2015-07-31 17:23:24 ¶ ●

## Hi...haven't yet read "The Deepwater Bride" (I'll probably tackle the issue this weekend), but did read your F&SF interview. I was amused by your mention of stories where shoggoths are killed by bullets, and I was wondering: did you have any particular piece in mind? I ask because I actually published a story last year in which two people do indeed kill a shoggoth with firearms. I've no problem with the criticism; in fact, I'd be tickled if my work was reaching that wide an audience. Thoughts?

I’ll illegally use this ask to do two things: first, to link to my interview in the F&SF website for “The Deepwater Bride” (spoiler-free!) and to link to Desmond Warzel’s “The Only Game In Town” which I found on Drabblecast and had not, in fact, read before. (Hoping you don’t mind the link.)

Hello! I did have a particular piece in mind when I talked about win-loss narratives and Lovecraft, but it wasn’t actually a piece of written fiction: it’s Lovecraft narratives as we’ve had to apply them in the world of video games and board games. Arkham Horror was the first one that sprang to mind, and I say this as someone who loves Arkham Horror a lot. If you’re not familiar, in Arkham Horror the entire point is to shoot increasing waves of Lovecraftian monsters and take down the Big Bad before the time runs out. It’s excellent. It’s also not scary, simply because it does predicate itself on the idea that the way to take down the Old Ones is through a boss battle. Arkham Horror is not scary in all the ways that, say, The Shadow Of The Comet or the glorious Anchorhead is; both games cleave to a more truly Lovecraftian idea of outrunning and slowing down evil, rather than a finality through bullets. (And having now read “The Only Game In Town”, I won’t say much about it, but I feel it gives much more narrative weight to prayers than firepower and thus escapes all of my criticism!)

I’d wanted to talk in-depth about weaponry in Lovecraft, text adventures and the red herring of the fight, but I realised that what everyone could be doing, right at this moment, is playing Michael S. Gentry’s “Anchorhead” which has a female protagonist and a huge reversal of the “save your wife” narrative, so the words have been blessedly taken out of my cake hole.