#canto 6

[monarch-aip]

Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

[sleepyminty]

SPOILER FOR CANTO 6 AND 7

Subtle foreshadowing

[rugwurm]

[venomgaia]

sm limbus scribbles too frm the past weeks between workin on things!

[slugpup2]

text post to commemorate one of my friends finally beating canto 6

[mariibeann]

“Your an angel, I’m a dog”

[picaroroboto]

in book Wuthering Heights almost everyone is against Heathcliff from the moment he's adopted into the Earnshaw family, insisting that he's "of the devil" because he has darker skin and that him being quiet and sullen is further proof of being evil by nature. When he's mistreated and abused by people who are convinced that he's awful it becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy when he grows up into a mean and spiteful person, like how you can't be surprised when a kicked dog bites back. The novel is sympathetic to him at times, but it's also told from the perspective of an older Nelly who's grown to hate him as he's gotten worse, and it's also very Victorian, from a time period where it was believed that being in poverty was a sign of moral failing. If you read it in modern times you end up looking at it with knowledge of how cycles of abuse work, and see Heathcliff's character from a sort of nature vs nurture angle. The Limbus version of Heathcliff is basically plucked from the midpoint of the novel before this transformation is complete, his character is in thematic dialogue with that of the original.

In Canto 6 all of the antagonists - Linton, Hindley, Nelly, and the Erlking - all criticize Heathcliff by telling him in different ways that he hasn't changed at all, that he is incapable of changing, that he is and always will be a wretch. The abuse has seeped into the extreme of the Erlking's absolute self-destructiveness, where he's convinced that it would be better if every Heathcliff didn't exist. But he has changed, or at least started to, even the fact that he's returned to Wuthering Heights to confront his past and continues moving forward past everyone trying to tear him down counts for something. At the risk of sounding too sappy our Heathcliff has got something that the book version and seemingly every other Mirror World version doesn't, and that's friends - friends whom he can count on to bring him back when he's out of control, and who are still holding out hope for him.

Canto 6 is also the work of someone who very clearly read and loved the novel looking at the text and asking "Could anything change?". Say, if Heathcliff had stuck around eavesdropping for one second more to that one conversation and heard Cathy saying how much she loved him - well, I suppose things would have turned out better but there wouldn't have been a second half of the story then, but you want to ask this question anyways because you care about the characters. In some ways Canto 6 like a very good fanfiction and not just because it's a secondary work, but because it's striving for a better outcome for the pairing while also having a strong understanding and appreciation for the original, carrying through it's ideas, imagery, and themes while also looking at them differently. And because it takes the concept of AUs seriously.

[knoxise]

league of nine

[yaoicarus]

I realized I never posted this here

additional canto 6 meme under cut

that seems abt right

[falsepriestt]

🪻🪻🪻

[vividseaa]

💟💜

[hollyleaf]

wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

[citroncynique]

bad dreams in the night

[wolvzephyr]

miss ellen dean (nelly)

[fantomeeee]

[sharoo]

basically what happened