Despite this, Journey to the West (a novel) and the Cthulhu Mythos (a series of novels by H.P. Lovecraft) lets lumped into the category. Of course in Journey to the West's case, the novel is itself accepted into Daoist culture and there are even statues dedicated to Sun Wukong. The Cthulhu Mythos, however, gets lumped in with mythology whenever the opportunity arises (most recently in SMITE where he's introduced as the BBEG), which is a weird flex for a series of stories written by a man who thinks black people are cats.
Wait, Lovecraft thought black people were cats? But he hated anyone who was a specific kind of white, and adored all cats? Is this a reference to a specific Mythos story I'm missing?
His family owned a black cat when he was growing up (the cat died of old age when H.P. Lovecraft was 14), who was named N****r, probably by his uncle or father.
The more telling story about Lovecraft's racist xenophobia is that he was so proud of his "pure" Anglo-Saxon heritage that, when he learned that one of his grandparents was Welsh (and thus a filthy Celt) he was thrown into a mental breakdown that he resolved by writing a story about evil fish people infiltrating a small town.
Lovecrafts racism is evident in his writing. He was racist I imagine due to the cultural backdrop of the time. If you read any of his stories, it usually features some otherworldly presence, whose existence threatens or troubles a group of minorities or uneducated folk, or perhaps this group were worshiping said otherworldly being, and some learned white man usually attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery, often loosing his mind on the way.
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u/Flashlight237 13d ago
For context, here's the dictionary definition of mythology: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mythology
Despite this, Journey to the West (a novel) and the Cthulhu Mythos (a series of novels by H.P. Lovecraft) lets lumped into the category. Of course in Journey to the West's case, the novel is itself accepted into Daoist culture and there are even statues dedicated to Sun Wukong. The Cthulhu Mythos, however, gets lumped in with mythology whenever the opportunity arises (most recently in SMITE where he's introduced as the BBEG), which is a weird flex for a series of stories written by a man who thinks black people are cats.