How H.P. Lovecraft Wrote the Impossible
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2022
- AUDIBLE ➤ www.audible.com/talefoundry/
Sign up for a free 30-day trial of audible and get any audiobook of YOUR CHOICE for FREE! Including any LORD OF THE RINGS BOOK, which we talked about in this video! It's a great way to support the show for free!
-
There are certain things human beings don't even have the capacity to imagine, let alone render artistically. And yet... they still try. This is our attempt at trying to understand why.
Turns out, you don't have to look much further than H.P. Lovecraft to find a reasonable answer.
▬▬▬▬ Tale Foundry Community▬▬▬▬
Support us on Patreon! / talefoundry
Come join our community! thetalefoundry.com/discord
▬▬▬▬ Tale Foundry Team ▬▬▬▬
• Talebot - The Talent
• The Taleoids - The Talent's Helpers
• Benjamin Cook - Writer, Director, & Voice Actor
• Abbie Norton - Art Director & Asset Artist (abbienortonart.com)
• Alexander Cuenin - Animator & Editor (www.alextheanimator.com/)
• Bazz Bartlett - Audio Engineer (www.bartlettaudio.com.au/)
• Momo Wang - Researcher & Writer
• Rachel Doud - Packaging & Asset Artist ( / jae.sketch )
Additional Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com
AUDIBLE ➤ www.audible.com/talefoundry/
Sign up for a free 30-day trial of audible and get any audiobook of YOUR CHOICE for FREE! Including any LORD OF THE RINGS BOOK, which we talked about in this video! It's a great way to support the show for free!
Can you do a video on how to make urban/ contemporary fantasy without it being too campy?
Could you do a video on writing growth and transphormation
“However it turns out we think it’s worth watching”
That doesn’t really make any sense. Even if it’s terrible it’s worth watching?
You like to use size a lot when describing a lot of things in relations to other things.
It ether really big for important and scary or super small for scared and weak.
Never hot nor cold or pointy to describe with in relation and importance to the relation.
Or maybe that's just how the few videos has been lately idk.
And if you can't afford to line Jeff Bezos' pockets so he can keep treating his warehouse workers like shit with no consequences, make sure to support your local library. THEY aren't there for profit, audible is.
I fucking LOVED The Nameless City. It's the first story that made me aware of how Lovecraft's writing style changes with the story. As the protagonist progresses in the city, the sentences get shorter, and simpler, depicting the slight panic that starts to take over. Very nice.
I think the writing style might support the idea that love craft himself was self inducing anxiety in himself as he continued to write it. Causing him to reflect that in the POV
@@ekothesilent9456 Writers shorten sentence length to control pacing. It's a powerful yet common tool in creative writing, not a reflection of the writer's internal state.
Shorter sentences create fast pacing and momentum for the reader, and are common in horror and thriller books, or other genres during action sequences.
@@e.matthews meh. Fun speculation vs boring ass creative writing tools. I think lovecraft was anxious in a lot of his writings.
@@ekothesilent9456 Sometimes it's best to keep the curtain up, for sure. Readers are different than writers.
@@ekothesilent9456I mean, I'd believe it. It's what I do when I write, to get inside my character's head. Sometimes you've got to dig a little too deep to make sure readers are properly immersed, but I also wouldn't be surprised if different writers had different tactics, like actors do.
The thing I've always loved about Lovecraft are the great, extensive, frenzied, poetic lengths to which he goes to tell you that he CAN'T tell you about these things
I mean, he doesn't do it that often. Most of his creatures are described in a lot of detail, such as Rhan-Tegoth, Shoggoths, Elder Things, Night-gaunts, Brown Jenkin, etc. Others are described with some detail, such as the Dunwich Horror. Even Yog-Sothoth was specifically described by Lovecraft as a mass of planets and galaxies trying to converge into one point. Most people have a tendency to overplay Lovecraft's indescribable creatures. The fact is, Lovecraft's indescribable gods are rarely important in his own fiction, even Cthulhu was only relevant in one story only.
@@joedough2718 I think that they’re important in the way they permeate throughout the entire story, a constant evil presence that looms over the narrative, rather than as an actual main character.
@@madamemortuus Yeah, they're not supposed to be like a "Mechanical" Boss in a video game or one that you actually fight. They're more like a "Story" Boss, that their influence is felt throughout the game and they are vaguely referenced, yet you never actually get to see them, or if you do it's only brief and you don't get to fight them.
It's not the character of them that is important, it's the idea of them that is the horrific part. The idea that you don't know what they are, what they want or much of anything about them.
Speaking as someone who did a *lot* of 'sexting' and RP-ing when they were younger, anytime I read Lovecraft and he even *glances* at the subject of sex, I look at his writing and think "Wow. You have **no** idea what you're talking about, do you? I mean, **I** have written raunchier stuff than this, and I've seen way more explicit stuff in published books."
@@eurosalamander since the guy was a paranoid schizo nazi, I don't think he would be all that interested in sex. He was primarily concerned with puss pouring out of people's faces that he totally didn't just imagine and air conditioners
One thing I think would be interesting to do a video is what I like to call “reverse-Lovecraftianism”. This is when you have beings or concepts that are so indescribably wonderful and beautiful that they can’t properly be described in words, as a sort of inversion of lovercraft’s horrors.
instead of making you kull yourself does it make you high as fuck on endorphins (the goooood shit) or does it make you nut instantly
That's pretty much Dante's Paradiso
That sounds wonderful but just as horrible at the same time.
As my mind tries to grapple with the wonder of what I'm witnessing, I feel the person I used to be being swept away in awe. True beauty is transformative. And something indescribably beautiful is indescribably transformative.
Last two chapters of Revelation
Something that is too much detail that it's overwhelming
The thing about eldritch abominations is that they represent concepts that can merely exist in our wildest dreams and nightmares. This, in and of itself, is appealing.
Oh, hey UX, fancy seeing you here
Or can only exist in our most incoherent attempts to describe entirely alien (academically and otherwise) geography and geometries
@@Pastafari4 the multiverse does not exist because we belive in it, it just are
There are amazing parallels between the consistent, ultimately nihilistic rationalism of David Hume and the monsters of Lovecraft. Azathoth's dream is a metaphor for the overall fact of being unable to derive an "ought" from an "is" (for instance, you can't say from pure sense data that the past exists, and you can't say that nature is uniform just because because the laws of nature have always functioned the same) and essentially serves to show what that nihilism would look like if it manifested: the world as a dream that follows the logic of a dream and one that could end at any moment. Shub-Niggurath is a metaphor for the nihilism of evolution, creating life not through design and purpose, but through random chance.
It's just so fascinating, isn't it? To know you're so small and insignificant, taken to most literal extreme of being nothing more than the dream delusions of a blind old fool.
That picture of Cthulhu looking at the light house is one of the best pieces of art I've seen on this channel, great video
timestamp?
@@mariustan9275 8:02
@@shaftraft3820 wrong.
@@Hjernespreng wdym wrong
@@shaftraft3820 the timestamp was for a different time.
I love how you can actually turn the “Unimaginable” concept into “its so horrifying and otherworldly that it has a certain beauty to it” I think Blood borne is a good example for this. There are some absolutely horrific things in this game, but some of them are just so fascinating you cannot avert your gaze.
A horrible thing, a monstrous thing
Too many eyes, too many teeth
Constantly moving, changing,
Twisting around you, inside you,
beyond simple comprehension,
Avert your eyes, avert your mind, heart and soul,
Alas, you cannot, you refuse to,
indescribable beautiful abominations
Why must you mesmerize us so?
Nice poem
The best examples of this in Bloodborne are the winter lanterns and the moon presence
Fear the Old Blood
That’s the beauty of Lovecraft and what he unlocked. He knew exactly what he was doing and writes about it in his correspondence. Only you know what truly terrifies you, and maybe you don’t, but it lies latent within your subconscious. Lovecraft wrote in a way that allows the reader’s mind to fill in the intentionally crafted shadows, whether the reader wants it to or not, and that’s brilliant.
*Oh Kos, grant us eyes!*
Your comments about true names and attempts to capture the ineffable reminded me of this:
"We're each of us blind in our way. Distractions rob us of focus. Technology robs us of memory. Repetition robs us of comprehension. You know the child's game: if you say your names enough times it becomes gibberish. That holds true for whole concepts, even entire bodies of thought. For example, take Nietzsche's old line: if you stare into an abyss, it also states into you. Right? Well, that has been rendered meaningless through repetition. It's a refrigerator magnet, it's a cliche. It's harmless. But when was the last time you really thought about that? What is an abyss, and if you stare into it, why? What about it calls to you? If it stares into you, it stands to reason something in you must also be calling to it. And that, my friend, is anything but harmless, if you really reflect on it. So the question becomes: if profound meaning can be robbed of something by so simple a task as repetition, which is more fundamental, which is more true - your name, or the gibberish?"
-The Empty Man
Can I be the party pooper for a second here? Don't read it if the OP's comment feels cool to you.
All this abyss stuff is wayy too humanizing and metaphorical. In real life voids, cosmos and all that crap don't stare or have interest in us. Not because they are evil, malignant, callous entities that are apathetic towards our suffering like howard minecraft would like you to believe, but rather because they are just.. there? They can't express or exhibit a lack of or a presence of caring because they lack any organs to process stimuli and deem it as important or not
I play this game with my name all the time it's real wild
This actually gave me chils
Fun Fact: Cthulhu's name is meant to be as alien of a word as possible, same with the other 3 entities like it.
The closest English pronunciation of Cthulhu's name as described by H.P. himself is "Clulu"
I always thought of it like hkhhlooloo
@@KalonOrdona2 I thought of it cuthülluuu
basically its pronouncing cthulhu with as much guttural rotund pronunciation like youre speaking from your gut through the mouth of a tentacle. kthloooluuu, more of a series of syllables than a proper name
@@ShadeStormXD interesting
I think the best way to say is trying to speak it with the mouth closed, gurgling as possible. Ktooloo.
Eldritch horror is just an amazing concept that I always get drawn into it!!
I'll take this chance to recommend you the magnus archives, if you don't already know about it. It's an audio story and it grows from urban supernatural horror to a lot more. And it somehow manages to make the endgame of an omnicidal eldritch abomination a genuinely good option. I'll say no more to allow you the first experience if you haven't had it yet.
@@chukyuniqulI was just about to write this.
You like to read Sutter Cane?
I love the idea that the "Reptilian" description in the Nameless city is just a, not a fake characteristic, but rather one like the talismans. Like defining a Banana "Rod shaped", not wrong, but definitely showing that they didn't have a word to describe it's shape. A faux-characteristic, not right, but using what you got.
I wonder if their from robert e howards works
I know he and lovecraft borrowed ideas from eachoter
Um, they rarely borrowed each other's ideas. Lovecraft mentioned Valusia and the Black Book, and literally nothing else from Howard's fiction. Lovecraft never mentioned Conan, Cimmeria, etc.
@joedough2718 you forgot the ring of Thoth Amon. Which captures the essence of the grim grey God.
In your efforts to correct someone to something that is true, you made an incorrect statement.
I've been really digging into Lovecraft stories lately. Can't seem to get enough. As a 32 year old horror addict for pretty much all my life I'm still suprised by how absolutely full of the best kinda of horror and dripping with atmosphere Lovecrafts works are.
Oh and thank you guys for this awesome episode. Even though I just recently found your channel, I can't get enough of your Horror content. You've really been inspiring me to do better on my channel. Keep em coming guys!-SLD
Try SCP too if you'd like.
@@lavvey_kuxx_porsche14 oh yeah I've been into the Scp foundation since waaaay back in the day. Like I said I'm a Horror freak so I've been on top of internet horror since like the early 2000s! Lol
I love the foundation. Just the idea of what i call "community horror" is so intriguing to me... stuff that the community as a whole builds together is so awesome!
After reading some of Lovecraft's stories ,I have to say he was very inconsistent. Some of his stories are really good and creative but others are generic and repetitive. It felt very convenient for him to use a lot of words like "incomprehensible" or "unimaginable" in stead of finding creative ways of describing the horror. He did that,but not very often, judging by what i've read.
M.R. James short stories are really great too if you're liking Lovecraft.
@@herrskymarshall Plus Arthur Machen’s stories such as
‘The Great God Pan’ and ‘The White People’ and ‘The Red Seal.’
What we see of Cthulhu in fiction is basically what a human can process of a much more complex entity. But that doesn't mean he's not in part cephalopod.
For ineffable - we can't describe even what the thing isn't. That's truly mind-bending
Think about how in the Nameless City they are described as Reptilian, it's not a correct characteristic, nor a perfect description, those things can't exist by rationality and mind. It's describing a banana as blue because you don't know about the color yellow , and though taken to more of existential levels.
All we ever see of this entity is what a human mind can perceive - it’s akin to looking at a distorted reflection of a being rather than the being itself.
@@wilberwhateley7569 I agree and plus humans can't see, hear, or smell at a great capacity so we're already missing out
Honestly, I think people play up the cephalopod angle too much. Most signs indicate that Cthulhu and his spawn aren't entirely _material_ beings to begin with, hence the likelihood of him having more than a convergent resemblance to octopuses is extremely low. Consequently, these days I tend to take points off art that represents his tentacles as having suckers (or worse, show him with a beak!). If anything, I'm half inclined to think his myriad facial tentacles end in mouths, like those of a star vampire or cthonian.
I think the story of the man descending into the temple perfectly encapsulates why characters in horror movies never run away from the strange noises in their house; because the greatest human fear is the fear of the unknown, or rather of not knowing, even greater than the fear of danger.
>Mentions Rings of Power.
>Tells you to watch and read the old series.
Passive aggressive at its finest.
I feel like I just learned a lot, but left so confused and grasping to understand what I just saw. Which I guess is the point. It's definitely what Lovecraft was going for with his stories.
Just read one of Lovecraft's stories. It's really not as confusing as this video makes it sound. Lovecraft's stories tend to be very descriptive and very colorful and very comprehensible. It's social media that overrates the "indescribability" of his stories.
@@joedough2718
Colors like none have seen before makes absolutely no sense if you know how people see color. It is like saying, a freezing temperature between 105 and 106. Sure, you can try finding a freezing temperature between those values, but it makes no sense to even try.
The horror of Lovecraft is not in danger and menace but in impotence and indifference. It is the realization that the Universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.
my guess is you'd need a 4-dimensional sculpture that twists in on itself impossibly to accurately portray C'thulu
Eldritch and Cosmic horror are my favourite kinds of horror stories, they really bring out emotions and inspiration in me. The idea that stuff like that is out there really appeals to me.
They also come with a sense of existential dread. Making you perhaps actualy scared of the dark, cause who knows what is watching you from the parts of the world you can't see
@@cherrydragon3120 yeah that too
It's always so strange to me. Can you explain what is appealing about existential dread? I don't have a fear of the unknown, cosmos or darkness, I actually like exploring it, I am endlessly fascinated by it, so cosmic horror fundamentally fails to work for me and looks stupid
Eugene Thacker's "Horror of Philosophy" grapples with this point in depth. To anyone reading this, if this wonderful introduction to the limits of epistemology sparks your interest I strongly suggest Thacker's meditations on the ineffable and it's centrality in dark fiction.
Well done Tale Foundry, well done.
Thank you. I added his work to my endless list of books to purchase.
Wow mic drop for who ever wrote the "Light house on the frontier of darkness" metaphor for understanding and human knowledge. Absolutely beautiful.
Artist here. I believe that all things are infallible, no matter how you slice it. There is no such thing as perfect understanding. You can describe the color of the bird, the roughness of the rock being thrown, the paint thickness of a painting, but you can never get the same feeling or experience then if you actually look at it. And when artist write or paint or sculpt, they aren’t creating a perfect version of what they see in their head. God knows I’ve made many drawings that don’t look nearly as good on paper as they do in my head. Trying to quantify it is impossible. There is no perfect understanding. But there also doesn’t have to be. You don’t need to know the exact Pantone shade of the bird to understand that it’s blue. You don’t need to know the exact roughness of the rock to know getting hit is gonna hurt. You don’t need to know the thickness of the paint to appreciate the image as a whole. You only need to know so much. In a way, I find it beautiful. Everyone will have their own understanding of the world, can find their own beauty in it. Our understandings of things are always evolving, and as a result, I can make this world into something I love. A blanket may not be as solid as a wall, but it’s far more comfortable. I’ll take this life of directional freedom over solid understanding any day.
We have a video about this exact principle coming out soon, can't way to share our thoughts! :)
-Benji, showrunner
I'd love to hear you talk about the Magnus Archives. The writers really captured the nature of lovecraftian horror.
Man, i managed to fall down a rabbit hole of fanart for that on pinterest while looking for multi-eyed character references for my own art.
From the snippets I’ve seen, it looks really interesting!
@@AnEmu404 It's really cool to see how the fans visually portrayed the characters, since the series itself is audio-only.
The genius of Lovecraftian writing isn't in DESCRIBING things, but leaving it vague enough for YOUR imagination to make it more real based on your own frame of reference, while giving it just enough shape to at least give you a direction in which your imagination needs to head in. In short, the stories is as terrifying as your imagination makes it, because when you try to shape the unimaginable, it seizes to be so and loses its essence (which is why most cosmic horror films aren't really cosmic horror, because it gives its main threat a recognizable shape in the form of mutated monsters, but leaves out the element that essentially makes it COSMIC - the fact that it's something humans have never encountered before, and have no way of understanding or defending against, and whose intellect or form or emotions vastly surpasses anything humans know or could imagine - many filmmakers give them human or animal emotions, but that's not a correct interpretation - you have to give them desires and appetites that humans have no idea even exists, because "living" (and the concept of living) is different for them than for humans). The idea that Lovecraft wanted to advance, is that humans COULDN'T describe anything they saw, because they had NO frame of reference to compare it to, not having met (and still haven't met) aliens before, there is no baseline to compare it to for accuracy. The only way you can project "the unknowable" is by starting with the "knowable" and try and imagine what exist OUTSIDE of it, for better or worse. And as the video itself highlights, once you shape the unshapeable, it stops falling in the latter classification and rapidly moves into the former, essentially robbing it of its unique nature and mystery.
As for people's gripe about his semi-frequent use of "cyclopean architecture" reference, I don't actually hear them making the same comments about Gothic horror, or Victorian horror, modern horror or just any horror in general (and this isn't just a horror issue, it extends to fantasy and sci-fi as well). I suspect it has more to do with just not liking the author personally, as opposed to actually making any valid point, since their comments directly contradicts their supposed dislike when the same issue exist THROUGHOUT horror, including their favorite writers. A writer would obviously refer to the same thing in the same way, because he or she has established it with a specific word or specific description, and once locked in, requires future descriptions to remain consistent with the original description, otherwise it directly contradicts what was said initially and destroys the internal consistency that the world requires (which is what you see in a lot of current-day movies and shows). A writer has no reason to REPEAT same description if part of a larger work (like a novel), but each of the Lovecraftian stories were written as a standalone story in a much larger universe, in which some things have standard shapes and sizes, because the people or things that made them had a specific architectural aesthetic in mind, and even in not having a frame of reference to describe alien architecture, there is "sameness" in the inability to describe something, even if comes from two difference sources with vastly different backgrounds (both a university professor or a car mechanic could describe something as "weird", without having the same or similar ability to express what they see, and the description in itself being subjective). A writer, if writing short stories in a larger universe, will of course then use the same description for the same thing in said universe, so the argument falls flat. :/
I always imagined the cosmic horrors as colors blending and melting together with no shape or form. It's hard to describe what I mean, but isn't that the idea?
In the words of Dirk Gently, "Let us grapple with the very ineffable itself and see if we may not eff it after all!"
Ah, another Douglas Adams fan.👍💯.
I was just thinking of that exact same line!
I've just been calling it the 'thing that can't be named' in my head but this really sums it up. I've seen the thing and it does feel kind of like a torch has gone out, like reason and words are just totally broken. It's the scariest thing I've ever experienced.
I like your description of "the second light" thought and dreams are us putting old shapes onto new things but sometimes we can build things that don't exist in nature. Taking up your torch or even your metaphorical hands alone into the ineffable if only to reclaim some tiny bit of knowledge from it is one of the great endeavors of the human project.
This was my favourite video so far. Yes I was already a Lovecraft fan girl before, hence clicking on this. But what made me like it most was how you crafted words for describing the ineffable situation. Pretty much described exactly how I'm feeling right now in my existential journey. Then I realised that's one of the many reasons I'm so drawn to the Cthulhu mythos. Thanks Tale Foundry.
I think the appeal of The Ineffable is that we as humans (or turtles like me) sometimes fear what we cannot or do not understand. Even some of the most well-known or scary monsters lose some of their horror because we know what they look like. If it can't be described, then we don't know what to watch out for. That's terrifying, to me at least.
Lk
Truly our glorious father Lovecraft was not just ahead of his time, but ahead of his whole multiversal timeline.
Or maybe he really did see something mad
Or maybe he just didn't understand and that itself was what he was trying to share
@@nathankiefer9323 Yeah this was a guy who quote "Didn't have the constitution for math" And was extremely neurotic for a lot of reasons.
Or maybe he was a guy who disproportionately feared things that were different and alien from and to him
The greatest minds are way before their time
Once when I was really sick and had this really bad fever alongside some dehydration, I thought I was trapped into some domain like the nameless city where directions, space and time made no goddam sense and the vague impression that other things were "There" somewhere that I REALLY didn't want to notice me. It scared the absolute shit out of me and I wanted out, then I'd get out, go back to puking my guts up and taking painkillers for the nasty headache only to lay be down and suddenly back there I'd be. To this day I still think it was a product of being really sick at the time, but still, I hope I never repeat the experience.
That's a delirium, same thing happened to me a couple of times when i was a kid and had a really bad flu. When i took a hero dose of psychedelics at a later age a finally 'understood' what happened to me when i was sick as a kid. Psychedelics are the closest thing to ineffable a person can experience. And i always say to people who have never experienced psychedelics and think they know what they're talking about. They can't know what they're talking about unless they experience it themselves. Most things I've experienced on psychedelics, there are just no words to describe it, if you try to explain it in words everything falls flat. Same with the visualization of psychedelics you see in movies or on tv they might approximate the visual aspect of a trip but it's nowhere near the experience you actually have.
I had one too,I can't even describe it as dream because I was self aware but time,space,direction and even colours did not made any sense,I just instinctively know I shouldn't go in the unknown but no matter where or how moved I was getting closer
I love your wording on being allowed to choose the shapes and constellations that guide you. It was studying astronomy that got me into Lovecraft's works, feeling at awe as I read about the birth and death of stars so unimaginably older than us. Not only that, but the unfathomable scale of it all, from singularities to near, if not actual, infinites. I began to understand the motions of our planet and moon, too. I could _feel_ my latitude on this rock, and the constant motion of the Earth carrying me up and over its orbiting plane each day. But it felt so strange to begin to understand these things. It at times made me feel both fearful and amazed at the universe and our place in it. It was this sentiment that led me to Lovecraft's "comsic horror" and I find it odd that I still chase that feeling.
But, I digress. The idea of looking out into the vastness of space and applying familiar shapes to those points of light in an effort to orient yourself is a beautiful one. I think I take it for granted having already begun learning the officially recognized IAU constellations, but I do find myself adding my own twists here and there in an effort to remember a location or order of something. So, perhaps because I literally use constellations not to orient myself on the sea but to understand the cosmos, your metaphor beomes especially meaningful to me. And it's rich, too, in that I could take multiple meanings from it, but this comment is long enough already to proceed down that rabbit hole.
Excellent video and equally excellent comments. Thank you for reminding me of a night long ago- out on one of my very long treks to places unexplored - I've made many such journeys, some literally, some not- and this one literally walking home amongst unfamiliar surroundings with avenues winding out in every direction and not knowing which way to get home.
But overhead friendly Orion was showing, and the dogstar shone out bright, and I remembered how the constellation appeared from the porch of my home. I remembered the angle, the difference in the perspective, and I surmised that if I could move myself so that I was seeing Orion that same way- I would be home.
So I chose the paths that altered Orion's perspective from the unusual into the norm, until Orion righted itself and I was standing at my door.
i was a teenager and it was the first time I'd used the constellations to guide myself home.
i was not at sea, although my house was beside the sea.
Pacific, that is.
A beautiful So. Cal. night.
Thanks for reminding me.
Here’s my interpretation of what that door was: If that torch was our rational thinking and ability to describe, considering John Locke’s statement that humans can only absorb so much, our torch of thought brings whatever it passes by into our thoughts, so I would think that doorway of light would be the same thing but for something much more godly, I believe that doorway was the view into the mind that knows all, the ineffable. We lose our torch but this creature knows all so it creates its own light, and when the door closed that was the ineffable blocking out what seemed to be merely an after thought, a train of thought it almost went down but decided to scrap.
Throwing us in the scrapheap, so to speak.
I realize with this that the idea of "naming something in order to have power over it" is what they did with Dooplis in Paper Mario, the Thousand-Year Door, and it's actually super cool.
i have never read any of lovecrafts works, but everything i find out of him and his stories shows me more and more about how his anxieties truly did control his life
"What happens when no rational reference point exists? When that book is missing from the library? What then?"
Then, you write that book.
You will be the first book on that shelf.
You will probably write about blue bananas in that first book, but your book will be the first foothold in this field.
Someone will correct your mistakes, and give a second foothold.
Slowly the shelves will get filled and now looking at that part of the library will feel comfortable, while before we were scared of its emptiness.
Now we will see new empty libraries that were unseen before, and now there are more books to write.
This was absolutely incredible. 🙂 I have always been a big fan of reading H.P. Lovecraft, but I have never "analysed on its meaning", so this was an amazing video to watch on it.
You're a very interesting imaginative machine and your videos are always an eye opener and very entertaining. A soft voice that talks and explain so many other stories and other mechanics of writing styles and much more to it. Drawing pictures to explain whatever videos you put out on this platform to inform the audience. I thank you for teaching me a little more or a lot more about topics like these.
This turned out so beautifully, and takes me back to when I first started watching the channel!!
i just recently got my hands on the entire lovecraft collection and i gotta say i'm hooked. the mystery of whats going on just grabs on to you as you figure out what the source of the phenomenon was but them when you figure out what it is you wish you haven't. the best parts was when i would read a story but even at the end i just can't understand it.
My little Shogooth servant,
My little Shoggoth servant,
She cries Tekeli-li!
My little Shogooth servant,
My little Shoggoth servant,
She writhes so eldritchly.
She cuddles her penguins
Down there in the ruins
of ancient cities below.
My little Shogooth servant,
My little Shoggoth servant,
Oh, I love her so.
...oh I love her so
I love your channel and the way you tell stories.
great job :^D
Man I just discovered your channel and I gotta say this is such a gold level content you're making really interesting take on stories and things that I usually don't always find , really glad I found your channel and keep the good work !
Dear tale foundry.
Incredible video, it made my head spin and awoke an anxiety I didn't even know I buried within. Yet enlightened me, trully your videos are supreme works of art themselves.
I also wished to recommend a short story that while it may lack proper publishing and is not very well know is still an enjoyable reading or listening experience.
It's called "Why humans avoid war"
If you do ever come across it, I truly hope you'll enjoy
Thanks so much for the recommendation! The first entry was a fun read. :)
-Benji, showrunner
Certainly the idea of the unknown and unimaginable can evoke very special sensations and emotion on us, so haunting it appears these things speak to us, trying to tell us something a bit ( or a lot) beyond our human-everyday concepts and perspectives of life.
Nice, i Love the constant nods to the "black oceans of infinity"-quote, it shows your video is well Crafted
I love the fact that these entities are described in abstract horrific ways and it’s made clear that they are unable to be perceived correctly by the human mid yet I just come up with these weird little images to represent them
I think what's special about Lovecraft is that with other works of art, once you find out what the monster looks like, you fear it less, but with Lovecraft's works, one's fear doesn't decrease when one looks at the monster because one never comprehends its appearance. In fact, one's fear actually increases, because of the unprecedented experience of not being able to comprehend the creature.
Lovecraft feared the unknown. His upbringing was horrifying. And it should not surprise us that his fictional works seek to unknowingly deify his worst unknown fears.
Ive really liked your channel for a while but finding THIS video has earned you a sub. Im a huge Lovecraft fan and you did his work great justice. Absolutely loved it!!!
**Brilliant video**, as a fan of Lovecraft's writing and other writings in the mythos, this video serves to appreciate it a little bit more - the description of understanding and comparison to the dark is obvious, but the way you presented it? Absolutely fantastic, I _actually love it._
I always look forward to your videos!
I think this video finally helped me work out why Lovecraft's work fascinated rather than scared me. As a Christian I've already been familiarized with "the ineffable" since the God of the bible is unnameable and and ineffable. When Moses asked who he should say sent him God's response was to say simply the "I AM" did. Good stuff.
~ Adam
popeye said the same as your god
My favorite lesser appreciated theme in the Biblical texts is God's cosmic horror nature. Humans being made in His image pretty much shouts the trope “Humans are Eldritch”. If you give every animal the sentience that man has, animals will fear people more knowing if they kill one person, their species might get wiped out. Another thing which makes humans Eldritch is how their soul is immortalized by spiritual ties with their Creator. In biblical theology study, humans are composed of Body, Soul, and Spirit, whereas the non-human animals only have Body and a Soul that dies with the body.
This channel is so amazing. It is so deeply philosophical and interesting it captures you until the very end
You've got a great voice. It is perfect for setting the atmosphere of these kind of videos.
You don't have a narrator voice, it's a storytelling voice, and I find it delightful :D
Your stories are amazing keep up
I used to watch your channel a while ago and forgot about it but just rediscovered it and aaaaaaah your content is great
I must I am impressed how you took an explaination of Lovecraft's...craft and turned into a motivational thing for creative writers.
"Evil cannot create, it can only destroy." -J.R.R. Tolkien
"Hey, you know that Amazon game of th- er, rings of power? Here's a resource to connect you to Tolkien's actual works."
Absolute Chad move, even if it's probably unintended
Thank You for presenting all these fascinating concepts in this video relating to this kind of art. I've been reading some Lovecraft stories I haven't gotten to yet for Spooky Month and have been having a good time with them :)
I love your videos high quality videos that are nice to watch! And helps me learn somethings I've never knew aswell!
As somebody's who's lost more than a couple of people close to me, I've spent a lot of time pondering the afterlife. If there really is existence after the body takes its last breath, after the light leaves the eyes, what then? Is there really an arbiter judging who is worthy of which endless existence? Is it just power off, oblivion, nothingness? Is there a reset, another cycle back on this plane of existence? I just don't know. And I won't ever know until I face it.
should you fear after death 💀 more than the time before your own birth or even conception?
@@Sorrowdusk I personally don't fear the time before my conception as much as I'm amazed by it. The age of this rock astounds me. It's been through so many what we would call apocalypses and still it remains. Even after a meteor wiped out 90% of her life over the course of a million years she still refused to let it all die, and here she stands. The scary part is that our existence has been a blink of her eye, and even further still, earth's existence is a blink in the eye of the greater cosmos. It all existed long before us. And I'm sure it'll exist long after we're gone as well.
@@Liex59 A hero dose of psychedelics will do the trick. When you experience ego death, which is truly ineffable. You wil understand death for the briefest and longest of times and then you forget it but you don't and you can't explain it only approximate it. Only a fellow psychonaut who's been trough the same experience will know what it is you are talking about but then still there are no words to really describe it to each other.
Funny you're talking about a rock i've been a rock in a place for an incomprehensible length of time once, experiencing the world around me. That one was mind boggling when i came out of that trip i didn't understand i was a human being for about a day or so, forgot how to talk and do the most basic things. Scared the shit out of the people around me, i was totally oblivious off course. Till i started to get my faculties back. Took me months to try and wrap my head around that trip. But i was so happy that i was a human being and life seemed so special. And that was a good trip. The bad ones well they are just cosmic horror. Can't do it anymore, hit a wall i couldn't go past. Every time i hit that wall it turns bad.
It’s amazing that Lovecraft managed to create this a century ago
that is very unique on how to look at Eldridge entities. nicely done.
I always compared the unimaginable to what you forget about when you wake from a dream; many aspects are forgotten quickly before you realize it.
I've tried writing a dream journal, but like many others have learned, whatever you can recall feel as if something is still missing. Some things you witness in your dreams are unexpressable in writing. It makes me feel uneasy when I remember something surreal in my dreams, but knowing I dont recall the full picture. If what little i recall would make me uneasy, how horrifying is the full dream? Its probably for the best we cant precieve everything. I think thats a core aspect of lovecraftian horror.
Eldritch horror and just everything eldritch is so underrated
How is it underrated? It's extremely popular in media
kirby is eldritch
Nah its all over the place.
Didn't think Kirbo himself would say that considering all the cosmic threats he has faced.
Problem is, it's a really word to work into casual conversation
"I had some absolutely eldritch linguine the other day. Truly, it was an unspeakable delight."
This is a masterpiece. Intellectually and emotionally profound. Thank you for everything that this is.
Been a huge fan of lovecrafts work for a while now, i still remember the first time I read the dunwhich horror or shadow over innsmouth. Such a unique genre pioneered by such a gifted man. Keep up the good work guys
I think I understand the feeling. Ive taught myself a fair amount about astronomy over the last year and to put it lightly, the harder you try to understand how it all works the more difficult it becomes. It actually started to affect my mental health, giving me serious anxiety and an intense feeling of insignificance among some other things. Id occasionally get caught in thought loops that felt inescapable, and there were so many times i felt like i was truly going insane.
I just wish Lovecraft could have lived to see how popular his work became I've read/ listened to basically all of his main stories my favorites are definitely Dagon, the dunwitch horror and the shadow over innsmouth
One of my favorite pieces of cosmic horror is from the first Eisenhorn book: Xenos
An alien race that a chaos cult is working with are capable of building structures with impossible answers, changing the way a planet works so that the waves from the ocean flow the opposite way from normal and a ton of different shit.
The aliens modified a planet to make it uncomfortable for humans to give them an edge in negotiation with the chaos cult. Reality is so distorted by the aliens by using an ancient book of forbidden knowledge that even time itself doesn't flow correctly on the planet.
This certainly underpinned a difficult concept that I have been trying to grapple with lately. Subscribing instantly
My oldest brother read to me and my middle brother the necronomicon as a bedtime story when we were little.Loved h.p . Lovecrafts work after that. The idea of cosmic horror and cosmilogical monsters fascinated me so much after that
H.P Lovecraft: you cannot comprehend these horrors, Cthulhu is beyond imagining
Me, comprehending easily: Big Squid Dude
The easiest way to beat infinite complexity is to be infinitely simple. I like your approach.
Based
The Ineffable kind of sounds like Lewis’ description of “the Numenous”
A response that is wonder, confusion, and fear all at once
I've been seeing people on youtube have that picture for years. What is that character from?
@@Sadeness99 Celeste, a game where you play a 20 something year old woman climbing Mt Celeste in an attempt to conquer her depression. It’s a very good game and I relate to the character hard. Also it’s the best platformer I’ve ever played
That was really cool, thanks! Very insightful & informative. I'd describe how, but it would go on too long.
I've only just thought about how I might describe colors... I think I'd probably do so by equating it to temperature. The shape of something is like it's texture, while color is like another form of heat. To say something is bluer could be said that it's hotter in color. With temperature on someone's palm you could convey a two dimensional distribution of values, very similar to color. Though it would need to be multiple channels of temperature for brightness and hue separately, but still, that's how I think I would describe it.
But a blind person still wouldn't be able to imagine colours (though I can't confirm as I do see).
I consider the inefable as a dream. Dream most times exceed our hability to describe them, "it felt like" comes a lot when trying to narrate a dream to a person. And when you wake up, memories fade and all that remain are emotions. I consider this would be the way describe an eldritch horror: a plethora of feelings, the sensation of barely grasping as it fades away, like a dream right as you awake, only over and over as long as your eyes gaze upon the horror. And after, just the feeling. Enough to make a person mad.
I imagined cthulu as a black octopus with many eyes but 4th dimensional. I no longer understand what I am imagining.
Edit: I was satisfied with this description because i thought it was the point.
This is a fun concept.
"I stood there staring at this unknowable thing, the best I could describe it was reptilian, black in color. This is a horrible way of describing it, as looking at it was much like trying to read in a fever dream, it was solid but it changed shape as though it were a liquid at random. Various shapes and features came in and out of existence in a dizzying and nauseating way as the air seems to bend and curve around it like a lens. In one part of the mass, I saw a glowing black orb grow directly in front of me, but it suddenly shrunk again before vanishing. I felt it was staring back at me in that brief time, but did not care for my presence. I was insignificant compared to it, I could not gauge its size as it was changing by the second, some moments it took up almost the entire room, in the next, there was no trace of it while its scales appeared to roll in place and shrunk, the entire space warped as though reality was straining. I threw up, not just because I was terrified and confused, but because just looking at this thing gave me awful motion sickness. It was not of this world, no. It wasn't even a part of our reality."
This is accurate as per personal witness.
I like your video particularly because I was trying to think of a way to fit Lovecraft into my Cyberpunk campaign. This helped a ton!
Well made. This was so much fun to listen to I had to listen to it 3 times to grasp it
WHY IS THIS CHANNEL DEEPER THAN MOST PSYCHOLOGY CHANNELS I KNOW?
Stories are the vehicle we use to display the subconscious mind.
Lesson learned: If you try to study the ineffable, the ineffable will eff you up.
Gaze long into the ineffable…
Amazinh video, amazing writing. Amazing amazing amazing. You got yourself a new suscriber
I don't know if someone already said this, (i didn't feel like reading every single comment) but I think Wittgenstein puts it quite well in his Tractatus: "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen." (That which one can not speak of, one must be silent about. (Not an amazing translation but neither English nor German are my first language))
For more context there are numerous pdf renders online, or you can just buy the book. It's quite interesting.
HP Lovecraft is like a lot of the "clasics" better as inspiration than as a book itself. Because the writing style is at best simplistic by current standards. Mostly he just outright tells you it's indescribable and throws out a salad of adjectives.
It’s not a failure of writing though because the entities are canonically indescribable. If they were defined the story would be worse because of it and fundamentally contradict the concept of ‘The fear of the unknown’ which is an obvious underlying theme.
This video is an amazing insight into human nature and that which is unnameable. I'm honestly really glad I stumbled upon it. I'm not used to this kind of thoughtfulness around me, but it's very very welcome. Amazing work, congrats.
This is a pet peeve of mine. EVERYTHING and ANYTHING you see or can interact with using some form of sense... such as touch, taste, and of course sight.. Can be described. The only real possibility for something to be indescribable would be that which one can't interact with using any form of sense. Doesn't matter if someone can't apprehend what it is they are to describe.... If they see it, obviously in the human visual colour spectrum. Thus, they can describe the colour. If they feel it, they can describe the feeling. And before someone says "Explain colour to a blind person or pain to someone that can't feel pain"... That also can EASILY be described using analogies to what they already DO know. Comparisons allow us to describe to those that lack the capabilities to experience said notion of what is. In my experience, it is poor writing to say something is indescribable..... I also would never except something as being unimaginable..... To not comprehend is a state of ignorance. Doesn't mean such visual or other sense can't be described and/or understood.. Human intellect is limited but constantly evolving. Reality has it's limitations and even with fantasy we bring those limitations over to make them feel more "COMPARABLE", "DESCRIBABLE", "sympathetic/empathetic", and "relatable". May lack words in one or more languages to fully describe things which is why we have word salad. We can use MANY words to describe something simple. We can even in some cases describe what we can't interact with using any sense by simply observing the world around us. Dark matter is a good example, we can DESCRIBE how it interacts with the world around it. That is a form of description.
TLDR: My opinion, nothing is the only function which can't be describable because nothing has no descriptor other than being absolutely nothing. There isn't anything to describe. Everything else we can interact with using one or more senses, can be described. We can even describe what we CAN'T interact with using observation of that which surrounds it. Example, dark matter/dark energy.
PPS. Amazon destroyed/ruined the Lord of Rings franchise.
We cover all of this in the video
-Benji, showrunner
@@TheTaleFoundry I wasn't attacking your video with my rant. I was expressing my opinion and pet peeve on writers using "indescribable", "unimaginable" or "unfathomable". Nothing more. Sorry if such was misconstrued that way. Your video was rational and of good quality.
-Orion, random nobody.
I see singin', ringin' trees 🔔🌳🔔and hear colors fallin' like infrared leaves ♨️🍂♨️
Some colors are new from ours here. Senses are introduced to alien also are tampered and extended in the dream cycle forms. Some is just word play by the wordsmith to help bring the chaos in description. Some are literally never described but met halfway in concepts or the necronomicon. Also u can't describe color with an analogy.
By "indescribable" I think they mean that it's so alien humans don't even have a word for anything it is because there's nothing like that on Earth. The simplest example is probably the titular color out of space from "Color out of Space," it's indescribable because it's made of a color humans have never seen before.
Hope we keep getting more horror content, glad I subscribed to you two years ago
Your description of the ineffable using a library reminds me of when I took my geriatric psychology class in my first year of grad school and how the experience of Alzheimer's disease and other progressive amnestic disorders is described.
Appreciate the video, good as usual!
I really love your videos! Could you please do a video on this topic?
The Pregnant Woman trope in the horror genre, such as:
Women getting impregnated by aliens.
Women turning into bloated hives for alien reproduction.
A woman giving birth to a demonic child.
A woman carrying a baby for an evil cult.
Even men getting impregnated by an otherworldly seductress.
Misogynist, sexist, rape culture, shock horror or just pushing a fear of aliens and demons?
There are some horror stories that show a betrayed woman turning into an alien mother, only to kill those who wronged her. Is this problematic?
Is it possible to make a story arc where the woman that was impregnated, is recovering from this mental scarring?
You see the same horror when men 👨🔬⚗️ try to defy nature and create life 🧬 on their own
Pregnancy is a major part of life, so of course there are stories about it.
Berserk has some of these elements
"How HP Lovecraft Wrote the Unimaginable" Step 1: think up an EPIC name for your cat!
yeah, totally super epic, dude...
@@DaveGrean What do you mean? It has to be a totally awesome gamer name. Why else would everyone call me that in video games?
That was incredibly well put, and tasteful.
2:40 the Norwegian sailor literally fights Cthulhu in Call of Cthulhu. He rams it with his steam boat before escaping ;)
A mix of paranoia, and racism. Truly the catalyst of great writing.
Like the art nit the artist
I love eldrich stuff, it is my favorite brand of horror. Nothing can compare to it.
However one thing we must note: though the concept of these inconceivable horrors is fascinating and is one of the most groundbreaking concepts in fiction to date, these concepts weren’t born out of a true fascination with the unknown, and a desire to wretch horror’s bare concepts into something truly monstrous. No, these stories weren’t born out of passion for a craft or any positive nor sympathetic emotion at all.
Lovecraft’s writings were born out of an irrational fear of the world, and most of all a deep xenophobia and racism.
This does not mean that eldrich horror is racist in any way, but I’m just reminding everyone that Lovecraft was NOT a good man.
They come from Mental Illness borne out of a syphilis contracting father and a hateful, nagging (and actually racist) mother mixed with a fear of literally everything.
Some of the strange subhuman people where written because of his fear of them, but Dagon exists cause of his fear of FISH. He wrote a story about how he was terrified of AIR CONDITIONERS for God sakes.
To boil down all his amazing work and deep seated issues to Racism is near disingenuous.
...
However, whenever Lovecraft actually interacted with what he feared, his fear of it was abated.
He was a raging antisemite, he ended up marrying a Jewish Lady and being best friends with a Jewish man.
He was incredibly homophobic, but he became a mentor to a gay man (a man who after Lovecrafts death his so called morally superior friends maltreated and abused).
If he would have met some people of Asian or African descent before he died, he would have likely befriended them too.
...
Lovecraft himself apologised for his hateful views, and admitted they where all made in Ignorance and irrationality. That didn't change his work though, because it was rooted in more than that.
...
You can point out his views where wrong, I mean, he admitted as much.
But I hate this trend of calling him a horrible human being or accusing him of some deep seated hatred, especially when the people that do this LOVE profiting from his work (looking at you CoC).
...
But now instead of using people like Lovecraft as an example of why even the worse people with actual circumstances against them can change for the better.
...
No, it's always beating the eldritch horse, cause its easier.
Some people even have the audacity to state Lovecraft was incredibly racist for his time. He wrote Goddamn stories for God sakes, other people in his time kidnapped and BURNED ALIVE the people he was writing about.
...
Sorry for the rant but I get so heated on this topic.
Lovecraft was Based
Well done and very thought provoking:)
This is the best explainable of this concept, perhaps, the only one, that I've ever witnessed