#i have re-written the exact same thing like 8 times rip & no i am not happy with it. beaming it into the universe who wants to plot with me

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the work is certainly not in progress, but it is wednesday !!

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oh jeez, your LND fanfiction sounds amazing every time you talk about it! Will you ever release it to the public, English translated or not?

EDIT: this post became longer than I thought and contains stupid ramblings about gothic literature and me overanalyzing stuff even if nobody asked me about any of this lmao. You’ve been warned.

Thank you :3 I’m pretty proud of that little soap-opera! Has been a while since I spent so much time just dwelling into characters’ personalities and trying to imagine how they changed as time went by. The last time I did something like this was at least 5 years ago with my own original characters.

Sadly, translating it would take me way too much time considering that I just hit 40 pages (add the 150+ pages of my ‘main’ fanfic and you’ll get the picture of how much Gehrmaria and Micorom crap I’ve written XD) but I can consider uploading the Italian one somewhere in the future.

The biggest problem I have with the LND AU rn and why I am hesitant to post it anywhere (aside from the language) is that I’ve lost the 1st chapter when my file got corrupted and I honestly doubt that I’ll ever re-write it. It was a nice introduction imho, taking place 8 years after the massacre of Fishing Hamlet with Patches, now on the run like many other Cainhurst survivors, carrying on his sketchy business in post-industrial revolution Lothric and giving Gehrman precious information in exchange for a conspicuous sum of money. The greedy bastard :P

From there, Gehrman made contact with Greirat (or at least, his Bloodborne-ish counterpart. He’s not supposed to be the same man, just like Patches is not the same as DeS and DS1-3) who’s the counterfeiter who forged Maria’s documents allowing her to safely leave Carim. The story then moves to the small, peaceful village near the border between Vinheim and Astora where Maria fled, a place so different from Yharnam that Gehrman can’t believe his eyes. I just like to imagine how shocked the characters would be to find themselves in places where not everything is trying to kill them lmao.

I mean, it’s super cheesy. It’s a rip off of the worst Phantom of the Opera fanfiction ever written (and performed. I still can’t believe that I saw that thing on stage 3 times. I AM SCARRED FOR LIFE WEBBER!) after all, but I guess that’s why I love Gehrmaria so much in the first place XD

I love Gothic Romance and many of its tropes but I am bored to death by how most of the time it presents female characters. Boring, empty, subservient ladies with no character *cough cough, Christine, cough*. So, let me explain why I find Maria to be a much more engrossing character, but in order to do so, we need to take a look at the old man himself first :P

Gehrman perfectly mets all the ‘requirements’  of the male counterpart in traditional gothic romance:

Is in a position of authority over the female lead. (Owner of the mansion/castle/whatever spooky place the story takes place in, teacher, replacement of a fatherly figure, betrothed the poor girl has never met before and so on)

Is usually older than the heroine and of a different social status.

Deceives the heroine. (this aspect changes from character to character and can range from an elaborate evil plan to kill the heroine just like Mr.Sharpe plans to do in Crimson Peak to Erik hiding his monstrous appearance from Christine or simply hiding an inconvenient secret like Mr.Rochester does in Jane Eyre. Most of the time, is just hiding the fact that they REALLY like the chick because *insert moral reason here*.

Uncertainty of reciprocation / unreturned love.

Elements of manias of various sorts and neuroses. (Ironically enough, these characteristics are found also in positive heroes such as the Byronic ones. In fact, most modern super villains AND superheroes can be considered Byronic heroes, depending on who you ask.)

Is associated with the supernatural, death and the underworld. (it can be through visual clues, the house is described as a tomb, is located underground, the character possess attributes, supernatural or not, that associate them with death. Erik is literally a living corpse, Maxim De Winter is haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife and Dracula is obviously a vampire. I don’t like to include Dracula among the other boys because his character was made an icon of tragic love only in modern media and not in the original book :/. “Eros&Thanatos” and “Death and the Maiden” are really common archetypes.)

etc.. etc…

BUT what I like about this ship is that you can easily turn the tables and say that almost all of the above applies somehow to Maria too. She is in a position of power being a noblewoman from a scary and powerful family of pseudo-vampires with a dark history. She’s not physically inferior in any way and had no reason to take interest in someone like Gehrman unless she wanted to because she saw something admirable in them or because they proved themselves worthy of her attention. Maria is also depicted in canon as someone in possession of traits traditionally associated with gothic heroines such as kindness, mercy and the will to bring solace to those who suffer BUT Gehrman possesses the exact same traits even if he shows them in a different way.

Personally, I love how balanced they are and that’s why I like writing about them so much.