Look, a journal!

Okay, it is now time for me to complain about something that probably no one else cares about.

("But xen0glossy," you may say, "isn't it always that time on your LJ?" Yes, but this is different because it has nothing to do with my own life. Anyway, you've been warned.)

See, I like Lovecraftian horror. I really do. For all that it's a bit overdone these days (especially in interactive fiction, the medium which inspired this rant) and for all the flaws of the original material, for whatever reason it remains one of my favorite horror subgenres. I will pretty much read/play anything in this vein that I can get my hands on.

However! Modern Lovecraftian horror authors, can we please stop replicating the more problematic aspects of Lovecraft's stories? Namely, the part where the horrible Old One-worshipping cults always go back to the Barbaric Rituals of the Savage Natives of Darkest Africa/the Mysterious Orient/pre-colonial America? Okay, if you're following Lovecraft canon to the letter, I guess it can't be helped, but I've seen this in works that don't specifically use the entities of the Cthulhu Mythos as well. It isn't omnipresent, but it shows up much more than I'd like it to.

Granted, usually these are only brief passing mentions that aren't given the same amount of emphasis (or level of nastiness) found in Lovecraft's stories. But it shouldn't be there at all. And you can argue that usually the stories end up with white Americans and/or Western Europeans joining horrible cults and practicing Barbaric Rituals as well, so it's not exclusive to foreigners or Savage Natives, but there is still the uncomfortable subtext of said Americans and/or Western Europeans being corrupted by the influence of Nasty Foreign(/non-white) People and their Suspicious Foreign Ways.

Just once I'd like to see a horrible Old One-worshipping cult originate in the distant past of Western Europe. Or, hell, in the modern USA — plenty of cults and religions have started there in the real world. You could do a pseudo-Scientology thing, for instance — I know making fun of them is overdone too, but I think there's potential in the idea. Genre fiction author starts religion which worships weird space monsters, no one pays it much mind, but it turns out he's tapped into something real and dangerous. (Er, not to belittle how dangerous cults can be in real life. You know what I mean.) ... I've gotten sidetracked. Point is, there are options. In real life, unpleasant ideologies have gotten started in all kinds of places with all kinds of people, so there is absolutely no reason to limit them to these particular groups in fiction.

tl;dr: Lovecraft was really xenophobic. We're all aware of this (at least, I've never met a fan of his who denied it). So with that in mind, can we please be a little more careful about what we borrow from him? Thanks.

* I'm leaving out Eastern Europe here because it has its own history of being known as a place where Scary Things Come From; it's just that it's usually more vampires and werewolves than betentacled monstrosities representative of the cold uncaring nature of the universe.

(PS: Speaking of things Lovecraft hated, happy Passover, guys. If any of you celebrate it. Which, probably not. But I couldn't resist the opportunity to mention it in a post about Lovecraft. Also, man, I really want macaroons now. Too bad I've never seen shredded coconut in stores around here.)

I would like to present sports festivals as evidence that Japan hates me, personally, and wants me to be unhappy. They combine three of the things I like the very least — sports, hot weather, and getting up early on Saturdays — into a nine-hour cocktail of oh god kill me now. Yesterday my supervisor said "Tomorrow you should maybe wear a hat" in the tone of voice that means "you had better wear a hat or I will be forced to be deeply embarrassed on your behalf", and while I have a pretty decent collection of hats, the only vaguely sportslike one I have is the Junpei baseball cap that came with my P3P preorder. So I had to wear that and I am hoping so, so deeply that no one recognized it.

On the bright side, I got a lot of writing done. Progress on the Stupid Vampire Novel after about a month of going "blah I don't feel like writing"! (As for my Japan blog... ha ha ha no.) The plot is really contrived, which bothers me, but it's at least half parody and also... a vampire novel. Plus I don't come up with plots so much as I have Neat Ideas and spend pages and pages writing about my Neat Ideas and then go "oh shit I need a plot in order to justify the existence of all this other stuff".

( tl;dr )

And then I went home and baked cookies until my hands fell off in preparation for my intro classes next week. More of the dough than I'd like to admit found its way into my mouth. So much for any good I might have done by jumping rope and/or lugging chairs and tables around. At least when this is done I probably won't want to look at cookies anymore for a while, because holy crap five schools is a lot of baking, even if I'm cutting each cookie into tiny bits. Maybe I've... bitten off more than I can chew.

(Holy shit I write long entries these days. And I post a lot more frequently than I used to. Chalk it up to living alone and having no friends I can actually talk to face-to-face. Sorry!)