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View Full Version : The Castration of Cthulhu: Subverted Cosmic Horror



Leliel
2011-09-27, 04:14 PM
Whelp, we've all heard it before-alien gods of a vast and uncaring universe have set their sights on Earth, the only outcomes are varying degrees of "you lose", you lose your mind through observing them, etc.

I also don't find it that scary. At all.

True, the atmosphere of cosmic horror is scary-subversion of the flesh and mind is never a nice thing, after all, nor is facing an unbeatable adversary.. But the tired old tropes? They just become silly without it: Why the hell does an alien god who's lived here a very long time want to kill us now when his cult's kept him fed and happy (and don't hit me with that "incomprehensible to humans" bull-there is alien, and then there is violations of things such as "self-serving logic", such as "these ants keep me worshiped, fat, and happy, I think I'll kill them all")? How come humanity, a stubborn race, just gives up? And (this is the real kicker) why the hell does seeing something out of normal experience make you insane, and if so, why hasn't the entire quantum physics field been committed?

Thus, while I don't quibble with the genre, I do find it hard to believe that Lovecraft makes anything scary if you put the names in something.

More importantly, though, I find human adversaries to be scarier-here is a person you are capable of understanding doing all these horrible things, and worse, he actually has a rationale for this, and may actively hate you, in particular. It's why I like "the monster isn't the villain" twists; it still plays on people's expectations and hits them from left field, making them nice and paranoid, as well as forces them to reconsider thinking in binary terms.

So, here's the thing:

How would you take a Lovecraftian horror story, and twist it so that humans-or beings with comprehensible motives-become the real villains of the piece, with the "insanity" angle removed?

Dyrhet
2011-09-27, 04:30 PM
I would play Unknown Armies.

NichG
2011-09-27, 04:46 PM
One way to do it and to keep with the Lovecraftian theme is to have it so the villain, a person, knows something (or believes he knows something) that the protagonists do not until the confrontation. So he only looks insane/irrational from the outside, but then in the light of investigation every thing he's done falls into place and makes perfect sense in a cold and rational way.

That has the risk of the protagonists being irrational for not just going with the villain's actions at the end, so you have to make it so that there's enough doubt left so the heroes don't look like idiots.

Here's an example that'd work for a story but maybe not so much a game:

The villain is part of the government of this one nation. He starts by doing mundane villainy like evicting people from their homes by buying them out from under them, slaughtering villages (in other, undeveloped countries perhaps) with the help of his nation's army and occupying the area, etc. The heroes discover that the locations he's taking control of are related somehow - they've all been sites of, say, archeological discovery. When they look more carefully, they discover that there are weird aspects of the discoveries - they look too advanced for the era they're from, but not hugely. Stuff like the Greek/Roman steam engines, things that could be plausibly explained but are still a bit weird.

Then, the villain starts going off the deep end even more, and begins making prisoners 'disappear', for what the heroes discover is medical experimentation of a dark variety. The villain gets darker and darker, having his country make ridiculous laws to increase the flow of prisoners, whatever.

The heroes raid one of his bases and find a team of scientists on some kind of crazy mysterious device, something from one of the archeological digs but now clearly beyond the reasonable tech level, and is using it on prisoners, killing most of them in the process or leaving them horribly warped physically and mentally, but unnaturally strong.

They hear of some sort of doomsday weapon/explosive device/whatever being built and go to confront the villain.

What's the villain thinks is going on: the villain thinks that humanity has been suppressed for the last two millennia by outside influences, essentially having their genetic potential for greatness crushed by alien interference. This device is one of those responsible for the procedure, and he has been working on a way to reverse it. If he can reverse it in a single person, he can reverse it for the entire world (supposedly) by powering it with a nuclear device. It will absorb the energy from the explosion and release transformative radiations over the planet, changing humanity forever.

What the heroes (might) think is going on: This guy is crazy and is going to detonate a nuclear weapon because he thinks it'll do something with this alien device, but it'll probably just blow up and irradiate nearby Denver or wherever.

So the heroes stop him, but the alien device is destroyed in the process, and no one is ever sure of whether it would have worked or not.

flumphy
2011-09-27, 04:46 PM
I think Lovecraft himself does it well at times. In some of his short stories, the antagonists are not the strange forces at play but the ordinary people who are amoral and foolhardy enough to toy with them. Joseph Curwen in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, for example, is perfectly sane. He's just ruthless and power-hungry and willing to take huge risks. Even Charles himself, as the narrator repeatedly points out, never actually goes insane: he's just young and misguided and a too curious for his own good.

I think the key to making humans the primary antagonists is as simple as focusing on the human element instead of the incomprehensible cosmic horrors. As you point out, some things are better left vague and mysterious. Minimal detail should be given regarding the supernatural elements in play, while the antagonists should be fleshed-out, believable characters with reasonable motives for toying with alien entities.

gkathellar
2011-09-27, 04:46 PM
I also don't find it that scary. At all.

A lot of people agree with you. I once read an essay on how Lovecraftian horror just isn't scary to the current generation and the one just before it. Which, eh, is reasonable. Lovecraft was writing in the early 20th century, a very different era.


Why the hell does an alien god who's lived here a very long time want to kill us now when his cult's kept him fed and happy (and don't hit me with that "incomprehensible to humans" bull-there is alien, and then there is violations of things such as "self-serving logic", such as "these ants keep me worshiped, fat, and happy, I think I'll kill them all")?

There are two answers to that. Firstly, a lot of these entities really don't care about their cults in the slightest. A lot of those that do only care about their amusement factor, which in most cases has either an expiration date or is roughly equivalent to the amusement factor of murdering everybody.

The second answer you probably won't like, but those violations of logic are exactly what make them so scary. One of the things most strongly stated in the Mythos is that things like "logic" are human inventions, and ones that have no wider application in the universe. It's existential horror — a universe that simply can't be reasoned with because it doesn't care about reason.


How come humanity, a stubborn race, just gives up?

It's not so much that we just give up as that no matter how much we do or don't fight we still lose. In some cases (particularly stories with Nyarlathotep), the Outer Gods simply tell us to destroy ourselves and we do.


And (this is the real kicker) why the hell does seeing something out of normal experience make you insane, and if so, why hasn't the entire quantum physics field been committed?

'cause you can't see quantum physics? Mathematicians had been known to go crazy trying to understand things in Lovecraft's time — it's very likely he was drawing on that at least in part. Again, the implication is that our whole set of assumptions about the observable universe is so totally wrong that we can't take it. Not only do we fail to understand, but we also just can't.


How would you take a Lovecraftian horror story, and twist it so that humans-or beings with comprehensible motives-become the real villains of the piece, with the "insanity" angle removed?

Read Solaris. It's about people in a research space station trying (and failing) to study a Lovecraftian planet-god whose probing reveals them as their own worst enemies.

The simplest way to do this is, following that example, to remove the malevolence from these entities. In Lovecraft, the universe hates you/likes the sound of your screaming/thinks you're a tasty snack. But you can have entities of Lovecraftian horror who either don't care about or actively like humanity without removing any of their mad, nigh-omnipotent glory. After that, it's just a question of placing the villain in control of humanity's interaction with such an entity.

Maybe a human villain is manipulating such an entity, or calling down one that isn't dead-set on killing everyone but is going to do so just by hanging around for too long. (Check out the new Doctor Who season 2 episode "Fear Her," which features an omnipotent alien spore that intends to kill two-thirds of earth's population because it just wants to be loved.) Maybe the villain is poking an ambivalent entity that is going to poke humanity back hard if we don't stop soon. Maybe the villain fearlessly attracting the attention of something that it's in our best interests to stay away from. There are a lot of possibilities here.

Arrghus
2011-09-27, 04:48 PM
Have you seen Sleepy Hollow? That's how. The Headless Horseman is a mystifying, strange and, though not thoroughly alien at least not entirely comprehensible entity. And he's under the complete control of the actual villain, an old lady who does what she does for very, very human reasons.

Spoilered because left field and stuff.

awa
2011-09-27, 05:00 PM
In general I disagree with you but the cosmic horror can easily be done badly
but here’s one.
A corrupt noble who is planning to take over the country he is working with deep ones taking their gold in exchange for kidnapping people to give to them for their dark purposes. His plan is more complicated he make the drop-offs secretly in one of his rivals cities. After he has amassed sufficient wealth he plans on exposing his fishy allies. The men making the drop offs and even the deep ones themselves believe they actually work for his rival. His rivals reputation will be weakened and in order to defend his reputation he will be forced into conflict with the deep ones which will require vast amounts of wealth and man power particularly once the deep ones release their shoggoths. The noble comes away vastly richer with his biggest rival effectively neutralized. The deep ones are there and a danger but they are little more than pawns of the human. Cuthulu dagon and mother hydra are all incredible dangerous but their sleeping right now and therefore irrelevant.

Andre
2011-09-28, 08:00 AM
It's not so much that we just give up as that no matter how much we do or don't fight we still lose. In some cases (particularly stories with Nyarlathotep), the Outer Gods simply tell us to destroy ourselves and we do.


A World Mass Suggestion with no saving throw and whose descriptor says "SR:No" and "Self-harming: Yes. Oh, yes."? Classic!

I wonder what the Spellcraft DC check is on that one.

The Glyphstone
2011-09-28, 08:30 AM
Make the Elder Gods just scaled-up versions of their minions like the shoggoths - specifically, mindless locusts/parasites/consumers? If they're incomprehensible to the degree that they don't even recognize us as lifeforms, only devouring our planet because Cult Leader Bob performed the ritual that sprays Earth with the metaphysical equivalent of Eldritch Horror A-1 Steak Sauce, it's Bob who is evil, Cthulhu is now as cosmically and knowingly evil as the machine guns Bob's cult guards carry...that is, not at all, and no more insanity-inducing either. Why Bob wants to destroy the world is his business, and it'll be the standard BBEG design process to not make him cliched, but the Eldritch Abomination angle has been eliminated (so the Hounds of Tindalos can't get in).

Ravens_cry
2011-09-28, 08:49 AM
Cosmic horror isn't about tentacles. It isn't about fish people, it isn't about sunken cities, it isn't about overwrought descriptions of freakish things.
No, it is about the universe.
It's big.
We can put a number to it, but that is not understanding. We can not grok this size, a universe so big and empty that light, something so fast that for most of history it was treated as instantaneous takes literally years to get to the nearest other lights.
It's old.
Again, numbers are not meaning, they are not understanding.
We casually throw around words like millions or even billions of years, without trying to consider what those words actually mean. They mean that an extremely small section of the history of the universe, we have been in it. For an even smaller portion, we as individuals will be alive.
And then . . .?
None can say.
The universe is still young.
Long after the last star has burnt itself out, the last black hole evaporated, the last proton decayed, the universe will still be.
In that incomprehensibly far future, the time from us till the start of the universe, a time we can not even begin to truly understand, will seem an eye blink, a heartbeat, a brief spasm that is over forever.
Forever, another word we can not even pretend to understand.
It is uncaring.
An asteroid could smash into the Earth and wipe us and all life out, and the Earth would still orbit the Sun. A black whole could swallow the solar system, the galaxy could be torn to shreds, and still the universe would exist.
It does not love us, hate us, it simply is.
It was when we weren't.
It will still be when we are not.
Cosmic horror is an attempt to evoke that, remind us of it, create personifications of that awesome, awful, majesty.
How small we are in the face of all that is.
Like all genre, some stories succeed and others don't.
But in the end, it is the truth.

gkathellar
2011-09-28, 10:33 AM
Cosmic horror isn't about tentacles. It isn't about fish people, it isn't about sunken cities, it isn't about overwrought descriptions of freakish things.
No, it is about the universe.

Pretty much exactly. Some additional context may be useful, though.

Lovecraft was sickly and depressed for much of his life, and was terrified by nature (which is why we have so many fishes and spiders and things with tentacles in his work). He was even more afraid of science, which he thought was beginning to reveal that the humanism and idealism of the past century and the Enlightenment were empirically wrong.

Lovecraftian horror is rooted in humanity being helpless against the forces of nature, which is not a very new idea if you consider mythology, but with one addition: Lovecraft's forces of nature couldn't be bargained with. In mythology, the gods are cruel natural forces, but are comforting in that they can be appeased and predicted. Lovecraft's gods follow recent scientific revelations that no, nature can't be defeated or reasoned with.

The man was a Romantic writer to his core — his writing is deeply nostalgic, with anti-scientific sentiments embedded in the recurring theme of "forbidden knowledge" and "things man was not meant to know." It's also Eurocentric — evil is typically the result of the "outsider" or "alien," be it human or otherwise. But his body of work does fixate on genuine questions regarding the value and usefulness of humanism.

Returning to the first poster's question again, one genuine way to make humanity the focus of a genuinely Lovecraftian story is to inject hope as a counterpoint. Whereas villains often define heroes, I think you might have more luck inverting that model. A despairing Romantic nihilist like Lovecraft himself is the ideal human villain for such a story, and might be pitted against heroes that embody generally positive sentiments like humanism, trans-humanism, hyper-humanism, futurism or cheerful nihilism.

In other words, if you want to make humanity a primary focus of Lovecraftian horror, then you have to insert an alternative vision of humanity that allows us to continue in the face of that horror.

Eakin
2011-09-28, 01:26 PM
Well I am probably the wrong person to ask since my favorite story with cosmic horror elements is Chrono Trigger, but I agree that "fear of the unknown" doesn't have the same impact as it did in Lovecraft's day. You have to really play up the "your species is completely insignificant" element of an eldritch abomination rather than stories that center on forbidden knowledge or shocking revelation.

Lapak
2011-09-28, 02:27 PM
Whelp, we've all heard it before-alien gods of a vast and uncaring universe have set their sights on Earth, the only outcomes are varying degrees of "you lose", you lose your mind through observing them, etc.

I also don't find it that scary. At all.It's not really supposed to be scary in the immediate sense. It's supposed to be existentially horrifying. Because it's not about the alien gods 'setting their sights on Earth', or anything of the sort; they don't care about Earth. Or humanity. It's just that doing the things which they do will destroy us as a consequence. A side effect.

It's like a guy on the beach running into the water to go swimming. Halfway down the beach, his foot comes down right above a buried crab and he crushes it to death. He doesn't even realize he did it; it's writhing out the last instants of its life buried under the sand and he'll never know it existed or that he killed it. And he wasn't engaged in anything particularly important when he did.

In Lovecraft's world, we're the crab, and there are dozens/hundreds/thousands of things in the universe that are running around the Universal Beach. It's only a matter of time until we get crushed, and it's not something that we're going to see coming or be able to prevent. It won't be celebrated, it won't be mourned, but it will happen sooner or later. And it's made worse when some idiots think that they can beat the system somehow by putting a sign up that says 'this way to the best waves!' and making it happen SOONER. (Or in some cases, they've just given in to the inevitable and want it to end so they don't have to anticipate it any more.)

But you're right; dread of an unknown, unforeesable, unstoppable demise isn't exactly good RPG material in and of itself. The whole point of playing games is to act, and a setting which inherently makes action useless is kind of a non-starter. So you have to focus on the human-level problems - including the destruction-seekers, or the people too foolish to realize that they're courting destruction - to make a game plot of it.

Shinizak
2011-09-28, 02:44 PM
Why the hell does an alien god who's lived here a very long time want to kill us now when his cult's kept him fed and happy (and don't hit me with that "incomprehensible to humans" bull-there is alien, and then there is violations of things such as "self-serving logic", such as "these ants keep me worshiped, fat, and happy, I think I'll kill them all")?

The thing about this one is that the alien horror gods either don't like humans or are incompatible with them. What I mean by "don't like" is that some of the gods really don't care either way what happens to the humans, humans are just a means to an end. This usually takes the form of a "get out of jail free" (since most of them are imprisoned) card or a meal ticket.

As for being incompatible, some cultist summon these creatures not knowing that you need a hazmat suit and a mile of personal space just to interact with it. Take Daoloth for example, Daoloth is basically geometry on crack, he is an ever expanding form of geometric shapes that will eventually consume you as it grows. Daoloth doesn't mean for this to happen, it just does.

In both cases people are simply collateral. the monster wanted something so it got it. if it needs something else it'll get new people or use the ones it still has. to them we are less of worshiping ants and more of that useful screw driver you found that may or may ynot be filled with beef jerky.


How come humanity, a stubborn race, just gives up? And (this is the real kicker) why the hell does seeing something out of normal experience make you insane, and if so, why hasn't the entire quantum physics field been committed?

This one is more of a misunderstanding of how to portray the genre then anything. the sanity loss come in 2 flavors, natural and situational.

In Natural sanity loss a person has confronted a creature that by it's definition can not interact with a person without destroying it. Daoloth from earlier falls into this category. His body cannot be fathomed as it is an anomaly. Great Cthulhu himself is a powerful psychic, so much so that he can contact people in his eternal slumber, so interacting with him while he's awake is mind shattering.

Situational sanity loss is much more personal. let me give you an example:

You and your friend Bill were investigating your grandmother's abandoned house when you found that a group of crazy people have started a cult in it's basement. they took you and Bill hostage and tied you up. While the crazy people were talking you realize the cultists are beginning a ritual of sacrifice, realizing who the sacrifices were you attempted a daring escape with Bill. As you and Bill rush for the door one of the cultists pull a grenade and set it off, the house collapses, the cultists die, and Bill is unconscious with multiple fractures. everything goes silent, everything is dark and you are left to figuring out how to get out of this place and how to get Bill to a hospital. but from the summoning circle a crack in the ground appears and begins to widen at an alarming rate. a gaping pit yawns before you, your heart races as a cold wind chills your face. silently an amorphous Dark mass rises from the pit and begins to curl around Bill's body. at this point you're panicking and hysterical as you try to drag bill back to safety to no avail. you can do nothing as the creature drags your friend into the pit and closes. leaving you only to sob and cry for help.

3 Days later

A search and rescue team pulls away the rubble only to find you scratching and digging at the ground screaming for Bill. When you tell everyone the events that transpired people look at you as though you were crazy. the paramedics call it post traumatic stress, They suggest you go in for psychiatric evaluation and court ordered therapy. For the rest of your life the nightmares never go away, the claustrophobia is crippling and you lose the ability to relate to others. Your life is long and miserable and you die wondering what happened to Bill. The End.

In this one the character has undergone such horrific events BECAUSE of the creature and it's minions, but not due to any qualities the creature possesses.

Frozen_Feet
2011-09-28, 03:12 PM
Yeah... insanity angle has been way overplayed in regards to Lovecraftian horrors. Most of the time, what they cause is perfectly ordinary post-traumatic stress disorders, which can be caused by any life-threatening situation.

Ergo, things from beyond don't drive you mad because they're OMG so mind-boggling. They drive you mad, because they want to eat your face, and that has a tendency to unhinge people.

PPA
2011-09-28, 05:05 PM
Actually, Lovecraft was kind of explicit in saying that looking at the Great Old Ones or whatever drove you crazy because they're so unfathomably horrible and alien that the human mind is ill equipped to withstand their sight. I get it that we, as fans of the genre or whatever, might be jaded and think that Cthulhu is not scary anymore. Hell, we even have plush toys and whatnot. But I'm pretty sure I'd be scared out of my wits if I ran into something like this, and not necessarily because it might want to eat me or something:

"Bigger'n a barn… all made o' squirmin' ropes… hull thing sort o'
shaped like a hen's egg bigger'n anything with dozens o' legs like hogsheads
that haff shut up when they step… nothin' solid abaout it - all like
jelly, an' made o' sep'rit wrigglin' ropes pushed clost together… great
bulgin' eyes all over it… ten or twenty maouths or trunks a-stickin' aout
all along the sides, big as stove-pipes an all a-tossin' an openin' an' shuttin'…
all grey, with kinder blue or purple rings… an' Gawd it Heaven -
that haff face on top… ' " (From the Dunwich Horror)