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.
One, the Cthulhu mythos doesn’t have a single author, it was initially am effort by H.P. Lovecraft alone, but was adopted by Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith some years into the project, with the stated goal of the Cthulhu Mythos being to act like a mythos, which conflicting stories and perspectives. To the point that after H.P. Lovecraft’s death, Clark Ashton Smith did his best to make the mythos public domain and even didn’t copyright it in France when he had his friend's works translated and sent them there. Technically, anything written in the Cthulhu Mythos is canon to it, as it is that author’s understanding of the Other Gods. Yes, even Sucker for Love. And much like a normal mythology, it is up to the individual to accept the story, or reject it for the contradictions it brings. Like how sometimes Athena is Hephaestus’s older sister and how sometimes Hephaestus is the one who cracked open Zeus’s skull to free here. Both are present in the mythology both are canon to it, and both disagree with each other.
Two. To H.P. Lovecraft, to compare an any person to a cat is an insult to cats. For they are the truly Babylonian in their features and quite esoteric in their demeanors. Whereas humans hold so many flaws as to list them would require enough time to speak on every human alive.
Edit: grammar, corrected some historical mistakes I made
It's impressive to see the interest of modern humans in creating their own mythologies, first as author-built fictional universes with their own bibles of settings and characters and rules, then as collaborative efforts where multiple authors add to the lore, generally under the helm of a company like most pop-culture productions, then as the rare attempt at a more public-domain lore such as the Cthulhu mythos, or the more recent SCP Foundation, to an extent. The problem with collaborative efforts is, of course, that they still rely on the original work of an author or a group of authors, and if one of those core authors is outed as problematic, the entire lore downstream can get tainted by those authors' biases, such as the Cthulhu mythos' inherent fear of the unknown being guided by Lovecraft's own xenophobia - little can be done to separate the newer art from the former artist in that case.
Indeed, but if you're willing to let a 135 year old man who was so paranoid that he was afraid of air conditioning and so self-contradictory that as an antisemite he married a Jewish woman dictate your enjoyment of the face of cosmic horror, then you're just weak. Accept death of that author already and enjoy the newer stuff made on his foundation. Ain't even like you're supporting a racist family buy buying his stories, the man had no kids, only cats.
Then you are supporting kittens. And you should picture the cuteness of the kittens instead of focusing on their racism. They are kittens, they'l eventually realize that all humans are lesser to them and not just some of us.
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u/Flashlight237 9d 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.