#A very horrifying reality

[immediatebreakfast]

It's kinda fun, and all of that make jokes about how Van Helsing is probably shitting himself out of fear while Mina watches him without blinking a single time, but considering the whole picture between the two... Van Helsing is in a deeply fucked up situation straight up from a more horror like narrative than a gothic one.

Yes, there is a really good difference between the Gothic and Horror as literary genres. The Gothic genre uses amplified emotions such as terror as a response plot device to give commentary on any socio-political-cultural anxieties that were happening in the real time period which the plot is centered. More times than once it is also hand in hand with a personification of these anxieties in the form of the Monster or the Villain of the story. However, in the Horror genre this terror shapes itself in the front and center of the narrative as a way to explore the extreme of the darkness that lays within the human condition through emotions like disgust or the emotionally disturbing. By putting the characters in unsettling conditions, and against the inevitable grotesque, the Horror makes the readers have a reaction to its situation, and questions about said reactions as humans beings.

And what else to call this if not Horror? How does the character of Van Helsing, a man who thrived in the Gothic setting as the role of the foreign man of science with rational and cultural knowledge on his side, can defend himself against this change when the literary Horror declares that he can shifted from protagonist to victim whenever the narrative decides to inflict a new emotion to the reader?

Well, this sudden shift leaves Van Helsing utterly afraid.

She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well. However, to-night she is more vif.

There is nobody else but him, and Mina in this isolated mountain as winter falls down on the ground, absolutely nobody to turn for help.

At sunset I try to hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown less and less with each day, and to-night it fail me altogether. Well, God's will be done—whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead!

As Mina changes the closer she gets to Dracula's castle, it was never like this and never so unnervingly quickly.

I go to help her; but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already—that she was so hungry that she would not wait. I like it not, and I have grave doubts; but I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of it. 

With only his journal as a listening ear for his very justified worries, because Van Helsing fears that the questioning would finally break the very thin liminal feeling that is protecting him right now.

Madam still sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid!—I am afraid of all things—even to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch.

Right now Van Helsing is holding in his hands the promise that he made to both Mina and Jonathan before departing, he is holding onto that little ray of hope that tells him to ignore all of the warning signs all over Mina that any other character except Jonathan wouldn't have just ignored. All of these days Van Helsing is taking care of Mina while praying that she doesn't kill him if her transformation becomes complete before ever teaching their revenge, he has to write his "last" letter now before he can't ever write again.

[thefearfulheart]

I offer another clownbo au to the clownbo people again

God Evbo keeps restarting the timeline because something ends up happening to Void that ends up with him dying each time and it breaks Evbo every time it happens.

So he thinks that if he can restart the timeline again that he’ll be able to fix it, that he can stop it before it happens so he does it and he’s back at square one as a noob but with the power of a god at his fingertips and he races back to the top and his first meeting with Void. Relief washes over him as he sees him and he ends up hugging a confused Void who has no idea what’s going but assumes that Evbo is just happy that he didn’t die in general.

Everything goes as it did in the original timeline and it’s great! Evbo even ends up solving things way quicker and getting it all done so much faster than beforehand! The only thing that really threw him off is when during when they went through the hidden level again that when he met the Parkour Villain it ended up with the guy looking at him for an uncomfortable amount of time before actually getting out of his prison and just saying:

“So we meet again.”

Which confuses Evbo and he doesn’t even notice that Seawatt ends up swiping his diamond boots again while he doesn’t notice and giving them to the Villain.

But he ignores it and goes to find him again and defeat the villain.

And he wins.

Then everything is good and great for awhile…Void is alive and breathing and smiling and-

And then he dies.

So evbo tries again.

Because he failed Void, so he needs to try again for him.

So he starts again and climbs his way to the top to see Void again and then continues on towards to meeting the Villain but this time no words are exchanged.

Everything proceeds as normal until the final parkour race between them…and the course has changed.

But Evbo pushes it back and defeats the Villain again.

And everything is good again.

But Void dies and he restarts the timeline to save him.

And again and again. A rinse and repeat cycle that always end with Void dying and begins with Evbo restarting as the villain, perhaps tiredly, stays silent the entire time as it goes through with the only variations being changes to the end parkour course.

It’s a maddening cycle and Evbo feels his sanity slipping bit by bit.

Maybe in the 50th loop or so the villain finally snaps and grabs Evbo by the shoulders with such a rage that it surprises the god.

“Is this some divine punishment of yours that you crafted for me?” The villain would say as his fingers dig into the other’s skin. “To know that I will never win against you…that no matter how hard I try to defeat you that it is just a laughable joke in the end!”

“W-what?” Evbo is just…surprised even though it makes a lot more sense on why the villain changed over time or that the course he beats him in changes. “N-no! How?-“

“How many times have I seen your face? How many times have I died by your hands…”

And the villain just throws him onto the ground with barely hidden anger as Evbo scrambles to…apologies? He doesn’t know.

He didn’t know that someone else…he didn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say.

So he just restarts the timeline and runs away from it as guilt crawls its way to his heart.

But he doesn’t stop it. He’s already gone to far and it’s fine…it’s just a fluke right?

It can’t happen again.

But the next time the villain sees him and, the minute he gets down from his prison, he jumps on top of him and goes to punch him before Evbo restarts the timeline with the realisation that no…it wasn’t a fluke. That it definitely did happen and it now makes everything so much more worse.

It makes him want to vomit.

[ghost-bxrd]

What if one of Jason's Red Hood revenge plans go off the rails, in Owl Song?

Off the rails as in, Dick gets caught in something that can kill even a talon - say, a big enough explosion... Jason left convinced Dick is dead and he is responsible for it...

If Jason is absolutely sure Dick is dead/beyond any chance of being revived either with electrum or other supernatural means…. He’d completely shut down, turn himself into authorities, and plead for the death penalty.

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

Unbecoming

YA contemporary set in a not-too-distant future Roe V Wade is overturned and anything to do with reproductive rights is outlawed

follows two Muslim best friends who are working on a texas teen’s guide to abortion access and resources

one, who wants to be an OBGYN, finds out just how complicated making a guide with accurate and usable information is when she accidentally gets pregnant & needs urgent help herself

and the other is a student journalist, who’s investigating suspicious dealings between their mosque and a local politican

drama/comedy, Indian & sapphic Palestinian MCs

[thecubspeaks]

I went back to see Ascended Astarion because I’ve never done it before… and I feel like it might narratively make more sense for this Tav to let him do it…

[diathadevil]

I just realized I have VERY specific memories of what I was afraid of growing up as a wee little devil. So I need to see if others had a similar experience to my own.

(or if not just laugh at these dumb moments with me 'cuz I grew out of them eventually. some of them took me longer than the rest.)

[b-blushes]

migraine has been bestowed upon me

[moodr1ng]

i think its so fun to see how when people are more or less used to horror media it has a vastly different effect on them.. for me personally im used enough to it that i dont get THAT scared of any horror anymore, though as a teen i was very sensitive to it, and tbh while ig id gain a deeper experience of the intended horror if i wasnt desensitized to it, i dont actually like being scared LOL so im fine where im at.

but the thing that i always remember is "the horla" by guy de maupassant, an 1887 horror short story about a guy who is being tormented at night by some sort of presence or being he calls 'the horla' and doubts his sanity as he tries to get proof of the things existence. when i was a kid, my mom would always bring up how she read the horla at 19 and was so completely horrified by it that she couldnt sleep in the dark for weeks. she always recounted just how absolutely terrifying this story was. so eventually as a young teen i read the horla, and i was like.. ok? and? thats it...? it had no effect on me at all, it was basically just a sort of lame ghost story to me.

but eventually i did get to understand that when my mom read the horla, that was the first horror story she had ever read. even after she immigrated to france, i think what she read and watched was still overseen by her parents, and this kind of literature wasnt the stuff she was supposed to read, so she just.. hadnt, presumably until at 19 she ran away and was free to do whatever. and the first time she read a scary story that stuff hit her HARD. its a little funny from my pov to imagine a 19yo being scared half to death by the horla of all things but considering the context its totally reasonable.

so yeah whatever no point to this i was just thinking about le horla again.. and how scary everything was to me when i was a young teen as well

[the-crow-binary]

Tfw you look up images of pregnant women for a drawing but end up just weirded out and gives up the idea altogether

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

I want to thank my Lord and savior Tom Cardy for posting a song that has the exact vibe I wanted for the relationship of ps8!Lance/ps8!Allura with an oc I have for this au

[nebulaleaf]

not enough people talk about missing the palace deadline end in third sem. i know it's because there's not a lot of meat to it compared to the "good end" and the "true end" but oughhoggug. it drives me insane in all the best ways. the cobwebs. akira giving in to apathy and going "i dont wanna think any more..." becoming just like the masses he so desperately sought to seperate himself from and save just a week or so prior. marukis ominous as fuck "...for as many days or weeks you have left." the fact that his reasonable choice of action in the face of akira being undecided is to put him asleep forever, as if that's somehow more moral than forcing him into marukis ideal reality

the phone thing! the fact that its implied akira has woken up multiple times and still succumbed to sleep! the blue butterfly attempting to reach out, but ultimately dying! akira is utterly alone and i doubt anyone even remembers him in this reality! its so fucked!!!!

[rotzaprachim]

I think I’m doing sooo well and then WHOOP random anxiety/ptsd/ocd attack

[pochapal]

shannon also bringing up the "violent witch" narrative as well in much the same way that the other servants were doing so in the kitchen oh it's not looking good for her at all

[omarwolaeth]

Thinking about how souls canonically do exist in universe, and how that might correlate to seeing different people as one in the same, all because their souls are identical (pieces of a whole)

[outeremissary]

Shout-out to Revolutionary Girl Utena for continuing to be something that can still completely derail me from everything I'm doing if I think about it for more than five seconds

[kiingbiing]

I'm not saying you shouldn't report for improper tagging(by all means, do it! fics with sensitive and potentially triggering topics should be tagged!), I'm just genuinely curious why the inc*st tag isn't enough? Like if even typing it is so triggering for you why would you open a fic with that tag in the first place? From what you described the fic /was/ tagged, just not with each specific instance of the tag. I think getting nitpicky with the specific manner of tagging (especially given these days a lot of people genuinely don't understand the difference between / and &, in addition to not knowing dd/de and the citrus scale) is sort of a bad faith view of the situation. Anyway, I rly recommend you don't open fics that tag your triggers. It's not healthy to willingly expose yourself to that if you know it will upset you.

I do understand what you mean, how I interact with my media is all on me. But I feel like people should at least learn to properly tag the proper / and & you know? They’re a really big difference.

Especially if I wanted to read a fic specifically catered to & and strictly platonic

I would gladly scroll away if it’s tagged properly

The reason why I’m complaining is because they tagged every single interaction with the siblings as & AND tagged a ship (not with the siblings) with / … so they know…