The unknown is scarier than the known. If something is known, then sometimes it can be defeated, countered, or tamed; what is unknown, only avoided, and only sometimes. Unknown: Cthulhu, terror of the deeps, beyond human comprehension. Known: a really big, carnivorous octopus. And so the creatures that were scary in H.P. Lovecraft’s time, shrouded under Lovecraft’s narrative and revealed at Lovecraft’s pace were scary, but when transplanted out of context, they became jokes. So you have these weird things hanging out in the culture, where they’re canonically supposed to be super scary but the details don’t live up to it.
Decades later, writers exploring the edges of human comprehension start to find things that are genuinely scary; things which can’t be defeated by an off the shelf squid-seeking submarine torpedo. And these were kind of technical and not emotionally resonant by themselves, so they named them after Lovecraftian monsters to make them memorable.
We’ll get to those. But first, the lighthearted version, to the tune of Good King Wenceslas; and if you happen to discover any unfortunate cosmic forces, well, Yog-Sothoth’s name is still available.
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