Alright /x/ let's get a thread going for the GOD of horror

File: Kyubey.jpg (67KB, 1920x1080px) Image search: [Google]

67KB, 1920x1080px

>>18887839
I and a few others reckon this little fucker was Nyarlathotep all along:

Howard was better, Lovecraft a schmuck.

>>18888301
It would have been great if they wrote a book together

>>18887839
Let's be real, the mythos has far surpassed its original author at this point. When you actually read Lovecraft most of his stories are long-winded with exceedingly predictable plot twists.

>>18887839
tried. wanted to like it. borrring as farrrk. a few gems but after a while his stories get so predictable.

Though his universe was rad, he had a shitty writting.
Jean Ray stories are far more scary.

>>18888526
>What is the Colour of Outer Space
>What is the Thing on the Doorstep
>What is the Rats in the Walls

Read more Lovecraft. The imitations are still just imitations, the only realm where Lovecraft has been exceeded is in critique and interpretation of his work

File: high_vs_low_SAN.gif (3MB, 544x612px) Image search: [Google]

3MB, 544x612px

>>18888614
Not that guy, but The Thing on the Doorstep and The Rats in the Walls telegraph the ending so far in advance that it's not even properly a twist when it comes. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call his writing formulaic, although it's occasionally repetitive. It seems to me more like that he was writing primarily to induce a sense of atmosphere in the reader. He does so, and that's what I like about his work. He's a concepts and feels man, plot isn't really his strong point. A lot of his work barely has any.

Look at The Shunned House. Something like 80% backstory, and it's brilliantly done. But it would be super hard to make a film out of it. Most of the historical stuff is too vague to make flashbacks of, and appropriately so. The action is just the narrator and his uncle sleeping in a basement, getting a bit possessed, digging a hole, and aciding a monster that can't actually flee or fight back. But you know pretty much from the beginning that there's something nasty about the house, the cellar in particular. The action is anticlimactic because it's incidental. It's not the point.

Now, on the point of the Mythos being improved after his death (presumably by Derleth), I have to disagree strongly. I like my incomprehensible outsiders to be unknowable. If you rescript them as functional deities and add interpersonal drama, you're doing the one thing you mustn't: pigeonholing them into neat comprehensible boxes. This one is consistently good, that one is consistently evil. Totally ignores the whole point.

For cosmic horror to actually be horror, we need to be portrayed as inconsequential. Powerless, defenseless, and oblivious. Intensely vulnerable.

>>18888526
In my opinion, the only modern author who writes Lovecraftian horror who is consistently on par with Lovecraft is Thomas Ligotti.

dude nigger-man lmao

I'm a huge fan of Lovecraft, but his actual prose is painful to read. Lovecraft is better when written by anyone else. Alan Moore has been doing some amazing stuff with Neonomicon and Providence, if you're into graphic novels

>>18889102

i picked up a collection of Ligotti on /x/'s recommendation. he's very very good at hinting at stuff without spelling it out, which i appreciate. but it was still kind of hit and miss, and ultimately i don't think it was quite what i was looking for.

i've actually found i prefer slightly older writers like Chambers or Machen.

Lovecraft is a giant in terms of his influence and his concepts but, like others in this thread, i don't care much for his prose. he spends a lot of time telling me how scared characters are instead of showing me how scared characters act, most of his twists are indeed extremely predictable (at least to a modern audience), and i don't love the pacing of his stories. very much worth reading, but not so good i can't pretend it's not flawed.