An Adorable Shadow Out of Time
Sep. 9th, 2008 03:03 pmHad the urge to reread some H.P. Lovecraft stories recently - man, I love the ambiguous ending of The Shadow over Innsmouth - after spending the whole story building up the Deep Ones as unspeakable inhuman abominations, the narrative ends with the narrator rejecting suicide in favour of joining his alien kin, to ‘dwell amidst wonder and glory forever’…
Anyway, it caught my attention that The Shadow Out of Time, rather unusually for Lovecraft, actually gives a fairly detailed description of the Great Race. On the other hand, I’m not that good at interpreting written descriptions, so I wasn’t left with much of a sense of what they’re actually meant to look like. So, I fired up the Spore Creature Creator to try and create one of my own.

Virtually everything except the colour is from the story – including the flower things on its head. It’s pretty cute for a Lovercraftian beast, no? But, I guess they’re more terrifying in the original story, where they’re constantly at work on their evil plan to… well, gather historical information and scientific data.
I think people in the 1930s just had a lower tolerance for ‘terror’ than people today…

Anyway, it caught my attention that The Shadow Out of Time, rather unusually for Lovecraft, actually gives a fairly detailed description of the Great Race. On the other hand, I’m not that good at interpreting written descriptions, so I wasn’t left with much of a sense of what they’re actually meant to look like. So, I fired up the Spore Creature Creator to try and create one of my own.
Virtually everything except the colour is from the story – including the flower things on its head. It’s pretty cute for a Lovercraftian beast, no? But, I guess they’re more terrifying in the original story, where they’re constantly at work on their evil plan to… well, gather historical information and scientific data.
I think people in the 1930s just had a lower tolerance for ‘terror’ than people today…
