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[scriver]

...what?

[Loud Whispers]

Which overlord

[ChairmanPoo]

Re: the Temple: his success is a matter of debate. He's successful only insofar  as he wins against the mutineers.  But there are some comments to be made here

- regarding his sanity: he has an irrational attachment to the (likely cursed) figurine. He should have thrown it away to suppress the mutiny, even if at a rational level he didn't believe it was really cursed. Which brings us to point two

- his skepticism is also of questionable sanity given the situation. I mean, it's reasonable that a scientific minded person would look for conventional explanations, but even when those are ruled out he sticks to his guns about the problems were related to his overactive imagination, and doesn't hesitate right upto the very end.

[Kagus]

...what?

J.J. Abrams made a movie that, from a glance, seems like it tries to approach WW2 from the novel viewpoint of "What if the Nazis were doing spooky secret supermutant experiments?", and then everybody screamed and there was a flamethrower.


EDIT: This un

[Loud Whispers]

Re: the Temple: his success is a matter of debate. He's successful only insofar  as he wins against the mutineers.  But there are some comments to be made here
- regarding his sanity: he has an irrational attachment to the (likely cursed) figurine. He should have thrown it away to suppress the mutiny, even if at a rational level he didn't believe it was really cursed. Which brings us to point two
- his skepticism is also of questionable sanity given the situation. I mean, it's reasonable that a scientific minded person would look for conventional explanations, but even when those are ruled out he sticks to his guns about the problems were related to his overactive imagination, and doesn't hesitate right upto the very end.

His objective is to stop his crew from trying to save themselves, to that end he is completely successful and only seems to mourn the loss of his 2I/C lieutenant Klenze (I think it's apparent that in spite of his dismissal of Klenze as weak, Heinrich considered Klenze to be the closest thing to a friend he had). Throwing away the figurine would have done nothing to quell the mutiny, because at that point the crew was mutinying over the realisation that their Captain was determined to see them all die before they surrendered to an allied warship in spite of the futility of their situation. Regarding sanity, I wouldn't question the rationality in assuming one has gone insane after hearing laughter underwater or seeing a fire burning underwater beneath antarctic ice, in the ruins of some settlement far from any known human civilisation of the past or present. From the description it's apparent that he does try his best to exhaust every conventional explanation, but bio-luminescence only goes so far before you have to conclude that you've gone mad, or there is an undiscovered sub-arctic civilisation of some kind chanting songs at you. Given that it is far more likely that being the last survivor of a submarine trapped in darkness will have affected his psyche, that the worst of the apparent delusions went away after he took the sedative sodium bromide, and that he feels a compulsion to investigate the source of light which overrides his conscious will; he has all the evidence to conclude he is no longer in full control of his mental faculties, while he has no evidence to suggest that the sub-arctic civilisation is real (until he visits the light source - before the end of the story).

[Rowanas]

I feel that this question is relevant in this thread - What would have to happen for you to believe that you were mad?  How bizarre or mundane may a thing be before you assume that it is your apparatus that is at fault?

[Kagus]

I feel that this question is relevant in this thread - What would have to happen for you to believe that you were mad?  How bizarre or mundane may a thing be before you assume that it is your apparatus that is at fault?

Well, kinda depends on how you define "mad". Is it a full-scale, long-term "incapable of rational thought"? In which case, you likely wouldn't be able to make such an assumption at all.

I've had stress hallucinations. Even after I realized that they were, in fact, hallucinations. Like staring at my powered-off phone while I can clearly hear its morning alarm ringing. I recognized that what I was perceiving was not real, but I didn't realize it until after I got the chance to check my phone and see that it was not, in fact, doing anything at all.

[Loud Whispers]

I feel that this question is relevant in this thread - What would have to happen for you to believe that you were mad?  How bizarre or mundane may a thing be before you assume that it is your apparatus that is at fault?

I remember one of my neighbours making a joke about how they didn't intend to get married because they already had 3 voices in their head and didn't need 4 ;P
I should imagine that with madness, it depends first on what madness it is - then on to what degree, then finally on how it is treated.

Regarding the first and second, if you started hearing/seeing things, going into panic attacks, depressive swings, manic excitement or any number of impairments or unusual behaviour, you might not be too concerned if it was all to a temporary degree, i.e. the result of extreme temporary environmental stress or poisoning by some psychoactive substance. I think we've all had at least one moment in our lives when we've been awake for 2-3 days and had the moment of realisation that we need to sleep or shall surely die, with the accompanied loss of mental coherence. Yet we would not be too concerned with such an episode because the cause, effect and cure are all known, and it is known that such effects are temporary.

If however the mental illness is not temporary, its cause is not known nor is its cure known, then it would be more concerning - but you would also need a frame of reference to know that you were mad. If you lived your whole life with auditory hallucinations, you would not be aware this is abnormal without discussing it with doctors, or having lived a life without the auditory hallucinations. I also think most people would not think of themselves as mad until such time as the madness became debilitating, much in the same way that people with depression will most likely tell you everything is fine

The last thing is obviously how it is treated, with special note to how stigmatised mental illness is wherever you are. I don't think Lovecraft's hereditary madness stories would be as punishing if mental healthcare back then wasn't a horror in its own right, nor the stigma of mental illness so potent. I imagine that a Lovecraft story set in a competent Britain would end as such:

Protagonist: 'Doctor I'm hearing and seeing things after moving into my family's ancestral halls.'
GP: 'I'll send you to a mental health specialist then if it's cool with you.'
Protagonist: 'Cool b'

Protagonist is referred to psychiatrist

Psychiatrist: 'What's wrong?'
Protagonist: 'I'm hearing rats in the walls but the vermin exterminators found nothing. Pretty certain I'm hearing things,'
Psychiatrist: 'Do you have a family history of any mental health, illnesses, work stress, drug use, anything you might suspect?'
Protagonist: 'Yeah lol centuries of madness, auditory hallucinations, psychotic episodes, orgies & serial killings. Also I'm pretty stressed out after moving here from America since I'm friends with basically no one here and I'm living all alone with my cat.'
Psychiatrist: 'Hmmm yeah dude that sounds like it might be important information, anything else? I aint judging, this is a safe space'
Protagonist: 'I feel like I'm pursued by a curse on the De la Poe family, like my destiny is out of my hands, that I'm always watched and my family house is built upon ancient cursed ruins. Also my friends are saying I've changed, since I've given up everything to pursue my family history with an interest they say is obsessive - I think they're up to something, just like those villagers who judge me behind my back.'
Psychiatrist: 'Yeah sounds like it could be early signs of schizophrenia, which can manifest symptoms of paranoia, auditory hallucinations and acute behavioural changes. You living in your family house still?'
Protagonist: 'Shit's pretty spooky. Big castle full of gargoyles and accursed, thrice-damned villagers, who call me a monster.'
Psychiatrist: 'Tell you what, find somewhere nicer to stay because the stress and significance of the house to you personally might be exacerbating your condition, while the community sounds pretty unwelcoming. I'll refer you to a community mental health team while we run some diagnostic tests to try and determine the cause of your condition, we don't want to rule out anything just yet.'
Protagonist: 'Sounds cool fam, I wouldn't want to eat my best friend's face off while screaming about De la Poes doing as De la Poes have done'
Psychiatrist: 'Yeah we want to avoid that kinda stuff'

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I've always preferred the counter-interpretation of Lovecraftian Sanity, that being that to be sane is a wrong and undesirable delusion, flat out. This was most made clear to me when someone published house rules for Call of Cthulhu that separated the sanity loss system into two components: sanity and stability. A character would lose both when exposed to cosmic things, but while sanity loss was semi-permanent stability loss was not. A low-sanity high-stability character is what we today think of as Post-Lovecraftian in attitude: the universe is a weird and dangerous place that doesn't care about humanity, and they accept that truth without peeling people's faces off.

The reason the cultists are so face-peeling is not because they are insane (i.e., they have accepted humanity's lack of supremacy in the universe), but because they have combined the epiphany of insanity with a fearful iron grip on the cultural attitudes of sane humanity, and so conclude the cosmic things are true gods to be worshiped and have faces peeled for. The investigator characters make a lesser version of the same mistake, approaching the cosmic as if the knowledge of it will simply bow to White Civilized Anthropology, which gets them a little further before failing and backlashing ("If the epistemology of my Superior Culture couldn't contain this, we're doomed to be nothing but insects! Rutting bleeding apes under the baleful stars! Damn you! Damn you all!") . If one fully embraces insanity they only move from the cosmic terror attitude of Lovecraft's day to the cosmic acceptance attitude of today.

[Loud Whispers]

I've always preferred the counter-interpretation of Lovecraftian Sanity, that being that to be sane is a wrong and undesirable delusion, flat out. This was most made clear to me when someone published house rules for Call of Cthulhu that separated the sanity loss system into two components: sanity and stability. A character would lose both when exposed to cosmic things, but while sanity loss was semi-permanent stability loss was not. A low-sanity high-stability character is what we today think of as Post-Lovecraftian in attitude: the universe is a weird and dangerous place that doesn't care about humanity, and they accept that truth without peeling people's faces off.

The reason the cultists are so face-peeling is not because they are insane (i.e., they have accepted humanity's lack of supremacy in the universe), but because they have combined the epiphany of insanity with a fearful iron grip on the cultural attitudes of sane humanity, and so conclude the cosmic things are true gods to be worshiped and have faces peeled for. The investigator characters make a lesser version of the same mistake, approaching the cosmic as if the knowledge of it will simply bow to White Civilized Anthropology, which gets them a little further before failing and backlashing ("If the epistemology of my Superior Culture couldn't contain this, we're doomed to be nothing but insects! Rutting bleeding apes under the baleful stars! Damn you! Damn you all!") . If one fully embraces insanity they only move from the cosmic terror attitude of Lovecraft's day to the cosmic acceptance attitude of today.

I prefer the interpretation that it's not insanity at all, it's just accepting a perspective which is so far removed from normal human experience that its acceptance appears insanity without exposure to the same phenomenon the protagonist experienced. A good example would be the psychiatrist in 'Beyond the Wall of Asleep.' I don't want to spoil what he discovers, so spoilers ahead:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

He gets contacted by a strange entity which recognises him as being his friend across several places in time and space:

'You have been my friend in the cosmos; you have been my only friend on this planet—the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. We shall meet again—perhaps in the shining mists of Orion’s Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia. Perhaps in unremembered dreams tonight; perhaps in some other form an aeon hence, when the solar system shall have been swept away.'

It's actually pretty adorable if you think about it, I think few people could think of a better fate than to be friends across forms, time and space.

Anyways his colleague & superior, another psychiatrist, writes off the experience as the product of a nervous breakdown induced by too much work and too little holiday:

As I have already admitted, my superior, old Dr. Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was broken down with nervous strain, and badly in need of the long vacation on full pay which he so generously gave me.

Which is fucking hilarious, but is also something I like bringing up a lot since Lovecraft derived works have solidified the concept that knowing a cosmic perspective = roll for san loss. While ignorance being bliss is a recurring themes in a lot of the famous Lovecraft stories, people miss how in the stories where characters are not put under the stress of life-or-death situations, they are as comfortable accepting a radical redefining of their place in the cosmos as one can be for such an incident - whether it is a breakthrough in archaeology, anthropology, geometry or an encounter with some extradimensional things. The cultists however are insane, seeing something they cannot understand and turning to worship it in a fit of superstition. I also do not see the reading where the investigators from the white academic institutions recoil in resentment & cosmic horror, as in the source material they respond pretty uniformly with morbid curiosity, even eagerness. For example the investigators from ATMOM don't caution against investigating the Antarctic ruins because finding out humans are an accidental offspring of ayy lmaos shakes them - on the contrary, their determination to continue investigating to uncover the truth regardless of their casualties, to even sympathise with their attackers, shows their commitment to the scientific method. The only reason they caution against continued exploration is that they might end up disturbing something which can kill off humanity; please do not wake the sleeping shoggoths
In this instance, embracing insanity is just embracing delusion, while the label of insanity is a handy way of writing off accurate perspectives held by entirely sane people exposed to the Lovecraftian event - things which showcase things which do not meld well with human timescales or dimension

*EDIT
A good way of looking at it would be imagining what it'd be like if you spoke to a perfectly sane human who experienced all of time at once. When they meet you, they've seen you from your birth to your death, and they'll be referencing these events without regard to your personal perception of time relative to theirs. They will seem completely insane to you, because your perspectives are so radically different that they seem mentally anomalous. Or a meeting between a creationist who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old and a geologist who believes the Earth is 4.5 billion years old; one is naturally going to believe the other isn't fully there.

[Egan_BW]

A low-sanity high-stability character is what we today think of as Post-Lovecraftian in attitude: the universe is a weird and dangerous place that doesn't care about humanity, and they accept that truth without peeling people's faces off.

Sounds like how you end up with something like the SCP Foundation. Their standard attitude seems to be that things are weird and possibly impossible to understand for humans, but they still try as hard as possible to study the anomalies and use strict procedure in containing them.

[Hanslanda]

Bit of a necro but meh.

I often feel this lovecraftian sanity being described when I try to explain space and the solar system to friends. It seems so odd to me that they don't realize how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things. Individual humans are... Imperceptible flickers in a vast and uncaring universe. Sand grains on a nigh-infinite beach.

[Loud Whispers]

Bit of a necro but meh.

I often feel this lovecraftian sanity being described when I try to explain space and the solar system to friends. It seems so odd to me that they don't realize how insignificant they are in the grand scheme of things. Individual humans are... Imperceptible flickers in a vast and uncaring universe. Sand grains on a nigh-infinite beach.

''The universe is a yawning chasm filled with emptiness and the puerile meanderings of sentience. Why should you deserve special consideration within it Augustus, above all else?' - t. A fucking space jellyfish

[Kagus]

I seem to recall that Mr. Lobster's speech wasn't quite as fancy.

Also, obligatory PARGON, PARGON, PARGON, PARGON, PARGON...

[SeriousConcentrate]

Not a valid spell, you need at least one Redgormor or something ;p