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Forgive Me Father - Cthulhu-hunting boomer shooter

LudensCogitet

Learned
Joined
Nov 4, 2019
Messages
210
I have no stake in this game. I don't know if it's good or does anything interesting with any Lovecraftian themes.

I would like to remind everyone that, in The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu is stopped from rising again to plunge the world into madness and blood because someone hits him with a boat.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
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Water Play Catarinense
A boat, not a shotgun while killing a lot fish people before facing Cthulhu. And it's not like the guy decided to get into a boat to kill Cthulhu.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
I would like to remind everyone that, in The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu is stopped from rising again to plunge the world into madness and blood because someone hits him with a boat.
Could a Lovecraft aficionado explain this? I mean, all of Lovecraft's bullshit about how great and almighty the Old Ones are and how INSIGNIFICANT humanity is by comparison, yet Cthulhu gets fucked by a fishing ship. If the faggot can get KO'd by a boat then I think a nuke will suffice for his destruction. Humanity rules, loser!

The only explanation I can think of is that Cthulhu was weakened because he had been slumbering in the ocean, because water weakens him. This, however, contradicts the pop-culture version of Cthulhu that depicts him as a massive, water-oriented squid monster.
iu

This guy doesn't look like a little boat is gonna hurt him any time soon!

Although, this only stands true in Lovecraft's original writings. In the writings of August Derleth, Cthulhu is associated with the water element, and is not weakened by it, thereby supporting my claim that August Derleth is the TRUE Mythos creator. Face it, you didn't start liking Lovecraft because you read his overly written trash stories (which are mostly ceaseless plot exposition), you started liking Lovecraft because of pop-culture products like the tabletop game and it's offshoots, like Dark Corner of the Earths, which take most of their inspiration from August Derleth. We should really be calling Forgive Me Father and its ilk Derlethian-inspired games, and making jokes about August Derleth's cats instead.

220px-August_Derleth_closeup.jpg

:salute:
 

Arbaces

Novice
Joined
Sep 11, 2021
Messages
42
I have never read a Derleth story, and Chaosium is on my same shit list as the Burroughs Estate for trademarking elements of public domain stories. Lovecraft's writing is fundamentally about decline, so it's poetic that his name is invoked in products by cargo cult hacks who completely miss the point. It was never intended to become a coherent "Mythos" only his circle of weird fiction authors sharing ideas.

For those who actually like Lovecraft's writing, they can't go wrong with the authors he surveyed in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature. William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland is particularly good, and, if you can slog through some of the most grating prose ever put to paper, so is The Night Land.

As to why a boat sets Cthulhu back. I think it's a moronic question, but I'll answer it for a sense of completion. It provides an explosive conclusion for the story, but also flavors it with a dash of ambiguity. It was paid by the word commercial entertainment after all. We've already established it was written to stand alone with a few nods to other material, it's not as if Lovecraft had Chaosium™'s Call of Cthulhu™ official stat block to reference against ramming damage from the boat supplement.
 

Viata

Arcane
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Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
You could remove all of his Cthulhu-related stories and I'd still love the rest of his work. I love Lovecraft's writing, he is a master of the English grammar. Even in his letter, he still has his unique way of telling tales. This, for example, is a letter telling the tale of a lovely cat he used to know for many(21+) years:
66 College St.
Providence, R. I.
Dec. 22, 1934

Dear Rhi'-Mhel:—

So I hadn't spoken about "Old Man" and my dreams of him! Well—he was a great fellow. He belonged to a market at the foot of Thomas street—the hill street mentioned in Cthulhu as the abode of the young artist—and could usually (in later life) be found asleep on the sill of a low window almost touching the ground. Occasionally he would stroll up the hill as far as the Art Club, seating himself at the entrance to one of those old-fashioned courtyard archways (formerly common everywhere) for which Providence is so noted. At night, when the electric lights make the street bright, the space within the archway would remain pitch-black, so that it looked like the mouth of an illimitable abyss, or the gateway of some nameless dimension. And there, as if stationed as a guardian of the unfathomed mysteries beyond, would crouch the Sphinxlike, jet-black, yellow-eyed, and incredibly ancient form of Old Man. I first knew him as a youngish cat in 1906, when my elder aunt lived in Benefit St. nearby, and Thomas St. lay on my route downtown from her place. I used to pat him and remark what a fine boy he was. I was sixteen then. The years went by, and I continued to see him off and on. He grew mature—then elderly—and finally cryptically ancient. After about ten years—when I was grown up and had a grey hair or two myself—I began calling him "Old Man". He knew me well, and would always purr and rub aorund my ankles, and greet me with a kind of friendly conversational "e-ew" which finally became hoarse with age. I came to regard him as an indispensable acquaintance, and would often go considerably out of my way to pass his habitual territory, on the chance that I might find him visible. Good Old Man! In fancy I pictured him as an hierophant of the mysteries behind the black archway, and wondered if he would ever invite me through it some midnight .... wondered, too, if I could ever come back to earth alive after accepting such an invitation. Well—more years slipped away. My Brooklyn period came and went; and in 19126, a middle-aged relique of thirty-six, with a goodly sprinkling of white in my thatch, I took up my abode in Barnes Street—whence my habitual downtown route led straight down Thomas St. hill. And there by the ancient archway Old Man still lingered! He was not very active now, and spent most of his time sleeping—but he still knew his fellow-elder, and never failed to give his hoarse, friendly "e-ew" when he chanced to be awake. About 1927 he took on a sort of final second youth and began to be awake more. He had been sticking rather close to the market, but now I met him farther and farther up the hill, and very often at the old archway. Goold Old Man! In 1928 he seemed a trifle feeble, but his purring friendliness was unabated. Not long before my thirty-eighth birthday I saw him—him whom I had known at sixteen! Then in August I began to miss him. Always when turning the corner on to the hill I used to look down ahead and see if I could discern a familiar lump of black by the archway or at the market. Now I failed to see the graceful old furry lump. I feared the worst—but scarcely dared to enquire at the market. At last—September—I did enquirex and found that my fears were all too well founded. After more than two decades Old Man had gone through the archway at last, and dissolved into that eternal night of which he was a true fragment—that eternal night which had sent him up to earth as a tiny black atom of sportive kittenhood so long ago! Assuredly, I felt desolate enough without my old friend—without any black lump to look for on the ancient hill! I had dreamed of him—and the musteries of the archway—before; but I know began to do so with redoubled vividness. He would greet me in sleep on a spectral Thomas Street Hill, and gaze with aged yellow eyes that spoke secrets older than Aegyptus or Atlantis. And he would mew an invitation for me to follow him through the archway—beyond which lay (as saith Dunsany) "the unreverberate darkness of the abyss." In no dreams up to now have I actually followed him through—but I have often wondered what will happen if I ever do ..... whether, in such an event, I shall ever again awake in this tridimensional world? When I mentioned these dreams to Dwyer he wanted to make a story about Old Man, but he has not yet done so. If he doesn't, I may myself some day. Good Old Man! But I am sure that no world he would lead me to would be a world of horror. He is too old and true a friend for that! When Little Sam Perkins appeared on the scene last summer I decided that he must be a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Old Man—perhaps a messenger despatched from the Abyss by my old friend. As soon as his great violet eyes began to turn yellow, I occasionally addressed him as Old Man, and fancied I could sense a spark of recognition! Perhaps he was my friend himself in a new body! But, alas, he did not remain long. he, too, returned to that eternal Night of which he and all his kind are inalienable fragments! .....

...............

Yrs. most sincerely—
E'ch-Pi-El
The man was a master of his craft.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I havent seen a Lovecraftian game since Clive Barkers Undying in 2001. Which has nothing to do with Lovecraft funnily enough.

Quake, Undying, Soul Reaver are infinitely more Lovecraftian than hipster garbage like Stygian, Stirring Abyss or Alder's Blood.

That's because those who directly copy Lovecraft's mythos are cargo cult designers.

Those who go for Lovecraftian vibes instead understand his themes.
 

toughasnails

Guest
I have no stake in this game. I don't know if it's good or does anything interesting with any Lovecraftian themes.

I would like to remind everyone that, in The Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu is stopped from rising again to plunge the world into madness and blood because someone hits him with a boat.
I don't think there is much consistency between his stories, he certainly wasn't autistically pouring over the minutia of his fictional universe the way Tolkien or Frank Herbert did... There are no consistent "rules" there.
At the beginning of The Shadow over Innsmouth you also hear how the army eventually genocided the inhabitants and used submarines to take case of deep ones who haven't been lucky to, you know, be deep enough. And yet the people who played the 2005 Call of Cthulhu game which was set in Innsmouth often whine about the game eventually turning into FPS bc that is somehow "unfaithful" to Lovecraft.
 
Glory to Ukraine
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Yeah, the whole "if you can fight back, its not Lovecraftian" is a highly over-exaggerated meme usually pushed by those who most likely didnt read that many Lovecraft stories. Shadow over Innsmouth is indeed a good example that Deep Ones are in fact quite weak and their only chance against humanity is a slow infiltration - once someone actually starts paying attention to them, they are fucked. Same with those Cthulhu worshiping negro cultists in the swamps of Louisiana who get rounded up by a bunch of redneck cops (I think that was in Call of Cthulhu?). In Shunned House, the protagonist is able to destroy an "Eldridge monster" by pouring acid on it etc.

Many of the lower-tier monsters, let alone cultists, are easily dispatched by a dude with a Thompson, let alone law enforcement or military unit. Having a combat focused "Lovecraftian" games is perfectly legitimate.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
I should probably read Lovecraft's work again, last time was years ago. The last story I remember reading was called something like "The Unnameable". It was two dudes in a graveyard or something having an argument, one guy's like "aha humanity is so great we can understand anything!" and guy 2 says "no, but there are things that humanity cannot put a name to", and guy 1 says "haha, there is nothing that is UNAMEABLE for us!". Then a big spooky monster comes and injures guy 1. Guy 2 visits guy 1 in the hospital, and when guy 1 wakes up, he's like "wow... that sure was... UNNAMEABLE™..."
I never knew Lovecraft wrote comedy
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
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Location
Water Play Catarinense
I should probably read Lovecraft's work again, last time was years ago. The last story I remember reading was called something like "The Unnameable". It was two dudes in a graveyard or something having an argument, one guy's like "aha humanity is so great we can understand anything!" and guy 2 says "no, but there are things that humanity cannot put a name to", and guy 1 says "haha, there is nothing that is UNAMEABLE for us!". Then a big spooky monster comes and injures guy 1. Guy 2 visits guy 1 in the hospital, and when guy 1 wakes up, he's like "wow... that sure was... UNNAMEABLE™..."
I never knew Lovecraft wrote comedy
image.png
 

toughasnails

Guest
Has anyone here tried this yet? Its user reviews on steam are extremely positive right now.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
The phrase "boomer shooter" doesn't refer to baby boomers, but rather the "30 year old boomer" meme.
iu


Thus the "sip... now Doom was a real game!" quotes you see passed around. Obviously baby boomers weren't playing fucking Doom. I know you guys are old and out of touch, but c'mon.
 

Riskbreaker

Guest
You could remove all of his Cthulhu-related stories and I'd still love the rest of his work. I love Lovecraft's writing, he is a master of the English grammar. Even in his letter, he still has his unique way of telling tales. This, for example, is a letter telling the tale of a lovely cat he used to know for many(21+) years:
66 College St.
Providence, R. I.
Dec. 22, 1934

Dear Rhi'-Mhel:—

So I hadn't spoken about "Old Man" and my dreams of him! Well—he was a great fellow. He belonged to a market at the foot of Thomas street—the hill street mentioned in Cthulhu as the abode of the young artist—and could usually (in later life) be found asleep on the sill of a low window almost touching the ground. Occasionally he would stroll up the hill as far as the Art Club, seating himself at the entrance to one of those old-fashioned courtyard archways (formerly common everywhere) for which Providence is so noted. At night, when the electric lights make the street bright, the space within the archway would remain pitch-black, so that it looked like the mouth of an illimitable abyss, or the gateway of some nameless dimension. And there, as if stationed as a guardian of the unfathomed mysteries beyond, would crouch the Sphinxlike, jet-black, yellow-eyed, and incredibly ancient form of Old Man. I first knew him as a youngish cat in 1906, when my elder aunt lived in Benefit St. nearby, and Thomas St. lay on my route downtown from her place. I used to pat him and remark what a fine boy he was. I was sixteen then. The years went by, and I continued to see him off and on. He grew mature—then elderly—and finally cryptically ancient. After about ten years—when I was grown up and had a grey hair or two myself—I began calling him "Old Man". He knew me well, and would always purr and rub aorund my ankles, and greet me with a kind of friendly conversational "e-ew" which finally became hoarse with age. I came to regard him as an indispensable acquaintance, and would often go considerably out of my way to pass his habitual territory, on the chance that I might find him visible. Good Old Man! In fancy I pictured him as an hierophant of the mysteries behind the black archway, and wondered if he would ever invite me through it some midnight .... wondered, too, if I could ever come back to earth alive after accepting such an invitation. Well—more years slipped away. My Brooklyn period came and went; and in 19126, a middle-aged relique of thirty-six, with a goodly sprinkling of white in my thatch, I took up my abode in Barnes Street—whence my habitual downtown route led straight down Thomas St. hill. And there by the ancient archway Old Man still lingered! He was not very active now, and spent most of his time sleeping—but he still knew his fellow-elder, and never failed to give his hoarse, friendly "e-ew" when he chanced to be awake. About 1927 he took on a sort of final second youth and began to be awake more. He had been sticking rather close to the market, but now I met him farther and farther up the hill, and very often at the old archway. Goold Old Man! In 1928 he seemed a trifle feeble, but his purring friendliness was unabated. Not long before my thirty-eighth birthday I saw him—him whom I had known at sixteen! Then in August I began to miss him. Always when turning the corner on to the hill I used to look down ahead and see if I could discern a familiar lump of black by the archway or at the market. Now I failed to see the graceful old furry lump. I feared the worst—but scarcely dared to enquire at the market. At last—September—I did enquirex and found that my fears were all too well founded. After more than two decades Old Man had gone through the archway at last, and dissolved into that eternal night of which he was a true fragment—that eternal night which had sent him up to earth as a tiny black atom of sportive kittenhood so long ago! Assuredly, I felt desolate enough without my old friend—without any black lump to look for on the ancient hill! I had dreamed of him—and the musteries of the archway—before; but I know began to do so with redoubled vividness. He would greet me in sleep on a spectral Thomas Street Hill, and gaze with aged yellow eyes that spoke secrets older than Aegyptus or Atlantis. And he would mew an invitation for me to follow him through the archway—beyond which lay (as saith Dunsany) "the unreverberate darkness of the abyss." In no dreams up to now have I actually followed him through—but I have often wondered what will happen if I ever do ..... whether, in such an event, I shall ever again awake in this tridimensional world? When I mentioned these dreams to Dwyer he wanted to make a story about Old Man, but he has not yet done so. If he doesn't, I may myself some day. Good Old Man! But I am sure that no world he would lead me to would be a world of horror. He is too old and true a friend for that! When Little Sam Perkins appeared on the scene last summer I decided that he must be a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Old Man—perhaps a messenger despatched from the Abyss by my old friend. As soon as his great violet eyes began to turn yellow, I occasionally addressed him as Old Man, and fancied I could sense a spark of recognition! Perhaps he was my friend himself in a new body! But, alas, he did not remain long. he, too, returned to that eternal Night of which he and all his kind are inalienable fragments! .....

...............

Yrs. most sincerely—
E'ch-Pi-El
The man was a master of his craft.

That was lovely.
I think I can see what he was doing there too. He admired Arthur Machen greatly and Machen had this small book, Hieroglyphics, wherein he expounded his thought on writing and literature. It's the theory behind Machen's writing, you could say. He talks about how a great writer can transmute the most ordinary situations into something wondrous, evoke the numinous in the mundane. Restore the wonder with which a child looks at the world.
That's pretty much what Lovecraft did with his alley cat friend here.
 

Jenkem

その目、だれの目?
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An oasis of love and friendship.
Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I helped put crap in Monomyth
tried it out and the shooting is good, I actually like the comic book aesthetic as it fits the pulpy nature of it and the "story" is told in a way that actually does have more of a lovecraft vibe than other games, and you can completely skip them since you interact with them in the environment, which is nice since it's not shoved in your face. I wish the enemies made more sounds though and while I like the comic book aesthetic the "headshot" popup is kind of annoying and I hope they add a toggle to remove it. you should try it yourself...
 

Atlantico

unida e indivisible
Patron
Undisputed Queen of Faggotry Vatnik In My Safe Space
Joined
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Messages
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Make the Codex Great Again!
The phrase "boomer shooter" doesn't refer to baby boomers, but rather the "30 year old boomer" meme.

A forced meme based on a very forced meme doesn't actually make any goddam sense.

Just like the phrase "boomer shooter". It's stupid.

Even moreso after having it explained. That's when you know the people pushing it are dumb as bread.
 

Viata

Arcane
Joined
Nov 11, 2014
Messages
9,885
Location
Water Play Catarinense
The phrase "boomer shooter" doesn't refer to baby boomers, but rather the "30 year old boomer" meme.
iu


Thus the "sip... now Doom was a real game!" quotes you see passed around. Obviously baby boomers weren't playing fucking Doom. I know you guys are old and out of touch, but c'mon.
Is he going to play Q3A on Dreamcast? I used to play that with 3 other friends one a single screen. Shit was fun as fuck, damn. All those memories. :negative:
 

Greek Anime God

Scholar
Joined
Oct 25, 2021
Messages
110
Yeah, the whole "if you can fight back, its not Lovecraftian" is a highly over-exaggerated meme usually pushed by those who most likely didnt read that many Lovecraft stories.
I thought people were saying the games missed the point of Lovecraft's stories, not that you couldn't shoot some squid monster or cultists. I think you got it confused with the horror game people who think the tension is ruined if you can fight the monster and prefer walking sims.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
As to why a boat sets Cthulhu back. I think it's a moronic question, but I'll answer it for a sense of completion. It provides an explosive conclusion for the story, but also flavors it with a dash of ambiguity. It was paid by the word commercial entertainment after all. We've already established it was written to stand alone with a few nods to other material, it's not as if Lovecraft had Chaosium™'s Call of Cthulhu™ official stat block to reference against ramming damage from the boat supplement.

its also stated in the story that the ritual wasnt complete and wasnt even performed as it should be and by the people it should be performed by.
 

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