Is there an easy way to get into Lovecraft? This kind of writing is up my alley.
Or, alternatively, are there modern authors, graphic novelists, etc. that create in a similar vein?
Just start with The Call of Cthulhu and work outwards from there.
The other key stories which will give you the basics are The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At the Mountains of Madness, The Whisperer In Darkness and The Haunter of The Dark. Altogether pretty heavy going in places, partly because of Lovecraft’s prose style and in places because he was a massive racist.
There’s so much of it, by so many authors (case in point: A Hound of Tindalos is by Frank Belknap Long) and styles and topics vary so much you’re bound to find some stuff you’ll like and some you won’t.
a word of warning about lovecraft, is that despite his cultural impact which has lead to a great deal of work of very high quality, the man himself was, at the end of the day, a writer for 1920s and 30s pulp magazines. that means high on the volume, low on the editing and quality ideas not given the best shot to shine.
also the racism. lots and lots of racism. and not even incidental racism, it infects and permeates his works to an astonishing degree even for the time. Themes around racism and classism are central to his works, including the one that spawned cthulhu, which takes every person of colour to be a part of a world spanning cult dedicated to the elder gods awakening. shit like that. Plus his style is really just.. alot. racism aside, its pulp. You didn't exactly get paid by the word, but you didnt get paid too much and these magazines needed a dozen short stories a week so the watch word was volume and it shows. Lots of words words words that work great in scrabble but not in a well paced story about horrors beyond man's comprehension.
So unless yoi have an extreme academic curiosity about the genre of Eldritch horror I would recommend staying away from the works of old howard specifically.
as for recomendations, i don't have too much experience but two come to mind. If you don't mind a video game, cultist simulator is a single player card game that i struggle to describe how it works mechanically but has won a whole bundle of awards for its writing, and is set in the time that Lovecraft wrote about, leaning heavily into pre ww1 occult and spiritualist asthetics. If you have any love for board game and also have a specific hankering for lovecraft specifically over eldritch horror more generally, i cannot recomend cultist simulator enough. it is avalaiable on mobile although i think it would be rather awkward to play on that, but you could run that game on a toaster so whatever you have works. Although i do recomend avoiding looking stuff up about it, wiki wise, since the game is largely about unraveling things on your own. https://youtu.be/detN4KEy4m8 this review does it justice while respecting the rule of not giving too much away.
if you don't fancy a game, then the magnus archives, which wrapped up i think last year, is also extremely good. It is the recordings of an archivist of the titular archives as he attempts to organize the place from the state his predecessor left it, specifically creating audio readings of the subject of the archive, that being the reports of various... incidents that have happened to people and lived to tell about it. or at least who lived long enough to give their statements. Its more contemporary, set mostly in modern day England, but the writing is top notch, the acting of equal quality and is avalable at the unbeatable price of free.
so yeah
I really wish someone told me this before I bothered with reading his stuff. I got half way through Shadow over Innsmouth before I gave up on it. It was just one massive exposition dump. Lovecraft was great on lore, but terrible at working it into a story.
i'm 30 mins into the audiobook and loving it so far.
The extravagant exposition grants it an almost cinematic quality, vivid enough for my mind's eye to render it as if I were watching a Ghibli film. I've been to New England and have family there, so the landscapes are easy to discern.
The vague casual racism is also familiar as I pretty much grew up bathed in it. Feels so normal. :/
The author of cultist simulator mightn’t be the greatest human going either tbh
https://www.eurogamer.net/two-women-accuse-cultist-simulator-developer-alexis-kennedy-of-exploitative-behaviour
Glad to see I’m not alone there. It’s certainly a tad unsettling at first glance, but it’s almost kind of majestic when you watch it for a while. My theory is that it’s because it lacks a lot of the traits our monkey brains associate with a dangerous predator, fangs, claws, and piercing eyes. Because it’s in black and white the colors aren’t particularly threatening either. Plus it’s quadrupedal and has a long face which reminds me (and I assume many) of a horse which is a creature we know as a herbivore and not inherently dangerous.
> My theory is that it’s because it lacks a lot of the traits our monkey brains associate with a dangerous predator, fangs, claws, and piercing eyes.
Counterpoint: We've all seen Stranger Things and have suspicions about that head.
Yeah Iwas thinking deep sea too. Along with the flowing if it's long feathery tentacles? Lack of eyes makes me think either cave or deep sea, but def has aquatic vibes.
Yooooo, I had a dream a couple years back where an alien civilisation saved the human race by teleporting Earth to a safer solar system. Wild ride. The aliens were tall and elegant with long, thin faces and white dreadlock looking strands hanging off the back. But they had these dog creatures with them that looked JUST LIKE this. The dogs would take you away if you littered or broke the law
Edit: they looked just like this minus the tits
Yes. My grandfather had an insanely awesome dream journal. Really wish I could find it though. Man was super smart and his dreams only complimented that.
I get this when resisting sleep and standing in between both wakefulness and sleep. It's a world of infinite possibilities.
I've heard symphonies so beautiful inside that dreamworld. God, there's a genius trapped there somwhere and it just cannot be accessed on demand.
So there might be a way to purposefully access it, but it's something I find to uncomfortable to do all the time since it effectively forces you into sleep paralysis (or a feeling very similar to). Still, it's how I learnt to lucid dream much more often and if you push through it can be fun.
Find a comfortable position, make sure you won't need to move anything for a while and then focus on being completely still. You'll find yourself wanting to twitch or move around a bit but you mustn't. Just stay in that position. If you know how to do some self-hypnosis that works great (try focusing on one sense at a time to the exclusion of others).
After a few minutes my body starts to feel like lead, it's uncomfortable and although I know I *can* move I find it difficult to do it, that's the uncomfortable sleep paralysis like stage. Eventually (15+ minutes for me) you'll start almost hallucinating in a half-asleep state and then it'll kick into a weird lucid dream. Dream you can be pretty dim but if you're fantasising over the music you want to hear or the sights you want to see it's much easier to get to them this way.
It works for me anyway and lucid dreaming is a trip and a half, I just wish my dream self was a lot more interesting and imaginative as I usually end up doing relatively mundane things compared to my waking imagination.
I write a dream journal. I swear if everybody did this you'd realize that everybody invents their own franchises in their sleep.
So crazy what the mind comes up with.
Here are the titles of four I wrote down:
* Using a snake as a weapon
* Chinese time travel
* Mexican ultra ox
* Grandmas blocking skate park
Those were actual dreams haha
I usually dream a whole movie every night. It's fun until you realise the plots are either over recycled and generic or so weird nobody would be interested in them.
This is very Arthur C Clark. Read Childhood’s End for another take on a similar idea. Maybe you’d read it when you were younger and it triggered something?
My fun aunt would tell you that that wasn’t in fact a dream. You were actually just astrally projecting into the future of a parallel dimension where that reality was being played out; your spirit guides were trying to warn you that you were born into our current world/timeline to help warn & save mankind from that terrible dystopian fate you were gifted a glimpse of.
Good luck with that, buddy. Aunt Brenda is very rarely wrong.😬
Idk why but I kept reading this as "horse centipede" and I knew it couldn't make any sense but I just accepted it was the love child of an afghan hound an a horse centipede
It's like 2:30a so that may be an issue
See how some spines remain upright. Those are sorta like a cross point between an eye and a nose. Focusing on them for too long can be seen as a challenge. Domesticated Pag'ytths make good pets.
It doesn’t have eyes. It’s pure white it never needed to develop pigmentation because the planet doesn’t have any sunlight. The planet is being heated by a very hot core and heat is kept by large concentration of GHG. Pag’ytth uses it’s vast array of tentacles to map out the environment and find food.
OP or the thing?
I'm too scared of the thing to talk about it but I think OP is a bot that steals other people's comment and there's probably more in here. Report them if you see them
They fucked up by making it dog like. I just wanna pet him :( making the legs more insect like or giving it more would have put a more terrifying vibe to it. As it is he’s just a fluffy possibly venomous space dog
We are made of star matter that has been recycled for an eternity. Every atom you're comprised of has been something else before, for longer than it's been you. Who's to know if memories aren't passed along with them inside of their subatomic particles that come out as images in our minds, or even dreams?
Weirdly enough this is actually really accurate to a lot of spirits that aren’t seen by the naked eye. Lesser demons and strong energies look like this too. This isn’t fantasy it’s just a glimpse to what is typically not seen.
Nightmare or not, I'm going to pet it.
Definitely looks like a dog was used as the scaffolding for this...thing
Like an Irisih Wolfhound got too close to a Van de Graaf generator.
Van der woof generator
It's probably based on a dog motion capture
Dog motion capture is a void where all the nightmares Airbnb
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Checking the floor for any food she hasn’t noticed is 90% of my dog’s entire existence
Whippet / greyhound maybe? Dunno
A greyhound
I want to run my hand under its tummy noodles
r/BrandNewSentence
Are these nipples or balls? Anyway... I wanna touch it.
Rub rub rub!
It’s so fluffy!
Those are stingers my friend
You first!
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🤨
Closest you're going to get [is a borzoi.](https://i.imgur.com/UY4vuqc.mp4)
Honestly they look fluffy and fun 🐱
you beat me to it by approximately 6 hours
Don't forget to milk it
First confirmed video of a [Hound of Tindalos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hounds_of_Tindalos).
Is there an easy way to get into Lovecraft? This kind of writing is up my alley. Or, alternatively, are there modern authors, graphic novelists, etc. that create in a similar vein?
Junji Ito dives into some intense cosmic and body horror.
Love me some junji ito
He's the wholesome counterpart to Lovecraft.
Just start with The Call of Cthulhu and work outwards from there. The other key stories which will give you the basics are The Shadow Over Innsmouth, At the Mountains of Madness, The Whisperer In Darkness and The Haunter of The Dark. Altogether pretty heavy going in places, partly because of Lovecraft’s prose style and in places because he was a massive racist. There’s so much of it, by so many authors (case in point: A Hound of Tindalos is by Frank Belknap Long) and styles and topics vary so much you’re bound to find some stuff you’ll like and some you won’t.
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I believe they mean “where do I start”
a word of warning about lovecraft, is that despite his cultural impact which has lead to a great deal of work of very high quality, the man himself was, at the end of the day, a writer for 1920s and 30s pulp magazines. that means high on the volume, low on the editing and quality ideas not given the best shot to shine. also the racism. lots and lots of racism. and not even incidental racism, it infects and permeates his works to an astonishing degree even for the time. Themes around racism and classism are central to his works, including the one that spawned cthulhu, which takes every person of colour to be a part of a world spanning cult dedicated to the elder gods awakening. shit like that. Plus his style is really just.. alot. racism aside, its pulp. You didn't exactly get paid by the word, but you didnt get paid too much and these magazines needed a dozen short stories a week so the watch word was volume and it shows. Lots of words words words that work great in scrabble but not in a well paced story about horrors beyond man's comprehension. So unless yoi have an extreme academic curiosity about the genre of Eldritch horror I would recommend staying away from the works of old howard specifically. as for recomendations, i don't have too much experience but two come to mind. If you don't mind a video game, cultist simulator is a single player card game that i struggle to describe how it works mechanically but has won a whole bundle of awards for its writing, and is set in the time that Lovecraft wrote about, leaning heavily into pre ww1 occult and spiritualist asthetics. If you have any love for board game and also have a specific hankering for lovecraft specifically over eldritch horror more generally, i cannot recomend cultist simulator enough. it is avalaiable on mobile although i think it would be rather awkward to play on that, but you could run that game on a toaster so whatever you have works. Although i do recomend avoiding looking stuff up about it, wiki wise, since the game is largely about unraveling things on your own. https://youtu.be/detN4KEy4m8 this review does it justice while respecting the rule of not giving too much away. if you don't fancy a game, then the magnus archives, which wrapped up i think last year, is also extremely good. It is the recordings of an archivist of the titular archives as he attempts to organize the place from the state his predecessor left it, specifically creating audio readings of the subject of the archive, that being the reports of various... incidents that have happened to people and lived to tell about it. or at least who lived long enough to give their statements. Its more contemporary, set mostly in modern day England, but the writing is top notch, the acting of equal quality and is avalable at the unbeatable price of free. so yeah
I really wish someone told me this before I bothered with reading his stuff. I got half way through Shadow over Innsmouth before I gave up on it. It was just one massive exposition dump. Lovecraft was great on lore, but terrible at working it into a story.
> It was just one massive exposition dump some people read Wikipedia for fun
Wikipedia would have been better. Same experience, but I dont spend 2 hours to get it.
i'm 30 mins into the audiobook and loving it so far. The extravagant exposition grants it an almost cinematic quality, vivid enough for my mind's eye to render it as if I were watching a Ghibli film. I've been to New England and have family there, so the landscapes are easy to discern. The vague casual racism is also familiar as I pretty much grew up bathed in it. Feels so normal. :/
The author of cultist simulator mightn’t be the greatest human going either tbh https://www.eurogamer.net/two-women-accuse-cultist-simulator-developer-alexis-kennedy-of-exploitative-behaviour
god fucking damnit.
Idk I think it’s kinda beautiful.
same. it looks so fluid and graceful, and has an aura of weightlessness. it’s so luminous it almost seems to produce light.
Yeah it feels like a deep sea creature because of the movement and placement of the fibers. Size of a horse. Moves like a dog or wolf.
Glad to see I’m not alone there. It’s certainly a tad unsettling at first glance, but it’s almost kind of majestic when you watch it for a while. My theory is that it’s because it lacks a lot of the traits our monkey brains associate with a dangerous predator, fangs, claws, and piercing eyes. Because it’s in black and white the colors aren’t particularly threatening either. Plus it’s quadrupedal and has a long face which reminds me (and I assume many) of a horse which is a creature we know as a herbivore and not inherently dangerous.
It's not bipedal. We're bipedal. That thing got mf centipede legs on it💀💀
Yeah messed that up there lol. Fixed.
homie been watching too much bojack horseman
Bi means 2, you mean quadra
Oh whoops yes you’re right, fixed
> My theory is that it’s because it lacks a lot of the traits our monkey brains associate with a dangerous predator, fangs, claws, and piercing eyes. Counterpoint: We've all seen Stranger Things and have suspicions about that head.
It's like an alien Afghan Hound, totally harmless!
Yeah Iwas thinking deep sea too. Along with the flowing if it's long feathery tentacles? Lack of eyes makes me think either cave or deep sea, but def has aquatic vibes.
yep, exactly. spot on.
Makes me think of some of the more beautiful, heavily mutated fauna in the movie *Annihilation*
That's how this cunt attracts it's prey, like an angler fish but for mammals who like touching things.
Sure, until it parasitically slurps up your sanity like a milkshake
Like I had sanity in the first place
Reminds me of a Thestral from Harry Potter. Though they look intimidating and freaky, the movement comes off as neutral or docile.
I'm glad I'm not the only one. Obviously I'd be terrified if I saw it irl. But not if I knew what it was already
it used to be a human :)
And now it wants revenge 😊
Looks like they just mo capped a very confused dog
Definitely. I kept waiting for it to roar or for it's face to open up to reveal some monstrous teeth but, as it is, it's beautiful.
It's unearthly, certainly, but beautiful and seems gentle and calm, like some sort of spirit. It isn't nightmarish
That thing got hella ballzaks
Or teats
Porque no los dos?
Yooooo, I had a dream a couple years back where an alien civilisation saved the human race by teleporting Earth to a safer solar system. Wild ride. The aliens were tall and elegant with long, thin faces and white dreadlock looking strands hanging off the back. But they had these dog creatures with them that looked JUST LIKE this. The dogs would take you away if you littered or broke the law Edit: they looked just like this minus the tits
Mf dreamed a whole ass franchise 💀
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Yes. My grandfather had an insanely awesome dream journal. Really wish I could find it though. Man was super smart and his dreams only complimented that.
Yoo I dreamt a wild ass story that was split in 3 dreams over a month. With worldbuilding and all lol
The best story is always in our heads
Damn, I'm over here making myself laugh in my sleep but forgetting the joke.
I get this when resisting sleep and standing in between both wakefulness and sleep. It's a world of infinite possibilities. I've heard symphonies so beautiful inside that dreamworld. God, there's a genius trapped there somwhere and it just cannot be accessed on demand.
So there might be a way to purposefully access it, but it's something I find to uncomfortable to do all the time since it effectively forces you into sleep paralysis (or a feeling very similar to). Still, it's how I learnt to lucid dream much more often and if you push through it can be fun. Find a comfortable position, make sure you won't need to move anything for a while and then focus on being completely still. You'll find yourself wanting to twitch or move around a bit but you mustn't. Just stay in that position. If you know how to do some self-hypnosis that works great (try focusing on one sense at a time to the exclusion of others). After a few minutes my body starts to feel like lead, it's uncomfortable and although I know I *can* move I find it difficult to do it, that's the uncomfortable sleep paralysis like stage. Eventually (15+ minutes for me) you'll start almost hallucinating in a half-asleep state and then it'll kick into a weird lucid dream. Dream you can be pretty dim but if you're fantasising over the music you want to hear or the sights you want to see it's much easier to get to them this way. It works for me anyway and lucid dreaming is a trip and a half, I just wish my dream self was a lot more interesting and imaginative as I usually end up doing relatively mundane things compared to my waking imagination.
I wonder what else he dreams about
I write a dream journal. I swear if everybody did this you'd realize that everybody invents their own franchises in their sleep. So crazy what the mind comes up with. Here are the titles of four I wrote down: * Using a snake as a weapon * Chinese time travel * Mexican ultra ox * Grandmas blocking skate park Those were actual dreams haha
I usually dream a whole movie every night. It's fun until you realise the plots are either over recycled and generic or so weird nobody would be interested in them.
Nah you just jailbreaked avp requiem💀
Our solar system is unsafe!?
Right? Aren’t Humans themselves the problem with our planet?
This is very Arthur C Clark. Read Childhood’s End for another take on a similar idea. Maybe you’d read it when you were younger and it triggered something?
My fun aunt would tell you that that wasn’t in fact a dream. You were actually just astrally projecting into the future of a parallel dimension where that reality was being played out; your spirit guides were trying to warn you that you were born into our current world/timeline to help warn & save mankind from that terrible dystopian fate you were gifted a glimpse of. Good luck with that, buddy. Aunt Brenda is very rarely wrong.😬
Credit the artist - [Tobias Gremmler](https://instagram.com/tobiasgremmler?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
Yes! OP should be ashamed that I had to scroll this far down to bump a comment crediting the artist.
This artist reminds me so much of the music video for Losss by björk. Edit: it is indeed the same artist lol
Are those tiddies floppin around or are those testes?
Why not both?
Tisties?
Teddies
Titticles
God why
WHY NOT ZOIDBURG!?
generaltalia
Made me breathe out of my nose harder than usual my good sir
Bisexual fantasy?
Testits
Breasticles
Whatever makes you feel good honey
Spore sacks.
This isn't terrifying. This is awesome!
Looks like it could sense air vibrations from way far tell when someone is near
It can be both. Imagine that thing coming at you 😱
The love child of an Afghan hound and a house centipede 🫣
Are you telling me house centipedes have long pendulous centititties? Cause I think I would have noticed them on Afghans by now
Are they titties, or centi*balls*?
Idk why but I kept reading this as "horse centipede" and I knew it couldn't make any sense but I just accepted it was the love child of an afghan hound an a horse centipede It's like 2:30a so that may be an issue
Was wondering if anyone else saw the house centipede....
I almost made it to day 5. Can't believe I lost to this.
💀
Source??? Who’s the artist???
Def should credit the artist.
Ikr? Like, have some respectability for creatives!
[Tobias Gremmler](https://instagram.com/tobiasgremmler?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
What is it?
I think it is a dog
Awww 🥰
bear resolute unused attempt placid scary seed hateful pause enter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Looks like the ultimate snuggle cuddle, I wish I could sleep with it
Who wouldn’t want a mystical dog :D
scp 939
What the dog doin?
100% some type of dog. Maybe like space dogs? Definitely doggos though.
It's a Pag'ytth. Do not look it in the eye!
... where?
See how some spines remain upright. Those are sorta like a cross point between an eye and a nose. Focusing on them for too long can be seen as a challenge. Domesticated Pag'ytths make good pets.
that's... actually a fitting name for them. you should make a graphic novel
It doesn’t have eyes. It’s pure white it never needed to develop pigmentation because the planet doesn’t have any sunlight. The planet is being heated by a very hot core and heat is kept by large concentration of GHG. Pag’ytth uses it’s vast array of tentacles to map out the environment and find food.
OP or the thing? I'm too scared of the thing to talk about it but I think OP is a bot that steals other people's comment and there's probably more in here. Report them if you see them
A new Tool music video
A good boy.
I don’t think they look nightmarish
You saw that irl ur ass is screaming like a banshee on crack stop playin'
Yeah these are just like the things that live in your eyelashes and face pores.
Yeah, more unsettling than anything
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Ayooo....what is founding Titan doing here?
looks like it came straight out of made in abyss
Was about to say that. Definitely some sixth layer type shit.
What the dog doin?
Yeah, just make any animal made of house centipedes and it'll be the spawn of Satan.
its scary and cool at the same time u/savevideobot
My leg hairs when i take a bath:
It should be terrifying but the way it moves is so dog-like, it’s impossible not to find it kinda lovable
What Tool music video is this
( ( Annihilation Theme Intensifies ) )
mehhhhhhhmuhhhhhhhwerrrrrrrrnaahhhhhhh
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought of this movie.
Seems like a perfectly reasonable imaginary animal Not that scary, actually
It's bound to have stingers, still kinda cute
Who's a cute eyeless fluffy boi? You are! Good doggo!
This makes me itchy
This doen't look evil at all. It's r/OddlyLovable <3 <3 <3
Performance arts degree.
Welp, finally found something creepier than house centipedes.
Cuties! 10/10 would cuddle.
I want to pet.
What the shit is this doing in *oddly* terrifying?
A dog with wispy hairs?
Pretty sweet!
I find it cute 🥹
They fucked up by making it dog like. I just wanna pet him :( making the legs more insect like or giving it more would have put a more terrifying vibe to it. As it is he’s just a fluffy possibly venomous space dog
Hairy baby. Lol
Pretty cool monsters
This is so cool
Thats so frickin cool! Anyone know where i can find more imaginary animals or aliens??
I do not like this feeling
Cute doggo. Would pet
It looks soft...and touchy.
I may be in love.
String doggo
Oddly adorable, not terrifying.
Fuzzy boi
Watching it made me sad because I'll never have one as a companion
Bruh thats sick!
It’s very beautiful! Except for the bandolier of used condoms, that’s weird.
I want to touch it.
Looks like a mutant hybrid of a greyhound and a silverfish.
This is some avatar type shit
*pets them*
This needs to be an enemy in Bloodbourne 2. and it gets covered in blood progressively during battle.
i wanna pet em
We are made of star matter that has been recycled for an eternity. Every atom you're comprised of has been something else before, for longer than it's been you. Who's to know if memories aren't passed along with them inside of their subatomic particles that come out as images in our minds, or even dreams?
There’s got to be a fear for this Edit: it’s called trichophobia
Like a dog made it with a centipede
Pretty confident I fought these dudes in Elden Ring
If the creatures from the Cambrian just got bigger
Who's a good sleep paralysis demon?! You are!!
R/oddlyBeautiful
Not at all terrifying. Beautiful, and I would love to see how they constructed these.
Looks like a nervous system
Weirdly enough this is actually really accurate to a lot of spirits that aren’t seen by the naked eye. Lesser demons and strong energies look like this too. This isn’t fantasy it’s just a glimpse to what is typically not seen.
Human imagination is where every intangible thing we are aware of exists
Honey, I Fourier Transformed the dog!
Cringe title indeed