what to do with a lovercraftian hybird

as a break from all that, I wanted to start maybe doing a short series of stories detailing a woman observing the by-product of an eldritch abomination and a human woman. he's only referred to as number 17, being the 17th subject in a line of other hybrids. the mother died giving birth to him and his father is unknown (although some say it's abbi-sahth, a giant bird-like creature made of dying stars and black holes). I just need to correctly portray the idea of Lovecraft hybrid decently, yet he has a father that isn't based on any elder god in the Lovecraft mythos. the main themes I want to explore is man vs self, society, and nature vs nurture. and the boy has wings which can turn into combat tendrils when threaten.

edited 23rd Oct '17 7:28:03 PM by ewolf2015

Having recently read The Dunwich Horror, there are several questions that arise in my mind right now. For one, what is the place and timeframe of the story? Social attitudes regarding children with atypical physiologies tend to vary greatly in that regard. For every Elephant Man, there's a Lakshmi Tatma, never mind the idea of half-demonic children being outright fetishized in Japanese culture. The actual Lovecraftian aspect of such "abominations" stems more from the man's (and his protagonist's) personal disgust and fear of miscegenation, supernatural or otherwise.

Similarly, how much is known regarding the child's lineage, by himself and others? On the matter of nature and nurture, is he inherently destructive and malicious? Does he want to learn more about himself, or does he regard himself as an abomination to begin with? Does his - let's call her a caretaker for now - treat him with clinical indifference or disgust?

Finally, the ultimate Lovecraftian theme - pervasive in The Dunwich Horror as well - is that such hybrids are only a taste of things to come, a minor glimpse of much greater horrors. Wilbur Whateley wasn't dangerous because he was an alien octopus half-breed, but because he was feeding the local populace to his invisible house-sized "brother", and he was trying to bring daddy over for dinner as well. That's the true horror of a Lovecraftian story - that it's not the hybrid children that are dangerous, it's their parents.

i was thinking of making his behavior more devoid and based on a different morality which the caretaker has a hard time relating to. he has limited shapeshifter but prefers a dormant very human state when not provoked. if he was threaten he turns into creature made of shadow.

also i mention this took place in the 70s.

None of that adds up to an Eldritch Abomination / Humanoid Abomination. They're interesting, maybe, but not what makes a being "eldritch". Are you sure you understand what makes something horrifying in the context of the Cthulhu Mythos?

edited 24th Oct '17 9:35:59 PM by nekomoon14

To be fair, a lot of what makes Lovecraftian stories horrifying is based on the personal paranoia and prejudice of the man himself. For instance, if the boy's caretaker was disgusted and judgmental toward him, only to find out that she herself has similar parentage, that would be a Lovecraftian realization. On their own, the creatures themselves aren't that scary. Not in the post-fifties world, where we already have atomic horrors to worry about, and the universe is pretty much confirmed as cold, uncaring, and chock-full of things that can destroy us without a moment's notice.

I had a conversation with some people and I thought a change in genre made more sense. Honestly, this isn't part of the mythos but inspired by it. Even then I will still do some research on the matter to get a basic idea of it. Hell, it will be more thriller horror In some cases.

edited 25th Oct '17 4:42:11 PM by ewolf2015

"Thriller horror" sounds more like King than Lovecraft, so that's another source of inspiration you could use. Another aspect is the religious and mythological one, like if, say, the caretaker were to study the kid with the help of ancient tomes of eldritch lore, trying to figure out what parts apply to him or are even real, and what are just the ramblings of deranged cultists.

Mind you, if want to understand Lovecraft better, you can think of his writings as more eloquent versions of the various satanic panic articles that pop up in the tabloids every now and then. They were very popular in his day, but are generally ignored in literature analyses, so without knowing about them, his own work seems a lot more outlandish now that it was in his lifetime. If he were indeed writing in the seventies, he'd probably be telling tales of children turned insane or sucked into hellish dimensions over a game of D&D. I mean really, that hardly ever happens anymore.

Noted.

edited 26th Oct '17 2:33:28 AM by indiana404

that was a typo.