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/lit/ - Literature

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14034725 No.14034725 [Reply] [Original]

Did he write anything that was actually scary?

>> No.14034858

his stories are way less scary today to the point of ridiculous, but maybe was actually scary 100 years ago, you know.

>> No.14034888
File: 121 KB, 1024x1024, 1566554614039.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14034888

Did anyone write anything that was actually scary?

>> No.14034889

>>14034725
His racism is scarier than any of his stories desu

>> No.14034925

>>14034725
Lovecraft is massively overrated on /lit/ I find him to be virtually unreadable.
Overblown prose combined with ridiculous subject matter.

>> No.14034956

As much as /lit/ hates him, the only stories that have even moderately scared me have been Stephen King short stories. There’s usually one or two stories in his collections that hit home

>> No.14034975

>>14034925
Were there too many big words for you?

>> No.14034999

>>14034975
I know you are being facetious but this is actually one of the many problems with Lovecraft's writing.

>> No.14035132

>>14034956
The Jaunt really fucked with me when I read it as a kid. Something about spending a thousand years inside an empty pocket dimension is especially terrifying.

>> No.14035150

>>14034925
you get to see words like caecodaimoniacal

am I spelling that right? I don't care

>> No.14035153

>>14035132
Ever notice how the only horror stories that have any impact whatsoever concern unpleasant eternities? Makes you wonder if there's a hint of truth to that whole hell thing.

>> No.14035181

>>14034725
yes but you just don't fucking understand why they're scary retardo

>> No.14035213

>>14034725
Books can't be scary

>> No.14035223

>>14035213
Shut up nigger

>> No.14035322

>>14034725
No, but that's not the point.

>> No.14035855

>"But then I passed out and woke up in the hospital."
He was also a hack writer who couldn't think of a climax to save his life.

>> No.14035931

>>14034725
His books are all about creating atmosphere. You are entirely missing the point of his works, so go ahead and look elsewhere for "actually scary" fiction. Let us know what qualifies for good horror by your standards and /lit/ will judge your taste.

>> No.14035950

>>14034725
I was pretty creeped out by The Rats in the Walls. But I read it alone in an old house.

>> No.14035953

>>14034888
you're not the only one that remebers your most embarrassing moments. thats my best shot at something scary anon hope you enjoy.

>> No.14036236

>>14034725
Lovecraft is the ultimate in comfy. Anybody getting scared by anything they read is a baby

>> No.14036249

>>14034725
what is scary is what he couldn't write about.

>> No.14036255

Lovecraft is more interesting than actually scary imo. The only "lovecraftian horror" i ever really found frightening was bloodborne

>> No.14036287

>>14034725
They are scary. You have to have an imagination though. Just take from beyond for example. The thought of inter-dimensional beings that exists all around you without you knowing it is paralyzing. If you suddenly saw them and realized they were always there, it would be a shock to your system. You have to imagine yourself in the position of the main character. Shadow over innsmouth, imagine being in an inbred fishing town thinking you're just sightseeing and the next thing you know there's a town wide conspiracy to ultimately capture you by lying about public transit, your only reasonable escape being unavailable and being forced to sleep in a dilapidated inn. Waking up to hear the crowd outside your door trying to break in and swarm you to do unspeakable things to you. Have you ever traveled alone? There are moments were you fancy that someone is about to take advantage of you in a horrible way whether that's killing you or robbing you. You have no help and no one cares if you live or die. The colour out of space? Disintegrating into a fine dust as you grow sicker and the blight on your land grows. Imagine your entire family slowly rotting from some unknown force when you're just a simple farmer trying to live. Point is to actually out yourself in the position and think... Fuck what if this happened to me?

>> No.14036294

horror like sci-fi is more of a reflection of a particular moment, don't read horror for scares, read it for what it has to say, same with film

>> No.14036456
File: 446 KB, 1296x825, coomthulu.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14036456

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
IM WAKING UP FROM MY ETERNAL SLUMBER!

>> No.14036500

>>14034725
I read The Whisperer in Darkness late, late at night in the foothills of the Green Mountains. Scared me. But that is not really the point. HPL is not for everyone. You get him or you don't.

>> No.14036715
File: 306 KB, 500x800, 1569614642397.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14036715

>>14034725
Books can be disturbing but I've never really been scared by a book.
Movies are scary, because they happen to you. You have to watch a movie, sure, but you don't control the passing of moments as a movie plays. It plays regardless. So you're sorta trapped in the movie when you watch it. Thus a movie can be really scary because it's happening to you.
Whereas you control the pace of reading. You have to read a sentence and you can control everything about how you read it. You can stop at anytime and, unless you're in a reading trance, probably will when you feel like it.
The only thing you can control with a movie is your attention span. Usually a good movie, especially a good horror movie, will have you stuck to the screen. Makes sense?

I've been disturbed by a few books. Particularly a passage in No Country for Old Men was pretty bleak. To sum it up a character was shot in the head, and it went through his last moments being alive.

>> No.14036728
File: 32 KB, 267x274, 1567461840188.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14036728

>>14036715
Here's the passage:
>"He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. ____ shot him in the face. Everything that ***** had ever known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother's face, his First Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in the roadside ravine in an another country. he lay half headless on the bed with his arms outflung, most of his right hand missing. ____ rose and picked up the empty casing off the rug and blew into it and put it in his pocket and looked at his watch. The new day was still a minute away."

>> No.14037104

I've been going through his works (I'm reading them in complete darkness by candle light) and like most people said, you kind of use your mind to fill in the blanks. He provides enough detail for you to outline it yourself. I mean look at how many depictions of Dagon there are. In my mind it doesn't look like Creature from the Black Lagoon, but to some people it is. He also uses a lot of isolation to help create that atmosphere. I'm not particularly scared by anything I read, but there's been a few moments where I've gotten tense just trying to put myself in the shoes for a second. A Recollection of Ralph Franklin wasn't scary when I read it, but imagining what it was like to be in that spot at the end with Warren is creepy.

>> No.14037167

>>14034925
What do you mean? I dont think I really remember anyone shilling him as a great author or anything here. Mostly people talk about his concepts, influuence, and "tehe niggerman". Have we been on the same board?

>> No.14037177

>>14034725
Read him at night, all alone in your place, and with the lights kinda dimmed and you tell me.

>> No.14037475

>>14034925
His prose is his greatest strength, he knows his dialogue is complete garbage so he leans on prose. Listen to some audiobooks of his books by a good narrator and it can really give extra appreciation to his work

>> No.14037490

>>14036255
Bloodborne is unironically so much more effective an experience than reading Lovecraft, having to uncover the horrors yourself is fantastic

>> No.14037493

>>14034725
x

>> No.14037509

>>14036728
Fuck I need to get back to reading McCarthy

>> No.14037513

>>14034725
He probably had some ideas but they were too indescribable

>> No.14037528

>>14037513
Unspeakable you mean?

>> No.14037545

>>14037528
that as well, yes
and also very, VERY cosmic and ancient

>> No.14037546

winged death is pretty spooky desu sure discouraged me from ever assassinating a rival by sending him cursed african flies

>> No.14037591

Remember that story he wrote where the protagonist went insane because he learned he was half-black?

>> No.14037611

>>14037490
Vidya is gay.

>> No.14038030

A fish! No! *Goes insane*

>> No.14038069

>>14034725
>reading weird fiction to feel scared
Nigga you dum

>> No.14038146

>>14034888
Legit lol
At best books can be disturbing. I love horror but horror literature is about the atmosphere. I've never felt scared from reading.

Movies give me big spooks tho

>> No.14038153
File: 77 KB, 604x401, 1571245133473.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14038153

>>14038146

>> No.14038161

>>14037490
Yeah then you slap a health bar on Cthulu, learn its animations and bam

COSMIC
HORROR

My ass.

>> No.14038164

>>14034888
That scene in 2666 when Norton has that nightmare about the mirrors was p scary.

>> No.14038187
File: 613 KB, 600x468, book_cover.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
14038187

Dream-Quest is his best work. Change my mind.

>> No.14038463

>>14038187
If you honestly believe that Dream Quest was his best work, no one can change your mind because you’ve clearly already lost it.

>> No.14038473

>>14035953
Then how come I can't remember anybody else doing anything embarassing in school :-)

>> No.14038726

>>14038463
Well duh. That's the whole fucking point. Lovecraft wants you to go insane from reading his work.

>> No.14038750

>>14034725
Broke: Lovecraft
Woke: Hodgson

>> No.14038770

>>14034725
The Street.

>> No.14038777

>>14034925
The good part of Lovecraft's bullshit prose is that I get to learn whatever words some WASP recluse managed to dig up out of the family encyclopedia to describe something horrific.

More seriously the prose builds the story, not understanding what the fuck the narrator's saying helps to feed the idea of whatever the subject is, being beyond human comprehension. If you do know what Lovecraft is saying then he builds some beautiful pictures.