Should I Use The Cthulu Mythos?

So I want the main bad guys in this comic I'm writing to be this Victorian Era cult who tried to summon some sort of otherworldy monster/demon, and I was wondering if said monster should be something from the Cthulu Mythos (I was thinking Nyarlathotep) or something I made up myself. On the one hand, I feel like using Nyarl would give it more credibility, but on the other hand I don't want the Mythos to overshadow everything else (The comic's going to have a mix of supernatural entities).

What do you guys think?

But Don't Forget Knuckles O'Shaughnessy!

If your going to have a mix of supernatural beings... don't use Nyarly. The cosmic nature of the mythos means that its going overshadow a lot of thing. Nyarlthotep especially since Lovecraft had him cropping up multiple times in history. The pseudo-Egyptian name is not accidental in that regard but that means that Lovecraft's mythos is going to get its tentacles and other appendages everywhere.

I'm a Lovecraft fanatic, so I think everything's better with Cthulhu (Why isn't there a trope called that btw???).

While I'd usually recommend coming up with your own Eldritch creations, considering your work is going to have other creatures in it I'd say go with Nyarlathotep or one of the other elder gods. That way it's more of a case of All Myths Are True.

If you're worried about the mythos itself overshadowing your other stuff trying to keep everything balanced is a tricky proposition given the level of bad mojo the mythos brings to the table. Perhaps, you should turn that weakness into a strength in some way.

edited 29th Aug '14 1:12:36 PM by Avenuewriter

Is not impressed.

Why would it overshadow everything?

Why don't you use one of the many races in the Cthulhu Mythos instead of the gods?

You could say they were trying to make dealings with the Deep Ones, or that they had their minds swapped with one of the Great Race of Yith, or that a Mi-Go decided to take one of their member's brain to take a travel around the universe.

On another topic, if you are going to use the Gread Old Ones or the Outer Gods...

Perharps you could make them a hedonist cult? In which case you could use Shub-Niggurath, or, if you want to make them a cult into really squicky stuff, Y'golonac

Or perharps you could make them trying to summon Hastur.

edited 31st Aug '14 9:29:54 PM by PersistentMan

Have you forgotten the face of your father, troper?

If you honestly think you can do something interesting with it, go for it.

IMO, Lovecraft monsters are only a few steps away from zombies and vampires at this point. While they can be done well, all of the prior associations people have with them mean that you will have to put in significantly more effort if you want your audience to take things seriously.

Normally I would say no considering how painfully saturated Cthulhu has gotten (comes from living underwater natch) but a Victorian era cult is pretty close to the original novels. So yes I think it would be fitted.

edited 2nd Sep '14 7:33:34 AM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

lovecraft probably would cause overshadowing; the main deal about using the mythos is that it gets easy recognition from pretty much anyone who knows what an eldritch being is.

when you see someone like nyarly in a non-mythos work, as a reader, if you recognize him the automatic assumption in play is probably not going to be that he's a minor player, or that theres even a chance of him being weaker than any non-mythos horror shown.

if you use a big player from the mythos then he is automatically placed in the higher echelons of threat-hood. thats the point of the mythos after all, that these are ancient, unknowable beings beyond us in pretty much every way that drive us to insanity with the smallest glimpses of them.

in a lovecraft lite series where they're not beyond us in every single way, they're still usually presented as top dogs and final villains.

so if you want a series with other supernatural horrors at work who arent working for the native eldritch god who arent presented as filler villains for the real villain of the piece, you probably shouldnt use a big name like the mythos.

I'd use something existential of a Lovecraftian sort, but nothing actually from the Mythos.

I mean, c'mon man. You say you're making a comic out of it? You've got the creativity and juice to get that far, and bang out ideas for everything that entails - but you need help from a dude who's been in the ground for... (*wikiwikiwiki*) 77 years?

It's your work. You give it credibility, not Howie.

Besides, if you play it wrong, it ends up looking like yet another Lovecraft hanger-on, and that risk ought to overshadow using the Mythos in the first place.

...is what I think. I'd definitely like to see what you've come up with, though, so don't be a stranger in that regard!

Hey, YOU be careful also, if he makes it too similar he basically winds up the same. Except with a 'look at this, it's like lovecraft but IT"S NOT' Kind of a vibe which can be even worse.

§◄►§

As much as i love C'thulu mythos. . .I would probably say no. It's getting overdone and badly done lately.

there's just this lack of cosmic horror about him these days. He's just a representation of the vaguely troubling thought that humanity might come to an abrupt end in a way that we can't control.

C'thulu's horror came after WWI but before WWII. We've had all that time in between to really find some horrifying things. Like nuclear horror, fascist horror, communist horror. After the bombs were dropped, the scale of things that induce madness got kicked up a notch.

And there's other things too like how we have satellite images of the bottom of the sea, and the place where r'yleh is supposed to be is right underneath the great pacific garbage patch.

And how every writer of fantasy even down to the Real Ghostbusters does at least one homage to C'thulu. Maybe it's time to let him, I dunno. . .eternally lie already

edited 7th Sep '14 1:20:18 AM by Lyredragon1

I think that as we have come to explore and map out more and more of the former unknown (bottom of the sea, deep space, the pre-human past), the terror of something lurking just beyond our vision has given way to the terror that we are utterly alone in the universe.

Finding life/intelligence at this point would be somewhat comforting no matter how horrifying it might be, anything but the endless accelerating void and its mindless atoms and quarks.

I agree with Lyredragon — feel free to take inspiration from the themes of the Cthulhu mythos, but don't just reuse them blindly.

For a different kind of cosmic horror, why not take an idea from Cordwainer Smith (he's an awesome author, by the way) and create something like the Douglas-Ouyang planets?

Spoilers for the linked short story (but read it, seriously, it's worth it): it's a cluster of planet following impossibly bizarre orbits and possessing some sort of group intelligence. It's not exactly malevolent — if anything, it's just lonely — but its completely alien mentality makes it impossible for them to interact with humans on a meaningful and non-destructive level. Its idea of "being helpful" is taking a suicidal madman, give him near-absolute immortality and weapons of mass destruction, and have him dance an hypnotic dance that renders everyone else catatonic.

edited 8th Sep '14 6:34:33 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Yeah, I'm sure by Lovecraft's time, a gigantic octopus alien-god emerging from the sea would probably be terrifying, nowadays, if that happened... We would probably just nuke it.

edited 8th Sep '14 7:38:24 AM by PersistentMan

Have you forgotten the face of your father, troper?

I think it's selling him a little short. I mean you could just nuke him but he will just reform and now be equally evil and radioactive.

hashtagsarestupid

Oh yeah, the Call of Cthulhu RPG, forgot about that.

Have you forgotten the face of your father, troper?

Oh man I wasn't sure any one would get that reference xD

hashtagsarestupid

If you're aiming for actual cosmic horror, don't use Lovecraft. The Cthulhu Mythos has become so saturated in culture that it has utterly lost the connotations of inevitable failure in an apathetic universe that it originally had. (Not to mention that much of what he wrote wasn't cosmic horror to begin with, i.e. Nyarlathotep.)

If you're aiming for religious horror instead... I would still advise you to not use Lovecraft, but I'd be more apathetic about it.

Use Nethescurial instead. :U

edited 16th Sep '14 3:41:38 PM by Noaqiyeum

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Er, what? Nyarlathotep is totally cosmic horror. It's about as cosmic as you can get, right up there with Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and the big C himself.

If you want to talk non-cosmic Lovecraft, try Pickman's Model, Cool Air, The Rats In The Walls, The Lurking Fear, The Cats of Ulthar, or The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward. All of those stories are more concerned with freaky shit here on Earth than with wierdness from beyond.

Nope. He's part of the same mythos, but Nyarlathotep is more of a Mephistopheles figure - unlike any of the other elder gods, he actively tries to get people to worship him. Why the avatar of the being whose existence signifies the profound mindless indifference of the universe cares so much about humans is anyone's guess, but it's kind of a thematic stumbling block.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

Yeah, I actually read up on Nyarlathotep and realised I was wrong shortly after posting. I just mentally filed him under "cultists and dark gods" at the time, which is what I tend to think of when I see the words "cosmic horror" these days.

Also I just wanted to dump the titles of a bunch of Lovecraft stories that had nothing to do with Cthulhu, because the dude had a bunch of other super-crazy ideas that most people have never heard of. Like the Martense family in The Lurking Fear. Screw your tentacle gods, give me more inbred cannibal monsters!

Oh that's a good one The Lurking Fear. I saw an adaption of that in the movie Bleeders. If you want to better example of why you don't show the monster in a movie you'll be hard pressed to find one

hashtagsarestupid

Frankly, I've always thought that the idea of organizing Lovecraft into a mythos was missing the point of the whole thing.

The entire point is that the beings from his work are supposed to be these things that are utterly alien, beyond our understanding. Breeding familiarity with them and filling in too many details turns them into just another bunch of monsters. They're supposed to be things that break people's minds, not stuff that you can put up on a wiki.

The stories work perfectly well without being part of an overall continuity. Trying to use his stuff as a "mythos" is kind of like people trying to celebrate Monty Python by repeating the parrot sketch to death.

This.

See, that's the thing, though - "cultists and dark gods" is fundamentally Religious Horror. Obviously overlap exists ^note as it does with psychological horror, folktales, etc... (since they do both tend to suggest that everything we think we understand about the universe is wrong), but stories like The Colour out of Space and At the Mountains of Madness are much more cosmic horror than The Call of Cthulhu.

Not to sound like a cosmic horror purist or anything, obviously. Pickman's Model and The Cats of Ulthar are particularly good for Lovecraft. ^_^ It's just that other subgenres aren't so closely tied to the complete works of a single author that they inspire this kind of rampant misuse.

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable