What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Micah Sweet]

Yep. Especially disturbing because the first time, the guy was in his, I dunno, 40s or so and I was 15 (I did not actually follow any of his "suggestions," fortunately). And that's not even counting my college gaming group which was... mostly OK, but not entirely.

That sounds terrible, I'm very sorry that happened. If that's your experience, then I certainly understand where you're coming from.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I contend that Lovecraft's works are unique because he channeled his anxieties, his fears, his phobias and his prejudices into his writing and created something raw and powerful that later authors who pay homage to him cannot imitate. It's like no matter how many people want to write like Tolkien, none of them have the same combination of scholarly knowledge, enduring passion for linguistics and mythology, and deep faith that was sorely tested in poverty and in war.

For me there is a lot that makes him good, but one thing is when I realized how versatile he is. He can write a normal story, if you read something like Herbert West The Re-animator. But his techniques get pretty odd sometimes, and he is very good at suggesting things. I like the way he draws on New England folklore and the way he uses the places of new england (I grew up next to Marblehead and I knew right away, without being told that Kingsport was Lovecraft when I first read the Festival (which was one of the first stories of his I read). I love the way he draws on Salem history and Salem in general. Something like Pickman's model in my opinion is very great technique, different from his other stuff in many ways and a really great horror story. Similar feelings about the Thing on the Doorstep. One big strength is the way he gives personality to the landscape so it sometimes feels alive.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

It might be better to say what you actually mean, and not use those rhetorical flourishes in discussions of touchy subjects

There was no ambiguity in my meaning: toxic words can have toxic results. The other poster instead chose to deflect the conversation into questions around proving a negative, and suggest that reading Gandhi and enacting violence based on that reading was no different from reading Lovecraft and doing the same.

Did you read the exchange which led to my subsequent post?

If you have to try to push the burden of understanding on the audience, you could have been more clear yourself.

I didn't.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

even if [HPL] weren't horribly racist, he wasn't that good a writer.

He was a crap wordsmith, but a once in a century ideas man. So say "he started something big, you need to know everything about him, but if you can't stomach his racism go ahead and read the Cliff's Notes of his works and De Camp's [1] biography".

[1] It is flawed but I loathe Saint Joshi and will not read anything he writes.

 

[Faolyn]

I contend that Lovecraft's works are unique because he channeled his anxieties, his fears, his phobias and his prejudices into his writing and created something raw and powerful that later authors who pay homage to him cannot imitate. It's like no matter how many people want to write like Tolkien, none of them have the same combination of scholarly knowledge, enduring passion for linguistics and mythology, and deep faith that was sorely tested in poverty and in war.

Unique, sure. But unique doesn't always mean high-quality. I like Lovecraft's concept and I really like some of his stories (I particularly enjoy The Colour Out Of Space and The Dunwich Horror), but his writing style is often tiresome.

You can ask ask him yourself if you track him down on the web, but this article should sum it up.

I have a sneaking suspicion that TSR wouldn't have had an "everybody's bi" setting even without any sort of moral panic. The time period wouldn't have allowed for that. It would have been watered down to straight girl prostitutes for the straight-and-manly adventurers, while the female adventurers would go shopping or whatever.

 

[Minion X]

I have a sneaking suspicion that TSR wouldn't have had an "everybody's bi" setting even without any sort of moral panic. The time period wouldn't have allowed for that. It would have been watered down to straight girl prostitutes for the straight-and-manly adventurers, while the female adventurers would go shopping or whatever.

Well, there you see what we lose when controversial content is eliminated out of fear of moral panic and things are watered down instead.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

By the way, at risk of turning this into The Lovecraft Thread, the BBC adapted three of HPL's better stories as podcasts, with modern sensibilities and set in our foul modern era:

BBC Radio 4 - The Lovecraft Investigations - Downloads

Podcast downloads for The Lovecraft Investigations

www.bbc.co.uk

Highly recommended. Available wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

 

[Random Task]

Aa

Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Michael Shea, Caitlin Kiernan, Stephen King, Ruthanna Emrys, and Victor Lavalle. Probably a few others, too. Ramsey Campbell with comments about his Severn Valley stories getting the kind of development that Lovecraft did with his New England.

I would touch on HPL as a historically important instigator whose revolting biases make his work mostly of scholarly interest, and that it’s better to read folks who took his ideas and ran with them to places Lovecraft didn’t and couldn’t go. Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Brian McNaughton (now there’s a dude who needs to be talked up more), Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Gemma Files, Premee Mohammed, Hailey Piper.

Um, this list would need a lot of trimming and explaining to actually be worth including in something D&D-like. I’d give maybe three authors a short paragraph each, and a sentence each to about a dozen more, for a total of about one column.

That the books that inspired Gygax in the original Appendix N aren't going to be the same things that inspire modern gamers. There are plenty of newer versions of eldritch horror that are going to be far better at inspiring people than Lovecraft was. I mean, let's face it--even if he weren't horribly racist, he wasn't that good a writer. He created a fascinating universe, but other people have done a better job in writing in it. So instead of Lovecraft's works, include things like The Magnus Archives or Uzumaki. I'm sure people here have other suggestions as well.

Lovecraft seems more popular in bookstores than he has ever been, at least in the US. Collections are in prominent locations in the store. I've seen a hardback Lovecraft collection in the Costco book section. I doubt that's down to his position as the inspiration of other writers.

I recently read Ramsey Campbell's Cold Print because I had been turned on to it from the connection to Delta Green and I didn't find it to be a cut particularly above Lovecraft FWTIW.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

For example, how does hybrid children appearing normal until slowly beginning the transformation into a Deep One reflect on miscenegation?

First, background:
1) A pre-Civil War black person was subject to potential enslavement; and postwar, ostracism, redlining, denial of housing/job opportunities, etc.

2) by the “one drop“ rule, one black ancestor made you black.

3) some people with black ancestry LOOK white.

4) a white-looking person with black ancestry living as a whiter person is “passing” for white.

Which brings us to Deep Ones.

The horrifying transformation from normal looking human to disgusting Deep Ones parallels the social transformation of a normal looking white person revealed instead to being a vilified black person who was passing for white.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You have me lost me here. What position was "nobody" taking on what? I believe we were talking about if there was anything particularly unique about slavery in the US.

Nobody was talking about the opinions of the majority of white people in pre-Civil War America. We were only talking about the opinions of the racists. That greatly affects the percentages and absolute numbers of who thought blacks were nonhuman.