I don't know. If a setting resembles the look of foggy New England then it may well be the trope.
There are basically two parts to the trope, the setting and the themes. The Lovecraftian theme is the most important part of the trope, while the setting is more about the look and atmosphere than the express location. Sometimes the actual location is kept vague, so I don't see a big deal if something was based on or filmed in, say, the Washington State forests rather than Maine so long as the look and atmosphere is consistent.
If the Lovecraftian themes are the most important aspect and not the geographic location, then there's still a lot of misuse. Many examples are just horror set in the Northeastern United States that isn't necessarily Lovecraftian.
In my opinion, defining this trope based on if a work is lovecraftian is a bad idea, namely because people believe a work being lovecraftian as a badge of honor. It makes more sense to define Lovecraft Country as horror set in New England because New England has a long history of being used as a setting in horror fiction.
The line between general horror and Lovecraftian is fairly thin and hard to determine, which is why we have Lovecraft Lite. A true Lovecraft style work is actually a fairly rare thing, as most works evoke some ideas while going in different directions. Conversely, a work set in the backwoods of New England but having no actual horror elements is not the trope at all, which is why the look and style is more important than the specific location given.
The line between general horror and Lovecraftian is fairly thin and hard to determine, which is why we have Lovecraft Lite. A true Lovecraft style work is actually a fairly rare thing, as most works evoke some ideas while going in different directions.
If we're going to say that most horror is Lovecraftian to a degree, then aren't we just defining Lovecraft Country as any horror set in a rural or backwoods area? If that's the case, how is it any different than Hillbilly Horrors or Southern Gothic? I also never said that this trope should be defined as a work set in backwoods New England. I always wanted this to be a horror trope.
The TRS thread
for Campbell Country (started by ![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
) was running under the assumption that Lovecraft Country is not so much about Lovecraftian horrors than it is about the setting Lovecraft often wrote about.
Edited by Synchronicity on Dec 21st 2020 at 12:19:09 PM
Lost in Space
And here again we see the problem of tropes named for works or authors. Bad tropers. No biscuit.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
To be fair to the site, it's a preexisting term. Which does refer to the gloomy New England setting.
The issue with Campbell Country was that it was defined as horror not set in New England, so the setting was a key aspect of that trope. If Lovecraft Country is going to be whether the work has Lovecraftian themes and not geographic setting, we should clearly define what it means to be Lovecraftian. If we say all horror is Lovecraftian to an extent, then the trope is meaningless.
It's not that all horror is Lovecraftian, it's that the boundaries of Lovecraftian are technically quite small and will have a lot of overlap with other horror elements. When talking about the far edges of the trope, I can see how a work may try to evoke the look and feel of that environment even if not explicitly set there.
If the trope is just a shorthand for the location it's a pretty useless designation, as Lovecraft implies something radically different and plenty of non-horror Stephen King novels are in the same place.
Lost in Space
Lots of horror is set in small towns mimicking the U.S. Northeast. Okay, great. Just like Expy, naming every stock setting after its notional originator is a recipe for minimal context tropes. Lump it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lump with what? Or rename?
Lost in Space
I feel like we ought to have a Stock Settings trope or index, but it's redlinking.
Well, we do have Settings, so that's probably too broad as a supertrope. Just call it Creepy New England Town or something.
Edited by Fighteer on Dec 21st 2020 at 4:26:52 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I mean, TV Tropes didn't exactly coin the term Lovecraftian. It's like any of the MacGuffin subtropes.
Though I can't really say one way or the other if the trope needs a clean up, likewise if the name is the source of those issues.
Lovecraftian tends to be misused because people seem to think Lovecraftian horror is better than regular horror. I've seen plenty of amateur horror writers describe their work as Lovecraftian as a marketing ploy. That's why I'm hesitant to define this trope based on if the setting feels "Lovecraftian".
Lost in Space
We didn't coin Nakama, but we decided it wasn't a trope, or at least not with that name.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Well Lovecraft, and especially the Cthulthu Mythos, are a pretty well established subgenre of horror. As a name I don't see much wrong with it, but as being brought up the trope seems to be a catch all for any horror story set in the New England backwoods, brought on by its indecisive description. I would even say a rename to New England Backwoods Horror might be better for it, because if New England matters more than the Lovecraft atmosphere then the name was bad regardless.
The big difference between it and something like Hillbilly Horrors would be that it's about a very specific type of horror story and that New England is a very specific group of states. Hillbilly Horrors could cover just about any backwoods US location East of Missouri, with a preference towards The Deep South, but horror can also include slashers, monsters and aliens without becoming Lovecraftian.
RJ Savoy
It is a preexisting term, used for a wide range of stories that take notes from Lovecraft, but to have examples we need a strict definition. It might be best to take the narrowest definition, and restrict it to works set in New England, or in fictional or undisclosed locations that clearly draw on Lovecraft's stories, and where we can identify themes from Lovecraft beyond being horror. Then note on the article that the term may be used more widely.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Lovecraft Country is supposed to be about horror set in New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island). Many people seem to apply this trope to the north eastern United States. Then there are some examples that aren't even located in the Northeast. On the trope page there are at least two examples set in Maryland, one in Wisconsin, and one in Russia. This seems like Trope Decay to me.