I personally think the GOOs have gender but its of a horrific and unknowable nature to man. As such, I am spliting the difference and going with: Hsi (pronounced: heh-sai)

Hey, I called dibs on "great debate"

I prefer Hesit. It rhymes with cheesit.

kroen said:

Does it really matter? As long as someone is encouraging interesting discussions, it really is not much of an issue what title one uses. Surely there are better things to get concerned about.

Of note, these great debates remind me of threads I have seen on countless forums - especially Boardgame Geek. You are hardly being original.

He.. She.. It.. I simply call them "cuddly bear".... make my investigators a little more brave and distract the doom upon them...

I like She... there seems to be a lot of She AO!

I refer to however they are refered in the source material

kroen said:

Is that a joke?

Just curious, how old are you?

Hey if they're all of unknown gender, why don't we call them Pat?

21

What's that?

johnwatersfan said:

Oh. That's Pat!

While I'm thinking about ways of referring to Ancient Ones, does anyone else perceive a racial slur in the name "Shub-Niggurath"? The name doesn't seem like it's just a coincidence, since it translates roughly to "Black Goat of the Woods," and Lovecraft was by many accounts racist even for his time. I don't mean to get preachy; I was just wondering if anyone else was uncomfortable using that name. I usually just call her Shub.

kroen said:

Wow. I thought you were a teenager. A *young* teenager.

It's not that. It's that I have no ife.

avec said:

Yep. I see it. Although it's not a racial slur. It's something else (slur is the wrong word). What it is exactly, I'm not sure, although I've seen this phenomenon in other imaginary languages (phonetic similarities overlying semantic similarities with a real language— which is in some sense appropriate as real languages often have phonetic overlap as well— due to the historic relationships between disparate languages).

I don't have a problem using the name, along with most other light vs. dark = good vs. evil = clean vs. dirty language (well, that's not entirely true, when I write fiction, this does effect some of how I use color symbolically). I recognize that it exists and existed and think that other people should be aware of it (in my opinion, these sorts of things are much more insiduous when unconscious). I'm not going to bleep out Shub Niggurath's name though any more than I bleep out Mark Twain's "Niggers" or the entirety of Mien Kampf. And no, I'm not suggesting that Twain's usage of the N word is analogous to the product of Hitler's thought process. What I'm trying to say is I don't sweep history under a rug, ever, I don't care how many people are offended by it.

As for Lovecraft being "racist even for his time," I really don't believe that at all (out of literary and historical periods the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century interest me the most). It's amazing how powerful racism was as an ideology among intellectuals less than a century ago. While many racists held somewhat idiosyncratic views (i.e. there was not a unified racist movement— although there were several large racist subcultures), I don't think Lovecraft was extremely unusual for an intellectual of his time (and no, I'm not saying that all intellectuals from his period were stupid about the issue of race vs. culture, but a very large number of them were— based on what I've read, I would imagine the preponderance, although I really don't know for sure, I don't think the issue has been studied well enough).

kroen said:

I'm not sure why that would cause you to act the way you do. There's a whole thread in the off-topic section dedicated to discussion of your seemingly immature behavior.

avec said:

No... well no until now but you you look hard enough you can find whatever you want in what your looking at. I like to call her Shubby! Ol the little Shubby woke up it so... ARGGH! uhh *crunch crunch* ~BURRRP!~

I love how there are two distinct conversations going on in this thread: Race and Lovecraft and whether or not Kroen acts his age.

Weighing in on both:

Lovecraft seems pretty racist to me, at least by today's standards. I mean, look at his cat's names, for Ashcan's sake. (I'm thinking The Rats in the Walls) . Whether or not that influenced his naming of Shub-Niggurath is up for debate.

And I never really know how to pronounce it. To avoid any unfortunate phonetic similarities, I just pronounce it Shub Negoorath. I mean, they aren't really that easy to pronounce anyways.

And I called dibs on getting mad about other people using things you called dibs on.

If only Latin was still taught in schools as it was in Lovecraft's day.

sulphurea said:

It's a dead tongue. My Latin is little to none—I don't know if Shub means anything related to goats, but I know that Niggurath at least means "black" in some way. This is probably the only Great Old One whose name has roots in human tongues. Or we could skew it to say that Latin has its some of its words rooted in the horrors of the stars

I like the personal pronouns because it allows me to perceive the "war" in different flavors according to gender cliches. Shub just wants to have babies, Yog wants to propagate through time and space, Glaaki wants his own football team (offense AND defense), etc. It's something our puny human brains like to do--alter perceptions using its own experiences as a template--and I rather think its a Lovecraftian thing to do, since we are incapable of comprehending the Old Ones on THEIR level.

That, and it makes the banter above our games even more customizable.

Shortening names...that we do because it's just easier and more efficient. Anything over two syllables gets a nickname: Az, Ith, Nyarl, Shub, Yog, Thog, Shudde, Nacha, Nac, Yibb, (speculation) Ghat, Rhan, Zoth, Kotch, Nyog, Chaug. Sometimes Cthulhu becomes "C" for the newbies (or people that just can't pronounce things like Mxyzptlk), but usually we say the full name, out of respect for the one that got us all to the Carnival.

I'm glad someone got my Pat joke... ;-)

johnwatersfan said:

hmmm... a Pat investigator!

Hahaha. Pat investigator!

Ability

Gender Confusion

All monster and investigators are delayed when entering a location with Pat because they are trying to determine Pat's gender.

How would a monster be delayed? How about their considered yellow border (next turn) and if yellow already there returned to the cup... Pat's imune to this effect.