#the shadow out of time

[chasedbybuildings]

Original cover art by Howard Brown from Astounding Stories, June 1936, for H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time.

A scan of the original story (from Volume 17, No. 4) can be seen at the Internet Archive.

[asaintellee]

I think there’s a lot of interpretations of ivy thus far but for me I like to imagine her as a complicit eddie Brock and yith as a passive venom

like ivy gets out of a depression through helping yith learn more about humanity during that time

she favors the alien side of yith

and yith favors the human part of her

they are both researchers to one another’s species and become obsessed with each other(yith doesn’t leave ivy even after gathering info and ivy is complicit and a little stoked)

and I think best of all you can see that bond mentioned in the backstory also in her gameplay

also side note,, cute thought of yith being concerned for ivy’s during her depressive state it makes breakfast and helps her like venom in that one part of the second movie. and yith ends up being more of the rational one because y’know yithians are docile researchers 😭 it was probably ivy’s idea to add that scary factor and yith was like contemplating if there were other ways to make this weird woman happy.. but it caved

sorry for the ramblings,, of course this is what I think after viewing the backstory reading the source material and seeing the gameplay but I’m open to all ivy interpretations ^^ all ivy love is good ivy love

[coupleofdays]

H.P. Lovecraft certainly had no positive things to say about LGBTQ people, and I'm fairly certain that he wasn't even aware of the concept of being transgender. However, when I read this particular paragraph in The Shadow out of Time, something about it struck me as... familiar:

"My first disturbances were not visual at all, but concerned the more abstract matters which I have mentioned. There was, too, a feeling of profound and inexplicable horror concerning myself. I developed a queer fear of seeing my own form, as if my eyes would find it something utterly alien and inconceivably abhorrent. When I did glance down and behold the familiar human shape in quiet grey or blue clothing I always felt a curious relief, though in order to gain this relief I had to conquer an infinite dread. I shunned mirrors as much as possible, and was always shaved at the barber’s."

Is it just me, or is there something about this passage that seems to fit in with descriptions of gender dysphoria?

The horror of something being wrong with your body is a recurring theme in many Lovecraft stories, though in many cases the intended subtext was probably just "wouldn't it be scary if you found out that your ancestors were anything other than white anglo-saxons?" Still, whatever the intent, I think he managed to tap into a fairly universally understandable theme with "something isn't right with my body".

[renmorris]

I love Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee being the most terminally boring, most vanilla guy at Miskatonic, of all the faculty he is the least equipped to handle being brain swapped out of his own time and placed in a big freaky alien body

but of course the Yith are very invested in his perspective. the only people who have ever found him interesting. in any way

[hplovecraftmuseum]

Many of Lovecraft's tales contain elements that give a new and more scientifically plausible perspective to standard occult themes. The Shadow Out Of Time was a tale many critics have sited as pure 'Science Fiction'. It was one of Lovecraft's last fiction writing efforts and was highly thought of by writers like L. Sprague deCamp and Colin Wilson who otherwise did not care for much of his work. In fact Colin Wilson's story, The Mind Parasites was highly influenced by HPL's story. The Shadow Out Of Time appeared in the pulp magazine ASTOUNDING STORIES not long before HPL's death. The tale concerns a college professor who seems to have been suddenly overtaken by a new and alien personality. In fact his mind has been transferred to the body of a monstrous alien life form from the prehistoric past of planet earth. The alien creature's consciousness is at the same time living in the body of the professor. Eventually they switch back. The traditional occult theme of 'demon possession' is masterfully given a modern upgrade and a terrifying origin in this Lovecraft tale. (Exhibit 357)

[chronivore]

The bloated, fungoid moon sank reddeningly in the west.

[nem0c]

Of real friendliness, however, I encountered little. Something in my aspect and speech seemed to excite vague fears and aversions in everyone I met, as if I were a being infinitely removed from all that is normal and healthful. This idea of a black, hidden horror connected with incalculable gulfs of some sort of distance was oddly widespread and persistent. My own family formed no exception. From the moment of my strange waking my wife had regarded me with extreme horror and loathing, vowing that I was some utter alien usurping the body of her husband.

H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time

[a-student-out-of-time]

And on a scale of Call of Cthulhu to Color out of Space, how much racism can we expect if we read it?

//Thankfully very light. There's just a few remarks here and there about Aboriginal Australians near the end, since it takes place in Australia's Great Sandy Desert, but that's it

//Really, the majority of it is focused on the weirdness of the Great Race of Yith and their colony on Triassic Earth, along with all the other aliens and historical figures they pulled in from across history to learn from them

//Side note: there's a detail a lot of people get wrong about the story. These creatures?

//They aren't actually the Yithians themselves. The Yithians are purely mental beings who projected themselves from their original bodies on homeworld, traveled through space and time, and inhabited the bodies of these creatures to survive

//These are, in Lovecraft's setting, organisms that already existed on Earth during the Triassic. Ain't that wild?

//But overall, yeah, it's one of his best stories imo, hence why it became the namesake influence for this blog ^^

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[ninjasmudge]

thats a red flag narinder, get that crown back while you still can

+ top panel without text below the cut

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[asaintellee]

holding hands..

came to her for research and stayed to make her happy help me (shadow out of time fans hi)

[memesandmylife]

it really is insane to me how in the mid 2010s netflix had a reputation of making cool, inclusive series as well as saving tv shows after their networks cancelled them, and now here we are today with every halfway decent netflix original show getting cancelled after 1-2 seasons and a bajillion episodes of bigmouth

[cookiereading]

[khruschevshoe]

Starkid is one of the absolute best arguments for supprting independent art. The fact that the shows you're invested in can't get canceled by Big Daddy Streaming, the quality is always amazing, the love of the cast and crew doesn't get squeezed out by surprise budget reductions, the fact that since crowd funding provides almost all costs up front (plus the presence of voluntary digital ticket/in person tickets for additional funding), the fan base can access the full material for whatever cost they can contribute (even if you can give nothing monetarily, you will still get a professionally shot version of the material eventually, without surprise fees or password crackdowns, AND with captions/completely accesible regardless of location). The same goes for Tin Can Bros, Shipwrecked, and all the other associated theater and web series companies loosely connected to Starkid. Like, I cannot believe the amazing content provided to us at the same level as Broadway or streaming services with billion dollars at hand, with almost none of the catches that come with others. Like, I cannot believe that we get all of this right at our hands.

[gunstellations]

safety first! 🏍️🏍️