you
>never get any thanks, either from the old ones or those you wish to change
>so you rise from the ocean, ready to do the deed
>get rammed into by a ship
>well fuck you then I'm going back to sleep
They didn't ram Cthulhu, they rammed his three-dimensional shadow.
They didn't even kill the shadow.
>>7820814
This. Think of it like a soap bubble
>>7820679
The monsters are all metaphors for non whites.
That is why they are scary but ultimately defeated by the white mans superior intellect.
>>7821928
>they are scary but ultimately defeated by the white mans superior intellect.
Yeah this definitely happens. You must have done a really close reading of the stories or you're really smart.
>>7821932
I know right, sounds to me he's dumber than the so called niggers who cuck him.
>>7821932
Duh the monsters get killed all the time everyone knows that. Most of the time they're just people in masks really trying to scare people away from old properties so they can look for buried treasure.
Lovecraft's gang of meddling kids are never far off though and their talking dog too.
>>7820679
Being rammed by a ship is stilll pretty brutal
>this thing was so super scary guys I swear
>uhh...what did it look like?
>well it had these monstrous...harrowing tentacles and...
>you know it was so terrifying I literally cannot describe how indescribably terrifying it really was.
>>7823724
You missed the point completely, unless of course you are trying to make a joke.
"The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
>>7823724
>and then half the people that saw went insane because thats how scary it was
>>7823766
One man went insane on finding out that his ancestry includes cannibals (Rats in the Walls iirc).
Lovecraft protags are generally sensitive people just barely on this side of sanity. Notably, in the Dunwich Horror a group of four professors aren't too fucked up by taking down an avatar of Yog-Sothoth, and Lovecraft endorsed a Howard story about Conan encountering and helping out an eldritch abomination without any real effect on his sanity.
>>7820679
even beings of unknowable juju nonsense can only do so much to mitigate the laws of physics and their effects on their being? in this case, momentum, kinetic energy
>>7823773
Are you talking about the story the lurking fear?
The narrator seeing the two glowing eyes in the tunnel had me shrieking.
>>7820679
>>7821928
Don't forget that Lovecraft named his cat "nigger"
>>7823958
Kekkle
>there will never, ever be a Lovecraft thread that isn't filled with tumblrs and /pol/tards arguing politics and idiots who only know of pop-culture Cthulhu and haven't read a single page of Lovecraft's work
>>7823991
Nigger-animal type was a common name for black animals back then. Besides which, why the fuck do you care what he thought about niggers? You should judge him based on the quality of his writings, and frankly astounding ability to comprehend highly advanced scientific concepts, come up with his own ideas that make metaphysical phenomenae both possible and infinitely more frightening than they were classicaly, and weave together all of the above and more into cohesive, at times deliberately dissonant stories that deal spectacularly with horror quite simply beyond human comprehension.
>>7820679
C'thulu having his 3-dimensional avatar hit with a goddamn ship traveling at flank speed just after he had wakened from an aeons long sleep temporarily broke his concentration, causing the city to sink back under the water. With his true self and the bulk of his physical and metaphysical self still contained in the city, the shadow was dissapated. Just dumb luck, a sleepy elder god, and a ballsy Swede throwing a skyscraper-sized object at something that was totally unprepared for anything like an actuall fight of that magnitude or type.
>>7824230
Dontcha know buddy? Racism is the worst thing in all of existence
>>7820679
nah
>>7820789
>Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young.
>I suppose
>>7820814
oh shit, vat a tweest
>>7824259
I'm inferring a lot of it, but it makes sense. The thing that the sailor saw was referred to as a shadow, so there must be something casting that shadow. Since that shadow's expressly stated purpose is to raise and stabilise the city of R'leyth in order to release the Great Old Ones, and because the only part of C'thulu that was seen or interacted with our physical realm was the 'shadow', the body of C'thulu must still have been locked away, likely in the city. If temporarily dissapating the shadow caused the city to sink again, the shadow must have been what was, through some unknown mechanism, keeping the city above water. The Danish sailor's desperate plan would have been pretty surprising for just about anyone, and the reason the armed yacht was in that area in the first place was to keep marine traffic away from the city. This means that C'thulu must not have been ready to put up a fight so soon after the city was risen, and the sheer brute force of the ship driving back an unknowable power therefore makes at least some sense.
>>7820705
accurate, though I think those strengths can get you pretty far, we're kind of hung-up on plot as the sole factor in literary quality here on /lit/
>>7823991
The shadow over Innsmouth is about the dangers of race mixing.
>>7825903
So... judging from the end of the story, he was okay with it?
>>7825975
The hero was tragically corrupted into believing it was ok.
>>7825975
It's almost as though Lovecraft was capable of inserting some sort of nuance.
>>7821928
He was truly, the master /pol/tard.
>>7824235
I'll screw you up m8, don't shit-talk my favorite author. He was a good-goy he dindu nuffin.
>>7820679
exactly, I was honestly surprised how this edgy, "grandiloquent" pulp horror was seen as literary accomplishment.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I can enjoy it. I just don't think it's really that good.
>>7823913
No, he's talking about The Rats in the Walls.
>>7820705
I'd say the plot is largely irrelevant to what he's trying to convey anyway. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just think he had other ends in mind and I'm okay with that.
>>7824307
>C'thulu
>>7823958
Fuck.
How didn't I notice this before?
>>7826425
Its not like theres an appropriate way to spell it, the pronunciation itself is inpossible.
>>7827575
I pronounce it Ktooloo.
this is kind of off-topic, but living in Providence (in my case, on the same street as the house where he lived at the end of his life) really changes your relationship to both the city and him. I can't walk around without running into streets/houses from his stories and feeling weird about it at night. Just things like, oh, there's the house where the psychically-sensitive insane architecture students lives in the Call of Cthulhu...
>>7825903
No, it's about Lovecraft's fear he'd die in a mental hospital like his mother and father had.
>>7827983
That's really cool.
Ever been to the "Shunned House"?
What saddens me the most about Lovecraft is that reading his short stories in chronological order like I did you notice his prose slowly but gradually improving over time, becoming less and less purple without losing its evocative, atmospheric feel.
if he hadn't died so young I am convinced he would have written a legit masterpiece.
