So, I have been wanting to write this, along with part 2 of this for a long time, but couldn't due to my fingertips getting bruised.
I don't like horror.
Humans dying is either funny, or traumatic, there is no inbetweeners for me.
So when I first learnt of the concept of this 'Lovecraftian horror' I didn't pay any heed to it,
I knew Love craftian horror didn't contain much gore, but depended on that whole, "something too weird to comprehend" stuff, nevertheless, I put it among other horrors,
This continued until one day, someone asked me how i feel about it, and I said, "it's stupid."
On that night, I saw a dream in which the spirit of HP Lovecraft himself asked me,
"How can I improve my work?"
He didn't say anything else, just that statement.
And that left me dumbfounded.
If any horror author were to ask me to review his work, I would had annoyed the hell out of him, pointing out every cliche and stuff that didn't made sense.
But I possibly can't do that to Lovecraft.
He created the genre.
It's like...such an absurd idea, I don't even have an analogy for this.
I mean, you can teach the inventor of chess the rules of chess, I am sure he would love to learn more about en passant or casting or any other variations you play with.
But with Lovecraft, for the first time, I just felt like I am not qualified.
When i woke up that day, I googled who he was.
A great author who used real life locations and his knowledge of geography, they said.
Now, google recommended that I read The Calling Of Chuthulu(I hope I spelled that right)
But, I mean, the title wouldn't be "why lovecraft is cringy" if I had just read his most loved book and ended it there.
Nope!
I went and searched for the first story he had every written.
Not even a book, but a story.
Aye, this was the time when HP would write stories for a local magazine.
And people, I must say,
Lovecraft, was cringe indeed.
And it's not that he didn't knew it, I could feel him cringing from my screen, by passing the time and space gap.
One problem that newbie authors face is choosing a name,
Even when they do choose a name, if the said name happens to be of another language or culture, it feels very cringy to say it.
Lovecraft himself always avoided naming his characters.
Even when he did had to name them, he would name them Bob, Joe and other generic names and then never mentioned it again by having the characters not say each other's name at all.
Even while naming places, he would often name them, 'City A'
For a long time, Lovecraft's earliest stories suffered like this.
It was only when he started collaborating with another author did he first named all his characters, as opposed to having butlers named Butler as seen in his earlier works.
As for the plot, while it's not the greatest thing in the world, Lovecraft has tried to deliver an unexpected ending to every one of his stories, even though most of them are predictable.
The characters couldn't possibly be plainer, they had more 2d personality than an isekai villain.
The world building was the worst and would contradict itself in order to make things more convenient for the MC.
For a 500 word stories, these were decent, but not very alluring.
Better luck next time Lovecraft, I hope you improve.
