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[Bohandas]

What/

[Xantalos]

Oh, the trope of the magical world being concealed from humanity, present in the Dresden Files, Harry Potter, etc. It's often ridiculed because it's kinda inevitable that a magical subculture would eventually be discovered, but in the case of the Yog-Sothothery it's that the claims of those who do find out are too ridiculous/horrifying to be believed.

[Neonivek]

Don't forget that Lovecraft even when he made an "Original deity" the idea is that many of the deity we know of were often them. So people know a lot of eldritch stuff without actually knowing it.

The other less touched upon aspects is that people are naturally averse to horrors and prefer to just forget them.

Professions that mean you EVIL in lovecraft universe
1) A Pharoh: Nothing is more evil than ancient Egypt! if there is a pharoh it is eldritch horror!
2) A lama: if you see a lama... you better hope it just corrupts you.
3) Hermits: Ok, I miiight be wrong about this... but I don't remember one ever not being a terror. (and no, Nodens does not count...)

[Spehss _]

Don't forget that Lovecraft even when he made an "Original deity" the idea is that many of the deity we know of were often them. So people know a lot of eldritch stuff without actually knowing it.

Reminds me of an idea I had for a lovecraftian horror short story where the twist is that all the deities of human religions are actually various spawn of shub-niggurath.

[scrdest]

Actually............

Dagon is not 'strictly' a lovecraft creation. The ancient Assyrians worshiped a fish deity of the same name.

Lovecraft borrowed this dead religion, made it all "Lovecrafty", with his themes of racial purity, intrinsic horror, and victorian themes-- and conjured up Father Dagon, the somewhat anthropomorphic fish god, who wants to conquer the surface world by using human bloodlines to create hybrid offspring that can live both on land, and deep in the sea. 

The original Assyrian god was related to agriculture, and grain harvests. This is probably why Lovecraft spun him into giving the fishing village of Innsmouth bountiful fish harvests in exchange for their "Sacrifices", and "Worship".

(Sometimes having studies old, dead religions makes reading fiction seem kinda cliche.)

M60, do you even "Dagon". That's not subtext, it's plaintext - near the end of "Dagon" the protagonist even consults a scholar in Middle Eastern religions about the Assyrian Dagon, although the latter proves unwilling to consider the Mythical implications. He's a fish god because at the times he was believed to be one historically.

Oh, the trope of the magical world being concealed from humanity, present in the Dresden Files, Harry Potter, etc. It's often ridiculed because it's kinda inevitable that a magical subculture would eventually be discovered, but in the case of the Yog-Sothothery it's that the claims of those who do find out are too ridiculous/horrifying to be believed.

Actually, there isn't strictly a Masquerade in the modern form of the trope - Innsmouth gets raided in a military/FBI operation and torpedoed for a good measure, in Call of Cthulhu a cult cell gets raided by New Orleans police, Salem Witch Burnings were, in-universe, at least a bit justified with at least two actual necromancers being accused - although both just legged it out of there and an unabridged copy of Necronomicon is sitting on a shelf in a university where even random geologists sometimes read it, apparently.

It's less that the subculture is trying to conceal itself from the world, in general, more that the world is trying very very hard to ignore it, and for a good reason, and it only gets out when someone is intrepid or unlucky enough to stumble upon something that cannot be rationalized away.

[wierd]

Scrdest--

That is called "Hanging a lantern on it".

The original assyrian fish god was not the kind of eldritch horror that lovecraft spun it as. That's why he "hung a lantern on it", mentioned said scholar being incredulous (and rightly so) about said deity being an eldritch abomination, and just went on with his story.

Those that are familiar with that deity would have had their suspension of disbelief punctured-- hence, hanging the lantern.

*makes raspberry noises*

[scrdest]

Scrdest--

That is called "Hanging a lantern on it".

The original assyrian fish god was not the kind of eldritch horror that lovecraft spun it as. That's why he "hung a lantern on it", mentioned said scholar being incredulous (and rightly so) about said deity being an eldritch abomination, and just went on with his story.

Those that are familiar with that deity would have had their suspension of disbelief punctured-- hence, hanging the lantern.

*makes raspberry noises*

That is not Lampshade Hanging. Lampshade Hanging would be the scholar saying 'Sure, sure, but the Assyrian Dagon was actually kind of nothing like what you've seen.'. You're scrambling to save your argument.

If something as minor as a reimagining of one fictional character as another fictional character punctures your suspension of disbelief, the bookshelf with Non-Fiction is on the left. No author feels the need to constantly wink at the readers, saying 'I made up the story. In, like, my own head. Geddit? Geddit? It's not real at all!' unless he has an extremely rare and weird, possibly debilitating neurological disorder.

Lampshade hanging is used to alleviate the audience's disbelief in plot contrivancies, not their disbelief in the plot itself.

The main character discovering the Plot Device is in the hands of his secret twin brother he never knew but bumped into on the street while a freak gust of wind blasted an old newspaper documenting the births in the very hospital he was born on the exact same day is something that warrants a lampshading. Another main character of another story finding out he's a wizard and going to a magicool school is not something that warrants a lampshading 'because we all know wizards are not real!'.

Likewise, unless you routinely hang out with ancient gods, in which case BURN THE WITCH!, Dagon actually being an eldritch abomination in-universe is not something that warrants a lampshading; Winston Churchill being an eldritch, non-humanoid, non-cloaked abomination would warrant it ('You'd think someone would have noticed, but apparently we somehow missed it the entire time!').

*makes watermelon noises*

[Spehss _]

Likewise, unless you routinely hang out with ancient gods, in which case BURN THE WITCH!, Dagon actually being an eldritch abomination in-universe is not something that warrants a lampshading; Winston Churchill being an eldritch, non-humanoid, non-cloaked abomination would warrant it ('You'd think someone would have noticed, but apparently we somehow missed it the entire time!').

It was at about this time that I realized that Winston Churchill, the man who was Prime Minister of the UK during WWII and who was generally considered to be a swell guy, was actually an eight story tall crustacean from the Paleozoic era. That goddam Loch Ness Monster tricked us all again.

[wierd]

....  This kind of plot was actually used by lovecraft.

There's the one about "Mister Akeley", who seems a totally swell guy, bent on exposing an alien abduction menace to a local skeptic, but who suddenly changes his mind in his letters, and asks the skeptic to come and visit him-- ultimately revealing that he had been replaced with a robotic doppleganger of alien construction.

(whisperer in the darkness.)