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Lovecraft for Squids: Scifi Religion Creation

Started by QueenThera, December 17, 2014, 09:43:41 AM

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QueenThera

I have a couple "big ideas" bubbling in my head. One of them concerns a future with uplifted animals, including my favorite creations, the ingeniopods. Their code is derived from several species of cephalopod, but primarily squid. It was found expedient to build off their pseudo-spine, two tentacles, and so on to create a species that can communicate with us.

I am trying to build their culture, and well, I think they'd have to build it from scratch. In a world where most religions center on humans, I suspect Lovecraft would thrill with its transgressive nature, its non-human centricity, and Cthulhu's star power.

What would their Necronomicon look like? What would their pantheon? What are their practices, if civilized?
Often incoherent. Tends to ramble on about various topics.
Hopes to get beyond that.

Formerly BrotherPrickle

LMNO


hooplala

Aren't all cultures essentially built from scratch?
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

Q. G. Pennyworth

I would look up the study on octopus intelligence to start with, personally.

QueenThera

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 12:11:26 PM
Reminds me of the Scrid.


What is that? Google keeps insisting it means Scribd. Is it one of the Discordian demons?
Often incoherent. Tends to ramble on about various topics.
Hopes to get beyond that.

Formerly BrotherPrickle

QueenThera

Quote from: Hoopla on December 17, 2014, 12:13:55 PM
Aren't all cultures essentially built from scratch?
Yes. But I think the fun part is in exploring how the ingeniopods have to deal.

Based on conversations I've had discussing this concept before, I'm assuming that the ingeniopods are designed to engage in underwater construction (and potentially combat, but my Martian-Earth interstellar war is another topic entirely). They're told to behave as rational as possible, and have no real history to fall back on when they've become emancipated.

So, I'm assuming they take on Lovecraft's mythos as their version of Satanism. The setting, tentatively, has humanity going militantly atheist/humanist under some form of fascism. In response, many of the ingeniopods adopted the Necronomicon as their holy text, and probably engage in irrational "magicks".

I'm taking some inspiration for this from the webcomic Freefall. It interests me how an intelligent uplift species goes about keeping their head down until they can be genetically viable, and their attempts to find an identity.
Often incoherent. Tends to ramble on about various topics.
Hopes to get beyond that.

Formerly BrotherPrickle

Doktor Howl

Quote from: BrotherPrickle on December 17, 2014, 04:23:12 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 12:11:26 PM
Reminds me of the Scrid.


What is that? Google keeps insisting it means Scribd. Is it one of the Discordian demons?

Worse.  The Scrid is a bartender.
Molon Lube

LMNO

Quote from: BrotherPrickle on December 17, 2014, 04:31:07 PM
Quote from: Hoopla on December 17, 2014, 12:13:55 PM
Aren't all cultures essentially built from scratch?
Yes. But I think the fun part is in exploring how the ingeniopods have to deal.

Based on conversations I've had discussing this concept before, I'm assuming that the ingeniopods are designed to engage in underwater construction (and potentially combat, but my Martian-Earth interstellar war is another topic entirely). They're told to behave as rational as possible, and have no real history to fall back on when they've become emancipated.

So, I'm assuming they take on Lovecraft's mythos as their version of Satanism. The setting, tentatively, has humanity going militantly atheist/humanist under some form of fascism. In response, many of the ingeniopods adopted the Necronomicon as their holy text, and probably engage in irrational "magicks".

I'm taking some inspiration for this from the webcomic Freefall. It interests me how an intelligent uplift species goes about keeping their head down until they can be genetically viable, and their attempts to find an identity.

Wait.  It's sounding like the only reason they're choosing the Cthulu mythos is because one or two of them are said to have tentacles.  That's hardly a reason for intelligent squid to adopt a group of stories written by a two-legger, and especialy if they've more or less been cultivated towards rational thought.

LMNO

Quote from: Doktor Howl on December 17, 2014, 04:38:14 PM
Quote from: BrotherPrickle on December 17, 2014, 04:23:12 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 12:11:26 PM
Reminds me of the Scrid.

[/IMG]scrid[/img]
What is that? Google keeps insisting it means Scribd. Is it one of the Discordian demons?

Worse.  The Scrid is a bartender.

I remember him fondly.

He's also the logo for Earfatigue Productions.


hooplala

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 04:41:33 PM
Quote from: BrotherPrickle on December 17, 2014, 04:31:07 PM
Quote from: Hoopla on December 17, 2014, 12:13:55 PM
Aren't all cultures essentially built from scratch?
Yes. But I think the fun part is in exploring how the ingeniopods have to deal.

Based on conversations I've had discussing this concept before, I'm assuming that the ingeniopods are designed to engage in underwater construction (and potentially combat, but my Martian-Earth interstellar war is another topic entirely). They're told to behave as rational as possible, and have no real history to fall back on when they've become emancipated.

So, I'm assuming they take on Lovecraft's mythos as their version of Satanism. The setting, tentatively, has humanity going militantly atheist/humanist under some form of fascism. In response, many of the ingeniopods adopted the Necronomicon as their holy text, and probably engage in irrational "magicks".

I'm taking some inspiration for this from the webcomic Freefall. It interests me how an intelligent uplift species goes about keeping their head down until they can be genetically viable, and their attempts to find an identity.

Wait.  It's sounding like the only reason they're choosing the Cthulu mythos is because one or two of them are said to have tentacles.  That's hardly a reason for intelligent squid to adopt a group of stories written by a two-legger, and especialy if they've more or less been cultivated towards rational thought.

I was going to say something similar. 

People often conflate Cthulhu with cephalopods, but he is only ever described as resembling said creatures.  Those things on his face are described as "feelers", if memory serves, not tentacles.

And who is telling them to behave as rationally as possible?  And who are they emancipated from?  It's difficult to give opinions on what feels like 20% of the details.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

QueenThera

These are good objections. I'd be lying if I said Cthulhu's resemblance wasn't the initial reason.

What they're rebelling against is not quite decided in my head. I have an end condition though of an interstellar empire known as the Gaian Alliance, which consists of multiple sapient species, humans predominant among them.

I think the initial conditions in which the ingeniopods are born is a world closer to our own, but where there has already been a failed attempt at an uplifted species: pigs, who had been liberated from a company and "allowed" to go extinct. A government is behind the development of the uplifted squids, via something like DARPA, and they expect repayment for their spending. So, there's quite a few cards stacked against them being independent intelligent beings already, apart from being water-based and a preference for communication via chromatophore bitmaps. In the turmoil which leads to them being granted equal rights, a scientific-minded party uses the cause of sapient rights to allow them to dominate. Admittedly, justifying this takeover is fuzzy for me still, since I am far from a political expert.

Now, as for Cthulhu, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Azathoth, and others as their deities, I do have a justification. Squid in the wild die soon after reproduction, on purpose. When uplifted by humans, ingeniopods were made to be capable of multiple reproductive events without dying. But there's still an instinct down deep in their heritage to have sex and die. It has become a twisted impulse that mashes together a desire for murder/suicide with sex. So, I envision the dark sexuality of the creatures in Lovecraft would resonate, and they'd engage in worship and rituals involving them to hold back these instincts.

They would have their own cultural arts, though, don't get me wrong. I imagine Rubik's Cube-style sculptures and use of senses we don't have, for instance. A lot of emphasis on the tactile and of many axes of symmetry. But religiously, it'd be hard to make up how your people came to be when it's been thoroughly recorded and documented. Hence why I imagine they'd borrow Lovecraft.

It also helps that people brought it up as a joke about what they resemble.

Does this sound like utter bullshit still?
Often incoherent. Tends to ramble on about various topics.
Hopes to get beyond that.

Formerly BrotherPrickle

LMNO

#11
Sorry, have to cut in again -- "dark sexuality"?

Apart from Roger, I'm not sure "mind-gibbering voids of infinite terror" is that much of a turn on.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 07:12:11 PM
Sorry, have to cut in again -- "dark sexuality"?

Apart from Roger, I'm not sure "mind-gibbering voids of infinite terror" is that much of a turn on.

There go my nipples again.
Molon Lube

QueenThera

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 07:12:11 PM
Sorry, have to cut in again -- "dark sexuality"?

Apart from Roger, I'm not sure "mind-gibbering voids of infinite terror" is that much of a turn on.
Well... Shub-Niggurath of a Thousand Young, the Deep One hybrids, Arthur Jermyn, Yog-Sothoth's twins... There's quite a few fucked up sex implications, I'd argue.
Often incoherent. Tends to ramble on about various topics.
Hopes to get beyond that.

Formerly BrotherPrickle

Q. G. Pennyworth

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on December 17, 2014, 07:12:11 PM
Sorry, have to cut in again -- "dark sexuality"?

Apart from Roger, I'm not sure "mind-gibbering voids of infinite terror" is that much of a turn on.

I'm right here.