H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast Forums
May 24, 2013, 07:15:12 AM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
News: If you encounter any unknowable eldritch forum problems, shoot Manndroid a missive at mmann(at)modsprocket(dot)com!
 
   Home   Help Search Login Register  
Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
Author Topic: At the Mountains of Madness  (Read 2193 times)
MattRichardson
Blissfully Ignorant
*
Posts: 28


View Profile
« on: November 29, 2010, 08:49:22 PM »

So, it would be really awesome if Chris & Chad could get Joshi as a guest host for "At the Mountains of Madness", given that it's his favorite Lovecraft story and all. I doubt he would do every episode given how many weeks that story is likely to stretch across, but maybe he'd be willing to do a wrap-up episode after Chris & Chad have gone through the story.

A man can dream, can't he?  Wink

Matt
Logged
Genus Unknown
Cultist
Committed for Life
*****
Posts: 1186


Spam Buster


View Profile
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2010, 09:45:50 PM »

I suspect that the multi-part episodes are recorded all at once and split up into half-hour segments.

But yeah, that would rule. Mountains is arguably Lovecraft's most significant (or at least one of his most significant) story, Joshi is hands-down the most significant Lovecraft scholar, and our boys lead the field in H.P. Lovecraft-related literary podcasting. It's a match made on Yuggoth.
Logged

Kaelestes
Cultist
Mind-Blasted
*****
Posts: 384


SI.VM E.T AV.VM


View Profile WWW
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2010, 02:56:36 PM »

SPOILERS
highlight to read

I only have one glaring issue with At the Mountains of Madness, and it's this: When the shoggoth is oozing its way after our heroes and it crushes the penguins, I can't help but laugh a little. I think penguins are adorable, wonderful, little feathered things, but they're very much like the bowling pin of the animal world. Their physical structure is such that when I imagine them getting run down by ol' Shog, I see them flying in all directions, squaking like mad, and bumping off the icy walls of the caves they dwell in. I can't help it, and it kind of ruins the moment for me.

Other than that, this story is gold. I love it. I'm going to have to give it a re-read this week and come up with a best line/worst line.
Logged

The Colour scorched my lands
 and burned away my family.
  Need money for Eldersign.
old book
Committed for Life
******
Posts: 1347


View Profile
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2010, 03:35:23 PM »

I agree, the penguins made a silly scene sillier.

Poe went into a complete afterword about tekelili in Arthur Gordon Pym. I guess it's supposed to be that Aramaic line from the Bible, you know, the one that gave us the expression "the writing is on the wall." The original tag was something like mene mene tekel ufarsin. Various interpretations, probably a pun where ufarsin means both "to get Persianized" and "be destroyed, come to an end."

If the Shuggoths inherited and made decadent the culture of the vegimite Older Ones, does that mean someday the penguins will inherit and carry the torch of an even more decadent version of that heritage?

The best version of "Tekelili" I've ever heard was on the ARTC podcast version of AtMoM. It's probably still there, on the Atlantic Radio podcast page, for download.
Logged

We live on a placid Rhode Island and Providence Plantations of ignorance in the midst of the black seas of an infinity of dark foreigners, and it was not meant that we should voyage too far.
Bulbatron
Unhinged
***
Posts: 199



View Profile
« Reply #4 on: December 22, 2010, 05:25:23 PM »

And now all I can think of is the noise that bowling pins make when they are knocked over - superimposed over the probable splattering and squawking of the penguins as the shoggoth hits them!   Smiley
Logged
Genus Unknown
Cultist
Committed for Life
*****
Posts: 1186


Spam Buster


View Profile
« Reply #5 on: December 22, 2010, 05:55:17 PM »

Screw all y'all, I love that scene. The albino penguins are, for some unknown reason that Freud would probably have a field day with, one of the creepiest damn parts of that story for me.
Logged

Cloven Sunfish
Blissfully Ignorant
*
Posts: 41


hepromantic
View Profile Email
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2010, 01:01:33 AM »

I'd always thought the albino penguins were hokey because when I read the story I didn't picture them having a menacing appearance. I imagined a garden variety penguin, only 6 ft. tall and white. The whole thing seemed quite goofy and out of place. It's been a while since I read "At the Mountains of Madness" so I don't remember if Lovecraft threw in any sinister descriptors for them.

Tanja Wooten's incredibly creepy interpretation of the penguins is great though. If I ever read the story again, I'm picturing them like this.

Logged
Boneworm
Shaken
**
Posts: 51


Like a Gingerbread Man


View Profile Email
« Reply #7 on: December 23, 2010, 09:58:56 AM »

I'd always thought the albino penguins were hokey because when I read the story I didn't picture them having a menacing appearance. I imagined a garden variety penguin, only 6 ft. tall and white. The whole thing seemed quite goofy and out of place. It's been a while since I read "At the Mountains of Madness" so I don't remember if Lovecraft threw in any sinister descriptors for them.

Tanja Wooten's incredibly creepy interpretation of the penguins is great though. If I ever read the story again, I'm picturing them like this.



Logged
Kaelestes
Cultist
Mind-Blasted
*****
Posts: 384


SI.VM E.T AV.VM


View Profile WWW
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2010, 11:38:41 AM »

Tanja Wooten's incredibly creepy interpretation of the penguins is great though. If I ever read the story again, I'm picturing them like this.

That is excellent! I'll be doing the same as well!
Logged

The Colour scorched my lands
 and burned away my family.
  Need money for Eldersign.
Bulbatron
Unhinged
***
Posts: 199



View Profile
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2010, 03:41:27 PM »

Screw all y'all, I love that scene. The albino penguins are, for some unknown reason that Freud would probably have a field day with, one of the creepiest damn parts of that story for me.

No, no!  I agree with you, but I'm still going to be thinking about the sound of bowling pins being knocked over - at least for a while now.
Logged
Kaelestes
Cultist
Mind-Blasted
*****
Posts: 384


SI.VM E.T AV.VM


View Profile WWW
« Reply #10 on: January 17, 2011, 06:34:12 PM »

Just remembered! Last month while researching a few linguistic ideas for a writing project I'm pursuing, and with the aid of mighty Google Translate, I stumbled upon an interesting fact about everyone's favorite creepy plateau. It turns out that "leng" translated from Welsh means "legion." As per usual, it seems reasonable to surmise that Lovecraft knew this, though I couldn't find any evidence to support the suspicion.
Logged

The Colour scorched my lands
 and burned away my family.
  Need money for Eldersign.
catamount
Mind-Blasted
****
Posts: 425



View Profile
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2011, 09:04:20 PM »

Just remembered! Last month while researching a few linguistic ideas for a writing project I'm pursuing, and with the aid of mighty Google Translate, I stumbled upon an interesting fact about everyone's favorite creepy plateau. It turns out that "leng" translated from Welsh means "legion." As per usual, it seems reasonable to surmise that Lovecraft knew this, though I couldn't find any evidence to support the suspicion.

That's interesting, I had always assumed that "Leng" was probably Asiatic in origin.
Logged

'Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.'

Robert E. Howard, "The Tower of the Elephant"
Genus Unknown
Cultist
Committed for Life
*****
Posts: 1186


Spam Buster


View Profile
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2011, 10:05:08 PM »

I don't know how much stock I want to put into any "real-world" translations of Lovecraft's names. I'm pretty sure he was just going for something weird and alien-sounding, and if you look around, I'm sure you can find all kinds of words in other languages that sync up with Mythos names.
Logged

Unruhe
Blissfully Ignorant
*
Posts: 13



View Profile Email
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2011, 12:11:45 PM »

Just remembered! Last month while researching a few linguistic ideas for a writing project I'm pursuing, and with the aid of mighty Google Translate, I stumbled upon an interesting fact about everyone's favorite creepy plateau. It turns out that "leng" translated from Welsh means "legion." As per usual, it seems reasonable to surmise that Lovecraft knew this, though I couldn't find any evidence to support the suspicion.

Great observation.
Logged

Nihil profĂ­ciat inimĂ­cus in nobis.
old book
Committed for Life
******
Posts: 1347


View Profile
« Reply #14 on: January 18, 2011, 01:34:39 PM »

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Chambers mentioned Leng first in Maker of Moons. I would more associate its currency in Lovecraft with that and

Lang, Fritz. 1890-1976, Austrian film director, later in the U.S., most notable for his silent films, such as Metropolis (1926), M (1931), and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932)

or

http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a79

Andrew Lang, 1844 - 1912, author of

Adventures Among Books, Alfred Tennyson, Angling Sketches, The Arabian Nights, Aucassin and Nicolete, Ballads in Blue China, Ballads, Lyrics, and Poems of Old France, Ban and Arriere Ban, The Blue Fairy Book, The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, The Book of Romance, Books and Bookmen, The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, The Clyde Mystery a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, Cock Lane and Common-Sense, A Collection of Ballads, The Crimson Fairy Book, Custom and Myth, Custom and Myth, The Death-Wake or Lunacy: a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras, The Disentanglers, Essays in Little, The Gold Of Fairnilee, Grass of Parnassus, The Green Fairy Book, The Grey Fairy Book, He, Helen of Troy, Historical Mysteries, Homer and His Age, The Homeric Hymns A New Prose Translation, How to Fail in Literature, The Iliad (as Translator), In the Wrong Paradise, Introduction to the Compleat Angler, James VI and the Gowrie Mystery, John Knox and the Reformation, Letters on Literature, Letters to Dead Authors, The Library, The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lock and Key Library The most interesting stories of all nations: Real life (as Contributor), Lost Leaders, The Making of Religion, The Mark Of Cain, Modern Mythology, A Monk of Fife, Much Darker Days, Myth Ritual and Religion Volume 1, New Collected Rhymes, The Nursery Rhyme Book, The Odyssey Done into English prose (as translator), Old Friends - Epistolary Parody, The Olive Fairy Book, On the Sublime (as contributor), The Orange Fairy Book, Oxford, Pickle the Spy Or the Incognito of Prince Charles, The Pink Fairy Book, Popular Tales (editor), Prince Prigio, Prince Prigio From "His Own Fairy Book", Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son, The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot, Raleigh (editor), The Red Book of Heroes (editor), The Red Fairy Book, The Red Romance Book, The Red True Story Book (editor), Rhymes a la Mode, Robert F. Murray: His Poems with a Memoir, Shakespeare Bacon, and the Great Unknown, A Short History of Scotland, Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy, Tales of Romance (editor), Tales of Troy and Greece, Tales of Troy: Ulysses the sacker of cities, 'That Very Mab', Theocritus Bion and Moschus Rendered into English Prose (editor), The True Story Book (editor), The Valet's tragedy and other studies, The Violet Fairy Book, The World's Desire, The Yellow Fairy Book, etc.


Logged

We live on a placid Rhode Island and Providence Plantations of ignorance in the midst of the black seas of an infinity of dark foreigners, and it was not meant that we should voyage too far.
Pages: [1] 2
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.16 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!