blacknedsoul-blog

[blacknedsoul-blog]

To me this shit has been eating my head for a while, I mean, the emotional kicks and regrets Lenore is going to have when she gets the full picture is going to be one thing (and not a pretty one).

When she learns that Annabel's silence is because the Deans fucked with her memory (and she refused to believe them), when she learns that Annabel's warnings about not getting attached to people are grounded because to love someone at Nevermore is to put them in danger, when she learns that she stuck Duke behind a wall to protect her, and when she learns that she got her most fucked up fear in her face.

The drama is going to be strong.

oh, so originally lenore knew that it was annabel's biggest fear, yet she didn't remember that or didn't care much TT

at first I got so caught up with excitement for the new episodes and flashbacks that I forgot they're in their divorce era now...

[blacknedsoul-blog]

I think you'd like Your Throne webtoon

(A google search later)

You are absolutely right. Thank you very much for the recommendation!

[blacknedsoul-blog]

The guy who was going to marry Annabel if no one better came along is the one who killed her and Lenore

Daily Reminder

WE HAVE 3 DAYS TIL NEVERMORE IS BACK

Question: What's a theory about Nevermore that you believe?

My is that I 100% believe that Eulalie is a Japanese-American that was killed during WW2 because of the hate and prejudice toward Japanese people during the time

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Nevermore is a gothic tragedy. Part II: Supernatural Brides

I had set out to finish this saga of essays before Nevermore came back. And then I realized that all the fucking references I have on hand were going to require at least one essay for each. Which means a total of…at least four parts.

So I made it my goal to finish at least one. And since we're talking about tragedy, it seemed logical to continue with the gothic novel.

Before I start, I have to make a little disclaimer: most of my sources come from Spanish material that I'm not sure I have an English translation because they are loose essays I have from my college days and prologues to books from different publishers that are dedicated to publishing gothic novels. If you understand Spanish, I'll be happy to pass the material on to you if this interests you. But if you only understand English, I'm afraid I only have two sources for you: Supernatural Horror in Literature, an essay by H.P. Lovecraft on the foundations of cosmic horror that reviews the history of horror in fiction and The gothic quest a book of about 400 pages that describes in detail the history of the gothic novel, I hope the density of that work compensates for not being able to deliver more finished information.

Brief (seriously VERY brief) history of the gothic novel

Here is something a bit tangled, because the Gothic novel goes hand in hand with many of the topics of the literature of romanticism (literary movement with which it shares time) and it is also necessary to understand some historical and architectural issues.

Let's go by part: Romanticism is a literary and artistic movement that formally emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century (it is estimated that the first works of the same are dated from 1770, approximately) consisting of three parts: the so-called pre-romanticism, romanticism as such and late romanticism.

Anyway, even from its beginnings, this movement emerges as a series of anti-classical ideas that sought to recover folkloric and medieval elements, were obsessed with the inviduality of creativity, nostalgia for nature (something that would later become nostalgia for the time before the industrial revolution), considered passion and sentimentality as the creative axis and in general were looking to Greek tragedies and other fantastic tales as a source of inspiration.

This clashed with the strong Christian values of the time and the rise of technological advances. A contradiction that is present in the works of this literary movement.

Another important historical fact that is necessary to understand is that this kind of novel gets its name directly from Gothic architecture. These works were intended to take place in castles, monasteries, mansions belonging to ancient families and medieval cemeteries. The reason is simple: the Goths were considered shitty architects and many of these buildings had been abandoned for decades if not centuries by 1700, so you could walk down a path and simply find an ominous monastery or the remains of a mansion and if you asked someone where it had come from, they would probably tell you about 15 different versions, but all involving dead people and ghosts living there. As you may have gathered from the above, the writers of this period were eating this stuff up with fries.

It is with the convergence of all these elements that Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto was published in 1764. A text born from a nightmare that this man had in the castle of Strawberry Hill, a neo-Gothic property that belonged to him. The novel is mediocre at best, but it lays all the groundwork needed going forward: ominous ancient places full of legends where the crumbling architecture is a reflection of the moral and emotional corruption of the characters.

Feminine entities

One thing in which the Romantics differ from the Gothics is their view of love. In this era, love is perceived as a kind of force that is above the characters, something so beautiful that it is capable of making them completely lose their minds (this is tied to the concept of the sublime. And where the romantics embrace this concept as something beautiful, the goths say “this is fucking disturbing”.

For this reason many gothic stories are up to their necks in supernatural brides: beautiful ghosts dressed in white, beings that we consider references to nymphs who only need to whisper in the ears of their victims to become obsessed with them and, above all, vampires. Vampires whose description you will have in detail because the narrators of these stories spare no words to point out how beautiful they are.

Because these supernatural brides are there for one thing and one thing only: to make our sad male hero lose his mind with the power of their impractically long eyelashes. Sometimes they love them honestly and deeply, sometimes they are insidious, evil and lying; on more than one occasion both alternatives are true at the same time. But the reality of things is that, in the end, the love of these supernatural brides ends up completely destroying the unfortunate object of their affection.

If this seems a bit sexist to you, that's because it is. There's no argument here and it's not worth delving into any further.

I've talked about Annabel as a vampire before, but this time I want to talk more in detail about two issues: how supernatural brides work and the consequences for the protagonist of having a relationship with her and the similarities this story presents to a particular job.

Love and death

What is a ghost? A terrible event doomed to repeat itself over and over again. An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead that seems at times still alive. A feeling, suspended in time, like a blurred photograph, like an insect trapped in amber. El espinazo del diablo, Guillermo del Toro (original quote in Spanish)

One interesting thing about this whole thing is, too, that while the attitudes of many of these supernatural brides may remind you of variations of a succubus (you know, a female entity that is there for and to seduce), the reality is that the gothic novel is steeped in religious puritanism, so these ladies (most of the time) don't usually need to be sexual with their love interest/victim to get their attention. They usually only need a single glance.

If you think I'm exaggerating:

Never gaze upon a woman, and walk abroad only with eyes ever fixed upon the ground; for however chaste and watchful one may be, the error of a single moment is enough to make one lose eternity. 

The dead women in love, Théophile Gautier

Another thing is that these supernatural brides are usually here at just the right time to skillfully grope the weaknesses of their beloved lover and victim: Are you a feisty guy who thinks he's not afraid of anything? Well, the spirit of the water that will end up bewitching you dwells in a mysterious fountain that no one dares to visit out of fear (Ojos Verdes, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer ESP/ENG), Have you just obtained eternal life by making a pact with the devil but are a little terrified of what might await you in the solitude of immortality? The beautiful young girl just revived by your own hand has opened her eyes and both you and she know in this one look that you will spend eternity together (The Skeleton Count, or The Vampire Mistress, Elizabeth Caroline Grey), Have you just moved here from Naples and are feeling incredibly lonely? Well, it turns out you have a beautiful neighbor who also seems interested in you. By the way, she's practically a poisonous plant (Rappaccini's Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne).

Examples like these are plentiful and most end in three ways for the victim of their affections:

Death.

Madness.

Or eternal mourning for having lost her despite having been a victim of deceit or manipulation.

In Lenore's case, her “supernatural bride” appears after the incident in which she rips the wallpaper off the wall: if flowers symbolize feeling alive, she doesn't need them. There is no need for flowers because she is irreversibly withering away.

And when all seems lost, she receives a visitor.

Annabel is a ghost in Lenore's life. The fuzzy silhouette that represents the one thing that made her happy during her confinement, her last glimmer of sanity in a situation where she could no longer hold on without breaking. A specter whose shadow Lenore has been obsessively chasing since a previous life. And every time she manages to reach her, something snatches her away: Annabel goes back to a place where Lenore cannot reach her with her hands.

This is the sad fate of supernatural bride lovers. Because for the gothic novel, when love transcends death it is not a reason to rejoice: the character's life has been permanently disrupted and all that remains is a feeling that is beyond reason. Love becomes the cruelest and most terrible of punishments.

Carmilla

If you're still here with me and you haven't read Carmilla yet, I highly recommend that you do because if you like goth lesbians, this is exactly your shit.

But just so we're on the same page: Carmilla is a short vampire novel published in 1872 by Sheridan Le Fanu in his collection In a Glass Darkly. The plot is about Laura, a young woman who lives in a proper gothic castle located in Austria and her life will be disrupted with the arrival of a beautiful young woman her age named Carmilla.

Both Lenore and Laura live in almost complete isolation barely accompanied by maids (And, in Laura's case, her father) in a huge estate that is surrounded by an appropriately dense and slightly terrifying forest. Now, the reason they are both here is different: where Lenore is locked up against her will, Laura simply lives in a place that is difficult to access.

But let's make a slightly insidious reading here.

One of the first things we know about Laura is that the maids she lives with, despite being fond of her, consider her “a bit touched in the head” and the incident where Carmilla enters the room when Laura is a little girl is completely dismissed for this reason.

Laura is 19 years old when all this happens and at no point in the play is it mentioned that she has any suitors or intentions of getting married, a bit strange for the time in which it occurs. One would assume that the reason for keeping her so isolated is precisely that Laura's father doesn't think his daughter is particularly sane in the head.

As does Lenore.

Add to that the fact that they are both grieving. Lenore for Theo's death and, in Laura's case, for learning that the daughter of a dear friend of her father's has died in strange circumstances and, although she did not get to know her, this fact affected her a lot.

Anyway, sooner rather than later this almost supernaturally beautiful young lady of her own age shows up and kicks in the door saying she wants to be friends. Carmilla through a carriage “accident” near the property and Annabel requesting a meeting to get to know her.

In both cases, the dynamic established is the same.

On the one hand, we have a young lady who looks completely ecstatic at this pompous and definitely somewhat deranged creature. Laura spares no words in explaining to the reader how fucking beautiful Carmilla is, how important she is to her and how much she loves her. And Lenore, well, Lenore does this:

On the other side, the supernatural (girl)friend returns her affection with the subtlety of a kick in the teeth:

Annabel is a little more subtle than Carmilla was before she and Lenore were a thing, but we still see her get super physically close (something she doesn't usually do with other characters in Nevermore, so this is something she only does with Lenore).

Fun fact: that gesture with the fan means “I'm shy, but I'm interested.”

Unfortunately for our comphet-filled protagonist (because she watches THIS and still thinks they're “good friends”) her days in the company of this girl end in tragedy. Carmilla is eventually unveiled as a vampire and killed, while Lenore sees Annabel leave and, taking into account that they are both in Nevermore, subsequently sees her die.

In both cases, the protagonist's life has been scarred by her supernatural (girl)friend: neither a year-long trip abroad nor a new group of friends can take Laura or Lenore away from the memory of those happy days that are now irretrievably tainted.

Conclusions

I think one thing that has happened to me writing this now that I seriously pulled the rug out from under me regarding the amount of references in this comic and it has been non-stop bullshit. They're all still framed within the genres of tragedy and gothic novel, but even with this essay I've fallen short on some topics.

I don't know when I'll continue with this saga because it really involves going through an awful lot of material, but I can at least say one thing for sure: the amount of detail it has is, honestly, quite impressive.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

And this is the song that plays softly in the background

Poppet's classes be like-

[blacknedsoul-blog]

In that order:

- Indeed, in the authors' illustration Annabel is not embodying Clara, she is dressed as they typically dress the dancers in Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

-About the other thing: it's a strange thing. It used to be that the Nevermore authors were really into fandom, now they're much less so, and given that the comic comes back in January, I assume they're busy doing other shit. But in general they are known to look at fanarts or read theories (I don't know if they read fanfics), like ... they're like the Deans, they don't appear much but occasionally look at what's going on out there, that's the reason people can assume they watched the fanart.

lookit all these copy cats, stealing ideas!

Don't they know a super important person on the interwebs bagsied first?

lookit the blatant disrespect?

Who do they think they are? Do they not respect the rules of ''i licked it first so its mine"?

Once its been AU CLAIMED!! Nobody else is allowed to make art or perform it. Thems the rules, I'm afraid. I don't care about it being a 130 year old tradition recreated in myriads of ways, genres and mediums across the world for decades, nobody else is allowed to play in the sandbox. Refund the tickets. Everyone go home. What is the world coming to when everyone doesn't respect the claiming of AUs? The audacity. I'm clutching my pearls.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Okay, let's take it one step at a time: we can agree that both illustrations are similar only in that 1) they are the same characters and 2) they are both from the Nutcracker.

Even the approach is different: in the AU Annabel and Lenore embody the characters, even Lenore has a much more colorful and toy-like appearance. On the other side, the authors' illustration is more like "yeah, someone hired these two for the Nutcracker ballet, look how cute they look".

We can also agree that fandoms doesn't work that way. We have band AUs galore, I think there's like 6 or 7 fanfics where Annabel is a vampire and the like.

That said.

I can see why this person is uncomfortable. These aren't random people within the fandom, but the authors of the comic. I can see why this situation would make this person feel upset, especially when the authors before have always explicitly said when they do something that has already been seen within the fandom (like the bunnybel apocalypse). This is, of course, assuming they have seen it (something likely because the fandom is small).

And again, we can agree that fandoms doesn't work that way, but I wouldn't discount this person's annoyances.

I think the reblog you did is much better for your point, because I think the sarcastic mockery of the first one only adds fuel to the discussion.

lookit all these copy cats, stealing ideas!

Don't they know a super important person on the interwebs bagsied first?

lookit the blatant disrespect?

Who do they think they are? Do they not respect the rules of ''i licked it first so its mine"?

Once its been AU CLAIMED!! Nobody else is allowed to make art or perform it. Thems the rules, I'm afraid. I don't care about it being a 130 year old tradition recreated in myriads of ways, genres and mediums across the world for decades, nobody else is allowed to play in the sandbox. Refund the tickets. Everyone go home. What is the world coming to when everyone doesn't respect the claiming of AUs? The audacity. I'm clutching my pearls.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Hi buddy! Thanks for this, it will be a pleasure to read it! :3

Unspoken - Hyporion - Nevermore - Red & Flynn (Webcomic) [Archive of Our Own]

Merry Christmas everyone 🥳🎄

Especially to @blacknedsoul-blog , hope you enjoy your Secret Santa gift!

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Secret Santa Gifts

Well, these are my gifts for @eloquentteagoblin. I hope you like them, buddy! I decided to go for the cute part of your preferences and, since I couldn't decide which ship to focus on, I preferred to make a small drabble of White Raven and another one of Willspero.

Have a great Christmas! And thanks to @nevermorgue for organizing this.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Fun fact: it's really hard for me to really dislike a character. That only tends to happen when a character is boring (which is, for me, the worst sin a work of fiction can commit) and in Nevermore I don't find any character to be so, although there are definitely some (like Theo or the Deans) who for now are more like “plot devices” than characters as such I do wish Montresor was less unbearable though, it makes me want to shake him like Prospero did every time he speaks but the son of a bitch does his job so well that I can't help but like him

Nevermore tier list go brrr

(There is no character order within the tiers, just about. The only row where the characters are in order of favourite is the S tier. Everywhere else I just slapped the characters into their respective rows)

Here's the link, pls reblog with yours :)

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Nevermore themed cocktail: Harlequin

Information

A cocktail with a sweet and dry taste, apparently light, but with a high alcoholic content. Thinking about Duke spectre made me think of grabbing between the contrast between this funny circus clown and how he can tear you apart, so I had in mind this sweet, but high alcoholic cocktail with a dry mouthfeel.

Ingredients

1 ounce - 30 ml of red wine (I used cabernet)

1 ounce - 30 ml of brandy

2 ounces - 60 ml of cocoa liqueur 

⅓ ounce - 10 ml of gin 

Ice

Preparation 

Half fill an old-fashioned glass with ice.

Place the ingredients in the glass 

Stir with a spoon until the glass is chilled 

Notes

Although it can be shaken in a cocktail shaker, it is n

[blacknedsoul-blog]

I think this is the collective hc I tend to disagree with the most. An extremely important part of the construction of the Addamses as individuals in all of their portrayals is that they accept ANYONE as a member of their family. For them to have trouble accepting Enid because she is colorful would be completely out of character for them.

At best they might be a little confused or cry about "their baby is growing up", but to not accept Enid? That would never

If we go by official sources, that is Addams Family Values, Enid would not be accepted into the Addams family as Wednesday's spouse, not because she is a wolf or a girl, it's just that Enid wears pastel colors and they could never forgive her for that. I'm just saying.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Nevermore Mocktail themed: Stolen Moments

At the request of @raven-nerd4life and @anumacy: a non-alcoholic version of Stolen Moments.

Ingredients

15 ml of non-alcoholic gin (most of them are herbal, so you get the same effect)

10 ml of tonic water

15 ml rose water (you can get it in stores or prepare it at home)

5 ml simple syrup

Preparation

Add all ingredients to a shaker and shake. Serve in a shot glass.

Notes

I have not tried this recipe, but the ingredients should have exactly the same effect.

Since it doesn't need to be a shot, the ingredients can be mixed in a 1:3 ratio (30 ml of tonic water, 30 of syrup, 90 of rose water and 90 of non-alcoholic gin).

[blacknedsoul-blog]

Nevermore themed cocktail: Stolen Moments

Information

Based on the stolen moments of Annabel and Lenore. A shot with a floral and caramelized taste, but that inevitably leaves a bitter aftertaste in the back of the throat.

When I thought of a recipe based on this specific part of Annabel and Lenore's relationship, I decided that I wanted something that was sweet to the palate, but inevitably tainted by a touch of bitterness. And brief, because that's why it's a stolen moment :3

Recipe

 Ingredients

5 ml of red wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon) 

5 ml of white wine (I used Sauvignon Blanc)

5 ml of simple syrup 

15 ml rose liqueur

15 ml of herball gin

Ice

Preparation

Place the ingredients in a cocktail shaker and shake until the shaker is cold. Serve in a shot glass.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

(Knuckles cracking) You just took some interesting things out of the box. Let me complement this.

Now that you mention the thing that grabs Lenore, it has a pair of glowing white eyes. The Deans have only one, could it be because they only have part of that thing's power?

Regarding minions and Lovecraftian entity hierarchies, it's a “well no, but actually yes”. Lovecraft was more interested in putting together an imaginary that felt plausible than in putting together a consistent mythology, but that hasn't stopped his fans from making the effort to classify these creatures and it is true that in his works it is mentioned that there are entities more powerful than others. Sometimes there are vague hints of relationships between them.

On this subject, there is one interesting thing: Nyarlathotep is a servant of Azathoth, but in general, Nyarlathotep's servants are humans who make pacts with they. Can someone bring me out of the closet the theory that Nevermore's staff were humans once?

Finally, let me give some context on the Threshold: this nickname comes to Yogg-Sothoth from a story of the same name “The Lurker at the Threshold”. A descendant of an ancient family comes to reclaim a family property and, after being possessed by one of his ancestors, ends up releasing terrible forces.

I wonder if Lenore will end up doing it unwittingly.

Regarding Lenore's Spectre: I'm not sure. It would be interesting, but given that this moves in parallels, I have a hard time seeing how a Spectre based on this stuff would match Annabel's Lady in White. Still, I wouldn't rule it out entirely.

I think the Deans are fucking Lovecraftian gods

If you're a regular reader of my nonsense, you may have noticed that on more than one occasion I've referred to the Deans as "Nyarlathotep Tumblrsexymen": no, I didn't have a stroke on the keyboard, this is a reference to an entity that appears in the stories of Howard Phillip Lovecraft. A writer who is widely known because there were even people who thought that the Necronomicon, a fictional text part of his work, actually existed (and because he was such a recalcitrant racist that it has become a meme about how extremely racist he was).

And since I'm still going through my pile of papers on Gothic fiction, let me take a moment to talk about Lovecraft's work, why I have reason to believe that the Deans have something in common with these creatures, and what that might mean for the development of Nevermore.

A Little About Lovecraft's Gods

To understand a little bit about the kind of creatures we are talking about, I have to stop at a brief (seriously brief) description of cosmic horror: This is a type of horror that takes elements from the scientific publications of the time (which makes it close to science fiction) to give it verisimilitude, it has at its core a deep nihilism, the breaking of scientific canons, the fragility of the human mind and societies contrasted with the vastness of the universe, an enormous fear of "the unknown" for the white man (fed by his racist paranoia), and seasoned with tentacles and creatures that remind us of sea creatures, because Lovecraft had an enormous fear of the sea.

The gods in these stories represent, on a symbolic level, the vastness of the universe, the terror of the unknown, and the fragility of the human mind: they are entities older than time itself, contact with them tends to shatter the mind, and humanity must be very, very grateful that most of them are locked away or incapacitated in some way. Also, the way to access them is through very specific rituals that have been lost over time, so thankfully they're not very easy to contact either.

Similarities with the Deans

Let's start with the most obvious: the Deans, like the Lovecraftian gods, seem to operate in their own plane of existence, beyond what humans understand as "life" and "death": Nevermore is a kind of limbo, but we know, thanks to the Raven, that these guys came from another place and had enough power to kick the crap out of psychopomps without any problem.

However, just like Lovecraft's gods, these enormous powers don't make them able to do whatever they want; as I said, these entities are usually locked up or incapacitated in some way and can only have contact with humans under certain circumstances (like being summoned in rituals), and getting out of their prisons usually requires vague events like astral alignments that are completely out of their control.

The Deans, like Lovecraft's gods, seem to be subject to rules that are above them, and while they can bend them a bit to achieve their goals, it's not like they can do much about it.

Another thing they have in common with Lovecraft's gods is the ability to create servants that function as extensions of them to fulfill their designs. There are many creatures that follow this line in the stories that speak of The Myths, but the best known are the Shoggoth that appear in the novel At the Mountains of Madness: artificial beings created by the Old Ones to rule the Earth, described as amphibious, amorphous masses similar to amoebas.

Although the Deans prefer their minions in the form of animated dolls. I suspect this decision is based on the story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman. I have no proof, but no doubt.

Now for the joke that brings this essay to life: the creature in Lovecraft's universe that most resembles the Deans is a being called Nyarlathotep. This creature belongs to the category of "Other Gods" (not the old ones like Cthulhu) and gets very nice nicknames like "Crawling Chaos".

Nyarlathotep is a being who enjoys causing chaos, death and madness wherever they go. They can communicate with humans, which they use to psychologically torture them and make them lose their minds. Something they seem to enjoy quite a bit. In the same way that the Deans view this sadistic battle royale, they have set up a fun game.

Then there is the ability to manipulate and alter the human mind, which is called into question in stories like Nyarlathotep and The Rats in the Walls (where it is apparently Nyarlathotep who messes with the protagonist's mind so that he tries to kill his friend).

This is something we've seen manifest in Nevermore in two different ways: the ability to trigger or unlock memories.

And the ability to change them. While we can't know if what was shown to Annabel is 100% real, we do know that showing her the end of her life caused a permanent change in the way she retrieves her memories: from the end backwards. If this memory is somehow altered, we also know that the Deans are capable of photoshopping people's memories.

Finally, Nyarlathotep has the ability to shape-shift, which allows them to appear as humanoids in several stories, such as The Oniric Quest of the Unknown Kadath or Dreams in the Witch's House. His human form is considered "unnatural", "strange" and "disturbing" by those who see it (remember that Lovecraft was extremely racist, so he always presents himself as a black man). As a pharaoh in the Randolph Carter cycle and as a charcoal humanoid figure in the second story cited).

Here, the human form of whatever the Deans are is also quite atypical: not only are they ridiculously tall (7 feet), they have heterochromia with a white-colored eye (which I would venture to say may be a reference to the cataract eye mentioned in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe), and their synchronized movements are amusing on paper, but possibly strange to look at for the characters.

Otherwise, there are two other entities in Lovecraft's universe whose descriptions can be loosely associated with the Deans: Yogg-Sothoth and Azathoth. Both are beings of dual nature.

The former is an entity associated with omniscience and appears in stories such as The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror. and is described as "the key and the door".

Azathoth represents omnipotence, is the center of the universe, and is described as "the beginning and the end" or "the alpha and the omega.

Implications for the comic

The fact that the Deans have elements in common with Nyarlathotep brings up an interesting point: although Nyarlathotep has far greater freedom than other beings, they is a servant of Azathoth. In other words, them powers are subservient to a more powerful being whose plans they must follow. They may amuse themselves in the process, but they is still essentially a butler.

On the other hand, the Azathoth connection might be vague, since this creature is a lobotomized god, so he can't do much. But if the reference is to Yogg-Sothoth, it gets a little more interesting, because that entity is the one who is supposed to release the original gods when the time is right.

And I don't know about you, but these references have me wondering if the Deans are working for something much more messed up than they are, or if they're using the souls of the students to bring back something much more sinister.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

I think the Deans are fucking Lovecraftian gods

If you're a regular reader of my nonsense, you may have noticed that on more than one occasion I've referred to the Deans as "Nyarlathotep Tumblrsexymen": no, I didn't have a stroke on the keyboard, this is a reference to an entity that appears in the stories of Howard Phillip Lovecraft. A writer who is widely known because there were even people who thought that the Necronomicon, a fictional text part of his work, actually existed (and because he was such a recalcitrant racist that it has become a meme about how extremely racist he was).

And since I'm still going through my pile of papers on Gothic fiction, let me take a moment to talk about Lovecraft's work, why I have reason to believe that the Deans have something in common with these creatures, and what that might mean for the development of Nevermore.

A Little About Lovecraft's Gods

To understand a little bit about the kind of creatures we are talking about, I have to stop at a brief (seriously brief) description of cosmic horror: This is a type of horror that takes elements from the scientific publications of the time (which makes it close to science fiction) to give it verisimilitude, it has at its core a deep nihilism, the breaking of scientific canons, the fragility of the human mind and societies contrasted with the vastness of the universe, an enormous fear of "the unknown" for the white man (fed by his racist paranoia), and seasoned with tentacles and creatures that remind us of sea creatures, because Lovecraft had an enormous fear of the sea.

The gods in these stories represent, on a symbolic level, the vastness of the universe, the terror of the unknown, and the fragility of the human mind: they are entities older than time itself, contact with them tends to shatter the mind, and humanity must be very, very grateful that most of them are locked away or incapacitated in some way. Also, the way to access them is through very specific rituals that have been lost over time, so thankfully they're not very easy to contact either.

Similarities with the Deans

Let's start with the most obvious: the Deans, like the Lovecraftian gods, seem to operate in their own plane of existence, beyond what humans understand as "life" and "death": Nevermore is a kind of limbo, but we know, thanks to the Raven, that these guys came from another place and had enough power to kick the crap out of psychopomps without any problem.

However, just like Lovecraft's gods, these enormous powers don't make them able to do whatever they want; as I said, these entities are usually locked up or incapacitated in some way and can only have contact with humans under certain circumstances (like being summoned in rituals), and getting out of their prisons usually requires vague events like astral alignments that are completely out of their control.

The Deans, like Lovecraft's gods, seem to be subject to rules that are above them, and while they can bend them a bit to achieve their goals, it's not like they can do much about it.

Another thing they have in common with Lovecraft's gods is the ability to create servants that function as extensions of them to fulfill their designs. There are many creatures that follow this line in the stories that speak of The Myths, but the best known are the Shoggoth that appear in the novel At the Mountains of Madness: artificial beings created by the Old Ones to rule the Earth, described as amphibious, amorphous masses similar to amoebas.

Although the Deans prefer their minions in the form of animated dolls. I suspect this decision is based on the story The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman. I have no proof, but no doubt.

Now for the joke that brings this essay to life: the creature in Lovecraft's universe that most resembles the Deans is a being called Nyarlathotep. This creature belongs to the category of "Other Gods" (not the old ones like Cthulhu) and gets very nice nicknames like "Crawling Chaos".

Nyarlathotep is a being who enjoys causing chaos, death and madness wherever they go. They can communicate with humans, which they use to psychologically torture them and make them lose their minds. Something they seem to enjoy quite a bit. In the same way that the Deans view this sadistic battle royale, they have set up a fun game.

Then there is the ability to manipulate and alter the human mind, which is called into question in stories like Nyarlathotep and The Rats in the Walls (where it is apparently Nyarlathotep who messes with the protagonist's mind so that he tries to kill his friend).

This is something we've seen manifest in Nevermore in two different ways: the ability to trigger or unlock memories.

And the ability to change them. While we can't know if what was shown to Annabel is 100% real, we do know that showing her the end of her life caused a permanent change in the way she retrieves her memories: from the end backwards. If this memory is somehow altered, we also know that the Deans are capable of photoshopping people's memories.

Finally, Nyarlathotep has the ability to shape-shift, which allows them to appear as humanoids in several stories, such as The Oniric Quest of the Unknown Kadath or Dreams in the Witch's House. His human form is considered "unnatural", "strange" and "disturbing" by those who see it (remember that Lovecraft was extremely racist, so he always presents himself as a black man). As a pharaoh in the Randolph Carter cycle and as a charcoal humanoid figure in the second story cited).

Here, the human form of whatever the Deans are is also quite atypical: not only are they ridiculously tall (7 feet), they have heterochromia with a white-colored eye (which I would venture to say may be a reference to the cataract eye mentioned in the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe), and their synchronized movements are amusing on paper, but possibly strange to look at for the characters.

Otherwise, there are two other entities in Lovecraft's universe whose descriptions can be loosely associated with the Deans: Yogg-Sothoth and Azathoth. Both are beings of dual nature.

The former is an entity associated with omniscience and appears in stories such as The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward and The Dunwich Horror. and is described as "the key and the door".

Azathoth represents omnipotence, is the center of the universe, and is described as "the beginning and the end" or "the alpha and the omega.

Implications for the comic

The fact that the Deans have elements in common with Nyarlathotep brings up an interesting point: although Nyarlathotep has far greater freedom than other beings, they is a servant of Azathoth. In other words, them powers are subservient to a more powerful being whose plans they must follow. They may amuse themselves in the process, but they is still essentially a butler.

On the other hand, the Azathoth connection might be vague, since this creature is a lobotomized god, so he can't do much. But if the reference is to Yogg-Sothoth, it gets a little more interesting, because that entity is the one who is supposed to release the original gods when the time is right.

And I don't know about you, but these references have me wondering if the Deans are working for something much more messed up than they are, or if they're using the souls of the students to bring back something much more sinister.

[blacknedsoul-blog]

I think I'll take this as an opportunity to comment on something that crossed my mind a while ago: webtoon is not a platform that is friendly to bodily diversity.

Let me explain: for your comic to be popular, it has to be visually appealing, but you still have to keep a weekly publication rate because that's what the algorithm likes. That means you have to juggle those two things.

And one way to reduce the workload is to make production more efficient. Nevermore, for example, does it with the bodies: all these people have the same body type and you can identify them from each other by other things (clothes, hair, skin color, extra details [like Bernice's teeth]). They have lots of details in these aspects, but the base has to be the same in all of them so they can work on that.

I've seen a lot of other webtoons that do something similar (it's the same with manga, too). But if you have characters with different bodies, you have to work with different base types and that requires more work.

So, this ends up generating -at the platform level- the impression that being thin is a standard and it's hard to find in the official webtoons stories with more diversity in that sense. It's really screwed up.

Hey I don’t know if this blog is still active but I just needed to get the written down somewhere. I love Nevermore loads along with all the characters, but I really do wish there was more plus sized representation in the comic. Honestly I would even take background characters. At this point it feels like any body variation is just making them shorter than everyone else. And before anyone is like “This is set in the past, there weren’t as many plus sized people then.”

I mean that’s just weak, a quick google search will prove that wrong. Even Bridgerton got a plus sized character in!

This isn’t a huge issue I have, like I said I love the characters, it just annoys me that every single one of them is as skinny as a twig

You thought I was gone, didn't you?

The Nevermore Characters are, to put it lightly, on a pretty hefty dose of celebrity Ozempic. It fits a Tim-Burton vibe, I guess, so there's that; and, it fits some of them!

For example, Lenore:

Lenore was wheelchair-bound, drugged, and it's not specified how often she was fed during her time in the attic. She's weak and fragile, skin and bones.

Annabel Lee is on the curvy side, with wider hips, a bigger bust, and thicker thighs than Lenore. And that waist was corsetted from birth. (Oh, Annabel, you're my body goals, girl. What's the workout routine?)

You know who I wished was plus-sized? Some of you might not see this coming, or maybe you do.

I think that if Morella lived longer, she would've been plus-sized. Sometimes, when picturing her in my head, I'll ignore the canon; she'll have a thicker, bigger figure a la the granddaughters of the Irish Women that survived the Famine. (I'm going to toss the word "Epigenetics" out there.)

That, my friend, would be "historically accurate." I mean, we all saw that giant meal she had, right? She's eating to survive, baby.

(Hey. Psst. Did you know that there was no "famine?" It was forced starvation from the British. Anyway.)

Headcanon aside, I also wish we get some more plus-sized representation. I'd love to see more variations of body types.