Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
It's precisely the telling which makes it worthwhile. I bet Cthulhu isn't any more horrific than anything you'd find in movies now. But telling that only looking at it would drive you mad is a potent narrative device that does a far better job than showing a description of the creature that obviously won't drive you mad (or probably will).
Literature is oral medium recorded on paper, there's always the figure of the narrator "telling a story" and the story unfolds from his POV. Leave "show don't tell" to visual media like movies or games, which is why no movie villain will ever be as nightmarish as Cthulhu, since we can see it's just some bad makeup or clear cheesy CG.
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The showing, if you pay close attention to the mythos could not be done.
What makes the elder gods and unmentionable horrors cause madness is the concept that their existence stretches into more dimensions of reality than our normal reality even has, and that in proximity to them humans develop an ability to percieve them...but do not develop brains that can process the added dimensions of reality. M.C. Escher on steroids.
This was truly a novel concept in Lovecraft's day, and it is an integral part of the overall mythos not re-explained in every story.
The narative style often follows because the persons to whom the events actually happened are now often wholly mad.