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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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I've never tried reading any "sympathetic to the monsters" Lovecraft-inspired fiction, but I would argue that Lovecraft himself was good at writing them in a way that was both alien/horrifying and understandable/sympathetic (in the cases where it served the purpose of the story), despite him writing horror in which it was almost never a primary emphasis.

I haven't read much Lovecraft-inspired fiction, and it's been a while since I've read Lovecraft himself, but I'd highly recommend the PS4 game Bloodborne for a great "sympathetic to the monsters" Lovecraft-inspired fiction. If you don't like games or don't have access to a PS4/PS5. I thought it did a great job of doing exactly what you're describing Lovecraft himself as doing, presenting these elder gods as both alien/horrifying and understandable/sympathetic. And it doesn't go for the obvious "humans are the real monsters" approach, presenting most human characters as parts horrifying and sympathetic, and the whole story just feels very tragic on all fronts for all characters, including the elder gods. This being a Fromsoft game, the story is cryptic and difficult to make out from a single playthrough, though there is no shortage of YouTube videos that dissect it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Fromsoft is a Japanese company with Japanese writers and developers, and their style of writing and game design tends not to be heavily influenced by Western/American norms, despite most of their famous games, including Bloodborne (set in heavily fictionalized Victorian London), being set in Western settings with Western characters.