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I was reading about Shub-Niggurath and planning a Sargava game when something clicked. Could the "Black Goat"'s name be a pun on a racial slur? After a bit of searching online, I haven't found much agreement on the subject: some folks say it's only a play on "Sheol-Nugganoth" in "Idle Days on the Yann," while others say it's also incorporating the Latin word niger, and yet others say it surely has racist underpinnings. Regardless of the truth, I'm now a bit reluctant to reference this entity in my games.
Is it any worse to use Shub-Niggurath if you've already introduced concepts Lovecraft created? Is that even so bad?
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Whether or not the name intentionally invokes a racial slur or not, it's something I think you should be aware of. To avoid the problem, I pronounce it "SHUB ni-GOOER-ath," with an emphasis in the second syllable. As the word we're trying to eschew has an emphasis on the first syllable, moving that emphasis and changing the pronunciation avoids my qualms with the name.
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*Raises hand*
I think it's worth noting that he was hardly alone in any racism, given the time period in which he lived in. He also tended to value being English more than being White - and people of at least partial African-American descent, as in The Dunwich Horror, even had some heroic roles in his writing. Racism isn't good, but unless someone's feelings and views in the past were particularly egregious and led to others being harmed, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to judge them by modern views.
I also think it's possible to believe someone was wrong about something without disliking the entirety of their lives and anything they were involved with. Our modern society has flaws of its own, after all. ^^
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*Raises hand*
I think it's worth noting that he was hardly alone in any racism, given the time period in which he lived in. He also tended to value being English more than being White - and people of at least partial African-American descent, as in The Dunwich Horror, even had some heroic roles in his writing. Racism isn't good, but unless someone's feelings and views in the past were particularly egregious and led to others being harmed, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to judge them by modern views.
I also think it's possible to believe someone was wrong about something without disliking the entirety of their lives and anything they were involved with. Our modern society has flaws of its own, after all. ^^
The time period that he existed in grants context I agree but it doesn't EXCUSE him. People who tend to make this argument tend to make it almost sound as if it okay that he's a racist because everyone else was, when that's not even true. Lovecraft isnt the average racist because of his popularity and the reach of his work.
No one is judging him by modern views. I'm pretty certain blacks and asians back in his day wanted to be viewed as equals and humans too. Being a racist in a time where racism was more openly accepted doesn't excuse that fact that you're still a racist.
I'm not telling anyone NOT to read Lovecraft. I'm not even calling fans of Lovecraft BAD PEOPLE. I own copies of REANIMATOR and FROM BEYOND on DVD. Those were purchased before discovered what kind of person Lovecraft was. I'm not going to throw them away because I still love those movies but I'll probably never re-purchase them if my copies ever go missing. Much in the way that I'm probably not going to throw out all of the Lovecraft influenced Pathfinder stuff. But going forward I wont support a Lovecraftian AP.
And if that stance makes ME a bad person then I'll live with that.
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*Raises hand*
I think it's worth noting that he was hardly alone in any racism, given the time period in which he lived in. He also tended to value being English more than being White - and people of at least partial African-American descent, as in The Dunwich Horror, even had some heroic roles in his writing. Racism isn't good, but unless someone's feelings and views in the past were particularly egregious and led to others being harmed, I'm not sure there's much point in trying to judge them by modern views.
I also think it's possible to believe someone was wrong about something without disliking the entirety of their lives and anything they were involved with. Our modern society has flaws of its own, after all. ^^
reading his works is weird at times. He is insulting of anyone of mixed heritage or non-British background in the extreme. However these "subhumans" are also the wink-wink-nudge-nudge smart ones in many of his works, as they know the old ones are older than humanity, could wipe out the human race with minimal effort, or slurp your sanity out through your eyeballs by accident. So naturally, they worship such beings, praying for nothing more than a swift death, because they know the score. We are walking, talking potato chips to cthulhu and his ilk, one and all.
Mmm... human brain chips!
Naturally, if you don't want to support his works because of his views, that's entirely your choice. ^^ I'm certainly not trying to dictate anyone's conscience or opinions - just noting that the situation is a bit more complex then "He was a racist". Whether one sees this as good or bad (or something else) is, of course, up to them.
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there are more than a few fans who have pointed out that shub niggurath could be a backhanded slur, given the authors well known bigotry(I will be relieving myself next to a typed letter the author wrote in roughly 24 hours, hopefully). I don't think this is the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
I've peed there, too!
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Started with Rats in the Walls. The hero's cat there is named N@+&%~man. Yes, it felt pretty awkward.
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Apparently, named after his own cat.
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stuffI have a question for you....do you do your best to avoid any type of entertainment where you object to any of the views held by any of it's creators? Because if you do, you will very rapidly be left with absolutely no entertainment remaining.
better to be aware and maybe even be a bit hypocritical than to attempt to excuse.
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It's also worth pointing out that many times the "people" that he describes as being "sub-human" or with similar slurs turn out to be exactly that...NOT FULLY HUMAN.
given that these are stories by the author who retains these views, this is a biased conclusion. If someone else wrote the stories, it would be a bit more arguable.
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SKR was at times a massive jerk. I presume you will be selling off all your D&D and Pathfinder products?
No. I already burned all of that anti-goblin trash.
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SKR was at times a massive jerk. I presume you will be selling off all your D&D and Pathfinder products?
there's a difference between a jerk and an active bigot.
I remember that part from reanimator, I thought it was someone who was experimented upon.
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I remember that part from reanimator, I thought it was someone who was experimented upon.I'd have to reread the whole context, but I'm pretty sure that was the description of the dead body before they "reanimated" it.
Correct. That's the description of the dead boxer, when they bring him in.
Reanimation only worsens the description, but at least there's the paper-thin excuse of monstrification. (There are still notable differences between that one's description and several of the other reanimated.)
Unless you buy into the theory that Deep Ones represented Jews, I don't see how Lovecraft's own racist views - even for the time he lived in - have anything to do with his work. Not any more than I (myself Jewish) can't get pumped to "Ride of the Valkyries" despite Wagner's publicly noted anti-Semitism, on top of the man's general dickishness.
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Oh no, I love lovecrafts stuff. But I know he's a bigot, and will laugh at anyone who says otherwise. He weaved bigoted stuff in his work at times, though that was not the main thrust of his work. I read his stuff regularly, it just makes my stomach churn on more than one level.
Not to speak for him, but there's a difference between "object to any of the views held by any of it's creators" and "the author's works often openly refer to people like you as sub-human".stuffI have a question for you....do you do your best to avoid any type of entertainment where you object to any of the views held by any of it's creators? Because if you do, you will very rapidly be left with absolutely no entertainment remaining.
Thank You.
Lovecraft's virulent racism and how its built into his work inspires me with an idea to develop a mythos of antiracist, antifa cosmic horror.
i've always found the aesthetic of unfathomable beasts penetrating the very ether of the universe with their every eldritch appendage or whatnot to be rather interesting, but the virulent racism of Lovecraft keeps me away, thus so far I've really only enjoyed elements of cosmic horror in works such as homestuck.
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Lovecraft's virulent racism and how its built into his work inspires me with an idea to develop a mythos of antiracist, antifa cosmic horror.
Good luck to that.
Lovecraftian horror is essentially a mix of xenophobia combined with something akin to what modern graphic artists call "uncanny valley," the idea that to be truly scary, there needs to be a strong element of familiarity in something. His most successful works aren't the ones about icky tentacled horrors from the Great Beyond, but about the icky horrors without tentacles that are right among us and we don't even know (initially) how icky they are, only that there's something "odd" about them.
Without that, it's just a bug hunt.
So how are you going to make something familiarly human but oddly and subtly different, without making the difference something that someone will seize upon as representing a parody of some racial, ethnic, or cultural stereotype?
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It's also worth pointing out that many times the "people" that he describes as being "sub-human" or with similar slurs turn out to be exactly that...NOT FULLY HUMAN.Sometimes.
Other times: ** spoiler omitted **
Or the description of a murdered African American
He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms that I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life - but the world holds many ugly things.
There's also Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (often anthologized as The White Ape), which is literally Racial Slur: The Short Story.
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Unless you buy into the theory that Deep Ones represented Jews, I don't see how Lovecraft's own racist views - even for the time he lived in - have anything to do with his work. Not any more than I (myself Jewish) can't get pumped to "Ride of the Valkyries" despite Wagner's publicly noted anti-Semitism, on top of the man's general dickishness.Did you read the bits I quoted?
His views are blatantly in the work. It's not a matter of "Lovecraft thought blacks were subhuman so you shouldn't read his books even though it never comes up in the stories". It's "Lovecraft's stories talk about subhuman blacks".
Not every story. Some simply don't refer to such people.
I'm not familiar enough with Wagner to know if his anti-Semitism shows up in his work nearly so blatantly.
Those aren't major plot points though. It's not Birth of a Nation where the entire message of the piece is blacks being inferior to whites, it's offhanded remarks by the creator forcing his views into the narrative. Even the parts you quoted which showcase the author's bias don't have any effect on the story - nobody's going to read Lovecraft and go "Oh, hey, I guess whites *are* genetically superior on account of their whiteness."
Re: Wagner - Mimir, the dwarf in the Nibelung cycle, is a collage of contemporary anti-Semitic stereotypes, being a short, hairy, long-nosed creature with an innate, jealous distrust of the Teutonic hero Siegfried and a greedy, deceitful and treacherous nature that causes his downfall. Funny enough, Tolkien seemed to tap into Anglo-Saxon myth and took the dwarves-Jews analogy in a different direction, focusing on the more positive aspects of European Jewry and ultimately a much more dignified portrayal (making them an industrious, family-oriented people with a unifying culture and a lost once-great kingdom).
Lovecraft's virulent racism and how its built into his work inspires me with an idea to develop a mythos of antiracist, antifa cosmic horror.Good luck to that.
Lovecraftian horror is essentially a mix of xenophobia combined with something akin to what modern graphic artists call "uncanny valley," the idea that to be truly scary, there needs to be a strong element of familiarity in something. His most successful works aren't the ones about icky tentacled horrors from the Great Beyond, but about the icky horrors without tentacles that are right among us and we don't even know (initially) how icky they are, only that there's something "odd" about them.
Without that, it's just a bug hunt.
So how are you going to make something familiarly human but oddly and subtly different, without making the difference something that someone will seize upon as representing a parody of some racial, ethnic, or cultural stereotype?
Hellboy made it work. Can't go wrong working in the SS-Ahnenerbe or the Thule Society, or some of the postwar Soviet experiments into shadier territory. This is if you don't want to go the tired old "Indian Burial Ground" route.
I'm honestly not a fan of political messages in art myself (I'm even of the view that if it's message first, art second then it's not even art, it's propaganda) unless it's examining conflicting views and how they'd play out realistically, as in Watchmen. But honestly, if this is something that really does inspire you, go for it. I'd like to see what you come up with.
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Relieved myself next to the typed letter tonight! Here is some of our hero's thoughts on the residents of the lower east side in manhattantown.
"The organic things inhabiting that awful cesspool could not by any stretch of the imagination be call'd human. They were monstrous and nebulous adumbrations of the pithecanthopoid and amoebal; vaguely molded from some stinking viscous slime of the earth's corruption, slithering in and oozing on the filthy streets or in and out of windows and doorways in a fashion suggestive of nothing but infesting worms or deep sea unnameabilities. They- or the degenerate gelatinous fermentation of which they were composed- seem'd to ooze deep and trickle thro the gaping cracks in the horrible houses..and I thought of some Avenue of Cyclopean and unwholesome vats, crammed to the vomiting point with gangrenous vileness, and about to burst and inundate the world in one leprous cataclysm of semi-fluid rottenness. From hat nightmare of perverse infection I could not carry away the memory of any living face. The individually grotesque was lost in the collectively horrifying, which left on the eye only the broad phantasmal lineaments on the morbid soul of disintegration and decay...a yellow, leering mask, with sour, sticky, acid ichors coating at eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and abnormally bubbling from monstrous and unbelievable sores at every point..."
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There's also Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family (often anthologized as The White Ape), which is literally Racial Slur: The Short Story.It's also worth pointing out that many times the "people" that he describes as being "sub-human" or with similar slurs turn out to be exactly that...NOT FULLY HUMAN.Sometimes.
Other times: ** spoiler omitted **
Or the description of a murdered African American
He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms that I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets and tom-tom poundings under an eerie moon. The body must have looked even worse in life - but the world holds many ugly things.
Or the much more succinctly titled He.
If someone called me pithecanthopoid, damn...
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Hellboy made it work. Can't go wrong working in the SS-Ahnenerbe or the Thule Society, or some of the postwar Soviet experiments into shadier territory. This is if you don't want to go the tired old "Indian Burial Ground" route.Yeah, several recent works are good at separating Lovecraftian mythology from Lovecraftian racism. You've got Hellboy, Pathfinder, and yeah, I guess MSPA? Though really entities like "Fluthlu" smack more of parody than actual homage. Buffy sort of counts, though its monsters are less Lovecraftian than demonic.
His most successful works aren't the ones about icky tentacled horrors from the Great Beyond, but about the icky horrors without tentacles that are right among us and we don't even know (initially) how icky they are, only that there's something "odd" about them.
Are his most successful works really the ones about normal people revealing themselves to be monsters? I thought At the Mountains of Madness was considered a classic - and yeah, it has the rebellious, bilious slave monsters, and speaks to Lovecraft's fear of degeneration, but there's no POC turning into monsters in the way you describe.
Honestly, it seems totally possible to do human corruption-type mythos stories without offending people. I remember an episode in Buffy involving a very normal human salesman. It wasn't his race that made him seem off, it was his mannerisms and personality. The image of a worm crawling out from under his shirt collar, and then his entire face melting into a writhing mass of mealworms, revulsed 10-year-old me enough that I had to leave the room. This kind of horror doesn't need to rely on racism any more than comedy needs to rely on misogyny.
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They had not been even savages—for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch—perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia . . . poor Lake, poor Gedney . . . and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last—what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn — whatever they had been, they were men!
That was first published about a year before HPL's death.
I sometimes wonder about the man he could've become if he'd lived longer.
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They had not been even savages—for what indeed had they done? That awful awakening in the cold of an unknown epoch—perhaps an attack by the furry, frantically barking quadrupeds, and a dazed defence against them and the equally frantic white simians with the queer wrappings and paraphernalia . . . poor Lake, poor Gedney . . . and poor Old Ones! Scientists to the last—what had they done that we would not have done in their place? God, what intelligence and persistence! What a facing of the incredible, just as those carven kinsmen and forbears had faced things only a little less incredible! Radiates, vegetables, monstrosities, star-spawn — whatever they had been, they were men!That was first published about a year before HPL's death.
I sometimes wonder about the man he could've become if he'd lived longer.
I've read that Lovecraft was softening up quite a bit in the 30s, endorsing the New Deal and condemning the Nazis a bit before it was fashionable. Granted you could be deeply racist and condemn the Nazis, but what I've read suggests that he was taking a bit broader of a lesson from it than that they in particular sucked. I haven't read the material from which the scholar arrived at that position, though. It could be one of those cases of getting a bit too close to the subject and wanting to read more into the text than is there.
Hellboy made it work. Can't go wrong working in the SS-Ahnenerbe or the Thule Society, or some of the postwar Soviet experiments into shadier territory. This is if you don't want to go the tired old "Indian Burial Ground" route.Lovecraftian horror is essentially a mix of xenophobia combined with something akin to what modern graphic artists call "uncanny valley," the idea that to be truly scary, there needs to be a strong element of familiarity in something. His most successful works aren't the ones about icky tentacled horrors from the Great Beyond, but about the icky horrors without tentacles that are right among us and we don't even know (initially) how icky they are, only that there's something "odd" about them.
Without that, it's just a bug hunt.
So how are you going to make something familiarly human but oddly and subtly different, without making the difference something that someone will seize upon as representing a parody of some racial, ethnic, or cultural stereotype?
I'm actually of the opinion that this supports my point. You have no idea how many people I've met that object to the cultural prejudice inherent in the "All Germans are Nazis" stereotype. In practical terms, if you want to mark a character as unremittedly and irredeemably evil, all you need to do is give him a monocle and a Mensur scar (despite the rather pointed irony that, historically, those were associated with the generation before the Nazis). The "All Russians are Soviet Communists" is less commonly cited but equally powerful.
The point is that anything different can -- and will -- be personalized by someone as a deliberate attack on them. In a world where everyone is their own critic, any bad guy is a stereotype to someone. And in Lovecraftian fiction, being a bad guy is genetic.