#more gothic than anything

[lazarish]

Abbie Echo

So uh. I'm posting a new legacy.

I'll avoid ranting for hours and just summarize: it's going to be a horror-themed nsb. By "horror-themed", I do mean this it's going to be darker/rated higher than my other projects.

A full list of triggers for each gen will be posted on the hub page, as well as the navigation post for each gen (the pinned post on my blog while the gen is posting). However, I will say upfront that there will never be any sexual violence, nor will there be gore further than some edited blood shown on-screen. I'm trying to be creepy, not genuinely upsetting, so all potentially triggering content will always be tagged. And, as always, I encourage you to let me know if there's something you would like tagged, or if there's a better way for me to tag things to avoid making anyone uncomfortable.

Also, Labyrinth isn't going anywhere! Gen 5 is just a huge project so it was always going to take a while!

[nellasbookplanet]

I know this is old hat to just about everyone, but I'm more and more enjoying Imogen and Laudna as not just a mirror of the Briarwoods but also, and perhaps even more so, as a foil.

Laudna may be the death magic goth with a necromancer in her head, but out of the two of them, Imogen is the stronger mirror of Delilah. She’s the one with the undead lover, the one prepared to break the world by risking Delilah's return as long as it got her Laudna back, the one with the drive and the thirst for power and knowledge. Laudna meanwhile, while also tempted by power, is mostly just along for the ride, deeply devoted to Imogen over anything or anyone, alive only because Imogen found a way to resurrect her. They have looked each other in the eye, recognised the same seeds of darkness and the possibility of giving in, and said 'Together either way'.

But they are also in many ways a direct subversion of the Briarwoods. Delilah and Sylas both seemed perfectly happy to have made a pact with Vecna and revelled in the power he granted them, even knowing the disaster he would bring and the horrific acts he asked of them. Imogen and Laudna meanwhile, while tempted by power and openly voicing said temptation to each other, actively fight against it. Imogen was prepared to risk Delilah's return for the sake of Laudna's resurrection, but she would've fought her every step of the way. She's tempted by the power and knowledge of Ruidus, but also prepared to give all of it up if it means saving the world, because unlike Delilah she chooses to care about people other than herself and her lover. Laudna may be prepared to follow Imogen into hell itself, but she may also be what would lead her back out, because unlike Sylas she doesn’t just recognise darkness in her lover, she wants to fight it alongside her.

This is what I mean when I say these two hold the potential for great darkness. They wouldn’t function as a mirror and a foil of the most romantically iconic critical role villain duo if they didn't. But holding the potential for darkness and corruption also means holding the potential to resist and fight said darkness at every turn. It gives them the potential to choose kindness and struggle while still keeping a little bit of that darkness in their hearts, because without it, they never would have found each other.

[chainmailcurse]

somewhere between chicago and the upper peninsula

[npcgrian]

i am number 1 dan fan

[locklyle-trash]

Late night makeup 🫣

[emiplayzmc]

Shitty Gravity Falls AU that mayhaps I am delulu about:

Gravity Falls x Jekyll & Hyde

I haven't much fleshed this out yet because this was literally just made up while reading Journal 3 and listening to the J&H musical OST, but what I'm MAINLY thinking about is like- 'what if Sock Opera was Jekyll and Hyde. Would that be fucked up or what.'

♤~~♡~~♤

It's the 1800s, and Dipper and Mabel are staying with their great uncle Stanley Pines, who's been living in the house that his brother, Stanford, lived in before mysteriously disappearing. In this AU Mason and Mabel would probably be moreso in their late teens / young adulthood

Dipper (more likely to be known as just Mason in this AU rather than a nickname) would be a man of science and logically much like Ford in this universe, but also still the mystery-loving Dipper we know and love :) He and Mabel would get it in their heads that they could find out what happened to Stanford, and they go snooping around looking for the clues as to how and where he disappeared to, breaking into an old, locked study of the house. Everything is messed up or destroyed except for many strewn about notes on the desk, and one vial of a mysterious liquid in a cabinet, surrounded by other smashed bottles of the same substance. They read the notes that Ford made about a substance he concocted that allowed him to give into his darker impulses, and soon after the two of them hurry to leave the room with the notes intending on keeping the fact they were snooping a secret - although not before Mason spots the bottle of potion.

The notes about the potion and Ford's experiences with the duality essentially act like a Journal 3 for Mason here, except much shorter and less otherworldly. Eventually Mason's morbid curiosity of the vial and Stanford's notes lead him to sneaking into the study again, and he drinks the vial in the cabinet.

Cue the arrival of Hyde - or in this AU, Bill Cipher / Bipper - causing mischief and hijinks across London and within the Pines family. And eventually, just like the original book (and like with Ford and Bill in the show), Mason gradually starts losing more and more of himself to the addiction of the potion / becoming Bipper while finding more notes and pages about how Stanford felt like he was losing his mind when the darker version of him took over, feeling like it was moreso a demon possessing him than an act of science in the end.

Mabel and Grunkle Stan would probably be the Utterson and Lanyon in this universe, trying to figure out why Dipper keeps disappearing / acting like a completely different person more and more often, and eventually having to find a way to save him before he meets the same fate as Stanford, or the original Jekyll & Hyde.

♤~~♡~~♤

Aka, Ford's the OG Jekyll in this AU and Dipper unknowingly follows in his footsteps lol. Again, I haven't fleshed much of this out, but I've always thought about 'what if Dipper and Bipper were Jekyll & Hyde parallels' but never really gave it too much thought? It seems like it'd be an interesting AU to explore mainly because I love the themes of goth literature, and I think the potential of Bipper / Bill's influence with Ford / Dipper goes SO WELL in this universe with the 'darker impulses' and the inherent HUNGER the two of them have for knowledge and the unknown that Bill manipulates in the first place, same as Jekyll being driven by his own impulses of needing to act out instead of being a prim Victorian man 24/7 paired with being a man of science.

[jazuthevulcanprincess]

i still fucking hate the domestic abuse scene in the tv IWTV it makes no fucking sense

i reread the book and they fight physically sometimes but theres never any wife beating bs its like. brawling

and lestat kicking the shit out of louis like that is out of character its like the showrunners lost their minds and thought this would be good

its good TV but its not the book nothing like the book or the spirit of the book

and why would Louis lie about it if he is lying abt this?

[carnivalls]

good morning. thinking again of juve and her dog

[pate-can-get-around]

[mariocki]

Infinite list of favourite lyrics: 229/?

Bobbie Gentry - Ode to Billie Joe (1967)

"And Papa said to Mama, as he passed around the black-eyed peas:

'Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please.

There's five more acres in the lower forty I got to plow'

And Mama said it was a shame about Billie Joe, anyhow.

Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge

And now Billie Joe McAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"

[...]

"Mama said to me, 'Child, what's happened to your appetite?

I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite.

That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today

Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday - oh, by the way

He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge

And she and Billie Joe was throwin' something off the Tallahatchie Bridge'"

[namazunomegami]

“Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light? You’re a fool.” - The Master and Margarita

[kotoneshiomiofficial]

the fact that someone suggested "noblebright" as an alternative to "hopepunk" is absolutely ridiculous considering the post in question was criticizing hopepunk for being a nothing-word that gets redefined whenever convenient and is usually used to suggest a film is morally or ideologically superior to other films. i dont think you can get more holier-than-thou than saying "my favorite movie is in the 'genre' Noble And Bright" like come on

[pynkhues]

Reading about the plot of TVL...man, Rolin Jones is really going to put Sam Reid through it next year, huh. Those tear ducts are going to get a workout.

It is A Book, anon!!

[fictionadventurer]

Well, now I know why Jo was crying.

[arctic-hands]

Related to my tags on the Irish American reblog, how long have bastardized "Celtic" crosses been neo-Nazi symbols? I wasn't aware of this stupid use until I was an adult and my father was equally unaware until I learned about it, and in our Celtic (American) Pride we often used Celtic cross imagery in decor and accessories. Granted these usually did resemble actually woven/knotted crosses (which by no means meant they were authentic. At best a few came from local Celtic Pride fests��which as I said in those tags was plagued by Confederate and Nazi imagery), but most of them came from like JoAnn's or Michael's or Walmart whenever Saint Paddy's Day rolled around. That said, the woven pattern of a Celtic cross is a bitch to draw especially when you have yet to nurture or be nurtured in any art skills, so when my borderline-Gothic ass would doodle graveyards in my school notebooks I would often doodle simplified Celtic crosses as grave markers, which unfortunately just meant a simple cross with a simple circle in it, unfortunately reminiscent of the neo-Nazi symbol.

Me and my family were staunchly Indiana liberals (to be fair that wasn't that shocking in our democrat enclave city) and have only become more leftist as time goes on, so those who knew me well would know I didn't mean anything by it, but like I have to wonder/worry that those who didn't know me well (like most of my classmates. I was pretty lonely in high school) or people who would briefly visit my home or come across us while we were wearing Celtic pins that day or something came away with the wrong impression. I'm especially dismayed at the thought that the kids I knew to be actual neo-Nazis might thought I was one of them

For the record I left school in like twenty eleven and had been doodling graveyards for years and wearing Celtic imagery for even longer. I can't really find out when the "Celtic" cross became a dogwhistle

[kraa-kraa]

I have to handsew 3 metres of embroidery on tulle onto a skirt. I am 40 centimetres in and contemplating death.