Gothic Fiction - Tumblr Posts
This or That, Gothic Edition
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chained up or forced to wear a straightjacket // stabbed in the shoulder or bitten by a monster // masquerade ball or dinner party // stormy night or winter forest // dungeon or tower // sudden collapse or bandaged up // poisoned or drained of blood // experimented on or bedridden // nightmares or hallucinations // attacked by a monster or transformed into one // betrayal or lost love // castle or cottage // seaside or garden // hanged or strapped down // damsel in distress or ghostly maiden // haunted portrait or haunted mirror // guilt or insanity // immortality or untimely death // thunderstorm or snowstorm // imprisoned monster or angry ghost // laboratory or library // cemetery or portrait gallery // secret cellar or secret attic // hanging chandeliers or melting candelabras // body horror or creature horror // howling wind or eerie silence
Happy Birthday, Aaliyah!
Born on January 16, 1979.
Enchanted Illusions: (Victorian Gothic Fantasy) Valentine Concordium's Journal Entries (part 1)
Valentine Concordium, Year 53 After the Great Dawn, October 20, nighttime.
The mansion is too quiet tonight, it … bothers me. Makes me restless, unruly thoughts stubbornly resurfacing again. So, I walked to the woods today, hoping that the night’s fresh air might give me some respite. There was a dead deer near the mansion, and the still-bloodied dire wolves that killed her were not far away. I hope I was able to scare them off for good. Being a fanged creature of the night has its perks, I will admit. But it so seems that only when it comes to being a source of fear. Strange.
At least there were no holy Hunters this time. They haven’t come for me in a month now, maybe they’ve finally given up! I don’t want to fight them anymore, but I don’t want to die either. I wish Sebastian were still here. I miss him a lot. It’s lonely, living by myself in these wide halls - there’s so much history here but so much sorrow too. My sibling always had something to say, even if trivial, about anything and everything. It seemed foolish, at the time. Now I would give anything to hear all of that again.
I still have yet to get used to the silence.
But alas… I wonder what has happened in the cities, it’s been a while since I last paid them a visit. It's strange, getting used to this new peace treaty, even though it was established over fifty years ago, even though that’s what my family always fought for. It feels, almost, unreal. But I rather like it. Bloodshed is pointless, and I’ve seen my fair share of it to want to banish such violence from my life forevermore. I was too young when the wars started, but in a way, I wish I had been more naive. I wish I could have been more naive, but that was never my choice to make, it seems.
I don’t know what has gotten me thinking about all of this again. Maybe it was the unbearable silence, or seeing the dead deer and its… bloody insides. I do not know. And I do not like it.
In a more positive discovery: I hear there is a train station being built down at Griffin’s Port. I might as well pay it a visit, if that city ever becomes less… dangerous. I’m curious, honestly, about how such contraptions work. I’ve seen trains in books but I’ve never quite been near one, much less gotten to enjoy such mode of travel. It’ll be a new, perhaps enlightening experience - and I hope it might be fun, even. Few things are, nowadays, but I want to feel that joy again.
I’ve spent far too much of my recent time cooped up in the study, surrounded by old specimen books and my - admittedly morbid - childhood butterfly collection, and the cobwebs on the ceiling that have yet to be cleaned - which I still have yet to figure out how to do. Transfiguring into a bat while holding a mop proved, well, disastrous, to say the least. Maybe it's time that I … try to do something new. See the world outside this walls, and far from this forest.
But the Hunters are always there. Waiting. Just like they waited for Sebastian. I’m tired of hiding, but I’ll also not lie and say that I am not scared of what is to come. Things were never quite so uncertain before, and well, I was never quite so alone, before.
I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what comes next, and hope that it is not quite as disastrous and bloody as everything seems to make it seem. Maybe there’s still something nice, about this world. Maybe. I don’t really know anymore.
It is getting late. Or should I say early? Either way, maybe I should try and get some rest, clear my head of… all of this. Of whatever this is. “There’s always a new night to come”, Father always said. But that thought never seemed quite so burdensome before as it does now - what good is a new night, if it’ll be just as haunting and boredom filled as it’s predecessor?
I’ll wait, and sleep, maybe I’ll know the answer tomorrow. Likely not, though.
I need to get this out of my chest, so here we go:
If you don't make Henry Jekyll a flawed character when adapting the novella, then you're setting up yourself to failure. Specifically, because you're failing to translate the themes of the novella.
You can't talk about the duality of humanity and the struggle that arises from that if Jekyll doesn't embody those
sometimes i like to imagine that cathy and heathcliff haunt the moors together on the wh estate. if they can’t be together in life; they’ll live together in death. they’re souls intertwined forever more.
‘𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝐼 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑑’ — daphne du maurier, rebecca (1938)