Yknow I actually didn't make the connection between popular annoying guy "old god" horror terminology & how it's drawing from lovecraft until just now but that really explains why it's always so fucking racist, doesn't it?
The racism runs a lot deeper than what he named his cat it's like thoroughly infused through his work and the underlying ideas his stories communicate. Like I'm not saying we have to completely discard anything lovecraft inspired or influenced but maybe try thinking about what you're saying when you're talking about (checks notes) pre-colonial religions being scary
H.P. Lovecraft was so comically racist that it's an internet meme & I, too, will make fun of him, but I thuink maybe also we should try being more Actually Critical of uh. That. Yknow. The comically racist shit he was saying. Before we try riffing off his work. Surely there's a way to get a little cthulhu with it without being a turbo colonizer
It's also worth noting that a LOT of lovecraft's inspiration and ideas of cosmic horror came from The King in Yellow -- a fantastically, mind-bogglingly racist book itself. Not to detract from Lovecraft's own racism at all, but that the ideas he was building upon were themselves deeply rooted in racism, imperialism, nativism, and antisemitism before he added his own to them.
Cossmic horror is a really fantastic thing done right, but even the seminal texts of its seminal texts have some of this baked in and it's worth examining them in that light.
