I don’t have it out for you. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have a problem with this particular author coming up year after year after year with the same mantra being spoken by people who are either fans or just oblivious. And yes, I am definitely familiar enough with his works to know that this:
Is not true. Those monsters, the cultists, the freakish people down at the docks… If you see someone you might describe as Other, you see vile, it is very likely Lovecraft is equating them to minorities and foreigners, not White Europeans. Not only did he see them as less than human, he wrote them as not humans. It’s not subtle, and you cannot simply ignore it. If people are going to draw from this material for future work they have to take it seriously and stop defending the man, so they can leave that kind of vileness behind when they create their works. This only works if they do this, and fortunately Evil Hat knows to do this because they did work.
This is not a new topic for gaming. It’s not new for fantasy or sci-fi or books or awards or board games or video games or movies or television. Lovecraft is a topic that comes up time and time again. We pretty much had the exact same discussion we just had here before… in another Lovecraft topic actually linked above. It’s not even new here.
It’s not being treated as new because it’s not new. And it’s more than frustrating to see the same ole hey he was only so so bad “for his time” or hey I’m a fan so he couldn’t possibly be that bad, or but oh those were just the letters not the stuff I like.
This man was thought to have night terrors, not nightmares but terrors. He preferred to go out at night. He supported the KKK. He absolutely thought anyone he considered an Other as subhuman not worthy of voting or really life. He hated sex. He has a toxic legacy, and you know what, the world of fantasy and sci-fi doesn’t just have a legacy of racism and exclusion through Lovecraft, it is notorious for it’s exclusions, for the wall that doesn’t allow anyone else in.
I will never ever know what it is like to go through life blissfully not knowing how horrific the origins are for some of my most favorite hobbies. I will never know what inclusion really looks because it will never happen in my lifetime We can’t get past these discussions of what already is, of what we already know, so forget trying to include the new, the different, and maybe not Euro centric of today. This guy has thousands, thousands of letters, several written works that are obviously racist and we still can’t stop having this discussion. Hell just think how this would be if we didn’t have that and suddenly there are claims of academia just making it up.
And I think it is a very small ask that we acknowledge and not accept the excuses that keep showing up with every discussion about one of the most notorious racists who also had a profound effect on fantasy and horror fiction. I am not asking everyone to know everything or really anything about Lovecraft just because or even to post here… but at the very least, very least, IF someone is going to show up in the 3rd, 5th, 50th discussion about him, they should at least take a minute and actually know something about the person they’re defending. And for this guy, for Lovecraft, getting that knowledge is easily available to everyone with minimal effort.