015: Stop! In the Name of Lovecraft

SPOILERS FOR... Well, nothing's really spoiled, but some stuff just kind of gets mentioned. Just to be safe? Oh gods... I don't even know... Lovecraft's Bibliography, Dr. McNinja, Evil Dead, IT, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Scrabble?, Ghostbusters, The Thing (1982, 2011, and the 2002 game), Hellboy 1&2, Pacific Rim, Shadow Hearts, and a lot of other stuff.

In this episode:

• We're talkin' Lovecraft.
• As we mentioned in the last episode, Ian decided to take a bit of a break to recharge his batteries, so it was up to Fio to recruit a guest host to help bear the neural load of completing this podcast. He chose an old friend, Turner, who's currently pursuing his doctorate in Neuroscience.
• We breeze by about a million things to try and communicate the scope of wildly different pieces of media that Lovecraft has had an influence on. We probably fail.
• If you're not familiar with how racist Lovecraft can be, it's honestly ridiculous. It reaches uncomfortable Poe's Law levels at times. I don't think we quite get into it enough on the podcast, but even if you brace yourself for the kind of racism and anti-antisemitism that you might find in early works, there are some bits of Lovecraft that will probably take you by surprise.
• So this would be the time to let you know that here's a crapload of his work.
• If you want to enjoy Lovecraft that isn't horribly racist, we recommend Cthulhu Gloom or Arkham Horror
• This is the Call of Cthulhu film that we reference. It clocks in at 46 minutes and is currently available to stream on Netflix.
• Pacific Rim is a character story. Somebody back me up on this.
• "Wrecking your shit for no reason" is the only motivation any of the interesting characters in Lovecraft need.
• Next episode we're going to talk about horror comics and I swear to you we'll manage to record for longer than an hour this time.

THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:

• We mention Japanese games with possibly Lovecraftian influence and somehow I completely forget to mention that Nyarlathotep is the villain of Persona 2. And I really love the Persona series. Shame, shame.
• Fio corrects Turner when he's talking about "The Rats in the Walls," saying that the mad idiot god at the center of the Universe is Azathoth, however, in "The Rats in the Walls," for whatever reason, Lovecraft refers to Nyarlathotep being the mad god in the center of the earth surrounded by pipers. Soooo... bad Fio.
• Other titles I briefly considered for this episode: "Lovecraft in the Time of Cholera," "I'm not gonna' write you a Lovecraft song 'cause you asked for it," "What is Lovecraft? Baby don't hurt me," "Lovecraft Actually starring Alan Rickman," "Shot through the heart, and you're... screw it, you get it. 

Music:

• Intro: "The Innsmouth Look" - Darkest of the Hillside Thickets | iTunes |
• Outro: "Love will Tear us Apart" - Joy Division | YouTube | iTunes |

(Screencap from http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100202021247/lovecraft/images/1/1b/Kraken-cthulhu.jpg)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT015/AMOT015.mp3