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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9893031" data-attributes="member: 18">Sturgeon's Law is meaningless circular logic that's promulgated by oldies like us who have been on the internet too long and have just started repeating catchy memes from our youth which never actually had any truth or wisdom to them, and which are notably abandoned by basically everyone under 35 unless they spend way too much time on Reddit. But no, Sturgeon's Law is false, it's circular logic that self-defines. One you start asserting that 90% of everything is crap you just redefine what crap is to be 90% of everything, even when it's very clear that isn't true. It's an ouroboros of idiocy and self-congratulation.Sorry rant over but don't Sturgeon's Law me maaaan, you might as well say "Stockholm Syndrome" if you want to trigger me about popular stuff that's absolute gibberish (Stockholm Syndrome was genuinely created by a single unqualified psychiatrist to cover for police carelessness and idiocy during a hostage situation, you can look it up).The issue with "Lovecraftian"/Eldritch Horror is two-fold:1) Over the last decade, more and more games called themselves or got called "Lovecraftian"/Eldritch Horror to the point where it became basically completely meaningless, just the vague hollow shell of an aesthetic, like steampunk (which interestingly, it's often combined with) became, but weirdly cyberpunk never quite did (or perhaps did in the 1990s but recovered). Anything which has anything creepy or weird going on that isn't zombies/ghosts/vampires/some forms of body horror gets called "Lovecraftian"/Eldritch Horror, and stuff that intentionally calls itself that but isn't actually using Mythos elements tends to be particularly crap and lazy in both its ideas about horror and how it delivers them (again, it's usually just a hollow aesthetic).2) Relevant to this:Lovecraftian and abomination aren't the same thing, so I'm not sure about conflating them here. Weird monsters aren't inherently "Lovecraftian" and I think the desire to label them such without reflection is part of the problem, because suddenly a lot of stuff coming from very different cultural places to Lovecraft and Eldritch Horror is getting called that.HOWEVER!!!!I do think this is actually slowly improving, on two fronts - there's more actual Mythos reclamation as I mentioned and that's slightly more likely to be good - and there are more games actually engaging with existential/eldritch horror as horror rather just "make it purple and put a lot of tentacles and eyes on it, that's scary right?!?!".I blame WoW in part for causing this problem (and D&D, honestly), which has possibly the lamest and least-creepy "Old Gods" in gaming history (certain for an AAA), and really just triple-downed on the aesthetic in the worst ways for years (even there they've kind of improved the aesthetic in the new expansion I admit).</blockquote>

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