Category talk:Cthulhu Mythos

Through the Gates

This seems like as good a place as any to discuss the direction of the Cthulhu Mythos articles as a whole. I think they are a good example of the problem identified in Wikipedia:Writing about fiction as "in-universe perspective". That is, despite the fact that they generally include the word "fictional" somewhere near the top, they're generally written as though the imaginary universe they discuss is a real place rather than a fictional creation. You've got a lot of articles that include a mishmash of information on persons, places and (elder) things with no indication of which authors or stories provided particular bits of information, often with considerable speculation to bridge the gap between various fictions.

I've been trying to replace such material with info based on quotation from and citation of original texts. (One of the problems with the Cthulhu Mythos articles is their reliance on the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana--written from an in-universe perspective, and hence fairly useless--as a secondary source.) I've also been trying to reorganize material to put more emphasis on authors and stories--moving characters from the omnibus Cthulhu Mythos biographies (note: should be "characters") into individual story articles, and regrouping minor Mythos entities from articles based on problematic theological distinctions (e.g. Great Old One compendium) into articles based on creators (e.g. Ramsey Campbell deities).

One issue related, I think, to the in-universe perspective is the reference system that many of the Cthulhu Mythos articles use--the Cthulhu Mythos reference codes and bibliography. It's a system of two-letter codes that follows a block of information, indicating which stories contain references to a particular character, tome, etc. While a pretty impressive display of wikicraft, it's really singularly unhelpful--instead of telling you at a glance which stories provided what information, as a normal reference would, it forces you to go to another page to look up each cite, and still leaves you guessing as to what comes from where. The intended goal is apparently to save space, which is not really a major consideration on WP. It has the unfortunate side-effect of making the fact that the Mythos beasties are made-up as non-obvious as possible.

"The Call of Cthulhu" article is probably my most successful attempt at what I'm aiming for. De Vermis Mysteriis is another fairly good example, though it lacks citation. Severn Valley may have gone a little overboard in providing detail. The first half of the current version of Cthulhu is a stab at replacing a heavily in-universe perspective with an out-of-universe one.

Randolph Carter needed a Silver Key to get out of his universe so he could have some perspective on it--we just need our battered editions of Lovecraft and a willingness to cite them. Nareek 11:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)