About ten years ago, I watched a movie called Dagon.
Dagon is a horror movie about half fish people. It is loosely based on HP Lovecraft's story, and it definitely stuck with me. In 2005 I found a band called Dagon with an evil looking mermaid on the cover of their CD. I fell in love with the mermaid artwork, and the guy at the record store was awesome enough to let me keep the cover without actually buying the CD. A few months later I got the mermaid tattooed on my upper back. Unfortunately I can not find a picture of the art for the life of me.
I decided I wanted to read Dagon. I went to the library to get it, and while I was there I saw this, also by HP Lovecraft:
I was absolutely amazed by the artwork on the cover, so I checked the book out along with Dagon. I read Dagon, but never ended up reading anything from this book. It is full of short stories, and I had no idea where to read about the giant monstrosity on the cover.
Over the years I never forgot the art. I really wanted to get this tattooed as well, but could not think of a less graceful thing than a giant squid like apparatus on my back. Over the years I did things to get try to get it out of my system so that I wouldn't get it tattooed; I traced over it a couple times, I even tried painting it. Nothing really worked.
So recently I started researching it a little bit more. I found out the artist of the portrait is Raymond Bayless. I also found out that the monster is called Cthulhu. Researching it more I found out that it is apparently the god of Lovecraft's characters. I also found out that the book has the story on Cthulhu, which is appropriately titled "The Call of Cthulhu". Metallica's song from Master of Puppets called "The Thing that Should Not Be" is based off of Cthulhu as well. I've heard that song dozens of times before, and I had no clue!
So what do I do? I decide to turn this art work into a lolita skirt.
By using Spoonflower, I will be able to print this portrait onto fabric. Cthulhu and his cavern will be on the front of the skirt, and the rocks will be along the bottom of the fabric the rest of the way around.
My first step in doing this was buying the actual book. My dad said I needed a high resolution photo instead of pulling it off of the internet (something to do about pixels). That version of The Dunwich Horror has since been discontinued, so I had to order an old library book from Ohio. I'm glad I did, because I was then able to read the Call of Cthulhu. According to the story, Cthulhu was sent down from the stars and has been around for eons. He's been in suspended in time, dead but dreaming, waiting for the right time to awake. By reading the book, I found other things that I'll be incorporating into the skirt:
Lovecraft developed a language for the Cthulhu cult (the cult are the people who help Cthulhu awake when the 'stars are aligned properly') This is their chant:
Ph'nghui mglw'nath Cthulhu R'ley wgah'nagl fhtagn
It means, in his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
I want to put the chant on the bottom of the skirt, underneath the rocks. I want it to be in some nautical looking script.
I also found the latitude and longitude coordinates for R'lyeh, which I want to incorporate into the skirt as well. I am still kind of stuck about how to do so.
I know of a couple girls in the lolita community who can sew, so I'll be seeing if one of them can help me turn the fabric into a skirt.
As for the coord, thats an entirely different story. The color scheme is going to be pale green and gray. I see this having the potential to be both a pirate and mermaid coord.
Either way, I'm pretty excited. I can actually say that I'm content with my lolita wardrobe in a way that I haven't been before. I don't feel the need to buy new stuff anymore, and all I have left to do is sell off most of my old sweet stuff. I'll only have 3 JSK's and 2 skirts, but I feel that's enough. My wardrobe is still versatile enough to wear sweet when I want.
Oh, and the Royal T meet next week, I don't know what to wear yet!
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