my older brother is a big fan of hp lovecraft and his cthulhu stories (wikipedia - cthulhu in case you're just as ignorant as i was before my brother gave me a long and boring explanation). i don't share his enthusiasm, but since it was his birthday yesterday i humoured the madman and made this as a birthday card, inspired by all the colouring pages kids give away to grown ups they like . i used rod's crayon effect (i'm perfectly in love with that filter, it's useful for so much)rather , a cardboard texture and the paths tool (to make the black outlines) but had to borrow a cthulhu picture to start from since i wouldn't know how to draw a cthulhu from scratch.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

I like it!
And where can I find the crayon effect you mentioned?

Nicely done. There are those who think that Lovecraft's work wasn't entirely fiction.

esper: oh no, i'm surrounded by them !
libero: thank you! i see you got immediate directions to the filter, now make sure you use it and post the results !
thanks, brother! well, there are also those who believe coffee is a drink fit for human consumtion - i don't know where they get it all!

If you drink some coffee you might be able to spell consumption.

duuuh! which of us has a degree in linguistics, you or me? such a degree certifies you to spell any given word exactly as you please

A disturbing number at that. Some actually think the necronomicon is real. Some even consider him one of the great experts of all time in the supernatural when everything he wrote was fiction. I guess that's a testament to how good he was at writing. Incidentally, he only had one story, Dagon, with cthulhu in it that I know of.

gms: i read a lovecraft collection once and there was cthulhu elements in many of the stories - it wasn't the central part of the stories, just sort of hinted at here and there. i think it was a bit like hiding easter eggs in computer games, hesat there at his desk giggling and thinking: "let's see how many find this one!"

sweet

cthulhu is a god or a supernatural creature from another dimension, so powerful, that he appears to us puny humans like a god....

hes been sleeping for millenea in a titanic city on the bottom of the sea called R`lyeh
and the day he awakes, when the stars are right, humanity will be doomed

libero: that's crayon effect for you - feels a lot like your old crayola, doesn't it?

molly: thanks! of course it's sweet, it was made for my earliest hero.

esper now we all know how to get you into geek mode! you should do it more often, it suits you, brother.

Hinted maybe but only mentioned one time. All of the other instances, such as The Statement Of Randolph Carter, it's left to imagination. In all other cases it's more like Howard just didn't like Cephalopods. The Dunwich horror wasn't written by him.

im hardly a Lovecraft geek
not at all to be precise

i know this was not meant to be rude from your side, but i would prefer if you dont call me that way

esper: no problem! sorry for calling you a geek. but just as you say i didn't mean to be rude, i think that word means mostly positive things to me.

As ex ghost writer i may assure that is the first thing to take care when writing a finction based on Lovecraft myths:
first you raise some doubts
...maybe he knowns much more of what supposed...for sure he was a member of a Golden Dawn , so we may try to trace the origins of the Golden Dawn back in a way to find hypothetical but fascinating links with as example Rosicrucian and from Rosicrucian to ancient Egyptian mystery and once the ancient Egyptians are in play the door for Sumer, Babylons and all kind of forgotten mysteries , brotherhood and religions is open...



That another Ghost Writer trick, it uses a very logical concept, so logical to be somehow disturbing because even true
(at least partially)

1)The Necronomicon (here you may replace "Necronomicon" with any other similar book ) WAS not existing
2) BUT more and more people believe it does exist, and so progressively more and more data and quote from the book start to exist
3) to the point that the Necronomicon start to exist also physically in this reality :
because were already sufficient quote (in all literature and movies somehow inspired by Lovecraft or anyway quoting the Necronomicon) to re-assemble the source ...the Necronomicon

At point 3 is also easy add a reasonable "academic" introduction explaining the origin and the myth around the book ,then finally the old good Necronomicon with critical notes and a reasonable academic background is ready for the print

Obviously this was already done (at least by Arkam House and a Italian editor ) published several years ago, and was quite successful so we may say that now the Necromicon exist and from long

and not only do exist but it is exactly the same quoted by Lovecraft long ago:
It can not be the same since was re-created assembling that quotes so will be always perfectly coherent with the quote


It is really the most basic trick in the media, it doesn't matter if the fact exist :
because if we can spread sufficiently informations interest and attention on a fact that will automatically become existent.

Facts doesn't exist if nobody talk about, and do exist beyond doubt if everybody talk about, this is the reality in the world of the media, playing with this make easy to eliminate or bring into real existence fact as the real Necronomicon, Area 51, the Reptilian Conspiracy or anything else

So now you may found a copy of the Necronomicon in any library, more info on its author, that once was a fictional author the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, but progressively become less and less fictional because the book was really written by a team of g writers channellings or playing the role of the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred and signing as the Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred

photo comix: it's sometimes hard following your english, but i have no problem following the thoughts behind it - your post actually made me feel a bit "homesick" for the university because it was on the same level as our source critical discussions there .

Yes, I had a copy of it back in the 70s, even then people thought it was real. There are people who think Sherlock Holmes was real and Churchill was fictional.