#hpl

[ahappyphjl]

can a fact not just be a fun thing you tell?

[frogismee]

Oh my god i need someone to draw him fainting and just absolutely eating the dirt in front of Nyarlathotep or something

[psychopacifist-rm]

And Hannibal walks in like a final boss

[nemeyuko]

Fun fact the term “transvestite” was first coined the same year as Herbert West killing a guy (1910)

Yes, I looked it up to be historically accurate on writing Herbert West as trans in a fan fic about the short story.

[mister-jekyll]

Of my colleague Herbert West, my friend from University to the present, I speak of with both terror and fascination. I wrote in my previous journal my experiences with him, a year after his disappearance, in 1922. Later that same year, my parents both died unexpectedly. I was about to leave Massachusetts for my home state of Illinois. Instead, Herbert West came through the front door of our Boston home like nothing happened. I fell to him like a saint touched by God, and he accepted me again as his inthralled assistant. His stronger will held me at Massachusetts, and I cancelled my move to Illinois. He was ripped apart on that night in 1921, but he was obviously reanimated. He refused to speak about what happened, but he had scars on his body that almost healed entirely from his death. Now, we’re both going to that frozen hellscape that we call Antarctica.

— The Insane and the Ignorant, Chapter 1 part 1, The Icy Lunacy of Dr. Herbert West

A fanfic I’ll try to finish by the end of the month.

[another-musical-enthusiast]

[stadtpiratin]

Seeing that their lifetimes overlap 45 years and that they were born only two years apart I think it would've not only been possible but also hilarious if J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft had met one day and discussed writing, coming eventually to the topic of – drumroll please – Felis catus. The common cat.

Because both men had vastly different ideas of what a cat was while both completely missing the point of what a cat actually is.

See, Tolkien originally envisionied what once should become the dark lord Sauron to be a cat named Tevildo who's prideful and cunning and wicked, loving to play with his prey and being named the chief hunter of what essentially is The Devil in Tolkien's writings.

To quote Tolkien in his own words: "[Tevildo] was a mighty cat and coal-black and evil to look upon. His eyes were long and very narrow and slanted, and gleamed both red and green, but his great grey whiskers were as stout and as sharp as needles. His purr was like the roll of drums and his growl like thunder, but when he yelled in wrath it turned the blood cold, and indeed small beasts and birds were frozen as to stone, or dropped lifeless often at the very sound."

On the other hand, Lovecraft adored cats. So much so that he granted them the power to see the invisible in many of his works, while also making them strong, agile, able to leap between earth and moon, saving the protagonist of one of his Dream Cycle stories and he even wrote at least two poems for cats. As christmas presents.

So I imagine Tolkien ranting about how cats are cruel and vicious predators with zero regards to life itself and servants of the Dark Lord, and Lovecraft freaking out, telling Tolkien to shup up because one time there were those people in a town called Ulthar who didn't like cats and treated them badly and these people were evil and one day the cats ate the people, see, this is what you get for hating on my poor kittens!

All the while cats are just... cats. Little furry gremlins who occasinally torture birds, mice or lizards, but they are neither heroes nor villains. They're just cats.

[greater-than-the-sword]

Alright theres only so many times we can do a story where a man contemplates suicide because he discovered his distant ancestor was the result of micegenation with an eldritch horror