Crusade against Cthulhu

[doctorow]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/04/02/crusade-against-cthulhu.html

…

[phosphorious]

What’s the Middle High German for “Tekeli-li?”

[knoxblox]

Flying Devils: “This brain is delicious. Care for some?”

Priests: “No thanks. Um…we already ate. You go ahead.”

[moosemalloy]

Beautiful! Ideal juxtaposition with the dark forests and fell legends of that time and place.
Would live to see a Hound of Tindalos curled at the foot of some Bavarian throne…

[acano]

There’s a playing cards game coming!
http://www.cthulhuproject.com/portfolio-item/coming-soon/

[fuzzyfungus]

Anyone have some nominees from, say, the least-well-liked and fishiest smelling Hanseatic ports, to stand in for the obviously period inappropriate New England coastal towns with dark secrets and murky gene pools?

[mrtut]

@fuzzyfungus

Anyone have some nominees from, say, the least-well-liked and fishiest smelling Hanseatic ports, to stand in for the obviously period inappropriate New England coastal towns with dark secrets and murky gene pools?

Lübeck is a top contender

Dark secrets and murky gene pools even sounds like Die Buddenbrooks. Die Buddenbrooks, die.

[Jim_Kirk]

[manybellsdown]

That Old One in the header image is straight out of Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials.

[hello_friends]

What’s the best Lovecraft story to recommend for a Cthulhu novice?

[incarnedine_v]

At the mountain of madness, shadow over innsmouth and shadow out of time are a great start.

[hello_friends]

Thank you! I’ve been hearing about Lovecraft stories for so many years and have never taken the plunge. I heard they’re supposed to be scary.

[incarnedine_v]

He has a way of making his cosmic horrors truly alien which is more disturbing than what is traditionally thought of as scary.
There are some great audio books narrated by Wayne June who you might have also heard in the Darkest Dungeon game.

[Hanglyman]

Another two I’d recommend are The Color Out of Space and The Whisperer In Darkness.

[geoduck]

And if you want to learn about Cthulhu specifically, The Call of Cthulhu.

[Israel_B]

I enjoyed that so much as a kid

[Mangochin]

You can throw in The Lurking Fear as well. It has nothing to do with the Cthulhu mythos, but it is an interesting take on the depraved family theme seen prominently in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films.

Also a good starting point for film buffs are the works put out by the HP Lovecraft Appreciation society, the short film based on Call of Cthulhu and feature length Whisper in the Darkness.

[fuzzyfungus]

You should start with actual Lovecraft; but Charles Stross’ A Colder War is a fun take on the not-at-all-fun “What if we did the Cold War; but with more Eldrich abominations?” scenario.

[eraserbones]

OK, but, the alien horrors in Lovecraft were already emotional stand-ins for Jews, right? This is a bit too on-the-nose for my taste

[fuzzyfungus]

Unless I’m very much mistaken, the alien horrors in Lovecraft come in too many distinct varieties(and Lovecraft more or less hated everyone who wasn’t a total WASP, and he wasn’t too sure that all of them were of…suitably eugenic…breeding); so at very least only some of them could reasonably be standing in for jews; given the number of other things they are called on to stand in for. If you have any particular candidates in mind, though, I’d be interested to hear the proposal: Lovecraft had both a gigantic chip on his shoulder and quite a bestiary, some of it more fully fleshed out than other parts, so there is plenty of room for poking around on the matter.

(Apropos of the intersection of ‘H.P. Lovecraft’ and ‘Jews’, though, the ‘[A Shoggoth on the Roof] (http://www.cthulhulives.org/shoggoth/)’ is a quality Cthulhu-themed total conversion of A Fiddler on the Roof.)