#get fucked and close your eyes Sydney Atherton

[see-arcane]

I fancy that those eyes of his have as much to do with Dora’s state as anything. I have heard it said that he possesses the hypnotic power to an unusual degree, and that, if he chose to exercise it, he might become a danger to society. I believe he has hypnotised Dora.

I CALLED IT I KNEW IT THIS IS WHY PEOPLE BOTHER BEING FRIENDS WITH THIS PRICK HE'S A HYPNOTIST TOO

[thethirdromana]

The Beetle characters based on how likely they would be to eat a worm

It's the sequel to Dracula characters based on how likely they would be to eat a worm that literally no one asked for.

The Beetle What do racist depictions of Egyptian deities/monsters eat anyway?! This is 100% a question that Richard Marsh did not consider, along with the many, many other things that he did not consider in this novel. Real beetles, though, eat worms among many other things, so I'm going to say that this one is a yes.

Sydney Atherton Because violence begets violence, I want Sydney Atherton to have to eat many worms. I want him to be force-fed them by the ghosts of murdered cats who, meowing and wailing, haunt his every waking hour and most of his sleeping ones. But we can't always get what we want, and if there's one thing that history teaches us, it's that privileged Englishmen of the 1890s very seldom got their just deserts. Sydney Atherton would not eat a worm.

Paul Lessingham It's funny how Paul, written by nearly anyone else, would be a sympathetic character - a social reformer trying to use his status to make life better for those worse off than him, while struggling with the impact of a long-ago trauma. But he's written by Richard Marsh, with his borderline fascistic view of strength and weakness, so here we are.

Anyway, Paul might have been hypnotised into eating a worm at some point, but that would be a weird thing even for the Beetle to do, so I think Paul's diet has been and will remain worm-free.

Marjorie Lindon Marjorie really diminishes as the novel goes on, doesn't she? By the end she's become the damsel in the tower; the woman who got tied to the train tracks. She exists to be white and in need of rescue. She's a plot device, and she would not eat a worm because plot devices don't eat. I only dimly remember the hints of Marjorie as a person who we got in earlier chapters, putting up a creditable fight against her overbearing father. The Marjorie that she could have been would eat a worm just to spite her dad, and good for her.

Augustus Champnell Who the fuck knows. Quick, people who have just spent several weeks reading a novel in which Augustus Champnell is one of the main characters: close your eyes and name any single trait that he has. I've got "upper-class" and "detective" and literally nothing else, how about you? Sure, he'd eat a worm, why not. It's not as if Richard Marsh has given me anything else to go on.

Percy Woodville Percy did get a character trait, and his character trait is "victim of bullying by Sydney Atherton". Sydney has definitely forced Percy to eat a worm at some point, whether in the playground as children or in the lab for some kind of experiment. Maybe more than one. Why do you still spend time with this guy, Percy? Why did you agree to be best man at his wedding? He's not your friend.

Dora Grayling For a character we don't really see all that much of, Dora Grayling is the most confirmed freak in the whole novel. She looks at Sydney Atherton and thinks, "I'd tap that." And then she flirts with him over the seductive concept of mass murder in the Amazon rainforest. There's no way of knowing what Dora might do, aided by her vast heiress fortune. She'd eat a worm, and she'd like it.

Robert Holt Poor, long-suffering, starved Robert Holt. Let him eat something.