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Pen & Paper Roleplaying Central => Pen and Paper Roleplaying Games (RPGs) Discussion => Topic started by: Reckall on May 27, 2021, 07:11:18 AM

Title: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on May 27, 2021, 07:11:18 AM
What follows was inspired by a link posted by the RPGPundit in the current Ravenloft thread.

2. Good Drow, motherfucker: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-drow-changes-lolth/ (https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-drow-changes-lolth/)

I checked the linked page out of curiosity, and of course the toxic word is immediately used, front and center:

"Dungeons & Dragons seems to be poised to make major changes to one of its iconic creatures, likely in response to their problematic depiction in various novels and other canonical lore."

Let's put aside the usual hypocrisy innate in the use of "problematic" (i.e. I will not engage in a real discourse about these "problems" by defining them). Remember the old adage by Abraham Lincoln “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”?

Because this is the point that it is always skipped when attacking something historically successful: How comes that your "problematic" content was and is being enjoyed right now by people of any kind all over the World? That this enjoyment, of the Drow, Lovecraft, fantasy races or whatever, successfully and consistently lasted for decades - being supported, and being still now supported, by people of all races, ethnies and nations?

Were we all being racist/stupid/insensibles for decades? Literally, you are saying that THE WORLD, wasn't aware for decades that what was commonly enjoyed had "problems"? Because this judgement would involve from blacks to Asians, and from Italians to Chinese - and everything in between (that racist Lovecraft, BTW, being a success in nothing less than China!)

I guess not. If Lincoln was right, we can say: "You can sell something 'problematic' to some of the people all of the time, and to all of the people some of the time, but you can not offend all of the people all of the time with your 'problematic' contents." The only possible answer being "These contents are not problematic at all."

Do we recognise unsavoury content? Sure. Lovecraft was racist (xenophobic, actually). But this part of his "poetic", put in context, was more complex that straightforward racism, involving issues ranging from his personal struggle with sexuality to the times he lived in, and his specific upbringing. Again, starting a discourse about Lovecraft by touching these topics is "forbidden" - no matter if these "problematic" contents were and are put in context just fine by millions of people of any kind.

Any "problems" about "races" in a fantastic environment, BTW, crash and burn once they put them in context (notice how often just putting something in context is enough to kill an argument). Just think about sci-fi, let's say Star Trek or Mass Effect. No one (yet) has problems with the fact that these universes are inhabited by different "races". This, I think, because "illuminated" minds more readily accept a "para-scientific" explanation (different life forms that evolved on different planets) than a fantasy one. And yet, most fantasy Worlds too make clear that "each race was born/created and evolved differently from each other".

Truth is, as amazing as it sound, a universe like Star Trek's or Mass Effect's one is as fantasy as the Forgotten Realms - and should be subjected to the same meter of judgement. There is no reason, if you consider "orcs" problematic, not to attack "Klingons", too. Maybe it will happen. But, right now any discussion about "the problem of races in an imaginary milieu" will, if put in context, just flounder. Which is the reason why it isn't made.

And these are only examples. There are many more, and you can even go much more in-depth if you wish.

No. Whites, Blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, persons of any age, gender and sexual inclination, weren't stupid/insensible/racist for decades. This simply doesn't hold water. And this is the reason why those who today point out "problematic" contents will never touch this simple fact with a 10' pole.

We survived the moral panic years just because the vast majority of the gamers didn't agree that the panic had any real grounds - and in 3E Demons and Devils returned to D&D amid general partying. I think that we will survive the current panic for the same reason, and that it will end the same way. Yes, I'm optimistic  :)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on May 27, 2021, 08:09:38 AM
I've made this comment before, but it bears repeating.

These endless attempts to redefine gamers of the past (and their games) as somehow 'wrong' really, really pisses me off.

We were the outcasts, the geeks, the nerds, the guys (and occasional girl) who didn't fit in, so we built our own little place. It wasn't perfect, but we tried to work past our own social inadequacies, and at least treat our companions the way we wanted to be treated. Yeah, there were bad apples; show me a group that never had any. I'll wait. I won't hold my breath though.

Where the fuck were these fucking shitbirds when we were getting mocked, shoved into lockers, and treated like potted plants? They sure as fuck weren't there. Where do they get off telling us how 'problematic' things were?

Fuck them.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Charon's Little Helper on May 27, 2021, 10:34:32 AM
I like the 1:55 description of early Drow in Seth Skorkowsky's latest video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EUjfRTOyo

"Photo negatives of Tolkien's elves meets KISS."
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on May 27, 2021, 11:32:25 AM
It is, of course, entirely because of the color of their skin.  If they were snow-white Colonizer Elves who served the evil god C'lumbus and went around conquering places, you can bet that they would not even be on anyone's radar for revision.  But where the brutish behavior of the Orcs was taken to be akin to black people by the completely not-racist people on twitter, Drow have the appearance of black people, despite being actually literally black and not brown, but close enough I guess?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on May 27, 2021, 11:33:35 AM
I like the 1:55 description of early Drow in Seth Skorkowsky's latest video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6EUjfRTOyo

"Photo negatives of Tolkien's elves meets KISS."

Seth Skorkowsky is great. The effort that he puts in his videos is amazing. It is people like him that, IMHO, are the true backbone of the hobby. Soon or later the beancounters (who are the ultimate strategic force in deciding what goes out and what doesn't - not the daily screeching banshee) will catch up.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jam The MF on May 27, 2021, 02:14:02 PM
It is, of course, entirely because of the color of their skin.  If they were snow-white Colonizer Elves who served the evil god C'lumbus and went around conquering places, you can bet that they would not even be on anyone's radar for revision.  But where the brutish behavior of the Orcs was taken to be akin to black people by the completely not-racist people on twitter, Drow have the appearance of black people, despite being actually literally black and not brown, but close enough I guess?


Yes.  Evil White Drow would barely elicit a yawn from society.  From now on; the Drow in my games will be extra Dark, and extra Evil!!!  Because, reasons!!!  Ha!!!  Reeeeeee!!!!!
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Habitual Gamer on May 27, 2021, 02:30:18 PM
It is, of course, entirely because of the color of their skin.  If they were snow-white Colonizer Elves who served the evil god C'lumbus and went around conquering places, you can bet that they would not even be on anyone's radar for revision.  But where the brutish behavior of the Orcs was taken to be akin to black people by the completely not-racist people on twitter, Drow have the appearance of black people, despite being actually literally black and not brown, but close enough I guess?

Split the difference: drow have been canonically depicted with blue and dark purple skin, so just go with that.  Pow!  They're no long "problematic".

(Personally, I always found it hilarious how Drow were equated with black people because of their skin color.  As if their long white hair, pointed ears, and sometimes inhuman-looking physiques didn't exist.)

Honestly though, if WotC were smart and ballsy, they'd stand their ground and say "orcs and drow aren't reflective of any real world group" and then set down to create a fantasy world that is to Africa what the Sword Coast is to Europe.  Hire on a few of the half-dozen or so professional RPG writers of African descent (so the SJWs can't scream "appropriation" or "lack of diversity on the creative team") and you'd probably have something decent.  If it's any good, I like to think white folks would gobble it up.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on May 27, 2021, 02:46:07 PM
Hire on a few of the half-dozen or so professional RPG writers of African descent (so the SJWs can't scream "appropriation" or "lack of diversity on the creative team")

No one will ever scream "Lack of diversity!" if the team is all Black.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on May 27, 2021, 03:12:52 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you read FR fiction?
Do you run/play FR?
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?
Why does this change matter to you?

Me:
No
No
Maybe (but not in Eberron).
It really doesn't.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on May 27, 2021, 03:29:19 PM
It is, of course, entirely because of the color of their skin.  If they were snow-white Colonizer Elves who served the evil god C'lumbus and went around conquering places, you can bet that they would not even be on anyone's radar for revision.  But where the brutish behavior of the Orcs was taken to be akin to black people by the completely not-racist people on twitter, Drow have the appearance of black people, despite being actually literally black and not brown, but close enough I guess?

Split the difference: drow have been canonically depicted with blue and dark purple skin, so just go with that.  Pow!  They're no long "problematic".

(Personally, I always found it hilarious how Drow were equated with black people because of their skin color.  As if their long white hair, pointed ears, and sometimes inhuman-looking physiques didn't exist.)

Honestly though, if WotC were smart and ballsy, they'd stand their ground and say "orcs and drow aren't reflective of any real world group" and then set down to create a fantasy world that is to Africa what the Sword Coast is to Europe.  Hire on a few of the half-dozen or so professional RPG writers of African descent (so the SJWs can't scream "appropriation" or "lack of diversity on the creative team") and you'd probably have something decent.  If it's any good, I like to think white folks would gobble it up.
Expand Chult, for God's sake. It's right fucking there in the Forgotten Realms. It's got a badass lawful good god (Ubtao). Why aren't they doing anything with it?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Zelen on May 27, 2021, 03:35:22 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you read FR fiction?
Do you run/play FR?
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?
Why does this change matter to you?

Me:
No
No
Maybe (but not in Eberron).
It really doesn't.

Unfortunately this isn't the type of scenario where you can just bow out of it. Unreasonable power-hungry people won't stop being unreasonable & power-hungry by acquiescing, even on trivial issues.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on May 27, 2021, 04:39:50 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you read FR fiction?
Do you run/play FR?
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?
Why does this change matter to you?

Me:
No
No
Maybe (but not in Eberron).
It really doesn't.

Unfortunately this isn't the type of scenario where you can just bow out of it. Unreasonable power-hungry people won't stop being unreasonable & power-hungry by acquiescing, even on trivial issues.
Really? I don't make any use of the products they are talking about here, and they can't do anything about what I use (or don't use) in my games. This isn't really too different from Disney fucking up Star Wars--I can still run a Star Wars RPG without any of those changes making any fucking difference. If I wanted to run D&D FR, I could still run it the old way too.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Renegade_Productions on May 27, 2021, 05:45:32 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you read FR fiction?
Do you run/play FR?
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?
Why does this change matter to you?

Me:
No
No
Maybe (but not in Eberron).
It really doesn't.

Unfortunately this isn't the type of scenario where you can just bow out of it. Unreasonable power-hungry people won't stop being unreasonable & power-hungry by acquiescing, even on trivial issues.

Yep. You either tell them to stuff it and keep their stupidity to themselves, or you lose more ground to them as the hobby capitulates to them.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on May 27, 2021, 05:55:43 PM
Any "problems" about "races" in a fantastic environment, BTW, crash and burn once they put them in context (notice how often just putting something in context is enough to kill an argument). Just think about sci-fi, let's say Star Trek or Mass Effect. No one (yet) has problems with the fact that these universes are inhabited by different "races". This, I think, because "illuminated" minds more readily accept a "para-scientific" explanation (different life forms that evolved on different planets) than a fantasy one. And yet, most fantasy Worlds too make clear that "each race was born/created and evolved differently from each other".

Truth is, as amazing as it sound, a universe like Star Trek's or Mass Effect's one is as fantasy as the Forgotten Realms - and should be subjected to the same meter of judgement. There is no reason, if you consider "orcs" problematic, not to attack "Klingons", too. Maybe it will happen. But, right now any discussion about "the problem of races in an imaginary milieu" will, if put in context, just flounder. Which is the reason why it isn't made.

And these are only examples. There are many more, and you can even go much more in-depth if you wish.
I remember reading a number of articles criticizing the species design in Star Trek and Mass Effect. Klingons are orientalist (https://treksphere.com/sponsored-content/jessie-gender-klingons-racial-coding/), Asari are sexist (https://gamecritics.com/alex-raymond/beyond-gender-choice-mass-effects-varied-inclusiveness/), Volus are antisemitic (https://thefandomentals.com/mass-effect-jews-in-space/), Quarians are antiziganist (http://www.experiencepoints.net/2010/04/quarian-exiles-politics-of-mass-effect.html), in-universe racism is poorly written (https://blacksci-fi.com/problem-manufactured-racism-within-sci-fi-media/), etc.

In fact, the common stereotype of fantasy dwarves is now considered both antisemitic and hibernophobic (https://alexraizman.com/2020/07/12/fantastic-diversity-the-fantasy-genres-unfortunate-implications/) because dwarves are typically characterized as greedy, short, big-nosed, drinking, violent, Scottish-accented, etc.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Brad on May 27, 2021, 05:57:55 PM
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17041/D12-Descent-into-the-Depths-of-the-Earth-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17043/D3-Vault-of-the-Drow-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17054/Q1-Queen-of-the-Demonweb-Pits-1e

Imagine claiming stuff is so "problematic" but having no issue making money off that stuff.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on May 27, 2021, 06:00:57 PM
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17041/D12-Descent-into-the-Depths-of-the-Earth-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17043/D3-Vault-of-the-Drow-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17054/Q1-Queen-of-the-Demonweb-Pits-1e

Imagine claiming stuff is so "problematic" but having no issue making money off that stuff.
You'd think they'd either give it away for free or give all proceeds to charity or something.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Warder on May 27, 2021, 07:10:10 PM
Time is the greatest critic, so caring about changing the optics with bullshit ''problems'' is a waste of time. I hope to be around in the next 40 years to witness what that generation has to say about the people of today in hindsight. While people like to be judgemental, everybody forms an opinion one way or the other. Each new generation likes to think they have the ''real deal'' on the topic because they have seen one facet of the issue and then ''bam!'', seen it all! Those old fuckers knew nothing about their own lives! Its why i laugh my ass off seeing whitewashing in tv series like ''Bridgerton''(yes, its a soap opera, sue me:)) or similar, making make believe history that deflects from the actual issues...

Its late and i feel i have to stop myself from getting a bit too preachy for my own taste, ill end for now by this; “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: ShieldWife on May 27, 2021, 07:37:27 PM
Gamers of the past weren’t student. It’s actually modern gamers, and modern people in fact, who are foolishly obsessed with race, racism, and the supposed evils of whitey. In most other places and times, people wouldn’t care about the skin color or morality of fictional creatures in books or games, but in the modern Western world we care tremendously about such things. It’s one of the new religions of our time, this constant witch hunt for even the slightest hint of so called racism.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on May 27, 2021, 07:39:24 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you read FR fiction?
Do you run/play FR?
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?
Why does this change matter to you?

Me:
No
No
Maybe (but not in Eberron).
It really doesn't.

Unfortunately this isn't the type of scenario where you can just bow out of it. Unreasonable power-hungry people won't stop being unreasonable & power-hungry by acquiescing, even on trivial issues.

Yep. You either tell them to stuff it and keep their stupidity to themselves, or you lose more ground to them as the hobby capitulates to them.
What ground am I losing? I already mentioned how it doesn't impact me at all. If the current ground I've lost is 0, then at what multiple of that is it going to be a problem for me?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on May 27, 2021, 11:33:00 PM
Split the difference: drow have been canonically depicted with blue and dark purple skin, so just go with that.  Pow!  They're no long "problematic".

You underestimate what insane leaps of ill-logic these lunatics well go through to declare something racist, problematic, whatever.
Drow are lead by evil women? That is problematic because it is misrepresenting women!
Drow have some sort of vaugly dark skin? That is problematic because it is misrepresenting minorities!
Drow live underground and dislike the light? That is problematic because it is condoning the oppression of minorities by forcing them into ghettos!
Drow have this whole spider theme going? That is problematic spiders are often dark colours and thus this is obviously a thinly veiled attack on minorities!
Drow have white hair? This is problematic because it is obviously a symbol of white supremacy over oppressed minorities!

Now change drow to say white skinned? This is problematic because it is whitewashing a minority AND erasure!
Yes. Doing as these loons demand is also problematic.

No matter what you do these sociopaths can and will and probably already have declared it problematic.
So your drow are now transparent cubes? Thats problematic because cubes are mathematical shapes and math was invented by white people (because the woke say so) and that is RACIST!
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on May 27, 2021, 11:37:55 PM
Friend of mine asked:
Do you allow Drow PCs in D&D games outside of FR?

Me:
Maybe (but not in Eberron).

Was it because of the scorpions or something else?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Mishihari on May 28, 2021, 12:06:07 AM
It all seems very adolescent.  Many people go through this stage.  They know more than the adults, because the adults have never had experiences like the teenagers.  Their love is amazing and unlike anything that has happened before.  They know how to solve all of the worlds problems, and obviously those who came before were just to dumb to see it.  And anyone who disagrees with them is, dumb, wrong, evil, or some combination of the three.

Thankfully, most of us eventually grow out of it and realize that practical matters make carrying out ideals harder, those who came before did a pretty good though not perfect job of trying to carry out ideal within the limitations of reality, and the current state of affairs is a balance of idealism and practicality, and a compromise among the values of many different parts of society.  A few don't and become extremists like SJWs or right wing militias.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Godfather Punk on May 28, 2021, 03:19:19 AM
Drow have this whole spider theme going? That is problematic spiders are often dark colours and thus this is obviously a thinly veiled attack on minorities!
Aargh! You wrote Spider without putting a trigger warning first!  :o
Don't you have any consideration for people with arachnophobia?  :P
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on May 28, 2021, 03:44:08 AM
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17041/D12-Descent-into-the-Depths-of-the-Earth-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17043/D3-Vault-of-the-Drow-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17054/Q1-Queen-of-the-Demonweb-Pits-1e

Imagine claiming stuff is so "problematic" but having no issue making money off that stuff.
You'd think they'd either give it away for free or give all proceeds to charity or something.
Ideally to a charity set up to help those harmed or traumatised by deptictions of imaginary beings in rpgs.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: KingCheops on May 28, 2021, 10:12:14 AM
Expand Chult, for God's sake. It's right fucking there in the Forgotten Realms. It's got a badass lawful good god (Ubtao). Why aren't they doing anything with it?

Because they are lazy and unimaginative.  Seriously that's the whole reason for everything that's happening.  You can't spend all day yelling at imaginary nazis on twitter if you have actual deadlines and work to do.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: bat on May 28, 2021, 12:55:44 PM
Don't tell these idjits that complain about the evil drow that in Neverwinter/DDO the drow (other than the 'renegade drow' player option) take slaves and are EVIL. There is an entire area with this theme.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Lynn on May 28, 2021, 07:48:49 PM
These endless attempts to redefine gamers of the past (and their games) as somehow 'wrong' really, really pisses me off.

You can just replace "gamers" with an open field _________ and leave it that way.

The attitude seems to be 'the past is all evil because racism.'
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: soundchaser on May 28, 2021, 11:15:13 PM
Leaving this here as I found it fitting with the discussion in this thread.

https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on May 29, 2021, 01:38:10 AM
Drow have this whole spider theme going? That is problematic spiders are often dark colours and thus this is obviously a thinly veiled attack on minorities!
Aargh! You wrote Spider without putting a trigger warning first!  :o
Don't you have any consideration for people with arachnophobia?  :P

Im pretty sure the drow book will not have any spiders in it because it might scare someone. Happy now?
(Actually Im pretty sure the drow book WILL have spiders in it because the woke only demand you kowtow to their current pet minoritys and who cares about those damn redskins. (until the blacks are used up and discarded for the next target.) Oh you cripples can have a bone too because we might sucker a few bucks from it.)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jame Rowe on May 30, 2021, 11:22:28 PM
Leaving this here as I found it fitting with the discussion in this thread.

https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/

That article can be summed up as "OMG! We're losing our Christian Values! Christianity is the only Cure!"
That's as much a dark path risk as Wokeism in my experience.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 01, 2021, 08:56:13 AM
Leaving this here as I found it fitting with the discussion in this thread.

https://www.convergemedia.org/wokeism-the-new-religion-of-the-west/

That article can be summed up as "OMG! We're losing our Christian Values! Christianity is the only Cure!"
That's as much a dark path risk as Wokeism in my experience.

IMHO, it is more complex and interesting with that. True, it starts by pointing out how "Wokeism" is born as a way to fill the "God-shaped hole in our culture" caused by the rise of secularism - something I agree with (I also agree with the idea that the same "hole" is also filled by para-scientific religions, like extraterrestrial cults).

And, true, it ends by saying that the only solution is a return to Christian beliefs (BTW, this doesn't mean believing is a supernatural God and all the Christian mystic paraphernalia: one can agree with Jesus' teachings simply because he thinks that they make sense, even if he doesn't believe in Jesus' divine nature - something often missed).

In the middle, however, I think that this piece is a clear and powerful dissection of the "Woke" religion, something that gives food for thought to everybody. The, IMHO, most important quote actually comes from an atheist, James Linsday:

“Some religions look up, they’re looking at God, and they’re afraid of sin, but they’re paying attention to God, and they’re thinking about renewal, they’re thinking about redemption, they’re thinking about forgiveness. And then some religions look down, and all they do is look at sin. If you look up, then religion can be great, it can lead people in spiritual development, community and so on, but if you’re looking down, if you’re obsessing about sin, you’re going to start obsessing about everybody else’s sin too.

...Which is one of the best tools for understand what is happening, for example, at TBP. Something that is reinforced by a follow up quote, this time from a theologian, Nathan Finochio:

“If I’m stuck in the oppressor group and there’s no escaping it, there can be no forgiveness if there’s no repentance, right? Like, isn’t that how it works? So I’m just perpetually a sinner, and I’m just going to continue to perpetuate the oppressor group, and there’s nothing that I can do. Of course, cancel culture is actually the logical conclusion of Critical Theory…because they have to get rid of the oppressor class.”


...Which is, still IMHO, one of the best X-Ray examinations of TBP, their regime of terror (no protests, no communications, no way to defend yourself or somebody else), and even of their permabans.

So, sure, this is a Christian approach to the rise of Wokeism, and it is not surprising that the answers offered are Christian ones. But the examination of the problem itself is objective, in-depthy and crystal clear (the latter being something that many critics fail to consider). This is for sure a link I would suggest to someone who asks me "what is this Wokeism thinghie about".
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Steven Mitchell on June 01, 2021, 09:03:10 AM
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17041/D12-Descent-into-the-Depths-of-the-Earth-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17043/D3-Vault-of-the-Drow-1e
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17054/Q1-Queen-of-the-Demonweb-Pits-1e

Imagine claiming stuff is so "problematic" but having no issue making money off that stuff.

I'm thinking that maybe considering WotC's poor track record that buying anything from them could be "problematic".  If not today, soon, or at least deemed so retroactively.  Better to be safe and not buy anything from them at all. :D

A little "Kantian" Categorical Imperative applied to buying habits:  Treat suppliers as if the rules they espouse were true.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 01, 2021, 10:18:55 AM
I still don't know why anyone is on this ship of fools (WotC's D&D). They get no time, money or energy from me. I mean, you all realize there is no end to this shitshow, reading WotC development announcements is like reading the Fantasy RPG Babylon Bee. It's absurdity masquerading as "D&D".

The D&D you all know and want in publication is dead. We wander the ghost-forests of the old dead-tree editions of yesteryear, still heroic and glorious.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Armchair Gamer on June 01, 2021, 11:37:00 AM
I still don't know why anyone is on this ship of fools (WotC's D&D). They get no time, money or energy from me. I mean, you all realize there is no end to this shitshow, reading WotC development announcements is like reading the Fantasy RPG Babylon Bee. It's absurdity masquerading as "D&D".

The D&D you all know and want in publication is dead. We wander the ghost-forests of the old dead-tree editions of yesteryear, still heroic and glorious.

  They're releasing a Strahd von Zarovich Funko Pop.

  The official game is not for us any more. :)

  (Last new WotC product purchased: Spring 2016. Last money given to WotC: Spring 2019.)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 01, 2021, 01:42:07 PM

  They're releasing a Strahd von Zarovich Funko Pop.

I fucking hate those things.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jame Rowe on June 01, 2021, 01:47:50 PM
I don't mind rejecting Wokeism. Personally, I'd like some more secular answers to it since I was never a Christian.
Though an answer which learns from it, such as "try to be a good person," can be good.

Just don't let those who want to scream about things win.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jeff37923 on June 01, 2021, 02:55:52 PM
The D&D you all know and want in publication is dead. We wander the ghost-forests of the old dead-tree editions of yesteryear, still heroic and glorious.

I dunno about ghost forests because Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, and Old School Essentials seem to be doing fairly well.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 01, 2021, 06:31:54 PM
  They're releasing a Strahd von Zarovich Funko Pop.

  The official game is not for us any more. :)

  (Last new WotC product purchased: Spring 2016. Last money given to WotC: Spring 2019.)

Exactly. If people are going to get this worked up about the fact our collective child has been abducted by perverts and psychos and are chopping it up to pieces - what interest are we supposed to have when the reality is they never really took our kid at all. They're still right there. What they DID do is steal our kid's identity.

I mean this is how they're going to slow roll out 6e. By amputating and spraying their SJW retard-radiation all over their changeling version of our kid and frankensteining it into their SJW monstrosity. Why be upset? Seriously.

When I realized my emotional connection to D&D really was decades ago and it's *never* been that game since, I accept they own the name, but they don't own its spirit. That's with us. Fuck them.

I'd rather get down with making/playing/running good games with that spirit in them then feel bad about what these leftist dumbasses do. Give them nothing, I say. Especially your energy. Laugh at them sure. But rage on them? meh - trust me, they're lightyears beyond any misery you could heap upon them. And whatever hatred you believe they feel about you - it's likely lightyears beyond that.

D&D is now a cargo-cult effigy of what it once was. I get a kick of how they're destroying it, personally. That the beauty of having *zero* fucks to give about WotC or any D&D zombie edition beyond 2e.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 01, 2021, 06:33:58 PM
The D&D you all know and want in publication is dead. We wander the ghost-forests of the old dead-tree editions of yesteryear, still heroic and glorious.

I dunno about ghost forests because Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, and Old School Essentials seem to be doing fairly well.

All of their content would be lush grassland in size compared to the content produced for 3e/4e/5e combined. That's the ghost-forest.

While I don't do OSR content, I LOVE its spirit.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Simon Fiasco on June 02, 2021, 02:33:10 AM
Am I the only one who...


Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 02, 2021, 03:08:56 AM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: trechriron on June 02, 2021, 03:57:42 AM
... No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

I looked at it like -- this is the most successful imperial city of the Drow (Menzoberranzan- a popular setting for the Drow). It's the common meta because these folks are powerful, conquering, enslaving, and terrifying. The world above fears them, and this is the focus we get because of that. It doesn't preclude other Drow colonies, enclaves, or cities. There could be more cosmopolitan Drow cities based more on, say, commerce. At the time, TSR then WOTC were focused on making enemies for the PCs to counter. It was about a foe so evil as to make you shudder. Dritz doesn't have to be the only good drow. He is an exception to the meta. It makes him unique but it doesn't really preclude other good Drow.

I think we assumed "hard lines" that weren't really drawn. Things were painted in broad strokes and contrasts. The authors left it up to each table to make the game their own. In so doing, we kind of ended up making similar assumptions about things. We could make other assumptions and derive other cultures if we feel that would be fun.

Also, just because the official cannon is going hard left at Albuquerque doesn't mean you can't portray or play the Drow how you want at your table. :-)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Pat on June 02, 2021, 06:25:55 AM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
Except they're not evil in some cosmic pre-determined sense. Whether we're talking about Gygax's darkling fae in their demon-infested city of Erelhei-Cinlu or the mother-led gangs and kin-strife of Salvatore's Menzoberranzan, there are non-Drizzt examples of drow who aren't irredeemably evil, like the dark elf rogues or Zaknafein. They're evil as cultures go, but that's because they traffic with demons or torture their proto-matrons to go along with the program. It's no different than growing up in the Mafia or some totalitarian state; they're not born evil, they're made evil. Which is actually explored, in far more detail than necessary for the game itself (because in the game they're intended as adversaries), in Homeland.

They are monocultures to some degree, but that's because in both cases our primary lens is a single city-state. But even within those city-states are factions with different agendas.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Opaopajr on June 02, 2021, 08:07:00 AM
I still don't know why anyone is on this ship of fools (WotC's D&D). They get no time, money or energy from me. I mean, you all realize there is no end to this shitshow, reading WotC development announcements is like reading the Fantasy RPG Babylon Bee. It's absurdity masquerading as "D&D".

The D&D you all know and want in publication is dead. We wander the ghost-forests of the old dead-tree editions of yesteryear, still heroic and glorious.

  They're releasing a Strahd von Zarovich Funko Pop.

  The official game is not for us any more. :)

  (Last new WotC product purchased: Spring 2016. Last money given to WotC: Spring 2019.)

Last new WotC product purchased: Magic the Gathering Unglued booster packs, 1998.  8)

My reward has been shelves and shelves of open space during the d20 glut and kicking my "cardboard crack" habit early.  ;)

5e DnD Basic is free, as has been quite a bit of additional .pdfs, and that has been as much as I have been interested in so far.  :)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 02, 2021, 09:35:32 AM
D&D is now a cargo-cult effigy of what it once was. I get a kick of how they're destroying it, personally. That the beauty of having *zero* fucks to give about WotC or any D&D zombie edition beyond 2e.

Personally, I loved BECMI and 1E. 2E was... dunno. I didn't really see all these "improvements". They succumbed to the "Satanism!" moral panic (which made some of their "historical" supplements risible) and, generally speaking, I felt it to be strangely anemic (as I found anemic, for example, the original FR Grey Box; I know that many loved it for the possibility to creatively fill the blanks, but, by then, I could just create my own world and fill its blanks just fine). D&D lost me during the 2E era.

Then I played "Planescape: Torment" and, amazed, I bought everything Planescape for a bunch of peanuts. I then started a 2E campaign set in Al-Qadim with a strong PS emphasis. When 3.5E came out I put my nose into the Player's Handbook and I loved what I saw. We switched from 2E to 3.5E (thanks to the fact that the Al-Qadim "book" was closed, and we were starting a "flashback" to the times when Myth Drannor was falling, with other characters). It was nice, when a female player of mine said "I want to play an Inquisitor", to find the "Inquisitor" prestige class in the books...

And the base book alone of the FR 3E leaves in the dust the previous efforts. Sorry, but it is the way I see it.

My experience with 4E was buying the two FR books while I was vacationing in Washington DC - only to leave them in a bin at the airport when I came back. I then played a couple of times and I found that the "cool attitude" of the game was anything but. And the combats (because in 4E there was this obsession about miniatures and combats) were just

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING

I then bought the 3 base books for 5E, liked them and then gifted them to a friend's daughter. I hear that they had a great time for a while.

So, to me, as I often said, D&D is either BECMI or 3/3.5E - the latter with the best previous editions had to offer. Sure, I'm no more 14 years old, and today I feel that with CoC I express more the feelings of my age. Yet, I still love D&D - and, of course, I play it the way I want.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 02, 2021, 09:50:40 AM
Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?

The simple presence of Eilistraee, the Goddess of Good Drows proves that they do exist (one of the strongest theories offered by Planescape is that without faithfuls a God disappears). In my longest running campaign I had a good drow NPC as an undercover agent among the drows during the fall of Myth Drannor. She helped the PCs and died when she was able to distract the attention of a red dragon while they were fleeing (I actually played the battle, with the players acting like the supporters of a soccer club in a big match and throwing suggestions - but actually there wasn't much to do for her).

Three sessions in a thirteen years campaign, and she is still fondly remembered. So, yes, there are good drows (and good orcs) and, if used with intelligence, they can be memorable.

(Something I was never able to pull was a big battle, up North in the FR, with, out of the blue, the whole army of the good orcs appearing on their steeds, basically copying the Rohirrim in the movie version of the Return of the King. And then they charge. It would be an AWESOME way to underline that, yup, there are good orcs - exp. if some Woke-mind is at the table...)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Zalman on June 02, 2021, 10:08:08 AM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?

I doubt you're the only one!

For me it's a matter of Evil (capital 'E', a la Evil Dead) existing in the world or not. I find a large part of the point of fantasy in general to be based on a clear archetypal divide between Good and Evil. As for a "whole race," it depends on the race. Are you OK with all Demons being evil? I am, because that's what a "demon" is: it's a representation of the archetype of an evil being. Are Drow any different? Certainly in your world Drow might be morally ambiguous, but there's nothing inherent in the word "Drow" that prevents them from being -- just like Demons -- a simple fantasy representation of archetypal evil in a game world.

So for me it boils down to whether or not you're OK with archetypal evil and good as concepts to explore. If so, you'll need a representation of that evil for game purposes. If not, then fantasy may not be the best genre fit.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Simon Fiasco on June 02, 2021, 10:28:09 AM
I doubt you're the only one!

For me it's a matter of Evil (capital 'E', a la Evil Dead) existing in the world or not. I find a large part of the point of fantasy in general to be based on a clear archetypal divide between Good and Evil. As for a "whole race," it depends on the race. Are you OK with all Demons being evil? I am, because that's what a "demon" is: it's a representation of the archetype of an evil being. Are Drow any different? Certainly in your world Drow might be morally ambiguous, but there's nothing inherent in the word "Drow" that prevents them from being -- just like Demons -- a simple fantasy representation of archetypal evil in a game world.

So for me it boils down to whether or not you're OK with archetypal evil and good as concepts to explore. If so, you'll need a representation of that evil for game purposes. If not, then fantasy may not be the best genre fit.

I am very much okay with the idea of a clear divide between Good and Evil. Just as demons are unambiguously Evil, angels (or their D&D equivalent) are unambiguously Good. But when it comes to a sentient temporal race, cousins to other sentient temporal races who aren't monocultures (high elves, wood elves, etc.), it seems odd to me to make a whole people Evil with a capital E, especially given that we know one non-Evil member of the society exists. As soon as a singular one exists, it shows that the people of the race have free will, that they can choose between Good and Evil, pretty much guaranteeing that a monoculture simply cannot abide.

For drow to be, like demons, an example of archetypal Evil in a game world, they should be unambiguously so. That means no singular member (like Drizzt Do'Urden) gets to break the mold. Once that happens, once the mold is broken, the narrative must change.

So I guess for my part, I'm glad to see other types of drow out there. It makes the race more interesting and realistic for me.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: ThatChrisGuy on June 02, 2021, 10:31:16 AM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?

I've never liked a monolithic culture for any nonhuman race, Drow included.  It's more interesting to have different nations, tribes, etc. among Drow, Elves, Dwarfs, and whatnot.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Steven Mitchell on June 02, 2021, 10:53:52 AM

I doubt you're the only one!

For me it's a matter of Evil (capital 'E', a la Evil Dead) existing in the world or not. I find a large part of the point of fantasy in general to be based on a clear archetypal divide between Good and Evil. As for a "whole race," it depends on the race. Are you OK with all Demons being evil? I am, because that's what a "demon" is: it's a representation of the archetype of an evil being. Are Drow any different? Certainly in your world Drow might be morally ambiguous, but there's nothing inherent in the word "Drow" that prevents them from being -- just like Demons -- a simple fantasy representation of archetypal evil in a game world.

So for me it boils down to whether or not you're OK with archetypal evil and good as concepts to explore. If so, you'll need a representation of that evil for game purposes. If not, then fantasy may not be the best genre fit.

Well, the default drow personality as usually presented is a mix of amoral and sociopath, which in D&D is probably chaotic evil more often than not.

From the very beginning, I've always understood that was what alignment meant in context.  If it was a supernatural, planar creature, it might be in its nature (e.g. not free willed).  It it were a "prime material" or standard plane, however, then the alignment was the default given the typical, expected culture.  Take away that assumption, and alignment could be anything, for a culture or an individual.  I believe this is even spelled out in the 1st ed. DMG, though I can't cite a page.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 02, 2021, 11:09:38 AM
The problem here isn't so much 'good drow' (or other race). There's plenty of precedent for outliers and iconoclasts going all the way back to 2E.

The problem (twofold) is that the wokeists are standing around congratulating themselves (and sneering at us unwashed heathens) for something they didn't even come up with originally. They are way fucking late to the party.

The second half of this problem is the attempt to rewrite these races into something 'correct' and non-problematic. I like the arguments against monoculture a lot more than the sniveling over how drow or orcs shouldn't be evil. At least it's internally consistent.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Steven Mitchell on June 02, 2021, 01:18:29 PM
In the case of drow, I think that the bigger issue is that so many SJW's were uncomfortably identifying with the old way that drow were portrayed.  In their occasional honest moments.  That is, it struck a little too close to home for them.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Zelen on June 02, 2021, 04:09:22 PM
In my own games I don't use alignment.

That being said I understand the things people like about alignment. One problem is that there's really no distinction between the cosmic-level conception of alignment and boots-on-the-ground good & evil. Since D&D has never unambiguously delineated what alignment means, you're fighting against the unspoken assumptions of all your players unless you lay out how you plan on using (or not-using) alignment explicitly.

I personally tend to prefer low-fantasy games. If a truly evil demonic entity passes into the world, that's a campaign-climax event, not encounter 3B of the dungeon. That's the easy part, but then you must contend with the laundry-list of spells, magic items, class features that D&D has ...
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 02, 2021, 05:56:28 PM
As soon as a singular one exists, it shows that the people of the race have free will, that they can choose between Good and Evil, pretty much guaranteeing that a monoculture simply cannot abide.

That is only true if you discount Drizzt having some kind of mental condition and or brain damage.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 02, 2021, 06:40:06 PM
As soon as a singular one exists, it shows that the people of the race have free will, that they can choose between Good and Evil, pretty much guaranteeing that a monoculture simply cannot abide.

That is only true if you discount Drizzt having some kind of mental condition and or brain damage.

Once Gygax published Unearthed Arcana in 1985, it was official that drow could be PCs and they could be of any alignment.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: RPGPundit on June 02, 2021, 07:15:08 PM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

Precisely. The entire problem comes from the banality of thinking that non-human races would think like humans think.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Zelen on June 02, 2021, 07:22:33 PM
But when it comes to a sentient temporal race, cousins to other sentient temporal races who aren't monocultures (high elves, wood elves, etc.), it seems odd to me to make a whole people Evil with a capital E, especially given that we know one non-Evil member of the society exists. As soon as a singular one exists, it shows that the people of the race have free will, that they can choose between Good and Evil, pretty much guaranteeing that a monoculture simply cannot abide.

That there's exceptions doesn't mean monoculture can't exist. Real offshoot cultures require a certain critical mass of population to exist at all, and ought to actually have a reason for existing besides fake guilt over characterizing fictional groups. (After all, Drow are already the exception to the rule for Elves.)

It isn't unreasonable to imagine an evil Elf culture is the only type of society with harsh values suited to surviving in the Underdark. Deviating from that culture is basically a death sentence (whether by execution or exile), and people in fantasy-styled settings generally ought to be more aligned with their general cultural customs & mores. Even if you assume a regular outflow of a few defectors, there's very little guarantee these exiles could coalesce into their own groups, carve out their own territory, and form a permanent settlement.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Pat on June 02, 2021, 07:30:02 PM
What does monoculture even mean in this context? The dark elven cultures in both Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms have each been almost entirely defined by a single city, which are both as diverse as you can reasonably expect.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 02, 2021, 07:50:42 PM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

Precisely. The entire problem comes from the banality of thinking that non-human races would think like humans think.
Well, that depends on how 'nonhuman' we're talking here.

Let me remind you that both elves AND orcs can crossbreed with humans, so their 'nonhumanity' might be up for debate.

Now, that being said, it's very tricky to get around anthropocentrist thinking. My go to for 'looks like a human but DOES NOT think like one' is ironically dwarves. Typically, they live in close quarter conditions -- privacy is -rare- in dwarven cities. As a result they tend to internalize stresses. I like to draw a page from Discworld; dwarves generally voice concerns by writing them on communal walls. Sometimes anonymous, sometimes not.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: David Johansen on June 02, 2021, 08:30:25 PM

The simple presence of Eilistraee, the Goddess of Good Drows proves that they do exist

Is her primary function being Loth's foot stool or chair?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 02, 2021, 08:45:55 PM
As soon as a singular one exists, it shows that the people of the race have free will, that they can choose between Good and Evil, pretty much guaranteeing that a monoculture simply cannot abide.

That is only true if you discount Drizzt having some kind of mental condition and or brain damage.

Once Gygax published Unearthed Arcana in 1985, it was official that drow could be PCs and they could be of any alignment.

Being a PC is, by definition, a mental condition.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 02, 2021, 11:26:53 PM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

Precisely. The entire problem comes from the banality of thinking that non-human races would think like humans think.
Well, that depends on how 'nonhuman' we're talking here.

Let me remind you that both elves AND orcs can crossbreed with humans, so their 'nonhumanity' might be up for debate.

Now, that being said, it's very tricky to get around anthropocentrist thinking. My go to for 'looks like a human but DOES NOT think like one' is ironically dwarves. Typically, they live in close quarter conditions -- privacy is -rare- in dwarven cities. As a result they tend to internalize stresses. I like to draw a page from Discworld; dwarves generally voice concerns by writing them on communal walls. Sometimes anonymous, sometimes not.
It’s virtually impossible to get around humanocentric thinking. That’s why portrayals of genuinely alien psychology are so rare. Often those portrayals decay as stories go on until they become funny-looking humans.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 03, 2021, 03:40:50 AM
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

Precisely. The entire problem comes from the banality of thinking that non-human races would think like humans think.

There is certainly a divide - where some people just think of elves as "dextrous humans" and half-orcs are "strong humans" as if that is the main difference, which to many people it is. Others try to emphasize more essential differences instead.

I think there's room for having non-human races just as stand-ins for humans, as well as having some non-human races that are truly alien. It's just a style difference.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ratman_tf on June 03, 2021, 03:53:28 AM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?
No.  Not really.  Once you have the possiblity that a Drow can be 'not evil' then they cease to make any real sense at all.  They only really make sense if they're fey creatures who think in a fundamentally different way than humans.

Precisely. The entire problem comes from the banality of thinking that non-human races would think like humans think.

They can, but the similarities to humans means they wouldn't be too alien in their thoughts. Unless they're completely alien and they only appear humanoid due to some fay glamour or whatever, in which case anything goes.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 03, 2021, 06:32:56 AM

The simple presence of Eilistraee, the Goddess of Good Drows proves that they do exist

Is her primary function being Loth's foot stool or chair?

No, but she also doesn't fight Lolth (who is her mother BTW). Eilistraee acts as "a beacon of hope" for those drows who decide to renounce their evil ways and, of course, constantly fights an uphill battle.

She was defeated during 4E's dark age of stupidity by the "handwave" superior spell ("The Power of the "Because" expels you!!") and disappeared, but with 5E she returned and was reinstated in the FR pantheon.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 03, 2021, 06:37:14 AM
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?

Aside from the woke? Maybe? heh.

Drow are the product of a divine curse and/or the influence of a crazy elven goddess. They make perfect sense in that context. They were all evil because they are literally infused with evil from a GOD. But eventually the door was opened up to the rare non-evil drow who were essentially shielded from Lolth by another elven goddess who is essentially fucking with Lolth. I am not sure where that originated though Forgotten Realms? Feels FR.

Also its been established that drow that get out and about more have a higher tendency to mellow a little, or alot. They might still be bad. But they are their own person rather than just another fly in Lolth's web.

And honestly the idea of some relatively obscure goddess fucking with Lolth is hilarious and makes total sense. She is essentially Satan corrupting Lolth's creations.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 03, 2021, 07:00:07 AM
Honestly, the worst thing about the Drow is that you have his concept for evil elf-fey creatures, and it's always fucking Lolth and fucking spiders.

When Gygax originally wrote them it was "what the fuck are these things they're weird and cool".

Now it's "Oh Drow, I know all about those guys because they're always the same.  They're totally predictable".
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 03, 2021, 07:09:09 AM
There were a few modules way back that showed different drow. One I liked was a drow colony living on the surface and working to corrupt a a forest and live in trees. Not sure if they were still spider obsessed or not. Would have to dig it out. Odds are theres more in Dungeon magazine.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Pat on June 03, 2021, 09:00:44 AM
There were a few modules way back that showed different drow. One I liked was a drow colony living on the surface and working to corrupt a a forest and live in trees. Not sure if they were still spider obsessed or not. Would have to dig it out. Odds are theres more in Dungeon magazine.
"Forest of Doom" in Dragon #73 was pretty good, but the drow in the adventure weren't different in any real sense. The outpost in the forest was just the forward base of a noble house, who were raiding the surface to gain an advantage in the internecine battles below.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 03, 2021, 11:57:02 AM
And honestly the idea of some relatively obscure goddess fucking with Lolth is hilarious and makes total sense. She is essentially Satan corrupting Lolth's creations.

She is the daughter of Lolth and Corellon Larethian, the very creator of the Elves. Don't ask me how this happened: I never intruded in their private lives.

Anyway, Eilistraee got the best of both worlds: the Drow nature from her mother and the Chaotic Good alignment from her father. She gave the finger to Lolth and became the aforementioned "beacon of hope" for the drow.

(Wagging tongues affirm that this happened after Eilistraee watched "The Return of the Jedi" and pirated the famous exchange:
 
"Your thoughts betray you! I feel the good in you, the conflict!"

"There is no conflict."

"You couldn't bring yourself to kill me before and I don't believe you'll destroy me now."

"You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny."
)

...If so, it will be no wonder if she ends up like Luke in "The Last Jedi"  :D
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Spinachcat on June 03, 2021, 11:51:18 PM
"Photo negatives of Tolkien's elves meets KISS."

That description is far cooler than any depiction of Drow I've ever seen.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Wrath of God on June 05, 2021, 07:09:25 PM
Quote
She is the daughter of Lolth and Corellon Larethian, the very creator of the Elves. Don't ask me how this happened: I never intruded in their private lives.

If I remember correctly Lolth was previously CG as proper elven goddess, but throw some fit about which of elven subraces is best, or maybe she was cranky about all this triangle with Sehanine, anyway she felt from grace into Abyss, and rebuilt herself from Demon Lady to Goddess proper.

Generally I'd say elves of Faerun are presented quite human-ey at least in this degree they are you know mortal though long lived beings with free will and ability to have own moral choices, so I'm generally quite OK with at least few promiles leaving influence of Lloth and her cronies.

Now of course to point to TJS and Pundit's notion about utterly alien non-human faeries, I'd say that maybe Gygax was planning to base his demihumans over Anderson's fairies, but ultimately Tolkien elves who are close kin to mankind after all took over.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 05, 2021, 09:21:19 PM
Didn’t Lolth and the drow get literally cursed with black skin by Corellon as a physical mark of their evil?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on June 05, 2021, 10:26:52 PM
Didn’t Lolth and the drow get literally cursed with black skin by Corellon as a physical mark of their evil?
This was true in at least one earlier version of the telling. The 5e version is in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, but I can't recall if/how it differs from that.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 06, 2021, 02:23:03 AM
I think in some versions the dark skin is a blessing from Lolth. What other elves, and non-elves even, might consider a curse.

Pretty much the same thing with the Shadukar elves. Elven sorceress or goddess tries to fix some problem or become a goddess, something happens and she ends up blasted into fragments barely held together and those loyal to her were drawn into the shadow realm and changed.

Pretty standard fantasy and folklore theme of followers of whatever being transformed in ways small or large. To the followers its a gift. To those outside eeeeeh maybe not so much a gift.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Wrath of God on June 06, 2021, 08:36:06 AM
Quote
Didn’t Lolth and the drow get literally cursed with black skin by Corellon as a physical mark of their evil?

I think so. Somewhere in 4e/5e timeline Elistrae managed to reverse part of this curse on willing non-demon-blood-tainted drows (some were demon-tainted don't ask me why) and they reversed to Dark Elves of ancient era in terms of phenotype (ergo sort of eee.. Egyptian looking elves or smth).

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 07, 2021, 11:50:08 PM
(some were demon-tainted don't ask me why)

What happens in Menzoberranzan, stays in Menzoberranzan.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 08, 2021, 10:58:17 AM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 08, 2021, 04:46:32 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on June 08, 2021, 05:04:03 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.
Didn't duergar and smurfnibblins (whatever those deep gnomes were called) have dark gray skin?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 08, 2021, 05:48:11 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.
Didn't duergar and smurfnibblins (whatever those deep gnomes were called) have dark gray skin?

Exactly. No one else has Black skin
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Pat on June 08, 2021, 06:45:19 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.
Didn't duergar and smurfnibblins (whatever those deep gnomes were called) have dark gray skin?

Exactly. No one else has Black skin
What about the svar... I mean xvart. Their name literally means black.

Oh that's right. For some reason, in D&D, they're bright blue smurfs.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 08, 2021, 06:55:24 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.

I cant remember anyone ever buying that one. But that was the "blue" era of drow so it didnt turn their skin black at least!

Now in an older thread here on the drow, one thing I pointed out was that drinking water laced with analgesic silver can and will turn your skin a deep shade of blue as it permeates cells and reacts to sunlight. Theres been more than a few documentations on it. But dont think anyone knew about that back in the 80s-90s. Was that process even possible back then? But it could be an easy explanation for drow. Its literally in the water and some radiation from the local rocks since they arent getting out enough to likely trigger it.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 08, 2021, 10:03:03 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.
Didn't duergar and smurfnibblins (whatever those deep gnomes were called) have dark gray skin?

Exactly. No one else has Black skin
What about the svar... I mean xvart. Their name literally means black.

Oh that's right. For some reason, in D&D, they're bright blue smurfs.

Because of the magical radiation probably.  :P
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Pat on June 08, 2021, 11:42:58 PM
Every writer for D&D has had their own take on what the origins of the drow are. If any.

Think it was 2e where in one book it is stated the skin colour is from magical radiations of the rocks down there.

Now that explanation is very doubtful considering every other race that does not get black skin from the "magical" radiations.
Didn't duergar and smurfnibblins (whatever those deep gnomes were called) have dark gray skin?

Exactly. No one else has Black skin
What about the svar... I mean xvart. Their name literally means black.

Oh that's right. For some reason, in D&D, they're bright blue smurfs.

Because of the magical radiation probably.  :P
Wait, if the magical radiation turned the black elves, I mean svartalfs, I mean xvart blue why did it turn the dark elves black?

I'm so confused. Which race are the smurfs supposed to represent? Is Gargamel an anti-semite, a hapa-hater, or an Islamophobe? Which real life race are my blue 1-1 HD monsters supposed to hate?

Magical skin colors are hard.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 09, 2021, 02:38:56 AM
no no no!

The magical radiation turned the black elves blue (or purple!). Obvious smurfwashing!  8)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 09, 2021, 05:09:09 AM
All of the above could be explanations as why the Little Mermaid in Disney's live action remake has black skin. It isn't that in the depths of the sea you need protection from ultraviolet rays...

(https://images.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_630x354/HT/p2/2019/07/04/Pictures/_7541bff0-9e2d-11e9-8ad9-cd072fe65304.jpg)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 09, 2021, 09:26:37 AM
All of the above could be explanations as why the Little Mermaid in Disney's live action remake has black skin. It isn't that in the depths of the sea you need protection from ultraviolet rays...

(https://images.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_630x354/HT/p2/2019/07/04/Pictures/_7541bff0-9e2d-11e9-8ad9-cd072fe65304.jpg)
I’m surprised they racebent Ariel rather than make a new adaptation of the original Anderson story. The original story doesn’t specify any particular location. You could retell it with an entirely black cast. I recall back in the late 90s there was a children’s cartoon where one episode was an adaptation set in China with an entirely Chinese cast.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on June 09, 2021, 09:58:12 AM
All of the above could be explanations as why the Little Mermaid in Disney's live action remake has black skin. It isn't that in the depths of the sea you need protection from ultraviolet rays...

(https://images.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_630x354/HT/p2/2019/07/04/Pictures/_7541bff0-9e2d-11e9-8ad9-cd072fe65304.jpg)
Imagine if they had gone with "biologically authentic" countershading... Is Blackback a thing?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 09, 2021, 02:33:17 PM
All of the above could be explanations as why the Little Mermaid in Disney's live action remake has black skin. It isn't that in the depths of the sea you need protection from ultraviolet rays...

(https://images.hindustantimes.com/rf/image_size_630x354/HT/p2/2019/07/04/Pictures/_7541bff0-9e2d-11e9-8ad9-cd072fe65304.jpg)
Imagine if they had gone with "biologically authentic" countershading... Is Blackback a thing?

What never ceases to surprise me is how the end result of this... dunno... "Let's take back the classics from the Patriarchy!" or whatever this new wave wants to be, always produces suckage. And there is no reason for it.

In "Without Remorse" they changed the classic Tom Clancy character John Clark from white to black. Also, the plot had nothing to do with the book. Amen to that.

And the result sucked. Why? Arbitrary changes do not automatically lead to suckage - just look at how Kubrick treated the original plots of the books he adapted, and the results were masterpieces... But here they do always suck.

"Ghostbusters 2016" was a masterclass lesson in how to suck. They deployed some good (and, OK, some overrated) actresses from SNL, only to fail at screenwriting, directing and even understanding the very essence of the original, thus producing a perfect storm of suckage.

"Mulan" live action sucked from minute one. In the original, Mulan had to overcome adversity after adversity to become a soldier; here she basically starts as a Jedi and grows from there. Maybe there is a clue in there.

"The Last Jedi" sucked so badly that when I exited the theatre I thought that they had distributed the wrong cut of the movie. I'm not joking. I mean... Luke Skywalker an alcoholic hobo?! Nonsensical behaviour from anybody?! Whole subplots leading to... more no-sense?! What was that?! The answer? "Toxic incel misogynist racist fans didn't understand the greatness of subverting expectations through inclusiveness!!" Really?! They subverted expectations... in Star Wars!? The series where you go to the theatre only because you want to see two hours of Luke duelling with Kylo Ren!? The movie fractured the fandom, killed the toy sales and, more importantly, desertified the new Star Wars attractions in the Disney parks.

Then "The Mandalorian" arrives, with his cohort of cool characters, and cool bad guys, and cool stories that mix Star Wars with Sergio Leone, and all of sudden everyone wants to buy a plush Baby Joda and the action figures of the group. And then, out of the blue

[SPOILER ON THE ENDING OF THE SECOND SEASON]

Luke Skywalker arrives with his green lightsaber, and for ten uninterrupted minutes he kicks so much ass so incredibly hard that you actually have to make a SAN check or be stunned for the whole sequence. Reaction videos on YouTube show adult people crying. Yup, even PoC. Yup, even grandmas. Cool characters plus cool stories plus Luke explaining the bad guys the error of their ways equals toy sales back up. One wonders why.

[END SPOILER]

Then there is the "Let's take Lovecraft Back!" literary movement, a bunch of writers whose books suck the very air from your lungs, providing, with this, the only lovecraftian experience ever achieved by the group.

And yet there is proof that these authors could do good things. For example, there is a tale by Brain McNaughton, "The Doom That Came to Innsmouth" (written back in 1999) that is where Ruthanna Emrys robbed her ideas for "Winter Tide" from: the poor people of Innsmouth were innocents whose lives were destroyed by the US government; many were killed, others ended up in "camps"; their religion was persecuted and forbidden; the ties with their beloved sea cut by "concentrating" them in fenced camps in the deserts of Oklahoma... There is even an excerpt from a speech that the then Senator John F. Kennedy gave at the Miskatonic U. in 1959, with the stunning admission that "Right here in our own state of Massachusetts, in February of 1928, agents of the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments perpetrated crimes worthy of Nazi Germany against a powerless minority of our citizens..."

But McNaugton's tale works because it is from the point of view of an Innsmouth descendant who (like the protagonist of the original) is clueless about his lineage and what it really means. McNaughton for sure had a great fun in unleashing fury and indignation about the "actions by the evil Federal Agents in Innsmouth", only to have even more fun in ripping the "woke" veil that hid the horrific truth, and in upending the fate of the foolish protagonist. In a word, McNaughton smartly subverts the original by actually respecting it. Emyrs takes only the subversion, spites on Lovecraft and runs towards the Sun until she reaches, blinded and unaware, the high and bitter cliff of extreme suckage.

And yet... Why this disaster? You can subvert the work of someone you actually hate and start from there. I personally think that taking someone else's life work, changing it, spitting on the original author and then making money out of it is deeply unethical, but that's me. However... well, now let's see your talent at work. Who knows? Maybe a good yarn will come from it. There is no reason why Emyrs should not be as good as McNaughton in her approach to the Mythos. But, no. You can take it to the bank. It can be "Winter Tide", or "Lovecraft Country", doesn't matter. The. Result. Will. Suck. Like if there is a curse at work.

Now, to be fair, it works both ways. After Jenny Nicholson's hilarious video about the super alt-right novel, "Trigger Warning" I actually bought it - so at the end Nicholson caused damage. It is about a campus siege in a University of "snowflakes" (who, strangely, are able to become violent beyond Charles Bronson only when the main character does something "not woke", like stopping a guy from hurting his girlfriend - because that's fascist; the descriptions of the resulting carnage in these occurrences are above and beyond). And it is about how this main character, who is a student, a ex-soldier and ate Rambo as a byproduct of some action in the field, teaches to these snowflakes "the right way (the word is important) to tackle the problems in your life - like hyperarmed terrorists who stormed your campus with anything from assault rifles to, I believe, tanks. And, of course, here, too the suckage is so high that you need the Hubble to see the top.

Dangerous terrorists storm a campus of uniformly leftist students plus a right-wing ex-soldier. The ingredients for something at the very least interesting are there. Tom Clancy would have produced something decent, maybe good. But not here. We go to the opposite corner of the aisle and what we do find? Their own version of "Let's Take Back Star Wars!"

I think that the live action Little Drow Mermaid will suck. And that there will be no discernible reason as why it was cursed to suck.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 09, 2021, 02:52:19 PM
I'll have to read "The Doom That Came to Innsmouth." Thanks for the recommendation.

EDIT: I found a review comparing and contrasting the two stories: https://deepcuts.blog/2018/04/21/the-doom-that-came-to-innsmouth-1999-by-brian-mcnaughton-the-litany-of-earth-2014-by-ruthanna-emrys/
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Steven Mitchell on June 09, 2021, 04:09:12 PM
What never ceases to surprise me is how the end result of this... dunno... "Let's take back the classics from the Patriarchy!" or whatever this new wave wants to be, always produces suckage. And there is no reason for it ...

But there is a reason.  I think you really get the reason in your text, because you certainly explain the thought process.  You can do what your "patron" wants or you can do something well.  There is only no conflict when all your patron wants is for you to do the best you can.  That is, the patron effectively takes themselves out of the equation.  Or if you prefer, it's about priorities.

C. S. Lewis talked about this problem in terms of watered-down Christianity, in his essay discussing "Christianity and ", as in "Christianity and the Poor" or "Christianity and Sex" or whatever you want to put after the "and".  Inevitably, when someone starts such a discussion what they mean is how can they change the first thing to accommodate the second thing.  This tends to diminish the first thing since it is not the priority.

However, the issue is much broader than Christianity or whatever else you want to put before the "and" too.  "Woke Little Mermaid" is really "Telling a Good Story" and "Fighting the Patriarchy". To the extent that it makes the latter the priority, it can't do the former well. The more someone tries to square that circle, the more suckage you will get.  Someone might be able to write a great story that happened to be about "Fighting the Patriarchy" (I'm skeptical*), but all I'm asserting here is that if they did it would not be "The Little Mermaid" and the author would have focused first on telling the best story possible, which happened to be about someone having such a fight.

The reason that it sometimes appears to work is that some people are capable of focusing on the priority, which in then informed by their whole life experiences--including, possibly, whatever is after the "and".  The goal is write a good story.  that is the priority.  If the person is Christian or woke or an athlete or a customs official or whatever, then chances are little bits and pieces of their personality is going to affect how it comes out.  More likely, it might affect how they conduct themselves when they promote the book.  For this to happen without damaging the main priority, of course, there has to be some self-awareness and ability to consciously choose that priority.  Not qualities that the woke are particularly known to possess. 

Game design and setting writing are by no means immune to this phenomenon, as it transcends the boundaries of creativity and logic. 

* Concerning skepticism of what is possible and not in great stories, there is a whole other, much deeper and broader discussion to be had about what would make a story great or why certain stories are great.  I think there is a fairly wide agreement that mainly such stories illuminate the human condition.  There's a lot of disagreement about what that might be, but I'd assert that the main problem is that "the woke" as "the woke" don't really have much to tell us about the human condition, except insomuch as they serve as an example of its pitfalls. To the extent that a "woke" person does have something to contribute along those lines, it is a sign of some area where they are not woke or recovering from being woke or are at least carving out a little slice of reality in their otherwise crazy existence. 

In much the same way, a great deal of why "story" in RPGs is such a difficult discussion is that you have often have people providing rules for telling a story when the person providing the rules is deeply confused about what a good story would be--and sometimes what roleplaying is and how games work too, but that's another topic. :D
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: RPGPundit on June 09, 2021, 07:04:45 PM
The real lie is "we're taking it back".  The people pushing to "subvert" all of western Art, media, stories, games, pop culture, etc are not actually interested in owning any of these things. They just want to kill these things, then peel off their skin and wear it as a suit to pretend they're still the old thing people loved and not  just one more unit of the propaganda machine spilling empty propaganda and nothing more.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Toran Ironfinder on June 09, 2021, 09:13:58 PM
Am I the only one who...

  • ... is an old school gamer...
  • ... leans politically incorrect, and...
  • ... still had an issue with evil monocultures?

Serious question. Drow always bugged me because it never made sense for a whole race to be evil. Drizzt always bugged me because it never made sense that there was only one good drow. The idea that there are other good drow out there actually makes them make a whole lot more sense in my eyes.

Am I really the only one?

Why is he the only one? It seems to me, the Drow oppress other Drow, the government and culture are controlled by evil men, err evil drow priestess if I understand them correctly. They control the government, schools, businesses, etc., but why would we assume there are not others who are oppressed and trying to get by, or trying to escape? It doesn't imply ubiquity it implies a set of conditions and general trends.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 09, 2021, 09:57:28 PM
Isn't part of the issue here that the Drow are a cartoon society?

A big part of the whole thing of taking the Drow apart and considering them as if they are a real world culture implies that Drow society in some ways resembles a real world culture.

It doesn't, nor was it ever intended to (at least not by Gygax - he wasn't trying to write Tekumel but underground!).

The problem is that saying that if there were a real world society like this they would have dissenters, falls apart because there would never be a real world society like this - and the more you adjust things and rationalise them to resemble a anthropoligcally plausible society the more pointless they become.

This is something the whole SJW movement does so wrong.  It fails to understand basic stuff like metaphor.  It insists we treat non-humans as if they were humans and not as metaphors for aspects of the human condition or aspects of human societies, and then based on that basic functional illiteracy proceeds to pointless erroneous conclusions.

And then we get left with nothing worthwhile.  You have the form of the thing, but not the function and everything gets hollowed out.  The only reason left for non-human races is cosplay costumes for your imaginary avatars.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 09, 2021, 09:58:12 PM
Patrick Stuart gets it (http://Patrick Stuart gets it).

Try playing a good one of these!

Quote
Imagine an ocean, a deep one. Imagine the water is black and dark like North-Sea mud. Imagine things living in it, thickly-knitted limbs that churn like a mower motor left tipped up and switched on, cutting blindly in long grass. You can’t see the limbs, or the things to which the limbs attach, but you can feel their movement in the thick black sea. They regard you. They hate you. A hate so deep they tear frantically at their own flesh in substitute for reaching yours.

Imagine the sea restrained by glass. Like the walls of an aquarium built on titanic scale. You stand before the sea that rises out of sight and curves to the horizon on each side. You can hear the surface fretting up its waves in storm a distant mile above your head. The glass holds everything back. Inside it you can see brief churnings of that midnight high-pressure world, raging at your presence just beyond its reach.

Imagine that the glass is beautifully made. Etched and engraved with perfect smiling forms. Beyond it, the black water, but, when the light slants just-so across the pane, a field of translucent harmony gleams, worked there on its surface by hands and minds that leap the greatest human art. A genius casually employed that vaults with ease the best that man has ever made. Crystal signature of thoughtless superiority. So perfect are its fields and processions that when seen, even glimpsed in a trickle of lateral light, you want to live there, with those frozen people, inside the surface of that glass.

This is the Drow.

This is how much the Drow hate you.

This is how much they control that hate.

The offence of your existence cannot be easily expressed.

The Drow are not angry that you live, they are amazed. The knowledge of you stabs them in the flesh with every recollection and event. Though they know it well, the wound of your existence will not close. Each memory of you, each experience, all evidence of your continued being, is like a knife twisting in the skin.

No other species could absorb such titanic contempt and remain sane. They would be reduced to raving berserkers, living only to kill, directly, the loathed enabler of their pain.

But the Drow are old, they know much of patience and control. Nothing is done without intent.

They can speak of you. They can name you. They can even see you in the flesh without breaking down. Some can even speak to you as if you were real, as if your name was something other than the froth-flecked gargling of a beast that dreamed it had a soul. As if your language did not taste like shit on their tongue.

Everything that can be done is being done. The situation is difficult, but there is time. There is always time. They must endure, as they have for so long.

They know an hour will come when horrors fade. When nothing else thinks or speaks upon the earth or in its veins. When even the memory of any other monstrous thing has been expunged. Then. Finally. There will be only Drow.

And they will be at peace. They will live to see it. They do not die.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Toran Ironfinder on June 09, 2021, 10:20:44 PM
Interesting posts.

I'm not a fan of the woke, C S Lewis wrote an essay about Butlmannian interpreters of the New Testament and their discussions of myth, despite a severe lack of understanding mythology in general (its last publication was under the name Fernseeds and Elephants).  There are a number of problems with critical theory, but the problem Lewis notes is true of the woke in this area, they don't seem to understand the source material. They seem to forget how much of an impact Nazi Germany influenced fantasy lit. in the 60s to 80s, the Drow aren't representatives of POCs, but of the.monolithic dictatorships that we faced in that time.

Someone noted though that a lot of us old school guys were the nerds who built worlds to escape socially oppressive environs, so true. The woke are just another set of narcissistic bullies pushing forntheir own feigned social superiority, little different from the high school jocks, I understand why people are upset--the bullies are trying to take over the places we went to get away from their nonsense. Ironically, IRL, I'm back in school hoping to teach, dealing with critical theorists, I've considered looking for a PBP game to get away from that nonsense, myself (2hy I came here after reading posts on another site that were too woke). The woke, like the Bultmannians will wither burn themselves out, or they will start killing people/sending people to camps, there is nothing new under the sun, and historical precisent for both. Either way, gaming is an escape from the pressures of reality, and if overly simplistic at points, that over simplicity serves the escapist purpose. Old editions are increasingly available on line. A number of games have sites, classic Marvel forever for MSH, etc. I think we can get by until the madness passes over.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 09, 2021, 10:36:58 PM
I've always seen the Drow as in many ways embodying the concept of decadence, arising from 19th Century views of Ancient Rome via Seutonius, the chapters on Byzanitum in Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, some aspects of orientialist ideas of Eastern society's etc.

In the Conan stories the culture which most closely resembles them is Stygia.  I don't see a particular of influence on the Drow of Nazi Germany (although as you say it was everywhere and ubiquitous so no doubt it's there to some extent).
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Toran Ironfinder on June 09, 2021, 11:27:59 PM
It's a fair representation of Rome at that period at time, but in the US we have always linked the various dictatorships of history in various ways, usually through the Nazis. Both Rome and the Nazis seem evident in Star Wars as well, Palpatine is a very Byzantine ruler in many ways. But the Germans in general and Nazis have become the lens through which other dictatorships are viewed in popular culture, likely through writers like Tolkien who were shaped as scholars by living through to world wars with English/German Centerpoint.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Zelen on June 09, 2021, 11:33:30 PM
I've never been particularly invested into D&D settings where Drow are prevalent. But it's hard not to see Drow as a mirror-universe reflection of the mass-conception (Tolkein-inspired) Elves. Asking how Drow society works is basically like asking how Mirror Universe Star Trek works. It doesn't really, its entire purpose is to be a dark mirror and if it' deviates too much from that template then it's failing, even if that failing might be richer and more authentic in presentation.

These kinds of idealized societies always seem to be draw out the need to contrast them with a dark & twisted version. Ironically human societies don't often get this treatment (unless envisioning a type of romanticized / mythologized society, e.g. Camelot) due to the inherent understanding of flaws that you're going to encounter in something closer to home.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Toran Ironfinder on June 09, 2021, 11:47:27 PM
Not to mix metaphors, but there is also Dalrymple's The Wilder Shores of Marx. Whether the Gestapo, the Stassi, the allies of the Triumvirate, etc., in the real world people exist in totalitarian societies and simply go along with the program, in part from fear, in part because control of propaganda and education by governments prevents free discourse, and in part because the corrupting influence from the banality of evil in such societies kills and stifles the soul. One need not view every drow as innately a chaotic evil twerp in a social Darwinist struggle for power, one can assume the authorities are chaotic evil tqerps in a social darwinist struggle for power, and the rest are caught in the spider's web. Too few have the energy, courage, will or ability to challenge the system.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 10, 2021, 12:08:04 AM
It's a fair representation of Rome at that period at time, but in the US we have always linked the various dictatorships of history in various ways, usually through the Nazis. Both Rome and the Nazis seem evident in Star Wars as well, Palpatine is a very Byzantine ruler in many ways. But the Germans in general and Nazis have become the lens through which other dictatorships are viewed in popular culture, likely through writers like Tolkien who were shaped as scholars by living through to world wars with English/German Centerpoint.

It's not a representation of Rome, it's just playing around with some of the ideas that people had of Rome, slavery, unnnecessary cruelty and the enjoyment thereof, sexual licentiousness, a completely amoral sense of sophistication.   I'm talking about how people saw the morals of Rome - not it's governance.
.
I have a hard time seeing the Drow as totalitarian.  They're more along the line of decadent aristocrats.  Think of Melnibone, they had an empire once, but they squandered it in their self-absorption.  The evil they represent is that of nihilism.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Toran Ironfinder on June 10, 2021, 12:26:37 AM
I tend to view most totalitarian societies as having a decadent aristocracy of sorts, they sometimes tend to hide it, however. I'm not an expert in DnD, though I've read a few novels, and the Social Darwinism in the soceity seemed clear; of course, I expect things have been mixed and flavored to taste. Anyway, I'm out, more than put my two cents in.
 
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 10, 2021, 12:42:24 AM
I tend to view most totalitarian societies as having a decadent aristocracy of sorts, they sometimes tend to hide it, however. I'm not an expert in DnD, though I've read a few novels, and the Social Darwinism in the soceity seemed clear; of course, I expect things have been mixed and flavored to taste. Anyway, I'm out, more than put my two cents in.
It's complicated.  The ideology of totalitarianism, in particular fascism, is often viewed as a response to decadence - see the rise of Nazisnm in the Weimar republic for example.  (But it's there in communism too in the idea that the down to earth working class will bring vigor back once put in charge of society).  And the idea that the west had become decadent was quite prevalent in the early 20th century.

So on the one level it's explicitly a rejection of decadence and an attempt to overcome it that gave rise to totalitarianism as an attempt to bring back meaning and redirect society towards some kind of cause or goal (I don't think you can have totalitarianism without this existing at the ideological level). 

On the other hand, because noone is actually sympathetic to totalitariansim it tends to be viewed quite cynically, and part of that is the belief that it's ideology is a hollow one, that not even it's ruling class truly believe in what it's selling - so in the end totalitarian masks a deeper nihlism.

I struggle to see the Drow as totalitarian because what is the cause or ideology that they must at least pretend to believe in?  Where is the idea that all the Drow are one body in lockstep in progress towards some glorious goal?

(There's elements of a spider queen ideology in Salvatore's work, but it's such a muddled confused dull mess it doesn't really add up to much.  In part because the spider queen is actually real and in part because she is chaotic evil - so completely nihlistic anyway - which means there would be nothing to actually believe in one way or another.).
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 10, 2021, 08:04:43 AM
Reckall's rant reminds me of the laughter at the graphic novel 'Calexit' (not to be confused with the anthology by Jim Curtis).

Who knew that Californians were heavily armed and trained to resist military occupation? Not I. LOL.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 08:56:56 AM
I read “The Doom that Came to Innsmouth.” It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that’s such a helpful moral considering that fish people don’t exist.

I get that Emrys’ story isn’t very good. It’s just a generic “racism is bad” with fish people. But this one wasn’t an improvement at all. It was awful in the other direction: it was “racism is good” with fish people. Particularly given that both stories explicitly compare fish people with “non-white” people.

I don’t get the appeal of such stories and I don’t get the vociferous defense/preference/obsession with such stories. Why is it so important that we need fish people in our stories to be nothing more than ugly evil rapist monsters that we can genocide guilt-free? (Or on the other end, perfect angels who can do no wrong)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 10, 2021, 11:07:30 AM
I read “The Doom that Came to Innsmouth.” It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that’s such a helpful moral considering that fish people don’t exist.

Your last sentence is the point of the story. This is a horror tale about some monstrosity that, over and over, tries to infiltrate our race via evil methods - for once fully told by its point of view.

The tale was written when the obsession to "interpret" was not as high pitched as it is today. For millennia you had evil mermaids, ghosts, aliens (the Alien itself, BTW: as lovecraftian as it gets), the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the big ants from "Them!", orcs, trolls, the Mummy, King Kong... All of these where "others". Better yet, "others to humans as a whole, no race, sex, nationality, culture or ethnicity excluded". Nothing more. In some cases they were a real menace, while, every then and now, they were just misunderstood. But the tales were written and meant to be read at face value (as Tolkien so often said).

True, coded is some of them (for sure all the most popular ones) you find the expression of psychological fears. Today is commonly agreed that the original "Pod People" represented the anxieties about being infiltrated by "Communists" in the '50s (notice how the structure of the fear is independent from the specific expression: today it could be Terrorists, or, in small groups the classic "Was someone bitten by a zombie and he is hiding it?") The Alien marvellously incarnates the Freudian concepts of both the "fear of the other" and "fears about sexuality". Factually, it terrorises (and is fought by) men and women of all age groups, races and even androids. It expresses fears common to all humans.

[As an aside, one of the best expression of modern psychological anxiety is, IMHO, the "entity" in David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows". Without spoiling the movie (watch it!) it has been interpreted in turn as a metaphor for AIDS, Fate itself, the fear that your totally normal neighbour is actually a very evil guy with children skeletons in the basement, the fear of betrayal and abandonment from your loved one, the fear of not finding help because no one believes you, the detachment between modern youth and older generations... heck, to me "It" represents the unavoidability of advancing age! I mean, it so clear! Truth is, "It" is a curse with a definite mode of transmission and a definite mode of manifesting, nothing else. The rest is what you bring in the movie, and you, once again, means everybody, with no barriers of race, religion, sex, ethnicity or whatever else.]

If you want to go full (cheap) academic, Umberto Eco once noted: "I spent all my life analysing other's texts. Then I published 'The Name of the Rose' and, for once, I was the one under the microscope. And I read these 'interpretations' by esteemed colleagues about things I, the author, had no clue about. But when I rechecked my own text all the elements needed to support these interpretations were there, black on white! So... there you go."

When you start considering things from this angle, all the above just underlines the strange crypto-racism which you noted and that, apparently, is the first soap block where people like Ruthanna Emrys (and those acclaming her) slips - until, as we will see, you discover the real, abhorrent, intent.

The poor people of Innsmouth are sent to "The same internment camps - Japanese Americans, similarly feared, and similarly locked away."

Really? You look at the people of Innsmouth and you think of the Japanese?! What about the internment of Italian-Americans or of German-Americans? Because those happened too.

But, most importantly, while superficially one could point out how the treatment of Japanese-Americans was motivated by a kind of deep racism that you didn't find in the treatment of Italians and Germans, and it was vastly superior in scale than the other two, why to mix Innsmouthians and Japanese in the same camps in the first place? Why do not send them in their own camps? (Because, as anyone with two neurons working will tell you, the last thing such a Government would want is to mix people from Innsmouth with other humans...)

Truth is, because you wanted to use the real suffering of real people as an easy way to whine about your characters and your ideals. You take a famous black spot in American history and just say: "See, it the same!" Much like, BTW, you took Lovecraft's life-work and name so to say "I took back Lovecraft!" - while, factually, only changing a bunch of things with a spell that turned them woke and then declaring everything "yours".

True, you could have done a lot of in-depth research on the realities of these camps, and create an organic occult/supernatural subtext to underline some topics in a symbolic way. And then write your own novel where you speak about universal issues via a supernatural story set in a Japanese American internment camp. Maybe in 1945, when the atomic bombs shocked not only the Japanese psyche but their very own spiritual tissue, and spiritic beliefs, and...

But... come on! Why do the effort when you can just ride on (in)famous events, with a famous name as your vessel and - presto! - universal acclamage of your progressive work! How easy it is being a writer, isn't it? I wonder why I never was able to reach this peak in my job.

This is why I consider "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" a serious creative effort compared to the criminal inanity of "Winter Tide". It is an evil story, told by an evil guy who isn't totally human, who hates humanity and who revels in acts holy to him even if horrifying to us (but who cares about what horrifies humanity when you are a Deep One?) And that's it. It is creative, funny in a crooked way, rightfully disgusting to us poor human readers, and takes the original tale to the extreme - while, lo!, respecting it. You see "things" in the tale? Good for it, it means that the story is not flat! (I consider it a metaphor of going to your first date only to discover, late in the evening, that your date is a psychopath, go figure...)

So, yes, maybe the main character of "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" is "a crypto- white nationalist incel." But for sure, Ruthanna Emrys is a crock.

Edit: Oh, BTW, in his tale McNaughton makes clear that the connection between Innsmouthians and American-Japanese, the comparison with Nazi Germany and all the other weepy events surrounding Innsmouth are only cheap propaganda created by the Deep Ones themselves. The irony, eh? :D
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 10, 2021, 11:16:40 AM
The real lie is "we're taking it back".  The people pushing to "subvert" all of western Art, media, stories, games, pop culture, etc are not actually interested in owning any of these things. They just want to kill these things, then peel off their skin and wear it as a suit to pretend they're still the old thing people loved and not  just one more unit of the propaganda machine spilling empty propaganda and nothing more.

Well keep in mind that since D&D cam out the 70s and 90s iterations of this, the moral guardians and politically correct, have set their sights on D&D. So yeah they are "taking it back" or trying to, again. Just this time a-lot more successful than in the 90s.

And the 90s iteration wont vs WOTC and has been cavorting about wearing its skin all along. Its just that, as usual, the old woke are now the new problematic. And they gotta go you know.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 10, 2021, 11:32:16 AM
Isn't part of the issue here that the Drow are a cartoon society?

A big part of the whole thing of taking the Drow apart and considering them as if they are a real world culture implies that Drow society in some ways resembles a real world culture.

It doesn't, nor was it ever intended to (at least not by Gygax - he wasn't trying to write Tekumel but underground!).

The problem is that saying that if there were a real world society like this they would have dissenters, falls apart because there would never be a real world society like this - and the more you adjust things and rationalise them to resemble a anthropoligcally plausible society the more pointless they become.

This is something the whole SJW movement does so wrong.  It fails to understand basic stuff like metaphor.  It insists we treat non-humans as if they were humans and not as metaphors for aspects of the human condition or aspects of human societies, and then based on that basic functional illiteracy proceeds to pointless erroneous conclusions.

And then we get left with nothing worthwhile.  You have the form of the thing, but not the function and everything gets hollowed out.  The only reason left for non-human races is cosplay costumes for your imaginary avatars.

Not quite cartoon. But an example, originally, of a society that exists because of divine or demonic influence. Which is pretty common.
Though I could be wrong. But were not the original drow from Descent just an example of one possible drow society? Not the whole race? D&D has always been one for outliers and counter examples. If theres good gold dragons then sure enough somewhere theres an evil one.

The problem is that the SJWs and ultra-woke need targets and they can and will hallucinate absolutely anything as being "problematic" because otherwise theres nothing to crusade against and oppress in the guise of "freeing" it from oppression. This combined with a near total lack of creativity. Alot of the modern complaints by the woke are just parroting and copy-pasting complaints from prior iterations. Just with the occasional new buzzword tossed in.

They hate it because someone told them to. Cattle. Just like over on BGG. People will absolutely despise a game or style of play. Simply because someone told them to. Or buy a game for the same reason. And are proud to be cattle.

The other problem is that, again, these loons are increasingly disconnected from reality and as you say, treat fictional creatures as if they were real. BGG example again. A year or so ago we had someone tell a designer that they would not buy his game because "it has leather in it and we are vegetarians." and another were a designer had his game cancelled by the BGG woke because it was about exploring and colonizing Africa and that... "promotes genocide"... I wish I were making these up but this is just the barest depths they can scrape.

"Orcs being bad and killing them is bad because Orcs are people too!"
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 01:04:01 PM
Why is there no discussion about Drow on Drow crime?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 10, 2021, 01:17:22 PM
I read “The Doom that Came to Innsmouth.” It was disgusting. It reads like the memoir of white nationalist incel.

What was the point of that story? That prejudice against fish people is entirely justified? That we need to exterminate their filthy fish taint from the pure human race?

Gee, that’s such a helpful moral considering that fish people don’t exist.

Your last sentence is the point of the story. This is a horror tale about some monstrosity that, over and over, tries to infiltrate our race via evil methods - for once fully told by its point of view.

The tale was written when the obsession to "interpret" was not as high pitched as it is today. For millennia you had evil mermaids, ghosts, aliens (the Alien itself, BTW: as lovecraftian as it gets), the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the big ants from "Them!", orcs, trolls, the Mummy, King Kong... All of these where "others". Better yet, "others to humans as a whole, no race, sex, nationality, culture or ethnicity excluded". Nothing more. In some cases they were a real menace, while, every then and now, they were just misunderstood. But the tales were written and meant to be read at face value (as Tolkien so often said).

True, coded is some of them (for sure all the most popular ones) you find the expression of psychological fears. Today is commonly agreed that the original "Pod People" represented the anxieties about being infiltrated by "Communists" in the '50s (notice how the structure of the fear is independent from the specific expression: today it could be Terrorists, or, in small groups the classic "Was someone bitten by a zombie and he is hiding it?") The Alien marvellously incarnates the Freudian concepts of both the "fear of the other" and "fears about sexuality". Factually, it terrorises (and is fought by) men and women of all age groups, races and even androids. It expresses fears common to all humans.

[As an aside, one of the best expression of modern psychological anxiety is, IMHO, the "entity" in David Robert Mitchell's "It Follows". Without spoiling the movie (watch it!) it has been interpreted in turn as a metaphor for AIDS, Fate itself, the fear that your totally normal neighbour is actually a very evil guy with children skeletons in the basement, the fear of betrayal and abandonment from your loved one, the fear of not finding help because no one believes you, the detachment between modern youth and older generations... heck, to me "It" represents the unavoidability of advancing age! I mean, it so clear! Truth is, "It" is a curse with a definite mode of transmission and a definite mode of manifesting, nothing else. The rest is what you bring in the movie, and you, once again, means everybody, with no barriers of race, religion, sex, ethnicity or whatever else.]

If you want to go full (cheap) academic, Umberto Eco once noted: "I spent all my life analysing other's texts. Then I published 'The Name of the Rose' and, for once, I was the one under the microscope. And I read these 'interpretations' by esteemed colleagues about things I, the author, had no clue about. But when I rechecked my own text all the elements needed to support these interpretations were there, black on white! So... there you go."

When you start considering things from this angle, all the above just underlines the strange crypto-racism which you noted and that, apparently, is the first soap block where people like Ruthanna Emrys (and those acclaming her) slips - until, as we will see, you discover the real, abhorrent, intent.

The poor people of Innsmouth are sent to "The same internment camps - Japanese Americans, similarly feared, and similarly locked away."

Really? You look at the people of Innsmouth and you think of the Japanese?! What about the internment of Italian-Americans or of German-Americans? Because those happened too.

But, most importantly, while superficially one could point out how the treatment of Japanese-Americans was motivated by a kind of deep racism that you didn't find in the treatment of Italians and Germans, and it was vastly superior in scale than the other two, why to mix Innsmouthians and Japanese in the same camps in the first place? Why do not send them in their own camps? (Because, as anyone with two neurons working will tell you, the last thing such a Government would want is to mix people from Innsmouth with other humans...)

Truth is, because you wanted to use the real suffering of real people as an easy way to whine about your characters and your ideals. You take a famous black spot in American history and just say: "See, it the same!" Much like, BTW, you took Lovecraft's life-work and name so to say "I took back Lovecraft!" - while, factually, only changing a bunch of things with a spell that turned them woke and then declaring everything "yours".

True, you could have done a lot of in-depth research on the realities of these camps, and create an organic occult/supernatural subtext to underline some topics in a symbolic way. And then write your own novel where you speak about universal issues via a supernatural story set in a Japanese American internment camp. Maybe in 1945, when the atomic bombs shocked not only the Japanese psyche but their very own spiritual tissue, and spiritic beliefs, and...

But... come on! Why do the effort when you can just ride on (in)famous events, with a famous name as your vessel and - presto! - universal acclamage of your progressive work! How easy it is being a writer, isn't it? I wonder why I never was able to reach this peak in my job.

This is why I consider "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" a serious creative effort compared to the criminal inanity of "Winter Tide". It is an evil story, told by an evil guy who isn't totally human, who hates humanity and who revels in acts holy to him even if horrifying to us (but who cares about what horrifies humanity when you are a Deep One?) And that's it. It is creative, funny in a crooked way, rightfully disgusting to us poor human readers, and takes the original tale to the extreme - while, lo!, respecting it. You see "things" in the tale? Good for it, it means that the story is not flat! (I consider it a metaphor of going to your first date only to discover, late in the evening, that your date is a psychopath, go figure...)

So, yes, maybe the main character of "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" is "a crypto- white nationalist incel." But for sure, Ruthanna Emrys is a crock.

Edit: Oh, BTW, in his tale McNaughton makes clear that the connection between Innsmouthians and American-Japanese, the comparison with Nazi Germany and all the other weepy events surrounding Innsmouth are only cheap propaganda created by the Deep Ones themselves. The irony, eh? :D

The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious, or any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won’t mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them “simian” (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He’s a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking “Mother Hydra” and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it’s telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

It’s honestly quite frustrating. I’ve read the Vang novels from the 80s and they present a terrifying subversive parasitic threat without relying on misogynist and racist tropes like this story does.

For once, I’d like a story that treated deep ones like an actual people with minds of their own rather than caricatures for racist screed from either side of the political isle. I’d like to see Bob and Aphra debate each other, as crazy as that sounds.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 02:16:36 PM
The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious,

To whom? I know lots of people that are not white, not nationalists, not incels, nor any combination of those three categories you describe that don't feel that way about this story at all.

Unless you ascribe to a certain ideology that has apriori assumptions about people based on appearance and/or a list of words that are code in this ideology for "bad things" - it seems like you're operating from a very myopic view that is common in college literary interpretation classes today. I get these submissions where people are so consumed with showing racial diversity (i.e. nothing "white") and citing examples of what are essentially racial stereotypes in new dress, they lose sight of the fact they're supposed to be telling a story, not breaking one down for political polemics.

or any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won’t mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them “simian” (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He’s a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking “Mother Hydra” and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it’s telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

There is this idea commonly seen in Lovecraft that the Mythos is one of alien horror. It's unknowable and unspeakable and evil. This idea of trying to intersect humanity with that alien conceit seems ripe for the whole point of the endeavor - to induce horror. That a male infected with this alien thread participating in a practice that by its very biological reality seeks to perpetuate itself with a tacit acknowledgement of sexual dimorphism seems an obvious choice to induce horror both physically and psychologically. As a Deep One it doesn't see humans as anything OTHER than a means to a larger end. Just like people don't consider the horrors that cows go through when eating their Big Mac, which is essentially extracting some biological utility from the cow for our own purposes.

That's how alien they are as a conceit.

It’s honestly quite frustrating. I’ve read the Vang novels from the 80s and they present a terrifying subversive parasitic threat without relying on misogynist and racist tropes like this story does.

For once, I’d like a story that treated deep ones like an actual people with minds of their own rather than caricatures for racist screed from either side of the political isle. I’d like to see Bob and Aphra debate each other, as crazy as that sounds.

But what would that even look like without making them Deep Ones? If the idea is they're aliens and parasitical and predatory - would they even be Deep Ones? Would they suffice to be even by Mythos-worthy?

It's like coming up with fanfic for Tolkien and revealing for ones own political ideology that there is another Valinor filled with Asian and African themed elves "because Tolkien was racist".

What is the point of injecting those assumptions into an established fictional universe if not for ulterior intents to destroy and replace it? Which is ironic given the idea that is the very same inverted reasons one might cite for "white nationalist incels".

Edit: As an Asian I'm always amused at how these terms which essentially are about power-dynamics reveal the inherent cache that its practitioners place on "white superiority" by championing some cause of race or gender to both deny and replace that acceptance of "white superiority" with some secondary victim-status without the awareness that their own beliefs are framed based on their acceptance of that their caricature of white-supremacy. Which of course only exist in their own minds.

I mean... I don't see Han Chinese in China having diversity councils. Nor in Japan, or Israel, Saudi-Arabia, Russia, South America or anywhere else outside the west. And I certainly don't see them applying it to their historical fiction. It appears from the outside that the people crying racism are the actual racists.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 10, 2021, 02:30:18 PM
The parallels to white nationalist incels are very obvious, or any patriarchal religion for that matter (I won’t mention the other obvious comparison that may have sprung to your mind reading this post), or even to the misogynistic racist male feminists on the left. The narrator is racist against ordinary humans, literally calling them “simian” (as Lovecraft was wont to describe black people). He’s a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion. The text tries to make the deep one faith out to be equalitarian by invoking “Mother Hydra” and having the narrator treat deep women with basic respect, but it’s telling that the killer only targets prostitutes.

Well, this is your interpretation and I'm not going to dispute it. There are, however, two things that I do not understand.

The first is that we are in the mind of a monster, in the most literal meaning of the word. I liked that the realisation came with a sudden twist, after the story lulled you into thinking that it was going in another direction. Like I said, it is like sharing your time with someone you find interesting only to pick up a pillow in his home and finding a demonic symbol made with the bones of infants.

Lovecraft never cut the sympathy you feel for the main character in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" - and, frankly, I never liked that ending. I always found it both tacked on and, at the same time, unable to go "all the way" (it is also perplexing that the Innsmouth people were unable to recognise one of their own). Here, McNaughton says "Yo! We are reading the memories of a monster! Let's try to be realistic!" I'm not surprised that we human are considered "simians". One could wonder, for example, how the Martians from "The War of the Worlds" called us. "Cattle", maybe.

The second thing is that, sure, this guy is "a religiously-motivated misogynistic rapist serial killer, which is comparable to misogynistic extremists of any patriarchal religion." But it is made very clear that this behaviour (and the rest) is repellent. Nothing in the story justifies it from the point of view of a normal human being. If anything, the plot is a denouncing of the extremes. Are there people who behave this way? Sure. They very often end up incarcerated or on the chair, because any sane society can't accept them (an alternative for them is to be voted in power...)

And notice how, if really we want to go down the rabbit hole of "interpreting", the same happens in the story (and in Lovecraft's): the Government does its best to eradicate these "individuals". They do their best to survive and strike from the shadows.

Nor I see the protagonist attitude against humans as "racist". He is an elevated monster, we are puny humans. As tenbones pointed out, no one is racist towards the cattle we raise to feed Burger King.

Neither I see a "message" hidden in the fact that he only kills prostitutes. He has a practical mind, prostitutes are the easiest target, and the Police will not go against a killer of prostitutes with the same energy used against a killer of daughters of the upper class. Also, notice how his last kill is not a prostitute at all but the best target of opportunity given the situation.

So, you can read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" as a fun escapist deep dive in the mind of a monster, or as the symbolic description of the psyche of an individual whose acts and beliefs are... clearly presented as repellent, monstrous and totally unacceptable anyway. I really don't see where your problem lies.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 10, 2021, 04:12:59 PM
All hail the King! The Burger King!

And his Chinese ally - General Tso!
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shawn Driscoll on June 10, 2021, 08:51:20 PM
Pop culture was awesome 40 years ago.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jaeger on June 11, 2021, 02:49:54 AM
Why is there no discussion about Drow on Drow crime?

It is a well known Fact that The Drow are ruled by a benevolent Matriarchy.

Therefore by law, there is no such thing as Drow on Drow crime in Menzoberranzan.

While at times one may see an enlightened Priestess of Lolth discipline a cis-gendered male Drow; This is done to ensure that Drow society does not fall into a state of patriarchy and lawlessness. And is typical of the way that the progressive Drow Matriarchy ensures equality for all.

Outside cultures racist microagressions against Drow society are very notable in their lack of cultural understanding when they describe the method in which the various Great Drow Houses vie for the attention and favor of Lolth as war. In Drow society it is simply understood that Drow houses will from time to time engage in energetic play with each other for the favor of Lolth and greater social equity.

But the most problematic issue facing Drow society today is the very real threat that the Rangers and Right-Wing militias of the Surface world present to Drow lives.

When the Drow engage in Mostly Peaceful trading expeditions to the surface world, they are routinely shot dead For No Reason At All by the arrows of light-skinned Elven and Human Rangers.

The Rangers have proven to be such a threat that many Drow traders feel that they are barely able to breathe in the fresh surface world air before they are set upon by a Ranger trying to kill them just for being in the wrong defenseless rich suburban village at the wrong time.

The surface world needs to recognize that Drow Lives Matter. They need to accept that in making a safe space for the Drow to live among them that the strength and vibrancy of Drow society will be added to their own.

Praise Lolth!  All Glory to the Queen of Spiders!

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 11, 2021, 03:03:02 AM
Despite people whining, I don't feel that drow (or orcs for that matter) have ever really been portrayed as evil as a species in D&D, but evil as a society and religion.  They have fucked up societies and worship fucked up gods, and that's the result.  Drizzt is not the one and only non-evil drow in the setting, there are enough to support an entire not-evil drow goddess and her religion so they aren't that rare.  A minority, but ample enough to point at as evidence that evilness is not a foregone conclusion for drow as a species.  Of course, your average adventuring party doesn't have much business with a peaceful drow village minding its own business, most people are only going to be running across evil drow because they need antagonists to fight.  Helping a bunch of good drow host a bake sale is probably not going to be high on most groups' agendas for their games.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 11, 2021, 09:47:35 AM
Despite people whining, I don't feel that drow (or orcs for that matter) have ever really been portrayed as evil as a species in D&D, but evil as a society and religion.  They have fucked up societies and worship fucked up gods, and that's the result.  Drizzt is not the one and only non-evil drow in the setting, there are enough to support an entire not-evil drow goddess and her religion so they aren't that rare.  A minority, but ample enough to point at as evidence that evilness is not a foregone conclusion for drow as a species.  Of course, your average adventuring party doesn't have much business with a peaceful drow village minding its own business, most people are only going to be running across evil drow because they need antagonists to fight.  Helping a bunch of good drow host a bake sale is probably not going to be high on most groups' agendas for their games.

Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.

This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

And once everyone is narratively made "Good" in equal amounts... the PC's will ultimately be the bad guy because all they wanna do is stab monsters and get gold. They'll need to make struggle-session mechanics where the Drow corner the PC's to make them understand that this whole time for the last 40+ years of D&D they are the actual monsters denying the Drow, Orcs and Demons their respective "Truths".

(It changes nothing! I draw my blade!)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on June 11, 2021, 10:36:06 AM
Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".
25 years of urban fantasy has normalized this part. Good vampires and demons are super common, and conversely, if you find an angel, it's probably the bad guy.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 11, 2021, 10:36:48 AM
Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.
If anything, the fact that it is an outlier underlines the "evil as normal" in the Drow society. It is, literally, the opposite of "Satan is an outlier" in the average human society.
Quote
This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

Somehow, I don't think we will see someone choosing the honest way of, then, picking Satan and asking for human society to be rewritten as "the New Evil" because some worship it - even if this is the end target. From here, this need of even more contortions ::)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 11, 2021, 10:44:34 AM
This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

This sort of pedanticness was why I quit two Star Frontiers e-groups because they did exactly this to serve their own ends. An artist bungled an illustration? Oh look that is proof that this thing EXISTS in game! It really really does!
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 11, 2021, 10:47:06 AM
Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".
25 years of urban fantasy has normalized this part. Good vampires and demons are super common, and conversely, if you find an angel, it's probably the bad guy.

Both "Hellblazer" and "Planescape: Torment" have angels who turn out to be the bad guys, and they are cool characters. But they work because they do represent an anomaly in their universes.

Anyway, once all vampires will be good and all angels bad, the movement will become "Let's take the angels back!"
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: HappyDaze on June 11, 2021, 11:06:00 AM
Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".
25 years of urban fantasy has normalized this part. Good vampires and demons are super common, and conversely, if you find an angel, it's probably the bad guy.

Both "Hellblazer" and "Planescape: Torment" have angels who turn out to be the bad guys, and they are cool characters. But they work because they do represent an anomaly in their universes.

Anyway, once all vampires will be good and all angels bad, the movement will become "Let's take the angels back!"
Supernatural tried the last one, with Castiel being (almost) the only (mostly) good angel around. Of course, he's already gone back and forth a few times and practically caused one or more apocalypses through his own actions, so...
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: oggsmash on June 11, 2021, 01:34:03 PM
 I blame the movie  The Prophecy and Christopher Walken for making the idea of Angel gone bad look so attractive to pop culture. 

  But I did enjoy the movie a lot, and it does make more sense that in a human welfare sense, Angels would be completely amoral in carrying out their duties, as they know god will save the souls of the good people should there be collateral damage.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 11, 2021, 03:01:10 PM
Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.

This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

And once everyone is narratively made "Good" in equal amounts... the PC's will ultimately be the bad guy because all they wanna do is stab monsters and get gold. They'll need to make struggle-session mechanics where the Drow corner the PC's to make them understand that this whole time for the last 40+ years of D&D they are the actual monsters denying the Drow, Orcs and Demons their respective "Truths".

(It changes nothing! I draw my blade!)

I'm not stating that Eilistrae-loving good drow are an appreciable percentage of drow, but that their existence proves that the species is not utterly hardwired for evil and spiders, and as such the attempts to "correct" them in recent WotC books are dumb.  There've been not-evil drow from the get-go, just not in enough numbers that I'd choose to turn my back on a random drow and not expect a knife for my trouble.  Spelljammer also had examples of non-evil (or less-evil might be more accurate) beholders and illithid who weren't just disintegrating and brain-eating everything in sight and could engage in civil discourse.  They were still inhuman creatures who prioritized their wants over other species, but not every interaction with them had to end in a bloodbath.  Plus space elves were giant pricks, so that was a nice twist.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 11, 2021, 06:47:04 PM
Wait... what universe are you from? Did you read Queen of the Demonweb Pits? By extension the many RPG books about the Underdark? The novels? By 3e Eilistrae was an extreme outlier that had to be worshipped in secret.

This propensity to pick an outlier and pretend it's the norm is one of the major issues of Post-Modern pathology. The fact that an outlier exists does mean they are equal. By forcing that issue it undermines the whole purpose of the exercise (that Drow and Orcs are evil) - which is the real goal.

To what end? It has nothing to do with creating conflict in which to engage the game. It's purely for political ideology. So great we have Good Orcs and Good Drow. Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".

And once everyone is narratively made "Good" in equal amounts... the PC's will ultimately be the bad guy because all they wanna do is stab monsters and get gold. They'll need to make struggle-session mechanics where the Drow corner the PC's to make them understand that this whole time for the last 40+ years of D&D they are the actual monsters denying the Drow, Orcs and Demons their respective "Truths".

(It changes nothing! I draw my blade!)

I'm not stating that Eilistrae-loving good drow are an appreciable percentage of drow, but that their existence proves that the species is not utterly hardwired for evil and spiders, and as such the attempts to "correct" them in recent WotC books are dumb.  There've been not-evil drow from the get-go, just not in enough numbers that I'd choose to turn my back on a random drow and not expect a knife for my trouble.  Spelljammer also had examples of non-evil (or less-evil might be more accurate) beholders and illithid who weren't just disintegrating and brain-eating everything in sight and could engage in civil discourse.  They were still inhuman creatures who prioritized their wants over other species, but not every interaction with them had to end in a bloodbath.  Plus space elves were giant pricks, so that was a nice twist.
That's been my point as well. All this virtue signaling is doubly stupid because the battles they want to fight have already been fought.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 11, 2021, 07:23:44 PM
Plus space elves were giant pricks, so that was a nice twist.

When in my 13 years long campaign the party reached the Moonshaes they were saved from the Blood Riders by a charge of the female elven paladins out of Synnoria (long story). The following battle was of the kind that defines "epic" in D&D. So, at the end, the party turned gratefully towards the paladinettes...

...Only to be summarily thrown in the local version of Guantanamo (yes, even the token elf ranger - after all he was from elsewhere too) and kept there until "their position was clarified".

When it was, the local elven council kicked the party into the next timezone and forbid it to ever return under penalty of death (no nice cures or gift of nice magic objects in the meanwhile).

Boy, I never saw a group of player turning so "racist" towards all elves (yes, even the token elven ranger turned racist) so fast.

The fun part for me, the DM, was that the Synnorians behaved in the only possible way given their culture, what they knew and what they learned about the characters. No one ever wrote that "Meeting the elves!" means "Free magic gifts in a candle shop with Enya!"
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Darrin Kelley on June 11, 2021, 07:44:37 PM
How about not buyijng the book? You don't like how it is written? Talk with your wallet.

I haven't touched Ravenloft since AD&D 2nd Edition. Because I haven't liked what the writers have done since. And to be honest? I don't want to.

The Ravenloft setting is a classic. The best time for it was AD&D 2nd Edition. That was MY depiction. It's what I liked. The rest doesn't interest me. So they ain't getting money for new editions from me.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 11, 2021, 08:25:15 PM
Let's have Good Demons and Good Devils. And they'll all be inclusive, so it's really Humanity that's "evil" - not the small "e".
25 years of urban fantasy has normalized this part. Good vampires and demons are super common, and conversely, if you find an angel, it's probably the bad guy.

(https://scontent.fakl5-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/171614235_4032854503445321_3540570245971210271_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=MHofi-qi5t8AX-tfpxL&_nc_ht=scontent.fakl5-1.fna&oh=bf99b48ac709e31ce4212ef0501af583&oe=60C973B7)
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 11, 2021, 08:33:57 PM
So, you can read "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" as a fun escapist deep dive in the mind of a monster, or as the symbolic description of the psyche of an individual whose acts and beliefs are... clearly presented as repellent, monstrous and totally unacceptable anyway. I really don't see where your problem lies.
I don't see a difference. For all the statements of being "alien" they still act basically human, even down to the religious extremism, misogyny, racism, and justifying their actions as not being any of those things with "facts" and "logic." (For the record, prostitutes are not the only vulnerable members of society. Whenever a serial killers targets them specifically, its always implicated in misogyny.)

The human characters in the story don't come across as sympathetic, either. If it wasn't for the "racism is totally justified against those evil fish people, honest!" part, then their actions would come across as racist and reminiscent of Nazi experiments.

It's just repellent (which isn't a difficult response to evoke, btw) and uninteresting to me. It's just the political opposite of "The Litany of Earth." In that story the deepies are angels who can do no wrong, and here they're devils in the flesh against whom genocide really is completely justified.

This story isn't deep or meaningful, or especially respectful of Lovecraft's story. I'm sure he would find the story repellent for its sexually explicit nature, but I digress.

Continuing to regurgitate the stale trite "fish people are evil, kill them all" message is not an especially interesting premise to me.

Also, the explicit comparisons in both stories between fish people and real persecuted is pretty repugnant. Real minorities are neither angels nor demons, they're human beings. Some are innocent, but that doesn't mean all are. Some are spies or terrorists, but that doesn't mean all are.

Both stories read like blatant propaganda pieces. Aphra is a textbook SJW, Bob is a textbook mass shooter. They're not deep ones: they're human beings cosplaying as fish.

I don't know what else to tell you. Maybe it's just the result of that whole "people of different politics have different personality biases" or something.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 12, 2021, 09:17:49 AM
I don't know what else to tell you. Maybe it's just the result of that whole "people of different politics have different personality biases" or something.
Maybe. I feel that it is more "recognising fiction as fiction".

Which doesn't mean that fiction can't have a political message for the real world. A sterling example is "Starship Trooper" (don't worry, I won't go down that rabbit hole...) Heinlein makes clear that he is speaking about the human society at large, and that "The Bugs" are little more than a McGuffin. I personally find it a hell of a novel even if you totally disagree with Heinlein's ideas. Mobile Suit Gundam was directly inspired by ST, BTW.

Then Joe Haldeman, a veteran of the Vietnam War who hated Heinlein book, writes his "answer" in "The Forever War", an anti-war sci-fi novel which is also a hell of a book (even if it lacks Heinlein's sophistication). Haldeman also weaves his ideas in the events, avoiding Heinlein's loooooooooong speeches by his characters. Heinlein, however, has the edge in showing that the real world is more complex that a couple of slogans.

But in both books there are humans (and only humans) talking about very real and still relevant issues about militarisation, war and society at large.

"The Doom that Came to Innsmouth"? Dunno, I can't find a way to better express myself. The acts by the Deep One are repellent. OK, maybe it is even more misogynist than I thought. This only adds to the disgust. At the end, IMHO, only someone already mentally ill can "sympathise" with the Deep One. There is no material for debate in this tale, only a straightforward condemnation of some acts and beliefs as "monstrous".
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: dungeon crawler on June 12, 2021, 09:35:45 AM
I've made this comment before, but it bears repeating.

These endless attempts to redefine gamers of the past (and their games) as somehow 'wrong' really, really pisses me off.

We were the outcasts, the geeks, the nerds, the guys (and occasional girl) who didn't fit in, so we built our own little place. It wasn't perfect, but we tried to work past our own social inadequacies, and at least treat our companions the way we wanted to be treated. Yeah, there were bad apples; show me a group that never had any. I'll wait. I won't hold my breath though.

Where the fuck were these fucking shitbirds when we were getting mocked, shoved into lockers, and treated like potted plants? They sure as fuck weren't there. Where do they get off telling us how 'problematic' things were?

Fuck them.
They are the children and grandchildren of the people who shoved us into lockers and mocked us. Just like their Elders they think they are our betters. They are mad because we have not submitted to their whims and we must be destroyed.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 12, 2021, 09:38:27 AM
Plus space elves were giant pricks, so that was a nice twist.

When in my 13 years long campaign the party reached the Moonshaes they were saved from the Blood Riders by a charge of the female elven paladins out of Synnoria (long story). The following battle was of the kind that defines "epic" in D&D. So, at the end, the party turned gratefully towards the paladinettes...

...Only to be summarily thrown in the local version of Guantanamo (yes, even the token elf ranger - after all he was from elsewhere too) and kept there until "their position was clarified".

When it was, the local elven council kicked the party into the next timezone and forbid it to ever return under penalty of death (no nice cures or gift of nice magic objects in the meanwhile).

Boy, I never saw a group of player turning so "racist" towards all elves (yes, even the token elven ranger turned racist) so fast.

The fun part for me, the DM, was that the Synnorians behaved in the only possible way given their culture, what they knew and what they learned about the characters. No one ever wrote that "Meeting the elves!" means "Free magic gifts in a candle shop with Enya!"
You know, the elves of Lorien weren't exactly the most welcoming hosts initially either. For that matter, the Mirkwood elves weren't exactly friendly (though the dwarves managed to blow every diplomacy check on that one).

So yeah, it's not exactly unprecedented.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 12, 2021, 11:20:59 AM
I don't know what else to tell you. Maybe it's just the result of that whole "people of different politics have different personality biases" or something.
Maybe. I feel that it is more "recognising fiction as fiction".

Which doesn't mean that fiction can't have a political message for the real world. A sterling example is "Starship Trooper" (don't worry, I won't go down that rabbit hole...) Heinlein makes clear that he is speaking about the human society at large, and that "The Bugs" are little more than a McGuffin. I personally find it a hell of a novel even if you totally disagree with Heinlein's ideas. Mobile Suit Gundam was directly inspired by ST, BTW.

Then Joe Haldeman, a veteran of the Vietnam War who hated Heinlein book, writes his "answer" in "The Forever War", an anti-war sci-fi novel which is also a hell of a book (even if it lacks Heinlein's sophistication). Haldeman also weaves his ideas in the events, avoiding Heinlein's loooooooooong speeches by his characters. Heinlein, however, has the edge in showing that the real world is more complex that a couple of slogans.

But in both books there are humans (and only humans) talking about very real and still relevant issues about militarisation, war and society at large.

"The Doom that Came to Innsmouth"? Dunno, I can't find a way to better express myself. The acts by the Deep One are repellent. OK, maybe it is even more misogynist than I thought. This only adds to the disgust. At the end, IMHO, only someone already mentally ill can "sympathise" with the Deep One. There is no material for debate in this tale, only a straightforward condemnation of some acts and beliefs as "monstrous".
I think both Doom and Litany are flawed.

Both draw comparisons between fish people and real persecuted minorities, but come to seemingly opposite conclusions. Both treat fish people as essentially identical in psychology to human beings.

I don’t think Doom even effectively makes the case that the deepies are inherently evil, at least no more than the humans they fight. Both sides are basically assholes who treat each other in racist fashion while considering themselves superior. It’s like the Nazis versus the Taliban.

If you switched the positions of the humans and deepies in Doom, then the story wouldn’t meaningfully change. It’s still Nazis vs Taliban. I don’t know if that was intentional on the author’s part.

The deepies in both stories are essentially human. Their piscine nature doesn’t make them meaningfully different from humans in a psychological sense. Even though it really should. Living forever and swimming in three dimensions should have a huge effect on their psychology, but we see no evidence of that.

This isn’t what I would consider cosmic horror.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 12, 2021, 04:43:12 PM
The cosmic horror isn't that there are fish people, but that they started off human.  That was the whole deal with Shadow over Innsmouth, Olmstead was a human, or so he believed, and actively worked against the deep ones, but by the end of the story his connection with them had corrupted his mind and body to the point that he went out to join them.  The human/deep one hybrids didn't pop out fishy from the get-go, or evil from the get-go, but became so over decades.  Someone who hadn't gone far along the transformation would still be human, or human-ish, so a hybrid narrator for a story coming across as mostly human isn't really a deal breaker.  Their eventual fate, however, would be wholly inhuman, and by then they'd be welcoming it.  That's where the horror kicks in.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 12, 2021, 04:46:20 PM
The cosmic horror isn't that there are fish people, but that they started off human.  That was the whole deal with Shadow over Innsmouth, Olmstead was a human, or so he believed, and actively worked against the deep ones, but by the end of the story his connection with them had corrupted his mind and body to the point that he went out to join them.  The human/deep one hybrids didn't pop out fishy from the get-go, or evil from the get-go, but became so over decades.  Someone who hadn't gone far along the transformation would still be human, or human-ish, so a hybrid narrator for a story coming across as mostly human isn't really a deal breaker.  Their eventual fate, however, would be wholly inhuman, and by then they'd be welcoming it.  That's where the horror kicks in.
Isn’t that body horror? Still Doesn’t strike me as particularly cosmic.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 12, 2021, 05:34:13 PM
That's been my point as well. All this virtue signaling is doubly stupid because the battles they want to fight have already been fought.

Hence why they try to claim none of this ever happened and/or that the old woke were really everything-ist and bad and wrong.

Last years inclusion and diversity is this years omission and oppression.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 12, 2021, 06:22:06 PM
The deepies in both stories are essentially human. Their piscine nature doesn’t make them meaningfully different from humans in a psychological sense. Even though it really should. Living forever and swimming in three dimensions should have a huge effect on their psychology, but we see no evidence of that.

This isn’t what I would consider cosmic horror.

What about the Pod People in the "Body Snatcher" movies, then? They do seem human, they behave as humans, some of them (like the "substituted" psychiatrist in the 1956 original) use logic and intelligence to undermine those who are starting to realise that something is very wrong. And yet they are aliens that see us as a way to dominate Earth and nothing else.

But in the original novel (by Jack Finney), they represented the author's fear for "conformism" and the loss of individuality in the American culture. In the movie, director Don Siegel considers the story "an obvious condemnation of both Communism and McCarthyism" (both Finney and the lead actor Kevin McCarthy disagree and consider the movie version "just a horror thriller"). And in Kaufman's 1978 version the Pod People represent both the fear of alienation in the big city and the general paranoia of the era (again Kevin McCarthy, who appears in a cameo, disagrees and says that the first movie and the novel were much scarier because they were set in a small city where everybody thought that he knew everybody else).

Anyway, as you can see, here is another example of "something" whose strength is the ability to mix with humans, deceive and mislead them, but that is actually "something else". And, when given an interpretation, the Pod People always symbolise something that is universally rejected. You can debate the opinions expressed in "Starship Troopers", but there is no debate about the repulsiveness of what the Pod People or the Deep Ones represent.

You can debate, of course, that there is no symbolism but only straightforward horror. In this case, it is good, creative horror (at least IMHO) - not the easy appropriation of some other else's work and some other else's suffering that you see in "Winter Tide".

I agree that Lovecraft wouldn't have liked the explicit sex scenes in "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth", and honestly I found them a bit gratuitous. But I don't condemn the idea of sex in a Lovecraftian tale in principle. Alan Moore (still IMHO) used sex very gratuitously in "Neonomicon" (a tale that even he admits being below his standard) but in an excellent way in "Providence" - where Moore tackles, through the troubled sexuality of the main character, what very possibly were the problems that Lovecraft had with sex in general. So, as usual, it is not what it is, but how you do it.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 12, 2021, 06:29:34 PM
The cosmic horror isn't that there are fish people, but that they started off human.  That was the whole deal with Shadow over Innsmouth, Olmstead was a human, or so he believed, and actively worked against the deep ones, but by the end of the story his connection with them had corrupted his mind and body to the point that he went out to join them.  The human/deep one hybrids didn't pop out fishy from the get-go, or evil from the get-go, but became so over decades.  Someone who hadn't gone far along the transformation would still be human, or human-ish, so a hybrid narrator for a story coming across as mostly human isn't really a deal breaker.  Their eventual fate, however, would be wholly inhuman, and by then they'd be welcoming it.  That's where the horror kicks in.
Isn’t that body horror? Still Doesn’t strike me as particularly cosmic.
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. A good example is "The Dunwich Horror".

Also, I always considered "Innsmouth" as one of a "two parter" with "The Call of Cthulhu" - and only by reading both you can reconcile body horror and cosmic horror in this specific part of the Mythos. I don't know if Lovecraft ever wrote Innsmouth as a follow up of the "Cthulhu Expanded Universe" (*) or just because he found the idea fun. I guess it was the latter  :D

(*) Edit: with all Hollywood and their neighbours desperately trying to create "expanded universes", what an opportunity they are missing here. Follow the path of "The Conjuring" series. Introduce bit by bit Arkham, The Miskatonic University, Lovecraft County, some identifiable characters... If they do their job well, "At the Mountains of Madness" could become the culmination. Of course SJWs would NEVER allow something like this, leaving us watching... something else.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 12, 2021, 11:22:40 PM
Isn’t that body horror? Still Doesn’t strike me as particularly cosmic.

I'd personally consider getting a fishy body to be body horror, it's the part about having peoples' minds and souls twisted to be followers of vile gods that is more along the line of cosmic horror in my book.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 08:13:42 AM
You can debate the opinions expressed in "Starship Troopers", but there is no debate about the repulsiveness of what the Pod People or the Deep Ones represent.
After playing Call of the Sea, I would contest that. There is an allure in being able to live forever under the sea, to be “part of your world.”
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 08:33:38 AM
If you’re interested, somebody did a deep dive analysis into The Shadow Over Innsmouth: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-69#post-11986039

A choice quote:
Quote
The message of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is that we all deserve to die. All of us. Everyone. Every single last human.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 13, 2021, 08:35:17 AM
You can debate the opinions expressed in "Starship Troopers", but there is no debate about the repulsiveness of what the Pod People or the Deep Ones represent.
After playing Call of the Sea, I would contest that. There is an allure in being able to live forever under the sea, to be “part of your world.”

OK, now things get really strange: tonight I dreamed that I swam under the sea as an escape from the real world  :o
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 08:55:48 AM
You can debate the opinions expressed in "Starship Troopers", but there is no debate about the repulsiveness of what the Pod People or the Deep Ones represent.
After playing Call of the Sea, I would contest that. There is an allure in being able to live forever under the sea, to be “part of your world.”

OK, now things get really strange: tonight I dreamed that I swam under the sea as an escape from the real world  :o
Told you so
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 13, 2021, 11:38:14 AM
If you’re interested, somebody did a deep dive analysis into The Shadow Over Innsmouth: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-69#post-11986039

A choice quote:
Quote
The message of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is that we all deserve to die. All of us. Everyone. Every single last human.
Thanks for the links. I read it and I was not impressed. Classic woke storm: "Lovecraft was problematic because... uh... let's look for reasons..."

Just two examples. First, it stumbles right out of the gate:
Quote
Consider: the story generally presents xenophobia as justifiable. Foreigners are dangerous. Nonhumans are even more dangerous.
No. This is a classic example of false equivalence. You can't arbitrarily tie "Foreigners" to "Non humans". There is a reason as why in fiction humans fear non humans and it should be an obvious one. Neither the main character in Innsmouth is hated by humans: they are a culture of Deep Ones.

The fear of "others" that can take a human form and mix with the unaware us is present across the human spectrum of fears and arts. It is present in Le Fanu, Stoker, Campbell, Philip K. Dick, Asimov... One could argue that even "Blade Runner" is an example of it. Somehow, it is used only as a sin when useful against Lovecraft. First strike for "I'll give an arbitrary interpretation to an element of the tale so to prove my woke point".
Quote
But then, we have a scene where a mob of villagers with torches - led by the local priests and community leaders - are chasing an outsider out of their town...and it's the bad guys doing it to the main character. The scene is evocative of a Puritan flash mob in a way that the author couldn't possibly have been unaware of
Why! The scene is also evocative of flash mobs who chased away the Frankenstein monster in classic literature and movies. I don't know if Lovecraft went to the movies but he had an in-depth knowledge of classic horror. That "Frankenstein" may have been the inspiration is not considered. Neither is that Lovecraft may have read of Puritan flash mobs and used them just as an inspiration for the scene without any political meaning.

No, there is only one interpretation, and it is the woke one. Don't dare to debate it.

I could go on ("People living in colonial times behaving and looking at the World like... people living in colonial times?! Heresy!" Manhattan, meanwhile, was most famously bought by Dutch explorers from the local natives for goods worth about $25). But I have other things to do with my life - like preparing my upcoming CoC campaign. If you are curious about a specific woke stupidity in that "analysis" just ask.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 12:38:24 PM
I think all of the wokeness has poisoned the well for these kinds of debates. This forum is so opposed to wokeness that it’s impossible to engage in good faith with anything judged woke or woke-adjacent.

Quote
One could argue that even "Blade Runner" is an example of it.
Blade Runner presents the replicants as victims and tragic villains, not irredeemable monsters that must be exterminated to protect the human race.

Quote
First strike for "I'll give an arbitrary interpretation to an element of the tale so to prove my woke point".
Leila Hahn goes out of her way to explain, rationalize, and defend Lovecraft’s behavior rather than dismiss him as a worthless bigot. She psychoanalyses his writing and biography in an attempt to understand him as much as it is possible with a dead person. That’s the last thing a truly woke person would do. Empathy is not a woke value.

She goes out of her way to analyze and speculate to a degree that any Lovecraft fan would hope to dream of being able to. She’s contributed plenty of interesting analyses of the aliens and monsters that I have never seen in any other fansite or forum or game. Biology, psychology, metaphysics, evolution, etc. A woke bigot who hated HPL would not be doing that. She clearly likes the material enough to write textbooks worth of anakysis and commentary. Effing textbooks worth!

Her analysis of the deepies doesn’t treat them as a persecuted minority and acknowledges their imperialistic behavior. She even takes into account that the deepies engage in propaganda and whitewashing of their own history. She explicitly compares them to white colonialists. A woke bigot, again, wouldn’t do that. Woke bigots want to fuck the fish people to satisfy their monster fetish, not psychoanalyze them and examine their culture from an anthropological standpoint.

Here you go dismissing all that as woke bigotry and personal attacks on Lovecraft. This is what I mean about poisoning the well. You’re so opposed to the woke that you absolutely refuse to tolerate any interpretation of HPL’s work that doesn’t take it purely at face value and lionizes Lovecraft.

The guy named his cat a racial slur and regularly dehumanized people in his stories on the basis of class, race, and culture. This is the horrifying ending revelation of “Medusa’s Coils”:

Quote
It would be too hideous if they knew that the one-time heiress of Riverside, the accursed gorgon or lamia whose hateful crinkly coil of serpent-hair must even now be brooding and twining vampirically around an artist's skeleton in a lime-packed grave beneath a charred foundation, . . . for, though in deceitfully slight proportion, Marceline was a negress.

To treat “The Shadow over Innsmouth” purely as a horror story where “fish people bad” is the takeaway and every other critical analysis take not matter how well reasoned is bad and wrong (especially if it sounds “woke”)… that takes Death of the Author to the most ridiculous extremes.

Quote
Neither is that Lovecraft may have read of Puritan flash mobs and used them just as an inspiration for the scene without any political meaning.
Now you’re just insulting HPL’s intelligence. The bookworm was a precursor to Tolkien. He would write layers of symbolism and references into his stories that only the erudite would understand. You’re deliberately flattening all those layers of meaning simply to defend HPL’s character (which isn’t being attacked here anyway) while ironically devaluing him as a writer and an intellectual.

This is exactly the kind of anti-intellectual cherry-picking backlash that I expected the woke to have created in their insanity. The well is so poisoned. Do you believe that if you read this analysis ten or twenty years ago that you’d still dismiss it as woke bigotry?

Even S.T. Joshi acknowledges that Lovecraft’s work was full of both literal racism and racist allegories, and he’s one of the premier Lovecraft scholars. He even handed in his award when they took away HPL’s likeness. Acknowledging that Lovecraft was racist because of his upbringing and wrote racism and racist allegories into his work, as was standard at the time he lived in, is not a woke take. I read such analyses as mainstream long before the woke panic.

Maybe Hahn’s analyses aren’t perfect or extensive enough, but they’re hardly woke bigotry. She displays empathy for Lovecraft, which the woke do not do. I know because I have chatted with them about it and they can’t fucking shutup about how he’s the devil incarnate. Hahn is not attacking Lovecraft. She’s treating him like a human being, with all the baggage that entails.

Treating Lovecraft like an actual human being, warts and all, is something that already doesn’t happen enough on both sides of the political aisle.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 13, 2021, 01:48:42 PM
Something to consider is that the cross breed deep ones are more like stages of alien and lean more to a cult than anything really alien until they start to really change. The full on deep ones are much like they Mi-Go and other horrors. They can converse with you. But their minds and goals may be strange in the Deep ones case, or utterly alien in the Mi-Go case. We can understand only a portion and only as long as these creatures stoop to our level and pretend to be human/ish. And the deep ones are still more or less terrestrial in some manner. While being inexorably connected to outer beings.

In effect they do not seem as alien because we mostly only see them when they are either believing or pretending to be human. Which fits with Lovecraft's usual leaning to hint at, but leave some or most details to the imagination of the reader.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 03:02:53 PM
Something to consider is that the cross breed deep ones are more like stages of alien and lean more to a cult than anything really alien until they start to really change. The full on deep ones are much like they Mi-Go and other horrors. They can converse with you. But their minds and goals may be strange in the Deep ones case, or utterly alien in the Mi-Go case. We can understand only a portion and only as long as these creatures stoop to our level and pretend to be human/ish. And the deep ones are still more or less terrestrial in some manner. While being inexorably connected to outer beings.

In effect they do not seem as alien because we mostly only see them when they are either believing or pretending to be human. Which fits with Lovecraft's usual leaning to hint at, but leave some or most details to the imagination of the reader.
That doesn’t equate to “they’re evil monsters and we must exterminate them.” They’re clearly intelligent and capable of reasoning in a fashion compatible with human existence. We don’t actually have any reliable evidence that they’re inherently hostile to humanity, either. They’re not like the bugs in Starship Troopers that viciously attack any humans they come into contact with.

Sure, it wrecks the horror when you start thinking critically about it. But Hahn’s analysis of “The Whisperer in the Darkness” highlight oddities in the original text that makes both the narrator and the aliens out to be quite incompetent. It’s quite comedic, actually. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-47#post-10837016

Hahn’s analysis of the mermen biology and psychology is neat. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-71#post-12004197 Hahn speculates that one possibility is that the mermen are victims of Cthulhu’s telepathy. Cthulhu doesn’t actually have any interest in lesser beings, it’s just that Cthulhu’s thoughts blast the minds of any sensitives so that they irrationally worship it. The mermen, being telepathic themselves, fell into Cthulhu’s unintentional thrall. This makes them more tragic than villainous.

Hahn’s analysis of Cthulhu is also pretty novel. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-38#post-10350440  Rather than the starspawn being Cthulhu’s servants or children, Hahn speculates based on textual inferences that the starspawn and Cthulhu are actually the same thing: an alien hive mind with a malleable multidimensional body.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 13, 2021, 05:12:40 PM
Something to consider is that the cross breed deep ones are more like stages of alien and lean more to a cult than anything really alien until they start to really change. The full on deep ones are much like they Mi-Go and other horrors. They can converse with you. But their minds and goals may be strange in the Deep ones case, or utterly alien in the Mi-Go case. We can understand only a portion and only as long as these creatures stoop to our level and pretend to be human/ish. And the deep ones are still more or less terrestrial in some manner. While being inexorably connected to outer beings.

In effect they do not seem as alien because we mostly only see them when they are either believing or pretending to be human. Which fits with Lovecraft's usual leaning to hint at, but leave some or most details to the imagination of the reader.
That doesn’t equate to “they’re evil monsters and we must exterminate them.” They’re clearly intelligent and capable of reasoning in a fashion compatible with human existence. We don’t actually have any reliable evidence that they’re inherently hostile to humanity, either. They’re not like the bugs in Starship Troopers that viciously attack any humans they come into contact with.

Sure, it wrecks the horror when you start thinking critically about it. But Hahn’s analysis of “The Whisperer in the Darkness” highlight oddities in the original text that makes both the narrator and the aliens out to be quite incompetent. It’s quite comedic, actually. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-47#post-10837016

Hahn’s analysis of the mermen biology and psychology is neat. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-71#post-12004197 Hahn speculates that one possibility is that the mermen are victims of Cthulhu’s telepathy. Cthulhu doesn’t actually have any interest in lesser beings, it’s just that Cthulhu’s thoughts blast the minds of any sensitives so that they irrationally worship it. The mermen, being telepathic themselves, fell into Cthulhu’s unintentional thrall. This makes them more tragic than villainous.

Hahn’s analysis of Cthulhu is also pretty novel. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-38#post-10350440  Rather than the starspawn being Cthulhu’s servants or children, Hahn speculates based on textual inferences that the starspawn and Cthulhu are actually the same thing: an alien hive mind with a malleable multidimensional body.

So, rather than worship HPL's works, we should worship someone else's speculative interpretations of HPL's works?  So, stupid, once removed.  HPL's works revolve around the ideas that humanity is insignificant, but totally unaware of their insignificance.  That powerful forces move through the universe seeking their inscrutable desires, and their interactions with humanity are similar to our interactions with insects.  That's cosmic horror.  The idea that humanity can be warped and coopted without anything we can do to stop it.  That everything we think we know is a thin veneer separating us from intelligences that are not so much malevolent, just indifferent to us to the point that our destruction is just a unknowing byproduct of their unexplainable goals.  The idea that the monsters of HLP's works either "reason" or are "compatible with human existence" shows a complete lack of understanding of HPL's works and mythos.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 13, 2021, 05:37:55 PM
Quote
But then, we have a scene where a mob of villagers with torches - led by the local priests and community leaders - are chasing an outsider out of their town...and it's the bad guys doing it to the main character. The scene is evocative of a Puritan flash mob in a way that the author couldn't possibly have been unaware of
Why! The scene is also evocative of flash mobs who chased away the Frankenstein monster in classic literature and movies. I don't know if Lovecraft went to the movies but he had an in-depth knowledge of classic horror. That "Frankenstein" may have been the inspiration is not considered. Neither is that Lovecraft may have read of Puritan flash mobs and used them just as an inspiration for the scene without any political meaning.

Hang on, who is forming mobs to chase who now?
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 13, 2021, 05:57:09 PM
That doesn’t equate to “they’re evil monsters and we must exterminate them.” They’re clearly intelligent and capable of reasoning in a fashion compatible with human existence. We don’t actually have any reliable evidence that they’re inherently hostile to humanity, either. They’re not like the bugs in Starship Troopers that viciously attack any humans they come into contact with.

The stated goal of the deep ones is to bring about the rise of, in no particular order, Cthulhu, Dagon, and Hydra, any of whom would promptly come snack on humanity.

For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time.

And we know that this is a species-wide imperative rather than a social thing that can be excused with #notalldeepones, because as he is transformed the narrator goes from working against them to totally being on board for it.  Trying to claim that the deep ones are rational creatures who can be expected to be talked out of destroying humanity is right up there with the people from the Mars Attacks movie.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 13, 2021, 06:23:44 PM
That doesn’t equate to “they’re evil monsters and we must exterminate them.” They’re clearly intelligent and capable of reasoning in a fashion compatible with human existence. We don’t actually have any reliable evidence that they’re inherently hostile to humanity, either. They’re not like the bugs in Starship Troopers that viciously attack any humans they come into contact with.

The stated goal of the deep ones is to bring about the rise of, in no particular order, Cthulhu, Dagon, and Hydra, any of whom would promptly come snack on humanity.

For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time.

And we know that this is a species-wide imperative rather than a social thing that can be excused with #notalldeepones, because as he is transformed the narrator goes from working against them to totally being on board for it.  Trying to claim that the deep ones are rational creatures who can be expected to be talked out of destroying humanity is right up there with the people from the Mars Attacks movie.

The real problem with most people (the left might be over-represented here, but it is true of just about all populations) is that they are completely incapable of recognizing their own base assumptions.  They project their own faults on everyone around them.  So RPG-makers and players stress about keeping people from connecting evil races with black people, not because the other players think that way, but because secretly they think that way.  Like when anti-gun people say that other people can't be trusted with guns because those people might be unable to control themselves in a fit of angry, because the anti-gunners secretly know theycan't be trusted with guns.

So when people ignore the hostile and alien nature of lovecraftian creatures, it's usually because they don't want to believe that some other being is incapable of reason and compromise, because they secretly fear that they are incapable of reason and compromise...
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 13, 2021, 09:07:11 PM
Because there’s absolutely no parallels between Dagonite apocalypticism and Christian apocalypticism. Gotcha.

I’m not saying the deep ones are right in the head, but 1) I’m sure that a lot of human beings might be all too happy to adopt their beliefs and 2) they’re lucid enough that we might not be able to tell the difference between “driven mad by Cthulhu” and “I feel the Lord Jesus in my soul.”

http://bactra.org/jesus-cthulhu.html

That doesn’t equate to “they’re evil monsters and we must exterminate them.” They’re clearly intelligent and capable of reasoning in a fashion compatible with human existence. We don’t actually have any reliable evidence that they’re inherently hostile to humanity, either. They’re not like the bugs in Starship Troopers that viciously attack any humans they come into contact with.

The stated goal of the deep ones is to bring about the rise of, in no particular order, Cthulhu, Dagon, and Hydra, any of whom would promptly come snack on humanity.

For the present they would rest; but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved. It would be a city greater than Innsmouth next time.

And we know that this is a species-wide imperative rather than a social thing that can be excused with #notalldeepones, because as he is transformed the narrator goes from working against them to totally being on board for it.  Trying to claim that the deep ones are rational creatures who can be expected to be talked out of destroying humanity is right up there with the people from the Mars Attacks movie.

The real problem with most people (the left might be over-represented here, but it is true of just about all populations) is that they are completely incapable of recognizing their own base assumptions.  They project their own faults on everyone around them.  So RPG-makers and players stress about keeping people from connecting evil races with black people, not because the other players think that way, but because secretly they think that way.  Like when anti-gun people say that other people can't be trusted with guns because those people might be unable to control themselves in a fit of angry, because the anti-gunners secretly know theycan't be trusted with guns.

So when people ignore the hostile and alien nature of lovecraftian creatures, it's usually because they don't want to believe that some other being is incapable of reason and compromise, because they secretly fear that they are incapable of reason and compromise...
But obviously you’re immune to this and aren’t subject to unconscious biases at all. Gotcha.

Jfc. Before you started spouting this self-righteous know-it-all bullshit I was ready to turn in, to concede, to reexamine my assumptions, blah blah blah. But fuck that.

I’m the sort of person who thinks tyranids are cool, even knowing that they eat planets.

With HPL’s mermen, I was ready to reexamine the assumptions made about them. I ready to ask “sure, they’re scary, but is that really a bad thing? Maybe I want to be part of their world even though it’s terrifying, or even because it’s terrifying?”

It’s close to the same questions asked by transhumanism and posthumanism. To be entirely honest, those kinds of futures are borderline Lovecraftian. Except this time it’s humans who are the Lovecraftian monsters.

And here you go masturbating to your fish genocide fantasies and telling me I’m bad, wrong, and stupid for not doing the exact same thing as you. I know that’s hyperbole, but fuck it, you pissed me off.

The fish rape and fish genocide fantasies get old after a while. There’s only so many times I can listen to this same old shit before I lose interest.

I’m done. You’re just as much of a pain in my ass as those fucking stupid SJWs I tried talking to. I’m sorry for putting it like that, but I’m just so fucking angry right now at this fucking horrible cultural wasteland created by the war between the woke and the anti-woke. I can’t do any kind of fucking critical analysis without both sides of the political shithole labeling me an istaphobe.

This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

It’s so cathartic to type that.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 13, 2021, 09:12:13 PM
LOL, calm down, BCT.

I just can't wait for you to try and reason with some tcho-tchos.

Hint: don't accept any dinner invitations.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: SHARK on June 13, 2021, 10:26:51 PM
Greetings!

*Laughing* So many tears and gnashing teeth over the desires to kill horrifying fish-men that are devoted to monstrous gods in books of fantasy. ;D

Geesus. You know, I have always loved literature. I discovered in a college literature class where I had to read some pretentious liberal-feminist shit book *critically analyzing* the deeper meanings and implications of a book on the impact of women's clothing on women of society, the criminal justice system, and broader cultural impact on the consciousness and development of feminism. Like, 400 pages. Then I had to write a god-awful paper on analyzing the fucking book and swallowing such jello.

My head hurts just thinking about it. Similarly, I think there can be far too much energy and thought poured into "critically analyzing" Lovecraft. Just read the fucking books and take them at face value, and stop trying to see signs of the fucking cosmic pyramid and the deeper implications on our own society through the Lovecraft books. I like it when some genuine scholars have something meaningful to say in regards to a work of literature. However, most people that are deeply double-special super-cereal into "Critically Analyzing" literature are full of shit.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 13, 2021, 10:29:12 PM
I'm... fairly certain that nobody here said anything about wanting to rape fish.  And also fairly certain that Christian dogma is not hardwired into humanity so deeply that some random non-human creature who became human would suddenly want to sacrifice the world for Jesus.  A human must choose an increasingly-unlikely series of choices to A: Be on board with Jesus, then B: Decide Jesus wants the world to be destroyed to feed his insatiable appetite, whereas the narrator for Shadow over Innsmouth was twisted from actively opposing deep ones to actively supporting them, entirely against his will.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: David Johansen on June 14, 2021, 12:28:57 AM
Now you've got me thinking about the Innismouth Kingdom Hall and the door knockers going around handing out leaflets.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 14, 2021, 01:02:58 AM
This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

Just because you want us all to die does not mean we should not all try to get along and live together in harmony.

I mean there is no surviving evidence that you want to bring about the end of days.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jaeger on June 14, 2021, 01:24:14 AM
...
My head hurts just thinking about it. Similarly, I think there can be far too much energy and thought poured into "critically analyzing" Lovecraft. Just read the fucking books and take them at face value, and stop trying to see signs of the fucking cosmic pyramid and the deeper implications on our own society through the Lovecraft books. I like it when some genuine scholars have something meaningful to say in regards to a work of literature. However, most people that are deeply double-special super-cereal into "Critically Analyzing" literature are full of shit.
...

Conflict theory and it's critical theory offshoots are the gifts that keep on giving.

And it has permeated our culture and been taught in our education system for long enough that a lot of people don't even know that is the indoctrinated lens they are viewing things through.

The only criteria for measuring right or wrong is: have/have-not, and/or: oppressor/oppressed.

If you are perceived to be a have-not and/or oppressed class or person, then whomever is your opposite is the bad guy. Irrespective of real world considerations.

Like my little Drow homage back on page 8 of this thread  - Critical/Conflict theory can make anyone "The real the bad guy" if you can label them as a one of the haves/oppressors.

Objective Morality need not apply.

We see the long term effects of this in the recent Ravenloft as evil gets watered down and lines blurred to the point that Count Strahd is a supplement or two away from being portrayed as a ruler just trying to protect his realm from colonialist adventurers that appear out of the mists trying to kill him and take his stuff for no reason at all...

When your notions of right and wrong are defined as who is being "oppressed", or a "have-not", then you can find yourself getting into bed with some pretty disgusting people all in the name of  "doing the right thing."

A fairly recent example of this being WOTC's hiring of Jessica Price to work on the new Ravenloft.

The only reason any company would hire someone with her track record is if they are no longer able to tell who the bad guys really are anymore...

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Jaeger on June 14, 2021, 01:26:03 AM
This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

Just because you want us all to die does not mean we should not all try to get along and live together in harmony.

I mean there is no surviving evidence that you want to bring about the end of days.

This forum seriously needs one of those "like" buttons for posts...
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: amacris on June 14, 2021, 04:37:29 AM
The only criteria for measuring right or wrong is: have/have-not, and/or: oppressor/oppressed.
If you are perceived to be a have-not and/or oppressed class or person, then whomever is your opposite is the bad guy. Irrespective of real world considerations.
Like my little Drow homage back on page 8 of this thread  - Critical/Conflict theory can make anyone "The real the bad guy" if you can label them as a one of the haves/oppressors.
Objective Morality need not apply.
We see the long term effects of this in the recent Ravenloft as evil gets watered down and lines blurred to the point that Count Strahd is a supplement or two away from being portrayed as a ruler just trying to protect his realm from colonialist adventurers that appear out of the mists trying to kill him and take his stuff for no reason at all...
When your notions of right and wrong are defined as who is being "oppressed", or a "have-not", then you can find yourself getting into bed with some pretty disgusting people all in the name of  "doing the right thing."
A fairly recent example of this being WOTC's hiring of Jessica Price to work on the new Ravenloft.
The only reason any company would hire someone with her track record is if they are no longer able to tell who the bad guys really are anymore...

Great assessment. Critical theory is indeed causing Hollywood to turn last generation's villains into heroes and vice versa. Off the top of my head -- the Wicked Witch, Maleficent, Joker, Cruella, Loki, now protagonists.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2021, 07:04:46 AM
I'm... fairly certain that nobody here said anything about wanting to rape fish.  And also fairly certain that Christian dogma is not hardwired into humanity so deeply that some random non-human creature who became human would suddenly want to sacrifice the world for Jesus.  A human must choose an increasingly-unlikely series of choices to A: Be on board with Jesus, then B: Decide Jesus wants the world to be destroyed to feed his insatiable appetite, whereas the narrator for Shadow over Innsmouth was twisted from actively opposing deep ones to actively supporting them, entirely against his will.
Nah, let him rant.  Half the fun is watching him get angry and make stupid statements, usually because the comments hit too close to home.  The rest of us can shrug that kind of thing off, but he goes all nuclear in an instant.  It's hysterical!
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 14, 2021, 10:38:56 AM
Greetings!

*Laughing* So many tears and gnashing teeth over the desires to kill horrifying fish-men that are devoted to monstrous gods in books of fantasy. ;D

Geesus. You know, I have always loved literature. I discovered in a college literature class where I had to read some pretentious liberal-feminist shit book *critically analyzing* the deeper meanings and implications of a book on the impact of women's clothing on women of society, the criminal justice system, and broader cultural impact on the consciousness and development of feminism. Like, 400 pages. Then I had to write a god-awful paper on analyzing the fucking book and swallowing such jello.

My head hurts just thinking about it. Similarly, I think there can be far too much energy and thought poured into "critically analyzing" Lovecraft. Just read the fucking books and take them at face value, and stop trying to see signs of the fucking cosmic pyramid and the deeper implications on our own society through the Lovecraft books. I like it when some genuine scholars have something meaningful to say in regards to a work of literature. However, most people that are deeply double-special super-cereal into "Critically Analyzing" literature are full of shit.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

you took the words right out of my head. My head spins reading this thread.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 14, 2021, 11:19:37 AM
This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

Just because you want us all to die does not mean we should not all try to get along and live together in harmony.

I mean there is no surviving evidence that you want to bring about the end of days.
Because trying to live in harmony has worked out so well for us, hasn’t it? War, genocide, religious fanaticism, politics… the list goes on.

A couple of months ago I played the horror game Lust from Beyond. It was inspired by Lovecraft without actually being set in the Cthulhu mythos fanfiction universe. LfB doesn’t simply try to scare or terrify you with disturbing imagery. It presents you with some philosophy. One of the questions posed by the game is whether human consciousness is worth preserving or whether we would genuinely happier as wireheads. Given my constant frustrations with humanity, I found the wirehead option genuinely tempting.

When horror makes you wonder whether you even want to be human anymore, then I think it succeeded. Being tempted to discard your humanity should be horrifying, more so than simply knowing that others did.

With the face value interpretation of Innsmouth, that kind of “horror of temptation” is completely absent. The fish frog things are evil, they want our women (and our men, don’t forget that part), we should hate them, we should kill them all, we should celebrate their destruction, etc. The horror comes from them being different from us, from the fear of being assimilated and supplanted by an alien gene pool and culture.

There’s no horror of temptation. There’s no attempt to make the reader wonder “would I want to marry a mermaid? Would I want my descendants to dwell amidst wonder and glory forever?” like the people who traded with the deepies probably did themselves.

Hahn’s speculative analysis of the yogspawn has similar implications. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/lets-read-everything-howard-phillips-lovecraft-ever-wrote.19724/page-44#post-10746665  Her speculation about their lifecycle and civilization raises some of the same horror temptation. Yes, their “gut-brain” existence is horrifying. There’s no way to pretend it isn’t. But in a way, it’s tempting to abandon the frustrations of civilized existence and live in an endless dream as your gut-brain does all the thinking for you.

I don’t think the face value “deepies are sea orcs” interpretation is inherently wrong, bad, evil or w/e. I don’t find it to my tastes, anymore than I find interest in the “deepies are a persecuted minority” interpretation. I feel both takes are reductive and don’t explore the concept as deeply as it could be explored. I think you could do a lot more with the psychological horror elements.

After seeing Cthulhutech take the “deep ones are sea orcs” to its logical extreme by having them run industrial rape camps and shit, seeing the constant flame wars over how to correctly interpret the genre of cosmic horror (I don’t think most fans understand it half as well as they think do, myself included), reading article after article demonizing HPL and praising any story that depicts the monsters as persecuted minorities, increasingly reactionary responses that are just more of the same in reverse, etc… I’m deeply disillusioned with all of it.

In this very thread I’ve seen posters call Cthulhu “evil”, say that it wants to snack to humanity, and that the deepies want to make that happen (and are, in fact, able to do so). I felt that all these assumptions are highly questionable. I was under the impression that the point of cosmic horror was that Cthulhu wasn’t evil, didn’t have any interest in humans, and the cults’ attempts to raise it were nothing more than the delusions of sensitives who had the misfortune of intercepting its incomprehensible dreams.

One of the most interesting analogies for the mythos was one in which the universe was compared to a backyard garden, with humans being a colony of small black ants and Cthulhu being a rabbit that wanders around the yard. Cthulhu doesn’t deliberately try to knock down anthills, but sometimes it just gets unlucky. There’s a bit more to the analogy, but I’d need to find the original.

But if we’re not actually on the same page regarding even simple things like that…

I feel like I’m stuck in a frustrating limbo where I can never find a place to belong or where I can have interesting debates about things. Everywhere I go I feel like I have to learn and follow a party line or else be labeled an istaphobe. I can’t simply hold an opinion, I have to hold a prescribed opinion or else be demonized. It’s terribly exhausting.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 14, 2021, 03:12:12 PM
OK, this post will be long. It is, possibly, the longest post I ever wrote for a forum. It answers a post by BoxCrayonTales. If you will jump it or got bored half-way... you are right! Be warned that a key example involves a long detour about David Lynch. I felt the need to include it because it is the best practical example I can give about "analysing a creative work" - something I feel being very important here.

No one with a normal mind denies that Lovecraft is racist (or, better yet, Xenophobic): you only have to read his tales. I openly recognised this in the first post of this very thread. BTW, I'm Italian and thus among the targeted groups.

I'm not mindlessly "anti-woke" when debating their ideas. If anything, politically I'm center-left. I'm for sure against "wokeness" as a dangerous religion - the one that admits only "sin" and no redemption, then looking obsessively for "sin" everywhere. As an Italian, I can track Lovecraft's realisation, later in his life, that maybe some of his ideas about race and ethnicity were wrong. When I hit the "woke wall" "NO! You can't say that Lovecraft was a product of his time! You can't say that he was slowly redeeming himself late in his life! (before being killed while still young and productive by a terrible form of cancer) I just refuse it and I genuinely think that it is a very dangerous mindset. "Sin can't have any redemption!" is as inhuman as the Deep Ones.

I can't judge Leila Hahn's efforts because I never followed her. I'll check her works and I genuinely hope that you are right. Meanwhile I can only judge what is presented to me, like this analysis of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and it is a terrible analysis. For all her efforts, she fails from the start to follow the first rule of textual analysis: "First start with the text, and the text only. Your first pass must be as pure as possible." Hahn, instead, just can't help to start with:

Xenophobia isn't just present in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Every sentence drips with it. Every word and syllable is marinated in it. Lovecraft was always a very xenophobic author, of course, but this tale takes it to an incredible extreme even by his own standards. And, like the Red Hook stories (sic), I don't think Lovecraft himself was unconscious or even uncritical of this.

...Which is already her take on the text. As an "analysis" it gets an "F" right there. "Lovecraft was xenophobic!" Sure enough. But one of the very first questions one should consider, "was he xenophobic in this story?" (because one thing doesn't lead to the other) remains a critical point of failure.

Once you approach the problem correctly, you easily find that, no, Lovecraft, wasn't "always a very xenophobic author". There is no xenophobia in many of his poems. There is no xenophobia in classics like "The Music of Erich Zann". And there is no Xenophobia in "The Haunter of the Dark" - a tale where, if anything, is the "cultured New Englander" full of hubris that gets nuked, and it is the community of "poor Italians and their Catholic priest" who was right from the beginning and now has to pick up the pieces.

This is why in her "analysis" of "Innsmouth", Leila Hahn fails from the very first paragraph. This has nothing to with "anti-wokeness" or anything else, only with "Text Comprehension 101".

"The swastika-holding Pacific Islanders slaughtered a local hybrid population, with seemingly even less justification".

Sure, because only the Nazis committed genocide in known human history - that the story was written and published years before Hitler came to power be damned!  ::) "Reductio ad Hitlerum" at his worst. If it is true that Hahn is such a good critic, why she torpedoes herself this way over and over?

And why nowhere in this "in-depth analysis" she considers what an important "NPC" clearly states about Innsmouth?

"But the real thing behind the way folks feel is simply race prejudice - and I don’t say I’m blaming those that hold it. I hate those Innsmouth folks myself"

This is part of the text. And you have a recognition by Lovecraft that racism is real right there! And, more specifically, that some racism springs from hate! And she just flies over it instead of, for example, starting a debate about if hate justifies racism (no, IMHO it doesn't, BTW), or if Lovecraft is actually condemning the fact (the main character has a neutral approach about it).

(Ironically, later we discover that the source of all the racism and the hate were the Deep Ones that in 1846, first tried to rape and then killed half of the population after the humans rebelled - then occupying and governing the town; so much for "trying to talk with the - oh!, so nice! fish people" ::)).

To further clarify this important point in criticism, first approaching the text and the text only, this is the example I always use with my students: we watch together David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive". In the movie we see both the real world and the dreams caused by some events the characters go through. I then ask them to connect the real events with the dreams, and what these connections tell us using only the contents of the movie. David Lynch was amazingly rigorous about this in his movie which is the reason why I use it.

So, the students munch about the movie and then try to cheat by reading (or watching) "interpretations" on the internet. And I always get the guy or the gal who pipes up "The dreams follow Freud's idea of dreams as compensation!" Cool! Congratulations for your Google-fu! Problem is "Nothing in the movie refers to Freud." As an interpretation can be acceptable, but it contaminates the analysis of the sheer contents by bringing in an outside element - Freud.

Sometimes, but it is rare, a student says "She dreams about the two judges in the competition that allowed her to have a shot in Hollywood as queer figures that, by the end, become malevolent, laughing ghosts. This because those judges once symbolised her hopes to become a star in Hollywood only to symbolise, now, how she was "cheated", and how that victory assigned by those judges actually led her to ruin."

Which, wow!, is a totally fine analysis. Agree or disagree with it, but it never strays from the contents of the movie.

I hope that this example is clear enough. Clear enough to show where Leila Hahn and many others fail - no matter how "good" their intent is.

Hahn even fails in her research. She doesn't consider at all the immense number of sources that Lovecraft mentioned when talking about "Innsmouth", and that had nothing to do with xenophobia or other ugly things: from a dream he had, to the fact that both his parents died in a mental hospital (and thus his fear of having inherited a propensity for physical and mental degeneration), to a visit to Newburyport, to Robert W. Chambers' "The Harbor-Master" and Irvin S. Cobb's "Fishhead" (the latter vividly acclaimed in "Supernatural Horror in Literature") to, of all people, H.G. Wells and his short story "In the Abyss" - from where Lovecraft does seem to have taken his description of the "fish people" (that's the same H.G.W. who wrote "The War of the Worlds" as a criticism of British Colonialism, BTW).

Again, nowhere these sources are mentioned in Hahn analysys. Why?

And then Hahn devolves into the straight stunning:

"The message of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is that we all deserve to die. All of us. Everyone. Every single last human."

Nnnnnnnnnnn...oh? The very quote by Lovecraft she puts above this doesn't say that. The quote essentially says that "knowing the reality of the universe leads to the understanding that human existence is meaningless, to the point that non-existing is the better choice (and thus suicide)." But both here and in his possibly most famous quote "...That we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." he offers a peaceful alternative: ignorance.

Even worse, Hahn fails to place the quote. It is from an political essay that Lovecraft wrote in 1921, ten years before "Innsmouth", and titled "Nietzscheism and Realism". In it, rather stunningly, Lovecraft perceives "...The impracticability of Nietzscheism and the essential instability of even the strongest governments." It is a nihilist essay, about why and how any form of government is destined to collapse (totalitarianism included - so much for those "swastika-holding Pacific Islanders"). Lovecraft thinks that the human condition is one of suffering, hopelessness, lost in the vast abysses of infinite space and time. No form of government (and nothing else, actually) can save humanity from this: the best attempts only delude for a while. From here, better not to live at all.

These are the words of someone either suffering or who has suffered from deep depression or disillusion. 1921 was the year when Lovecraft lost his mother to insanity. But Hahn withdraws this information, takes the sentence without giving context, sends it to "Innsmouth" via extraordinary rendition, and uses it as the lead in to that incredibly misguided final commentary. And people applaud her for her efforts!

I have read S.T. Joshi biography of Lovecraft - all the 1100+ pages of it. True: amazingly enough, he recognises that Lovecraft was a xenophobe - as anyone who read his tales can tell you. It is good to know that Joshi read Lovecraft before writing his biography.

Talking about "Innsmouth", Josh first points out how it was written by Lovecraft in late 1931, during a new spell of disillusionment and lack of faith in his own writing craft. It was a very difficult story for Lovecraft to write, with not less than four versions discarded before the final one. Joshi for sure recognises at once racism as "a" interpretation (not "the"), with, possibly, the involvement of...

"...Such things as Lovecraft’s general coolness toward sex, the frequency with which members of his own ancestry married their cousins, perhaps even his possible awareness of the cause of his father’s death [madness]."

Notice the careful use of the word "interpretation".

But Joshi, later in his examination, also pushes the racist idea by pointing out how it appears over and over "in text":

"By means of his protagonist, Lovecraft occasionally betrays his own paranoia: during his escape from Innsmouth, Olmstead hears "horrible croaking voices exchanging low cries in what was certainly not English," as if a foreign language were in itself a sign of aberration."

How far we are from Hahn maybe well intended but incredibly amateurish ramblings...

You mention Tolkien. Tolkien?? The guy who, until his last breath, declared how he hated "allegories" and "interpretations", and how "A tale should be read only as the narration of some events, maybe happening somewhere else in a different time, and nothing else." Sorry to break you the news, but if there is someone who "flattens" Lovecraft (and himself) before anyone else, he is Tolkien.

True, both Lovecraft and Tolkien "would write layers of symbolism and references into his stories that only the erudite would understand." But this doesn't mean that they do bring the contents and meanings of these references into their tales. Once again one thing doesn't lead to the other. Tolkien's Ring is Tolkien's Ring, not Siegfried's. The "wise man with a staff" is a recurring image in fables and fantastic art, but Gandalf is Gandalf, not Moses. Gandalf is not even Saruman and for sure he is not Elminster.

Which is, ironically, what each one of us does everyday when preparing a original adventure for their players. As I often mentioned, my 13 years long D&D campaign was based on the Iran-Contra scandal. Was it anti-American? Not at all: it was anti-some "Good" Gods in the Forgotten Realms. The Devils were the Iranians? No, they were Devils born and raised by a stunt by Tyr and company done "for the greater good". Were the elves "a clear proof that the Contra rebels were represented in the campaign"? Not at all: some Good Gods dangle in front of them the opportunity to recapture Myth Drannor and it ended... not well.

Should have I written and published book instead of creating a D&D campaign I'm pretty sure that someone would have pointed at the plot and said "This is a clear denouncing of American politics in the '80s! This guy is anti-American!" And the inspirations would have been there! - except that not even once you would have found a NPC named "North". But you would have found a hidden eighth level of Carceri named Pyranesia - because the visuals were not "inspired" but directly taken from what Piranesi showed us in his "Carceri" art (https://www.google.com/search?q=piranesi+carceri&rlz=1C5CHFA_enIT680IT680&sxsrf=ALeKk02a5gNcrAWcqXMiIk7h3HL-Tlmw9Q:1623652302519&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXr-uVwJbxAhVK_aQKHaJhBCcQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1680&bih=882), and thus I made a direct reference to the source.

Lovecraft can be interpreted and "psychoanalysed". Alan Moore does just that in "Providence". As the main character he creates Robert Black, an "American gay Jew" living in 1919, because (Moore's words...)

"I chose some parts of Robert's character specifically because they resonated interestingly with some of Lovecraft's prejudices. I thought this would be a good way to actually make some of Lovecraft's views emotionally explicit by showing them from the point of view of someone who could not help but be hurt by them.

But Moore is too intelligent to stop there. Across the series, it becomes increasingly clear how Blake's experiences are both about his struggle with his repressed homosexuality and his general being in the 1920s, and at the same time show that the Mythos are quite real. Moore is not interested in choosing a single interpretation of Lovecraft's work. To him, Blake's feverish, fearful hallucinations when accidentally poisoned by a gas leak are born by his repressed homosexuality (earlier stimulated by the clear interest shown for him by a certain Detective Tom Malone...) and there was no gas leak and Blake had a scrape with the Mythos (issue #2).

But Moore (who had read "anything Lovecraft" before he started writing "Providence") also said of the man:

"...If you actually look at his attitudes, they are actually precisely those of the white, middle class Anglo-Saxon Protestant heterosexual men of his period. All of his fears were almost exactly the median of social fears at the time. He was frightened of Bolsheviks. He was frightened of foreigners. He was frightened of women. He was frightened of gay people."

What basically Moore says across the series is "Listen, we all know the nature of Lovecraft the man and we can we can find it in his works. But this doesn't imply that these works must be interpreted as misogynist, racist, serial killerist or whatever else. They can stand by themselves, at the same time, as very creative, very inspiring, very horrific works."

Which indirectly answers the absolute cringeworthy statement that the very interviewer makes while introducing his interview with Moore (https://bleedingcool.com/comics/recent-updates/alan-moore-writes-a-gay-jewish-protagonist-for-providence-to-address-lovecrafts-prejudices/):

"Lovecraft was vocally homophobic and anti-Semitic in his personal life and, to some extent in his writings. In fact, that's one of the things I've seen crop up in conversations about this comic Providence already, in the form of speculation. Some fans have essentially asked why people who create Lovecraft-based stories shy away from addressing these hard truths about Lovecraft's prejudices."

Really? Because, maybe, once again the inspiration is not the content and thus being inspired by Lovecraft doesn't mean to translate the man in your tale or be obliged to address "hard truths" that simply are not there to address once you consider the tale alone? Most importantly (and sadly) you just had an interview with Alan Moore where he addressed this point, and about a creative work where he addressed the same point across twelve issues, and you learned nothing?! What a waste of that time of your life (not ours thankfully).

I know how a young Lovecraft named his cat. I read about it everywhere. What I never found was someone pointing out how cats were the creatures most beloved to Lovecraft. The Lovecraft gave that name to a creature he deeply loved could be the spark for an interesting debate about the complexities of his personality - and not necessarily a debate that ends well for Lovecraft. But, since, I guess, this is a remote possibility, it will never be held. "Pure sin" doesn't admit complexity.

Some final side notes:

Re: "Blade Runner". I mentioned the movie as part of the "fear of the other" examples. This doesn't imply that the other is evil in this case (or in Dick's original novel), but there is no doubt how, in both movies, humans fear replicants who develop emotions, free will and become indistinguishable from human beings.

Re: Leila Hanh. While writing this I put my nose into some other writings by her. I'm reading her analysis of Cthulhu and surrounding - and, up to the point I reached (one third in) she remains faithful to the texts. If she manages to pull through I'll recognise her effort.

Re: Jesus. He multiplied fishes. There is a dark clue in there.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: ThatChrisGuy on June 14, 2021, 03:45:24 PM
big snip

I read the whole thing and now I just wanna watch Mullholland Drive.

Actually I want to watch Inland Empire but that's a bit hard to find now and I never had a copy anyway.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 14, 2021, 04:24:35 PM
<snipped>
I read it all. This is actually a pretty good analysis, Reckall. Hats off.

Oh, and if you want to twitch a little more, I like reading the old Daily Bestiary blog as it comes up with some intriguing ideas for critter encounters.

The one for Great Cthulhu had a particularly disturbing seed. Cthulhu is dreaming in R'lyeh... but the seas and continents have changed significantly... and now a group of cultists seeks to rouse him, not on some mythic island... but in a major American city.

Raleigh, North Carolina, to be precise.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 14, 2021, 04:45:11 PM
There's this unspoken assumption among many of Lovecraft's defenders that readings of race issues into Lovecraft's work are part of a malign conspiracy to besmirch the author and his work. While there are obviously plenty of SJWs doing just that, that doesn't mean that everyone else is. It doesn't mean that such a reading inherently devalues the work, either, and may very well enhance it.

To say "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is either racist or not racist misses the point. It's not that simple. The story certainly deals with racial themes, such as when the text initially leads you believe the Innsmouth look was the result of race mixing with pacific islanders only to later reveal that it was the result of mixing with fish people.

It is very easy to read as an allegory for fear of miscegenation. But there's more to the horror than that. It's not simply that the fish people engage in conspiracy to infiltrate and supplant humanity. Horror comes from the story unsettling what it means to be human. The fish people, for all their differences, are genetically human. Hominid, if you want to be pedantic. In turn that relates back to racism and fears of miscegenation, which are founded on the belief that other races are subhuman despite their ability to interbreed.

I think that racial themes are inherent to the story and can't be separated from it. But I don't believe that makes the story bad and that we should feel bad for liking it. Whether the story itself is actually presenting the deep ones as villains is ambiguous. Their stated actions are very close what human beings have historically done to each other, so we can't exactly claim they're worse than humans in that respect. Zadok's account isn't necessarily reliable either, and that may have been intentional. Neither is whatever we heard from the fish people themselves. The ending could be interpreted as an ironic nihilistic happy ending depending on how you approach it, since another recurring theme of HPL's stories is that we're all doomed and trying to delay the inevitable is pointless.

I don't think that reductive readings like "it's racist!" or "it's not racist" contribute that much. "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" presents us with a psychotic serial killer who goes around doing repulsive things and generally being repulsive. "The Litany of Earth" presents us with a flawless Mary Sue who can do no wrong and lectures us for being the real racists. Cthulhutech has them running rape camps with the implication that's mostly or exclusively women being raped for extra misogyny points.

I think it should be possible to write the fish people without falling into those extremes, those traps. What's frustrating is that people too often treat it as an either/or thing. There's no room for nuance. The fish people are either evil cultists or a persecuted minority, nothing else. Even in Hahn's thread, I saw the potential for nuance going over a lot of people's heads.

To go back to my horror game comparison for a sec... One of the most disturbing aspects of the Lust from Beyond game isn't that it assaults our eyes with disturbing imagery, but that it makes us feel for the "villains" and "monsters" of the story without diminishing or justifying their horrifying actions. There's drama, introspection, those sorts of things. I feel that enhances the horror factor and that stories about Innsmouth would benefit from that.

Have you ever read "The Black Brat of Dunwich"? Long story short, it's a retelling of "The Dunwich Horror" except with Wilbur Whateley as our doomed protagonist trying to escape the old ones. Otherwise, the events are unchanged, albeit reinterpreted. Wizard Whateley is still a deranged cultist. Furthermore, I think it dovetails very nicely with Hahn's xenology article on the yogspawn, particularly when she asks if Wilbur would have turned out a villain if he was raised by non-cultists and the whole speculation about how he was slowly growing into a horrifying alien monster. The synthesis is very Cronenberg, I think.

I'm sorry. I'm so frustrated by how polarized the discourse has become.

I remember being so angry after reading "Shoggoths in Bloom." Long story short: the story explicitly compares shoggoths with black people. No surprise there. It's so ironically racist because the narrator is a black man. People hated when Detroit: Become Human compared androids with black people, but suddenly that plot outline becomes suddenly okay when you're writing hatefic of HPL.

The story doesn't raise anything new, because we've already been philosophizing similar stuff in bioethics. Is it moral to use slaves if they covet slavery? "Shoggoths in Bloom" say it's wrong (because of the narrator's personal experiences as a black man), but I've seen arguments to the contrary. The reason why slavery is bad is because it causes unnecessary suffering to the slaves. If some robot slaves can't experience that suffering by their nature, then why would it be bad?

I'm so frustrated. I don't know what I want.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 14, 2021, 04:58:37 PM
This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

Just because you want us all to die does not mean we should not all try to get along and live together in harmony.

I mean there is no surviving evidence that you want to bring about the end of days.
Because trying to live in harmony has worked out so well for us, hasn’t it? War, genocide, religious fanaticism, politics… the list goes on.

**Looks around at the current lack of war, genocide, religious fanaticism and politics.  Nods**

It was all worth it.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 14, 2021, 07:32:41 PM
No one with a normal mind denies that Lovecraft is racist (or, better yet, Xenophobic): you only have to read his tales. I openly recognised this in the first post of this very thread. BTW, I'm Italian and thus among the targeted groups.

No one in their right mind believes Lovecraft was racist, you only have to read his tales.
In several of his stories he portrays immigrants and such as actually in the right and doing what they can to hold off the horrors. While its very often the white people who scoff, disbelieve and nigh invariably make things worse.
In a way he might not have even been xenophobic. Theres been some small discussion that Lovecraft was actually his eras version of woke. My how the pendulum swings doesnt it? He did grow out of his sheltered worldviews once he got out and actually met more people. And got un-woke.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 14, 2021, 08:09:57 PM
No one with a normal mind denies that Lovecraft is racist (or, better yet, Xenophobic): you only have to read his tales. I openly recognised this in the first post of this very thread. BTW, I'm Italian and thus among the targeted groups.

No one in their right mind believes Lovecraft was racist, you only have to read his tales.
In several of his stories he portrays immigrants and such as actually in the right and doing what they can to hold off the horrors. While its very often the white people who scoff, disbelieve and nigh invariably make things worse.
In a way he might not have even been xenophobic. Theres been some small discussion that Lovecraft was actually his eras version of woke. My how the pendulum swings doesnt it? He did grow out of his sheltered worldviews once he got out and actually met more people. And got un-woke.

I generally agree with Reckall's commentary, but I also agree with BoxCrayonTales that the interesting question isn't "Lovecraft was racist" versus "Lovecraft wasn't racist". It seems to me that most people's answer to that is just a declaration of identity rather than a nuanced position.

Lovecraft was a brilliant writer, and had tons of depth to his work. Part of where I also agree with BoxCrayonTales is that Lovecraft generally avoided having good versus evil in his stories - so talking about Old Ones as evil is dodging much of the depth of the stories. There was a potential escape in ignorance, but it was never a very good answer.

In terms of gaming, I've played and run a ton of Call of Cthulhu. It works well enough as a general monster-killing game, but I think it gets even better when there are complex sides rather than just monster-killing (and cultist-killing).


This is why I hate humanity. Every last fucking one. Cthulhu can’t wake up fast enough.

Just because you want us all to die does not mean we should not all try to get along and live together in harmony.

I mean there is no surviving evidence that you want to bring about the end of days.

Because trying to live in harmony has worked out so well for us, hasn’t it? War, genocide, religious fanaticism, politics… the list goes on.

**Looks around at the current lack of war, genocide, religious fanaticism and politics.  Nods**

It was all worth it.

I'm not quite sure what is literal here - but from my view, humanity has done many terrible things, but it is also the best that it's ever been. War and genocide have been decreasing for decades, and people have been living longer and better lives throughout the world.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 14, 2021, 08:16:50 PM
I kind of feel that some people here are fighting the wrong battle.

The thing to be defended is whether it's ok to like something even if it contains some racist elements and it isn't necessary for such things to be restricted in order to protect the plebs.  And also to push back on the ridiculously over-inflated work the concept of 'harm' is doing in woke narratives.

There are people here who seem to argue that nothing is ever racist, even things like R.E. Howard, or Lovecraft that to my mind contain ridiculously blatant examples of racism.  It's beside the point to my mind.  Even if you think they don't contain racism, what if they did?  Would it be ok to cancel them? Obviously not.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 14, 2021, 09:35:17 PM
I think it should be possible to write the fish people without falling into those extremes, those traps. What's frustrating is that people too often treat it as an either/or thing.
No, NO, NO!  That isn't a trap!  Your cosmopolitan, pampered, Western, relativistic worldview is the trap.  Your insistence that nuance is necessary, or even obligatory, is the trap.  HPL's monsters are the essence of other.  They are not redeemable, nor are they sympathetic.  They are alien, in the most extreme meaning of that word.  They seek, as part of their very being, the destruction of humanity, not as a hostile act, but because humanity's survival is irrelevant to their aims.  They are no more amenable to compromise with humanity than humans are amenable to compromise with cockroaches or termites.  And that absolute enmity with human concerns is vital, central, impossible to remove without destroying what cosmic horror is intended to mean in those stories.

You rage against suggestions that you are blind to your own biases that prevent you from understanding these stories, and yet every word you write simply confirms that blindness.  You cannot write Lovecraftian monsters with "nuance" and still have Lovecraftian horror.  Only someone so steeped in modern bourgeoisie relativism that they can't even see outside their own mental constructs could miss this.  By definition, a Lovecraftian horror is one that is impossible to understand, to bargain with, to defeat.  The most you can ever to is to delay the inevitable.  Cthulhu sleeps and waits, but he will awake, and all of our civilization will crumble.  THAT is Lovecraftian horror.  And it doesn't work if the Deep Ones are "reasonable" and "understandable" creatures.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 14, 2021, 09:40:10 PM
I don't believe R.E. Howard was racist, except in the harmless 'foreigners are strange and exotic' way that people like to pick at lately.  Conan was a racist, but he was living in a time before recorded history, so can't really say that an uneducated barbarian not being super on top of treating people respectfully is terribly out of character.  And even Conan managed to interact with people of very different ethnic groups and nationalities with some degree of aplomb from time to time.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 14, 2021, 09:43:32 PM
I think it should be possible to write the fish people without falling into those extremes, those traps. What's frustrating is that people too often treat it as an either/or thing.
No, NO, NO!  That isn't a trap!  Your cosmopolitan, pampered, Western, relativistic worldview is the trap.  Your insistence that nuance is necessary, or even obligatory, is the trap.  HPL's monsters are the essence of other.  They are not redeemable, nor are they sympathetic.  They are alien, in the most extreme meaning of that word.  They seek, as part of their very being, the destruction of humanity, not as a hostile act, but because humanity's survival is irrelevant to their aims.  They are no more amenable to compromise with humanity than humans are amenable to compromise with cockroaches or termites.  And that absolute enmity with human concerns is vital, central, impossible to remove without destroying what cosmic horror is intended to mean in those stories.

You rage against suggestions that you are blind to your own biases that prevent you from understanding these stories, and yet every word you write simply confirms that blindness.  You cannot write Lovecraftian monsters with "nuance" and still have Lovecraftian horror.  Only someone so steeped in modern bourgeoisie relativism that they can't even see outside their own mental constructs could miss this.  By definition, a Lovecraftian horror is one that is impossible to understand, to bargain with, to defeat.  The most you can ever to is to delay the inevitable.  Cthulhu sleeps and waits, but he will awake, and all of our civilization will crumble.  THAT is Lovecraftian horror.  And it doesn't work if the Deep Ones are "reasonable" and "understandable" creatures.
Yeah, I was kind of boggling at BCT there myself.

But that's part and parcel of wokeist thought nowadays, as you said. Many of them do not believe in monsters, either the fictional kind or the real ones that will beat them senseless and laugh about it.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 14, 2021, 09:58:03 PM
I don't believe R.E. Howard was racist, except in the harmless 'foreigners are strange and exotic' way that people like to pick at lately.  Conan was a racist, but he was living in a time before recorded history, so can't really say that an uneducated barbarian not being super on top of treating people respectfully is terribly out of character.  And even Conan managed to interact with people of very different ethnic groups and nationalities with some degree of aplomb from time to time.
Who cares?  As I said it's not the point. Are you suggesting that if it were racist no one should read and enjoy it?  That whether it is ok to read and enjoy it is dependent on it not being even a little bit racist?

There's an extent to which if you get sucked into arguing the wrong thing, you are implictly conceding the more imporant principle.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 15, 2021, 01:34:56 AM
Your insistence that nuance is necessary, or even obligatory, is the trap. HPL's monsters are the essence of other.  They are not redeemable, nor are they sympathetic.  They are alien, in the most extreme meaning of that word.  They seek, as part of their very being, the destruction of humanity, not as a hostile act, but because humanity's survival is irrelevant to their aims.  They are no more amenable to compromise with humanity than humans are amenable to compromise with cockroaches or termites.  And that absolute enmity with human concerns is vital, central, impossible to remove without destroying what cosmic horror is intended to mean in those stories.

HPL is not at all about good humanity-protecting people versus evil monsters. I've played in a bunch of Call of Cthulhu games that worked like this, and they always came across as vastly shallower than Lovecraft's stories. I think his stories are nuanced and complex.

For one, there isn't a hard line between monsters and humans. In many of his stories, monsters are an inherent part of the world we live in, part of our history, part of our future, and even a part of ourselves. There is no safe part of humanity or society free of corruption. Pursuing science is dangerous ("From Beyond", "Herbert West"); but also, living in the past and tradition is also dangerous ("The Rats in the Walls", "Arthur Jermyn and his Family").

Saying that the monsters are not redeemable is missing the point of his nihilism. The horror of his stories is that there is no sin or redemption - there is just stark reality in shades of grey.

CoC games where PCs save the world by shooting monsters with shotguns and dynamite can be fun, but they aren't very Lovecraftian IMO. I've felt that games are much more shocking, horrific, and Lovecraftian when the PCs do have to compromise - when they need to make hard choices including compromise, like working with a Yithian that has possessed their friend, for example. Sometimes trying to kill the monster just brings greater doom on everyone, and it's better to just accept, avoid, and/or compromise.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 15, 2021, 02:14:59 AM
I never felt Call of Cthulhu was about shades of grey at all.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 15, 2021, 02:59:32 AM
I wouldn't call it shades of grey, but it's not black and white either.

The horror of Lovecraft's cosmos is in part the idea the morality and notions of good and evil are purely human and utterly irrelevant in the greater scheme of things.

The great old ones are basically amoral rather than supernaturally evil. Human notions of morality are too small and petty a thing for them to be concerned with.

We can ask call them evil, but at the same time it's potentially like ants thinking that we're evil because we step on them.

There's a quote from Neitzsche which basically presents something of the same idea (although he doesn't see it as necessarily a source of horror)

Quote
“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of 'world history' — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.”
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Lynn on June 15, 2021, 03:34:45 AM
There's this unspoken assumption among many of Lovecraft's defenders that readings of race issues into Lovecraft's work are part of a malign conspiracy to besmirch the author and his work. While there are obviously plenty of SJWs doing just that, that doesn't mean that everyone else is. It doesn't mean that such a reading inherently devalues the work, either, and may very well enhance it.

Right, and there are plenty of those in the SF writing world, and in Hollywood, and they reinforce the notion that you shouldn't separate the artist from the art. That's how you get works like "Lovecraft Country."
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 15, 2021, 07:09:34 AM
Your insistence that nuance is necessary, or even obligatory, is the trap. HPL's monsters are the essence of other.  They are not redeemable, nor are they sympathetic.  They are alien, in the most extreme meaning of that word.  They seek, as part of their very being, the destruction of humanity, not as a hostile act, but because humanity's survival is irrelevant to their aims.  They are no more amenable to compromise with humanity than humans are amenable to compromise with cockroaches or termites.  And that absolute enmity with human concerns is vital, central, impossible to remove without destroying what cosmic horror is intended to mean in those stories.

HPL is not at all about good humanity-protecting people versus evil monsters. I've played in a bunch of Call of Cthulhu games that worked like this, and they always came across as vastly shallower than Lovecraft's stories. I think his stories are nuanced and complex.

For one, there isn't a hard line between monsters and humans. In many of his stories, monsters are an inherent part of the world we live in, part of our history, part of our future, and even a part of ourselves. There is no safe part of humanity or society free of corruption. Pursuing science is dangerous ("From Beyond", "Herbert West"); but also, living in the past and tradition is also dangerous ("The Rats in the Walls", "Arthur Jermyn and his Family").

Saying that the monsters are not redeemable is missing the point of his nihilism. The horror of his stories is that there is no sin or redemption - there is just stark reality in shades of grey.

CoC games where PCs save the world by shooting monsters with shotguns and dynamite can be fun, but they aren't very Lovecraftian IMO. I've felt that games are much more shocking, horrific, and Lovecraftian when the PCs do have to compromise - when they need to make hard choices including compromise, like working with a Yithian that has possessed their friend, for example. Sometimes trying to kill the monster just brings greater doom on everyone, and it's better to just accept, avoid, and/or compromise.
No, there are no white and dark, no shades of grey (your descriptions, not mine).  There is just unending black.  Nowhere did I speak of morality or human triumph (please quote where I did).  The term "redeemable" referred to the folks writing the stories, redeeming the Old Ones via humanizing them (apparently modern Western bourgeoisie leftism destroys reading comprehension, too).  So trapped in your zeitgeist you have to try and work relativism somewhere.  No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 15, 2021, 09:29:52 AM
No, there are no white and dark, no shades of grey (your descriptions, not mine).  There is just unending black.  Nowhere did I speak of morality or human triumph (please quote where I did).  The term "redeemable" referred to the folks writing the stories, redeeming the Old Ones via humanizing them (apparently modern Western bourgeoisie leftism destroys reading comprehension, too).  So trapped in your zeitgeist you have to try and work relativism somewhere.  No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.

Regarding "good" and "evil", Lovecraft gives his bleak opinion in the same essay "Nietzscheism and Realism" that I mentioned before:

"It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients - or their lack - and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing "good" because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like - whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest which should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic Nature - nothing is either good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate - automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability."

Which is the best summation of the grounds on which he built his cosmology I ever read.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 15, 2021, 11:01:40 AM
Saying that the monsters are not redeemable is missing the point of his nihilism. The horror of his stories is that there is no sin or redemption - there is just stark reality in shades of grey.

CoC games where PCs save the world by shooting monsters with shotguns and dynamite can be fun, but they aren't very Lovecraftian IMO. I've felt that games are much more shocking, horrific, and Lovecraftian when the PCs do have to compromise - when they need to make hard choices including compromise, like working with a Yithian that has possessed their friend, for example. Sometimes trying to kill the monster just brings greater doom on everyone, and it's better to just accept, avoid, and/or compromise.

No, there are no white and dark, no shades of grey (your descriptions, not mine).  There is just unending black.  Nowhere did I speak of morality or human triumph (please quote where I did).  The term "redeemable" referred to the folks writing the stories, redeeming the Old Ones via humanizing them (apparently modern Western bourgeoisie leftism destroys reading comprehension, too).  So trapped in your zeitgeist you have to try and work relativism somewhere.  No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.

The last part is provably false. In some of Lovecraft's stories, humans and monsters are so much alike that they are literally indistinguishable. The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, for example, is presumed human at first and considers himself human, but turns out to be of monstrous descent. This is also explored in "The Rats in the Walls" and "Arthur Jermyn and his Family" as well as other stories -- that some inhuman creatures can interbreed with humans and indeed have interbred for millennia.

I think running Call of Cthulhu purely as shotguns-and-dynamite, kill-the-monsters misses aspects like these.

I explored some of these aspects in a Victorian era campaign, using John Tynes' Golden Dawn sourcebook. Part of the horror in that was each PC learning more about themselves in disturbing fashion. In one adventure, a PC learned that he was partly descended from a snake-like race that were the basis for legends of the Little People, and he could mesmerize humans and other prey animals.

More broadly, we use the term "mythos" for Lovecraft's monsters - but they aren't a unified group all from the same origin all with perfect knowledge beyond us and the same goals. They tend to have huge differences from humans, but they can also be terrified of what is beyond their knowledge. Creatures like the Elder Things and the Yithians had their own civilizations on Earth that rose and collapsed, just as humans rose and collapsed. The Elder Things were themselves terrified of what was beyond their civilization, that brought about their doom. The campaign module Masks of Nyarlathotep has a captured Yithian that can be a useful source of information if communicated with, which I thought was interesting - and I'm a little disappointed that our PCs missed it when I recently played through that.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 15, 2021, 11:24:53 AM
I think it should be possible to write the fish people without falling into those extremes, those traps. What's frustrating is that people too often treat it as an either/or thing.
No, NO, NO!  That isn't a trap!  Your cosmopolitan, pampered, Western, relativistic worldview is the trap.  Your insistence that nuance is necessary, or even obligatory, is the trap.  HPL's monsters are the essence of other.  They are not redeemable, nor are they sympathetic.  They are alien, in the most extreme meaning of that word.  They seek, as part of their very being, the destruction of humanity, not as a hostile act, but because humanity's survival is irrelevant to their aims.  They are no more amenable to compromise with humanity than humans are amenable to compromise with cockroaches or termites.  And that absolute enmity with human concerns is vital, central, impossible to remove without destroying what cosmic horror is intended to mean in those stories.

You rage against suggestions that you are blind to your own biases that prevent you from understanding these stories, and yet every word you write simply confirms that blindness.  You cannot write Lovecraftian monsters with "nuance" and still have Lovecraftian horror.  Only someone so steeped in modern bourgeoisie relativism that they can't even see outside their own mental constructs could miss this.  By definition, a Lovecraftian horror is one that is impossible to understand, to bargain with, to defeat.  The most you can ever to is to delay the inevitable.  Cthulhu sleeps and waits, but he will awake, and all of our civilization will crumble.  THAT is Lovecraftian horror.  And it doesn't work if the Deep Ones are "reasonable" and "understandable" creatures.
The past four days have been extremely stressful for me in real life (e.g. I’ve been having nothing but diarrhea all that time), so I apologize if there’s any confusion as a result of my responses.

It’s not my desire to see the horror subtracted. It’s extremely difficult to explain this because we both seem to have completely different meanings when it comes to basic words, but I’ll try.

I feel that Innsmouth stories are typically extremely schlocky. They rely on violence, gore, graphic rape (of women, and only women), etc. The more subtle psychological horror in the original story is completely absent. The fish people are reduced to caricatures with more in common with dothraki or orcs than anything else. I feel these recurring elements betray the writers’ biases and hangups regarding horror and sexuality more than it says anything about cosmic horror.

The stories that don’t fall into that are typically SJW claptrap where the fish people are a persecuted minority with nothing but redeeming values. Any kind of horror is absent; at best you get dark fantasy.

It’s extremely difficult to find stories that actually emphasize the alien nature of the fish people without resorting to gory misogynistic b-schlock. The only decent effort I’ve found is Call of the Sea, an adventure puzzle video game.

What I mean to say is: I think writer biases and hangups regarding violence, sexuality, more recently social justice, etc cloud our ability to explore cosmic horror. This goes in all political directions. This problem is particularly pronounced whenever stories broach any topics that relate even remotely to human social issues like race relations.

It’s easy to avoid complicating a story where an alien from another universe is trying to eat you or an ancient city is telepathically eroding your mind. It’s a lot more difficult when things like sex with fish people is involved.

I’m not trying to argue that we can make peace with the fish people and live in a peaceful multicultural society, unless the story is presenting that as horrifying. And to be fair, going by Hahn’s xenology speculation, a multicultural society would result in fish people genetics dispersing through the human population and making everyone subject to Cthulhu’s dreams.

I think there’s tons of potentially interesting avenues that are being completely ignored here.

I’ve also been having similar problems trying to pitch omnivoracious hivemind bug stories elsewhere. I keep running into people who think the bugs should inevitably engage in diplomacy, when my entire argument has been that they’re so alien that they don’t interact in any way other than genocidal warfare. I’m pitching these bugs as intelligent and introspective, and reasonable in the literal sense: they’ve reasoned that the best way to interact with humans (and everything else) is to eat/assimilate them as part of their quest for borg-esque perfection. In fact, some bugs who give it any thought are actually surprised that other species would not want to join this quest and blame this resistance on pathological ignorance. The bugs are reasonable, yet impossible to reason with. They don’t bother to engage in communication with other species because it won’t convince them to surrender and let themselves be eaten. Etc.

I hope I explained that right because it’s really difficult to get it across to human readers, it seems.

Anyway, I’m tired now so I’ll sign off.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 15, 2021, 05:02:36 PM
Saying that the monsters are not redeemable is missing the point of his nihilism. The horror of his stories is that there is no sin or redemption - there is just stark reality in shades of grey.

CoC games where PCs save the world by shooting monsters with shotguns and dynamite can be fun, but they aren't very Lovecraftian IMO. I've felt that games are much more shocking, horrific, and Lovecraftian when the PCs do have to compromise - when they need to make hard choices including compromise, like working with a Yithian that has possessed their friend, for example. Sometimes trying to kill the monster just brings greater doom on everyone, and it's better to just accept, avoid, and/or compromise.

No, there are no white and dark, no shades of grey (your descriptions, not mine).  There is just unending black.  Nowhere did I speak of morality or human triumph (please quote where I did).  The term "redeemable" referred to the folks writing the stories, redeeming the Old Ones via humanizing them (apparently modern Western bourgeoisie leftism destroys reading comprehension, too).  So trapped in your zeitgeist you have to try and work relativism somewhere.  No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.

The last part is provably false. In some of Lovecraft's stories, humans and monsters are so much alike that they are literally indistinguishable. The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, for example, is presumed human at first and considers himself human, but turns out to be of monstrous descent. This is also explored in "The Rats in the Walls" and "Arthur Jermyn and his Family" as well as other stories -- that some inhuman creatures can interbreed with humans and indeed have interbred for millennia.

You know, your argument might be better served if your evidence didn't actually support what everyone has been saying here the whole time.  The entire point of HPL's stories on these matters is that "race" wins out.  The narrators in those stories aren't human.  Their lineage has warped them beyond humanity, to the point where they behave in incomprehensible (to normal, rational people) ways.  That's the whole point.  They aren't "good" or "redeemable" or "relatable" or anything else that would connect them with humanity.  They have become the other, due to forces beyond their control, and now are warped and inhuman.  That's HPL's cosmic horror.  It isn't "shades of grey."  If it touches you, you lose everything, including your humanity, with no hope to prevail against it.  I don't see how that contradicts anything I said.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Eirikrautha on June 15, 2021, 05:04:49 PM
No, there are no white and dark, no shades of grey (your descriptions, not mine).  There is just unending black.  Nowhere did I speak of morality or human triumph (please quote where I did).  The term "redeemable" referred to the folks writing the stories, redeeming the Old Ones via humanizing them (apparently modern Western bourgeoisie leftism destroys reading comprehension, too).  So trapped in your zeitgeist you have to try and work relativism somewhere.  No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.

Regarding "good" and "evil", Lovecraft gives his bleak opinion in the same essay "Nietzscheism and Realism" that I mentioned before:

"It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients - or their lack - and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing "good" because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like - whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest which should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic Nature - nothing is either good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate - automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability."

Which is the best summation of the grounds on which he built his cosmology I ever read.
I haven't seen that quote before.  It's good to see that what I thought was the basis of his worldview (as expressed in the stories) is borne out by his own words on the subject.  It's exactly what I said above...
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Shasarak on June 15, 2021, 06:57:58 PM
The last part is provably false. In some of Lovecraft's stories, humans and monsters are so much alike that they are literally indistinguishable. The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, for example, is presumed human at first and considers himself human, but turns out to be of monstrous descent. This is also explored in "The Rats in the Walls" and "Arthur Jermyn and his Family" as well as other stories -- that some inhuman creatures can interbreed with humans and indeed have interbred for millennia.

Your shades of grey is literally "50 shades of grey"? 

How does the moral flow diagram work in this case:  Can you have babies with this creature?  If yes then morally ambiguous;  If no then morally black or white.

That Joe, he may be the spawn of Satan but hes not so bad once you get to know him.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 15, 2021, 11:02:48 PM
No, in HPL humans aren't "like" the monsters.  We can't be.  They are so far beyond us, in power and purpose, that such a comparison is ludicrous.

The last part is provably false. In some of Lovecraft's stories, humans and monsters are so much alike that they are literally indistinguishable. The narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, for example, is presumed human at first and considers himself human, but turns out to be of monstrous descent. This is also explored in "The Rats in the Walls" and "Arthur Jermyn and his Family" as well as other stories -- that some inhuman creatures can interbreed with humans and indeed have interbred for millennia.

You know, your argument might be better served if your evidence didn't actually support what everyone has been saying here the whole time.  The entire point of HPL's stories on these matters is that "race" wins out.  The narrators in those stories aren't human.  Their lineage has warped them beyond humanity, to the point where they behave in incomprehensible (to normal, rational people) ways.  That's the whole point.  They aren't "good" or "redeemable" or "relatable" or anything else that would connect them with humanity.  They have become the other, due to forces beyond their control, and now are warped and inhuman.  That's HPL's cosmic horror.  It isn't "shades of grey."  If it touches you, you lose everything, including your humanity, with no hope to prevail against it.  I don't see how that contradicts anything I said.

I can't tell if we're disagreeing or not, because the verbiage here is very abstract.

From my view, I feel like this is projecting a specialness onto humanity that isn't present in Lovecraft. You say that monsters aren't "good" or "redeemable" -- but I would say that in Lovecraft's mindset, humans also aren't "good" or "redeemable". Nihilism rejects those terms. Humans aren't uniquely special and good - they are just an ordinary species that is no better or worse than Yithians or white apes or any other life form. "Humanity" isn't some precious snowflake quality that makes people good. Human beings are frequently terrible and murderous to each other.

Objectively and scientifically, in Lovecraft's world, humans can and do communicate with inhuman life forms, compromise with them, and even live and breed with some of them. The humans who do this can be considered "other" -- but they aren't necessarily punished for those sins, because there isn't any such moral framework of sin and redemption.

In game terms, the difference I see is:

1) The PCs always just destroy anything inhuman or strange, with shoguns and dynamite. Maybe the terms "good" and "evil" aren't used, but it's still clear and simple fight-the-bad-guys.

2) The PCs sometimes need to make judgement calls about compromise or dealings with monsters to achieve their goals. I gave examples of strange dealings in some of my campaigns - like the PC who found he was of snake-creature descent, and the captured Yithian in Masks of Nyarlathotep that the PCs could gain useful information from.

In practice, I've felt that #2 is more interesting, more horrific, and more Lovecraftian.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: TJS on June 16, 2021, 03:18:23 AM
There's the Charle's Stross novel where they went along with Nyarlathotep becoming Prime Minister of the UK, because it seemed like the least worst option.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 16, 2021, 03:51:08 AM
There is an interesting (and thus often overlooked  :) ) passage that Lovecraft places right at the beginning of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth":

"There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. [...] Complaints from many liberal organisations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end."

It is, AFAIK, the only time that Lovecraft inserted a political element in one of his stories. It shows how the Government, while keeping the secrecy, it was actually quite open regarding the events concerning Innsmouth. Lovecraft doesn't write that the liberal organisations became passive "as usual", but "surprisingly". It is not a statement against liberalism or the free press, but the recognition that once one saw what was really happening in Innsmouth any partisanship was dropped. It immediately became a matter of "us vs. them".

I feel that there is a connection, here, between the tale and Lovecraft's famous quote "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" (which is actually a recognised psychopathology (https://www.healthline.com/health/understanding-and-overcoming-fear-of-the-unknown#overcoming-fear)). It doesn't matter if the "other" may actually be a tragic figure, like the Replicants in "Blade Runner" or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 16, 2021, 04:56:07 AM
I generally agree with Reckall's commentary, but I also agree with BoxCrayonTales that the interesting question isn't "Lovecraft was racist" versus "Lovecraft wasn't racist". It seems to me that most people's answer to that is just a declaration of identity rather than a nuanced position.

Lovecraft was a brilliant writer, and had tons of depth to his work. Part of where I also agree with BoxCrayonTales is that Lovecraft generally avoided having good versus evil in his stories - so talking about Old Ones as evil is dodging much of the depth of the stories. There was a potential escape in ignorance, but it was never a very good answer.

In terms of gaming, I've played and run a ton of Call of Cthulhu. It works well enough as a general monster-killing game, but I think it gets even better when there are complex sides rather than just monster-killing (and cultist-killing).

1: Very. SJWs love to throw around terms till they lose all meaning then the usual village idiots parrot it as holy writ.

2: To Lovecraft the real horror was not that they were good or evil. But that they were totally indifferent to siderial life. They seem good or evil from a terrestrial viewpoint. But its like an ants view of a human unknowingly stepping on an anthill. Or actively trying to be rid of pests. Or as Gerry Anderson loved to put it. It is not life as we dont know it. It is life as we can not know it.

3: CoC works horrible as a general monster killing game. That is nigh the diametric opposite of what CoC is intended for.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 16, 2021, 05:16:47 AM
I don't believe R.E. Howard was racist, except in the harmless 'foreigners are strange and exotic' way that people like to pick at lately.  Conan was a racist, but he was living in a time before recorded history, so can't really say that an uneducated barbarian not being super on top of treating people respectfully is terribly out of character.  And even Conan managed to interact with people of very different ethnic groups and nationalities with some degree of aplomb from time to time.

REH was not racist in the modern "everything on earth" way. From research for a RPG for a company back in the 90s what it was was that he really disliked one or more tribes of Native Americans. It reads not so much as racist as "never trust these jerks!" sort of personal experience. Apache? I do not recall as its been 25 years. Pretty sure it was one of the tribes that other tribes didnt like either. Yeah I know. Shocking isnt it? Get thee to a fainting couch!

As for Conan. The idea of him being racist is beyond absurd. This was trotted out back in the 90s iteration of the SJW cult and will near certainly be again when the 2030s iteration rears its ugly head. Conan for example never trusted the Pict as they were notoriously prone to backstabbing and madness and comported with demons and worse. But I am fairly sure that if it did not happen in the books, Conan would give a Pict a chance if they comported themselves in a manner contrary to the general populace. And pretty much how he treated anyone. He'd get along with Stygians and whatever long as they werent trying to kill him.

Conan also had a disdain for civilization as he saw it as a weakening force. He actually respected the Pict more than alot of civilized kingdoms. But he also had an appreciation for the finer things in life, moreso over time. Very much not a one-dimensional character.

And this is the point of this thread. Some of us have seen more than one wave of the exact same stupid claims with each iteration. It didnt fly 20 years ago, and it didnt fly 40 years ago, ad nausium.

As always. These cultists dont actually read the books. They read a paragraph of some college disertation on how wacist authors are! They hate something because someone told them to.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 16, 2021, 08:16:24 AM
There is an interesting (and thus often overlooked  :) ) passage that Lovecraft places right at the beginning of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth":

"There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. [...] Complaints from many liberal organisations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end."

It is, AFAIK, the only time that Lovecraft inserted a political element in one of his stories. It shows how the Government, while keeping the secrecy, it was actually quite open regarding the events concerning Innsmouth. Lovecraft doesn't write that the liberal organisations became passive "as usual", but "surprisingly". It is not a statement against liberalism or the free press, but the recognition that once one saw what was really happening in Innsmouth any partisanship was dropped. It immediately became a matter of "us vs. them".

I feel that there is a connection, here, between the tale and Lovecraft's famous quote "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" (which is actually a recognised psychopathology (https://www.healthline.com/health/understanding-and-overcoming-fear-of-the-unknown#overcoming-fear)). It doesn't matter if the "other" may actually be a tragic figure, like the Replicants in "Blade Runner" or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
I'm not even sure that's political. More like 'okay, this is what you are defending'. And then they get to meet the Deep Ones and take a SAN hit.

Other media have tried to play this card with varying levels of success -- some less so than others.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 16, 2021, 02:03:03 PM
I don't believe R.E. Howard was racist, except in the harmless 'foreigners are strange and exotic' way that people like to pick at lately.  Conan was a racist, but he was living in a time before recorded history, so can't really say that an uneducated barbarian not being super on top of treating people respectfully is terribly out of character.  And even Conan managed to interact with people of very different ethnic groups and nationalities with some degree of aplomb from time to time.

REH was not racist in the modern "everything on earth" way. From research for a RPG for a company back in the 90s what it was was that he really disliked one or more tribes of Native Americans. It reads not so much as racist as "never trust these jerks!" sort of personal experience. Apache? I do not recall as its been 25 years. Pretty sure it was one of the tribes that other tribes didnt like either. Yeah I know. Shocking isnt it? Get thee to a fainting couch!

As for Conan. The idea of him being racist is beyond absurd. This was trotted out back in the 90s iteration of the SJW cult and will near certainly be again when the 2030s iteration rears its ugly head. Conan for example never trusted the Pict as they were notoriously prone to backstabbing and madness and comported with demons and worse. But I am fairly sure that if it did not happen in the books, Conan would give a Pict a chance if they comported themselves in a manner contrary to the general populace. And pretty much how he treated anyone. He'd get along with Stygians and whatever long as they werent trying to kill him.

Conan also had a disdain for civilization as he saw it as a weakening force. He actually respected the Pict more than alot of civilized kingdoms. But he also had an appreciation for the finer things in life, moreso over time. Very much not a one-dimensional character.

And this is the point of this thread. Some of us have seen more than one wave of the exact same stupid claims with each iteration. It didnt fly 20 years ago, and it didnt fly 40 years ago, ad nausium.

As always. These cultists dont actually read the books. They read a paragraph of some college disertation on how wacist authors are! They hate something because someone told them to.

Speaking of REH and only REH written stories (since he only wrote the one full novel about Conan):

Conan befriended, fought alongside and/or slept with Hyrkanians, Shemites, Kushites (and other black kingdoms ppl), Even Kithai isn't presented as "EVIL" in his stories.

On the other hand Lemurians and Hyperboreans  (both Hu-White ppl)  are presented as evil conquerors and slavers and supossedly the Lemurians founded Stigia (and ensalved the darker skinned stigians).

For the noobs:

Kithai is a standing for all Asia, HIrkanians (soppossedly) became the Mongols, Huns, Tatars and Turks. Shemites are a stand in for Arabs and other Semite tribes, Zingarans descend from them.

As for the Picts, in Kull histories they are civilized and not at all evil, after the cataclism the Picts are divided between those who would become the native americans and the savages from the Pictish wilderness/islands. Mayapan from Conan of the Isles is created whole cloth by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter for that novel based in what little REH had written about the picts, so if ANY (I don't remember any example buth still) racism is really there (and I doubt it) it should be laid at the feet of those two authors and not REH.

Yeah, I'm kind of a nerd sue me  ;D
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: BoxCrayonTales on June 16, 2021, 02:46:51 PM
There is an interesting (and thus often overlooked  :) ) passage that Lovecraft places right at the beginning of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth":

"There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. [...] Complaints from many liberal organisations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end."

It is, AFAIK, the only time that Lovecraft inserted a political element in one of his stories. It shows how the Government, while keeping the secrecy, it was actually quite open regarding the events concerning Innsmouth. Lovecraft doesn't write that the liberal organisations became passive "as usual", but "surprisingly". It is not a statement against liberalism or the free press, but the recognition that once one saw what was really happening in Innsmouth any partisanship was dropped. It immediately became a matter of "us vs. them".

I feel that there is a connection, here, between the tale and Lovecraft's famous quote "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" (which is actually a recognised psychopathology (https://www.healthline.com/health/understanding-and-overcoming-fear-of-the-unknown#overcoming-fear)). It doesn't matter if the "other" may actually be a tragic figure, like the Replicants in "Blade Runner" or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
I'm not even sure that's political. More like 'okay, this is what you are defending'. And then they get to meet the Deep Ones and take a SAN hit.

Other media have tried to play this card with varying levels of success -- some less so than others.
Even with the SAN hit, I find it difficult to believe than modern leftists would just stand aside. I mean, The Shape of a Water is a thing. These are probably the same sort of people who would happily convert to Dagonism and marry fish people just to prove how anti-racist and anti-white they are. Some of them might even actually enjoy it.

And, to be entirely candid, I think the original story is quite comparable to anxieties surrounding transhumanism. The fish people are transhumans. They're genetically compatible with humans, which makes them human (and upsets our definition of what it means to be human). There is the implication that they may have been engineered (from humans) by the starfish heads. That is transhumanism.

Cyberpunk is a relatively recent genre, but I think there are at least a few stories which make transhumans look like cosmic horror monsters. I'd need to check.

But essentially, HPL's stories are a product of their time. Particularly the scientific knowledge of the time. Since then, we had cyberpunk and bioethics.

In a typical cyberpunk setting, I don't think the fish people would raise any eyebrows. They'd probably come across as quaint in a setting like Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase.

Given even a fraction of the shit I've seen just reading anything by Chris A. Fields, "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and derivatives like "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" don't hit very hard in the horror factor anymore. Maybe I'm just jaded by being on the internet too long and watching too many horror movies.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Omega on June 16, 2021, 02:55:34 PM
er. If recall right Lemurians were a slave race after the cataclysm and became the Hyrkanians of Conan's era while their former masters (Mu?) became the Stygians? Pre-cataclysm Lemurians were depicted fighting for Kull I believe. But of the Kull series I know about nil so could be wrong there.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: tenbones on June 16, 2021, 02:56:47 PM
The supernatural element and conceits of HPL's work immediately transcends transhumanism by default.

The very fundamental qualities about the fish-people of HPL's work have less to do with ichthyoid proclivities and their potential impact on human drives, as much as it has to do with Elder Gods from another dimension that have considerations so far beyond our imaginations that even the word "evil" doesn't begin to describe it.

Relying on that as a moral rallying point is precisely what would get you devoured - because "they" don't care. Which is not necessarily what I'd attribute to transhumanism (but it could go that way).
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Ghostmaker on June 16, 2021, 02:57:08 PM
There is an interesting (and thus often overlooked  :) ) passage that Lovecraft places right at the beginning of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth":

"There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. [...] Complaints from many liberal organisations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to coöperate with the government in the end."

It is, AFAIK, the only time that Lovecraft inserted a political element in one of his stories. It shows how the Government, while keeping the secrecy, it was actually quite open regarding the events concerning Innsmouth. Lovecraft doesn't write that the liberal organisations became passive "as usual", but "surprisingly". It is not a statement against liberalism or the free press, but the recognition that once one saw what was really happening in Innsmouth any partisanship was dropped. It immediately became a matter of "us vs. them".

I feel that there is a connection, here, between the tale and Lovecraft's famous quote "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown" (which is actually a recognised psychopathology (https://www.healthline.com/health/understanding-and-overcoming-fear-of-the-unknown#overcoming-fear)). It doesn't matter if the "other" may actually be a tragic figure, like the Replicants in "Blade Runner" or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
I'm not even sure that's political. More like 'okay, this is what you are defending'. And then they get to meet the Deep Ones and take a SAN hit.

Other media have tried to play this card with varying levels of success -- some less so than others.
Even with the SAN hit, I find it difficult to believe than modern leftists would just stand aside. I mean, The Shape of a Water is a thing. These are probably the same sort of people who would happily convert to Dagonism and marry fish people just to prove how anti-racist and anti-white they are. Some of them might even actually enjoy it.

And, to be entirely candid, I think the original story is quite comparable to anxieties surrounding transhumanism. The fish people are transhumans. They're genetically compatible with humans, which makes them human (and upsets our definition of what it means to be human). There is the implication that they may have been engineered (from humans) by the starfish heads. That is transhumanism.

Cyberpunk is a relatively recent genre, but I think there are at least a few stories which make transhumans look like cosmic horror monsters. I'd need to check.

But essentially, HPL's stories are a product of their time. Particularly the scientific knowledge of the time. Since then, we had cyberpunk and bioethics.

In a typical cyberpunk setting, I don't think the fish people would raise any eyebrows. They'd probably come across as quaint in a setting like Transhuman Space or Eclipse Phase.

Given even a fraction of the shit I've seen just reading anything by Chris A. Fields, "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and derivatives like "The Doom that Came to Innsmouth" don't hit very hard in the horror factor anymore. Maybe I'm just jaded by being on the internet too long and watching too many horror movies.
The Shape of Water isn't Lovecraft.

You've made this error before. Just because there's a fishman doesn't make it a Deep One. The whole point of the Deep Ones is that they venerate Dagon (and other nasties) and do not even view humans as, well, sapients. Humans are food and breeding stock, to be used and discarded as need be.

To misquote a better man, I'm not judging them by the scales on their skin but by the content of their character.

The Asset in The Shape of Water does not mistreat Elisa. He does not take advantage of her. He does not use her to his own ends.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: GeekyBugle on June 16, 2021, 03:19:16 PM
er. If recall right Lemurians were a slave race after the cataclysm and became the Hyrkanians of Conan's era while their former masters (Mu?) became the Stygians? Pre-cataclysm Lemurians were depicted fighting for Kull I believe. But of the Kull series I know about nil so could be wrong there.

Kull is an Atlantean, enslaved by the Lemurians, the Picts his allies, Lemurians ARE enslaved by Khitai after the Cataclism, but not before they were enslaved by the Lemurians.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: DocJones on June 16, 2021, 04:49:27 PM
...or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
I've always likened the Innsmouth tale to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Invaders from Mars". 
It doesn't make sense to confuse human racism with the fear of the unhuman or fear of possession.

Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Valatar on June 16, 2021, 05:08:03 PM
I don't think anyone in Lovecraft's writings are "good".  The protagonists aren't hosting any charities, they're just going through life, doing their job, looking for a place to stay, etc, stumble across some crazy shit going down, then are primarily concerned with survival or escape.  I think the better dichotomy would be human vs inhuman rather than good vs evil, because Lovecraft himself often made a point of mentioning that the inhuman horrors weren't evil per se, but had goals at odds with humanity.  There wasn't malice involved for many of the old ones and species involved, but their activities would still lead to a terrible fate.  Nyarlathothep, on the other hand, probably the most human-like of Lovecraft's creations, was also the most actively malicious, who would go out of his way to fuck with people.  That probably says a thing or two about Lovecraft's opinion of humans.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: jhkim on June 16, 2021, 06:21:51 PM
...or a malevolent entity like the Pod People in the "Body Snatchers": once an unknown entity may mix with humans and become indistinguishable from them, fear kicks in; then containment, then destruction.
I've always likened the Innsmouth tale to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Invaders from Mars". 
It doesn't make sense to confuse human racism with the fear of the unhuman or fear of possession.

I think Lovecraft is very different from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Invaders from Mars" -- because the Deep Ones aren't invaders. The implication is that they've lived alongside humans for thousands of years. Instead, they are mostly quietly living in their communities. They were actively brought to Innsmouth by Obed Marsh for his own gain, and haven't been spreading from there. They aren't good - they will selfishly look after their own interests without consideration of morals, but then, Lovecraft thinks the same thing about humans.

In typical alien invasion stories, the aliens are malicious new evil - and are actively trying to conquer and/or destroy humanity - and they are opposed by stalwart strong-jawed soldiers who believe in Mom and apple pie, and innocent young people help in the cause. In Lovecraft, it is vastly different than this. The inhuman creatures have always been around, and humans are a blight on what was their planet just as they are opposed to humans.

I'd be interested to run an alien invasion game - but the tone and structure of it would be vastly different than Lovecraft, as I picture it.


Just because there's a fishman doesn't make it a Deep One. The whole point of the Deep Ones is that they venerate Dagon (and other nasties) and do not even view humans as, well, sapients. Humans are food and breeding stock, to be used and discarded as need be.

To misquote a better man, I'm not judging them by the scales on their skin but by the content of their character.

The Asset in The Shape of Water does not mistreat Elisa. He does not take advantage of her. He does not use her to his own ends.

I agree that Lovecraft's Deep Ones care nothing for human lives except as help to their own, and would kill them off for their own gain. But Lovecraft would also say that humans care nothing about Deep One lives, and would only use them for their own ends at best, and massacre them at worst.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: Reckall on June 16, 2021, 06:55:55 PM
I think that the best example of "destruction by otherness" in Lovecraft is "The Color Out of Space" (a tale that terrified me when I was a kid, and for all good reasons). It was Lovecraft's favourite among his own works, and his attempt to "finally describe a truly alien entity" (an intent that gives a strange context to the rest of his creations...)

In the story, a "Color not from this Earth" mercilessly destroys a family of innocent, hard working farmers. The story has a strange structure: it is told to us by an unnamed character who hears it from an old farmer, young when the facts happened; this farmer, in turn, got fragments of these events from the victims, thus creating an almost clinical detachment from us to the "strange days" when the Color came to Earth.

IMHO, Lovecraft succeeded in his objective, showing us sheer... "evil"? permeating the earth, the bodies of any living thing in the stricken area, and ultimately the minds of the innocent victims. There is no "screaming realisation at the end", fade to black (well, a bit). Nothing is spared to them (and to us): the utter devastation is almost told "live", with a sort of unblinking stare uncommon for Lovecraft.

And yet, we are told "It was just a Color", only to be reminded "A Color out of space." If you don't look for them, they will come for you anyway. Was it an accident? Was this entity even intelligent? Can we really speak of "intelligence" (or "evilness") thinking that the word has for "it" the same meaning that it has for us? For all the detail that Lovecraft puts in this story, we are not told. It happened, pray that it will not happen to you.

To me TCOoS is the "ultimate Lovecraft". He doesn't need bad seafood or mercifully lost cities to make his point. It is something not even hidden to the World: the Color is unbothered by acting in plain sight, it the presence of common people, scientists and policemen. You can imprison or kill a Deep One, or cause a setback to Cthulhu itself, but here there is, literally, nothing we can go against: it is not even a form of energy (that we can understand at least). It is a Color.

This story does seem to be "isolated" by the rest of the Mythos, almost stand-alone (except for the fact that it is set in the hinterlands of Arkham) - but there is a totally throwaway reference to the Color at the end of "At the Mountains of Madness". If, by then, Lovecraft was having fun at throwing the kitchen sink into his "magnum opus" or if he had plans to clarify the reference that were cut short by his untimely death, I guess we will never know.
Title: Re: No, we weren't stupid for 40 years
Post by: shuddemell on June 17, 2021, 02:10:24 PM
The supernatural element and conceits of HPL's work immediately transcends transhumanism by default.

The very fundamental qualities about the fish-people of HPL's work have less to do with ichthyoid proclivities and their potential impact on human drives, as much as it has to do with Elder Gods from another dimension that have considerations so far beyond our imaginations that even the word "evil" doesn't begin to describe it.

Relying on that as a moral rallying point is precisely what would get you devoured - because "they" don't care. Which is not necessarily what I'd attribute to transhumanism (but it could go that way).

This is largely how I see his work. One of the points he made about his "horror" wasn't regarding evil, it regarded the notion of how the cosmos and beings within it are vastly indifferent to the condition of mankind. If anything we are an afterthought and don't largely figure into their calculations. In other words, the terror came from describing their absolute indifference to mankind and the horrible consequences of this point of view.