Halloween Special: H. P. Lovecraft 

Hey gang! Can't help but notice the comment section is a little bit on fire. That's all good with me, but one recurring complaint I've noticed has started to get under my skin - namely that my explanation of non-euclidean geometry was insufficient, or even - dare I say - inaccurate. Now this is a fair complaint, because after a lifetime of experience finding that people's eyes glaze over when I talk math at them, I concluded that interrupting a half-hour horror video with a long-winded explanation of a mathematical concept wouldn't go over too well. I put it in layman's terms and used a simple example to illustrate the point. However, since some of the more mathematically-inclined of you took offense, I now present in full a short (but comprehensive) explanation of what exactly non-euclidean geometry is. First, we axiomatically establish euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry has five axioms: 1. We can draw a straight line between any two points. 2. We can infinitely extend a finite straight line. 3. We can draw a circle with any center and radius. 4. All right angles are equal to one another. 5. If two lines intersect with a third line, and the sum of the inner angles of those intersections is less than 180º, then those two lines must intersect if extended far enough. Axiom #5 is known as the PARALLEL POSTULATE. It has many equivalent statements, including the Triangle Postulate ("the sum of the angles in every triangle is 180º") and Playfair's Axiom ("given a line and a point not on that line, there exists ONE line parallel to the given line that intersects the given point"). Euclidean geometry is, broadly, how geometry works on a flat plane. However, there are geometries where the parallel postulate DOES NOT hold. These geometries are called "non-euclidean geometries". There are, in fact, an infinite number of these geometries, and because the only defining characteristic is "the parallel postulate does not hold", they can be all kinds of crazy shapes. (As you can see, my explanation of "this is just how geometry works on a curved surface" is quite reductive, but at the same time serves to get the general impression across without going into too much detail.) An example of a non-euclidean geometry is "Elliptic geometry", geometry on n-dimensional ellipses, which includes "Spherical geometry" as a subset. Spherical geometry is, predictably enough, how geometry works on the two-dimensional surface of a three-dimensional sphere. In spherical geometry, "points" are defined the same as in euclidean geometry, but "line" is redefined to be "the shortest distance between two points over the surface of the sphere", since there is no such thing as a "straight line" on a curved surface. All "lines" in spherical geometry are segments of "great circles" (which is defined as the set of points that exist at the intersection between the sphere and a plane passing through the center of that sphere). The axiom that separates spherical geometry from euclidean geometry and replaces the parallel postulate is "5. There are NO parallel lines". In spherical geometry, every line is a segment of a great circle, and any two great circles intersect at exactly two points. If two lines intersect when extended, they cannot be parallel, and thus there are no parallel lines in spherical geometry. Since the Parallel Postulate is equivalent to Playfair's Axiom, the fact that no parallel lines exist in spherical geometry negates Playfair's Axiom, which thus negates the Parallel Postulate and defines spherical geometry as a non-euclidean geometry. Also, since the Triangle Postulate is another equivalent property to the Parallel Postulate, it is thus negated in spherical geometry. Hence, my use in-video of an example of a triangle drawn on the surface of a sphere whose inner angles sum greater than 180º. Hope that cleared things up (and helped explain why I didn't want to say "see, non-euclidean geometry is just a geometry where Euclid's Parallel Postulate doesn't hold - hold on, let me get the chalkboard to explain what THAT is-" in the video) Peace! -R ✌️

"Colors that man can't comprehend and are dangerous to and warp the biology of flora and fauna" is actually a reasonable description of gamma radiation, and radioactive meteorites are real so Color Out Of Space is technically the most scientifically realistic Lovecraft story

i remember reading Colour Out Of Space when i was twelve or so, and my immediate reaction being "Ah, beige."

When an archeologist says something was for “ritual purposes,” they mean “we have no idea what this thing is.” When they say something was for “fertility ritual purposes,” they mean “using the term ‘ancient dildo’ in academic papers is heavily frowned upon.”

Interviewer: “So, Mr Lovecraft, everyone’s dying to know. How do you write such effective horror stories?” HP: “Well, what can I say? I just wrote based on what scared me.” Interviewer: “Ah, I see, so you wrote based on yours fears of existentialism and cosmic nightmares?” HP: “Yes, among other things…” *sips tea while glaring at an AC vent*

"Hates Progress Lovecraft" lmao that was gold

Because I’m mixed-race myself, I like referring to myself as a Lovecraftian horror.

can we just appreciate the name 'lovecraft'? imagine if his last name had been johnson. 'Johnsonian' just dosnt sound as mythical as 'Lovecraftian'.

The Call of Cthulhu: the journal of a man reading the journal of a man listening to the story of a man who had weird nightmare

“Half-Human, Half-Octopus, Half-Dragon.” “This is what happens when you lack the constitution for math.”

"He lacked the constitution for math" So an English major?

Entire city: *brings relics and literal spells to counter the horror* Morgan: “If it eats another shed, we’ll pump it with lead. If it even breathes, we’ll shatter it’s knees”

I love how the mug on the AC obsessed doctors desk says the “worlds alivest doctor”

"OH GOD ITS DARK WHAT COSMOLOGICAL HORROR IS THIS?!" "You blinked, Lovecraft."

I assume someone's mentioned this joke: "Lovecraft was afraid of his shadow because it was black."

"Too delicate of a constitution for math" is HILARIOUS when you remember Red has a math degree.

Despite Lovecraft's many, many, many flaws as a person, he did at least give us a story where a generational death curse turns out to be both a hoax and entirely true in the most hilariously petty way ever: In "The Alchemist", the immortal who "cursed" the family to have all their descendants die at the age of 32 is literally doing all the leg-work himself and just straight-up murdering them whenever the one of them hits the right age. No magic is involved in their deaths aside from their murderer's immortality, he's just THAT stubborn.

*All the famous horror authors of history are sitting together, having a spooky story contest.* *Stephen King:* Okay so once there was this really smart magic black guy- *Lovecraft:* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *Stephen King:* Howard I haven't gotten to the scary part yet *Lovecraft:* _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_

One of my friends explained Lovecraft to me as: “Earthbound but if it was made by an LSD abuser who went scuba diving one day”

I’m indigenous and I had no idea I was so villainous! I guess it’s time to enter my villain era.

I think a cool twist ending to "Cool Air" could be that the doctor's dying note reveals that the narrator died from his heart attack, but has been kept alive thanks to the air conditioner. However, because there wasn't enough power for two people, the doctor decided to allow himself to finally die so that the narrator can keep on living.

The twist in Shadow Over Innsmouth reads differently once you find that H. P. Lovecraft came up with the story after finding out his great-grandmother was Welsh.

I can just imagine a posh math teacher chastising a student now: “By god, your level of understanding for non-euclidean geometry is downright Lovecraftian!”

A common theme that Lovecraft had in his writing was that evil fate and sin - in the form of madness, bodily pollution, & mutation - was inheritable and passed down through the bloodline. You see it in texts like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "The Rats in the Walls" - past decadence or excess inevitably leaking down the ages to infect and change the living heir, who becomes just as foul and misbegotten as their ancestors. It's basically Lovecraft admitting through his writing that he lived his whole life in constant fear that he would fall to madness & hysteric fits as his mother had. This also explains his racism - once you assume that the past misdeeds of a person's family shape the person themselves, it is logical to assume that people who are poorer or otherwise don't quite fit in with "high society" must come from bad bloodlines where their ancestors were wicked and deplorable, and that such people, too, will do evil and wrong, because it is in their genetic makeup to act that way. It's actually something that still happens today, with ideas like Prosperity Gospel, and it was how Nazism justified itself. All were "logical/rational" conclusions, but based on a faulty assumption: that the capacity to do good and evil is genetically hardwired.

3:17 Horrible Phobias Lovecraft 8:44 Hippopotamus Lovecraft 9:40 Hates Progress Lovecraft

Is no one gonna talk about two people brought MAGIC and the third dude was like “Hey, here’s a GUN!”

the secret to immortality? Air Conditioning

The color out of space is actually one of my favorites, if shift just one element...replace "color" with "radiation." Then literally everything makes more sense, and even becomes a cautionary tale about how radiation is indiscriminate, and the dangers of nuclear waste...and how often times, goverments don't take proper caution around toxic waste, as they are literally going to turn the area into a water resivoir.

The best way I have heard Lovecraft described was from Mr. Welch's Call of Cthulhu Mad Musing: "The man was clinically phobic, and I don't mean violent hatred but more curling up in the fetal position and sucking his thumb. The man didn't have Issues, he had Volumes."

He bumped into a... BLACK GUY... *dramatic music and a gasp* I laughed a bit too hard

I just realized the color he's describing is just magenta

Lovecraft's frothing bigotry and agoraphobia becomes a lot more funny if you just think of him as Roaring 20's Sheldon Cooper Loveecraft: I'm writing a story combining the unfathomable horrors of flying through a thunderstorm with the incalculable tedium of having to sit next to a stranger, white or not. Lovecraft: B'Zinggoth

Petition to resurrect Lovecraft and have him play Subnautica, a game practically built on eldritch horrors. (Edit: punctuation, because yes.)

Lovecraft's horror aesthetic reminds of when you close your eyes and you see a bunch of random patterns under your eyelids. A constantly shifting, random assortment of patterns not seen in the natural world. Lovecraft managed to turn that into something physical and dark. Super cool. Shame about the... everything-except-rich-white-people-phobia and rampant paranoia.

Tbh, although this was very unintentional, The Color Out of Space always read like radiation poisoning.

In all fairness, Cool Air sounds more like a Junji Ito type story

"But this is Lovecraft cryptic, so it doesn't take a genius together ..." This hits the nail on the head. HP tried to do twists in several of his stories, but they are always so clearly foreshadowed that it's not a reveal at all. Also I really appreciate how matter of factly Red always is in her summaries. To many channels talking about literature try to be epic and appropriately weighty in their presentations or when reading quotes, but it's so often way too thick. I call it audible syndrome and several audio book speakers do this as well. Might be just a personal thing, but I like neutral readings a lot more.

"why can't you just Nuke Cthulhu?" "Because it'll just reform and this time it'll be Radioactive"

So Color Out of Space is basically just “what if magenta was sentient and wanted you dead?”

I feel like Red strikes a good ballance between calling out Lovecraft's bigotry, making fun of the stuff that's silly in his stories, acknowledging the unique strengths of his creative work and even having some sympathy for this man's awful life. I cannot overstate how much I appreciate a nuanced perspective like that.

When you read At The Mountains of Madness you realize just how much Lovecraft feared penguins

It’s weird, H.P. Lovecraft feels like a fictional character from Edgar Allen poe

One massive historical irony: Lovecraft loved Irish people, because he thought they were all descended from Celtic druids and so were all psychic. This was at a time when people were putting up signs saying "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish". Also, he loved Hispanic people. Two of his best bred heroes are Hispanics. He thought they were all descended from Aztecs so were in tune with the whole "dark alien gods" thing.

“Exit, pursued by Cthulhu” may just be the greatest Shakespeare reference I’ve ever heard

Imagine being so anxious that you create a new fear.

Why does HP Lovecraft look like Zuckerberg

"One trips on a corner and falls through the map" "homeboy's face is jacked" "UNLike anY sEEn oN EArtH" "JUST MOVE AWAY" *plays 'Man In The Mirror' to reflect someone's worst decisions* *plays 'Under The Sea'* i love the humor in these videos Edit: this comment has the most like I've gotten thank y'all for getting me

I can only presume lovecraft would be scared of salsa -mildly foreign -wet -red like blood with weird chunks in it -horrors too spicy for delicate New England palette to comprehend (even the mild flavor)

I don’t know why, but H. P. Lovecraft with googly eyes is probably the most bizarrely hilarious thing I’ve ever seen. 11:03

"I got the Eye of Raznogshi'ni'yn!" "I got a magical super-poison!" "...I got a Glock."

The level of passive-aggressive scorn in this video is supernatural.

"...and writes her off as pretty thoroughly dead" I think the implication here is that Ammi killed her, because at that point in the story the narrator goes on about how people can do terrible things out of necessity, that Ammi had a broken-off chair leg in his hands that he didn't remember picking up, and that he was certain there was nothing left alive in the attic after he left.

Me, watching the Call of Cthulhu summary: "Wait, that's where it ends? What about Cthulhu? What about the cult? Hey Lovecraft, you left a dangling plotline, take it back!" 😅

Shopkeep: "Everything's for sale my friend. Everything!" What do you got for sale? Can you train me in speechcraft? What can you tell me about Insmouth?

H.p Lovecraft won't sleep because he only sees black

Imagine old Howard's reaction to the new Little Mermaid. Non-white fish people is pretty much the worst thing he could ever imagine

I love how everyone has different reasons for researching Lovecraft. Some read the stories and wanted to know more, some like Lovecraft-inspired horror, some heard about his cat, some wanted to make fun of the guy. For me, I need Yog-Sothoth related knowledge to write a fanfic about murderous space pirates and their eldritch Norse friend.

I died every time Red cuts herself off when saying "unlike any seen on Earth."

Just pointing this out because I find it funny: Cthulhu is the grandchild of Yog-Sothoth. So Wilbur Whately & The Dunwich Horror are Cthulhu's uncles.

0:00 Intro 0:48 Lovecraft’s life 3:20 The Call of Cthulhu 8:41 Cool Air 10:37 The Color Out of Space 14:38 The Dunwich Horror 19:33 The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Despite his obviously problematic views (to put it lightly) I really love Lovecraft's stories. I first stumbled across Lovecraft years ago while playing Fallout 3, after exploring the Dunwich Building and immediately taking to the wiki to figure out what in the fresh hell was going on and finding that the location was a tribute to Lovecraftian horror. A few months later I bought a collection of his short stories. Maybe the fact that I first discovered Lovecraft via a videogame set in a nuclear wasteland has coloured my view, but when I read The Color Out of Space I get a strong vibe of radioactive contamination from the descriptions of how the colour effects everything around it.

Random person: hey whats your favorite color Me: a mysterious color unlike any seen on earth.

Everyone's talking about how fucked up LC would be seeing hentai and shit, meanwhile I'm over here thinking that the mere *idea* of radiation and nuclear weapons might just cause Lovecraft to spontaneously combust. "Hey, remember how you wrote that whole thing about 'a meteor with light you can't see that kills people'? Yeah turns out that's bullshit, but we *have* found a material that poisons literally anything it touches, to the point that even being in proximity to some of the more nasty versions of the stuff will cause your body to *break down on itself within days.* ...also this material can be turned into bombs so powerful, even *one* will kill literally your entire hometown in the blast. The poison-y affects come afterwards to infect any of the survivors and anyone who comes to help. Oh! And even if you survive that, it'll probably fuck up any future kids you plan on having. ...also we made like...twenty thousand of these bombs? And pointed them at each other for shits and giggles? Don't worry, things have gotten better. We're down to like only a few thousand now. What was that? You wanted to go back to 1936? 'My constitution can't handle this'? OH RIGHT. I forgot to mention, all this occurs within the next *decade* for you. Have fun buddy! :)"

In my opinion, the way the Color Out Of Space movie handled the story's adaptation was pretty good, namely by making the color in question visibly portrayed as bright Magenta Pink, a color that appears nowhere in the natural world.

7:57 the fact that one guy clips through the map is arguably the best part of Call of Cthulhu

Fears: *Rural Massachusetts* Me: *lives in rural Massachusetts* That’s valid

Every picture of Lovecraft makes it look like he's holding a frog in his mouth

I am 15 seconds into this video and I cannot over stress the amount of dread I felt the first time I saw Lovecraft’s face. There will NEVER be a lovecraftian concoction that’s more disturbing than that death glare

I come back to this video every year. It's a tradition for me to hear Red dunk on Hopelessly Pennyless Lovecraft once per October

There is one thing Lovecraft fears more than anything else: Describing things.

So what I got was that H.P. Love craft made a new genre of horror because he was constantly confused and xenophobic

I only now noticed that Wilbur’s silhouette on the hill doing the ritual shows the tendrils on his waist. Noice detail 👌

It took me way too long to get the joke that "Horrible Phobias Lovecraft" is still shortened to HP Lovecraft.

I love that "JUST MOVE AWAY" comment, since of course the story was written by a dude for whom moving to a new place would be about as scary as having his life drained by an alien lifeform.

Returning to this knowing that Mark Zuckerberg looks like Lovecraft makes everything so much more hilarious

love how red's narration is just funny enough to not get scared to death by the stories yet the soundtracks retains some of the thriller feels

20:18 For a guy you probably correctly described as agoraphobic, Lovecraft went on a TON of road trips during an era when people were just starting to do that (he's known to have traveled as far south as New Orleans and up into Canada, so he was going pretty far out from RI). And just like the guy in this story he'd travel as cheaply as possible (cheap seats on red-eye-route buses, eating beans out of cans, sleeping at YMCAs) because he was very hilariously just as poor as the working-class and agrarian people he hated so much. You can do the same thing today with Greyhound and Flixbus! And I have!

The Color Out of Space has a film adaptation that is completely black and white and thus devoid of color. Except the meteor, which is magenta because magenta is not on the color spectrum.

“He’s also super ugly...” Continues to draw Wilbur grow up to look creepishly handsome

The mysterious colours story sounds like ✨radiation✨

10:58 Now imagine someone telling Horrific Pigments Lovecraft that they were red-green colorblind. Better yet, imagine Lovecraft being told that HE was colorblind and seeing more of the visible spectrum than he can was utterly *normal*.

_a mysterious colour, unlike any seen on earth-_

Art teachers be like: *MYSTERIOUS COLOURS UNLIKE ANY SEEN ON EARTH*

The Insmouth ending gets kins of weird when you're left wondering if grandma and great grandma don't know or don't care about the fact that their source of sacrifices and baby makers got bombed to hell because of Robert 😅

How to frighten Lovecraft: sneeze. How to frighten Lovecraft using language: Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch

I've read that Lovecraft was likely born with syphilis transmitted to his mother by his philandering father, which would explain his mother's slow descent as well as his consistent horror around inherited sin and sickness. But I don't think it's confirmed, still an interesting notion. Also I never get over the humor of Cthulhu, god of the old gods, ancient and unknowable nightmare that lurks beneath the waves, whose mere stirring sends artists and thinkers into screaming madness, is overcome by slamming a boat into its face.

1:25 Mrs. Lovecraft: * hallucinations of shadow creatures * Doctors: *Probably that pesky uterus.*

That "JUST MOVE OUT!!" line on the Colour Out of Space segment actually raised an interesting question for me because I once had an idea for a Colour Out Of Space-inspired "Lovecraft Horror Farming Sim"- think Harvest Moon meets Frostpunk- and one hurdle I never really could cross was figuring out how to keep the player invested or what sort of "endgame" you're trying to survive to see beyond simply not dying.

"Too delicate a constitution for math" why couldn't I use that as an excuse in high school?

"One trips on a corner and clips through the map" There has never been a better sentence to describe a man being swallowed by the one thing he is supposed to stand on

I wonder what Lovecraft would have made of imaginary numbers.

Current Lovecraftian nicknames (Approved): - Horrible phobias Lovecraft (3:17) - Hates progress Lovecraft (9:40) - Hippopotamus Lovecraft (8:44) Be sure to use these in your writing moving forward

I really like H.P. Lovecraft's work. Yeah, personally the man didn't have issues (he had editions). But a lot of great artists did; Poe, Van Gogh, etc. However, Lovecraft's influence on modern horror, fantasy, and science fiction is huge. Through all of his faults, both personal and artistic he was still able to be a pioneer in speculative fiction. He has left a legacy that's going on a century now and I appreciate him for that.

H.P. Lovecraft looked like a horror version of corporate Mark Zuckerberg.

Honestly, with the air conditioning story, he claims that his demise is "thanks to the failure of modern technology" when in reality that modern technology kept him alive 18 years after his natural expiration date. So honestly I'd say it was worth it.

If you can look past the racist undertones Lovecraft knew how to write a story that is still inspiring others to this very day

This is on a very short list of videos that i can (and have) rewatch hundreds of times and will never be bored

I love the anthropology joke of "ritual purposes?" "we already knew that." For those that don't know, in archaeology and anthropology, if you don't know what something is, you say it's for ritual because really, anything is ritual. Brushing your teeth? Ritual. Cooking? Ritual. Praying to some unknowable god who will destroy your world? Ritual! Getting ready for bed? By golly, you guessed it, that's ritual! It's a catch all for "heck if I know."

moral of the story: _m y s t e r i o u s c o l o r s u n l i k e-_

0:00 Introduction 3:19 The Call of Cthulhu 8:40 Cool Air 10:36 The Color Out of Space 14:38 The Dunwich Horror 19:32 The Shadow Over Innsmouth 26:27 Ending (Red Cover of Under the Sea)