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Episode 513 - Spawn of the Green Abyss - Part 2 (Patreon)

Published:
2020-08-31 19:37:41
Imported:
2021-07

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Content

The second half of Spawn of the Green Abyss by C. Hall Thompson is out!

This story is available in Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos.

Special thanks to reader Andrew Leman!

In September: THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY 

Comments

CthulhusDream

Long time listener and supporter, first time commenter. Unfortunately, for the first time in over a decade of never missing a show, I think I'm going to have to sit this episode and the rest of the story out. Nothing against the story or you guys, but I think I can definitely see what is about to happen in the story and I don’t think I can stomach it. Out of all the things a person can be triggered by, I think what flips my anxiety and dread switch is possibly one of the weirdest. For whatever reason killing monster babies, eggs, and or dispatching pregnant monster creatures of any type makes me sick to my stomach and incredibly upset. The most puzzling part, to myself anyway, is I am a divorced guy in my mid 30s with no kids and absolutely zero desire to ever have any of my own, in fact I’ve never been a huge fan of children in general. It’s an odd brain quirk that’s actually kept me from enjoying movies and other media I’d typically love. I am a gigantic (pun intended) Godzilla fan, and have been since I was a little kid watching the bastardized English Toho dubs with my grandparents, so I raced to watch the 2014 Lionsgate Godzilla movie in theaters and after a particularly gruesome (to myself) monster infanticide by the thousands and the MUTO mother killing I was so upset I’ve never seen it again. To me some hack writer(s) tossed together a half-assed “kill all those ‘disgusting’ monsters” script and damn near ruined a favorite movie franchise for me. A similar incident happened in a book series I was recently really getting into, Necroscope. I’ll try not to spoil it for anyone, but at the end of the third book a very similar “kill the disgusting pregnant creature and its eggs” situation happened headed by the story’s protagonist and I broke down and got so violently disgusted with the book I never finished it and I’ll never go back to the series. I caught myself thinking about the scene for months after (and I still do occasionally) and it overwhelms me so emotionally I have to stop and find anything else to think about or have an anxiety attack. In any case I love you guys and I love the show, and I’ll be glad to catch up with next episode!! PS: Sorry for the wall of text. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!

Anonymous
>>43200273

I understand this completely. From overtones of brutal anti-miscegenation to hints at ethnic cleansing, there's something very disturbing about the "victory" in these tales. As damn-near always, we need to spend more time exploring empathy and less time celebrating its absence.

Anonymous

It’s cute that Chad and Chris think their listeners have completely memorized part one. The recap is necessary! It’s been a week!

Anonymous

Show of hands, who else thought Yoth Syra and and Zoth Kala were the same entity? We're already dealing with hypnotic polymorphous blob creatures -- who's to say it/they aren't hermaphroditic? Also, I'd guess that (1) the Syrens weren't just banished to the ocean but to another plane of reality, hence the "strange geometrical dimensions" of their city; (2) they need susceptible humans and/or hybrids to act as gates or anchors giving them access to the human world; and (3) only certain people can undergo the transformation into an amphibian and breed with the Syrens, which is why Lazarus Heath was the only person chosen from the "Macedonia". Perhaps Cassandra was meant to be at the vanguard of a Syren uprising, but when both Heaths proved resistant the Syrens thought they'd have better luck with another generation that was only one quarter human. Anyway, thanks for pointing me at this story, and I'm really looking forward to THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY!

Anonymous

Sick burn on the Quad Cities Chad, I’ve never been there but I was a teenager during the 90’s in rural Texas. They had a pretty staunch abstinence only sex education program, we all know how well that works. Lots of “Promise Rings” happening before graduation there.

The Screaming Moist

I really liked this one when I stumbled across it a few years ago, and I still do, but this time I kept catching myself thinking “the guy found out his wife got pregnant by someone else and just shot her.” Maybe it’s because I’m viewing it through the lens of 2020 where everything is terrible, but the end felt a little too convenient. To Chad’s point at the end, he didn’t really try ANYTHING else. He’s a doctor, so we can assume he’s a reasonably intelligent guy, but all he could come up with is “welp, guess I’ll just shoot her.” At least in Shadow Over Innsmouth there was a bigger picture hinted at with government cover ups and wider knowledge of what was happening. Here, there was apparently a murder investigation, but no one else turned up anything weird or found any interesting anatomical features on mom and baby during an autopsy? He came up with a fun story, but in the end he’s a guy ranting about conspiracy theories to justify his abhorrent actions, which feels a little too real at the moment. ***edited to add that if you ever run out of stories, I will absolutely subscribe to a “bastardized goth lyrics” podcast.

Anonymous

Me: *sips coffee while listening to podcast* Chad: "CONQUISTADORS WHO DATED CHER!!!" Me:*spits coffee*

Tom Král

I like how in every episode that is a part 2,3 or more, you guys talk about how a recapitulation of the story is not necessary because we've already heard the previous part. It takes at least a whole week and sometimes I get back to the new episode even later than that and/or I've listened to several different episodes from the past, so I always forget what was going on and this quick recap really helps a lot so please dont stop doing it.

Devin Trim

Hey guys, weird request. But I know I’m not the only one, since you’ve actually mentioned this on the show before. I’m one of those people who occasionally throw the show in before bed and drift off to it. You guys just sound really relaxing. But the ending music always interrupts me as I’m starting to drift off. Would you guys ever consider threading together several episodes and cutting the ending music till the very end of those, for us who also use HP Podcraft as a soundtrack for sleep?

Anonymous

Hi guys first time commenter, long time listener here. Great show as always, but I found it interesting that you found the characters to be a bit lacking. I saw the relationship dynamic between the protagonist and his wife as one that plays out the process of a relationship breaking down. The love that they felt for each other was born in spite of the creepy surroundings of the house and her father's death, and it seemed like they could overcome the emotional trauma of her upbringing. But these repressed feelings tend to find a way to poke through and people can become like their parents in ways they may not like. This is especially true for families experiencing the intergenerational trauma that war or poverty is likely generate. In addition to this the encroaching mythos creatures could stand in for a relationship growing apart over differing interests, or even for an adulterous interloper into the marriage. In the end I think the actual thematic significance of what is causing the relationship to break down is kept vague, so as not to reduce the story to simple allegory as well as to linger on the emotional ramifications of having to realise that sometimes you have to call it quits as the person you fell in love with simply isn't there anymore. Not that I'm advocating murder, of humans or old ones, but the story would lose some of its impact if the last act followed some aquatic and arcane divorce proceedings rather than the ending we got. Keep up the good work!

Anonymous

I liked this story, particularly since it put a weirder, more extreme twist on the ol' Innsmouth fish romance genre. In Shadow Over Innsmouth, I always found the "human-ness" of the Deep Ones a little deflating. Sure they're scaly, but they're still hopping around wearing jewelry and having religion and stuff. The "Even Deeper" ones in this story are much weirder, with their oozy invertibrate biology and hypnotic powers.

Anonymous

Addendum: I know it's very hard not to compare this story to its obvious model. But imagine reading this if you hadn't ever heard of Shadow Over Innsmouth. I think you would find it an extraordinarily good weird fiction story.

Anonymous

It ended a bit better than I thought it would, so good on that kid from The Outsiders writing some weird fiction. But really happy things are going to get Wilde now.

Jason Thompson

Hell yeah Dorian Gray!!! You should discuss Emotional Lateralism and the amazing Victorian theory that if you were evil it’d physically reflect on *one* side of your body! H.H. Holmes believed it!!!

Bryce Perry

So you've done Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde, The Invisible Man, Dracula and now Dorian Grey. How long have you been planning this League of Extraordinary Gentlemen show??? (Yes, I know Dorian is only in the movie but we're one Alan Quattermain story and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea away from the full set!)

Anonymous

Good story, great episodes. Just *once* I want the protagonist to break into an old library and find the shelves filled with, like... old TV Guides and Sears catalogs. Maybe when they find evil necromancer Frank Costanza's study.

Anonymous

Alan Moore had said, during press for NEONOMICON, that "Lovecraft was sexually squeamish; would only talk of ‘certain nameless rituals.’ Or he'd use some euphemism: ‘blasphemous rites.’ It was pretty obvious, given that a lot of his stories detailed the inhuman offspring of these ‘blasphemous rituals’ that sex was probably involved somewhere along the line. But that never used to feature in Lovecraft's stories, except as a kind of suggested undercurrent. So I thought, let's put all of the unpleasant racial stuff back in, let's put sex back in. Let's come up with some genuinely ‘nameless rituals’: let's give them a name." in Neonomicon, those nameless rituals involve: deep-one rape.

Anonymous

Chad asked, "What's the fear here?" To me, it seems pretty obvious that it's "weird alien dicks are coming for your women (and maybe you too!)" I mean, how else can you interpret the passages, "flesh-made periscope shot up from hell . . . the eye-tentacle suddenly grew rigid, turning toward me."

Anonymous

Also, I need to talk about the extreme adjective abuse here. I mean, I know H.P. loved a good hyphenated descriptor, and some of these are evocative or at least sensible, like: wind-dried proprietor sea-misted evenings moon-washed strand rain-sodden beach But it got out of hand quickly, with stuff like: gloom-encrusted hallway moon-scorched desert of the Atlantic, brine-tangled corpse summer-choked city and my favorite: rat-pirated tunnels That last one certainly evokes an image, but I don't think Thompson was aiming for me to imagine cartoon rats with eye patches.

Anonymous
>>43464882

King Solomon's Mines would be great for the guys to cover. It's the original lost world story and is seminal to the sword and sorcery and planetary romance subgenres of the pulps (and with Gagool etc has shades of the Weird). Without King Solomon's Mines I don't know if we ever get Conan or John Carter of Mars. And yes it's got some questionable racial attitudes but unlike, say, Kipling Haggard was actually *trying* (alas at best only slightly successfully) to be noncondescending and sympathetic in his depiction of non whites.

Jason Thompson
>>43481582

It’s so clear when you put it that way!! I’m honestly just disappointed the female lead didn’t monster out (much). I mean, why is she even 1/2-monster then

Anonymous

There is a 1965 sci-fi film called War-Gods of the Deep with Vincent Price that has alot of the same motifs and vibes as this story. This American goes to a creepy old english town on the coast. Alot of people think something is up and gill-men come ashore to kidnap a woman for their dark ritual. They are pursued under a big house into undersea caverns and the men find themselves in an underwater city. There are some human sailors there that are super old but not aged because the gill-man city is keeping them young. The sailors are lead by Vincent Price who wants the woman for himself. The rescue squad has to fight mad Vincent Price and then the evil gill-man cult and escape as their sea-devil city is destroyed in a volcanic eruption. Its very much 60s sci-fi like 20,000 leagues under the sea but I love it and alot of the beats remind me of this story.

Anonymous

On the comparison between this story and Shadow Over Innsmouth, I think the character agency is exactly what makes the difference. In this game, the humans are all unwitting pawns in the hybrid machinations of the underwater beasts. Without the Siren Song, it is clear that they wanted no part of what was happening and would have been free of the monstrosity. In Shadow, the protagonist could never have escaped his fate, and ultimately isn’t sure that he wants to. This monster is something that happens to you, the Deep Ones are something you *are*.