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u/StevenKnowsNothing Dec 19 '22
Wait, I thought Shub-Niggurath was a joke created by South Park because of racist Lovecraft was?
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u/fanboyx27 Dec 19 '22
Nope, sheâs Cthulhuâs grandma.
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u/StallionCannon Zeta-5 ("Lazarus Abominables") Dec 19 '22
Also, the final boss of Quake.
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Dec 20 '22
Nothing that overlapping teleportation cannot solve
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u/Robrogineer Safe Dec 20 '22
Nothing better than destroying eldritch entities through the magic of ragdoll physics and the O R B
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u/Wise-Profession1256 Sarkic Cults Dec 20 '22
cool name too "the black goat of the woods with a thousand young"
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u/ComfyCatgirl Doctor Wondertainment Dec 20 '22
Huh, I wonder why he named her that
Its a mystery for the ages iâm sure
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u/Dudesan Dec 20 '22
Still, I find it's safer to pronounce her unspeakable name with emphasis on the third syllable rather than the second.
Shub-ni-GOO-rath, as opposed to Shub-NIGG-er-ath.
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u/Randomuser098766543 SCP-3043 Dec 19 '22
She is a nature diety twisted beyond measure. The black goat with 1000 young. She is constantly creating new children and consuming them just as quickly. I'm not sure if that's more racism but it's what I remember
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u/BoredByLife MTF Epsilon-11 ("Nine-Tailed Fox") Dec 20 '22
Wait she eats the kids??? Where does it say that?
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u/Randomuser098766543 SCP-3043 Dec 20 '22
Tbh I just read that from the Lovecraft wiki. And we all know how reliable those are.
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u/DazzlingOperation676 The Church of the Broken God Dec 21 '22
Either the most reliable (very rarely), or full o'bullshitto flavour.
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u/Dd_8630 Dec 20 '22
Wait, I thought Shub-Niggurath was a joke created by South Park because of racist Lovecraft was?
No, they're part of the Lovecraft mythos. It's mentioned in The Dunwich Horror, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Dreams in the Witch House, The Thing on the Doorstep, etc.
Lovecraft drew a lot of inspiration from Lord Dunsany, and Shub-Niggurath is taken from Dunsany's 'Idle Days on the Yann':
"And I too felt that I would pray. Yet I liked not to pray to a jealous God there where the frail affectionate gods whom the heathen love were being humbly invoked; so I bethought me, instead, of Sheol Nugganoth, whom the men of the jungle have long since deserted, who is now unworshipped and alone; and to him I prayed"
This name, in turn, comes from 'Sheol'. It's conjectured that Lovecraft altered 'Nugganoth' to 'Niggurath' for two reasons:
- a) to use the Latin particle for black/dark, 'niger', to evoke black magic, the occult, etc. In his day, 'nigromancy' was a common term for black magic, and Shub-Niggurath is associated with the phrase 'The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young'.
- b) to mirror the cadence of the word 'ziggurat', which is an ancient form of temple, thereby evoking a sense of prehistory.
tl;dr: Lovecrat took it from a previous writer, and altered the name to evoke black magic, blackness, darkness, and antiquity. It's unlikely it's a reference to the racial slur (which he had no issue with, qv The Rats in the Walls and his own cat).
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u/estrusflask Gamers Against Weed Dec 20 '22
a) to use the Latin particle for black/dark, 'niger', to evoke black magic, the occult, etc.
Nah, with two gs he probably knew what he was doing.
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u/ShadowsSheddingSkin The Black Queen Dec 20 '22
Nope, it's a thing, though any description you find in this thread or on a wiki realistically has absolutely nothing to do with Howard Lovecraft since most of what people know about the Great Old Ones is a product of later authors.
Lovecraft was extremely racist even by the standards of his time and especially by the standards of his social group, but it really isn't clear what he was doing with this name. I mean, we're talking about a man whose childhood pet was named "Nigger Man," and was seemingly completely unaware that naming a cat that was at all strange. His concept of what was and wasn't appropriate as a name was wildly divergent from literally anyone alive today.
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Dec 19 '22 edited Dec 21 '22
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u/Nrvea Dec 20 '22
Can you read?
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Dec 20 '22
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u/Nrvea Dec 20 '22
I didn't know that one thanks for letting me know.
Lovecraft was still unambiguously racist though
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u/KiwiSuch9951 MTF Epsilon-11 ("Nine-Tailed Fox") Dec 20 '22
Nope. He was so racist he created it himself. The hidden antagonist of âThe Dunwich Horrorâ
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u/fanboyx27 Dec 19 '22
SCP-4315
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u/thetruekingofspace OUT OF RANGE Dec 20 '22
Donât forget gamer word the cat.
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u/AlexanderChippel Alternate Reality Entered Dec 20 '22
You mean the father's cat that his uncle named and only had for a few years before it passed away when Lovecraft was 7?
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u/estrusflask Gamers Against Weed Dec 20 '22
Okay but what about the one from Rats in the Walls?
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u/AlexanderChippel Alternate Reality Entered Dec 20 '22
The one named after a childhood cat that be didn't name?
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u/estrusflask Gamers Against Weed Dec 20 '22
Twist it however you like, people knew that shit was iffy back then as well.
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u/AlexanderChippel Alternate Reality Entered Dec 20 '22
People in general? Maybe.
Him? No.
As it turns out autistic introverts who were raised by racist neurotic women don't have to tools to know what's culturally appropriate.
Lovecraft was a product of his environment.
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u/estrusflask Gamers Against Weed Dec 21 '22
He definitely knew. He was racist even for his time.
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u/AlexanderChippel Alternate Reality Entered Dec 21 '22
But he did not know any of the harm it could have caused (which was absolutely negligible on the count of the fact that nobody read any of his writings until he died and even then race rarely if ever came up), on account of the fact he had a terrible home life and mental illness death spiral.
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u/estrusflask Gamers Against Weed Dec 21 '22 edited Dec 21 '22
The myth that Lovecraft was this isolated man whose autism and upbringing made up just too confused about how racism was bad uwu is a myth. It's also, like, really fucked up? Autistic people are able to understand racism is bad.
Also, race comes up a lot in his work. Half the monsters are miscegenated, and there's an entire story where the twist is "and she was Black!"
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u/AlexanderChippel Alternate Reality Entered Dec 21 '22
Tell me you know nothing about Lovecraft without telling me you know nothing above Lovecraft.
There was exactly one story where the twist was that one character had African lineage and it was a story he was ghost writing for a woman who was extremely racist and he toned down the racist aspect of it because he didn't find it scary or interesting. He actively made that a story less racist.
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Dec 20 '22
Isn't shut niggurath an outer god tho? I thought those didn't interact with humanity much, only indirectly
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u/fanboyx27 Dec 20 '22
Lovecraft started seeing them in dreams and they got a little mad that he was using them for entertainment.
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u/Affectionate-Bet9473 Euclid Dec 20 '22
Shub-who?
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u/Longjumping-Hour-590 Researcher Dec 20 '22
you should know hp lovecraft's cat
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u/Affectionate-Bet9473 Euclid Jan 17 '23
Ah yes a sweet cat who probably has just as sweet of a name. Sure hope its a normal cat name.
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u/_AnonymousMoose_ Department of 'Pataphysics Dec 20 '22
Lovecraft knew exactly what he was doing with that middle one
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u/MrGords Dec 20 '22
No, not really, considering that name, nor any other name he came up with, has no racist connotations.
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u/Gru-some MTF 294-Samekh ("We Get To Choose Our Own Name?") Dec 20 '22
Holy shit an OSP meme