#basically the entire book

[apricusapollo]

quotes from frankenstein by mary shelley that remind me of theo raeken:

It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. 

It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction. 

It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed for ever – that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. 

I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.

My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.

But now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.  

Dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space were now become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete! 

I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. 

How sincerely you did love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own. A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses. 

The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings!

She also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I the cause!

He threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. 

I had none to support me; all looked on me as a wretched doomed to ignominy and perdition.

Anguish and despair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within me which nothing could extinguish.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more was yet behind.

Instead of that serenity of conscience which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures such as no language can describe. 

All sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation – deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

Often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. 

Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils.

Banish those dark passions. Remember the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. 

Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe; the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no beneficial influence could penetrate.

All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! 

Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. 

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.

Believe me, I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing? They spurn and hate me.

Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no term with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. 

Listen to my tale; when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me.

If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched. 

Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?

I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death – a state which I feared yet did not understand. 

Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them.

Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.

They did not appear rich, but they were contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine became every day more tumultuous. 

I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him. 

I required kindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of it.

I am an unfortunate and deserted creature, I look around and I have no relation or friend upon earth.

Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? 

My feelings are those of rage and revenge

There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No; from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. 

For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to control them, but allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death.

I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.

The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. 

My daily vows rose for revenge – a deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured.

I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him

I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I noy shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?

I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear. 

I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth. 

You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed. 

I felt then that I should survive the exhibit what I shall soon cease to be – a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.

For an instant I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a free and lofty spirit, but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self. 

I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. 

I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom.

How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest?

Who could be interested in the fate of a murderer but the hangman who would gain his fee?

I was overcome by gloom and misery and often reflected I had better seek death than desire to remain in a world which to me was replete with wretchedness. 

Little happiness remains for us on earth, yet all that I may one day enjoy is centred in you.

Memory brought madness with it,  and when I thought of what had passed, a real insanity possessed me; sometimes I was furious and burnt with rage, sometimes low and despondent. 

They were dead, and I lived.

My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me.

His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendlike malice.

The only joy that he can now know will be when he composes his shattered spirit to peace and death. Yet he enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium. 

When younger I believed myself destined for great enterprise.

I am chained in an eternal hell.

If you had known me as I once was, you would not recognise me in this state of degradation. 

I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathise with and love me

The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain. 

What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destoyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. 

A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse.

I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey.

It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall.

It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.

But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure.

I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal.

When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires.

Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?

I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.

But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the helpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept and grasped to death his throat who never injured me or any other living thing.

You hate me, but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. 

I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched.

I shall no longer see the sun or stars or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness.

Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?

Blasted as thou wert, my agony was still superior to thine, for the bitter sting of remorse will not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close them for ever.

I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly and exult in the agony of the torturing flames.

[freakcliff]

many things about the chronicles of Narnia made me irrevocably insane at the small age of six years old but one of the big ones was the bit in prince Caspian where caspian blows susan's horn to try and summon help and it summons the pevensie kids like. that's crazy ok. that's insane. imagine at 12 years old you're given a horn thats purpose is basically summoning divine intervention & then years later someone blows it and summons YOU . I'm crazy !

[egophiliac]

Since book 7 part 5 (the part where we meet Meleanor/Maleanor 👀) is coming to EN this month, i would love to see your take on lilia’s proposal to meleanor! i mean they were like little kids right? it couldn’t have been that serious…i think the only reason she even brought it up again is because she could tell lilia still genuinely loved her…(even if he didn’t realize it himself?) but, oh well! Let’s think about silly childhood shenanigans to numb the pain! ^_^ (orz)

oh shit?! get ready for a doozy guys, it's comiiiiiing ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I chickened out of posting the whole thing (look, I get VERY carried away when it comes to these wacky kids and their Tragedy), but I do believe that it probably ended with Lilia getting embarrassed and just shoving the first thing he sees into his mouth to try and cover for it.

(we're just lucky it wasn't a frog this time)

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

honestly "no good deed" makes perfect sense when you put it into context of everything elphaba's been through in the last 24 hours. like. went to go visit her sister and dad. found out her dad was dead and not only does her sister hate her now but she's become the dictator of their home and imprisoned everyone who lives there. tries to help her sister a little by giving her the ability to walk only for her sister to immediately try to kill a guy. elphaba saves his life by turning him into a walking statue. during all this she finds out both of her college crushes are marrying each other and decides to go see what's going on there. goes to the capitol and is almost pardoned by the fascist dictator until she finds out that her favorite schoolteacher has been tortured so bad he's no longer sapient. crush a then shows up and almost kills her, then reveals he's running away with her instead. and she's like. what. and they have to leave behind crush b who ALREADY has severe abandonment issues. this is all happening in front of the fascist dictator, who is also her birth father. she and crush a run off and have sex for the first time. she then sees a massive storm and realizes it's heading right for her sister. goes to check and make sure her sister's ok. her sister has been murdered and the murderer is a 6yo girl who was given the family heirloom shoes by crush b. elphaba and crush b get into a fistfight, elphaba is almost arrested and murdered but crush a frees her and gets killed instead. like no wonder she fucking snapped, i would've cracked like eight hours prior

[kingroan]

not to ramble about iwtv but i think a lot of people who balk at the unsavory parts of gothic fiction are people who have either 1) never truly had to face an onslaught of the macabre in their own life 2) have not actually sat with the discomfort of the darker parts of existence or simply not learned or had to learn how to process truly twisted emotions within themselves. and i bring this up in relation to iwtv because i see a lot of people pointing out 'problematic' parts of the book or bemoaning which ships are more or less toxic. and it's like it's a cow farm there's gonna be cows on the cow farm.

yeah anne rice wrote some weird shit and some of it is definitely unnecessary, most of those elements were corrected in the show. but a lot of it is just gothic fiction. you don't get to have sexy vampires, romanticism and tortured yearning without the inappropriate attachments, the true face of grief and the blurred lines between violence and eroticism which has evoked great interest in humans for centuries.

[blueskittlesart]

Hi, I saw your tags on the ask about your thesis comic and got to wondering... why would you not want to post your art if you're planning on showing it to an agent? I'm a musician, not a visual/digital artist, so I might just be missing context.

i'm going off of advice from my thesis advisor, but from what i understand, it's less likely that people are going to pay for your work if the whole thing is already online for free. (it's still possible obviously, but less likely, and you'd usually have to have an INSANE amount of viewership to even be considered.) posting previews like i've been doing gives me the best of both worlds in that i'm able to prove that there's interest in my work but there's still exclusivity to it! I believe it's also just generally an industry standard thing where if you want to sell something you don't give it out in full to the internet beforehand.

[cl0wnstuff]

how i feel searching a specific drarry extract from the books just to prove my point that drarry is not something that came out of nothing

[hanzajesthanza]

i read a take about the witcher online that i disagree with

[crazy-ache]

Prelude (Elucien Week Preview)

Summary: One moment. All it takes is one singular moment to change the trajectory of fate. Following the events of Hybern, everything changes when Lucien instinctively grabs his mate—Elain Archeron—and brings her back to the Spring Court with Feyre and Tamlin. 

In the midst of war and ruin, Elain and Lucien will have to face the bond that connects them together if they hope to survive the unintended consequences. To do so, they’ll have to prevail through games of deceit, powerful forces of magic, and deadly enemies. And hope their hearts survive the journey. 

A retelling of A Court of Wings and Ruin (ACOWAR) and a Canon Divergent AU. 

Notes: This is my big project for Elucien Week 2024! I'm posting a short prelude a week early in excitement for the first seven chapters which will be posted daily for @elucienweekofficial and will continue updating weekly afterward. This will closely follow the book's events and feature Elain/Lucien POVs.

Read on AO3

Lucien suddenly landed in the gravel of the Spring Court’s front drive. It was only at the sound of Feyre’s voice, a near growl, a sharp blade against the gentle air of blooming Spring, that Lucien realized his hand was gripped around a delicate wrist. “What did you do?” She snapped at him.

If you'd like to be added to a tag list for updates, please comment or let me know!

[miinteaa]

Sskk redraw of a panel from The Disabled Tyrants Beloved Pet Fish

[ruffledwizard]

Ranger Treaty??? The guy from my most beloved childhood book series???

[kooldewd123]

as much as i love book 32 in concept, it's probably the worst thing that ever happens to rachel's characterization because it feels like every ghostwriter after that point read it and their only takeaway was mean rachel

[egophiliac]

I have never been more concerned for a JP update from your art than I am seeing a Cheka knowing the context of Leona’s dream.

My bois ok right?????? My sweet nephews ok right??????

well

uhhhh

I'm sure the real one is fine :)

[thevibrationofatoms]

Still working on the little reading/plant room overall but I finished the wall mural in time to enjoy it for Anthesteria! This whole thing was outside of my usual style and I'm beyond happy with how it turned out.

Done by sketching the design out with chalk, making and cutting out leaf stencils then filling in leftover spaces with random fiddly bits and cleaning lines up afterward with the main wall color.

"Chaise lounge" was faked using a cushioned chair I already had with a thrifted ottoman and cunningly arranged pillows. The blanket IS amazing and was another thrift find. Next steps are book shelves, more plant stands, and setting up a wall of random art prints.

[tea-cat-arts]

To me, one of the most baffling changes the donghua made was making it so demonic cultivation is actually what caused wwx to snap. The book's "wwx snapped after witnessing his clan die, being thrown in the torture pit for 3 months, participating in a war, getting isolated from his family, and suddenly becoming responsible for a clan that's being actively persecuted and the only safe place is the aforementioned torture pit. Wwx doesn't let anyone know the full extent of his pain, so everyone incorrectly assumes the demonic cultivation is what's making him act up. Also Demonic cultivation is the one the one thing letting him keep his illusion of control and power, so he lashes out against people like lwj who are trying to take it away from him" just makes more sense to me and is also more consistent with the idea that resentful energy and the study of it is morally neutral

[puhpandas]

I think about the tapes so often the badass dialogue they use to build tension in 46 the storytelling of both Vanessa's past with abuse and showing it still affecting her and her STILL being abused by glitchtrap/mimic and actually truly for real showing that on screen canonically in a game. steel wool having the chance to put in love and effort into the writing of the human characters. the vanessa tapes being about her but also being about showing GGYs progress keeping everything under wraps and how powerless vanessa is to stop him or vanny or glitchtrap. the 46 tapes giving us cute little information about Rabs character and being so sinister with great voice acting and great writing in the dialogue to tell all this information like GOD. I miss the tapes sooo much I want them to come back so bad they were some of the only surviving actual writing from SB and I know steel wool is still capable of cooking like this. they just havent gotten the chance!!!!!