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[Neonivek]

I don't think HP lovecraft was anything close to terrible.

The issue is the same thing wrong with George Orwell... He is to dang popular for his own good.

So you have someone who a LOT of people outright misinterpret (For example people are under the assumption that all the protagonists eventually go insane, die, or transform in his books... when that sparsely occurred) while at the same time book beating you with the fact that they are some unapproachable genius.

As well like George Orwell every single hack writer and videogame creator is copying their themes and styles... usually badly.

I like the Lovecraftian themes but even I am starting to feel pushed towards hating the guy.

[Max™]

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward is too damn long but fantastically creepy.

I would literally sacrifice an entire crate full of live babies for an At the Mountains of Madness movie, especially if it had a scene where the entire screen is black except for the tiny little bit over in the corner illuminated by our explorers before one of them pans their light upwards across a huge engraving which spans the entire rest of the screen.

The Colour Out of Space creeps me right the fuck out and back in and out once again for good measure.

That one story uh, Beneath the Pyramids I think, with the uh... Sphynx? My imagination had fun with that one.

Kadath is weird but doesn't really feel like a proper Lovecraft story until it gets to the part where he notices some of the mountains seem to be moving.

I had an amazing time reading Innsmouth to the missus, especially the look in her eyes when it clicked that despite all the noise outside his room... nobody had said a word and she suddenly decided maybe she didn't want me to keep going but knew I was going to anyways.

Really though the best Lovecraft story is Equoid, by Charles Stross, and that reminds me I need to fix the wussy ass unicorns in my main df mod...

[helmacon]

(Basically, yes, but it seems like King just took the "use more words" part and ran with it.)

Wait, what? Are you serious? King is incredibly colloquial. His stories are almost always more blue collar, and the characters more relatable than the elitism you get in lovecraftian stories. His stuff is about as simple as it gets!

The Colour Out of Space creeps me right the fuck out and back in and out once again for good measure.

+ motherfucking 1

[ChairmanPoo]

The Color out of Space left me shivering when I read it at 14. IMO its Lovecraft at it's cosmiciest, creepiest. And its not even within the main cycles of Lovecraft's fiction

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My favorite Lovecraft story isn't even really horror, The Nameless City. It's so amazingly atmospheric and really gets the whole emotion of archeology. For cosmic horror I go with The Shunned House, and for madness The Rats In The Walls. Of all the famous stories At The Mountains of Madness is the best written.

Ironically, I disliked Call of Cthulhu.

[redwallzyl]

My favorite Lovecraft story isn't even really horror, The Nameless City. It's so amazingly atmospheric and really gets the whole emotion of archeology. For cosmic horror I go with The Shunned House, and for madness The Rats In The Walls. Of all the famous stories At The Mountains of Madness is the best written.

Ironically, I disliked Call of Cthulhu.

my near eastern archeology professor literally showed the first bit of the exorcist in class. not sure its a great advertisement for the profession.

[nenjin]

I wouldn't call all of Lovecraft's style terrible. A lot of it is just dry.

But his dialog IS terrible, which is why his stories rarely include it. I get the impression of a man who didn't talk a lot with other people face-to-face. He was much more into correspondence and that comes out in his writing, and why so many of his stories take the form of correspondence.

So ideas: A+.
Execution: C+, on average. Some stories are better than others, likely due to brevity.

Kadath is weird but doesn't really feel like a proper Lovecraft story until it gets to the part where he notices some of the mountains seem to be moving.

I forget where but I remember reading something that said The Doom That Came To Sarnath and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath were both homages to a similar kind of story, set in a fantastical city, written by a contemporary of Lovecraft's. Kadath is one of his earlier works too so it's likely he was cribbing another author's style closely, which is why it doesn't fit nicely with his other stories.

edit
Ah. Right. Lord Dunsay. Guy used to write a lot of poetry and I think that's why Kadath seems weird for Lovecraft. I remember there's a lot of poetic prose in that, which isn't how you'd describe Lovecraft's later prose at all. It's pretty much the opposite of poetic and flowing.

I think one of my more favorite Lovecraft stories is The Silver Key, because it's sort of about the dream cycle but excludes the mythos and most of the horror elements of his other stories.

Also Steven King stories would all around be better if he would drop the romance sideplots/main plots. Going back to the Dark Tower though, it's just his thing, which I guess you get out of a lot of late 70s, 80s writers: a preoccupation with sex. I really enjoyed the Dark Tower up until the main character starts shacking up with different women and there's whole weird vaguely misogynistic vibe going through it. And then later books just double down on it.

I think that's why many of his books make for decent normie fare though. People can relate to it a lot easier than, say.....Clive Barker, because it's drawing on the experiences of average midwesterners and easterns in small towns.

[itisnotlogical]

Most 2D Disney is severely overrated. Lion King, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc. were all good movies. They are good for kids. But Disney + Pixar has tackled much more adult stuff, leaving in the things that 2D Disney didn't have the balls to tackle, while still creating movies that small children can comprehend and enjoy.

And yet some of Disney's earliest work is still hailed as the Second Coming.

I have to give credit where it's due though, milking Snow White for eighty years via generic princess merchandise (and the odd item related to the seven dwarves) is pretty impressive.

[ChairmanPoo]

The problem with Stephen King is that three quarters of the time his novels degenerate into dark-ish fantasy with psychic children rather than straight horror.

The Dark Tower is a good example, and IMO it was a mistake. I loved the first novel with it's surreal tone. The rest dropped it (sometimes retconning stuff outright) in favor of standard cookie-cutter fantasy, which to me, made everything very bland.

When he wants he can Lovecraft it like the pro he is, though. Just look at Pet Semetary.

[Antioch]

Most 2D Disney is severely overrated. Lion King, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc. were all good movies. They are good for kids. But Disney + Pixar has tackled much more adult stuff, leaving in the things that 2D Disney didn't have the balls to tackle, while still creating movies that small children can comprehend and enjoy.

And yet some of Disney's earliest work is still hailed as the Second Coming.

I have to give credit where it's due though, milking Snow White for eighty years via generic princess merchandise (and the odd item related to the seven dwarves) is pretty impressive.

I think among the 2D Disney films the Lion King does really stand out. Several others are indeed just "good" (though not only for kids, I still enjoy those films).

I agree that a lot of Pixar films are just as good or better though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Here's my unpopular Stephen King opinion:

You may or may not have heard of Rage, which was published under the Richard Bachman pseudonym. The reason you might not have heard of it is that King pulled it from publication. The reason you probably have heard of it is the reason he pulled it -- the book is not about King's usual fare but is in fact entirely about a school shooting. Unlike most such pulls, there is even semi-good reason to believe that a specific shooting was inspired by the book.

The problem here is that, in my opinion, this is the best thing King has ever written. It is a perfect book about the failures of society towards teenagers as well as an amazingly tense hostage drama. You know how people repeat the nonsense they were told in English class about Catcher In The Rye and how it's a breakdown of all society's bullshit? Rage is actually that book. I'd assign it as standard reading if I had the power to do so.

Fun Fact: I read Rage while in high school. Not concurrent with going to high school, while I was physically in my high school. That probably could have gone over badly, in retrospect.

[misko27]

Most 2D Disney is severely overrated. Lion King, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, etc. were all good movies.

Unacceptable. Aladdin is terrible. Ja'far true hero of story.

Fun Fact: I read Rage while in high school. Not concurrent with going to high school, while I was physically in my high school. That probably could have gone over badly, in retrospect.

Given I read that one person on reddit is under investigation after his school found the text of "Meet the Sniper" on his calculator, yes it could have gone terribly. Like as bad as you can possibly imagine.

I feel like school administrators are, with rare exception, all terrible. Either terrible at their jobs or just terrible human beings in general. And in particular, they love to freak out about everything.

[Max™]

Unpopular idea: Fight Club was one of the blandest Palahniuk books and in no way deserved a movie over Rant, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke, or even Diary.

I'd love to see Rant done with the switches from each narrator POV including mild changes to Rant's appearance for some, entirely different actors for others, from obnoxiously young and awkward looking for one character, to gawky redneck for another, beautiful sexgod to one, attractive but unsettling for another, and never specify which one was the "real" one, because you only ever is in the eyes of other people.

(Basically, yes, but it seems like King just took the "use more words" part and ran with it.)

Wait, what? Are you serious? King is incredibly colloquial. His stories are almost always more blue collar, and the characters more relatable than the elitism you get in lovecraftian stories. His stuff is about as simple as it gets!

I mean it's just so many fucking words and for what? The only idea of his I really found interesting was the Langoliers, and I didn't even read it, just saw some of a horribly overlong movie and dug the "weird toothy maws that clean up all the moments you aren't in" concept.

Hell it might be a deep seated thing, because I recall all this hype over the Stand, went to the library and started going through it and gave up, I mean, I will read some boring shit, I've read multiple sets of encyclopedias for fuck's sake, but I just cannot get me eyes to stop sliding off the page when I read King... or Jordan actually, I dug the wheel of time setting and mythos but I just couldn't get into them like I did with Pratchett or Baxter or Stross or Banks and goddammit two of them are dead now!

The Colour Out of Space creeps me right the fuck out and back in and out once again for good measure.

+ motherfucking 1

I did an image search trying to find a drawing I saw of that moonlight train story he did and kinda regret it, even though this isn't super high budget or anything... fucking nothx.

[Strife26]

Members of a political community bear some level of personal culpability for the actions of their community, regardless of their views on the action. Individual options are only to accept the community, accept the community while trying to change it, or to leave the community.

[helmacon]

I mean it's just so many fucking words and for what? The only idea of his I really found interesting was the Langoliers, and I didn't even read it, just saw some of a horribly overlong movie and dug the "weird toothy maws that clean up all the moments you aren't in" concept.

Hell it might be a deep seated thing, because I recall all this hype over the Stand, went to the library and started going through it and gave up, I mean, I will read some boring shit, I've read multiple sets of encyclopedias for fuck's sake, but I just cannot get me eyes to stop sliding off the page when I read King... or Jordan actually, I dug the wheel of time setting and mythos but I just couldn't get into them like I did with Pratchett or Baxter or Stross or Banks and goddammit two of them are dead now!

I went back over some of his stuff, and I think you might be right. I've read most of his short stories, and a few of his more famous works, but I sort of forgot about the other stuff.