Yeah, so here the Queen mostly just covers the ground we’ve already covered – Nyarlathotep’s true form, which we’ve already seen, and its favorite/most effective form while out on business, which we’ve actually seen right from the start. On the positive side, that means everything is caught up now and there’s no need for further flash-backing. Back-flashing. You know what I mean.
Since HPL’s mythology is anchored in Western culture, it was kinda inevitable that Latho would find the perfect form on attempt #666. Too bad for Latho, though – had HPL had his background in buddhism, it would only have taken 108 tries. (No telling how many tries it would have taken with hinduism…) Starting from a basis of 1000 faces, I’d say finding the right one two thirds of the way in sounds like a ‘plausible’ result…although that’s not really how probability works. >_>
The only other bit of extra information provided is the terrifying appearance of the demon sultan himself, Azatoth. In lore, he’s not a terribly active character, spending most of his time just gibbering madly while lounging around in the heart of chaos. The passivity in combination with the ‘sultan’ title inevitably made me think of Iznogoud’s Caliph Haroun al Pussah*. Furthermore, Azatoth is described as ‘idiotic’…and Haroun al Pussah is the definition of idiotic. And not even the walking, talking definition of idiotic, but rather the napping, sleeping definition of idiotic.
Although some readers of Iznogoud insist that Haroun al Pussah isn’t an idiot at all, but in fact a manipulative genius hiding behind a mask of obfuscating stupidity, all of his seemingly ‘lucky’ escapes actually being the result of brilliant planning. I’m not convinced…
But anyway, so I decided to essentially just take Haroun, remove his eyes, add a few tentacles and place him in the heart of chaos. And I’m actually surprisingly happy with how disturbing the result looks…
More on Monday.
*A sultan isn’t exactly the same as a caliph, of course, at least in terms of rulership claims, since ‘caliph’ implies a more universal rulership. In rulership reality, the difference might not be large…and in the case of Chuthloid deities, the use is kinda metaphorical, anyway…
I’ve always liked The Colour Out of Space, which solves the problem of the indescribable by saying it has no analogue in human experience.
That’s one of the big advantages of the written form – you can leave things to the imagination of the reader in a way that visual media just can’t. That allows you to be vague or even contradictory in your descriptions, and the reader just has to find some way to wrap their mind around it. In a visual medium you have to show things.
A good example is the character of Fu Manchu – described by his creator as being entirely inconspicuous in appearance, but permanently surrounded by an almost palatable aura of evil. How do you transpose this into a visual medium? If you go by the physical description, your version of Fu will be pretty unimpressive…but if you give him an appearance that radiates evilness, you’re flatly contradicting the description in the source material…