Cthulhu is not an Elder God?

[darxus]

When I hear "Elder God" I think "tentacle faced monster". Basically Cthulhu. Which is why one of my additions to wikipedia's list of emoticons cracks me up:

3:

Elder God

But I just read, again on wikipedia, that Cthulhu is not actually an Elder God, but a Great Old One. And replacing the "Elder God" definition above with "Great Old One", or just "Cthulhu" just does not have the same tasty comedic timing.

Also, an images.google search for "Elder God" turns up lots of tentacle faced monsters.

Comments

[temalyen.livejournal.com]

Well, here's my understanding of the situation. It's slightly confusing because Lovecraft let other people use elements of his mythos. My understanding, however, is that Elder Gods are forces of good whereas Great Old Ones are forces of evil. Other than that, I don't think there's much difference. Whether or not Lovecraft came up with this or another writer did, I'm not sure. I suppose the terms are somewhat interchangeable.

I'm not even that big of a Lovecraft fan (I only have one Lovecraft book and it's a collection of short stories/novellas), but I'm fairly interested in the God-beings mentioned in his work, moreso than the actual stories themselves.