#i was ​reading Frankenstein when i wrote this

[my-chemical-aromance]

I think if I fell apart and was sewn back together as a freak, I would live happier. I could understand, with my bulging and yellowed eyes, greying skin, and unnatural proportions. I could understand then, the looks I receive, the daggers always planted in my back. My heart would ache less, if my loneliness were justifiable. If I am so clearly a monster, ought I not look like one then? If my heart is pure, my eyes wide and kind, born of the same parents as anyone, I am human. Then why do I feel so unfortunately unique?

[leofromsomewhere]

damn, that's awesome and/or intense. i don't fully get it though, i gave up reading partway through act 2

Ok but consider: A production of Hamlet that starts with the last scene and then Horatio has to play his role in the rest of the play, but he’s still completely dissolved in tears. Everyone else is oblivious and he has to keep it together for the sake of storytelling, but his voice cracks as he says “I think I saw him yesternight”, regret filling his tone, and he frantically holds on to Hamlet as he begs him not to follow the ghost; he practically chokes on his words as he shouts, “Be rul’d!” And he knows it’s no use, but he’s so reluctant to play his part in this and he can barely keep his emotions at bay. And then the end of the story draws nearer. He takes longer and longer to say his lines. He hesitates, tries to stretch out the little time he’s got left with Hamlet. He doesn’t want to be in this narrative, but he is. Until finally, as Hamlet decides to duel Laertes, Horatio simply gives up. Reluctantly, but knowingly, he accepts the fact that there’s nothing he can do but play his part and relive it all, just to honor Hamlet’s legacy and story. And Hamlet dies in his arms a second time.

[ice-devourer]

Lord (read: chuuya) pls give ne the strength to resist draining my bank account on my bday to purchase books

[cheer-nympho]

Steve was always being brushed off when he asked people to read things aloud for him,

In middle school his assigned partner for their ‘Frankenstein’ project gave him a scornful glare and ignored him when he had asked them to read the passages aloud.

In his sophomore year, he’d turned to ask Robin Buckley to read a old newspaper article about the ‘Wild West’ to him, because he couldn’t make it out through the fonts and weird words. She had fixed him with a cold look but before she could respond, Tammy was tapping his shoulder offering her help.

Then, while studying with Nancy and Barb at lunch, Steve had asked for help reading study cards. His own study cards. The paper was too bright and the squiggles too squiggly. Both of them had looked at him, them each other, clearly trying to decide if it was a joke.

Barb had scoffed under Nancys pointed look and gone back to her own notes. And while Nancy hadn’t read them out for him, she had handed him her own notes on some nice blue and yellow cards. It took him a while, but he could read them. Maybe she thought he hadn’t wrote any.

After that, he went a long time without asking anyone to read him things. Turns out that once you graduate, reading isn’t much of an issue. He’d gotten by just fine by looking at his Archie comics and ignoring the swirling lines of articles surrounding them.

He didn’t need to ask again until Scoops Ahoy. For a cheap, overly themed ice cream parlour there sure was a whole lot of memorising and reading to be done. He couldn’t see the charts properly, couldn’t really make out the dates on the tubs in the freezer. But every time he asked Robin for help, her frown would deepen and deepen until she just snapped. It hadn’t been that mean, really. Just an annoyed yell followed by accusations of being lazy, her not understanding how he managed to graduate, one last comment of him being a ‘bumbling idiot’.

After the Russians, she never said anything like that to him again. And she always did the inventory and lists for him.

It takes until summer, 1987, for anyone to read aloud to Steve. They were laying across Eddie’s new bed in comfortable silence.

Steve had his legs dangling off the edges as Eddie leant back against him, legs pointing up against the wall in a way he swore was actually comfortable. He had been reading a new book called “Spellfire” and he couldn’t seem to put it down.

“Eddie?”

“Hm?”

“What’s your book about?”

“This? Well I…Not sure it’s really your thing, man.”

“Maybe.” He goes back to reading. “I could see if it’s my thing?”

Eddie twists his head sideways to look up at Steve with a slightly confused face. “You wanna borrow it?”

“Was thinking you could read it.” He fiddled with the pocket of his jeans in a hopefully casual and not freaking out way. He didn’t look at Eddie as he waited, but after a few moments he responded.

“Sure. That’s fine, yeah. Want me to start over or go from here?”

“From there is good.”

And it was good, it was really really good. Steve hadn’t been able to read a book since middle school, hadn’t really tried again after that. But as he lay back and let Eddie’s voice wash over him he couldn’t help feeling that he’d been missing out.

Sure, it actually wasn’t really his thing, but the way Eddie read aloud painted such a clear picture that Steve enjoyed it anyway. The other would change his voice slightly for different characters and added emotions into his speaking. If it was a tense moment, he’d go slow and add gaps in just the right places. If it was fast paced he’d speed up and get more and more manic until the action cut off. He felt like he was reading along. Felt like he could see the pages in the book, but also the characters and the dungeon they were combining through.

So, for the first time Steve hadn’t been brushed off. He had probably found the only person he knew who could turn reading a book into a performance. One he would happily be seated for every night.

From then on, new books turned up at the trailer every week, Steve not far behind.

[princesssarisa]

As I've read different people's views on Little Women, I've realized that for different readers, it's a fundamentally different book.

When I see someone describe the "universal" experiences of identifying with Jo, wanting her to marry Laurie, and disliking Amy, I remember all the proof I've seen that these are far from universal. The latter two weren't even my experiences: identifying with Jo, yes, but shipping her with Laurie and disliking Amy, no!

Even people with equal amounts of knowledge of the historical context and of Louisa May Alcott's life seem to come away with vastly different feelings about the story and characters.

I suppose there are a wide variety of reasons for this. First and foremost, which of the four March sisters you personally admire or relate to the most. Then there are other factors like your gender, your age when you first read the book, your relationship (good or bad) with traditional femininity, whether you read Parts I and II as a single novel or as Little Women and Good Wives, your relationships with your own family members, your religion and ethical values...

The list goes on.

That post from @theevilanonblog that I reblogged recently about the different interpretations of Frankenstein makes me want to write out a similar list of ten different views I've read of Little Women. Here it is:

Little Women is about the March sisters learning to be proper virtuous women of their time and place. With Marmee as their role model (a role later shared by Beth as she becomes increasingly angelic in her illness), they learn to conquer their flaws, give up their wild ambitions, and settle down as good wives and mothers. This is especially true for Jo, whose character arc is a slow taming from a rough tomboy to a gentle nurturer. It's a conformist and anti-feminist message, which Alcott probably disliked, but she wrote it to cater to public tastes. (This reading seems mainly to come from critics who dislike the book.)

Little Women is about Jo's struggle to stay true to herself in a world that wants to change her. She struggles with whether to stay a tomboy or become a proper lady, whether or not to marry Laurie despite not loving him romantically, and as an author, whether to write what she wants, write what earns the most money, or give up her writing altogether. In the end, she changes only in ways that make her happy, e.g. by learning to control her temper, and later by embracing romantic love. But in more important ways, she stays true to herself: always remaining slightly rugged, clumsy and "masculine," finding success as a writer, and marrying Friedrich, a man just as plain and "unromantic" as herself, but whom she loves and who respects her as an equal.

Little Women is about learning to "live for others." That phrase is used often and could well be the arc words. Beth is the only March sister to whom a selfless life comes naturally, but the other three master it by the end of the story (as does Laurie). They learn to conquer their moments of pettiness and selfishness, to live in better harmony with each other and with their friends and love interests, and to give up their self-centered dreams of fame and wealth, building lives that focus on service instead.

Little Women is about growing up. The first half is mainly about the March girls' maturing by surviving hard times and learning to be better people, while the second half is about reaching adulthood and bittersweetly parting ways to start new lives. At the beginning, Jo is a girl who doesn't want to grow up: she wants to always be a wild young tomboy with her family (and Laurie) by her side forever. But of course, she can't stop time or womanhood, and is eventually forced to accept the loss of Meg, Amy, and Laurie to marriage and Beth to death. After grieving for a while, she lets go of her old life and willingly builds a new one with Friedrich.

Little Women is about family bonds and the fear of losing them. We meet and become attached to the wonderfully close, cozy March family, which gradually expands through friendships, marriage, and new babies. But throughout the story, the family is in danger of breaking apart, whether due to conflict (Jo and Amy's sibling rivalry, Meg and John's marital problems), or separation by distance (Father going away to war, Amy going to Europe, Jo to New York), or death (the danger of losing Father and Beth in Part I, and the ultimate loss of Beth in Part II). But in the end – unlike in reading #4 above – the family doesn't break apart and never will. Conflicts are resolved, travelers eventually come home, the surviving family members always live near each other and stay as close as ever, and even Beth isn't really gone, because her memory and influence live on.

Little Women is about femininity and each March sister's relationship with it. Meg and Amy happily conform in different ways: Meg to "domestic femininity" as a housewife, Amy to "ornamental femininity" as a society lady. Beth pressures herself to conform to self-effacing domestic femininity, until sadly, it kills her – either because she's too selfless and nurturing when she cares for the fever-infected Hummels, or because she has anorexia, as Lizzie Alcott might have had. But Jo strikes a successful balance in the end, conforming just enough to fit into society, but only on her own terms, and otherwise living a happily unconventional life as a writer and schoolmistress.

Little Women is about Jo's unlearning of internalized misogyny. At the beginning, she's a "Not Like Other Girls" tomboy, who wishes she were male, disdains feminine girls (especially her sister Amy), doesn't care enough when "her boy" Laurie behaves badly toward women, and is afraid to be vulnerable. But gradually, and without losing her strength of character, she learns to embrace the sweeter and more tender aspects of herself, sees that Amy's ladylike manners have practical benefits, and learns to say "no" to Laurie when he turns his childish, unhealthy romantic attentions to her. Then after Beth dies, she realizes how precious Beth's utterly domestic, feminine life was, and embraces a more domestic life herself. Yet by doing so, she becomes a true feminist, as she enters an egalitarian marriage and devotes her life to teaching boys to be good, respectful men.

Little Women is only what US Americans know as the first half. It's just about the March sisters getting by and learning moral lessons over the course of the year their father is away at war. Nobody gets married and nobody dies. Everything else is in Good Wives, which is a sequel with different character arcs and different themes, and which should be published separately, as it originally was and still is outside the US. Trying to tie them together into one narrative never feels quite right.

Little Women is Alcott's idealized version of her own life and family, where no one suffers quite as much as they did in real life, everyone is slightly less flawed, and Jo ends up happily married to a man very much like Alcott's lost love Henry David Thoreau. She wrote the life she wished she had.

Little Women is just a semi-autobiographical slice-of-life that Alcott wrote quickly for money.

Which is the truest to Alcott's intent? I don't know. But while some of these readings I like better than others – and some of them I despise – I'd say they're all understandable and reasonably valid. Some aren't even mutually exclusive, but can be used together... although of course, other readings are mutually exclusive, like whether the story is feminist or anti-feminist, or whether the March family ultimately breaks apart or holds together. And they're all worth using as springboards for discussion.

Alcott wrote more books than she ever realized she did, because Little Women can be many different books to different people.

@littlewomenpodcast, @joandfriedrich, @thatscarletflycatcher, @fictionadventurer, @fandomsarefamily1966

[karloff-the-uncanny]

Well done Karloff fans, we made it to round two! Let’s all try really hard to get him to round three, shall we? In case you’re having trouble deciding, here is some propaganda for dear Boris:

As an older man:

And in makeup:

And he was great fun to be around too! (On set of Son of Frankenstein in 1938)

To get the whole package, make sure to listen to his voice! Try and find him reading Rudyard Kipling’s stories or the Grinch.

Some written propaganda;

Karloff had a diverse career, working on stage, silent films, sound films, colour films, in radio and narrated several audiobooks and a couple of animation movies (including the Grinch in 1966!). He also appeared on several television shows, and even had three of his own (Thriller, The Veil & Colonel March of Scotland Yard).

Karloff was of East Indian decent, something of which he preferred to keep quiet, due to the racism of the times.

He was already typecast before appearing in Frankenstein in 1931, as his darker complexion lead to him being constantly cast as the “exotic foreign villain”. He spent a good 20 years trying in vain to be cast in worthwhile roles, living on hardly any money, and constantly moving around the US (something which took its toll on his personal life, as he was divorced 5 times), until he eventually was successful in 1931 with several small, but important roles before he was then cast as the Monster in “Frankenstein”.

After years of being an unknown, struggling actor, Karloff was an instant success, and went on to star in many other great (and some not so great) movies.

He never minded being typecast as villains and monsters, in fact he was always extremely grateful that he had so many opportunities to act in movies and television, and that people continued to enjoy watching him throughout the years.

[first two gifs are by walksdowonders, not me on my other sideblog. I had to copy and paste them onto a post I made there, because I couldn’t find them in gifs under all the Frankenstein gifs. Now it’s showing I made them, but they’re just copies of the ones made by walksdowonders :)]

This is a three-way poll. Only one of these men will continue to the third round of the bracket.

Propaganda

Fred Astaire (Top Hat, Shall We Dance, Easter Parade)—Not just a dancer (but oh, what a dancer), we should also show nothing but respect to a man whose characters had the good sense to repeatedly fall in love with Ginger Rogers over the course of ten movies together!! He was such a style icon that even Cary Grant wanted to know where he got his clothes. Astaire was one of those men whose intense charisma and talent is best understood when seeing him in motion!! A genuinely lovely person who worked very hard and did his utmost to promote the standards of how dancing should look and be filmed on screen. Debbie Reynolds also had some lovely stories about him in her autobiography [clips and Debbie's anecdotes below]

Johnny Weismuller (The Tarzan movies)—no propaganda submitted

Boris Karloff (Frankenstein)—I feel like everyone should know Boris Karloff had Indian ancestry and grew up in the UK, so he deeply understood the outsider feelings he portrayed so beautifully onscreen...and that's never minding his gorgeous soulful eyes, his expressive hands. (plus he voices the grinch. how can you not love the grinch?)

This is round 2 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Boris Karloff propaganda:

"when he was out of the monster makeup he was touching, elegant, dignified"

Fred Astaire propaganda:

No additional propaganda was submitted for Johnny Weismuller.

[mothwingwritings]

Can we have Ren/Fox (TPOF) and Mc with a child?Long after Fox decided to stay with MC, they both had a daughter (probably not something with consent and a bit of Stockholm syndrome).The daughter asks her mother how she got the scars and this makes MC have memories of post-traumatic stress.

I was so tickled by this ask that I started manically typing out a response for it nearly as soon as I saw it in my ask box (which at this point, was quite some time ago. Forgive me, I am a mess lul). I wrote the whole damn thing in a fit of passion, excited to release it into the world… But ultimately hated it and thought it was garbo, so I scrapped it and tried again. Wrote a second iteration and thought ‘hell yeah, this is it!!! Sick!’, but then I read it AND HATED THAT ONE TOO AAAHHH!!!

I rewrote this�� so much…

But I never give up on my dreams, and you shouldn’t either! Persevere! Don’t give up on yourself! Here’s your daily motivation for the day! Keep writing even it makes you cry!!! :D

Anyway, so I wrote this third one, comprised of new stuff and the stuff I actually did like from the first two stabs, and it ended up being the one. Truly it is a Frankenstein of a fic lol. Regardless of all the reworking, I had a lot of fun writing this and enjoyed the prompt very much!!! I I hope you enjoy reading it just as much. :)

I’m sorry if the writing seems a tad too mature for the reader’s daughter in this, writing children isn’t my forte. ^^;

Due to the nature of this fic, IT IS 18+ ONLY!!! Thank you!

WARNINGS: Incessant mentions of abuse of all kinds for reader and mentions of physical abuse for her child!!! Reader is heavily scarred from said abuse and that’s a main theme in this fic so please avoid if that is upsetting to you. Also, though not the main focus, there are multiple mentions of child abuse in this fic, as well a part where reader goes off verbally on her child, so please be mindful of that as well! Other things of note: reader is a parent in this (which you can probably tell by the prev warning lol), reader getting hurt, blood, manipulation, Stockholm syndrome, being held against your will/isolation, mentions of noncon, sad family stuff :(

Diminishing rays of afternoon light splayed through the open window of your quaint living room, casting a comforting orange glow over everything they touched. The light gave the environment an ethereal and nostalgic feel, wrapping you in peaceful warmth as the sun sunk lower and lower. The loveseat you occupied was plush and inviting, and a mug of your favorite tea stood at the ready on the small coffee table beside you, steadily cooling with help from the last hurrah of winter blowing in gently from the outside. Besides the slight chill, the wind brought with it the heavy scent of freshly bloomed flowers, a delightful precursor to the oncoming spring.

Relishing the rare moment of serenity, you couldn’t help but wish that all your days could be this lovely.

You smiled down at your daughter who sat perched in your lap, happily flipping through the newest gift she had acquired from her Father- a thick picture book full of bright illustrations highlighting various exotic animals. As it lay sprawled across her tiny lap, her chubby finger pointed out each animal she took an interest in, her high pitched voice chirping away as she explained what she liked about the creatures. She got particularly excited when she spotted the page full of foxes, jabbing at the red one feverishly as she exclaimed “its daddy!”

Spotting the foxes began her down a path of assigning an animal to not just herself, but you as well. She didn’t find it fair that only her father had kin in the animal world, even though you pointed out that she technically did as well by sharing half the man’s blood. Your revelation did little to deter her, she wanted something new, something just for herself, and she wasn’t going to stop until she found her perfect soul animal. So she continued on, scanning each page in earnest until she found a creature that suited her.

She ended up picking a bunny for herself, supplying you with a comprehensive reason as to why she chose it. As she explained in great length, skimping no details, you couldn’t help but hold back laughter. She spoke as if she were a professor teaching a class, and you did your best to keep a straight face as she yammered on with her shoddy reasoning, deep down knowing she only picked a rabbit because of how cute they are.

After she was done waxing poetic about bunnies, she continued scouring the book, coming to a halt once she reached the wild cat section. She stopped with a gasp, beaming up at you as she pressed her finger firmly against one of the images on the page.

“Mommy this one is you!”

Your eyes traveled to the picture she was rapidly tapping, “An African Wildcat, huh?” You smirked down at the little girl in amusement, “Why did you pick that one for me?”

“Because it looks just like you!”

You chuckled at her enthusiasm, “It looks like me? How so?”

“It has marks just like you do!”

Her innocuous words sent a chill up your spine. Eying the stripes that crossed the cat’s legs, you felt a great unease begin to overtake your body. Her reasoning was not lost on you, the cats coat did quite resemble the jagged scars that covered nearly every inch of your body, and just like the feline in her book, your limbs were the most prominent location of said ‘markings’. You quickly shook your head, not wanting to dwell on it further. In hopes of moving on from the subject, the outpouring of words that flew from your mouth were jumbled and messy.

“O-oh, I see,” you stuttered, clearing your throat to steady your voice, “well you certainly picked a cute animal for me! Thank you baby, it was a good choice.”

She smiled at you innocently, a gesture that usually made your heart melt with affection. But as her tiny hands moved from the book to your arms, that smile did nothing but fill you with dread, the realization that you wouldn’t be getting out of this sticky situation hitting you like a brick to the face. 

“Yeah mommy, the kitty’s marks are just like these ones,” her stubby fingers gently traced the old wounds, a look of reverence reflected on her cherubic features. “They make you look like that kitty mommy,” her little voice cooed, “I like them a lot!”

Your muscles constricted at her words, a slight tremor coursing through you as you involuntarily tightened your grip on her. She took note of this, looking up at your strained features with a puzzled expression on her face.

“Don’t be sad mommy,” she spoke assuredly, “I really do like them! I think they are pretty!”

Her words burned you, scorching the inside of your frozen shell of a body, leaving you feeling sickly and discombobulated. The room around you started to spin in a hazy blur, a wave of nausea making you nearly wretch. Your breathing grew erratic as you tried to calm yourself, inwardly repeating that your daughter was just a child, a little girl barely four years of age who had an incredibly limited view of the world. Her words were not meant to upset you. Her opinions were coming from a place of total naivety.

Yet still, the mental assurance did little to help with the extremely uncomfortable position you now founds yourself in. It wasn’t as if this was her first time noticing your scars. She had mentioned them before, her curious mind trying to piece together the reason that her arms appeared different from your own. Each time she brought your old wounds up you couldn’t help but feel flustered, responding with weak explanations and misdirection to try and quickly brush off her questioning.

The marks came from a silly mistake, or a childhood accident, or from a careless moment when mommy should have been paying more attention. It was always excuses on repeat. How many lies had you told her on this topic alone?

But even if they were lies, it beat telling her the truth. You didn’t want to have to explain where the scars on your body actually came from to anyone, let alone a child, and especially not to your own daughter. How could you possibly word it gently, or in a way that she would understand, when you barely understood why you had them yourself? How could you look her in the eye and tell her that these markings were a permanent sign that you had been very, very hurt and that it was her own fathers hands that inflicted the pain?

Reliving the horrific moments that left your body in such a state was overwhelming enough on its own, but to also have to lay bare her father’s sins, relay to her the unsavory proclivities of a man who she idolized and adored, was not something you were keen on doing.

She didn’t know her daddy like you knew him. She was ignorant to the constant state of concern you lived in, unaware of the worries that plagued your mind and kept you up each night. All the troubles of the hell she had been born into were completely lost on the small, carefree girl.

But honestly that was for the best. You had made an unspoken promise the moment she entered your life that you would protect her no matter what. From the day of her birth onward it became your mission to keep her as happy and healthy as possible.

Ren had broken you, but she did not have to suffer the same fate.

At this point in her life, your daughter knew nothing of her daddy’s profession or ‘hobbies’, and you wanted it to remain that way for as long as possible, if not for the rest of her life. You dreaded each time Ren came home from an auction, terrified he may let casually slip too many details about his ‘lively client’ or that he would carelessly step through the door with the stains of his liaisons still littering his clothes. Your daughter was at an age where she was brimming with questions, and she was relentless in getting answers to each question she asked. Everything had to be explained in complete detail for her to be satisfied, drop the subject, and move on. She was a smart little thing, possibly too smart for her own good. You highly doubted a silly joke or wave of the hand would assuage her whirring mind should Ren grow too impetuous in her presence.

And should her questioning become too pesky, you fretted over what Ren’s reaction to it may be. The more you tried to avoid thinking about it the more you seemed to fixate on the topic, pondering just how much goading it would take from your daughter before his temper would rear its ugly head.  You, above anyone, had firsthand experience in just how volatile the man could be, the scars that littered your body a testament to his turbulent emotions and violent outbursts.

Looking back on it now, it’s a wonder you survived any of it at all.

Ren often told you he loved you, each confession spoken through honeyed words that spilled from his lips easily and often.  And while you didn’t doubt those words (you knew better than to, at this point), you also knew his sweet nothings weren’t merely a term of endearment, they also served as your curse. He loved you, but he also loved your fealty to him, your adoration and worship of him and only him. Should you not reciprocate his feelings as quickly or ardently as he expected, the mere thought of whatever punishment he would concoct was enough to send you into a debilitating panic attack.

There were few things he loathed more than when you flinched from his affection or if you exhibited any sign of distress towards his presence, especially after he had spent so many years going above and beyond to provide for you, devote himself to you. You had learned early on to keel any feelings of aversion you had to his advances, several of your more prominent scars a brutal reminder of that misstep alone.

 If your daughter uncovered the truth and saw her father for who he truly was, if she began to fear him the way you feared him, how would he respond?  If not only his partner, but his own daughter started shying away from him, what length would he go to to correct this behavior?

Dwelling on it made your skin crawl.

But perhaps all of your worries were asinine. Despite his inclination for cruelty, Ren had never so much as raised a hand towards your daughter, even when she did act up. If anything, he was overprotective of her, barely letting her move faster than a brisk jog lest she fall and hurt herself. He hated seeing his little girl experience even a modicum of physical pain, mentioning to you previously that were he able, he’d keep her locked up in a padded room all day and night to prevent any foreseeable accidents or injuries. Surely it was just his idea of a joke, but the insinuation still made you cringe.

It was almost comical, just how greatly the manifestation of his affection for her differed from how he showed his love for you.

His domineering nature shielded her from experiencing any true pain. Every scrape, bruise, and cut she ever received was superficial, nothing that caused major bleeding or left a lasting impression. She had no way of knowing what had been done to you to cause the scars that marred your form, the torment and hell you experienced with each slash, smack, burn. Hell, she probably didn’t even really understand what a scar actually was. All she knew was that her mommy and daddy had strange marks on their skin that didn’t follow any kind of set pattern, weird jagged lines and indents that her soft skin was curiously free from. The mystery of it all was as puzzling to her young mind as it was enticing.

However, some mysteries were best left unsolved, and just as with each other time she brought up this hot topic, you found yourself unable to look into her clear, bright eyes and tell her any semblance of the truth. She may have been forced upon you, but she was your daughter. You loved her, and you refused to be the one to shatter her innocence. You would keep her ignorant for as long as possible, shielding her to the endless nightmare of your daily lives, even if it cost you your sanity.

“Mommy,” her voice jarred you, dragging you from your thoughts, “mommy did you hear me? I said I think they are pretty!”

“T-that’s… I…” You stuttered, struggling to find the right words to say, your voice coming out much smaller than you intended it to. The room felt like it had dropped thirty degrees, your body twitching in response to the sudden chill.

“Daddy told me he gave some of them to you, like this one,” her pudgy, cold finger pressed into the faded heart that resided on your chest, the first of many indelible sins he had etched onto your form. Only the top half of the carved symbol was viewable above the collar of your shirt, so she tugged at the loose hem until she could see it in its horrible entirety.

“Daddy said he gave you this one because he loves you so much,” her voice grew quiet, a thoughtful look in her eye as they drank in wounds you wished you could forget, “Daddy loves me too, right mommy? You think he’ll give me a cute heart someday too?”

You felt as if you had been hit by a train.

“S-top,” the words were forced from your throat, airy and breathless, as if someone was wringing your neck to make them come out, “p-please, just stop talking.”

“What did you say mama,” your daughters sing-song voice responded as her fingers continued to trace and prod your scars, “You are whispering, is it a secret?”

“I told you to SHUT UP!”

As if following your command, your booming voice instantly silenced the small girl. Unused to such a violent outburst from her mother, her happy-go-lucky nature quickly shifted to one of alert, her tiny body going rigid as she stared up at you with fearful eyes.

Seeing her in such a state and knowing that you were the cause of it would normally have killed you inside, making you fall to your knees to beg for the child’s forgiveness. But right now, the thin thread that had been holding you together had snapped, and your words rushed out in a torrent you couldn’t begin to quell.

“Shut up, shut up, shut UP!” You seethed, clasping your hands to your ears to try and block out your own intrusive voice, “Just STOP TALKING about it! What are you even saying? Why would you ever want to look like this?!”

Tears started to flood your eyes, blurring the image of the girl who had quickly jumped from your lap and was now cowering before you. Through your bleary vision, you could see tears were brimming her eyes as well.

“You… You have no idea,” your voice warbled, shaking in equal parts grief and frustration, “You have no clue what you are saying, so just STOP IT. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK OF IT AGAIN!”

You slunk from the chair down to the floor, burying your face in your cold, stiff hands. The soft blubbering of your daughter could be heard through your own sobbing.

“I-I’m sorry mommy. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

Hearing her broken voice began to shatter the spell you had been under, instant regret jerking you roughly back to reality. Your head sunk lower, your body scrunching itself up as tightly as possible to hide from this cruel reality.

Your screams were born from deeply buried feelings of hatred, tucked far, far away as a means of self-preservation. For a moment, you felt as if you despised your daughter, her existence tethering you to this wretched excuse of a life, binding you irrevocably to Ren. But as you lifted your heavy head, glancing up to stare into her young face, a face so very similar to your own, a face contorted in panic and sadness over her mother’s abrupt descent into madness… you realized it wasn’t her that you hated.

It was yourself.

Your daughter didn’t deserve this. She deserved normalcy. She deserved a father that didn’t pose a threat to her. She deserved a mother that wasn’t ruined by his hands. She deserved a happy and untroubled life, not to be stuck being raised in a barbed cage, navigating her way through life with nothing but the shattered remains of a battered woman to guide her.

“I’m so sorry,” you choked under the weight of your overwhelming emotions, snot and tears running freely down your ruddy cheeks and chin, “I’m so, so sorry baby…”

“What the hell is going on?”

You hadn’t heard the front door open, nor had you heard Ren’s jubilant greeting as he entered your home. He had no doubt been upset by the lack of welcome-it was one thing to be ignored by a child, but his doting wife? That was not something he was not apt to look past.

But surely any feelings of annoyance or frustration fled from his mind the moment he entered the room, his eyes falling upon your crumpled, messy form collapsed on the floor. You cursed his arrival, upset that he entered the scene at such a compromising time, right as you were struggling to regain an ounce of composure and properly apologize to the little girl who had done nothing wrong.

“D-daddy,” your daughter’s voice warbled as she barreled towards him, colliding into his waiting embrace. You wiped at your face in a desperate attempt to hide your previous outpouring of emotions, doing your best to avoid eye contact with Ren as his sharp gaze quickly flicked from you, to his daughter.

This had already become enough of a scene without Ren’s interference, it was best to try and begin damage control now. 

“Daddy I-I made mommy cry!” Tears continued to pour from your daughter’s eyes, her face twisting into a look of pure dismay. Her misguided admission of guilt made you recoil, knowing full well it would grant her no favors with the person she seeking comfort from. “I’m really sorry daddy! I didn’t mean to!”

After several endless seconds of silence, Ren spoke.

“… You made her cry?”

His voice was far sharper than it needed to be, further agitating the precarious state of affairs. In most cases he would have offered your daughter leniency, letting her get away with far more than she probably should. However that leniency was null and void if you ended up suffering in the process.  Ren could not forgive anyone that caused you any duress (himself, of course, being the exemption) even if that person was his own flesh and blood.

“What do you mean you made her cry? What the hell did you do to her?”

“I-I don’t know,” she wailed, a fresh wave of tears spurred on by the accusatory tone of her father’s voice, “I just told mommy I thought her marks were pretty and then she started crying! I wasn’t lying daddy, I like them! I think they make mommy look really pretty!”

“Her marks…?” Ren’s look of vexation began to dissipate as the meaning of her words donned on him. He lifted his arm, rolling up his sleeve to reveal his own scars to the little girl. Pointing a clawed finger to them, he leaned down until he was looking her in the eye, “You mean like these?”

As she nodded her head vigorously in confirmation, Ren tutted, “That’s the reason for all the water works? An innocent compliment started all this fussing?” He scoffed, shaking his head, “Isn’t that a little bit… silly?

You tensed at the sound of his barking laugh, your frown deepening as an amused grin spread wider across his lips. You wished that you could say it was shocking for him to have such disregard after finding the two of you in such an agitated state, but it was painfully in character of him to shrug off your misery and suffering as inconsequential.  How he could so nonchalantly normalize this hellish situation he kept you and your child ensnared in, you would never understand.

Your daughter was apparently sharing similar thoughts, as her face began to once more morph into a pre-sobbing scowl. She was no doubt wounded that her father was not offering her the comfort she was seeking, her emotional state already greatly weakened by her mother’s venomous tantrum.

To help quell another round of tears, Ren pulled the child closer, wrapping her up in his arms so that her tiny form was nearly enveloped by him.  “Shhh, no more tears angel,” he cooed sweetly, patting her head gently to appease her, “There isn’t any reason to cry, especially because… Well, you’re right! Mommy’s whole body is pretty, isn’t it? Her marks just compliment the beauty that’s already there.”

Slowly but surely, her tears began to dissipate. Hunched over shoulders loosened, and sniffles and hiccups gave way to even breathing. Like clockwork, her father’s gentle handling soothed her, the same touch that destroyed you offering her salvation.

As if under a spell, the turmoil that had overcome your daughter quickly began to vanish, her sobbing fading into quiet sniffles. Once she was fully calmed, Ren continued speaking, “That’s all you meant to say to mommy, right angel? I’m sorry she took it the wrong way, she’s probably just tired or hungry, you know how mommy gets. She’ll get over it in no time flat!”

Heat spread through your body at his flippant dismissal of your feelings, an indignant blush lighting your cheeks as you gripped your hands tightly at your side. Your previous emotional episode left you all but drained, but your will to fight back against his callous commentary could never truly be contained.

“In fact, I bet she is already over it now,” Ren’s voice took on a jovial tone as he directed his focus solely on you, “Aren’t you, pumpkin?”

With the ball suddenly in your court, you flinched as both sets of expectant eyes fell on you. Your own eyes darted from Ren’s piercing glare, down to your daughter’s wide-eyed look of unbridled hope. You felt much like the rabbit that had been caught by the fox, stuck in a lose-lose situation. Seeing him hunched over her small body as she clutched to him as a life line, openly concerned that her mother may once more reject her while her father remained a bastion of strength and understanding, left you reeling. Either you would get heated again and stay the villain, but possibly hold on to an ounce of your dignity, or concede to Ren and have yet another piece of your soul wither away and die-the price to pay so that your daughter could remain in blissful ignorance for another day.

“Aren’t you, pumpkin?” He repeated himself slowly, enunciating each word. The kindness in his voice serving only as a mask for the threat buried beneath.

“Y-yes,” you responded quickly, shooting them both a smile you hoped was convincing, “I am very sorry, baby. Daddy is right. Mommy is just… tired.”

A serene smile lit her face, your words placating her. Seeing her happy once more helped relieve a bit of the ache in your own heart, making the lie worth it.

“Good, good,” Ren affirmed with a nod, carefully detaching himself from your daughter as he stood, “but you know little one, mommy deserves some love too, don’t you think? She may have been in the wrong, but it’s not nice to make her cry like that. Why don’t you go give her a hug, hm?”

With no further persuading necessary, she quickly padded over to you, hopping on your lap with so much enthusiasm that it nearly knocked the wind from you. Her arms tightly latched around your torso as she smushed her face into your chest, rubbing it back and forth like she was trying to burrow beneath your skin.

“I love you mommy,” her voice spoke clearly, any hint of previous sadness long gone. You sighed, relieved that this dramatic chapter was over as you pulled your daughter closer to you.

“I love you too.”

During this show of affection, Ren had made his way behind you, slinking so deftly you hadn’t even known he had moved until you heard him chuckle softly behind you.

“This is what I like to see,” he spoke with a sickeningly dreamy sigh, “nothing makes me happier than when my two girls are happy.”

He placed his hands gingerly atop your shoulders, trailing them down until they rested on your arms. His thumbs pressed gently against the marred skin, rubbing in a small circular motion in an attempt to subdue you. His claws grazed your flesh, uncomfortably scratching against you as they snagged against your skin.

He planted a firm and lingering kiss to the side of your head, pulling away just enough that his lips grazed the shell of your ear. “There really was nothing to cry about,” he whispered breathily, his words quiet enough that despite your daughters’ proximity, she would have no chance of hearing them. “It’s almost unfair how gorgeous you are, scars and all. But you must know that, right my sweet pet? I tell you all the time.”

Ren took in a deep breath, releasing it in a shaky sigh, “Seeing these scars reminds me of all we have been through, all that we share. They are a symbol of our bond.”

One of his claws pressed down sharply, a small bead of blood pooling around the piercing. Leisurely he began to drag his finger up your arm, a thin red line following in its wake. You shivered at the burning sensation, but deigned to give him any reaction further than that.

“Don’t forget pumpkin, these pretty marks are a reminder of my constant love for you.” He chuckled softly, peppering a few kisses to the back of your neck while his claws slowly sunk deeper, “And right now I am feeling  terribly sentimental, so for old times’ sake, why don’t I add a few more to remind you just how precious to me you are~?”

[burningvelvet]

Lord Byron's first edition copy of Frankenstein (1818), one of only two known surviving copies to be personally inscribed by Mary Shelley (the other is to her friend Mrs. Thomas). Byron took this copy with him when he went into the Greek War of Independence, and it was among his personal things when he died there in 1824:

Mary didn't disclose her name in the inscription because the novel was published anonymously and she initially wanted to keep it that way. However, Byron did reveal her identity in a letter to his publisher, correcting his assumption that Percy was the one who wrote the novel:

"The story of the agreement to write the Ghost-books is true — but the ladies are not Sisters — one is Godwin’s daughter by Mary Wolstonecraft — and the other the present Mrs. Godwin’s daughter by a former husband. Mary Godwin (now Mrs. Shelley) wrote 'Frankenstein' — which you have reviewed thinking it Shelley’s — methinks it is a wonderful work for a Girl of nineteen — not nineteen indeed — at that time."

Under Mary Shelley's consultation, Thomas Moore writes in his Life of Lord Byron (vol III):

"During a week of rain at this time, having amused themselves with reading German ghost-stories, they agreed, at last, to write something in imitation of them. 'You and I,' said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley, 'will publish ours together.'"

Percy, writing as Mary with her permission, mentions Byron and himself (in the third-person) in the novel's 1818 preface thus:

"Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than any thing I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence.

The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed."

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

This makes me incredibly angry.

[ID: Screenshots of a Facebook post from user Advocatus Peregrini, which reads:

I was conversing with a fully-grown adult a few days ago, born and educated in the USA, who let this little gem drop:

"Well, it's like Shakespeare said, "Love conquers all!""

I pointed out that Shakespeare never said that, Virgil did, (Eclogues X) and Chaucer after him (Canterbury Tales.)

She said, "Oh I'm sure Shakespeare said that. In Romeo and Juliet!"

I sighed. I've been in that play several times, in different roles, and even directed it. That text does not occur in it.

But the real grind-my-teeth moment here was that if Romeo and Juliet can be said to have a message, it is most certainly not "Love conquers all," seeing as the lovers die by their own hands with a trail of their friends and relations' corpses in their wake.

Neither this fact, nor the fact that I knew the play, nor my explanation that Virgil and Chaucer used the phrase long before Shakespeare's birth dented her determination that "Love conquers all" came from Shakespeare.

"You don't know ALL the versions!" she protested.

All the versions?

Alternative Bard?

With every instinct screaming at me to let the matter drop, warning me that some horror that will not soon be absent from my nightmares waited around the next corner of this conversation. I pressed on.

It was a decision I was soon to regret.

I asked when she had first read "Romeo and Juliet." She said she had only read it once, when she was in Junior High. In the version she was taught, Romeo and Juliet survive, are reconciled with their parents, and are married in the church with their friends Mercutio and Tybalt arm in arm in the wedding party.

"Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint."

It turned out that her school had their own "version" of Romeo and Juliet, with an "uplifting" ending. This was printed and distributed by a religious education publisher. And it was the only version of the story that she had ever read. Of course she had HEARD other people say that the story was a tragedy, but she just assumed they were wrong.

And she did not see why MY version of Shakespeare should be considered better than HER Shakespeare, which, after all, had a much more wholesome ending.

I explained, in vain, that "my" version is definitive because Shakespeare actually wrote it (quiet, you Oxfordians. Don't make me stop this car) and the message of the play - that when adult stubbornness meets youthful impulsiveness tragedy ensues - is lost in the ersatz, happy-clappy ending.

She said the ending that had been Frankensteined onto Shakespeare's play by the "Christian Education" publisher was better than the original ending, "if the ending is as sad as you say it is."

At this point, I concluded that this was a person who deserved to go through the rest of her life "...safest in shame! being fool'd, by foolery thrive!" I bid her adieu.

After the conversation, I wondered, darkly, if that was to be the fate of Shakespeare, and all other literature if the happy-clappy people get their way - as harmless and "uplifiting" as a cheerleader's chant.

I wondered what these bowdlerizers would do with "Hamlet?" or worse, "Titus Andronicus" or "MacB-" Nothing wholesome, I'm sure. Oh, that's right, what they can't appropriate, they ban. Or burn.

In trying to protect children, we leave them undefended from "...the slings and arrows" that life will no doubt throw their way. Shakespeare raises the issues of tragedy - the fatal flaw, the last turning, the role of fate, as well or better than any author before or since. He is a gentle tutor, much to be preferred over that stern and dangerous teacher, Experientia Inopinatum.

But, as ever, it really isn't about the children. It's about the adults, and their desire to avoid answering difficult questions from agile young minds, who know no fear and swarm like eager flies around questions that have been boggling our best minds for millenia. To answer the questions that literature raises, you have to have thought deeply about them yourself. And that is something that few dare to do.]  end id

[sleepinginmygrave]

write my thoughts on the book if i'm feeling fancy, i mostly forget tho i only do it when something is marking me so much i have to grab a pen yk (except sometimes i have a pen close to me while reading, if i do i'll basically write on each pzge) i dogmark my pages a lot.... i never had a proper bookmark i think (for the book i'm reading rn i'm using an old biscuit wrapping paper so no dogmark!! yay) i czn't keep a book clean even if i really try, they all end up cracked and a bit dirty and all corned

wait tell me how you read books (eg. annotate in them, crack it, dogmark, proper bookmark, have a sheet of paper for thoughts, etc.) and i'll assign you a marauder character

[unclewaynemunson]

Thanks to a conversation I had with @frankenstein-ate-my-left-shoe and @stevesbipanic about this post by @piratefishmama about Scott Clarke helping middle schoolers with sexuality crises I wrote a lil something :)

Scott Clarke has been worrying about Eddie Munson ever since the boy first set foot into his classroom. He was tiny for his age and thin on the verge of being scrawny, with big, scared eyes in a pale face. With his long, dark curls he was the kind of boy who would unavoidably be called names for being too much like a girl, and Scott wasn't surprised that it only took one week before the boy came in with his hair all buzzed off, pulling even more attention to his expressive eyes instead.

Scott was known for worrying about the nerdy kids, and even though it wouldn't be obvious to everyone right away, he immediately noticed that Eddie was one of those. He wasn't the kind of nerdy kid who would sit in the front of the classroom, hanging onto Scott's every word while avidly scribbling down the secrets of the universe that Scott liked to share. No, Eddie was the other kind of nerdy kid: the kind who would often be called dreamy, or imaginative, or quiet, or lazy. The kind who would retreat to the back of the class and get low scores on their tests because they were spending their time sneakily reading comic books underneath the table or staring out of the window with their mind completely elsewhere for hours on end.

Middle school wasn't an easy place for kids like Eddie, as Scott knew all too well. The only thing he could do, as a teacher, was try to make it a little bit more bearable for him. He was glad when the boy took him up on his offer to spend his lunch breaks in the science classroom instead of the cafeteria or the playground. Soon, it became a habit that Eddie would be on the other side of Scott's desk reading his way through some big book while Scott was grading papers or preparing his next lesson.

Scott knew that with patience and kindness, all kids like Eddie would eventually come out of their shell and start trusting him. So he asked about the books Eddie brought first, proceeded to topics like music and games he liked to play later, and eventually could ask him about his home life.

Whenever he'd talk about his books or his music, Eddie's eyes lit up and his smile widened. Scott soon found out that, when Eddie was at ease, he could talk a mile a minute and bounce around the classroom, caught up in his stories with all kinds of excited hand gestures. At those moments, he was nothing like the quiet boy with the haunted look in his eyes who Scott met two months ago.

But Eddie never disclosed much about his personal life. He didn't mention his mother even once and he didn't tell Scott much more than that he was living with his uncle in Forest Hills because his dad was “unavailable” to take care of him.

Scott doubted whether Eddie was much better off living with his uncle than with his father. Judging from the meager lunches he brought with him, the shabby and ill-fitting clothes he wore, and the fact that the man never once came to drop Eddie off or pick him up at school, Scott was skeptical, to say the least.

He started worrying even more when one day, Eddie lingered in the classroom after the last lesson of the day, saying he wanted to ask him a “science question” with a certain dread in his eyes that Scott had never seen there before.

“There's nothing I love more than a good science question,” Scott quickly reassured him. “Tell me, what is it?”

“The other kids,” said Eddie, “Brendon and Mark and, you know... They call me names.” His voice was soft and his eyes were aimed towards the ground as he spoke. “Queer. And fag. And...” He shrugged. “Y'know.” He raised his head up again, big scared eyes meeting Scott's.

“I – I think they're right,” he said, almost in a whisper. “How can you stop being gay?”

And oh, this was a conversation Scott had experience with. He had been a teacher at Hawkins Middle School for almost two decades and there had always been kids he worried about, who would open up to him about this exact topic.

So he sat Eddie down at his desk and patiently talked him through everything the boy needed to know; God knows his trailer park uncle most certainly wouldn't. He told him all about science and nature and feelings and, most importantly, being perfect the way you are, no matter who you love.

More than two hours later, Eddie finally left the classroom with relief in his eyes instead of dread. But Scott kept worrying: Eddie's uncle hadn't so much as called the school to inform where Eddie was. Who was looking out for him after the last school bell rang and the kid rode his bike out of Scott's sight?

Not long after that conversation, Scott finally got to meet Mr. Munson for the first time. He was one of Scott's last appointments of the yearly parent-teacher evening, and Scott half expected him not to show up. But he was right on time, even though he looked almost comically out of place when he walked into the science classroom.

He was exactly what Scott would've imagined of a man living in Forest Hills: washed-up jeans and a worn-down flannel, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, and a gruff frown hidden underneath a faded gray trucker's hat. He walked up to where Scott was seated behind his desk in a few big strides, and Scott couldn't help but think that there was something almost intimidating in merely the way he carried himself. Not exactly the kind of man who radiated safety for a boy like Eddie.

They shook hands and Scott felt rough callouses press against his own chalk-stained fingers.

While Scott talked Mr. Munson through Eddie's grade list – a list that at this point was barely enough to get him into the next grade – Mr. Munson didn't say anything. Only when Scott asked him if he had any questions, he opened his mouth.

“How're the other kids treatin' him?” the man asked him in a thick southern accent.

“It's not easy for him,” Scott answered in all honesty. He wondered how much Eddie told his uncle about what his days at school usually looked like.

Mr. Munson bowed his head. “I know,” he mumbled.

“Eddie is a sensitive kid, he –”

“I know what kinda kid he is,” Mr. Munson interrupted him immediately. It sounded sharp and Scott wondered if he should be worried about Mr. Munson having a temper.

“Of course,” he cautiously retreated. “I just assumed, since I've never seen you at the school before, sir, that you might not be aware of what exactly he has to deal with in here.”

“Maybe you should do less assuming, then,” Mr. Munson answered bluntly. “You think I should be at the school more? Drop Eddie here in the mornin', come pick him up in the afternoon, all that?”

Scott wondered if Mr. Munson was mocking him.

“Well, I think it might be good for Eddie if –”

“You know why I ain't never at the school? 'Cause I'm tryin' my damned best to keep that boy's stomach filled. When should I be at the school, exactly, between my day shift at the quarry and my night shift at the plant?”

“I – I'm sorry,” Scott backpedaled. Suddenly, the frown lines in the tired face of the man in front of him had gotten a different meaning. “I didn't know. You're right, I shouldn't have made assumptions.”

“Look, I dunno how much he shared with you, Mr. Clarke, but I know he looks up to you. So I think you should know that he's the kinda kid who got in trouble at home for bein' “too sensitive.”” He shot Scott a meaningful glance. “Boy was cryin' to me on the phone, 'cause of what his daddy did to him, so I picked him up and drove him here and I made it my mission, as his uncle, to protect him, to shield him, and to take care of him as best as I possibly can.”

Scott had always prided himself on being a good judge of character. He wondered if he had ever been more wrong about somebody before in his life.

“I know he thinks highly of you, Sir,” Mr. Munson continued. “And I'm very grateful that you're keepin' an eye on him when I can't. But at some point, he may trust you with some very personal information about himself, and you better have his back when he does.”

He knows, Scott realized with a shock. He tried to give Mr. Munson a reassuring smile, but his heart was beating in his throat with what he was about to tell him.

“I was a sensitive kid, myself, Sir. I promise you Eddie is in good hands with me.”

Scott wondered whether Mr. Munson caught the message in those words while a long silence stretched out. Their gazes were locked: Mr. Munson's eyes were bright blue, completely different from Eddie's but just as expressive. His gaze softened while the seconds passed and underneath his graying beard, his mouth twitched.

“I was a sensitive kid, too,” he eventually said.

And Scott's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. This man, with his big calloused hands and his trucker's hat and his undeniably manly demeanor?

His feelings of astonishment must have been visible on his face, because Mr. Munson chortled softly.

“Didn't see that one coming, did ya?”

Scott laughed, too, making the last bit of residual tension between them disappear. “I'm sorry, Mr. Munson. I had no idea.”

“'S okay,” Mr. Munson said. “'s good to know that Eddie has someone lookin' out for him here. Um –” He scraped his throat. “I um...” He abruptly averted his gaze back to his lap again, where his fingers were nervously fumbling with the cap he was holding between his hands.

“I always make Eddie dinner,” he finally said. “'S one of the few things I can do for him, y'know. It'd probably be better for me if I took a quick nap 'tween my jobs, but it's the only time of the day we got together. I'm not much of a cook, but I try to get him to eat somethin' healthy and warm, and we talk about stuff, whatever it is he wants to talk about. So um... If you ever wanna join us – that is, if you don't mind comin' to the trailer park... We don't have much, but I'm sure we can fit another chair 'round the table. I think it could be good for Eddie.”

Scott could barely believe what was happening. To think that only a few minutes ago, he had been worried about this man having a temper or being neglectful towards his nephew...

Wayne Munson was shy and soft-spoken and he loved Eddie with a passion that sparked a fierce protectiveness. And after having Scott judge him based on the way he looked and a bunch of false assumptions, he showed him nothing but genuine goodness.

He felt his lips bend into a smile more authentic than he'd been able to give in a while.

“I'd love to join you sometime,” he told Mr. Munson. “For Eddie – but I also wouldn't mind getting to know you better,” he added in a sudden spur or braveness.

And he could swear that something suspiciously like a smile matching his own was hiding beneath Mr. Munson's beard.

[pynkhues]

I would LOVE to read your analysis of louis as byronic hero as apposed to his reading as gothic heroine. lots of the latter and zero of the former in the fandom.

Sure! Mmm, okay, so –

What are we talking about when we talk about Gothic Heroes?  

When we talk about gothic heroes, we’re really talking about three pretty different character archetypes. All three are vital to the genre, but some are more popular in certain subgenres i.e. your Prometheus Hero may be more common in gothic horror, whereas your Byronic Hero might be more likely to be found in gothic romance. That’s not to say they’re exclusive to those subgenres at all, and there is an argument that these archetypes themselves are gendered (in many ways, I think people confuse Anne being an author of the female gothic with Louis being a gothic heroine, but I’ll get into that later), but this is also not necessarily something that’s exclusive.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, haha, so the three gothic hero archetypes are:

Milton’s Satan who is the classic gothic hero-villain. You can probably guess from the name, but he was originated in John Milton’s 1667 poem, Paradise Lost. He is God’s favourite angel, but God is forced to cast him out of heaven when he rebels against him. As an archetype, he’s a man pretty much defined by his pride, vanity and self-love, usually fucks his way through whatever book or poem he’s in, has a perverted, incestuous family, and a desire to corrupt other people. He’s also defined as being “too weak to choose what is moral and right, and instead chooses what is pleasurable only to him” and his greatest character flaw, in spite of all The Horrors, is that he’s usually easily misguided or led astray. (I would argue that Lestat fits into this archetype pretty neatly, but that’s a whole other post.)

Prometheus who was established as a gothic archetype by Mary Shelley with Frankenstein in 1818. Your Prometheus Hero is basically represented by the quest for knowledge and the overreach of that quest to bring on unintended consequences. He’s tied, of course, to the Prometheus of Greek myth, so you can get elements of that in this character design too in that he can be devious or a trickster, but the most important part of him is that he is split between his extreme intelligence and his sense of rebellion, and that his sense of rebellion and boundary pushing overtakes his intelligence and basically leads to All The Gothic Horrors.

And the Byronic Hero, who as the name implies, was both created by and inspired by the romantic poet, Lord Byron in his semi-autobiographical poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage which was published between 1812-1818. The archetype is kind of an idealized version of himself, and as historian and critic Lord Macaulay wrote, the character is “a man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.” Adding to that, he’s often called ‘the gloomy egoist’ as a protagonist type, hates society, is often self-destructive and lives either exiled or in a self-exile, and is a stalwart of gothic literature, but especially gothic romance. Interestingly too, in his most iconic depictions he’s often a) darkly featured and/or not white (Heathcliff being the most obvious example of this given Emily Bronte clearly writes him as either Black or South Asian), and b) is often used to explore queer identity, with Byron himself having been bisexual.

Okay, but what about the Gothic Heroine?

Gothic heroines are less delineated and have had more of an evolution over time, which makes sense, given women have consistently been the main audience of gothic literature and have frequently been the most influential writers of the genre too. The gothic genre sort of ‘officially’ started with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto and Isabella is largely regarded as the first gothic heroine and the foundation of the archetype, and the book opens even with one of the key defining traits – an innocent, chaste woman without the protection of a family being pursued and persecuted by a man on the rampage.

The gothic heroine was, for years, defined by her lack of agency. She was innocent, chaste, beautiful, curious, plagued by tragedy and often, ultimately, tragic. Isabella survives in The Castle of Otranto, but she’s one of the lucky ones – Cathy dies in Wuthering Heights, Sybil dies in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Justine and Elizabeth both die in Frankenstein, Mina survives in Dracula, but Lucy doesn’t. There’s an argument frequently posited that the gothic genre was, and is, about dead women and the men who mourn them, and Interview with the Vampire certainly lends itself to that pretty neatly.

Of course, the genre has evolved, and in particular by the late 1800s, there was a notable shift in how the Gothic Heroine was depicted. The house became a place of imprisonment where they were further constrained and disempowered, she was infantilized and pathologized and diagnosed as hysterical, and as Avril Horner puts it in her excellent paper, Women, Power and Conflict: the Gothic heroine and ‘Chocolate-box Gothic’, gothic literature of this era “explores “the constraints enforced [by] a patriarchal society that is becoming increasingly nervous about the demands of the ‘New Woman’.”

This was an era where marriage was increasingly understood in feminist circles to be a civil death where women were further subjugated and became the property of their husbands. This was explored through gothic literature as the domestic space evolved into a symbol of patriarchal control in the Female Gothic.

Female Gothic vs Male Gothic

Because here’s the thing – the female gothic and the male gothic are generally understood to be two different subgenres of gothic literature.

While there are plenty of arguments as to what this entails, the basics is that the male gothic is written by men, and usually features graphic horror, rape and the masculine domination of women and often utilises the invasion of women’s spaces as a symbol of further penetrating their bodies, while the female gothic is written by women, and usually features graphic terror, as opposed to horror, while delving more specifically into gender politics. More than that though, its heroines are usually victimized, virginial and powerless while being pursued by villainous men.

The Female Gothic as a genre is also specifically interested in the passage from girlhood to female maturity, and does view the house as a place of entrapment, but she is usually suddenly “threatened with imprisonment in a castle or a great house under the control of a powerful male figure who gave her no chance to escape.”

That’s not Louis’ arc, that’s Claudia’s arc twice over, first with the house at Rue Royale, then with the Paris Coven, and Lestat and Armand aren’t the only powerful male figures who imprison her.

Claudia as the Gothic Heroine

Claudia in many ways is the absolute embodiment of the classic gothic heroine. Even the moment of their meeting is a product of Louis’ Byronic heroism – his act of implacable revenge against the Alderman Fenwick which prompts the rioting that almost kills her. She’s a victim of Louis’ monstrousness before they’ve even met, and while he saves her, he arguably does something worse in trapping her in the house with both himself and Lestat, holding her in an ever-virginal, ever-chaste eternal girlhood, playing into Lestat’s Milton-Satan by enhancing the perversion of family and ultimately infantilizing her out of his own desire for familial closeness.

Claudia has no family protection before Louis and Lestat – a staple of the gothic heroine – she is completely dependent on them in her actual girlhood, and again in adulthood, never developing the strength to be able to turn a companion, to say nothing about the sly lines here and there that further diminish and pathologise her (Lestat calling her histrionic, Louis making her out to be a burden, etc.). This is all further compounded again with the Coven, and when the tragedy of her life ultimately leads to the tragedy of her death.  

Louis as the Byronic Hero

Not to start with a quote, but here’s one from The Literary Icon of the Byronic Hero and its Reincarnation in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights:

“Generally speaking, the Byronic hero exhibits several particular characteristics. He does not possess heroic virtues in the usual, traditional sense. He is a well-educated, intelligent and sophisticated young man, sometimes a nobleman by birth, who at the same time manifests signs of rebellion against all fundamental values and moral codes of the society. Despite his obvious charm and attractiveness, the Byronic hero often shows a great deal of disrespect for any figure of authority. He was considered "the supreme embodiment [...] standing not only against a dehumanized system of labor but also against traditionally repressive religious, social, and familial institutions" (Moglen, 1976: 28).

The Byronic hero is usually a social outcast, a wanderer, or is in exile of some kind, one imposed upon him by some external forces or self-imposed. He also shows an obvious tendency to be arrogant, cunning, cynical, and unrepentant for his faults. He often indulges himself in self destructive activities that bring him to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself. He is hypersensitive, melancholic, introspective, emotionally conflicted, but at the same time mysterious, charismatic, seductive and sexually attractive.”

Louis as he exists in the show to me is pretty much all of those things, and I think to argue that he’s a gothic heroine not only diminishes Claudia’s arc, but robs Louis of his agency within his own story. Louis chooses Lestat, over and over again, he’s not imprisoned by the monster in the domestic sphere, he is one of the monsters who’s controlling the household, including making decisions of when they bring a child into it and when Lestat gets to live in it – he wanted to be turned, he wanted to live with Lestat in Rue Royale, and while there are certainly arguments to be made about their power dynamic within the household in the NOLA era, importantly Louis actually gained social power through his marriage to Lestat, particularly through The Azaelia, he didn’t lose it in the way that’s vital to the story of the gothic heroine.

Daniel Hart even said it in a recent twitter thread about Long Face, but there is an element of Lestat and Louis’ relationship that is transactional, and to me, for that to exist, they both have to have a degree of control over their circumstances and choices in order to negotiate those transactions. Claudia is the one who can’t, she’s the one who’s treated effectively as property, and she’s the one who lacks control over her circumstances.

While you could perhaps argue the constraints of the apartment in Dubai lend more to the gothic heroine archetype, I’d argue it as furthering the Byronic trope again by being representative both of Louis’ self-destruction and self-imposed exile. As Jacob has said a few times, Louis does seem to have known to a degree that Armand was involved in Claudia’s death on some level, and it’s that guilt and misery that has him allowing Armand his degree of control. The fact that Louis was able to leave Armand as easily and as definitively as he was I think demonstrates that distinction too – after all, to compare that ending to Claudia’s multiple attempts to leave the confines of the patriarchal house, both in Rue Royale and Paris, which were punished at every turn – first by her rape, then by Lestat dragging her back off the train, and then by the Coven orchestrating her murder.

Louis gets to leave because Louis can leave, he has both the social and narrative power to, and the fact that he does is, to me, completely at odds with the gothic heroine. Louis can, and does advocate for himself, Louis is proud, moody, cynical. Defiance is a key part of his character, just as his exile from NOLA society due to his race, and his chosen rejection of vampire society in Paris, is. He’s intelligent and sophisticated, travels the world, and has misery in his heart, guilt that eats him up, and self-destructive tendencies. That’s a Byronic Hero, baby!  

[fbfh]

you know what I'm thinking about?? beck oliver. yeah the one from victorious first of all FUCK YOU dan schneider and I'm specifically thinking about this clip from the episode where they try to make a reality show about their high school 0:31

I really hate that beck is one of those characters like lucas friar and tristin dugray where we simply do not get more clarity on them as a person. one of the few times we get to see beck really open up and talk about WHY he's so passionate about acting and it's immediately cut off and overshadowed by how he looks. dare I say he has elle woods syndrome. "beck and jade are toxic" "beck should date cat" "beck and robbie fuck" yeah yeah you know what he REALLY NEEDS????? he needs someone that does not give a single fuck about how he looks. he needs someone who prioritizes HIM instead of his hair. yes he's pretty and he has nice hair but those are all sprinkles. he needs somone who cares about the rest of the cupcake, not just the decorations. I think the reason he thinks he likes angry girls who yell and fight with him all the time is because when he and jade fight she's yelling at him about anything other than his hair. he needs a break from constantly being objectified is my point. you know what would be great?? beck dating a screenwriter. someone who works on the scripts for the hollywood arts shows they put on. someone who hunts him down in the halls looking like they rolled out of a dumpster with sikowitz and reeks of coffee because they've been up for 36 hours to meet their deadline and finish their homework.

you are just that. you do other stuff at hollywood arts too, but there's really not a lot of script writers there, so you've found a way to pretty much corner the market and it looks FANTASTIC on your student transcript, plus you get extra credit for it, which is even better. you're wearing a hoodie that looks like you slept in it for two days (true if you had slept at all) and you're not aware of the two or three empty jet brew cups shoved into your hoodie pocket, plus the extra one you're carrying that you're almost done with.

"Beck!"

you manage to startle him a little which is surprising because he is totally unscareable. he doesn't think you've ever exchanged two words before now, he doesn't even know if he knows your name.

"I need to talk to you," you pant, a little delerious from caffeine and sleep depravation and excitement. "I finished the script for the next play-"

Beck didn't realize that a student was writing any of the shows they put on, he thought they were all lisenced or from local writers.

"It's a dystopian retelling of frankenstein with- with cyberpunk influences," you ramble, "and I need to know if you're okay playing the lead." you pant, still trying to catch your breath and not lose your train of thought.

"some pretty fucked up stuff happens and you'd have to quickly lose your morals and go from morally gray to kind of antagonistic pretty quickly..." you look up at him and hand him a script full of sticky flags. "I wanna make sure there's nothing that'll make you too uncomfortable... like I said it gets pretty fucked up, but I wrote it with you in mind for the doctor, so- just, let me know what you think."

before he can answer, you trudge into the janitor's closet and fall asleep on top of a pile of paper towels.

Beck takes the script home to look over, and he's genuinely surprised for a number of reasons. he expected to be typecast as the love interest yet again, but you want him as the antagonistic lead. it's a really complex role, and has absolutley nothing to do with how he looks. you even left a sticky note in there by accident, and he reads your scribbled handwriting. doc MUST be smwn who fully commits and dgaf if it makes them look bad or silly or unattractive. if they get self consious it ruins the char

underneith are two or three names scribbled out, then his, underlined several times. he is so genuinely shocked by this decision, and absolutely fascenated by your script. he's actually getting really excited to play a role that will challenge him for once.

the next day he meets you with the script tucked under one arm and a coffee in each hand. he hands one to you, and you thank him with a pleasantly surprised smile.

"You seem like you could use it."

"That's putting it mildly..." you mutter in agreement, and he bites back a chuckle when you remove the lid and down half the cup at once. You look at him anxiously after that, and your eyes flit between him and your script. "So... what did you think?"

"I... accept." relief floods through you. "I've already been thinking about my character and going over my lines. But why did you want me for Victor?"

You shrug a little.

"Well, you got the script like, 12 hours ago and you're already developing your portrayal of him, so that's a pretty good reason there," you chuckle, "and I... I hope this doesn't sound mean, but I don't think there are a lot of other people here who could pull off such a complex antagonistic main character."

you state, taking another sip of coffee.

"Everyone here is great, really-" you emphasize, hoping you don't sound like a dick. "I just feel like no one else could really bring the depth to him that you could. He's a horrible person, but I still want the audience to sympathize with him at times, and go wow he's a fucked up asshole at others without making it feel disjointed. I think you're really the only one who has the skills to pull that off."

honestly, if Beck had slightly less self control he would have started wailing and sobbing right then. Instead, he's determined to live up to your expectations and prove to you that your faith in him will pay off. You work pretty closley with production of the show, and with Beck. after closing night, you and Beck are still pretty close, to your pleasant surprise. his friends are a little curious why Beck suddenly is spending all his free time with one of those kids in their class who never talks or says anything, but he seems... happy. he did in fact fall first, and he definitely fell harder. he falls even more when months pass and he realizes you are still too adorably oblivious to realize how he feels.

[thebat-musicman]

Things the batfam have probably done as things i did while bored in high school

Jason: Read a thesis paper on Frankenstein’s daddy issues and how that affects his relationship with the monster

Tim: Had a conversation with skin bug guy about poetry (skin bug guy apparently wrote a poem about spam (yes the canned meat))

Damian: Pantomined stabbing several people/stabbed several people with a plastic knife

Steph: Rickrolled several people with a PDF titled “Bilingual Penguins” (and when people stopped falling for the Bilingual Penguins PDF had a different one named “Penguinese”)

Bruce: Changed his handwriting just to see if he could (and now randomly accidentally copies people’s handwriting to the point he has no clue what his handwriting is)

Alfred: Wrote a novel

Cass: Explored 2 separate dungeons while wearing a hard hat since she kept hitting her head

[miscelliteeous]

SO it turns out I have even more thoughts on him than I realized, like I wrote 14k words about him and I still have so much more to say so here’s some headcanons that didn’t really fit anywhere. NOT WORKSAFE, but this covers a wide range of topics, with the nsfw stuff being only like 1/4th of them.

Adam Frankenstein Headcanons

- General:

He’s a stew guy, like that’d be his go-to meal if he could have it. He likes that no matter what it always tastes a little different than the last time and how easily it can be modified with different ingredients plus it warms him and makes him feel cared for.

Gets cold easily and gets colder than most people can handle, though he still prefers to be wrapped up in something warm.

His voice is deep and can vary between gravelly and raspy, though it gets a tiny bit higher when he’s upset or extremely passionate about something.

Tends to mutter under his breath and talk to himself a little when he’s working on figuring out something complicated.

He can be a bit impulsive and it often bites him in the ass, but he’s working on it.

Has absolutely NO care for looking how men are expected to look at that time in society.

His hair gets very poofy and wavy when it’s taken out of a wet braid.

He has thin skin, and though he heals relatively quickly, he also scars very easily and bleeds easily too.

Will read anything and everything he can get his hands on. He wants to learn about the world as much as possible.

His favorite fiction genre is romance, and he likes big, toxic all-consuming romances and thinks they’re the height of romance. He’s a Heathcliff stan (hey, he’s gotta have SOME bad qualities, am I right?).

Not the best at singing, can’t really stay on tune, but he enjoys singing when happy and alone. Gets very embarrassed if caught.

Animals either adore him or despise him, there is no in-between.

Has a habit of slouching over when standing, to seem just a little shorter.

Feels emotions very intensely. He’s never just sad, he’s devastated, he’s never just angry, he’s furious, he’s never just happy, he’s overjoyed. It’s something he’s working on.

- Romantic:

He has a habit of staring at the one he loves for a long time, blinking very minimally.

Adam doesn’t like to be far away from you, and will follow you around like a lost puppy.

Very much would prefer to have some part of him touching you at all times, usually handholding.

Takes him a while to get used to you touching him as opposed to him touching you, but once he does, he melts.

Braid his hair! It’s practical, its cute, it says fuck you to fashion trends of the time, and it’d make him smile. Braid! His! Hair!

Loves the idea of helping out with mundane tasks, like he’ll cook and sew and be so very gentle when brushing your hair.

Uses so many little terms of endearments, the more reverence they show to you the better. He wants you to know he puts you on a pedestal and practically worships you.

One thing that will piss him off quickly (unless you’ve maybe asked him to please hold back ahead of time) is someone insulting you. He’d be ready to go off on them in a scary way within seconds.

Ideal sleeping position: curled up around you like a pill-bug. He’s big enough that he can probably wrap his body entirely around you and would want to do that every night if he could. Horrible for both of your backs.

If you braid his hair (which you should!) he would want to braid yours in return if possible.

Tends to stand behind you when in public. Partially out of shyness, partially to serve as a warning to others to not fuck with you.

When he’s standing behind you in public? The slouch is GONE, he is eight feet of glaring intensity, like a pissed off lighthouse behind a tiny cottage.

Really doesn’t like anyone else touching you and would get a bit more clingy even if it was a purely platonic touch.

Honestly he’s very possessive. He’s found one person in the world who loves HIM, flaws and all, and he doesn’t want to risk losing you.

Tells you he loves you at least 4-5 times a day, including any time you leave a room he’s in.

- Sexual:

You know that image of the hamster eating a banana? You’re the hamster.

Massive, ridiculously large dick that’s still in proportion so it doesn’t look too crazy huge, but it’s still probably about 9-10 inches hard, 7-8 flaccid.

Absolutely aware of how big he is, and takes every step he can think of to make things easier, though it might still be tricky at first.

Adam prefers positions where he can see your face.

Very vocal, tries to hold back sometimes but fails, very loud.

Says anything that comes to his mind, most of which is just really over-the-top praise for you and how you make him feel.

He’s close to 400lbs of muscle, but very mindful of his body so that he doesn’t hurt you. Even if he lays on you he’d still be supporting himself mostly.

Not really fond of mirrors being involved. He’d love to see different angles of you, but himself? Not so much.

Thinks he’s going to die and ascend to heaven when he first gets a blowjob. Though he loves it, he prefers to give rather than receive, he wouldn’t want to hurt your jaw.

Not much aftercare the first time because he doesn’t know as much about it, but once he learns he’s a king.

Cleans you up, gives you a massage, water, holds you, praises you (even more!), makes sure you’re okay and that you enjoyed it too. He would melt if you do the same for him too.

- Familial/Paternal:

Ideally, he would have two children, he would love to be father to a boy and girl, but he would be happy with any amount or none at all and taking care of pets instead. He just wants to raise and care for something the way Victor never raised and cared for him.

So indecisive with names, like there’s so many good names he would want to use, he’d probably leave it mostly up to you.

The one name he’d really want to use? The second he hears the name Abigail means something like “my father is joyful” he jumps for it because that’s exactly how he feels about being a father.

So scared to hold the baby for a good while. He’s just so big and they’re so small and if he accidentally hurt them he’d never forgive himself.

Hovers around the baby though and still holds its little hand. As close as he can get without holding them.

Once he gets over that, he’s a very attentive father.

Very high chance any of his kids would have his black hair and some of his facial features. He’d hope they would have your eyes though.

Lets his kids climb all over him, pull his hair, swing on his arms, anything just as long as they don’t get hurt.

Very encouraging of them to explore and learn new things but also a bit of helicopter dad.

Torn between wanting to keep his kid/s safe from the world and wanting them to be able to do anything they set their mind to.

While not quite 8ft, I think any kids he would have would still grow to be a bit taller than average.

[pynkgothicka]

Ａｌｗａｙｓ Ｆｏｒｅｖｅｒ ＭＹＧ

Pairing - Yandere! Dark! Min Yoongi x Frankenstein! AFAB! Reader

Featuring - Sarah Paulson (HELP THE KILLER IS ESCAPING HELP ME)

Tags and Warnings - death, sex, yandere tendencies, grotesque descriptions, gaslighting

Authors Note - this counts as my Halloween fic since I be lazy, but I promise to write more! First I'll finish the monster series then the reqs! Then I'll write what I wanna write yada yada probably do a non bts series or fic

A friendly reminder that all my works are dark fanfiction! Please if you do not like that do not read them! These depictions don't pertain to reality.This is your final warning before hitting the keep reading button!!

He needed something, anything.

Staring at he conglomerate of body parts he stole from previously dead people of the outskirts of the village he found himself by.

Yoongi shook his head as he looked at the body parts. He wanted to focus on the task at hand, even if it was considered testing death itself.

He was meticulous, finding different shades of her skin tone to fit his new creation. All to top it off was her head.

The head of his dead wife, you.

He looked at it, running his finger down it's cheek. It was cold, too cold. He missed seeing you alive, having any ounce of warmth from your body. It was such a loss when he had to take and cut off your rotten body parts. He wanted you to be perfect.

Yoongi planted a kiss on the top of your severed head, a stray tear going down his face. “I'll get you back my love, I need you back.”

🪡

You blinked, seeing as you were covered in a sheet. Taking a deep breath you breathed in the scent of fresh linen. A shadow came over you, peering at your covered body. Your head was uncovered as you looked into a man's face. Blonde hair and dark eyes that sparkled once seeing you.

His hand trembled as he ran his shaking thumb on the side of your face. “Y- You're alive… you… you're beautiful.” His lips came to the top of your head, as he kissed it. You tried to speak but all that came out was a small squeak.

But the man found this amusing. “It seems like you forgot everything… Seems as if I didn't have my science all down.” He adds smiling. He held your hand helping you to move off the lab table. You almost immediately fall, the man taking your arm and holding you up. “Don't fall now come on let's get you to the wheel chair.”

He placed you down gently, running his hand over your stitches. He pulled at a few and securing them. “Okay, it's all in place… I'm so happy you're back. Well not all the way back I just have to do some reteaching. Like me, I’m Yoongi. Min Yoongi your husband.”

Yoongi made faces to help you pronounce his name correctly. “Y-You. Yoon-gi.” You finally muttered out in which Yoongi smiled and kissed your head.

“See look how easy it is for my brilliant wife to learn. I'm going to reteach it all to you my love…That and so much more…”

🪡

Having to be retaught everything wasn't the most normal feeling. But Yoongi, was more than helpful in making you remember who you were and the basics of living.

Yet he pushed for your captivity within the walls of his mansion. You stay at his feet most of the time while he worked and wrote letters.

He even constantly reminded you of your beauty and how you were the most beautiful girl hes ever seen. It was sweet in your eyes yet you were surrounded by so many depictions of beauty that weren't what you looked like. Different shades and natural movement you've yet to nail down.

But still you wondered about what existed past the mansions walls. Especially the village in the distance. You wondered about the women there and if they looked and aced like you. Your mind was busy and it could be shown on your face.

Snap!

You blinked as Yoongi snapped his fingers in front of your face. “Sorry, I was thinking.” You said quietly looking back towards Yoongi as he read a book.

“Thinking? About what?”

“I don't… look like. The paintings. Or the films.” You were able to piece together to form a sentence. It was degrading yes but true.

“Well who told you that?” Yoongi inquires while raising a brow at you. Gulping at the sternness in his voice, you speak up against him.

“No one told me that. I… I don't look like them. I don't, look like any of the women you've shown me.” You say getting up from your spot besides Yoongi. You look out the window in his study at the town in the far off distance. “I bet the village has-”

Yoongi gets up and grabs your hand gently. He runs his hand down the side of your face and leads you to turn away from the window. “Is that what this is about? Going into town?” He mumbles leaning into your neck. He peppered kisses along a stitch that tickled in particular. You giggled and looked at Yoongi your mind going blank at what you were mad at. “Is that better my love?”

“Mhmm. Yes Yoongi…”

“Good let's continue reading.”

🪡

Of course the thought came back.

The lights and the sounds of joy and fun. It haunts you, the time known as Halloween the same night as tonight. Yet here you were with Yoongi, his body over your own.

His thrusts increased in speed as he pounded into you. It was weird how full he made you feel. But you didn't mind it, you enjoyed it actually. Yoongi wrapped a hand around your stitched throat, pinning you to the bed. You let out a groan as Yoongi filled up your cunt, his cum spilling from inside of you. He pulled out and laid on top of you, peppering more kisses along your face.

“That was amazing…” Yoongi mumbles as he rolls over from on top of you. He wraps a arm around your naked form. You feel his lips against the middle of your neck, and soon the silent breathing known as sleep.

Tonight was the night.

No matter what you were getting out of here.

You hobble out of bed, limping towards the wardrobe. You grabbed a sweater he made for you and a long white skirt. Throwing both of them on you sneak out of the bedroom. You head to the bathroom and wipe your legs, making sure you were clean. You quietly make your way down the stairs to the front door. You look back making sure Yoongi wasn't behind you.

Nothing.

So you kept moving. Walking along the side of the road, dirt and rocks digging into the bottom of your feet. Your limp was soon gone as the pain dulled. It was a long walk and you made it eventually. Finally you see orange light shining on your face.

The village was full of people. Children dressed up as well as adults. Peering into windows you saw fashion portrayed in paintings and jewelry Yoongi only showed you from books of art. You ran a hand down the window but was pulled from it as you felt a touch on your shoulder.

There was a woman, her face framed by brown hair pulled into a bun. Stray hairs fell down her face. She was a tad bit older, but not too old. “Hi, were you looking at the jewelry in there?” She asked smiling. You nodded and she nodded with you giggling. “You don't talk much huh? It's alright, I was asking because I was going to buy it for you.”

Clearing your throat you finally spoke up, “Really?” You exclaimed excitedly. She nodded and pulled you into the shop.

“Choose anything I don't mind.” She says looking at the wall of fancy jewelry. “I have no one to spend it on so why not you…” Finally you choose one silver necklace with a diamond pendant in the center. Your plan was to give it to Yoongi, as a sort of thank you. It would also double as a apology for leaving when you eventually did come back. e woman purchased it and smiled taking you out of the store.

A gush of wind made you shiver and the woman gasped. “You're freezing, come on. I'll give you something to eat and get you warmed up.” You didn't know why but you followed behind the woman as she led you to her small quaint home in the village. You enter and are welcomed by a fireplace.

It was something you never felt nor seen your entire life, even if it was as small as it was. “Go sit by the fire while I go heat up some soup.” The woman says ushering you to go sit by the fire. You do, the warmth making everything feel better. It was bright and brilliant as Yoongi would've said.

You were passed a bowl of chicken noodle soup. It had vegetables and overall smelled delicious. The woman passed you a spoon and draped a blanket over you. Yoongi taught you to how use utensils, so you were familiar as you began to eat. “Good isn't it? I'm Sarah by the way, Sarah Paulson, the towns widow or whatever they want to fucking call me.” Sarah said making you gasp. Her language made you laugh yet also made you amused. Yoongi usually only spoke like that during sex or under his breath.

Was never for you to pay attention to nor recite

“What's a widow?” You ask eating more. Sarah seemed more than happy to have someone to talk too. She sat down on the couch, becoming even more comfortable.

“Well, a widow is someone whose husband or lover has died. It's mainly the villages women trying to make fun of me. But I say hey, if I'm a widow than I'm a widow.” Sarah exclaimed. “What about you? What's your name and slash or title?”

That made you think. You knew your name but what were you. After telling you your name, you went quiet. “I don't think I have a title. Except for what Yoongi calls me.”

“Wait like Min Yoongi? The one that lives in the mansion out of town?” Sarah asks looking at you with a inquisitive eye. You nod slowly and she looks away looking out the window. “Oh you poor thing. You don't even know the half of it do you?”

You shake your head no looking at Sarah. “W-What? You have to tell me.”

“Yoongi he… he stopped coming into town a while ago. He was caught digging up corpses, he went to me as he lost his lover and wanted some common ground with someone who understood him.” Sarah started but you cut her off.

“But, I'm his lover. He told me I was his one and only…” You say frantically.

“He had another, no one saw her though. He kept her in that mansion for fucks sake. He wanted to try and revive my husband, Mr Paulson. But I told him no…” Sarah trailed off and took a look at your neck and arms. She let out a quiet gasp as she moved to sit next to you. She ran a thumb over one of the stitches. “You're her… his creation.”

You furrowed your brows and looked at Sarah with concerned eyes. “I- What? What are you talking about? I'm his love, no I'm not-”

“You're a bunch of body parts… God I'm so sorry… your brain. He must've had to throw out your old one… he kept going at it. He kept running the experiment to revive Mrs Min.” Sarah said bringing you in for a hug. You quickly hugged her back crying into her shoulder. But she pulled away so you could look at her. “He's going to come looking… and I don't want you to get hurt. Yoongi is crazy… and you need to hide.”

A loud set of bangs were heard from her front door. Sarah covered you in the blanket and bent down to whisper. “Lay down and don't move, I'm going to try and save you.” Sarah said and you listened. You trusted her, but you couldn't see Yoongi as a violent man. But finding out all you now knew you couldn't risk it.

You heard the door open and feet moving into the home further. “Where did you put her?” You heard a voice that was similar to Yoongis speak up.

“Put who? Don't tell me you've found a new lover. Did you remarry Mr. Min?” Sarah said, keeping her tone respectful. She kept away from the living room where you laid on the ground.

“Don't play dumb. You are the only one I told about her.” Yoongis voice raised and you heard more steps being took away from you and towards where the first set stopped. You started to slowly move, one limb at a time, to under the couch.

“Well yes, but I didn't even know you succeeded in your experiment. Congratulations on that but you'd trust the people who rat you out about the body snatching?” Sarah came back stepping away and moving in a circle to the front of the couch. “Besides quiet rude entering my house this way, don't you think?”

“Rude my ass, I know she's in here. If there's anything those people want is to get me away from them. So they'll lead me in a direction to where I don't have to talk to them and I'm not going to be mad with them. So that leads to you.” Yoongis voice raised as he stood in front of the couch towering over Sarah. “So I'll ask one final time, where is she?”

“Get out of my ho-”

BANG!

You covered your mouth as the sound of a revolver echoed from within the home. You felt your cheeks grow wet.

“Where are you my love? I'm not mad I promise, it's okay I knew this would happen.” There it was, that sweet voice that was always coated in honey to coax you successfully. You moved from under the couch and let the blanket fall from your head. Yoongis face was covered in Sarah's blood as he gasped pulling you in for a hug. He kissed your head and lips, hands on your cheeks. “I was worried sick!”

“W- I'm… what ju-” You were cut off as you felt the necklace you brought earlier being pulled from your hand.

“Is this for me?” You nodded. “Thank you baby… this is beautiful my love.” He put it on and smiled at you keeping his thumb on your cheek. You kept stuttering though, confused and unaware of what just happened to you. “Shhh, it's okay just stay with me from now on okay? I can keep you safe, forever.” Yoongi said keeping your head faced away from the half bloodied mess that he made of Sarah's head.