The Stuffed Bear of the Forest With A Hundred Acres
The thing I like best about Lovecraft is how much he exposes the lie of "separate the art from the artist". His racism was his art.

What's scary to him? Stuff from other places. Your mind shattering against the rock of learning the universe doesn't exist for your benefit alone.
He wrote about the progeny of interracial relationships in the same horrified tones he wrote about the offspring of humans and unfathomable alien fish people because they were the same thing to him.
Back when the World Fantasy Award was still using a bust of Lovecraft as the model for their trophy, I said he was the worst possible mascot for fantasy as a genre because everything that is great about fantasy was a source of terror and disgust to him.
Like, imagining other worlds? How horrible! Bad enough that he has to imagine other countries, now you want him to imagine whole other worlds in which, by necessity, every country is an *other* country, relative to his? All the people are *other* people?
A universe, a multiverse, a cosmos so vast that we aren't a tenth of a percent of the living minds that make it up is the kind of thing that makes a fantasy writer go, "Think of the possibilities."

Lovecraft wants us to believe that it's a fatal insult to the frail human ego.
I know a lot of people mine Lovecraft (and the Derleth Cut of the Lovecraft Expanded Universe) and post-Lovecraft eldritch horror and I wouldn't take that away from anyone if I could, especially given how much it resonates with people who identify with rather than recoil from it.
Honestly, I hope that somehow, somewhere, he knows how many people are horny for the horrors he unleashed. It's what he deserves.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Alexandra Erin

Alexandra Erin Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @AlexandraErin

7 Jan
There's more than one cause of this (as there is for everything) but when I hear it phrased like that I can't help but think about how much we have relied on moralization and stigmatization in place of health education, in all aspects of life.
We've got a culture that largely gave up on teaching kids to like vegetables (and teaching parents how to help them do so) in favor of the message "No one likes eating vegetables, but you have to do it, because it's good for you."
Our compulsory physical education involves games but in a "You've got to play this sportsball because today we're playing this sportsball" way, with a lot of bullying and sanctioning of bullying, and adolescent anxiety multipliers built into the system.
Read 11 tweets
7 Jan
So I started playing Control after watching the first of @JuliaLepetit's recent VODs. I'm not super far into it so please no spoilers, but I find that it's a game with a lot to say and I think by the time I'm done I'll have a lot to say about it.
It's fun to watch Julia play it because as a visual artist she keeps stopping to point out things that I would never notice, in particular how the game designers achieve the difficult trick of staging the big areas so that when you enter them you get a striking visual.
Which, you're probably thinking that's not a hard trick, games do it all the time, but I'm not talking about a micro-cutscene with strategic camera focusing and panning. What's trickier is doing it in free-roaming mode with the camera following the player's shoulder.
Read 23 tweets
7 Jan
As somebody who reads a lot of books that aren't written for adults, including books written for a lower grade level than even the first Harry Potter was: they are right and they should say it.
I will also add that a big part of J.K. Rowling's clout lies in mass market appeal. While she wrote from a very narrow perspective, she wrote something that marketers knew how to position to sell to millions.

And a lot of what makes stronger writing stronger is a sharper focus.
And another thing about this kind of comparison is that Rowling's claim to fame is having written 7 books in a single continuing narrative. If R.L. Stine didn't compete at her level, it's unsurprising as he was playing a different game.
Read 5 tweets
6 Jan
Rewatching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and while remembering how good it was, I had forgotten how good it is.

Can't believe there are people who pretend with a straight face that the previous animated adaptation was better than this.
Yes, they're all different adaptations of the toy line(s), by different creators who each hold separate but overlapping sets of rights. I think it's amazing, like a "my cup runneth over" situation.

Which is also how I feel about "Muppet canon".

I guess to be more precise, Revelation is an adaptation of the previous adaptation (I think of it as "the sequel to an enhanced reimagining") and the He-Man and She-Ra cartoons are fresh adaptations of the toy line concepts.
Read 6 tweets
6 Jan
So health update: continuing the trajectory of feeling better, continuing the practice of resting as much as I can till I'm well past being sure I'm over it.

(And increasingly confident that "it" was just my body's usual reaction to a bad cold.)
Today is not a day I would get much done anyway, as it's the most important floating feast day in the current calendar of my life: the day I sit downstairs and wait for the FedEx truck to pull up with the meds I need to function the rest of the month.
My meds are a scheduled controlled substance, so the courier is not allowed to simply place it on the porch and leave. I have to actually open the door, sign the pad, and give my name. It wouldn't be the end of the world if they come and I miss it. Just another day of this.
Read 4 tweets
6 Jan
Fascinating thread with interesting details about a dramatic moment in history, possibly undercut by the preachy justification given in the last sentence of the first tweet.

Here's the thing: it's okay to laugh at the absurdity of death. It's human. It's helpful. It's necessary.
I have said -- and am proud of saying -- that it's only gallows humor if your own neck is on the line, otherwise you're just another heckler in the crowd, and such humiliation is part of a public execution.

But death, so far, that we have been able to tell, comes for us all.
Nobody reading this has to charge up a muddy hill into a munitions-based meatgrinder, but we are all living in an era of mass death and many of us are living under leaders who have made it clear they do expect us to walk into the line of fire for the glory and goals of others.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(