Cthulhu Mythos: Difference between revisions

Soon the Old Ones come again!|[http://www.journalfen.net/community/the_hms_stfu/239597.html From "Climbing from the depths abyssal"], a [[Filk]] of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s "Climbing over rocky mountain" by Adam Cuerden.}}

 

 

 

The actual term [[Cthulhu Mythos]], depending on how you define it, post-dates Lovecraft's death, at which time H. P. Lovecraft's work got seized and expanded on by August Derleth. Lovecraft called his budding mythology "Yog-Sothothery".

Due to the [[Shared Universe]]'s informal nature there have arisen several rather divisive conceptions of the Mythos, generally categorized as the Lovecraft purists' version; the version including the broad post-1930s expansions by later writers like August Derleth (who is a controversy unto himself) and Ramsey Campbell; and then there's the rigidly codified and de-mystified [[Tabletop RPG]] adaptations which crunch down [[Mind Screwdriver]]-style to produce orderly game rules from an inherently disorderly canon. Information from the latter has tended to proliferate across the Internet disproportionately, resulting in simple Google searches producing a majority of pages derived from the game and its various campaigns, which are not always labeled as such.

 

 

See also the [[Call of Cthulhu|Call of Cthulhu RPG]]

* [[Delta Green]]: The Mythos meets government conspiracies and black ops.

* Hyperborea: Prehistorical Greenland before the ice age. Created by [[Clark Ashton Smith]], it focuses more on the weirdness than [[Cosmic Horror Story|horror]].

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=== [[wikipedia:Category:Cthulhu Mythos writers|Notable Cthulhu Mythos writers include]]: ===

** [[Clark Ashton Smith]].

** [[Donald Wandrei]]. Co-founder of ''Arkham House''.

** [[Henry Kuttner]].

** [[Frank Belknap Long]].

** [[Fritz Leiber]]

** [[Robert Bloch]].

* '''Pre-Lovecraft Authors''' : Writers whose works were before Lovecraft started, but were a great influence on him. Latter [[Retcon|retconned]] into the Mythos:

** [[Ambrose Bierce]]: Created the lost city of Carcosa and the name Hastur, which reappear in ''[[The King in Yellow]]''.

** [[Lord Dunsany]]: Inspired Lovecraft's dream-prose period and the idea of creating a pantheon of his own.

* [[Brian Lumley]]: Whose [[Titus Crow]], ''Primal Land'', and ''Hero of Dreams'' forms a part of the mythos.

* [[Chiaki Konaka]], who has written several Mythos stories in addition to his work as an anime screenplay writer.

{{examples|Examples of:}}

* [[Affectionate Parody]]: Several, including:

** "Love's Eldritch Ichor" by [[Esther Friesner|Esther M. Friesner]] is a silly love story between a harried publisher and a romance writer, a descendant of Lovecraft who is protected by Cthulhu.

** [[Pokethulhu]], crossing the mythos and Pokemon.

* [[Alien Geometries]]: One of the most notable examples being on the island of R'lyeh, in "The Call of Cthulhu".

* [[Aliens Are Bastards]]: Just about everything not of this Earth is evil and/or horrifying. About the only exception are Elder Thing and the Great Race of Yith, who still do freaky things like body-swapping with humans so they can visit Earth, and politely mind-wiping the unfortunate human when they switch back.

* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: An alternative take on the Mythos by some authors. Most of the beings in the Mythos are beyond good and evil, as we understand it. For example, Long presents the ''Hounds of Tindalos'' as "Foul" and "descended of angles". Humans are somewhat "Pure" and literally descended from curves. In "A Note on the Cthulhu Mythos", Derleth explains that the entities of the Mythos are "beyond mundane morality".

* [[Canon Welding]]: Very common.

* [[Covers Always Lie]]: Lovecraft anthologies (such as the ''Del Ray'' ones) tend to have weird, surreal imagery that often doesn't have anything to do with anything in the stories. Though, it does communicate the atmosphere of the books well enough.

* [[Cult|Cults]]: The Mythos is filled with Old One worshipers with [[Religion of Evil|horrible rituals]]. They range from the ''Arkham Witch Coven'', various madmen like the Whateleys, ''The Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign'', and the English ''Temphill Cult'' to name a few.

* [[Dark Fantasy]]: Really Dark.

* [[Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?]]?:

** Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". Yog-Sothoth mates with a human woman {{spoiler|and produces the offspring who will be known as Wilbur Whateley.}}

* [[Go Mad From the Revelation]]: [[Trope Namer]].

* [[Half-Human Hybrid]]: And not the [[Body Horror|cute furry kind]], [[In the Blood|nor the sympathetic outcast kind]].

* [[Historical Domain Character]]: It's common for Mythos stories by later authors to feature Lovecraft himself as a character, often with the premises that he wrote truth disguised as fiction. ''[[Lovecraft Is Missing]]'' is a prominent example.

* [[How We Got Here]]: Typically of the "See, this is why I must commit suicide before sundown..." variety

* [[No Hugging, No Kissing]]:

** Lovecraft's stories contain virtually no hanky-panky. His narrators are universally chaste. Females characters are consistently abominations in disguise. On the very rare occasions that sexual activity is implied, it is depicted negatively and guaranteed to result in inhuman hybrid demon spawn.

** As in the space of a story (days, maybe weeks) the male heroes spend time among creatures like [[Half-Human Hybrid|Innsmouth hybrids]] or [[I Am a Humanitarian|man-eating degenerate beings]] from ''The Lurking Fear'', it would be pretty horrible to imagine what they could do if they ''weren't'' chaste.

* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: Cthulhu only appears in one of the original Lovecraft stories. Though he is the most iconic character in the Mythos, not all of the stories involve him--technically, "The Great Old Ones Mythos" would be a more accurate title.

* [[Paranormal Investigation]]

* [[Plant Aliens]]: Both the Mi-Go and the Elder Things are described as being fungoid.

* [[Public Domain Character]]: Even when it was created. H.P. Lovecraft encouraged creative diversity in the original Cthulhu Circle, such that there was (and is) no ''single'' all-enjoining [[Canon]], but rather what amounts to multiple authors' [[Ascended Fanon]]. In this sense, the Cthulhu Mythos more resembles an organic [[Mythology]] with numerous variations.

* [[Psychological Horror]]

** References to the Mythos is also common in popular culture.

* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism]]: Most of the time, so cynical you could use the scale as a trebuchet, competes with Warhammer 40k for the title of most Cynical popular body of fiction.

* [[Starfish Aliens]]: All of HPL's aliens, and quite a few earth-dwelling creatures. Howard, for such an early writer, was good at ensuring his aliens were actually alien. And in the case of the [[wikipedia:Elder Things|Elder Things,]] one of the more sympathetic species, almost ''literal'' [[Starfish Aliens]]. Latter authors have followed suit.

* [[Stuck in Their Shadow]]: In-universe example: The protagonist of ''Black Man With A Horn'' feels that his literary career was overshadowed by his friend, H.P. Lovecraft.

* [[These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know]]

* [[Too Many Mouths]]: One of the classic eldritch abomination traits. In a particularly corporeal case, the Great Old One Y'golonac ([[Running Gag|you fool]], [[Speak of the Devil|you've doomed us all!]]) has them on his palms.

* [[Tome of Eldritch Lore]]: Most notably the ''Necronomicon'', but also ''De Vermis Mysteriis'', the ''Pnakotic Manuscripts'', the... well just [[wikipedia:Cthulhu Mythos arcane literature|look at the list.]] Name-dropping one of these is a stock horror [[Shout-Out]].

* [[Tuckerization]]: In addition to all the Author Avatars and Shout Outs, the Lovecraft Circle tossed out references to their pals:

** Lovecraft mentions the Atlantean priest ''[[Clark Ashton Smith|Klarkash-ton]]''.

** A ''[[August Derleth|Comte d'Erlette]]'' wrote the ''Cultes des Goules''.

* [[Trope Overdosed]]: Think this page has a lot of tropes? Check out the character page.