Despair

This is real.

This actually exists.

A Cthulhucon.

For those of you who are fans of the paranoid, weird, macabre, doomed, depressing, haunted tales of HP Lovecraft, this seems like a truly inspired gathering.  There's even a screenplay contest!  My favorite title:  "Call Girl of Cthulhu."  That's got promise.

Unfortunately, it's in Portland, OR, and I don't think I'm burning any vacation time to get there.  Additionally, I can kinda guess at the general condition of the attendees, which while probably somewhat cleaner than a GenCon or DragonCon, is probably a lot more....Rob Zombie.  Conjecture, sure, but it takes a very different person to wrap your whole life around horror and occult movies than that of who wraps their whole life around gaming systems.  Whatever.

I got into Lovecraft about a decade ago, starting with the collected works entitled Necronomicron (which is also a grimoire mentioned in several of his stories).  I now have several Lovecraft collections, and though the infamous Cthulhu is mentioned only a few times in Lovecraft's actual stories, "his" mythos drives much of where the author was coming from.  Our source of underlying anxiety, common among all of mankind, is the evil presence of Cthulhu, waiting to return.  That's reflected, then, in all of Lovecraft's stories.

Lovecraft was also heavily influenced by science, in that given the scientific advancements of the early 20th Century, he came to view humanity as increasingly insignificant in a vast universe.  He sprinkled into that sentiment that not only are we insignificant, the universe is also actually out to get us, but only because we're a cosmic pebble among greater forces that render everything we believe sort of silly.  Themes like that allow for the creation of truly awful horrors which we cannot overcome, and glimpsing the true nature of those forces would drive our puny brains mad.  That's some damn good fiction, you ask me.

And now?  There are games (Arkham Horror, Cthulhu Dice, and Elder Signs to not even scratch the surface), a webcomic based on the much-beleagured University of his stories, car decals, a Presidential bid and...the Con!  And that doesn't even begin to get into how deeply Cthulhu pervades gamer, geek, and horror fiction cultures.