Front Page

Content

Authors

Game Index

Forums

Site Tools

Submissions

About

KK
Kevin Klemme
March 09, 2020
35165 2
Hot
KK
Kevin Klemme
January 27, 2020
20836 0
Hot
KK
Kevin Klemme
August 12, 2019
7428 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
December 19, 2023
3981 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
December 14, 2023
3506 0
Hot

Mycelia Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
December 12, 2023
2079 0
O
oliverkinne
December 07, 2023
2587 0

River Wild Board Game Review

Board Game Reviews
O
oliverkinne
December 05, 2023
2257 0
O
oliverkinne
November 30, 2023
2499 0
J
Jackwraith
November 29, 2023
3020 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
November 28, 2023
1973 0
S
Spitfireixa
October 24, 2023
3696 0
Hot
O
oliverkinne
October 17, 2023
2626 0
O
oliverkinne
October 10, 2023
2462 0
O
oliverkinne
October 09, 2023
2291 0
O
oliverkinne
October 06, 2023
2509 0

Outback Crossing Review

Board Game Reviews
×
Bugs: Recent Topics Paging, Uploading Images & Preview (11 Dec 2020)

Recent Topics paging, uploading images and preview bugs require a patch which has not yet been released.

F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

More
18 Oct 2018 13:59 #283287 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
So, I went back and revisited the article as I kind of dismissed it with an eye roll (my eyes are light sensitive and the Virtue Signal was super bright here).

The things you don’t seem to know about Mexico (as someone who lived there 5 days a week for a year) is this:

Mexicans are racist as fuck. Like, 1000 times more overtly racist than us. They literally do not hire “Indio”’(native Mexicans) and negritos (dark skinned). They see them as subspecies. The fact that they took photos with your kid should have clued you into this. They are xeno as fuck. If you sneak into their country you WILL do prison time.

The difference between us and them is that they accept that people are racist and don’t make a big fuss about it. It’s almost a caste system. So, Mexico is vastly inferior in that regard, as we try to be better.

Just a bit of fact from someone who isn’t a one time visitor who had a revelation. You should travel more. If you want to know what America should be like, regarding race, go to Toronto. They have it down. I lived there for a while and in Montreal (same as in Mexico, on weekdays for a year). Montreal can be very racist.
The following user(s) said Thank You: jeb
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 14:03 #283288 by Hadik
Replied by Hadik on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

Michael Barnes wrote: To be clear, I am not a paid influencer. My current income from hobby games writing is $0.


Sorry I thought GW comped you copies of games.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 14:26 #283290 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
Comping isn’t the same as getting paid. I do get review copies, almost always because I’ve requested them. But that isn’t income, I’m not paid to write anything. If I sell a game, there is that but it is still not a publisher or venue paying me to influence or whatever.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Erik Twice, WadeMonnig
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 14:36 #283293 by Colorcrayons
Replied by Colorcrayons on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

moofrank wrote:
...and ditching a look at the latest Arkham Horror...

This is Lovecraft filtered through Nikki Valens...there is no way any of that will filter through her...


This is a salient point. One that needs repeating.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jackwraith
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 15:17 #283295 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
This is true- I’ll wait to hear about it before I completely dismiss it. If there is anyone working in games today who could actually subvert the racist subtexts And do something interesting with it...it’s her.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 15:34 #283296 by Space Ghost
Replied by Space Ghost on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
Michael -- check you TM; fairly important message.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 15:36 #283297 by hotseatgames
Replied by hotseatgames on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
Michael is a reverse influencer. If he sells a comp copy, it tells me he didn't consider it worth owning, even for free. ;)
The following user(s) said Thank You: SuperflyPete, Erik Twice
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 15:37 #283298 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

Michael Barnes wrote: This is true- I’ll wait to hear about it before I completely dismiss it. If there is anyone working in games today who could actually subvert the racist subtexts And do something interesting with it...it’s her.


There’s no level of revisionism that she can do to change the fact that he was racist, though. I mean, you can look at any Mythos after it based on Lovecraft, and no matter how sanitized it is, the fact remains that it stands on the shoulders of a man who was a bit deplorable.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 16:02 - 18 Oct 2018 16:02 #283301 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
That is also true. But what if she manages to do something that actually puts the racism right up front and confronts it rather than ignoring it or hiding it away...that could be interesting.

But also not likely possible in an FFG/Asmodee game...
Last edit: 18 Oct 2018 16:02 by Michael Barnes.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 16:17 #283304 by DarthJoJo
Replied by DarthJoJo on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
I have to disagree with Superfly regarding the importance of racism to Lovecraft’s writing. I can’t comment on how often it was straight up like that “Creation” poem, but even if he’s right that it was three paragraphs worth across his tens of thousands of pages, he couldn’t have written about mankind as an insignificant speck in a vast, uncaring, even hostile universe without his utter terror and contempt of everyone that wasn’t him. Everywhere outside Providence and his home he saw corruption and fall, and no one saw or cared like him. I’m not going to defend those beliefs, but it must have felt lonely and terrifying. And then those beliefs were written, subliminally or not, into Cthulhu and Innsmouth and all the rest.

I repeat, he could not have written what he wrote without being racist. Maybe not even if he were the lynching type. Then he might have believed it possible to triumph over those evils. I don’t know.
The following user(s) said Thank You: GorillaGrody
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 16:33 #283305 by DarthJoJo
Replied by DarthJoJo on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
On another note, what would it look like to confront Lovecraft’s racism in a game, in Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Horror Files line? In these books people have been quoting, it works because a not-white character can deal with their conflicting feelings right out, but how do you do that within the universe itself?

Do you treat it like Taymor’s Caliban and make the representation of whatever Great Old One just a regular black or mixed-race guy that’s misunderstood or rightfully angry?
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 16:35 #283307 by Pat II
Replied by Pat II on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft
Human beings are racist - whitey didn't invent it. I live in Toronto which is quite possibly the most integrated place on the planet and it is a joy to watch everyone just try to get along and bitch about the same things. There is racism, of course, not only coming from whitey. I've seen it from all corners unfortunately.

Lovecraft was a scared little douchebag that spun some awesome art from that fear. Whenever you see someone being an ignorant asshole you have to know it comes from fear. Rather than using anger, rage and violence he used a pen to settle himself down. His nerves killed him he was so wound up with fear. As was popular at the time he put down every culture that wasn't WASP. I'm white but also of Irish Catholic descent and undoubtedly a guy like him would look down his nose at me for that reason. It's just the way it was and it sucked.
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 19:20 #283312 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

GorillaGrody wrote:

Not Sure wrote: I very strongly agree with his followup post that "fuck it, everything's worse, your shit doesn't matter, stop bumming me out" is a basically nihilist view. I can't get behind that.


I’m not sure about that, because I can’t make it out, but I have a feeling that you’ll hate what I actually said more.

What I actually said, reworded, is that the idea that all contradictory evidence deriving from a single source is mere hypocrisy, and dismissible at face, is contrary to any known process of developing and acting on information. Such an idea promotes inertia. It is the main mode of shit like South Park and Bill Maher, but it’s also replaced most of what counts as news online and on television. No one has anything nice to say about Trump but that he’s supposedly not a hypocrite. And that serves a very specific kind of nihilism which says that, as a white guy, I’m going to live as comfortably as I can until it all goes to shit, at which point I get to use m’guns.


I don't know why you'd feel I would hate that, reworded or not. I agree with what you said in both phrasings, and I was just a lot more glib about how I repeated it.

I'm not going to double-post for the followups (since I was the guy who split the discussion first), so for the second post I think you and I have very different notions of what "left" and "right" mean. If you feel that there's never really been an actual left-wing in American politics, then I could see how we're arguing past each other. This isn't a productive place to hash any of that out, so I can drop it. Be nice to each other on the site was my main point. There are some perfectly good right-tending folks here.
The following user(s) said Thank You: GorillaGrody
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 19:32 #283313 by Not Sure
Replied by Not Sure on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

SuperflyTNT wrote: So, the question regarding his racist view is whether his racist stuff has caused anyone else to become racist. I doubt that highly. I think, at best, it's his own personal hangup and some of the subtle stuff slipped into his writing, which didn't affect the whole of his writing's impact. He created Cthulhu, not KKK.


This is a very very low bar. The issue isn't "does his writing make people racist?" The issue is "does this industry need to base such a high amount of its IP on something that's pretty exclusionary to anyone but white males?" What's the upside there? Is it acting as a signal that some people aren't welcome? Those are the questions worth asking.

Do what y'all want, but for my own part, Lovecraft's racism is such a minor, minor portion of his overall writing that nobody remembers it directly. I mean, think of how many characters and places you can think of off of the top of your head, how many stories you can name, and then ask yourself how many times he said something racist and how impactful that comment was to the overall story. I think it's pretty clear that it's a minute part of his overall writing.


Okay. Your prerogative. I'm not even interested in trying to make you feel bad. Different folks can come to different conclusions. I'd say check out the NPR link I put above for a different viewpoint, if you're interested. TWBG really isn't very diverse, so it can get echoey in here.



Regarding the spoiler, I hope you find what makes you happy. The other day I had some Constitutional discussion filtering through my mind, and I knew you'd be a good guy to cross-check with, but I couldn't figure out a non-fighty way to engage on that. That sucks, honestly.

Don't read below. Trust me.


Don't tell me what to do! I do what I want!
The following user(s) said Thank You: jeb, Black Barney, Erik Twice
The topic has been locked.
More
18 Oct 2018 19:49 #283314 by stoic
Replied by stoic on topic F#@k H.P. Lovecraft

Not Sure wrote:

GorillaGrody wrote: By contrast, Lovecraft was purely representative of a strain of middle-class, middlebrow American ultrarightism which has gone unchanged for a hundred years. He was afraid of non-whites, female bodies, and the idea of biological evolution, learned just enough about these things to freak himself out even more, and so decided he would hide in his little apartment, in his little town, and write stories about miscegenated vagina monsters until he died.


Nothing about this was remotely right-wing, especially at the time. There were lots of full-fledged racists on all sides of economic theory (example: Wilson, as I stated). I'm about as lefty as you'll find on the site, but I really think continuing to paint HPL as "right-wing" is just baiting the right-leaning members of the site, and incorrect. We have a whole Trash Talk section for that. I stopped going there for my own mental health. The defection of Southern Democrats to the GOP after Johnson completely changed the left/right landscape with regard to race as political policy, and that was long after HPL was dead.



www.dailysignal.com/2017/05/10/ugly-racism-karl-marx/
The topic has been locked.
Moderators: Gary Sax
Time to create page: 0.218 seconds