Yknow Personally I Think There Is A LOT To Be Cooked On The Matter Of The Thematic Parallels With The

Y’know personally I think there is a LOT to be cooked on the matter of the thematic parallels with the self-inflicted predicament of the Narrator from the Stanley Parable and AM’s situation. Much more about the relationship and power dynamics between themselves and their chosen favorite protagonists..

I’m not even joking when I say I could talk for hours about my interests. Like. If you’re also in the fandom great! We can discuss theories and such. And if you’re not? BOY OH BOY I can and will yap your ear off about it.

A compilation of a few of my at-the-time live reactions while gnawing through Corey Brill’s reading of The Troop

(Non readers turn back, Here thar be spoilers!)

Rookie mistake: listening to one of your favorite jams (which got a massive bump years ago from a popular arg) and deciding to look at the comment section

Half spoiler:

My partial interpretation was that the dogs tweaking out worked against the humans tbh. The elder things were not any more or less evil than human beings, and optimistically may have even been reasoned with… if they didn’t wake up basically on a dissection table, having no idea what was going on other than being surrounded by a bunch of primates and their pack of animals trying to attack them.

They were ancient, but they were an advanced and highly social people of their own evolutionary timeline. Over the course of the story there is not a single action the awakened ones take that, from their POV, isn’t at least understandable.

Shoggoths on the other hand…

You KNEW when those penguins started acting up. When the 6 foot tall blind creatures that were just as comfortable around man and Elder thing alike, also bred for their domestic nature, started acting up and fleeing like hell,

You finally knew the presence of a genuine and true “ancient evil”.

I don’t know what it is about the “dogs/animals are unsettled” trope in cosmic horror stuff (or just horror in general) but man it never gets old for me. All the parts of At The Mountains of Madness when the dogs are tweaking about the elder things just puts a smile on my face. “Yes good boys, bark at the ancient evil, you tell em!” I also like the idea of animals just having a better vibe detector than humans, not burdened by logic or a thirst for knowledge, just a simple, “oh, bad for my survival, gonna bark at it, fuck that.”

Bentley during the prison break

Call me a nostalgic soul but one of my most beloved running gags they used to sprinkle into older cartoons was the one where whenever a character was being an absolute douche weasel or a weapons grade idiot, to start playing stock audio of a loudly braying donkey in the background, indicating a “jackass” moment