What are the Great Old Ones and why do they make such good fictional villains?

There are a lot of fictional properties that contain lore about the Great Old ones, and all of them go back to H.P. Lovecraft's creations in his rather "unreadable" horror fiction. I say "unreadable" because there's almost no dialogue. Reading them is like reading a first hand account of events but with narrators describing things in terms that no one alive today would use. They are going to appear in the last season of Sabrina on Netflix (assumedly) in force, and it seems like a very good choice as the whole Satan storyline seems to be a bit played out. Additionally, they are in the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition game as the power behind the warlock class, they are in movies like Hellboy and the Cloverfield franchise (loosely), they definitely inspired The Mist (a Stephen King story), and they make their rounds in online memes during political season with "Why vote for the lesser evil? Cthulhu (insert date)." I could probably name a dozen other times the Great Old Ones either directly inspire something in a story or directly contribute to it. HBO is about to add a new series called Lovecraft Country, which will (no doubt) have Great Old Ones in it. So, I'm here to ask and perhaps answer the question: what are the Great Old Ones and why do they make such good fictional villains?

The Great Old Ones are a group of unique, malignant beings of great power created by H.P. Lovecraft. They reside in various locations on Earth, and they once presided over the planet as gods and rulers. They go by strange-sounding names like Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Cthulhu. In nearly all of the stories featuring Great Old Ones, there's a common theme of human insignificance and cultists. There are always cultists.

These are people who have noticed that there is actual, physical proof of one of these things existing, which makes them unique as the only godlike figures with definite presence behind them. The cultists seem to not realize that these gods of the world have no good side at all, and they stumble over themselves to get on the good side of the "true religion" as fast as they can. And then there's usually the subject of timing, which mostly has been set in the 1930's, but has found success in modern and future timelines as well. Here's a bit on that "timing" part from the tabletop roleplaying game, The Call of Cthulhu:

"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals...

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth."

So why do they make good villains? Rather, why do people (authors and writers) mine Lovecraft's mythos for villains to insert into fantastical horror fiction? I think the answer is a bit...complicated. For one, they are completely invincible in comparison to humanity, so as far as a threat goes, it's always high-stakes (which makes for great storytelling). Second, their alien nature is so utterly bizarre that it creates madness in all who gaze upon them. This is also a great storytelling hook. Who hasn't been entranced by the rantings and ravings of a mad person in a fictional story? Finally, Lovecraft himself said something about them which gives a clue as to why they are great villains. He said that the Great Old Ones were meant to be amoral rather than malicious. This is in keeping with his belief that the universe itself was alien and uncaring, which makes them in many ways "unknowable." Whereas in the figures of Satan or in undead, we may see something familiar, I think that the horror of the Great Old Ones is increased because they are unlike anything we can imagine. The closest thing might be something we see in the Prometheus movies, but even that (I think) falls far short of the apocalyptic awfulness of the Great Old Ones.

An island rose out of the sea and I instantly thought of Cthulhu

Yesterday, a deadly earthquake in Pakistan caused an island to rise from the sea. Now, I don't mean to make light of such a tragedy by drawing a connection to fiction, but I can't help but think of Cthulhu and his home/prison of R'lyeh.

R'lyeh by Decepticoin on deviantART

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Cthulhu mythos, R'lyeh is a fictional lost city that first appeared in the H.P. Lovecraft short story "The Call of Cthulhu," first published in Weird Tales in 1928. According to Lovecraft's short story, R'lyeh is a sunken city in the Pacific that makes its appearance for one day every thousand years or so.

Here's how Lovecraft describes it:

The nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh...was built in measureless eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults.

Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen, the narrator of one of the tales in the short story, describes the accidental discovery of the city as a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror--the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh... loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.

TL;DR: An island rose out of the sea, and I instantly thought of Cthulhu. It's eerie how fiction can sometimes show up in one form or another in real life. Crazy, right?

Cthulhu

Today is my Monster Fest post for fabulous blogger/writer Sommer Leigh who runs one of the most professional websites that I frequently visit.  If you've never been to "Tell Great Stories" I truly urge you to do so. Sommer's posts are always cerebral and examine the world of writing and publishing from unusual and fresh perspectives.

[T]he nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults...In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Artist rendering of the City of R'Lyeh where Cthulhu is said to dream.

Here is how Lovecraft describes Cthulhu...

"The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way clown toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally life-like, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it shew with any known type of art belonging to civilisation's youth - or indeed to any other time. Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy. The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present, despite a representation of half the world's expert learning in this field, could form the least notion of even their remotest linguistic kinship. They, like the subject and material, belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it. something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part."

R'LYEH

R'lyeh is characterized by bizarre architecture likened to non-Euclidean geometry. Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen, the narrator of one of the tales in the short story, describes the accidental discovery of the city: "a coast-line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror — the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh...loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours". The short story also asserts the premise that while currently trapped in R'lyeh, Cthulhu will eventually return, with worshipers often repeating the phrase Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn: "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming".

Lovecraft claims R'lyeh is located at 47°9′S 126°43′W in the southern Pacific Ocean. Writer August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft and co-creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, placed R'lyeh at 49°51′S 128°34′W.[2] The latter coordinates place the city approximately 5,100 nautical miles (9,400 km) from the actual island of Pohnpei (Ponape), the location of the fictional "Ponape Scripture". Both locations are close to the Pacific pole of inaccessibility (48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W), a point in the ocean farthest from any land mass.  The city is said to rise from the deep on its own for one day every 1000 years.

THE AGE OF CTHULHU

Cthulhu is set in that same time period that we find King Kong. It's the 1920's...there's much of the world that is still unknown.  Pervading all of this are Lovecraft's short stories that hint of ancient civilizations hidden by the waves kinda like that huge wall in Peter Jackson's film and the ruins all over that island.  You have steam-powered schooners, flappers, old-style cars, detectives that look like Humphrey Bogart's character in Casablanca... and people smoking cigarettes everywhere because it's "glamorous".

The Setting for King Kong 2005 is very Cthulhu-esque. I think Peter Jackson could
make an outstanding Call of Cthulhu movie because it would have many of the
same elements as seen in this film with the giant monsters, the mysterious island
and the ruins of an ancient city emerged from the bowels of the ocean and surrounded
by a blanket of thick fog.

I'm not the biggest fan of Lovecraft's actual writing. I'm thankful that the stories are short. He's heavy-handed with his vocabulary and the stories tend to read much like a diary would so they are very dry. I think I would prefer being immersed into the story than have it be told to me in passive first person, past tense. And I don't like the way his stories end. It's like he takes you up to the point where there could clearly be more and then just cops out and says that the narrator went insane and thus, there's no more that's written.  However, his world-building is impressive. Boys in particular seem to be drawn to tales of dark and evil things as long as very little is known about them.  Something about this "unknown and mysterious element" appeals to their imaginations, and I think, is the reason why this kind of mythos continues to endure. Every boy at some point discovers Cthulhu...becomes intrigued by the weird sounding name, wants to know more and discovers that there is in fact, very little known about it outside of roleplaying games.

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My own writing has "Cthulhu mythos" inspired creatures and has been described by some reviewers as a "dark fantasy populated by terrifying monsters." Please give it a try if you like glass spiders, hockey sticks, and monsters from the id (subconscious). In "Slipstream", a dark god lays dreaming...