At The Mountains Of Madness - Tumblr Posts
H.P. Lovecraft quotes out of context which tear my body open and viciously rend my heart or stomach into shattered pieces at the amount of emotional weight charged behind them (also you should seriously read them in context too)
Off my chest but I hate that Cthulhu is the flagship lovecraftian figure I hate that all eldritch horror icons get to be compared to Cthulhu in our timeline now that it’s all called the “Cthulhu Mythos” and what for???
I got into HP for the short stories, but I did eventually get around to the bulkier, connected stuff, and honestly? “Call of Cthulhu” is one of the weakest and underwhelming examples of the guy’s work that I’ve gotten through. THIS is the monster that in huge part made Lovecraft a pop culture name? THIS story?
Like sorry not sorry but Cthulhu is a little bitch boy stuck in timeout. Yes yes, I admit he’s pretty cool in a vacuum and I guess the “that is not dead which can eternal lie” quote does go pretty damn hard. But put into context it’s just…. Eh… like, I’m not going to even touch the overflowing can of worms that is the racist overtones since it’s already-taken low hanging fruit at this point. I honestly just found CoC boring and anticlimactic because I made the mistake of chomping through so many of huge other monster stories first. Once you’ve inoculated yourself into the stakes of At the Mountains of Madness or gotten in the know on Innsmouth or Yog-Sothoth, you feel like squidboi doesn’t really throw much punch even for the amount of suspense that he does build up to. He’s the first and only otherworldly deity so far I’ve even read to be defeated and shooed back by mere mortal men- mortal men, ones that didn’t even know wtf they were doing or facing, mind you.
I have less than nothing against people who enjoy the story and Cthulhu, but I just want to know… why? More specifically why this one got so famous and influential for a whole genre of horror. Cthulhu is just not really even scary to me. Ephraim Waite is scary. Shoggoths are fucking terrifying. The lore of Elder Things are everything I never knew I wanted in eldritch horror, and their story was genuinely compelling. The Deep Ones I thought I got their gist and wasn’t so interested in before reading, and they actually pulled me in past expectation. Cthulhu’s like…. A “safe” to “euclid” class scp at worst. The Innsmouth plot is the real setting for the theme of serious danger that is plotting and bubbling just beneath the uncanny surface.
I’m not telling anyone to not read Call of Cthulhu, but if you already have and you didn’t really get the appeal and hype for Lovecraft, Don’t be afraid to try explore down a different branch of the Mythos. You might be surprised. If you did read and enjoy CoC, make sure you check out the other stories because in my opinion it’s pretty uphill from there.
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.”
The Most Dangerous Drinking Game- Lovecraft Edition
Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any deaths pls don't sue me
