Lovecraft References

[DamnDirtyApe]

This one might be too much of a stretch, but there's a similar character element. When Bran and the Reeds are telling tales in the Nightfort, it's mentioned that Night's King's "very name [was] forbidden."

The villain in HPL's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" is a necromancer named Joseph Curwen, who was active in the years leading up to the American Revolution. When the upstanding people of Providence, Rhode Island learned of all of the horrors Curwen was engaging in under their noses (he was summoning Yog-Sothoth and bringing dead people back to life as slaves, among other things), they killed him (for the first time, anyway), and his name was wiped out of as many public records as possible, so that he was largely forgotten by the 19th century. The eponymous Charles Dexter Ward is a descendant of Curwen's who discovers the cover-up and brings him back to life with instructions Curwen left for just such a purpose.

So, there you go. Maybe more of a stretch than you're looking for, but there's definitely some similarities between the two, up to and including the possibility that Night's King was a Stark and therefore, maybe an ancestor of Bran (Night's Watch vows notwithstanding).

[TheSovereignGrave]

I don't really think that's much of a stretch, since we don't exactly know that the Night's King was a Stark for one. And destroying all mention of someone's name/existence as a punishment wasn't something Lovecraft made up.

[WeaselPie]

The Necronomicon -

- First mentioned in The Hound, a story about graverobbers. (gravediggers?)

- The Dunwich Horror gives us more about the Old Ones the Necronomicon ang Yog-Sothoth

"Nor is it to be thought...that man is either the oldest or the last of earth's masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks

alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them, they walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. .... Yog-Sothoth is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again."

Yog-Sothoth is a decent parallel for Bloodraven, particularly since he is associated with the Old Ones

The Old Ones - something like children of the forest, possibly. Certainly seems parallel with the CotF going into Weirwood trees and capable of inspiring visions/dreams

"...Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died."

Nothing exact of course, but plenty of parallels.

-

I think someone mentioned part of this story above.

Re: The Elder Things, long story short

In At the Mountains of Madness, the Elder Ones are discovered in a largely unexplored Frozen continent (Antarctica) beyond an enormous range of Mountains. The advance party is mostly slaughtered. The party sent to find them discover that the Elder Ones created a race of mindless helpers. Some of the Elder Ones come back to life. In the end, one of the surviving explorers sees something beyond the Mountain Range that even the Elder Ones had feared, and he goes insane.

Reminds me very much of the Others and their wights, as well as Bran's vision beyond the curtain of light at the end of the world.

The Elder Ones also had conflicts with the starspawn of Cthulu and the Mi-Go (other non-human races) of other Lovecraft stories.

[Drekinn]

Great lists there. Kinda sad these places won't be explored as much as Westeros is. But sometimes less is more I suppose.

[Sigella]

The sistermen with webbed fingers and toes deserves a mention under #7, I think.

[syrioforelseesforreal]

DAGON'IT stop with the lovecraft stuff!!

[MerlingManderly]

Rereading AFFC and noticed a reference to "The Whisperer in Darkness".

 

In one Brienne chapter Nimble Dick tells about his ancestor Clarence Crabb who had a castle called the Whispers where he had the severed heads of his enemies. The heads were kept alive with sorcery and gave counsel to Clarence.

[thehandwipes]

Asshai by the Shadow seems like a reference to the the Shadow over Innsmouth.  No elderly in Innsouth because they return to the sea.  No children in Asshai, perhaps they aren't recognizably human.

[Jak Scaletongue]

On 2015-02-02 at 10:57 AM, LordToo-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse said:

This could very well be Tsathoggua,

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Tsathoggua

I should have guessed there was a Lovecraft wiki out there somewhere!  I bought a collection of Lovecraft's for my Kobo, and I've been trucking through it so I could understand all these references a bit better, but I can't bring myself to read it before bed, so reading has been slow!  I'm still gonna read the stories (cause they're awesome!) but now I can understand the references without nightmares! YAY!  Thanks!

 

On 2015-02-06 at 5:56 PM, TheSovereignGrave said:

I don't really think that's much of a stretch, since we don't exactly know that the Night's King was a Stark for one. And destroying all mention of someone's name/existence as a punishment wasn't something Lovecraft made up.

 

No, it certainly wasn't something Lovecraft made up.  It was used quite extensively in Ancient Egypt.  Akhenaten and Hatshepsut are two examples of rulers they tried to destroy or alter.  One's name was very important in Ancient Egypt, and to have your name erased after death was to ensure that you'd never make it to the underworld (it's a LOT more complicated than that, but that's the gist).  It's quite fascinating.