Finished reading the Call of Cthulhu

12:36 AM (of Sunday, September 29th 2024)

Today is Saturday, September 28th 2024 and I started and finished reading the Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft today. This is possibly his most famous work, with Cthulhu being his most famous character. The work is a classic to be sure, but because I've read lots of works inspired by this, reading the source of that inspiration left me left me unimpressed.

The reason I started reading H.P. Lovecraft in the first place, is because I saw another anime today. Just as a curiosity, I started watching, and I hate this extremely long name for this anime, My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! Most people just shorten this to Instant Death, so I started watching Instant Death today as a curiosity. After finishing most of the series, I looked at the Wikipedia to read about this character more, and his ability is explained as an eldritch horror possessing his body granting him the ability to kill anything with thought. Then I looked up eldritch horror, and it lead me to H.P. Lovecraft as the creator of this genre.

I've known about H.P. Lovecraft for years, since like high school, maybe 2010. I've probably known about Cthulhu since elementary school, because the cartoon show The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy featured some episodes with him in it, so that's when I learned about him. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade, 2004 or 2005, hearing Cthulhu for the first time on that show, and then I think I either looked him up, or I clicked on the info button on the remote to read the episode description, and that's where I saw it spelled for the first time too.

9:01 AM (of Sunday, September 29th 2024)

I fell asleep.

Anyway, the anime Instant Death is probably the most violent anime I've ever seen. It also features the most overpowered characters I've ever seen, with the main character being the most overpowered as he's able to beat them all. Judging from the anime's title, the first time I read it, I thought that the main character was overpowered and that everyone else around him was weaker in comparison, sort of like a main character having a machine gun in a fantasy world, the machine gun is overpowered in that world. But, I was wrong, there are tons of extremely overpowered characters in the show too.

The show features several characters called sages who cannot die and are extremely powerful. The show features several characters who have some sort of instant killing ability and the sages are immune to it. Either the sages can regenerate extremely quickly, or they heal extremely quickly, or they can come back to life after being killed, or all three, these sages can't die except for the main character killing them. The sages themselves are extremely overpowered, one of them levels up every millisecond, she's at level over 5 billion already, and every level up increases all her stats and she fully heals, so no one can hurt or kill her, not even instant killing abilities. She just comes back to life every time she dies too.

Another sage is a vampire, she also just regenerates instantly, can make exact clones of herself that is just as powerful as herself, an infinite amount of them, and she heals instantly and comes back to life when killed. All the sages are actually like this. All the sages cannot be killed, and they have extremely overpowered abilities. Another sage can alter fate itself by believing in things, she can nullify abilities if she thinks they don't make any sense, or make it so that nothing can hit her if she believes in plot armor, she's also immortal and recovers instantly.

Then there's sage candidate characters, which is what the main character is, and all of the thousands of people who were transferred to this other world. Every single one of them has super powers as well, and they are sometimes just as overpowered as the sages' powers or even more overpowered. There can only be one new sage per generation though, so they have to kill each other until there's one left, and they become the new sage.

The main character mercilessly kills off tens of people throughout the series. He's the second most powerful person in the series. It's revealed in the wiki that the entire universe is dreamed up by this one character, Great Sage Mitsuki, who started everything. He's god, he is the most powerful character who can just do anything, he gave all the powers to all the sages, and he made them too. He literally runs the entire universe. Apparently this is the second re-run of this world, and he made it so that the main character now has a permanent killing ability, anything killed by him is gone forever. The main character killed 60 million people in the first run of the world.

Anyway, so all the sages and everything, the main character can kill. He can even kill this god with his thought alone. I don't know why the god didn't make it so that he's immune to the main character's abilities or add limitations to his abilities. The only person able to kill any sages, other than the god, is the main character. The sages fighting each other doesn't make sense, since they are all immortal, none of them can kill each other, even if they have an instant killing ability, even if they can alter fate, the sages are all equally nigh-nigh-omnipotent (not quite nigh-omnipotent, almost nigh-omnipotent).

The main character can kill any object, any person or living creature, any concepts too, anything. He can kill off a language, a word, gravity, the planet, the sky, anything, that's his ability. When he was falling down from a high place, he killed off his momentum to slow his speed down. When an acquaintance was being pulled by a suction force, he killed off that force. He also kills sages at his will. Anyway, it's the most violent because he goes around and murders so many people and has no remorse. He actually also even wins against the Great Sage Mitsuki, who is the god of the universe, by killing off the god's abilities and connection to the universe, so that this god becomes powerless and comatose.

So this is the second most overpowered character in fiction I have ever come across. I've seen hundreds of fictional series, read them, watched them, this character overpowers them all, except one. Not even the Azathoth of this universe could win against this main character. Azathoth is the most powerful character in the Lovecraft Mythos, the entire universe is the dream of Azathoth, who is omnipotent. If he wakes up, everyone dies. In the VS Battles wiki, this main character would be second most powerful, and would win against any other character except one.

I'm not sure why this character was removed from the VS Battles Wiki, but The Writer is the most powerful character in fiction. The Writer is the writer of the fictional world, and arguably the strongest, even beyond the god of the world. I mean H.P. Lovecraft is more powerful than Azathoth, since he can make Azathoth powerless with his writing alone. The Writer was introduced in this comic called Animal Man, and I love that The Writer was revealed to be a vegetarian in that dialog alone. Some other vegetarian characters in fiction are Superman, Wonder Woman, Animal Man, Beast Boy, and Bruce Banner (not the Hulk his alter ego, but the character Bruce Banner). That's so interesting to learn about, I would read about that tomorrow (Sunday), reading this article called "15 superheros (and villains) you didn't know were vegetarian" by Screen Rant.

Anyway, characters like Goku, Superman, Azathoth, The One Above All, Kaidou, Luffy, Cthulhu, and so on, all of them would die instantly to this main character. This main character can't time travel or pause time or anything, but he's likely immune to those effects as well, he's immune to the fate altering abilities of the sages. Some sage candidates actually can pause time, and they still can't win against the main character. The main character can probably "kill his lack of ability" to do something, such as to fly, to enable himself to fly. I don't see why he wouldn't be able to do that.

But yeah, reading the Call of Cthulhu today, it was a classic, but disappointing too if you're expecting much more. It's a really slow paced book, and Cthulhu isn't as powerful as you'd think. He's just some Great Old One, who turn people mad when they look at him, but people are still able to escape him. Apparently Cthulhu can't swim because characters escape him by being on a boat and getting away, though Cthulhu tries to chase them down.

The book is set in the 1920s or 1930s, so there's no Internet, and the main characters have to gather information by asking experts like professors, archaeologists, and policemen. It starts with the main character finding the notes of his deceased relative, who has a bas-relief of Cthulhu along with notes about it. He then goes off on a detective-like discovery mission finding more clues about it, and more clues about Cthulhu's existence. He finds there are tribes around the world who worship Cthulhu and all chant the same lines in an unknown language, which translates to something like "In the deep ocean lies Cthulhu in the city of R'lyeh dreaming, and one day he will awaken and rule the earth again."

Ultimately the main character finds the notes of a traveler who found the city of R'lyeh, as it was above the water temporarily. In the city, he encounters Cthulhu, who kills everyone except for him and another person, they both die later driven to insanity, but this character is able to write about his account of his discovery and encounter. The end is the main character trying to write notes of all his discoveries, and he entitles it The Call of Cthulhu, making it a circular work.

It's an interesting tale with a lot of mystery and wonder, for the time period. Nowadays we can just ask the Internet for any kind of knowledge that we want, while he went up to professors and other experts asking them for info, traveling long distances to seek them out. The clues and info about Cthulhu are given bit by bit, trying to get the reader to become more curious about him, with the final discovery being a satisfying one, notes about encountering the city of R'lyeh and even Cthulhu himself.

My parents and I also went out to Costco and Wal-Mart today. At the Costco, my parents saw this praying mantis on the back of a car, reaching out trying to get to the forest across the road. The problem was there were all these cars driving through constantly and he would get run over. Serendipitously we parked next to this car with him on it, and we saw, him, so I went out and let him get on my phone then he climbed up my arms and shirt onto the back of my head, and then onto my shoulders. He also jumped off and landed on my shoe.

Anyway, I pick him up again and walk him across the street, he'd jump off again and landed in the middle of the street, I picked him up again and ultimately put him on the other side. That was a cool experience. I got some pictures of him on my shoulder, and also some pictures of him on my hand. This is my third encounter with a random praying mantis and holding them. I have pictures from all of my encounters with them.

At Costco, my mom wore a Friends not Food shirt with a bunch of farm animals on it. I think it's a great shirt. We bought a bunch of different foods and I paid for them. I hope they don't stop restocking the Beyond Burgers, it looked like there were only a couple of boxes left. Then after this, we went to Wal-Mart and bought some other foods there.

I could have gone to the gym after, but I didn't. We ate, and then I just read manga and watched anime the rest of the night, wasting my time.

Anyway, that was my day today.