You guys are actually incorrect about the origins of Hastur as an entity/god. While it is true that Chambers seems to treat Hastur as a city rather than a being, Hastur was actually introduced as a god of sheperds in Ambrose Bierce's Haita the Sheperd. Bierce is also where the name of the city Carcosa comes from, both of which Chambers later adapted into his work much like how Lovecraft and other authors such as August Derleth would proceed to adapt Hastur, Carcosa, The King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign.
I feel the narrator in The Yellow Sign is also, if I can borrow your phrase, unreliable. He claimed he had never read the King In Yellow, yet there it was on his bookshelf. He claimed the grave digger guy had been hanging around outside his building, yet we learn his corpse was inside the apartment and seemed to have been there for many weeks. You also get the impression that the conversations he had with Tessie after the injury to his wrists were hallucinations, and she was probably already deceased by that point. Perhaps the injury to the wrists were symbolic of his crime, or a quite literal injury sustained as she attempted to defend herself. Loved the podcast. Just wanted to throw my observations out there.
I really wanna say that the romantic parts feel to me like they're demonstrating that you can look past ill conceived perceptions and you really do have free will. Except the falcon one, but that one's about ownership and being tamed and stuff, so I guess it still fits with that.
yeah the falcon one seeing the strange hastur and basically dismissing him like nothing is telling to me either hastur is geuinley a weirdo into falconree or he only has power if you grant it
If you guys want to do another pre-lovecraft piece of horror literature, I’d heavily recommend the Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. It’s great and inspired both Lovecraft and even Bram Stokers Dracula. Great episode, can’t wait to see next years spooky piece of literature!
Yeah that answer pretty much sums it up. They don't care about the history of the genre. Which makes this video an odd choice and explains the blatant disrespect.
I really like the King in Yellow stories - even if only 4 of the 9 were really about him, and even if they were overall badly written. Maybe Chambers didn't have the capacity to use the ideas better, rather than lacking the will. Whatever, although he did get some inspiration in these ideas from Bierce (e.g. Hastur and Carcosa) he certainly greatly inspired and influenced Lovecraft. And although Lovecraft was much more prolific and created a much greater literary profile I actually prefer the tone of Chambers. Lovecraft is big on dread and menace, Chambers implies puzzlement and incomprehensibility. His horror connects insanity to the supernatural and cosmic; not for the first time (Poe did it) but in an almost systematic way. His is the epitome of 'philosophical horror'. A horror not of violence, hauntings or even elder gods, but of a primal and unanswerable mysteriousness whose touch renders humans incapable of continued rational existence.
Back in 2008-2009 I helped write and direct a play that was loosely based off of the king and yellow. The in-universe play. I'll try to summarize the plot as best I can. It concerns a series of characters jockeying for power over a former monarchy loosely based off of France during the terror that has recently finished a violent revolution whilst also trying to win the favor of a particular ambassador from an allied nation (carcosa) whom they will hope will sort of bring legitimacy to whomever actually manages to get enough support to lead the country. The central characters are two women (Cassilda and Camilla) who once we're friends, but after the siege of the palace that saw the king deposed Cassilda began to suspect that Camilla had Cassilda's boyfriend killed in order to assure her boyfriend's ascent to leadership over the Republic (Cassilda's boyfriend was the leader of the revolution). Cassilda receives a letter from the Ambassador from Carcosa saying that Camilla is planning to kill her because she was selected to lead the new Republic when her boyfriend died during the palace siege and that she must meet him to discuss what to do next. With no idea what to do other than to go, they meet with and end up being aided by this mysterious ambassador who always goes around wearing a mask over his face (as it is supposedly custom in his kingdom). As the story progresses, she begins to have romantic feelings for the ambassador and together they plan to assassinate Camilla and her boyfriend before the party Congress can have its vote in order to assure that she is able to take the throne before Camilla is able to orchestrate her assassination against Cassilda. All the while around her people have been acting very strangely and she begins receiving letters from an anonymous person implicating the ambassador in doing something to these people and that he can't be trusted. Unsure of who she should trust, the mysterious man who is sending her letters or the ambassador who is directly helping her protect herself from this supposed coup that soon to happen... All of this culminates in a ball that is being held during a festival to celebrate the alliance between carcosa and this nation and the Republic that is soon to form. Casilda is unable to sleep the night before she is to do the deed and while she is awake in her room, somebody tries to slip a new note under her door and she catches the anonymous letter writer only to find out that they are Camilla. So many people within the Palace during this festival that has been going on since the fall of the king that she is convinced that the ambassador has done something to them and that she has gone nearly mad getting to the bottom of this. She is convinced the ambassador is trying to do something to Cassilda and that she's in grave danger. At this point, casilda is so paranoid that she ends up rejecting this idea and accuses her of trying to confuse her, denounces her and her supposed bid to seize control of the nation, and generally tears up their friendship in that moment. Flash forward to the ball itself and everybody is on edge after hearing that casilda and Camilla have had some kind of meteoric falling out. Everyone is dressed rather similarly and wearing a carnival mask as part of this festival to celebrate the kingdom of carcosa and it's aid that they gave to the revolutionaries when they overthrew the king and they do comment on the fact that it's hard to tell each other apart with all these gaudy clothes and these masks on. Suddenly there is a gust of wind that blows through the dance hall stronger than a gale that blows all the candles out and disrupts the music and the dancers. There's a scream that cries out and when the lights are relit they find that Camilla's boyfriend has been stabbed with a particularly jeweled dagger. Everybody at the party is asked to unmask stuff that they can determine who the killer is that there was only so many people there in the room and Camilla is 100% convinced that Cassilda carried out this murder. Everyone else on masks themselves to reveal that casilda is not present and so the last person in the room, the ambassador is asked to unmask. The ambassador explains that he isn't wearing a mask which confuses the patrons of the party, so they ask him again to take his mask off and sort of gesture for him to take the mask off his face and he again presses that he is not wearing a mask. So irritated Camilla grabs the mask on his face. And rips it off to reveal... nothing. A hollow, empty void or his face is supposed to be. Panic ensues as the faceless minions of the ambassador enter into the venue and declare that the kingdom is now under the thumb of this mysterious kingdom of carcosa and that all of them are declared to be criminals. Camilla manages to slip away in the chaos. Cut to the third act We're casilda believe that she is about to marry the ambassador and become the queen of this kingdom, whereas actually she is going to be sacrificed to some kind of terrible dark God/ whatever the king in yellow of carcosa is. Camilla arrives and attempts to rescue Cassilda from her own madness, having never given up on her friend even though she seems to have gone insane. Camilla explains that casilda's boyfriend was not killed by Camilla's boyfriend but was assassinated after the palace siege, not during it. He was killed by a Carcosan spy, who in a rush to flee the scene had left his cloak which allowed Camilla to sneak around unseen and deliver her messages to Cassilda. She urges her to get under the cloak and follow her out of the palace before she is sacrificed. Casilda refuses having gone so completely insane that she sees herself as the rightful heir to the throne and has Camilla arrested. Then during the supposed coronation the ambassador reveals that he isn't a Carcosan prince and that she isn't descended from royalty like he'd been telling her. He is a spy, and that he was the one who killed her boyfriend and had been setting her up as a puppet so The King in Yellow can seize their nation for himself. Cassilda had a brief moment of lucidity as Camilla begs for her friend to see reason. Cassilda saves Camilla, but is knocked down by the "ambassador". the sacrificial dagger is picked up by Camilla and used to kill the "ambassador". They hug and forgive each other for their sins....only to realize the "ambassador" had said blood shed by that dagger was all it took to bind one's self to the King. And that already happened with the assassination. Camilla had just used the dagger to kill the supposed ambassador. And then they behold Hastur in all his eldritch glory, boldly declaring his pleasure at having not one but two Brides awaiting him. They scream curtain falls and a narrator explains that the nation fell into a long period of turmoil, with no one faction able to achieve control over the nation. Until one man managed to conquer all of the random factions vying for control over the nation and it said that he did it with a strange woman by his side garbed in gaudy, yellow and gold and wearing a mysterious mask. Let me tell you that the final part of the final act involving a giant shadow puppet of the king in yellow looming in the background was so complicated and so difficult to put together that when it broke on the second night and we didn't have time to fix it for the 3rd. We just played it off and kept using the puppet anyways and nobody noticed that it was broken. And the worst part of all this is I lost the original document and I don't have anymore. It's sitting in the desk of a teacher somewhere at my old high school probably. I wanted to write this story about the cyclical nature of how nations come together and fall apart whilst also going with that sort of lovecraftian fear of the outsider and the unknown. That people keep reaching out to carcosa for aid and ending up being corrupted as a result. It's such a drag that I lost the original document and I have no idea if anybody else who worked on the project with me has copies of it. I've never been able to reach out to any of them and get a copy for myself.... Such a shame because that production was very well received. For a high school production written by high schoolers, let me tell you it turned out rather well (though we had a lot of help from the teachers involved with the common department).
The Prophet chapter in the book, which has many verses that can be read from the end to the start, makes me think that the book can also be read back to front. Many of the characters from one chapter are mention on the next, in a way that we are going back into the past (Like Philip in the Lys story). The book starts at 1920 and mentions Boris as a dead artist, then in the next he is alive, then the middle it's 1870 (siege of Paris), and the characters are trying to survive, and in the next chapters the same characters are students and courtesans in a peaceful Paris. It really makes me feel there are more to this book than the first 4 stories.
This was a thoroughly interesting discussion, and I really enjoyed hearing both of your opinions on the stories and on the themes of them, especially the one about overarching societal corruption in The Repairer of Reputations. Now I'd also be really interested to hear more about MBT's apparently very strong feelings on Moby Dick sometime
I enjoyed your video guys! I hadn't realized all the things that were influenced by the King in the first one. You can listen to them all on a channel called HorrorBabble, and it's not just the old Librabox recordings :D a lot of the older stories I'll get bored trying to read them, but listening makes it easier
Fortunately for you, I made a playlist of all the Halloween episodes, which always feature MBT Other than that, he was in one of the House of Leaves episodes. The rest feature other co-hosts.
This could easily be made into a slasher film. Why has no one turned a thriller out of this book? Have the murderer be almost a complete mystery until the end of movie with clues hinting at the assailant's true identity. Then at the ending the protagonist finds the book... The King in Yellow. The murderer is a cult follower driven mad by stories in the book. Each of the killings is based on a story from the book kind of like the movie "Urban Legend" or "The Bone Collector". The sequel film would be the detectives or group of friends, what have you, going after Hastur (The King in Yellow).
Another Halloween special, another spoopy time! Sounds like you two were on quite the rollercoaster with this one, but I'm absolutely intrigued with the first four stories by far.
Hey Joe, are you into fantasy? If yes, a series that has the writing style you described as 'very engaging' basically throughout, that being the malazan book of the fallen. There's a lot of 'I won't explain it but if you read it attentatively you'll get it yourself' in there
I felt like a monster when I hit that like button on this video because it was at 69 likes before I got to it but I had to show my support even if i ruined the immaculate number
What you said toward the end about the SEO😅 Every other conversation of surrounding the story. People said it was like the scariest thing. You could read and you would go crazy. The way you described, it doesn't sound scary at all
OH man, a literary analysis of the King in Yellow requires so much depth besides just stepping through the book and talking about it linearly. It provokes philosophical quandaries that really do require grappling. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the characters, discussing... thinking! I think it does drive someone "crazy" but it depends on what craziness is. At least in my case, it provokes questions like: "does the noosphere exist and can things exist there without direct human mentation?" (I think the novel posits /yes/). "What do colors mean, or do they mean anything at all?" ("whiteness" is mentioned a ridiculous amount of times in the Prophet's Paradise, and green, blue, and ofc YELLOW). "What is a "mask" and why are masks significant?" (Human mentation/noospheric entities seem to be able to enter our world through the (Sometimes literal!) wearing of masks, like Perriot as a character in the commodie del arte in real life AND in the Prophet's Paradise). "Can our own reasoning and mentation steal something from ourselves?" (Truth hands the "I"/self a mirror in The Throng to show the "I" who has stolen from them). "What is the relationship between Civilization (Carcosa) and True Knowledge (the titular King)?" (The novel implies that the King - the fully-actualized, unmasked mentation/thoughtform of 'Truth'... the Prophet of Truth! - does something horrible to Civilization... but Civilization, now dark and warped, endures and almost symbioses with the King, even if individuation/cassilda/camilla is lost). "Do /I/ wear a Mask? Am I just a Mask of my own thoughtforms? Can this mask be ripped away? What am I behind it?" Etc. So much more...
You guys are actually incorrect about the origins of Hastur as an entity/god. While it is true that Chambers seems to treat Hastur as a city rather than a being, Hastur was actually introduced as a god of sheperds in Ambrose Bierce's Haita the Sheperd. Bierce is also where the name of the city Carcosa comes from, both of which Chambers later adapted into his work much like how Lovecraft and other authors such as August Derleth would proceed to adapt Hastur, Carcosa, The King in Yellow and the Yellow Sign.
Though he came later its interesting that Babalon in Aleister's Thelema is both Babylon and Babalon (place and "entity")
I feel the narrator in The Yellow Sign is also, if I can borrow your phrase, unreliable. He claimed he had never read the King In Yellow, yet there it was on his bookshelf. He claimed the grave digger guy had been hanging around outside his building, yet we learn his corpse was inside the apartment and seemed to have been there for many weeks. You also get the impression that the conversations he had with Tessie after the injury to his wrists were hallucinations, and she was probably already deceased by that point. Perhaps the injury to the wrists were symbolic of his crime, or a quite literal injury sustained as she attempted to defend herself.
Loved the podcast. Just wanted to throw my observations out there.
I really wanna say that the romantic parts feel to me like they're demonstrating that you can look past ill conceived perceptions and you really do have free will. Except the falcon one, but that one's about ownership and being tamed and stuff, so I guess it still fits with that.
yeah the falcon one seeing the strange hastur and basically dismissing him like nothing is telling to me either hastur is geuinley a weirdo into falconree or he only has power if you grant it
If you guys want to do another pre-lovecraft piece of horror literature, I’d heavily recommend the Great God Pan by Arthur Machen. It’s great and inspired both Lovecraft and even Bram Stokers Dracula. Great episode, can’t wait to see next years spooky piece of literature!
Personally I'm more interested in exploring where horror went after Lovecraft than I am in exploring the past more.
Yeah that answer pretty much sums it up. They don't care about the history of the genre. Which makes this video an odd choice and explains the blatant disrespect.
I really like the King in Yellow stories - even if only 4 of the 9 were really about him, and even if they were overall badly written. Maybe Chambers didn't have the capacity to use the ideas better, rather than lacking the will. Whatever, although he did get some inspiration in these ideas from Bierce (e.g. Hastur and Carcosa) he certainly greatly inspired and influenced Lovecraft. And although Lovecraft was much more prolific and created a much greater literary profile I actually prefer the tone of Chambers. Lovecraft is big on dread and menace, Chambers implies puzzlement and incomprehensibility. His horror connects insanity to the supernatural and cosmic; not for the first time (Poe did it) but in an almost systematic way. His is the epitome of 'philosophical horror'. A horror not of violence, hauntings or even elder gods, but of a primal and unanswerable mysteriousness whose touch renders humans incapable of continued rational existence.
Aww yes, Joe and Joe. I love when you two collaborate!
Im so stealing that "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" line. Edgy asf
Back in 2008-2009 I helped write and direct a play that was loosely based off of the king and yellow. The in-universe play. I'll try to summarize the plot as best I can. It concerns a series of characters jockeying for power over a former monarchy loosely based off of France during the terror that has recently finished a violent revolution whilst also trying to win the favor of a particular ambassador from an allied nation (carcosa) whom they will hope will sort of bring legitimacy to whomever actually manages to get enough support to lead the country. The central characters are two women (Cassilda and Camilla) who once we're friends, but after the siege of the palace that saw the king deposed Cassilda began to suspect that Camilla had Cassilda's boyfriend killed in order to assure her boyfriend's ascent to leadership over the Republic (Cassilda's boyfriend was the leader of the revolution). Cassilda receives a letter from the Ambassador from Carcosa saying that Camilla is planning to kill her because she was selected to lead the new Republic when her boyfriend died during the palace siege and that she must meet him to discuss what to do next. With no idea what to do other than to go, they meet with and end up being aided by this mysterious ambassador who always goes around wearing a mask over his face (as it is supposedly custom in his kingdom). As the story progresses, she begins to have romantic feelings for the ambassador and together they plan to assassinate Camilla and her boyfriend before the party Congress can have its vote in order to assure that she is able to take the throne before Camilla is able to orchestrate her assassination against Cassilda. All the while around her people have been acting very strangely and she begins receiving letters from an anonymous person implicating the ambassador in doing something to these people and that he can't be trusted. Unsure of who she should trust, the mysterious man who is sending her letters or the ambassador who is directly helping her protect herself from this supposed coup that soon to happen... All of this culminates in a ball that is being held during a festival to celebrate the alliance between carcosa and this nation and the Republic that is soon to form. Casilda is unable to sleep the night before she is to do the deed and while she is awake in her room, somebody tries to slip a new note under her door and she catches the anonymous letter writer only to find out that they are Camilla. So many people within the Palace during this festival that has been going on since the fall of the king that she is convinced that the ambassador has done something to them and that she has gone nearly mad getting to the bottom of this. She is convinced the ambassador is trying to do something to Cassilda and that she's in grave danger. At this point, casilda is so paranoid that she ends up rejecting this idea and accuses her of trying to confuse her, denounces her and her supposed bid to seize control of the nation, and generally tears up their friendship in that moment. Flash forward to the ball itself and everybody is on edge after hearing that casilda and Camilla have had some kind of meteoric falling out. Everyone is dressed rather similarly and wearing a carnival mask as part of this festival to celebrate the kingdom of carcosa and it's aid that they gave to the revolutionaries when they overthrew the king and they do comment on the fact that it's hard to tell each other apart with all these gaudy clothes and these masks on. Suddenly there is a gust of wind that blows through the dance hall stronger than a gale that blows all the candles out and disrupts the music and the dancers. There's a scream that cries out and when the lights are relit they find that Camilla's boyfriend has been stabbed with a particularly jeweled dagger. Everybody at the party is asked to unmask stuff that they can determine who the killer is that there was only so many people there in the room and Camilla is 100% convinced that Cassilda carried out this murder. Everyone else on masks themselves to reveal that casilda is not present and so the last person in the room, the ambassador is asked to unmask. The ambassador explains that he isn't wearing a mask which confuses the patrons of the party, so they ask him again to take his mask off and sort of gesture for him to take the mask off his face and he again presses that he is not wearing a mask. So irritated Camilla grabs the mask on his face. And rips it off to reveal... nothing. A hollow, empty void or his face is supposed to be. Panic ensues as the faceless minions of the ambassador enter into the venue and declare that the kingdom is now under the thumb of this mysterious kingdom of carcosa and that all of them are declared to be criminals. Camilla manages to slip away in the chaos. Cut to the third act We're casilda believe that she is about to marry the ambassador and become the queen of this kingdom, whereas actually she is going to be sacrificed to some kind of terrible dark God/ whatever the king in yellow of carcosa is. Camilla arrives and attempts to rescue Cassilda from her own madness, having never given up on her friend even though she seems to have gone insane. Camilla explains that casilda's boyfriend was not killed by Camilla's boyfriend but was assassinated after the palace siege, not during it. He was killed by a Carcosan spy, who in a rush to flee the scene had left his cloak which allowed Camilla to sneak around unseen and deliver her messages to Cassilda. She urges her to get under the cloak and follow her out of the palace before she is sacrificed. Casilda refuses having gone so completely insane that she sees herself as the rightful heir to the throne and has Camilla arrested. Then during the supposed coronation the ambassador reveals that he isn't a Carcosan prince and that she isn't descended from royalty like he'd been telling her. He is a spy, and that he was the one who killed her boyfriend and had been setting her up as a puppet so The King in Yellow can seize their nation for himself. Cassilda had a brief moment of lucidity as Camilla begs for her friend to see reason. Cassilda saves Camilla, but is knocked down by the "ambassador". the sacrificial dagger is picked up by Camilla and used to kill the "ambassador". They hug and forgive each other for their sins....only to realize the "ambassador" had said blood shed by that dagger was all it took to bind one's self to the King. And that already happened with the assassination. Camilla had just used the dagger to kill the supposed ambassador. And then they behold Hastur in all his eldritch glory, boldly declaring his pleasure at having not one but two Brides awaiting him. They scream curtain falls and a narrator explains that the nation fell into a long period of turmoil, with no one faction able to achieve control over the nation. Until one man managed to conquer all of the random factions vying for control over the nation and it said that he did it with a strange woman by his side garbed in gaudy, yellow and gold and wearing a mysterious mask. Let me tell you that the final part of the final act involving a giant shadow puppet of the king in yellow looming in the background was so complicated and so difficult to put together that when it broke on the second night and we didn't have time to fix it for the 3rd. We just played it off and kept using the puppet anyways and nobody noticed that it was broken. And the worst part of all this is I lost the original document and I don't have anymore. It's sitting in the desk of a teacher somewhere at my old high school probably. I wanted to write this story about the cyclical nature of how nations come together and fall apart whilst also going with that sort of lovecraftian fear of the outsider and the unknown. That people keep reaching out to carcosa for aid and ending up being corrupted as a result. It's such a drag that I lost the original document and I have no idea if anybody else who worked on the project with me has copies of it. I've never been able to reach out to any of them and get a copy for myself.... Such a shame because that production was very well received. For a high school production written by high schoolers, let me tell you it turned out rather well (though we had a lot of help from the teachers involved with the common department).
Humble bragging is lane bro.
The Prophet chapter in the book, which has many verses that can be read from the end to the start, makes me think that the book can also be read back to front. Many of the characters from one chapter are mention on the next, in a way that we are going back into the past (Like Philip in the Lys story). The book starts at 1920 and mentions Boris as a dead artist, then in the next he is alive, then the middle it's 1870 (siege of Paris), and the characters are trying to survive, and in the next chapters the same characters are students and courtesans in a peaceful Paris. It really makes me feel there are more to this book than the first 4 stories.
"Two people being horny about falcons, and I guess time travel" is also a solid summary of Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V.
I'm so glad legs talk about books is back. Found it a few months ago and have been binging it all.
with "The Mask", i was questioning whether the stuff at the end really even happened
This was a thoroughly interesting discussion, and I really enjoyed hearing both of your opinions on the stories and on the themes of them, especially the one about overarching societal corruption in The Repairer of Reputations. Now I'd also be really interested to hear more about MBT's apparently very strong feelings on Moby Dick sometime
Oh I did hear it entirely, then again I was drawing and was a fun episode.
I enjoyed your video guys! I hadn't realized all the things that were influenced by the King in the first one. You can listen to them all on a channel called HorrorBabble, and it's not just the old Librabox recordings :D a lot of the older stories I'll get bored trying to read them, but listening makes it easier
Damn ok this is a good combo and came out at a really good time considering signalis came out recently which references the King in Yellow A LOT
Alright, you got me. I am tracking down every episode with MBT in it and listening to all of them; y'all bounce off each other way too well
Fortunately for you, I made a playlist of all the Halloween episodes, which always feature MBT
Other than that, he was in one of the House of Leaves episodes. The rest feature other co-hosts.
Oh shit, this Hastur be good
This could easily be made into a slasher film. Why has no one turned a thriller out of this book? Have the murderer be almost a complete mystery until the end of movie with clues hinting at the assailant's true identity. Then at the ending the protagonist finds the book... The King in Yellow. The murderer is a cult follower driven mad by stories in the book. Each of the killings is based on a story from the book kind of like the movie "Urban Legend" or "The Bone Collector". The sequel film would be the detectives or group of friends, what have you, going after Hastur (The King in Yellow).
Cuz two people used it in a Survival Horror game and it's confusing as fuck.
I'm so glad Joseph is a Mario Chalmers/DWyade-era Heat fan ❤️🔥
The halloween episodes are always so much fun. This in combination with a class i was taking got me really into horror
Another Halloween special, another spoopy time! Sounds like you two were on quite the rollercoaster with this one, but I'm absolutely intrigued with the first four stories by far.
In my head canon, the Falcon chapter is about Zap Branign
The Court of the Dragon is a real place in Paris (as many places described on the book).
This was incredibly enjoyable to listen to. Great stuff.
extremely awesome
Woe! Woe be to he!
Hey Joe, are you into fantasy? If yes, a series that has the writing style you described as 'very engaging' basically throughout, that being the malazan book of the fallen. There's a lot of 'I won't explain it but if you read it attentatively you'll get it yourself' in there
I felt like a monster when I hit that like button on this video because it was at 69 likes before I got to it but I had to show my support even if i ruined the immaculate number
Your sacrifice is appreciated o7
What you said toward the end about the SEO😅 Every other conversation of surrounding the story. People said it was like the scariest thing. You could read and you would go crazy. The way you described, it doesn't sound scary at all
I love Halloween episodes
Ambrose Bierce...
Robert W. Chambers...
H.P. Lovecraft...
°°°
(... everyone borrows ...)
OH man, a literary analysis of the King in Yellow requires so much depth besides just stepping through the book and talking about it linearly. It provokes philosophical quandaries that really do require grappling. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the characters, discussing... thinking! I think it does drive someone "crazy" but it depends on what craziness is.
At least in my case, it provokes questions like:
"does the noosphere exist and can things exist there without direct human mentation?" (I think the novel posits /yes/).
"What do colors mean, or do they mean anything at all?" ("whiteness" is mentioned a ridiculous amount of times in the Prophet's Paradise, and green, blue, and ofc YELLOW).
"What is a "mask" and why are masks significant?" (Human mentation/noospheric entities seem to be able to enter our world through the (Sometimes literal!) wearing of masks, like Perriot as a character in the commodie del arte in real life AND in the Prophet's Paradise).
"Can our own reasoning and mentation steal something from ourselves?" (Truth hands the "I"/self a mirror in The Throng to show the "I" who has stolen from them).
"What is the relationship between Civilization (Carcosa) and True Knowledge (the titular King)?" (The novel implies that the King - the fully-actualized, unmasked mentation/thoughtform of 'Truth'... the Prophet of Truth! - does something horrible to Civilization... but Civilization, now dark and warped, endures and almost symbioses with the King, even if individuation/cassilda/camilla is lost).
"Do /I/ wear a Mask? Am I just a Mask of my own thoughtforms? Can this mask be ripped away? What am I behind it?"
Etc. So much more...
20:00 it's pronounced Jeune-vee-ay-v
AH!
At least they made their bias and dismissiveness clear at the start so I didn't have to listen for more than 5 minutes.
So THATS what the point of the mask is
PLEASE READ SCPS. OMG I WOULD LOVE 2 HEAR THE TWO OF YOU DISCUSS SOME OF THEM.
I'll consider it.
Wow it's MBT! Known illiterate!
I read this book and I feel like the first few stories were really good, and the last few were complete dogshit haha
lol I'm not sure I'd be that extreme about it, but yeah, the first half is definitely better than the latter half.
𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙢 ☝️
If it weren’t for true detective I wouldn’t have discovered this treasure.
If the King becomes a Yugioh card, it'll be fucking hilarious if it became even more broken than Norden and Azathot combined
The king IS a yugioh card.
Elder Entity Hastur is supposed to be him.