racism mostly (like the guy was considered extremely intolerant even for the standards of the time, which was the 1920s and 30s, so… y'know). he was also antisemitic, classist, xenophobic, and generally held intolerant views of anyone who wasn’t white, christian, came from a ‘respectable background’, wasn’t well educated, was an immigrant, and/or wasn’t middle class or higher. unfortunately these themes affected his works, so a lot of his depictions of monsters and the characters in his stories contain or are based on negative/offensive stereotypes. a lot of people will just tell you to look up what his cat was called (spoiler/warning: its name contains the n word slur) but imo that doesn’t cover how his bigotry extended far beyond that and people who try to defend the guy’s image will tell you 'well his dad named the cat that, not him’ (as if he couldn’t have chosen to change it if he wanted to…).
tl;dr lovecraft was very bigoted even by the standards of his time and this is a theme in some of his works, so crediting the cosmic/eldritch horror genre to him when there are better works and writers out there isn’t the best move - there’s no denying his influence, but trying to improve on and critique his legacy is much better! and more fun honestly. his writing is not that good.
racism mostly (like the guy was considered extremely intolerant even for the standards of the time, which was the 1920s and 30s, so… y'know). he was also antisemitic, classist, xenophobic, and generally held intolerant views of anyone who wasn’t white, christian, came from a ‘respectable background’, wasn’t well educated, was an immigrant, and/or wasn’t middle class or higher. unfortunately these themes affected his works, so a lot of his depictions of monsters and the characters in his stories contain or are based on negative/offensive stereotypes. a lot of people will just tell you to look up what his cat was called (spoiler/warning: its name contains the n word slur) but imo that doesn’t cover how his bigotry extended far beyond that and people who try to defend the guy’s image will tell you 'well his dad named the cat that, not him’ (as if he couldn’t have chosen to change it if he wanted to…).
tl;dr lovecraft was very bigoted even by the standards of his time and this is a theme in some of his works, so crediting the cosmic/eldritch horror genre to him when there are better works and writers out there isn’t the best move - there’s no denying his influence, but trying to improve on and critique his legacy is much better! and more fun honestly. his writing is not that good.
Anonymous