Talk:Great Old One

Great Old Ones in Doctor Who novels

As mentioned on References to the Cthulhu mythos, some of the Doctor Who novels from the 1990s identified various powerful entities from the original Doctor Who series with various Great Old Ones — for example, Hastur was Fenric, the Nestene Consciousness (which powered the Autons) was one of the offspring of Shub-Niggurath, et cetera. I was going to add a short note about this to the article, but couldn't figure out where best to put it in the article's organization. Since the table includes things like the appearance of M'nagalah in Swamp Thing, should this just go into the table somehow? I don't really know much about Lovecraft scholarship, and don't know what the widely accepted view of canon (fiction) is.

I would have just put a note at the bottom, but there isn't a section, and it felt out of place with all the scholarly citations. —Josiah Rowe 16:35, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

• Regarding the issue of the Great Old One M'nagalah, I came across this on the net:

CTHULHU IN THE COMICS - Part One: The Superhero Books

The following instance of DC utilizing the Mythos was much more satisfying as a whole, and occurred in a much more fitting place: a monster-hero comic! SWAMP THING # 8 featured "The Lurker in Tunnel 13!", written by Len Wein and drawn by the incomparable Bernie Wrightson, and introducing the very Lovecraftian Old One, M'nagalah. You may recognize the name, for no less an author than Ramsey Campbell picked up the tentacled amorphous monster for inclusion in his intriguing Revelations of Glaaki, as evidenced by a passage in his story, "The Tugging"! And the team of Wein and Wrightson must be congratulated on this story, for "Lurker" manages to convey a mood and careful attention to detail seldom exhibited in such four-color efforts at Mythos story-telling!
—James Ambuehl, Boyd E. Pearson and Dan Ross, "I. The DC Comics Company"

In "The Tugging", Campbell describes M'nagalah this way: "a tentacled mass of what looked like bloated raw entrails and eyes..."

^Gate2Valusia^{Oh?..(contribs)} 03:51, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I've read (and even own) that issue of Swamp Thing — it's a good story. But I'm afraid it doesn't help me with my question about how best to incorporate the Doctor Who info... :) —Josiah Rowe 04:46, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

• I recommend adding a ==Great Old Ones in other media== section before the ==References== section. It might look something like this:

==Great Old Ones in other media==

* Blah..blah..[[Doctor Who]]..blah..blah.

It would also be a good idea to include a reference for this info under the ===Books=== or ===Web sites=== section in References (you probably already know this stuff, but it may still be of use to others). Information for citing sources is found here (which, admittedly, I don't religiously adhere to). You might consider using Wiki's reference templates. For example, a simple web reference template looks like this:

{{Web reference_simple | title=Title | URL=http://www.example.com | date=Month Day | year=Year}}

^Gate2Valusia^{Oh?..(contribs)} 02:33, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Requested move

Shouldn't this article be under the plural title of Great Old Ones, not the singular, because it's talking about them collectively?

• There is a simple answer to this question: No. The reason is because Wikipedia's naming conventions for titles specifies that articles should always be titled (whenever possible) in the singular. I agree that "Great Old Ones" would be more logical, but then this is Wikipedia and not Cthulhipedia (though I wish there was such a thing!), so we have to play by their rules. ^Gate2Valusia^{Oh?..(contribs)} 09:48, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

But then we have Greek sea gods, Twelve Olympians, Moirae, etc. for the plural title, and Titan (mythology) for the singular. It seems like plural is perfectly fine when talking about a group of related deities. Also, as that page says, the "ALWAYS" part of the rule is in dispute, and in cases where plural is normal, you should probably go with plural. At least it's not an adjective title, like Anti-aircraft and Anti-tank used to be. Night Gyr 10:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• Those are some good points. However, I'm not so sure that plural is the norm in this case — primarily because the "Great Old Ones" are not strictly a unified pantheon. The term "Great Old One" seems to be more descriptive than anything else (as in "Zhar is a Great Old One" as opposed to "Zhar is a member of the Great Old Ones". BUT! Wikipedia often bows to consensus; so, if enough users say that "Great Old One" should be moved to "Great Old Ones", I certainly won't object (in fact, I just added a template to address that very issue). ^Gate2Valusia^{Oh?..(contribs)} 13:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the subtelties of this, but I followed through with your move request, taking into account that the article itself uses "Great Old Ones", and that a reference at the bottom also uses this. If the move needs to be undone, let me know and I'll be glad to help out. --HappyCamper 13:48, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

The wheels turn fast on Wikipedia! If no one objects to this move, I think this will be final word. ^Gate2Valusia^{Oh?..(contribs)} 13:56, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I believe this is called "WikiBoldness" WP:BOLD :-) --HappyCamper 17:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Gol-goroth

I noticed that a user changed Gol-goroth to Gol-Goroth; since no references for this change was cited, I changed it back given the following rationale:

I have four references that support the spelling Gol-goroth. In Robert E. Howard's "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" (1931)—the story that introduces the deity—the following paragraph appears (italics added for emphasis):

There are many gods in Bal-Sagoth, but the greatest of all is Gol-goroth, the god of darkness who sits forever in the Temple of Shadows... I forbade men to worship Gol-goroth... I had strong men take heavy hammers and smite the image of Gol-goroth, but their blows only shattered the hammers and gave strange hurts to the men who wielded them.^[1]

In C. J. Henderson's "Free the Old Ones" (1995), the sudden inclusion of the "Old Ones" into popular culture leads the protagonist to ponder their various names: "There were... figures identified as Y'golonac, Daoloth, Shub-Niggurath, Glaaki, Eihort, Byatis, and the like. My personal favorite was 'Gol-goroth, the forgotten Old One', more for the lurid title he had been gifted with than anything else."^[2]

In "The Fishers from Outside" (1988), Lin Carter drops the hyphen and uses the spelling Golgoroth. For example, in one passage we learn that Abdul Alhazred in the Necronomicon stated that "the Fishers were the minions or servants of the demon Golgoroth, who had anciently been worshipped on Bal-Sagoth".^[3]

In addition, Daniel Harms uses the spelling Gol-goroth in his article about the deity in The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (pp. 124–5).

I realize this is overkill, but I hope I have at least supported my case for using the spelling Gol-goroth (and if nothing else, perhaps this gives more insight into this particular Great Old One).

• ¹ Robert E. Howard, "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth", The Dark Man and Others, pp. 104. New York, NY: Lancer Books, 1963.
• ² C. J. Henderson, "Free the Old Ones", Made In Goatswood, pp. 194. Scott David Aniolowski (ed). Oakland, CA: Chaosium, 1995. ISBN 1-56882-046-1.
• ³ Lin Carter, "The Fishers from Outside", The New Lovecraft Circle, pp. 90. Robert M. Price (ed.), New York, NY: Random House, 1996. ISBN 0-345-44406-X.

RlyehRising 19:57, 20 November 2005 (UTC)