benlehman

I don't really think these are different, except cosmetically, and by observation.

Lovecraft isn't really about liquescent horrors from the deeps of space; it's really about the desolate idea that there isn't really a smiling old man in the sky who made us and is looking out for us, and the painful loneliness of a world that really just doesn't care.

I guess that, distanced from the culture that assumed Warm And Friendly God Power, and immersed in a society that's all about the cold uncaring world, that aspect loses its impact, and that's part of why Lovecraft's writings are blunted to us. So like we read At the Mountains of Madness and expect it to be scary, and we have to invent something to be scary because nothing really is but there is supposed to be, so we decide, "Oh! It must be this weird cabbage alien and the albino penguin city! Tekeli-li!"

So, in conclusion, I'm guessing here that insulated horror is subversive horror that depends on something that we canour own horror here, generated by real emotional responses to the content of the text; it's just where we see the symbols of horror and so we say, "That is horrific;" it's fossilized into a linguistic response.