Non-threaded

Forums » The Lounge » Read Thread

A place to sit back, hang out, and make monkey noises about anything you'd like.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

There's very few examples of media I can think of, outside of writing, (Even then, they sometimes miss the point, like that one god in the Wikipedia list that was basically described as "Cthulhu's good brother") that gets Lovecraft right. Most movie attempts have devolved into "Kaiju Film with elements of Silent Hill" or just been the territory of B-Movies that missed the point to begin with. Bloodborne kind of does it right. The Sirens series was spot on. I don't really read enough books to list other things that hit the spot the same way.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
Ooh, I forgot about Bloodborne.

Is there some legal reason there hasn't been a Cthulhu movie of the massive, soulless blockbuster variety? Nerds fucking love Cthulhu, and everyone loves giant blisters. It'd be terrible and miss the point completely but also basically a license to print money, so I don't understand this oversight.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Shouldn't be any legal reason since Cthulhu is public domain which is why he gets used a lot in other things (video games, board games, comics, etc)

In the Mouth of Madness is probably the best "Eldritch Horror" movie that doesn't go the dark comedy route.

Dagon is fine too though it oddly has a happy ending for a Lovecraft inspired movie. Of course "happy" is relative. Most people probably wouldn't have seen it as having a happy ending, but I thought it had one.

Then there's Reanimator which funny enough is probably the most accurate Lovecraft story since he wrote it for money and the movie is accurate to its pulp horror roots.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
That's supposed to be giant monsters, not giant blisters.

My phone has a sense of humor.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

If it's an other worldly horror then it could very well be made up of nothing but giant blisters.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Nerds might love Cthulhu, but Hollywood does not love nerds. The Hollywood bigwigs like to make nerds think that they're being marketted to, when in all honesty it's only because they can get the children and normies on board. They're too huge, and their product too high-budget, to really rely on a market of hardcore fans, geek hipsters, and money whales the same way that tabletop and B-Movies can. They need ticket sales up the ass coming from everyone in order to CONSTANTLY GROW AND HAVE THE MOST MONEY or else it's an UTTER FAILURE. Big media corporations only take ventures that offer them ALL OF THE MONEY or none of the money. They'll only pour their millions into things that their marketting team insists is a 100% sure bet for profit.

So why do we have superheroes? Because they're mainstream. Everyone knows Batman, superman, and Spiderman. They've been making movies about them for years until the industry flanderised itself into an all-or-nothing sequels machine. The only reason Joss Whedon, Deadpool, Suicide Squad, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and all those other "obscure" nerd-related things have been brought to the masses as blockbusters if because they're connected to the big names and can be brought into the fold as merchandise pointed at people who aren't really involved in comics and/or have parents that'll shell out cash for them.

Nerds are just an outlier that get pissed off and deliberately pirate and boycott your shit whenever you get something wrong, The fact that corporations can appease that demographic is nice, because there are whales among them that will spend hordes of money on whatever you wanna give them, but honestly we're one of the most fickle, sub-divided masses you could ever want to market to, and taking a big risk like this specifically to exploit the name and concept and grab money would only wreck the already unstable love-hate relationship that the 'nerd' demographic has with blockbuster-making corporations in general.

Among those turn-offs, there's also the fact that Cthulhu is a horror thing, so he can't be marketted to families without being "Neutered". His source material is old-timey and kinda racist, so he can't be marketted to teens without another internet shitstorm. He's public domain, so he can't be made into one universal franchise that you can royalty the fuck out of, and people are just as, if not more likely to buy the well-established fan merchandise rather than your own. And basically, he can pretty much only be marketted to nerds. A wide range of nerds, yes, but only nerds nonetheless. So, if you're going to pour big-budget blockbuster money into this mold, it had damn well better be great, or nothing. And we all know Hollywood has a hard enough time guaranteeing that they'll have an audience, how could we ever expect them to guarantee quality!?

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

BTW we can also talk about Hellboy movies and comics here, and why they are good.

This poor thread, it's been through some things.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

I never read the comics, I just saw the movies.

(This thread is ever changing and influenced by alien geometry and unspeakable forces)

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
I notice Cthulhu's good brother fixed a typo for me.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Since Mizal's being lazy with informing all of us about how wonderful the Hellboy comics are, I guess I'll have to jump start her.

Anyway I was aware of the comic and knew some of the lore, but just never felt compelled to pick it up. There was one Hellboy story I read, but it was a crossover in an issue of The Goon (Which is a comic I used to read).

I thought the movies were cool, sort of wished they managed to do a third one, but I guess that won't happen now.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
It turns out I need data at faster speeds than 15k a second to make the post I wanted to make.

So instead I'll just say the the best way to learn about Hellboy is to go to Comixology, sign up for the free month of Unlimited, and read a few issues. The first three volumes used to be free and probably still are. (If you keep Unlimited I think it's like $6 a month? There's a shit ton of comics there and I'm always throwing a few issues or volumes of this or that onto my Kindle to sample. Beats $8 or $12 an issue...NFI how it's even possible to be seriously into comics nowadays with what they expect for them.)

Anyway to tie it back in to the main topic, Mike Mignola (Hellboy's creator) has a very distinctive art style, and Darkest Dungeon looked to have been heavily influenced by it.

If anyone reading this has never played Darkest Dungeon you owe it to yourself to at least watch the intro video because it looks amazing and the narrator has a sexy voice and the setting and backstory is about as Lovecraftian as it gets. Also, why haven't you played it? It's a roguelike with amazing art and sound and character design and just so much fucking style while also being legit challenging and satisfying to beat.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
Logging out for the night, but Sent? Just your daily reminder that God hates furries:

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Honestly? That's not even offensive to furries. Everyone hates the wolves. They're like the basic bitches of the Furry world.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
But but but...they're so noble and majestic...

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

I wouldn't say that establishing your dominance sheerly by keeping your children from having sex with each other is very majestic or noble, but... I guess, given the practices of real-life noble families, they're not too far off...

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
But do furries really look down on each other based on choices of animal species to obsess on/masturbate to?

Where do foxes rate in the furry world? They always seemed the most popular and surely many times more obnoxious than the others.

Gosh. I wish we could have James back, just for one day and just in this thread...

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Some do, some don't. I just know that Wolves have been the most common ever since the cringey T-Shirt phase of the 2000s. Foxes are kind of like that, too, but not as discriminated against since there's more porn with them in it, so every fapper post-puberty with the self-respect to admit what they're into is probably just fine with them.

Where people really draw the line is with Centaur furries (Exactly what they sound like) and  S P A R K L E D O G S,  which are generally the type of beastie persona that separate the 80%-90% of us don't suffer from ADHD/some sort of spectrum disorder from those uf us that do. The  S P A R K L E D O G S, that is, not the centaurs. Centaurs are for degenerate farmers who've never seen a human vagina before, which may or may not have disorders depending on the circumstances. You'd be hard pressed to actually find someone who says that they hate those two kinds of furfuck, but honestly, that's because it's a niche bunch to begin with, and we're having a hard enough time to begin with trying to distance ourselves from those fucking Sonic Pedophiles.

God, I hate it when people have to ruin cool/vaguely sexy shit.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
What in the actual fuck did I just click. My eyes are bleeding. I refuse to believe that's really a thing.

Since you distinguished 'furry centaurs' from regular one I'm now picturing something half wolf/half horse. This is strange and ridiculous, even moreso than the concept of furries themselves. I don't understand, but I'm obviously not going to google it.

Don't feel the need to elaborate further. In hindsight I kind of regret spending most of my at home time yesterday in this thread.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

There is this movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu_(film)

Never got around to watching it for some reason, but from what I've heard, it's the best attempt at a Lovecraft mythos film.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago
This reminds me, there's an old survival horror game with similar name: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Ah, I remember that game. It was kind of cool as a Survival Horror game. Not especially scary in hindsight, but it is one of the first Survival Horror games I've played, and it worked. There were some smart design choices, and some not-so-smart design choices. I'd give them credit that, from an atmospheric standpoint, they at least had read a few stories and were good at creating the feel and atmosphere of the source material, but the story itself felt kind of Lovecraft-lite. The notion that humanity could fight off and compete with the invading aliens, (and that the protagonist was one) kind of broke that feeling of desolation and hopelessness that an unstoppable, unknowable force of spookery is supposed to create. And there was no Cthulhu, which is odd. He was the only Old Thing that was demonstrably vulnerable to human violence, so why isn't he the FPS villain?

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Just for discussion, I would like to add Resident Evil 4 to that list.

 

Think about it.

1. You are sent to investigate a weird town where the populace is not as they appear.

2. The townspeople change into inhuman creatures.

3. The town is dominated by an crazed evil cult who worships tentacled aberrations.

4. Said creatures are ancient, as evidenced by the lord of the castle whose family has owned the castle for centuries, notes talking about how the previous lords sealed them away and Leon even finds one of the Las Plagas fossilized in the mine.

 5. Said creatures make the people act strangely, cooking and eating rotton food, ignoring sanitation, using human skulls as decorations etc.

 

Sounds like A Shadow over Innsmouth kind of shenanigans to me. wink

 

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Maybe Lovedraftian in overall form, but not in function. The difference is that Resident Evil's zombies are an earthly threat, caused by an extensively known and researched organism that more or less obeys conventional physics as they exist in the Resident Evil world, and can not only be physically fought, but in fact destroyed in large numbers by small groups of people. The horror in Lovecraft comes not from the describable nature and design of the aberrations, nor their apparent properties, but from their unknowable design and illogical properties. And, just like one of the biggest rules of Roadrunner and Coyote is that there are no spoken words, one of the biggest rules of eldritch horror is that the powers that be cannot be properly known, understood, resisted, or vanquished, and that Man is ultimately an insect to infinitely greater things.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Agreed, which is why you will pretty much never see a major motion picture that truly embraces Lovecroft. Most games are dedicated to vicarious existence in a power fantasy and Lovecroft, as you said, is a complete reversal of it. Suffice it to say, not many people would watch it or play it. Kind of reminds me of the original ending of Little Shop of Horrors where Nick Moraines gets eaten and the plants end up taking over the world and killing off humanity. Sadly, the test screenings were negative and they shot the good ending to please the mass audience.

P.S. Though, granted, I'm focusing on the Las Plagas from Resident Evil 4 who are never explained where they came from rather than the generic virus zombie or mutant created by human experimentation.

 

http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Plaga

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Well another attempt at a Lovecraft game, looks pretty but who knows if it'll actually be any good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va7Zmu1dd1E

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

That looks pretty cool.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

Anyone here read Saya No Uta? It's a Weeaboo game/Manga about a pedophile, but it manages to be pretty Lovecraftian in a pretty clever way.

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

As someone who has read a great deal of HPL, I can vouch for this film: The Wisperer In Darkness

Teaser: https://youtu.be/wQkos7WTHjg

Trailer: https://youtu.be/pd5gWGfnK5M

I was honestly surprised at this low budget film. It's fairly accurate to the time period, 1929-31, has passable acting, and some good creature (CGI) effects. The ending wasn't part of the original story, but it had great flavor. All in all, I found it to be superior to much of what Hollywood has produced over the decades. If you love the mythos, you'll like this film.

(Just found this: https://youtu.be/fbIUj7Bq9yM don't know how long it'll be available.)

Eldritch Horror Stuff

7 years ago

A YouTube channel called Tabletop has played several board games under the Cthulhu genre. It's hosted by Wil Wheaton, of Star Trek fame.