Where did the term Outer God come from? The term Other Gods in Dream-Quest seems to refer to them, but did Lovecraft ever call them "Outer Gods?" Or is this just a fan term that we in our arrogance made up? --Niser Resin
- I think you can blame Derleth for that one.RingoRoadagain (talk) 14:48, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
- Nope. Derleth grouped all the relatively hostile deities into one group, which he interchangeably called "Great Old Ones", "Ancient Ones" or "Evil Ones". The term "Outer God" (obviously based on "Other Gods") was probably introduced by the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. Salchipipe (talk) 16:12, 4 January 2021 (UTC-3)
- TILRingoRoadagain (talk) 22:03, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks for asking, I was looking for it as well. I kind of thought it was originated from Démons et Merveilles, the French translation of the Dream-Quest of Kadath the Unknown and a (somewhat partial) selection of stories from the Dream Cycle and of Randolph Carter's stories, that is rumored to be fairly poorly translated and with cuts and invasive restructuring of the story, so I wouldn't give it much credit even if it was indeed present in that edition. If anyone has a precise reference for it (precise author and/or media), I'm interested (I want to complete w:c:marvel:Outer Gods and the page here could need it as well as it currently lists Lovecraft as creator). Undoniel (talk) 22:41, 6 January 2021 (UTC)
- According to the search function https://www.hplovecraft.com/about/search.aspx of the HP Lovecraft Archive, the phrases "outer god" and "outer gods" don't appear in Lovecraft's fiction. I feel like this article should make that clear--and we should get rid of the paragraph that discusses Lovecraft's use of a concept that was introduced after his death. Hrairoo (talk) 00:27, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- A couple questions regarding that:
- 1) Are the creatures identified as Outer Gods used in Lovecraft's personal stories? Not saying they were called that by Lovecraft himself, merely did he actually describe/use creatures that are now called that?
- 2) Would it really be necessary to remove the paragraph discussing this as opposed to just rewriting it? I read the article, and it doesn't so much say he used the term but more referenced beings that were later labeled as Outer Gods. It kinda reminds me of the way Bloch mislabeled Dark Young as "Shoggoths" in Notebook Found in a Deserted House. MDGeistMD02 (talk) 05:51, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- I think one should be careful about attributing fictional concepts to authors who didn't use those concepts. It's like if Marvel Comics incorporated a bunch of Shakespearean characters into into their universe, and decided that Puck and Prospero were mutants. Then the Shakespeare Wiki writes, "In Shakespeare, mutants were characters of great power...." These characters weren't mutants until Marvel decided to make them mutants. To the extent we want to say that the later conception of Outer Gods (by Chaosium?) drew on concepts that were found in Lovecraft, we should make clear that that's what we're saying. Hrairoo (talk) 10:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
- To answer the first question, yes he did. He called them "the Other Gods from Outside" or "the Ultimate Gods". Of course, the concept was expanded upon after his death (I don't think he ever intended them to be the same as Yog-Sothoth's species), and as Hrairoo says, the page should be edited to reflect that. I don't think the paragraph needs to be removed, but I think it could be rewritten, or at least contextualized. -- BlueFrackle (talk) 12:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)