“Unfortunate! Anyway,”

gerard dubois' moby dick sells me on the cosmic horror whale

when internet people are like “i love gothic literature but i hate anything that discusses incest, sexual violence, oppression, misogyny, abuse, torture, gore, murder, or death”

no actually me and everyone else who’s ever watched crimson peak were brainwashed by guillermo del toro into believing that incest and violence are cool and awesome. sorry

a lot of victorians thought first-cousin marriage-- arranged by their parents--was good, actually, because the boy and girl already knew how to get along, neither party had to move too far away from their existing family, or move at all, and all the resources to inherit a business and set up a household were just, right there, in place. and the grandmother or -father of the family would definitely have good reason to approve of their grandkids staying put rather than marrying out or bringing anyone else in.

so, like, yeah, victorian literature and gothic literature has a lot to do with the ways the family unit can be imperiled, whether by rot from within or infection from without, and at the time that family unit probably had a significant amount of what we would now term incest. so like, ‘people can agree that’-- no. people are always going to disagree. sometimes because they lived a hundred and fifty years ago. sometimes because they live now and understand that cultures change over time and that nothing is ever simple and easy and universal and eternal. and sometimes because BAD THINGS CAN AND SHOULD BE DEPICTED IN FICTION BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT MAKES A STORY INTERESTING, BECKY.

this was just meant to be a quote board but now it's a whole post so here is

harrow & john vs. forgiveness

harrow's whole life is haunted by the desire to be forgiven for her existence and the war crime she didn't commit that made it possible. this quote really gets me:

i'm sure nona is referencing having worked with kids but is the harrow part of her thinking of the 200 who will never "forgive" her?

all of this contrasted with the man harrow worshipped her whole life, john "there is no such thing as forgiveness," "there can be no forgiveness," "people don't forgive, not really" gaius... harrow doesn't think she can ever be forgiven but desperately wants to believe forgiveness exists; she'd have nothing to live for otherwise. john doesn't think he can be forgiven either but he takes that to mean forgiveness can never exist for anyone; that's the only way he can live because he did do something truly unforgivable. and enforcing the idea that forgiveness is just something that doesn't exist is easier than accepting that it does but everyone he loves would prefer to deny him of it.

which makes THIS quote even more interesting (i'm assuming this is john speaking but the pov in the poem is a bit confusing):

john really only implies that forgiveness is possible when it helps him trick alecto into walking to her death, but i wonder if that's meant to show that he was lying or if it's some of his secret deep-buried hopes coming through.

John's definition of forgiving seems pretty fucked. It's very results oriented. Kind of a YouTuber's definition of forgiveness. More like forgetting than forgiving.

You can forgive someone for something, and set new boundaries. You can even forgive someone and never want to see them again. But to John these would not count as forgiveness.

NOT TO FUCKING MENTION. Harrow admits a detailed accounting of her wrongs, ceases harming Gideon, and even then she barely hopes for forgiveness, because she knows it doesn't actually stack up against the years of abuse. There's been no time to really make amends.

John doesn't do ANY of that stuff. He avoids consequences as much as he can. He's not even asking for forgiveness in any serious way.

The case of Nona and Hot Sauce is more puzzling to me because IIRC Nona is in trouble for who she is, not something specific she's done:

Maybe the crime was not mentioning it? When she stops by, Nona acts very considerately to Honesty and Hot Sauce (telling Honesty about some resources, giving strategic intel to Hot Sauce). But she doesn't apologize for being herself. Hot Sauce forgives her pretty readily, I think clearly because they love each other so much.

(This is brought to you by an interview with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg on Vox Conversations. She said there was a specific Māori tradition structuring how repentance and forgiveness work, but hasn't gotten into it so far in the podcast. Obviously it would be interesting to learn about that and see if Muir has reflected it in the books at all. Rabbi Ruttenberg has a book out, On Repentance and Repair.)

I think the big problem with John is that HE doesn’t forgive(as the book, and he, tell us repeatedly). It’s not that he’s trying to normalize other ppl not forgiving him by saying forgiveness is impossible; he’s trying to normalize HIS Flaw, HIS Wrath, HIS refusal to forgive or even just to prioritize anything beyond punishment(and thus HIS [justifiable]anger and thus HIS [destructive]Egotism and thus HIS replication of all the worst aspects of Colonial-Capitalism, committed BY its victims TO the descendants of its authors) by saying “people don’t forgive”. If “people dont forgive”, then it’s entirely normal that HE, a Person, chose vengeance over salvation; even seeing it as a mistake, which he does, it’s an understandable mistake and thus one that can be rationalized aside. Humans dont forgive, Humans just consume, They were lying and WE were the only ones who could see it They were Getting Away and Only **I** Could Stop Them(no he couldnt and no he didnt and no one asked him to and he Only Made Things Worse) so it’s Perfectly Natural that, instead of Changing Things the way Earth wanted, he just Replicated in microcosmic Speedrun all the crimes which brought humanity and Earth to that moment in the first place. He’s only Human, afterall.

THAT is his cop-out. THAT is his rationalization. THAT is his escape. The Earth can Love and Forgive Everyone but HE cant because he’s not divine(funny how and when and why that changes). And so, ironically, THAT is also his plea for forgiveness: “people don’t forgive, not really” is his way of saying “can you blame me?”

He doesn’t forgive himself, he’s convinced himself forgiveness is Impossible because HE Refuses to forgive, but maybe you can understand him and, maybe, Love him Anyway??? Thus his Desperate Hungry NEED to be Loved.

Which honestly makes John one of the Best and most Successful examples and deconstructions both of the Gothic Hero in literature, Period.

frankenstein is about self loathing and recognition through the Other. it’s about the original sin. it’s about what we owe to our creations and each other. it’s about internalized homophobia and the monstrosity of a man desiring another man. it’s about Romance. it’s about romance. it’s about playing god. it’s about being transgender. it’s about the absent fathergod. it’s about society. it’s about unethical medical experiments. it’s about gay college dropouts. it’s about a big nasty monster dude who is, and i cannot stress this enough, spooky

Why the fuck don’t vampires understand animal agriculture.

“Oh we are vegetarian vampires, we only drink blood from animals, so we go out into the incredibly unique temperate rainforest ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest and hunt their rare megafauna” what the fuck dude. Why? Just keep some cows, y’all have so much money! Just keep some goddamn goats! Order some live horses! Leave the local wildlife alone!

“I am a vampire with a soul and I am so tortured with guilt all I can eat are rats off the street” off the street!?! Dude what is wrong with you. Just start a rat rescue. I have friends in rat rescue. Do you have any idea how many rats they get all the time? Rats that aren’t covered in fleas and filled with diseases??? Rats that are pregnant and have baby rats? You’ll be eating for the rest of your life!

All these vampires making eating the hardest fucking thing in the world like we never figured out how to get continuous animal resources for food thousands of years ago why the fuck you think you have to be hunter/gatherer about it like it’s the goddam Paleolithic

who else is in the mood to walk barefoot over the moors in a blood-red velvet ballgown w anguish in ur soul and wet leaves in ur hair while the wind blows moodily and dramatically?

can we all get mcdonalds afterwards

we all deserve it so yes absolutely. my treat

thamk kyuu

The Good Place: A Gothic Novel

Eleanor, a jaded demimondaine, is torn between the influences of an innocent and kindhearted scholar and a seductive aesthete- and though she may not know it, her very soul is in the balance!

Starring:

Eleanor as the reformed (?) libertine!

Chidi as the saintly gothic hero!

Michael as the suspicious best friend who is secretly the devil!

Jason as the gallant (and incompetent) highwayman!

Tahani as the author stand-in who drops names 19th century readers would have recognized!

And Janet as the brilliant, androgynous train nerd!

Quotes from The Good Place: Or, the New Temptation of Eve:

“In my career of vice, I have always and ever preserved myself above all others. I made this choice joyfully and rationally, and yet there was some part of my soul I could not banish which reproved myself when I did so. I could immerse myself in wickedness, but never banish that hesitation.”

- Eleanor

“We do good not because we are rewarded- indeed, often have I suffered from my attempts to follow my conscience. And yet I propose that we owe each other kindness, for if not, what is the point of living?”

- Chidi

“I have always found expedient solutions to life’s problems. When my musket would not fire upon a fleeing coach, I doused myself in brandy, thus quenching my thirst and creating a weapon.”

- Jason

“I have never considered myself to be a woman, but nor do I call myself one of the male sex. Thought of my soul extend beyond such conventional boundaries.”

- Janet

“You mortals throw away your lives in meaningless pursuit of purpose, and for what? The same iniquity awaits you all in the end.”

- Michael

“ As I told my good friend Carolyn Lamb when Lord Byron preferred me as his dance partner, we cannot be blamed for life’s unpredictability.”

- Tahani

Oh my god, this is too good.

I Will write & publish a Gothic theory of chronic pain & I Cannot be stopped

‘The pained body often operates not only in tandem with the mind, but also in spite of it. The pained body’s privileging of itself over the mind helps to explain our culture’s antagonism to our own inescapable corporeality. In her 1985 book The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry suggests that, regardless of the physiology of pain, the experience of pain reinstates a Cartesian antagonism between body and mind by attacking the “self” with pain: “The ceaseless, self-announcing signal of the body in pain, at once so empty and undifferentiated and so full of blaring adversity, contains not only the feeling ‘my body hurts’ but the feeling ‘my body hurts me’” (47). […] In our thinking, pain is not “natural”; it is adversarial. Our English word “pain” comes from the Latin poena, meaning penalty or punishment. The body in pain attacks the self that recognizes that pain. This sense of being attacked by one’s own body, says Scarry, explains why metaphors for pain are so often those of weaponry, assault, and violation (pounding, burning, tearing). Pain evokes an antagonistic relationship between the body and the self at the same time that it allows no distinction between body and self: I hurt and I am being hurt; I hurt myself. Thus what pain effects is a return of the body to a preCartesian body - where mind and body are inseparable - at the same time as it pits the mind firmly against the body. Pain confounds one aspect of dualism (the primacy of mind over body) by evoking another aspect of dualism (the body’s perceived estrangement from the self). What is perhaps most singularly remarkable about this confusion, then, is the way pain destabilizes Cartesian thinking, in which the mind is separated from and privileged over the body. And this destabilization seems to make its birth cries in the literatures of sensibility, and emphasized in its descendent, the Romantic novel.’ [Steven Bruhm, Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction (1994), p. 9]

e.g… this is what I’ve talked about before as the kind of conception of pain and of the body that chronic pain forces you to confront and discard if you’re going to have any semblance of peace

At Twitter, @BritLibPublishing comments:

“ Worst vampire ever.

“Douglas? Really? “

well shit now I gotta go read this for official reasons

Honestly in all of these stories these poetic white men who somehow end up immortal get so bored and miserable because they just sit in their mansion all day doing whatever it is they need to do in order to sustain their immortality and then they just throw lavish parties and organize orgies or whatever and then they’re like “why am I sad I eat three course meals and have at least one orgy daily what MORE could I POSSIBLY need??”

Like???? Damn go for a walk. Do you even KNOW your neighbors? Get a dog and take it to the park. Set up an elaborate fish tank. Go skiing like you’ve been alive for 200 years and you’ve spent 180 of it in your house looking at paintings and drinking wine with other rich assholes no wonder ur life sucks my man.

Buy a canoe.

this post was specifically targeting dorian grey.

As it happens, boring Nelly and self absorbed Lockwood are really the last two people you would want as narrators. Sucks to be you, reader! I guess Heathcliff gives his perspective once, but mostly it’s these two clowns and Isabella’s letter from inside the madhouse. 

[X]

We got new kids items in store!  By popular demand!

I want a movie about a kid who just so happens to be born a Classic Gothic Hero, but in modern day. His name would be like Byron Dangerfield or something. 

Whenever he has EMOTIONS, there are claps of thunder and lightning. Every time he leans against a piece of furniture, it turns out to open a secret passageway leading to some dark secret, until eventually he’s just like “REALLY, GUYS?” All bad dreams are prophetic, even if it’s just that Starbucks will be out of pumpkin spice syrup the next day. Every girl he talks to swoons a lot and has a tyrannical heavy-browed father who are all played by the same actor. Ravens flock around him.

There are inexplicably paintings with moving eyes and moving suits of armor everywhere he goes, even McDonalds. Every time he moves to a new apartment, there is ALWAYS a screaming woman chained up in the room above his, and she invariably sets the place on fire. He’s so over it.

He has never stood upon a moor(on, on; he has to remember to stop using that preposition, it is archaic and it morbs people out) that was not windswept and dreary. After he lost that fifth coat to strong winds he just gave up on North England entirely.

...

i think you and ceruleancynic have been reading the same literature

:p

I want a movie about a kid who just so happens to be born a Classic Gothic Hero, but in modern day. His name would be like Byron Dangerfield or something. 

Whenever he has EMOTIONS, there are claps of thunder and lightning. Every time he leans against a piece of furniture, it turns out to open a secret passageway leading to some dark secret, until eventually he’s just like “REALLY, GUYS?” All bad dreams are prophetic, even if it’s just that Starbucks will be out of pumpkin spice syrup the next day. Every girl he talks to swoons a lot and has a tyrannical heavy-browed father who are all played by the same actor. Ravens flock around him.

There are inexplicably paintings with moving eyes and moving suits of armor everywhere he goes, even McDonalds. Every time he moves to a new apartment, there is ALWAYS a screaming woman chained up in the room above his, and she invariably sets the place on fire. He’s so over it.

He has never stood upon a moor(on, on; he has to remember to stop using that preposition, it is archaic and it morbs people out) that was not windswept and dreary. After he lost that fifth coat to strong winds he just gave up on North England entirely.

He has never seen a full moon; not entirely. Whenever he tries, he sees but a bit of it through a veil of brooding clouds and the scraggly branches of leafless trees, clawing at the gloom towards its alabaster glow. They are so much like hands, he thinks; the gnarled, withered fingers of man, that fallen, ragged vagabond, reaching -tremblingly, achingly- for a redemption he shall never touch. He also wishes he could stop thinking up all these ridiculous rambling metaphors and similes about everything he sees or does I mean CHRIST it's embarrassing just having all this purple prose in his head why him? Why is he tormented so?? Why has God chosen to Afflict him thus??? What crime could be so great tha-

He has to remember the exercises his therapist taught him. Deep Breaths... iiiinnn... ooouut...

...iiiinnn... ooouut...

...Better.

He tries not to dwell on the injustice of it all. Dwelling just leads to rants. His natural talent for soliloquy and monologue certainly served him well in the theater(he had to give up on acting though; all those sordid love-triangles, jealousy-fueled murder-suicides, and mysterious disappearances that seemed to follow him from company to company[even to a dinner-theater troupe in Cleavland!] got to be too stressful), but it has sent more than a few friends and lovers backing slowly and wide-eyed for the exit. Apparently, flying into 30 minutes of self-pitying heroic couplet when the plumbing breaks is not considered an acceptable reaction by most people but in his defense how was he supposed to know that?!? Besides, broken pipes are serious business; all this wet could give him consumption! He's supposed to take that in stride??!!?? Byron is also, unfortunately, rather immune to scientific explanations on such matters |:/

It was a fact as inescapable as the fickleness of God and the faithlessness of humanity; Byron Dangerfield of Ravenwood Manor simply could not catch a break u_u