Disconnect Between Designer's Intent and Player Intepretation

[Bedrockgames]

Yes and the narrator of Innsmouth doesn’t go insane, he justs becomes a Deep One. You might say by his new perspective his old life was the insane period.

These are always worth a re-read as some of the things people repeat, like everyone going mad, doesn't need up being true. But madness was definitely a theme (pretty sure both his parents were institutionalized). I can see some of that fear at work in Innsmouth, but the interesting thing about the Shadow over Innsmouth is he ends up embracing it by the end like you point out, and it is actually not horrifying (he paints an almost pleasant picture of becoming a deep one).

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

These are always worth a re-read as some of the things people repeat, like everyone going mad, doesn't need up being true. But madness was definitely a theme (pretty sure both his parents were institutionalized). I can see some of that fear at work in Innsmouth, but the interesting thing about the Shadow over Innsmouth is he ends up embracing it by the end like you point out, and it is actually not horrifying (he paints an almost pleasant picture of becoming a deep one).

Um .... I don't think the ending of Shadow Over Innsmouth paints a pleasant picture? Instead of ending his own life like his uncle, he succumbs to the evil. He had an early choice- be like his grandmother or his uncle.

I read his description as symptomatic of the madness.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Um .... I don't think the ending of Shadow Over Innsmouth paints a pleasant picture? Instead of ending his own life like his uncle, he succumbs to the evil. He had an early choice- be like his grandmother or his uncle.

I read his description as symptomatic of the madness.

I think that is certainly a valid reading. But both can be true (especially since this can be read as embracing the madness). One of the cool things about the ending in my view is it can be read multiple ways. There have been times when I read it and your response has been what my response was. But the last few times I have read it, the character feels liberated and I tend to read the subtext as a person coming to terms with something like madness or a physical ailment, a condition that maybe has been inherited. Also just the way he paints the picture, whether our take away is meant to be horror or not, it just seems like he is painting a beautiful visual. And importantly, he doesn't seem anxious or upset like many of the characters at similar points in the telling of his stories. Personally I find the idea of living beneath the sea horrifying, as I don't like being in the ocean. And the bulk of the story reinforces that fear of the deep. But that last portion of the story surmounts that fear and embraces what life there might be. That it was written by a guy who seemed to be pretty fearful that he had inherited his parent's mental illness (and who may even have been feeling the first pangs of the physical illness the would eventual kill him----something I think you see traces of in the story), makes the alternate reading work for me. I do get it isn't a standard reading though.

EDIT: The is the passage for those who haven't read it (I just always liked how he begins with a 'frightful dream' and transitions into a more exalted mood with promises of immortality by the end of these paragraphs)

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I think that is certainly a valid reading. But both can be true (especially since this can be read as embracing the madness). One of the cool things about the ending in my view is it can be read multiple ways. There have been times when I read it and your response has been what my response was. But the last few times I have read it, the character feels liberated and I tend to read the subtext as a person coming to terms with something like madness or a physical ailment, a condition that maybe has been inherited. Also just the way he paints the picture, whether our take away is meant to be horror or not, it just seems like he is painting a beautiful visual. And importantly, he doesn't seem anxious or upset like many of the characters at similar points in the telling of his stories. Personally I find the idea of living beneath the sea horrifying, as I don't like being in the ocean. And the bulk of the story reinforces that fear of the deep. But that last portion of the story surmounts that fear and embraces what life there might be. That it was written by a guy who seemed to be pretty fearful that he had inherited his parent's mental illness (and who may even have been feeling the first pangs of the physical illness the would eventual kill him----something I think you see traces of in the story), makes the alternate reading work for me. I do get it isn't a standard reading though.

Yeah ... look, I don't want to dwell on this too much- I love this story, but it's also problematic for a lot of reasons. There's a whole part of the "horror" that I'd rather not get into.

I'm glad you got your own meaning out of it. But it's established quite clearly (from Zadok) that in order to get these "powers" (aka, to be a cultist) you have to participate in human sacrifice. It's pure evil. The end is not a triumph, but his descent into madness.

 

[Celebrim]

Personally I find the idea of living beneath the sea horrifying, as I don't like being in the ocean.

Well, back to the difference between reader perception and author intent, I think it's a valid reading that the narrator accepts his condition joyfully and finds happiness, but I think authorial intent here is that that is horrifying in the extreme. Because it doesn't matter how horrifying you find the sea, it's nothing but a tiny shadow or mere dust compared to overwhelming neurotic horror HPL had to the sea and ocean life. He literally couldn't be in the same room as a fish. He be forced to flee the room in a panic, stomach heaving, heart racing, sweating and gasping for air in the presence of sea food. So it's interesting to think about what this scene means to the author. Is he trying to come to grips with his own phobia? Or is he channeling his own horror?

There was earlier talk about the way vampires have shifted mentally in peoples mind from being horrifying monsters greatly to be feared, to being a desirable state of existence where we romanticize being the monster. The fish people HPL describes are not conventionally attractive at all (contrast strongly the almost anime Harem depiction Stross gives them!). Would we be romanticizing the vampire in CW dramas if they were always portrayed as rotting Nosferatu - high function zombies smelling of dead flesh? Would we be like, "Of course I'd want to live like that?" Of course I'd want to be a grotesque fish person living in the lightless depths among worms and glowing corals?

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah ... look, I don't want to dwell on this too much- I love this story, but it's also problematic for a lot of reasons. There's a whole part of the "horror" that I'd rather not get into.

I'm glad you got your own meaning out of it. But it's established quite clearly (from Zadok) that in order to get these "powers" (aka, to be a cultist) you have to participate in human sacrifice. It's pure evil. The end is not a triumph, but his descent into madness.

I understand. And definitely has things going on which I don't think can be easily discussed here. I don't disagree with you that those are present.

I was just saying this is an interesting moment in the story where I think you see some of the things underlying the fears behind all that stuff coming to the surface. And its also a moment where I sense he is coming to terms with things going on inside his body and mind. Which is why I feel the description of the deep ones in that section, with a lot of its interesting religious language is so compelling. But I do think the story has a lot of different layers and I wouldn't necessarily bring it down to being about one thing. I see there being a lot of different aspects of it that are worth analysis. Like I said, it can be about a descent into madness, but also about the author embracing that part of himself.

I also think it is interesting because it at least opens up the possibility of the narrator having been an unreliable narrator up to the point of the story as well, as another poster alluded to (which I don't necessarily think is the case but I do think it is an interesting topic of discussion). And that ties to Zadok, because something to keep in mind about him is he is the town drunk. And he rambles like someone who might not be in their right mind, so it is entirely possible details he is conveying to the narrator are not accurate, exaggerated, or at least not the whole story. The whole sequence where they are coming after the narrator in the inn for example may not have been as nefarious as he thought.

And again, I am not saying that means the deep ones are good, or the narrator isn't mad, it just opens up this possible angle where the story can be recontextualized.

 

[MGibster]

One of the problems with that discussion is how much you want the game to put its thumb on the genre scale is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. I don't want a game to ignore the genre for which its designed, but I'm not usually wanting it to hem it in too tightly either, which some people very much do want.

They say on cold winter nights, you can hear the bards singing from deep within Y'ha-nthlei.

I'm glad you got your own meaning out of it. But it's established quite clearly (from Zadok) that in order to get these "powers" (aka, to be a cultist) you have to participate in human sacrifice. It's pure evil. The end is not a triumph, but his descent into madness.

As with many "bad guys," they get stale over time and sometimes we like to reinvent them as good guys or perhaps just misunderstood. Ruthanna Emrys' The Litany of the Earth is about a former resident of Innsmouth who fled in the wake of the goverment's raid. She describes the government raid as a bunch of heavy handed thugs who came after a harmless religious group. It's well written, but I didn't particular care for it as I felt it completely invalidated the original story. It would be like someone coming along and writing a story explaining how the rebels were the bad guys in Star Wars and lamenting the death of all those innocent people on the Death Star.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well, back to the difference between reader perception and author intent, I think it's a valid reading that the narrator accepts his condition joyfully and finds happiness, but I think authorial intent here is that that is horrifying in the extreme. Because it doesn't matter how horrifying you find the sea, it's nothing but a tiny shadow or mere dust compared to overwhelming neurotic horror HPL had to the sea and ocean life. He literally couldn't be in the same room as a fish. He be forced to flee the room in a panic, stomach heaving, heart racing, sweating and gasping for air in the presence of sea food. So it's interesting to think about what this scene means to the author. Is he trying to come to grips with his own phobia? Or is he channeling his own horror?

I don't know what his intent was here, but it seems intended a change in tone, so I do think reading it as a coming to terms with that horror and making it something rather beautiful is a fair interpretation. I don't know that we can ever get into the man's head, but I do think authorial intent is important (so I am not discounting that). I just don't think finding something the height of horror, precludes using that to speak of coming to terms with something (and my sense is what he is coming to terms with isn't a fear of the ocean, but a fear of his own mind, of his own body).

 

[Bedrockgames]

As with many "bad guys," they get stale over time and sometimes we like to reinvent them as good guys or perhaps just misunderstood. Ruthanna Emrys' The Litany of the Earth is about a former resident of Innsmouth who fled in the wake of the goverment's raid. She describes the government raid as a bunch of heavy handed thugs who came after a harmless religious group. It's well written, but I didn't particular care for it as I felt it completely invalidated the original story. It would be like someone coming along and writing a story explaining how the rebels were the bad guys in Star Wars and lamenting the death of all those innocent people on the Death Star.

I tend to find these kinds of flips boring so I am not particularly into them either. I haven't read the Emrys story (nothing against that particular story or writer, I am just not interested in any of the expanded Mythos stuff from other writers, in the same way that I don't find the stuff written about Conan after Howard all that interesting. But here I do think there is more 'there', there. I just think between the unreliability of Zadok, how this final portion of the story sounds (and what a beautiful picture he paints of immortality beneath the sea), and inclusion of things at the end like the deep ones being put in concentration camps, it much more opens the door to that kind of retelling or recontextualizing. And think both can exist. It isn't like a new version where the Deep Ones are a misunderstood religious group, means the original can't still be read as them being evil. Just like it can be true that the story is about a man's descent into madness, even into transforming into an undersea monster, while at the same time, the writer is using that as a way to come to grips with something or some fear going on internally and maybe find a way to accept it. I think what makes stories interesting is that there isn't necessarily a definitive conclusion about these things, that there is room to discuss them and there are different potential layers of meaning (as well as subjective meaning people might find in it that doesn't have as much to do with the intent).

 

[Celebrim]

...precludes using that to speak of coming to terms with something (and my sense is what he is coming to terms with isn't a fear of the ocean, but a fear of his own mind, of his own body).

I think you are giving HPL way too much credit here, but I guess there is no harm in that. Like you, I don't want to discount the role of the reader in the communication either, least of all in rejecting the writer's take even once and especially once you understand it.

For me though your take is tying back into my problem with attempting to scare modern readers with horror, in as much that even forced transformation and loss of humanity and an alien conspiracy that amounts to a cuckoo breeding strategy makes you shrug and go, "Isn't it pretty! Look, he's coping with his mental illness by accepting his inner nature!"

You ever seen the original B&W Dracula with Bela Lugosi? A real classic and worth watching, but it's impossible to watch as a modern viewer in the way it was originally received. Women were literally fainting with terror. The audience was screaming with horror. The original screening was so intense, that the actually edited the final release so that it never actually shows the vampires fangs because that was felt to be too graphic and horrifying. Now days, compared to the sort of stuff people take in and shrug at, it plays as a comedy.