#literature – @horizon-verizon on Tumblr

Being into gothic horror is wild, because you’ll look up the reviews/public opinion on a book and all the posts will be like “ugh, this was insufferable. The main character was the most melodramatic whiny narcissist cunt who’s perspective I’ve ever had the displeasure of following. When the main character wasn’t whining, it was just pages and pages of the most useless boring shit describing stupid landscapes over and over again. Boring and insufferable to read.”

And then you’ll get the book and read it and it’ll be like “Hi, I’m gothic protagonist. My entire family got brutally murdered by an unknown person and I also got horrifically abused as a child and struggle with severe mental illness, and now there’s unholy paranormal forces at work all against me, but at least I have the love of my life and my closest friends who I’d kill and die for and they’d do the same for me. Even though I’m cripplingly psychologically unwell and severely burdened with the mass of terrible things in my past, I’m going to figure out and track down the thing that killed my family and seek to destroy it, whilst poetically mirroring my suffering with the most beautiful and profound descriptions of the nature around me that you’ve ever read, contrasting the horror of nature with the beauty and goodness of it and giving you an existential crisis. This book is going to make you so ridiculously attached to these characters and change your whole perception of the life you lead.”

lady-dulcinea

That attitude is, annoyingly, very prevalent among reading spaces. And aside from sounding very much like hollow criticism — I mean, most of them barely even discuss the plot and it’s apparent shortcomings, focusing instead on things that bothered them personally with no regard for how said things serve the characters and narrative — there is also a certain laziness (for the lack of a better word) in their complaints. It often feels like they refuse to even engage the work for what it actually is, instead of the more digestible version they imagined in their heads. I don’t even mean that in the cultural sense, of readers being outraged at the bigoted values the author had no remorse in adding to the book’s philosophy; I mean that it feels like they don’t really want to read anything that isn’t “significant” character interactions or passages directly related to the main conflict. As in, the description of scenery and subtle character details, all those things that contribute to the atmosphere, themes, and psychology behind the premise, are woefully disregarded by people who have no patience for such, that don’t want to do the work of interpretation as much as they’d rather take every word at face value.,

(Also, don’t even get me started on how some readers commit to engaging with Gothic Horror specifically and then somehow come out of it baffled — baffled, I say! — about the presence of disturbing imagery, dark themes, and the truly incomprehensible concept of a villain/unsympathetic protagonist.)

#Literature #Gothic Literature #Gothic Horror #Literary Criticism #not asoiaf #fav post #reblog

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a-romantic-velociraptor

vladimir-nabokov-official

“Lolita isn’t a perverse young girl. She’s a poor child who has been debauched and whose senses never stir under the caresses of the foul Humbert Humbert, whom she asks once, ‘how long did [he] think we were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together…?’ But to reply to your question: no, its success doesn’t annoy me, I am not like Conan Doyle, who out of snobbery or simple stupidity preferred to be known as the author of “The Great Boer War,” which he thought superior to his Sherlock Holmes. It is equally interesting to dwell, as journalists say, on the problem of the inept degradation that the character of the nymphet Lolita, whom I invented in 1955, has undergone in the mind of the broad public. Not only has the perversity of this poor child been grotesquely exaggerated, but her physical appearance, her age, everything has been transformed by the illustrations in foreign publications. Girls of eighteen or more, sidewalk kittens, cheap models, or simple long-legged criminals, are baptized “nymphets” or “Lolitas” in news stories in magazines in Italy, France, Germany, etc; and the covers of translations, Turkish or Arab, reach the height of ineptitude when they feature a young woman with opulent contours and a blonde mane imagined by boobies who have never read my book. In reality Lolita is a little girl of twelve, whereas Humbert Humbert is a mature man, and it’s the abyss between his age and that of the little girl that produces the vacuum, the vertigo, the seduction of mortal danger. Secondly, it’s the imagination of the sad satyr that makes a magic creature of this little American schoolgirl, as banal and normal in her way as the poet manqué Humbert is in his. Outside the maniacal gaze of Humbert there is no nymphet. Lolita the nymphet exists only through the obsession that destroys Humbert. Herein an essential aspect of a unique book that has been betrayed by a factitious popularity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov (tr. Brian Boyd), Apostrophes (1975)

brujahinaskirt

Véra Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov’s editor and wife (among so many other things), mentioned in interviews with her biographer that he threw the Lolita manuscript into a fire several times (she pulled it out). Vladimir Nabokov spoke openly about his fear that the industry and an idiot public would pervert his book into a saucy sex fantasy instead of a study on predatory patriarchal horror. I hate how right he was.

#not ASoIaF #lolita #literature #vladimir nabokov #sexualization of young girls #cw pedophilia #tw pedophilia #Metaphysical solipsism #solipsism #russian literature #victim-blaming

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finitefall

Anonymous asked:

Alicent's fans reading The Crucible: I think the puritans are right not to trust witches, magic is a blood purist nuclear weapon and the puritan ideology of hard work and individualism helped them settle in a harsh new land. The same puritans who escaped religious persecution in England are right to enforce it in America.

Alicent's fans reading The Scarlet Letter: I can’t blame the reverend, the puritan colony and Hester’s husband because adultery and fornication are the greatest and most monstrous sins and women can’t go around fucking anyone like harlots just because they want to. Shaming, public humiliation and social stigma are necessary.

Alicent's fans reading Jane Eyre & Wide Sargasso Sea: Bertha is an insane, violent, lecherous, and depraved woman and she’s an exotic foreigner trying to ruin Jane and Mr. Rochester and mad women in the attic need to be put down for the greater good of humanity.

Alicent's fans reading The Oresteia: Clytemnestra is a mad woman who deserved to be murdered by Orestes. She cheated on Agamemnon and murdered him. She even murdered Cassandra, a victim of rape and war slavery. Never mind that Clytemnestra herself was raped and forced to marry Agamemnon.

finitefall answered:

Apparently some Alicent stans compared her to Clytemnestra, so I’m not sure they all have enough reading comprehension skills to really say all this. Usually I’m encouraging everyone to read, but here I feel like protecting books from some people. You’re right though, of course. As @la-pheacienne said in her post about “where is duty? where is sacrifice?”, they sound like Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale.

la-pheacienne

I’m not sure I agree with anon here on Clytemnestra. Yes there are some Alicent stans who are inherently misogynistic and conservative so I guess they would totally despise Clytemnestra, but not all of them are like that, I’m not sure if the majority of them is like that. Most Alicent stans are just a by-product of Targaryen hate + self inserting on victimised, conformist and conventionally attractive female characters because they find them relatable. From there, they start to identify to whatever that victimised, conformist and conventionally attractive character feels or thinks. If this character happens to be a bigot, they don’t give a flying fuck, they start spreading the most bigoted shit themselves to support the character just because she’s victimised and conventionally attractive, basically. But that’s always the case with bigoted ideology, isn’t it? People always find good reasons to be bigots, also, bigots don’t realise they are bigots. There is always a facade : they are victimised/discriminated themselves so they feel entitled to say shit for other people, or they idolise a person they hold on a pedestal and they accept whatever that person says as a pillar of faith. That’s always how this kind of ideology spreads. Nobody wakes up one day and decides “ok now I’m gonna be a misogynist/blood purist because I love it”. There is always an excuse, a front.

Now Clytemnestra’s case differs because she’s victimised but she’s not conformist, she’s quite the contrary. I do think that Alicent stans would support Clytemnestra in their majority, because the victimised part would be the heaviest in the balance. The problem is that Clytemnestra is not a good character. I’m not saying she’s a vile character, but she’s not a good one. I apologize to the Tumblr University of Girlbossification studies, but Clytemnestra is not the feminist icon TM people make her out to be (link to an excellent meta by @fweet-prince ).

I’m not saying that Alicent has any common point with Clytemnestra, I’m saying that her stans will normally stan Clytemnestra imo, and in both cases they would be mistaken. So what’s the common denominator here? The common denominator is basically their functional illiteracy and wokemania of these people. I don’t use the word wokeness very often because I respect its very specific origins, but here, I couldn’t find another term that could describe what I’m trying to say.

They take the literary text and they don’t understand shit in what they read because they have a Tumblr aesthetic in their mind that they are trying to satisfy like a hungry person yearns for a burger. Zero comprehension skills, zero knowledge/ investment in the historical context of the literary work. They look for hot, victimised girl aesthetic. Whatever they can find that remotely ressembles that, bingo, they stan. GRRM writes 700 pages to prove how misogyny can destroy a realm? DGAF, Alicent’s hot and cries all the time so they stan. GRRM writes like thousands of pages showing how bastards are unfairly treated and socially ostracised by society? DGAF, Alicent says they’re bad so they’re bad. Aeschylus writes three fucking theater plays to tell a story of the sins of the parents that haunt their children, DGAF, Clytemnestra is a GirlbossTM and Aeschylus is a misogynist LOL, end of discussion.

I use the word wokeness here to cover the ~~mainly american~~ phenomenon of modern interpretation/revisiting of classic works (or even modern works with an already established different message), in order to reframe or adapt the literary text to a modern political agenda that is inherently foreign to the text. I agree with the political cause, that doesn’t mean that I agree with the means, in particular, rewriting history and stripping literary texts off their context and overall meaning just because I have a different morality/a specific political goal. That’s not only a manifestation of functional illiteracy, that’s basically a fascist strategy.

TL;DR I do think that overall Alicent stans would participate in the girlbossification of Clytemnestra because, like in Fire and Blood, they would completely disregard Aeschylus’ ultimate message in favour of a particular Victimised Vengeful Hot Woman aesthetic that is labeled as modern and feminist and cool, basically. So it’s not that simple as anon’s argument that Alicent stans become Clytemnestra antis because they are misogynists.

#alicent hightower #asoiaf asks from others #fire and blood characters #fire and blood comment #classic literature #literature #classical literature #alicent clytemenstra #the crucible #the scarlet letter #the bronte sisters #hotd comment #alicent's characterization #asoiaf fav posts #asoiaf #Fire and Blood #HOTD

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theminecraftgay

Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark

#shakespeare fanart #hamlet shakespeare #hamlet fanart #renaissance literature #literature

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lipsticksontheglass-deactivated

“Medusa, in effect, became the archetypal femme fatale: a conflation of femininity, erotic desire, violence, and death. Beauty, like monstrosity, enthralls, and female beauty in particular was perceived—and, to a certain extent, is still perceived—to be both enchanting and dangerous, or even fatal. In this sense, even Helen of Troy, considered the personification of ideal beauty, was deemed responsible, albeit inadvertently, for the Trojan War and the ultimate destruction of Troy.”

— Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art, Kiki Karoglou.

#monstrous feminine #feminism #classical literature #european archetypes #literature #medusa #greek myth #femme fatale #definitions