Did Lovecraft ever reuse is own monsters?

[Yora]

I was just thinking about it and I can't actually remember a single story in which a creature from one story got any major role in another story. There is some name dropping here and there, but I only known of one story in which Cthulhu appears, only one that has Deep Ones, only one with Elder Things, one with a shoggoth, only one with Mi-Go, and only one with Nyarlathotep.

Did he have the wise foresight not to reuse a monster his readers would already know?

[GolemsVoice]

As far as I know it never went beyond the aforementioned name-dropping.

[HandofShadows]

Nyarlathotep shows up in a couple of stories, but only once a big character. The other times he is in the background.

[-D-]

Nyarlathotep shows up in a couple of stories, but only once a big character. The other times he is in the background.
He? I thought it was well, it. Genderless and ever changing.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

He? I thought it was well, it. Genderless and ever changing.
I thought it was kawaii. (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EwTTiD-W1Rc/T45aii5q4dI/AAAAAAAAPNY/z5v0iv1A_-s/s1600/Haiyore%2BNyaruko-san%2B-%2B01%2B-%2BLarge%2B02.jpg)

(I haven't actually seen the show.)

[Yora]

It's awesome! :smallbiggrin:
Nyaruko is only the beginning. It gets so much worse! (Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Dagon-kun and Hydra-chan? :smallamused:

[Mx.Silver]

Very little, if ever.
It makes sense, after all. The key element of Lovecraft's horror is that the entities here are fundamentally beyond human knowledge and comprehension. Bringing them back repeatedly would undermine this.

Which makes the way they've been constantly recycled by other people since something of a tragic irony.


He? I thought it was well, it. Genderless and ever changing.
It is, as are more or less all of the entities. That they're nigh-universally referred to as male is because male is still the default gender, and so just about everyone has an ingrained habit of thinking of any character not explicitly gendered as being female as being male. Lovecraft

The main exception here being Shub-Niggurath, who has been gendered as female since she was first named - even though there's no more reason to assume our concepts of gender would apply in this case than with any of the others.




(I haven't actually seen the show.)

You aren't missing anything.

[veti]

Nyarlathotep often appears in human form, and when he does, he is definitely male.

And he appears in multiple stories. Nyarlathotep, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Dreams in the Witch-House. Also The Haunter of the Dark, although not so human there.

Lovecraft re-uses ghouls. The Outsider, Pickman's Model, Dream-Quest (again), and I'm pretty sure a few other places too.

[Cikomyr]

What was Lovecraft's story where the POV character was an abomination child that didnt knew of its own horror?

[veti]

What was Lovecraft's story where the POV character was an abomination child that didnt knew of its own horror?

You may be thinking of The Outsider (http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/o.aspx).

[GolemsVoice]

Maybe also the one story where the narrator was the offspring of an African ape and a human. Lovecraft at his finest.

[hamishspence]

In The Shadow over Innsmouth, the protagonist has a Deep One great-great-grandparent.

[Kris Strife]

He used the Ghouls a few times, though they're not one of his more famous creatures.

[Wardog]

He used the Ghouls a few times, though they're not one of his more famous creatures.

Interestingly, when they first show up, they're portrayed as OMG DOG-HEADED CORPSE-EATING PEOPLE LIVING BELOW OUR FEET! MY PUNY MIND CAN'T STAND THE HORROR!!!

(Actually, that should probably be randomly italicised rather than allcaps, to better fit his style).

But when they show up again in (I forget which story), they're actually shown to be pretty decent.

[hamishspence]

I think it was in A Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath that the ghouls assist the protagonist.

[danzibr]

This makes me want to pick up my Necronimicon.

[the_druid_droid]

I thought it was kawaii. (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EwTTiD-W1Rc/T45aii5q4dI/AAAAAAAAPNY/z5v0iv1A_-s/s1600/Haiyore%2BNyaruko-san%2B-%2B01%2B-%2BLarge%2B02.jpg)

(I haven't actually seen the show.)

You know, I watched a bit of that a while back, but got sidetracked... I am itching for something new to Let's Watch...


Nyarlathotep often appears in human form, and when he does, he is definitely male.

And he appears in multiple stories. Nyarlathotep, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Dreams in the Witch-House. Also The Haunter of the Dark, although not so human there.

Lovecraft re-uses ghouls. The Outsider, Pickman's Model, Dream-Quest (again), and I'm pretty sure a few other places too.

Aaaaand ninja'd on the actual point I came here to make. Oh well...


Interestingly, when they first show up, they're portrayed as OMG DOG-HEADED CORPSE-EATING PEOPLE LIVING BELOW OUR FEET! MY PUNY MIND CAN'T STAND THE HORROR!!!

(Actually, that should probably be randomly italicised rather than allcaps, to better fit his style).

But when they show up again in (I forget which story), they're actually shown to be pretty decent.

To be fair, when they show up again, it's in Kadath, which was meant to be far more of a fantasy than a horror story, and is told from a different perspective - decidedly more inside the weird than suffering under its effects. Also, the guy in "Pickman's Model" didn't go crazy so much as decide 'f*ck subways'.

[Fralex]

You know, I watched a bit of that a while back, but got sidetracked... I am itching for something new to Let's Watch...

What is this show everyone is talking about? That single out-of-context screenshot of an anime girl looked decidedly non-Lovecraftian, although there's always Google Deep Dream (https://dreamscopeapp.com/i/Z-ehb9YIQs) to solve that problem...

[Hiro Protagonest]

What is this show everyone is talking about? That single out-of-context screenshot of an anime girl looked decidedly non-Lovecraftian, although there's always Google Deep Dream (https://dreamscopeapp.com/i/Z-ehb9YIQs) to solve that problem...

Consider yourself enlightened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyaruko:_Crawling_with_Love) (roll SAN loss).

[Hazzardevil]

It sounds like when it says "inspired by lovecraft" it means "bastardised and ruined"

[Nerd-o-rama]

It sounds like when it says "inspired by lovecraft" it means "bastardised and ruined"

People have been ruining Lovecraft since Derleth. Hell, even Lovecraft ruined Lovecraft, what with all the naked, spiteful racism and the tell-don't-show hackery.

Nyaruko is more of both a parody of Lovecraft and a satire of its own genre that leans more heavily on parody since, well, they still have to make money of merchandising to otaku with obscure tastes.

Does Yog-Sothoth show up "in person" more than once? I swear I remember two stories with it as a major element but I'm blanking on the titles.

Nyarlathotep (or its various forms, some of which are monsters implied to be one and the same) and ghouls are the main ones that recur with actual story presence, though.

[WalkingTarget]

Does Yog-Sothoth show up "in person" more than once? I swear I remember two stories with it as a major element but I'm blanking on the titles.


"The Dunwich Horror" gets us Wilbur Whateley and his brother as the offspring of Yog-Sothoth. I'm actually unaware of (or at least cannot recall) any of Lovecraft's solo-authored stories where it actually makes an appearance. I want to say that we get a description in The Lurker at the Threshold, but that was more Derleth than Lovecraft. There may be more of Lovecraft than Price in "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", which might be what you're thinking of as Yog-Sothoth shows up and addresses Randolph Carter directly. Y-S gets name-dropped a lot, though.

As for the main question, my main recollection is that anything that shows up multiple times is likely to be in the "Dreamlands" set of stories rather than the horror stuff (the ghouls being a crossover). At the Mountains of Madness has the largest collection of name-drops of entities from earlier stories (Cthulhu, the Mi-Go, etc.), but that practice was rampant throughout his work as part of the point was to use the references to give a sense of interconnectedness/history to his stories and those of his contemporaries.

Edit - Oh, I suppose that Asenath Waite from "The Thing on the Doorstep" was technically a Deep One hybrid, although that element wasn't really a major plot point in that story.

[Yora]

Y-S gets name-dropped a lot, though.
The actual term for Lovecrafts work is Yog-Sothothery. Whenever people talk about Cthulhu Mythos, it really seems mostly about the elaborations and explanations by other writers. (Cthulhu is really a pretty minor entity in Lovecrafts own works.)

[Winter_Wolf]

This makes me want to pick up my Necronimicon.
I keep mine in my car. Assuming you're talking about the ridiculously thick collection of his works. The Simon book I kept as my bathroom reader which unfortunately I left in China.

its hard to get into reading HPL these days, I fall asleep about the same time as my three year old and Lovecraft isn't a good bedtime story author. Although plushie Cthulhu is a good pillow adornment. :smalltongue:

[Wardog]

Another one I've thought of - "the crinoid race of Antarctica" from At the Mountains of Madness show up briefly in at least one other story.

[megahobbit]

People have been ruining Lovecraft since Derleth. Hell, even Lovecraft ruined Lovecraft, what with all the naked, spiteful racism and the tell-don't-show hackery.

Nyaruko is more of both a parody of Lovecraft and a satire of its own genre that leans more heavily on parody since, well, they still have to make money of merchandising to otaku with obscure tastes.

Does Yog-Sothoth show up "in person" more than once? I swear I remember two stories with it as a major element but I'm blanking on the titles.

Nyarlathotep (or its various forms, some of which are monsters implied to be one and the same) and ghouls are the main ones that recur with actual story presence, though.

I tend to find written horror to be one of the few places that the "show dont tell" rule doesnt apply.

[Yora]

Lovecraft uses the neat trick of pretty much always writing in first person. While he doesn't show us the actual events, he generally shows us how the narrator reacted to the events, which structurally is still showing and not telling.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Show don't tell is situational advice, not general advice.

[Bulldog Psion]

Shoggoths appear in person in At the Mountains of Madness, and are mentioned again in The Shadow over Innsmouth.