Hakkesshu posted:

They are definitely not shy about calling out Lovecraft himself - the first time they mention him by name they bring up his, er, poem, "On the Creation of N-Word," which is by far the worst thing he ever put to paper. It's hard to get a sense for where the season is going, not being familiar with the source material, but so far it seems to largely be a period piece with a helping of cosmic horror in the margins. Either way, I feel confident recommending it based on the first episode.

Xealot posted:

First episode was great. I'm already very into this show.

The intro dream sequence in particular is so awesome at introducing a lot of core concepts for the story: Atticus is a veteran who views himself as a genre fiction hero; he aspires to be a John Carter type who fights aliens and gets with a Space Princess in the end; but the Hero's Journey expectations he has of a prevailing hero become meaningless when they slam against HP Lovecraft. Not even Jackie Robinson can overcome an immortal Elder God, conflating cosmic horror with white supremacy and systemic racism in the first 2 minutes. It's so goddamn solid.

Xealot posted:

Not to mention other fun details, like at the end of the episode where the racist cops are attacked and become infected with shoggoth monster contagion, and one of them is visibly morphing into a grotesque monster, and the other cop is still aiming his gun at some scared unarmed black people. In case True Detective was too subtle about how the white patriarchal power structure in America is essentially just a predatory cult of Cthulhu worshippers.

Pedro De Heredia posted:

hp lovecraft sir your canceled

Beef Hardcheese posted:

Jerusalem posted:

Loved the first episode, I never knew about Sundown Towns and goddamn what a horrific and monstrous concept that this was just an accepted thing in the not-too distant past.

Also I loving adore Uncle George, please don't hurt him!

banned from Starbucks posted:

The cop that chased them to the train tracks was one of the ones in the woods/cabin? I thought he stopped at the tracks? Did he radio the other cops ahead and then join them? Was kinda confusing how they edited that part. Is that how he knew his name?

zoux posted:

https://twitter.com/MorganJerkins/status/1295679009485922304

Ceramic Shot posted:

I've seen similar comments about Robert E. Howard floating around, but would just like to add that he was a lot worse than I think a lot of people seem to realize too, at least if his correspondence with Lovecraft is anything to go by. I've been reading A Means to Freedom, the collection of Howard/Lovecraft correspondence, and holy poo poo is it (unsurprisingly) a sty of vileness at times. As prejudiced as those times were, I can't help but put Howard into the category of "racist even for his generation." Spoilered for some of the most ugly bare-faced racism you'll hopefully read for a while. All of the following quotes are from Robert E. Howard, from around the year 1931:

Yikeseroni! They have some interesting conversations about the relative merits of civilization vs. barbarism and epistemology, at least, but the whole volume is kind of interwoven with this shared sense of fascistic racial destiny garbage.

Clipperton posted:

OTOH, while a prodigious letter writer, Lovecraft never once used his correspondence to groom teens

Wolfsheim posted:

great first episode, I thought it went a little too big too soon (them being slowly chased by the sheriff is infinitely more menacing than them getting into a literal car chase gunfight with a redneck death squad so tonally it just felt a little weird) but then again the first twenty pages of Mountains of Madness is Lovecraft dryly reciting the travel logistics so maybe they wanted to assure the audience that things are actually gonna happen on this show


my girlfriend was annoyed that this was played as a tense getaway when obviously the cop was going to arrest or try to murder them regardless of if he could legally do so, and then was pleasantly surprised when that's exactly what happens a minute later

ex post facho posted:

the scoring is god loving awful, lmao at clones followed by killing strangers

that episode fell off pretty hard, IMO, hoping next week is better

Ballz posted:

Yeah, I felt like I was back in True Blood for some of that. Just a complete different tone from the previous week.

I'll stick with it for now, but man I'm not sure where it's gonna go from here.

Hostile V posted:

cool Lovecraft stuff

megapuppy posted:

I'm enjoying this show, but man - it's really schlocky. It started off pretty well, I enjoyed the scene with the sheriff - but the minute otherwordly monsters started appearing, it turned into a Stuart Gordon movie. I mean, I *love* Stuart Gordon's lovecraft movies, but they are definitely not high art. And that second episode was ludicrous - like a tacky version of GET OUT with one-dimensional villains and some howlingly bad CG work.
It all feels weirdly un-HBO. More like a slightly-naff miniseries from a network channel, but with more overt sex and violence.

That Italian Guy posted:

I too am a fan of In the Mouth of Madness Event Horizon and think it's one of the best Lovecraftian horror movies out there. Speaking of Lovecraftian movies, it's not perfect but it's definitely in the vibe: Cold Skin. I guess it helps that I've watched it while I was going 1 week with barely any sleep due to strep throat and I would wake up to this never-changing, weird horror with fishmen from time to time. Really got me into the oniric horror theme of the movie.

anothergod posted:

Just a show of hands (no judgment), who here was beaten as a kid? We see this a lot in media, and I think a lot of poor/immigrant/etc families make jokes about it, but I have very rarely seen it talked about on any other level than "good/bad/funny".

I remember when I was really little (like less than 3), my dad would slap my hand really hard if I did something bad. He's a first gen immigrant, and it was a much different time when he was growing up, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's how he was raised. I've never broached the topic w/ him, but I think he sees it as a bad thing that he just had to stop, and he's never had a reason to bring it up himself. Personally I don't care, but, it's just interesting to think about how things like that change.

Darko posted:

I was spanked ridiculously, with belts bare assed full force up to like 60 times, switches, etc. by my father, mother, grandmother, etc. Raised in the 80s in a black family, and it was something passed down generationally from the South.

asciidic posted:

I got full on beatings, not so much for discipline / punishment, but more because my dad was a perpetually frustrated ball of rage even without all the booze and cocaine use. It's easy to find similar cases in real life but I can't think of any portrayal in movies or TV off the top of my head that matches my experience. But Montrose's dad telling him to pick a switch brought back memories of my more mischievous cousins being told the same. There's something extra devilish in making a child choose the instrument of their own abuse. And they know they have to choose, because if they don't, the parent might choose something more painful.

Open Source Idiom posted:

Excellent. No comment on the episode, except to say that I've missed seeing Regina Taylor on screen.

Irrelevant aside: the more I think about it, the more that it's obvious to me that this show isn't remotely interested in adopting the tone of Lovecraft's work. I think that put a lot of people off from watching an excellent show. *shrug* Their loss.

AtraMorS posted:

This is going to be really self-indulgent and I get it if nobody gives a poo poo.

Xealot posted:

I got into a conversation with someone about Watchmen and its portrayal of the Tulsa massacre, and their sense was that despite good intentions, there was something exploitive or sensationalist about how it packaged black historical pain. This episode is an interesting counterpoint to that, because the stakes are so personal. The scope of the tragedy felt much clearer to me...you actually get to spend some time in this community and see what it looked like before it was ripped apart. And definitely, it helps that your POV characters are all people you've seen shaped by the trauma of it (directly or indirectly.) It's wild that this event scrubbed from white history books for a century would be depicted twice within a year of each other, but I can definitely see how this version is better and more reverent.


One thing I definitely didn't expect, and that I'm thrilled by, is how Hippolyta is being handled. She's the kind of character that always gets marginalized even in trope-conscious storytelling: this middle-aged wife and mother, whose job is typically to be concerned or voice concern or mourn the dead or provide emotional support. It's thankless. Turning that on its head is my favorite surprise in this show. I'm all-in for Hippolyta becoming the blue-haired spacetime adventurer from Diana's comics. You thought Tic was going to become a John Carter type...nope, it's Hippolyta. It kicks rear end.

GimpInBlack posted:

It's even more general than "racism in New England." (Also, watch that bus breakdown scene in episode 1 again. Tic knows full well that crossing the Mason-Dixon line is no cause for relief.) For black people in the 1950s (and let's be real, continuing straight on through to today," America is a Lovecraft country. Both in the sense of plenty of white Americans all over the country holding views in line with old Howie Phil's and in the sense of "living in a world where vast powers that are at best utterly uncaring about you and at worst will casually destroy you out of hand if they deign to notice you." White supremacy, particularly as it is entrenched at every level of American society, law, and government, is the cosmic horror. The wizards and the monsters are just set dressing.

Doltos posted:

I'm just wondering where they go from here with the eldritch stuff. Is Tic going to be battling systematic racism with shoggoths or something? It just feels like this show can easily, easily go off the rails. It hasn't yet from its overall message but I'm just waiting for it to start reaching.

Doronin posted:

Stayed away from this thread to avoid spoilers, but godamn I loved this show. It wasn't predictable, and presented really tough issues in such a creative way, but recontextualized a lot of things to make them more powerful.

Although for my wife, her favorite part was how Hippolyta was handled within the story. Someone already mentioned that moms usually get sidetracked as 'emotional support' and don't really get to do much. But in this show she gets to go on a grand adventure, and when given the chance, names herself "mother." That really appealed to her.

socialsecurity posted:

To show that just because a person is a White Feminist doesn't mean they won't sacrifice/use black people to get what they want. They sort of do that with Tic and the gay stuff as well, being oppressed doesn't automatically make you sympathetic to other people being oppressed.

Anonymous Zebra posted:

The question you should ask is why is the onus always on black people to be the ones that show forgiveness in the face of generational violence?