Why exactly is The King in Yellow so dangerous according to Aquino?

[Xepera-maSet]

The first four are the only relevant ones.

[idgo]

I never quite finished this one, though I was very charmed by it. I should go back and do so. Which of the short stories would you most recommend, Idgo?

Oh jeez. That's a tough question -- most of them interplay with each other in a way that I fear might be lost if they were taken in isolation.

For mindfucks around time and timing, try The Mask or The Demoiselle d'Ys. The Mask is more "sci-fi", d'Ys is more fantasty.

For a nicely self-contained little horror story with a touch of romance, try The Yellow Sign.

If you like themes of American artists hanging out in Paris, any of the Street / Rue ones will do. Four Winds has the most immediately obvious depth to it though First Shell tells a good war yarn with a touch of insanity.

I found the Repairer of Reputations most the most dissonant/uncomfortable of the tales, especially due to assuming it was written some time in the mid-1900s rather than recognizing it as the futurism it actually represents.

From an LHP perspective, an Alchemist would enjoy The Mask, a Vampire might enjoy the final two stories for their plays on power and identity, an Oneiromancer might either enjoy or get badly skeeved out by The Yellow Sign.

I find they get less blatantly weird after the Repairer of Reputations.

A particularly amusing quest would be to attempt to reconcile the whole set of stories such that there is only one Sylvia, and similarly the other names. I suspect it may be plausible, but have yet to chart it all out.

[idgo]

The first four are the only relevant ones.

Why do you believe that? If its source is in Aquino's writing, I've missed it.

From consuming them as a set, I strongly suspect that the latter stories at least flesh out the world of the former, if not directly add new concepts.

d'Ys comes back around to themes of The Mask, and offers them from another angle. Philip from it can be seen to show up again -- earlier in his life but later in the book -- in the Street of the First Shell. Additionally we passingly meet a Hastur in d'Ys, who could be seen as another face of Hastur from Reputations.

The Prophets' Paradise stands alone moreso than any of the other stories, and wraps itself up in series of the particular sort of conceptual loop that's present though less tightly wound in the others -- it's almost as if that story's purpose is to get you spotting the loops elsewhere.

If the first 4 carry the brunt of the book's message, then the Street/Rue cycle fill out a context and view of Paris that greatly enriches at least the Mask and the Yellow Sign.

And how one even begin to reason about the Yellow Sign's Sylvia without First Shell and Four Winds' Sylvias to inform whatever the heck complex the author had about some chick so named?

[Xepera-maSet]

Bump.

[Xepera-maSet]

I often think the Yellow King is that darkly obsessive part of the mind. He targets obsessed people, even modern day like True Detective. He's that cut in your mouth you can't stop playing with, the thing from your nightmares you try so hard not to think about but can't help it.

[NEMO 93]

@Xepera maSet  That makes a lot of sense, I need to read the book.

[Olive]

I loaned my copy to a friend that I am teaching a bit about magic. They ended up staying up all night madly reading through it in one go. They reported a very strange and disassociated state of mind produced by doing this. Apparently all of the contradictions and intentional misdirects become a lot more significant and confusing during a single read.

[Xepera-maSet]

He read the 4 tales or the entire book?

[idgo]

Xepera, to bump: On what grounds do you believe that only the first 4 stories are relevant?

[Xepera-maSet]

They're the only ones actually about the King and his play, beside reference to Hastur once.

[Olive]

The entire book, Xepera. Although they mentioned that the section entitled “The Prophet’s Paradise,” was something of a breaking point directly following the first 4. The short poems are quite mind twisting and a bit eerie at times. I would include them with the significant portion of the book, at least. I’ll have to reread the back half eventually to see if anything jumps out at me.

[Olive]

I called and asked them about the back half again just out of curiosity. They described it like this:

“The first story starts off in this incredibly dark place, and as the stories go on they fuck with you more and more until you reach a point where everything breaks down (the prophets paradise) and then after that the stories just become sort of normal. But although they are less interesting - you are in such a twisted state of mind that you almost become the paranoid schizophrenic from the beginning, looking for things that aren’t there.”

They also mentioned something about reusing names from the beginning towards the end and that messing with them, but again I’ll have to go back to see exactly.

[Xepera-maSet]

Thoughts.

1. The Yellow King is absolutely related to time itself, and not in the way of Yog-Sothoth. This has been absolutely cemented in the 21st century by True Detective. If you guys havent watched season one you must. He's related to the concept of Nietzsche's flat circle, the idea wherr we are constantly reborn into the same life doomed to the same suffering. This leads to

2. The Yellow King is absolutely related to impending Doom. He shows up before a characters
Insanity boils over, before one experiences an accident and resulting suicide, before one gets ill, and before one dies if I remember correct. Even other tales not from Chambers, like the superb Viking in Yellow, has the king foreshadowing disaster. Hell this is the significance of his appearance in Carcosa, they're immediately doomed once they realize the king has come.

3. The king is akin to Nazis in they're evil. Sure there's been more destructive and violent groups than Nazis, but none so clearly esoterically driven by true metaphysical evil. The king is the same, the other gods, even nyarlathotep, just does what they do. The Yellow King is intentionally malicious.

4. The Yellow King is the true identity of the God pretending to be Yahweh. It's another trick.

5. I agree part of the danger is people like me who want to fill in the blanks and fall under the sway of the king for, well probably forever. I can't even see the color yellow the same.

[Xepera-maSet]

And let's be clear the Yellow King isn't Nyarlathotep.


Edit: I originally said Hastur was never the name of the yellow king. This may be wrong as Hastur is the name of a God as far back as "Haita the Shepard". However, this could be the entity in D'y, and not the Yellow King himself.