#vampire human metamorphoses

[autumnmobile12]

Human turned Vampire variations

From the classic bite of Bram Stoker's novel explained to some really convoluted metamorphoses, here are 6 ways humans are turned into vampires throughout modern media.

Shiki

This series had a slow process, similar to the classic Dracula. The shiki chooses one victim to feed off of over the course of three nights and holds said victim entirely under their sway through a means of hypnosis. Growing increasingly more anemic and unable to tell their family and friends what's happening, the victim eventually passes away from heart failure.

However, the vampire bite itself doesn't guarantee a new vampire. It's caused by an unspecified genetic factor that responds to a vampire bite. The shiki in the series gather around the grave of their latest victim and wait for signs of life, digging up their new member if they do and giving up if they start to smell the body decaying.

It led to a pretty devastating moment for one of the vampires who desperately tried to turn the rest of her family, but none of them had the genetic factor and she ended up killing all of them for nothing.

Hellsing

Vampire bites virgin human of the opposite sex.

Okay, seems simple enough, but what exactly are we considering virginity here? This is an arbitrary concept with a definition that has changed multiple times over history, not to mention the 'loss of virginity' definition today varies according to who you ask. What are we considering gender? Are we strictly adhering to an individual's biological characteristics or is transgenderism/gender-fluidity at play? What about intersex individuals?

This one seems straightforward until you consider all the non-heteronormative angles, but really...I'm pretty sure no one watches this series for the plot. I think we all just showed up to see a vampire annihilate the Third Reich.

Twilight

I've never read/watched the books/movies, but I've heard it's venom in this series. Is it venom? If so, that's an interesting take.

Vampire in the Garden

Saliva.

The vampires of this series are the result of a genetic mutation and can change another human into a vampire by introducing an unspecified pathogen/chemical found in their saliva into the human's bloodstream.

Soulless (or the Alexia Tarrabotti novels)

All right, this book series is fun and I highly recommend. British sass, steampunk Victorians, LGBTQ+ representation, fabulous vampires, and dorky werewolves, I love it.

Anyway, vampires in this series have what's called 'feeder fangs,' but the female vampires have a second smaller set called 'maker fangs.' So only a female vampire can create a new vampire.

Also, the supernatural system of this world revolves around souls. People can have an average 'amount' of soul, for lack of a better word, an unknown percentage of people can have 'excess soul,' and a rare number can have no soul. Excess soul lingers after death, so people with excess soul become ghosts when they die. Or, if they are bitten by a vampire or werewolf, they can become that supernatural being and gain immortality.

But since there's no feasible way to measure how much soul one has, becoming supernatural is a roulette with death. Similar to Shiki, immortality by vampire bite is not guaranteed.

Vampire Knight

Vampires can reproduce with each other and give birth to children, essentially making them just a long-lived, virtually immortal sub-species of humanity that needs blood to survive.

There's also a vampire hierarchy of which only the rare 'purebloods' can create new vampires, but the former human vampires are unstable and often become mindless, blood-driven monsters, adding to the classicism of the upper hierarchy.

(If I remember right, it's been awhile since I read these.)

...

These are all the methods I can think of, but reblog if you can think of another method or one that's similar to the ones above.

[thesirenisles]

Pluto’s Sirens 🦂

beauty, love astrology observations ✨

scorpio sun, scorpio moon, scorpio mars, scorpio ascendant , Scorpio lilith, Black moon lilith

8th house placements including Lilith

Lilith aspects, Pluto Aspects, Venus Opposing Trine Conjunction Square Pluto, Ruled, Dominant

Pluto in the 1st house, Pluto in the 8th house

“She knew death quite well. She often drowned. But, never in fear. The storm waters of love, pain, and sorrow filled her lungs and from their depths, she rose metamorphosed — a captivating phoenix of the sea.”

-The Siren Isles

do not steal any of my original work. All rights reserved. © 2024 The Siren Isles | Leave a tip if you enjoy! 🧜🏾‍♀️

🦂Child of Pluto,

The stunning dark beauty that disappears intermittently, only to reemerge a brand new person.. having lived another full life to it’s completion.

You have walked the Valley of Death and your essence was fortified by means of eternal hellfire. There’s really no wonder why you’re so intimidatingly hot. 🔥

As a water sign, this is similar to the siren-like energy of Neptune. However, a Neptunian might unwittingly lure suitors to their death, but you, Plutonian Goddess are the siren who wants the kill.

🥀You are the siren they fear.

You are a mistress of the deep, a beacon of light through the annals of life’s taboo topics like sex, death, occultism, and mystery.

When considering Plutonian energy, I imagine the scorpion deep within a fierce ocean of emotions, burrowing deeper and deeper into the sand… searching and feeling…

Deep within these depths is where you thrive. The drowned woman… I say this because Scorpio is a fixed sign, meaning its energy can be stagnant.

So, it is literally fixed water or stuck water. Being stuck underwater can symbolically connote to drowning.

This is also where the big misunderstanding of Scorpio comes from because… a scorpion does not belong underwater?? Yup, you’re an anomaly.

But, hence this is literally why you cannot stay under water for too long. You’re meant to dive deep beneath the surface, transform yourself, others, and your surroundings BUT only for a little while.

If you try to resist and stay submerged, life literally pushes you to transform and resurface for fresh air. By the end of your journey, you come out reborn anew, carrying nothing but the wisdom you’ve gained.

At your core, you are here to transform yourself and others.

With this energy, you are always digging and craving depth wherever you go, whether you realize it or not just like the scorpion. This could be for emotions, the truth, or other extremes.

Your plutonic vibrations sometimes does this for you and easily charm souls into revealing their darkest and deepest desires to you.

Pluto has gifted you with a gaze that certainly helps to compel information, while also commanding authority and exuding power. (It’s giving Vampire Diariesss)

🥀A fierce siren, you wish to take hold of your romantic partners, friends, and families and lead them to the deepest depths of human existence.

But, this is only an attempt to free them from the confinement of the human ego and mundanity.

🦂The Misunderstood

The Scorpio/ 8th house slander is endless. But, I feel it’s just misunderstood. I love Plutonian energy. I find it refreshing, possibly because I have Scorpio 11th house & Scorpio Mars lol.

But, I get them. My longest friendship is with a beautiful Scorpio Sun and I have never had to second guess her loyalty.

She has been through more than anyone would guess, but maintains a heart of pure gold. Her shell is hard to crack though.

This is because you guys have seen the other side of life… death. You are aware most people aren’t living their truths or even knowledgeable of the truths of this Earthly realm… and it infuriates you at times.

It’s not easy being the one who sees a liar in a fake smile or an enemy within a friend. You see people without their masks and you call them out when needed… including family.

This can ruffle many feathers, of course. We all know how truth tellers are deemed in society.

And to some, your intense need to dive deep can terrify them and trigger them because in some way they are not living their authentic truth.

But, it’s meant to!

Pluto in the 1st house natives know this reaction well, as they wear the hellfire mark wherever they go. This triggers those who are not comfortable with darkness or their own shadow self.

Significant Lilith placements can resonate with this energy. Your presence and rebel energy triggers those whose identity is based upon a facade.

A Plutonian is a friend with their shadow self. They have seen the likes of all darkness.

You are the wounded warrior with these placements, (and honestly deserve so much more and so many hugs for what you’ve survived🥹) But, you seldom allow anyone to see you sweat or any weakness.

This need to conceal weakness hides your incredibly, loving heart and loyal spirit.

You can come off a bit brash at times. (Think, Jade from Victorious… Marlo from The Wire.. Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective) But, Its hard to empathize with those who seem ungrateful for their less challenging life paths or who refuse to make simple life changes out of fear.

You are like a butterfly. You have lived several lives, experiencing completely new things at each stage of life, but ultimately improving yourself each time.

While painful at times, that’s your superpower. ✨

The ironic part is that people see you in your Butterfly phase, ornate wings and beautiful colors, and assume you have not had it hard.

Until you sting. 🦂🩸

Absolutely incredible and yet so misunderstood.

Believe me when I say, it is such a GIFT to be able to transform in a world where Saturn’s energy reigns supreme.

🥀A piece of advice I leave to you all is… while understanding death.. DON’T forget to LIVE. Take a page out of the book of your sister sign, Taurus or Planet Venus… pamper your soul. 💅🏾

You are allowed and capable of just as much happiness and soft living as any other soul. Do not be afraid to open up and love or allow yourself to be loved.

You ARE loved over here! ❤️🫶🏾

🦂La Petite Mort “Little Death”.

To possess significant scorpio or 8th house placements is to live through many small deaths to be born anew.

Ironically, while Pluto rules sex, the French saying for an orgasm is Le Petite Mort … or “Little Death”.

Perfectly fitting.

With these placements, you can transform yourself and others through your sexual encounters.

🥀Your sex is transformative!

The sexual energy exudes from your pores, thanks to Papa Pluto and those around you can smell the fragrance.

When a suitor spots you, perched upon a rock amidst the chaos of the ocean… they can’t look away.

They don’t know what it is about you, but they are drawn… hooked and captivated by your watery siren gaze.

You call to them on the shore… and they approach only to be grasped and delivered to the bottom of the ocean for an unforgettable awakening.

This is why Scorpios/ Plutonians/ 8th housers rule the sack. There is less inhibition, less hesitation, and your goal is sink your prey… to the depths… and transform them. (This gives me chills to think about… very powerful stuff!)

Both men and women of Pluto have this quality. Even if they aren’t perfectly symmetrical or dreamy, you have to admit they are HOT AF & their raw sexual energy caught your eye and made you wonder if you even possess the endurance to swim in their waters…

Keep transforming the world Plutonians! We need you!

Thank you for reading! Wishing you blessings💋

Neptune ♓️⬅️✨ MERCURY♍️♊️ Mars ♈️♏️✨ Venus | masterlist

Alton Mason (Scorpio Sun) and Kofi Siriboe (Scorpio Pluto, Moon, Jupiter STELLIUM 😮‍💨)

@thesirenisles | masterlist | Enjoyed? Support!🧜🏾‍♀️

[see-arcane]

I think what I love most about the idea of Jonathan clearly becoming Something Else is that it's so much scarier than a vampire. We know the rules and limitations of a vampire. Van Helsing can even provide a list. But Something Else? Let's be real, not even Jonathan knows.

Quincey: Hey, I couldn't help but notice Harker is kind of, uh. Metamorphosing in the corner over there.

Van Helsing: He is going through a grief-filled and harrowing time, Friend Quincey.

Quincey: True. But I don't tend to recall 'spontaneous hair color change, wall-crawling, inhuman speed, blazing eyes, and having an omnipresent heightening scare chord present in the soundtrack whenever you do things' as part of the grieving process.

Van Helsing: Are you not supposed to be laconic?

Quincey: Are you not supposed to be up every available textbook's ass about supernatural happenings in our vicinity?

Van Helsing: Friend Quincey, in fullest honesty, I feel it is best that he copes as he likes. If that means he has to transmute into an entity unknown to the written word or human recognition, that is his choice.

Quincey: ...

Van Helsing: ...

Quincey: So you're putting caring on hold because the Cross and Wafer combo hasn't given him hives.

Van Helsing, pouring himself his third stress-brandy: Perhaps.

Quincey: Jack, back me up here? We should be a little concerned, right?

Jack, has been melting into a manhood-admiration puddle as he watches Jonathan 'White-Haired Romantic Horror Anime Man' Harker handling his kukri in plain view for the past 3 hours: yeag

[caspercryptid]

Dungeon Meshi as Monster Culture

-jeffrey jerome cohen as a framework for dungeon meshi

i. The Monsters Body is a cultural body

Vampires, burial, death: inter the corpse where the road forks...it will haunt that place that leads to many other places, that point of indecision...The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place

ii. The Monster Always Escapes

We see the damage that the monster wreaks, the material remains...but the monster itself turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear someplace else.

No monster tastes of death but once... Each time the grave opens and the unquiet slumberer strides forth("come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all"), the message proclaimed is transformed by the air that gives its speaker new life...monstrous interpretation is as much process as epiphany, a work that must content itself with fragments (footprints, bones, talismans, teeth, shadows, obscured glimpses—signifiers of monstrous passing that stand in for the monstrous body itself).

iii. The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis

The monster always escapes because it refuses easy categorization...they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.

The too-precise laws of nature as set forth by science are gleefully violated in the freakish compilation of the monster's body.

Full of rebuke to traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience, the geography of the monster is an imperiling expanse, and therefore always a contested cultural space

iv. The Monster dwells at the gate of difference

The monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us... the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond—of all those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within.

Representing an anterior culture as monstrous justifies its displacement or extermination by rendering the act heroic..A political figure suddenly out of favor is transformed like an unwilling participant in a science experiment by the appointed historians of the replacement regime: "monstrous history" is rife with sudden, Ovidian metamorphose

History itself becomes a monster: defeaturing, self-deconstructive, always in danger of exposing the sutures that bind its disparate elements into a single, unnatural body.

V: The Monster polices the borders of the possible

From its position at the limits of knowing, the monster stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes...curiosity is more often punished than rewarded, that one is better off safely contained within one's own domestic sphere than abroad, away from the watchful eyes of the state

To step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself.

The horribly fascinating loss of Lycaon's humanity merely reifies his previous moral state; the king's body is rendered all transparence, instantly and insistently readable. The power of the narrative prohibition peaks in the lingering description of the monstrously composite Lycaon, at that median where he is both man and beast, dual natures in a helpless tumult of assertion. The fable concludes when Lycaon can no longer speak, only signify.

Whereas monsters born of political expedience and self-justifying nationalism function as living invitations to action, usually military (invasions, usurpations, colonizations), the monster of prohibition polices the borders of the possible, interdicting through its grotesque body some behaviors and actions, envaluing others.

victims are devoured, engulfed, made to vanish from the public gaze: cannibalism as incorporation into the wrong cultural body.

vi: Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

The monster is continually linked to forbidden practices, in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts. The same creatures who terrify and interdict can evoke potent escapist fantasies; the linking of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint

Escapist delight gives way to horror only when the monster threatens to overstep these boundaries, to destroy or deconstruct the thin walls of category and culture. When contained by geographic, generic, or epistemic marginalization, the monster can function as an alter ego, as an alluring projection of (an Other) self. The monster awakens one to the pleasures of the body, to the simple and fleeting joys of being frightened, or frightening—to the experience of mortality and corporality

The habitations of the monsters ...are more than dark regions of uncertain danger: they are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation.

the scapegoated monster is perhaps ritually destroyed in the course of some official narrative, purging the community by eliminating its sins. The monster's eradication functions as an exorcism and, when retold and promulgated, as a catechism

vii: The monster stands at the threshold of becoming

Monsters are our children. They can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse, hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return.

And when they come back, they bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human knowledge—and a discourse all the more sacred as it arises from the Outside. These monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place.

They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression.

They ask us why we have created them

[divorceblogger]

hope it isn’t weird to barge into yr dms re: the mythology metaphors, but yr post sparked a thought in me! idk too much about Marius’ timeline, but I believe he would have been a contemporary of Ovid (exiled in 8 AD). the pursuit of Daphne, Leda, and Ganymede are all in Ovid’s Metamorphoses — a LOT going on in the poem re: sexual violence’s transformative effects (and this feels possibly significant in the context of vampiric “turning” as a metamorphosis?). the marble statues make me think of Pygmalion & Galatea which is also another passage in Metamorphoses that has weird implications abt consent. i am going to try to flip thru the footnotes of my copy later bc i haven’t refreshed my memory on ovid in a hot minute

not at all, I love talking to people on here - and I never considered that angle but it seems so obvious in hindsight! marius is very much a product of and clings to the prevalent ideas of his time in a way that’s not very subtle at all, transferring his belief systems to various fledgling vampires and using controlled imposition of literacy & culture as a tool of subjugation (which is a pattern of behaviour louis also emulates with claudia in the books), and it reminded me of a specific passage from an article on pederastic relations that I found relevant to the larger conversation:

I haven’t read the metamorphoses yet myself so it’s interesting that you should bring up pygmalion and galatea because they’re mentioned in the vampire armand too (perhaps indicating a conscious intent to reference ovid?), but it wasn’t in a context that made sense to include in the other post. The transformative role that seems to be such a common theme associated with sexual violence is very much in line with what the books do otherwise too, I’d say - they label all human victims ‘brides’ which has certain implications for marital relations as a large for vampires who seem to develop very dysfunctional companionships; louis himself also describes the turning of a human by a vampire as a sexual act, and a mutual and I also recently discussed how claudia’s own turning seemed to draw on a lot of language used to describe assault.

this is also slightly less relevant, but in the continued context of violence imposed through a controlled parcelling out of literacy, I enjoyed drawing comparisons between lolita and the vampire armand, specifically looking into language as a tool of violence even if I don’t necessarily think anne wrote that with conscious intent.

[bracketsoffear]

Flesh Leitner Reading List

The full list of submissions for the Flesh Leitner bracket. Bold titles are ones which were accepted to appear in the bracket. Synopses and propaganda can be found below the cut. Be warned, however, that these may contain spoilers!

Awad, Mona: Rouge

Barker, Clive: The Hellbound Heart Basye, Dale E.: Blimpo Bazterrica, Agustina: Cadáver exquisito (Tender is the flesh) Boote, Justin: Carnivore Bradbury, Ray: Skeleton Brown, Daniel James: The Indifferent Stars Above Buller,  Jon and Susan Schade: Mike and the Magic Cookies

Calvert, Amy: You Are What You (M)Eat: Explorations of Meat-Eating, Masculinity and Masquerade Carroll, Emily: Some Other Animal’s Meat Clarke, Arthur C.: Food of the Gods Cook, Robin: Coma

Dahl, Roald: Pig

Ellin, Stanley: The Specialty of the House Enriquez, Mariana: Carne (Meat)

Fink, Joseph: It Devours!

Gaiman, Neil: Babycakes from Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions Graves, Damian: An Apple A Day Guanzhong, Luo: Excerpt from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Harris, Thomas: Hannibal Harris, Thomas: Silence of the Lambs

Ito, Junji: Glyceride Ito, Junji: Tomie

Katsu, Alma: The Hunger KFC: Tender Wings of Desire King, Stephen: Survivor Type King, Stephen: Thinner

Lee, Tanith: The Beast Levene, Rebecca: Too Rich for My Blood (in Seven Deadly Sins)

Miyazawa, Kenji: The Restaurant of Many Orders

Ojeda, Mónica: Mandíbula (Jawbone) Orwell, George: Animal Farm Ovid: Metamorphoses

Pinkwater, Daniel: Slaves of Spiegel Piper, Hailey: Benny Rose, the Cannibal King Pizarnik, Alejandra: La Condesa Sangrienta (The bloody countess)

Quiroga, Horacio: La gallina degollada (The decapitated chicken)

Rymer, James Malcolm and Thomas Peckett Prest: The String of Pearls; or, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Shusterman, Neal: Duckling Ugly Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle Smith, Clark Ashton: The Garden of Adompha Smith, Cordwainer: A Planet Named Shayol Stine, R.L.: Chicken, Chicken Stine, R.L. and Stephen Roos: The Boy Who Ate Fear Street Summers, Chelsea G.: A Certain Hunger Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal

Wells, H.G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau

Yoshitomi, Akihito: School Ningyo (School Mermaid)

Awad, Mona: Rouge

The book’s themes centre on consumption and perfecting the body. Much of it is reminiscent of the denizens of the mortal garden. Vague cannibalism and vampiric vibes but the latter distinctly not in a hunt way. A lot of juxtaposition of sterility and cleanness with fleshliness and revulsion. Towards the end of the book, the main character finds herself in a production line-esque march to some unknown doom. The book is tinged with several powers (haven’t even touched on the spooky mirror-dwelling dark prince who assumes the guise of whoever the watcher most desires) but flesh seems like the dominant one.

Barker, Clive: The Hellbound Heart

Frank Cotton is a hedonistic criminal selfishly devoted to sensual experience even if it harms others. Believing he has indulged in every pleasure the world can offer, Frank obtains the Lemarchand Configuration, a puzzle box said to open a "schism" or portal to an extradimensional realm of unfathomable pleasure ruled by beings called the Cenobites. Solving the box, he is confused and horrified when the Cenobites – horribly scarified creatures whose bodies have been modified to the point that they appear sexless and in constant pain – arrive. Frank still eagerly accepts the offer of experiences he has never known before, and the Cenobites take him to their realm, where they subject him to total sensory overload and he realises their devotion to sadomasochism is so extreme and their personalities so removed from humanity that they no longer differentiate between pain and pleasure and have no care to ever stop even if their subject no longer wishes the experience.

Sometime later, Frank's brother, Rory, moves into the home in England with his wife Julia. Unknown to Rory, Julia had an affair with Frank a week before their wedding and has lusted after him since. While in the attic, Rory accidentally cuts his hand and bleeds on the spot where Frank was taken by the Cenobites. The blood, mixed with semen Frank had left on the floor before he was taken, opens a dimensional schism. Frank returns, his body now reduced to a desiccated corpse by the Cenobites' experiments. Julia later finds him and promises to restore his body so he can truly live and they can be together. Julia seduces men at bars and kills them in the attic, where Frank feeds on their corpses.

Rory's friend Kirsty encounters Frank, who attempts to kill her. Kirsty grabs the puzzle box before fleeing and later accidentally opens it. The Cenobite intends to take Kirsty now that it is here, but she then reveals Frank is alive on Earth again. Though skeptical that one of their experiments could have escaped, the Cenobite is intrigued. It agrees that if Kirsty leads them to Frank and he confirms his identity, they will take him back and perhaps leave her alone.

Rory and Julia claim they killed Frank but Kirsty realizes the man she is speaking to is Frank wearing Rory's skin. Another altercation ensues, during which Frank inadvertently kills Julia. Kirsty then baits Frank into admitting his true name out loud. The Cenobites appear, ensnare Frank and return him to their realm, telling Kirsty to leave. Downstairs, Kirsty sees Julia's disembodied head calling for help. The leader of the Cenobites, a being called the Engineer, then appears and seems to take away Julia as well before briefly bumping into Kirsty. After leaving the house, Kirsty realizes the Engineer gave her the puzzle box to watch over until another seeks it out.

Basye, Dale E.: Blimpo

"After his second escape from Bea "Elsa" Bubb, the Principal of Darkness, Milton Fauster makes his way to Blimpo—the circle of the otherworldly reform school, Heck, where he's sure his friend Virgil is sentenced. Virgil's only crime is being, well, plump . Milton has to wonder if that's really enough to justify eternal darnation. And what Milton finds in Blimpo horrifies him. The overweight dead kids spend most of their time running on giant human hamster wheels called DREADmills that detect and exploit their deepest fears. The rest they spend eating Hambone Hank's barbecue—mystery meat that is delicious, but suspiciously (to Milton, anyway) haunting . Every classroom has a huge TV screen showing happy thin people who taunt Blimpo residents with a perfection they will never attain. Meanwhile, at her new job in the devil's Infernship program, Milton's sister, Marlo, knows all about trying to achieve perfection. And failing miserably. Can Milton get himself and Virgil out of Blimpo in time to rescue Marlo, too? Or is Fauster the next delicacy on Bea "Elsa" Bubb's menu?"

Bazterrica, Agustina: Cadáver exquisito (Tender is the flesh)

Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

***

The virus makes animal flesh unsafe to eat. Society converts to farming humans for meat. The book describes functioning slaughterhouse, often exaggerating the violence that goes on within. Where does the border between animals and human lie? What does it means to be reduced to meat? How would a human behave if they were treated like cattle?

Boote, Justin: Carnivore

Detective Inspector Jim Morfield is worried. In the quiet, countryside village of Fritton, human remains have begun appearing. Bodies so viciously mutilated that only their bones are left behind, in some cases less than a few hours after they were reported missing. What creature could possibly devour human remains so quickly? Surely, as with the case of farmer Stanley Walters, it couldn’t be his cows nearby and covered in blood that dismembered and devoured him? Then, when another person is attacked by a horse, his arm nearly torn off, he has no choice but to consider the impossible.

The problem is that there is another killer to contend with. One who has Fritton terrified. A serial killer hiding among the woods and fields, unseen, unchallenged. Now Jim has to decide if the bodies accumulating in the area are the works of a human or something as harmless as the local wildlife.

Bradbury, Ray: Skeleton

The story of a hypochondriac who becomes utterly terrified of the alien form of his own bones, and sets out to have them... treated. The character of M. Munigant alone, and his terrible office, would have made for an excellent Flesh avatar.

Brown, Daniel James: The Indifferent Stars Above

In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.

In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

Bonus: This is a nonfiction account of The Donner Party, probably one of the most famous occurrences of survival cannibalism in history.

Buller,  Jon and Susan Schade: Mike and the Magic Cookies

The protagonist and his family are turned into animals by the antagonist who is planning to eat them. Pretty Flesh i guess.

Calvert, Amy: You Are What You (M)Eat: Explorations of Meat-Eating, Masculinity and Masquerade

A fascinating essay on the concept of carnophallogocentrism (the connection between meat-eating and masculinity, as defined by Jacques Derrida) which discusses the gendered politics of consuming, preparing, and raising meat animals, viewed through the lens of the US reality television series Man V. Food. Calvert argues that the show represents the sexualization of both women and meat, and represents a cultural backlash against feminism as traditional concepts of masculinity are reasserted through the grotesque displays of meat consumption onscreen.

Carroll, Emily: Some Other Animal’s Meat

An excellent blend of the body image issues central to the Flesh and classic body horror.

“Aren't you tired of all those half empty bottles cluttering up the cupboard beneath your bathroom sink? Why not choose something that actually WORKS for once? Alo-Glo is all natural rejuvenating healing”

“But I wonder... What if inside. it's somehow the wrong stuff? What if my meat is some other animal's meat and the human part of me is just the skin like the smooth layer of dough you drape over an uncooked pie”

Clarke, Arthur C.: Food of the Gods

In this imagined future, we have stopped killing animals for meat and started to grow tissue in vats instead (to help support our even-more-massive population). People actually retch at the thought of eating animal flesh, although the vast majority of the various manufactured foods replicate the characteristics of various meats exactly. Several companies manufacture the stuff and get into a competition about who can make the best. Eventually, one company makes one that apparently tastes delicious and is perfectly tailored to human needs, calling it "Ambrosia Plus". The competition goes before a Senate subcommittee to explain why this might be a problem:

"Yes, Triplanitary's chemists have done a superb technical job. Now you have to resolve the moral and philosophical issues. When I began my evidence, I used the archaic word 'carnivore'. Now I must introduce you to another: I'll spell it out the first time: C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L ..."

Cook, Robin: Coma

Susan Wheeler is a medical student working at the Boston Memorial Hospital. Young, healthy patients are coming in for routine operations and leaving in permanent comas. Susan investigates, eventually unearthing an Organ Theft conspiracy. Apparently, they started using hospital patients who were already comatose, but demand (and profits) is such that they start artificially inducing brain death in healthy patients undergoing surgery to get more victims.

Dahl, Roald: Pig

Once upon a time, a boy named Lexington is born in New York City. Unfortunately he is soon orphaned when his parents are accidentally shot by the police, who mistake them for robbers. Lexington is sent to live with his Aunt Glosspan out in her cottage high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is an eccentric old woman who schools him herself and raises him to be a strict vegetarian. As he grows older, Lexington starts to exhibit a talent for cooking and Aunt Glosspan encourages him to write a cookbook. By the time he is 17, he has invented over 9,000 different dishes. He is shocked when Aunt Glosspan suddenly dies, though, and he buries her himself behind the cowshed. The next day he finds a letter she has left him instructing him to go to New York and meet with her lawyer. Apparently the lawyer will read her Will and then give Lexington money to pursue his cooking ambitions. Unfortunately for the boy, the lawyer is an unscrupulous man who takes advantage of Lexington’s trusting nature and ends up giving him just $15,000 out of the $500,000 his Aunt left for him. Upon leaving the office, Lexington decides he is hungry and heads to the nearest restaurant for some dinner. To his surprise, he is served pork for the first time in his life and he finds it delicious. Eager to learn about this new food for his book, he bribes the waiter to take him back into the kitchen to meet the chef. The chef tells him though, that he can’t be sure it was pig’s meat. “There’s just a chance,” he says, “that it might have been a piece of human stuff.” He tells Lexington that they’ve been getting an awful lot of it from the butcher lately. He’s pretty sure that the piece Lexington had was pork though, so the boy asks him to show him how to prepare it. The cook says that it all begins with a properly butchered pig. Wanting to see how this is done, Lexington takes off for the packing-house in the Bronx. When he gets there he is ushered into a waiting room to await the Guided Tour. He watches as others go through the doors before him: a mother with two little boys, a young couple, and a pale woman with long white gloves. Finally his turn is called, and he is led to the “schackling area” where the pigs are grabbed, looped about the ankle with a chain, and then dragged up through a hole in the roof. While he is watching, one of the workers slips a chain around Lexington’s ankle and before he knows what is happening he is being dragged along the path as well. “Help!” he cries. “There’s been a frightful mistake!” But no one stops the engine, and he’s carried along to the sticker, who slices open the boy’s jugular vein with a knife. As the belt moves on and Lexington begins to feel faint, he sees the pigs ahead being dropped into a large cauldron of boiling water. One of the pigs seems to be wearing white gloves. Lexington’s strong heart pumps out the last of his blood, and he passes on “out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.”

***

A short story about a cookbook writer, Lexington, who was raised by a strictly vegetarian aunt. After her aunt's death, he seeks to expand his culinary horizons, first by tasting pork for the first time and then going to a factory tour to see how meat is processed. Unfortunately for him, the slaughterhouse he goes to appears to specialize on processing meat of the "long pig" kind...

Ellin, Stanley: The Specialty of the House

https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/books/stanley-ellin-the-specialty-of-the-house/

A macabre little tale about an unusual restaurant in Manhattan and its lonely patrons.

Enriquez, Mariana: Carne (Meat)

From the book Los peligros de fumar en la cama (The dangers of smoking in bed).

After the suicide of a controversial culty musician who sang about how we're all meat, a couple of teenagers dug up his rotting body and began to consume it until they were detained by police. This leads to a huge debate in the city as to wether these girls were insane groupies or if they "understood his message perfectly".

Fink, Joseph: It Devours!

From the authors of the New York Times bestselling novel Welcome to Night Vale and the creators of the #1 international podcast of the same name, comes a mystery exploring the intersections of faith and science, the growing relationship between two young people who want desperately to trust each other, and the terrifying, toothy power of the Smiling God.

Nilanjana Sikdar is an outsider to the town of Night Vale. Working for Carlos, the town’s top scientist, she relies on fact and logic as her guiding principles. But all of that is put into question when Carlos gives her a special assignment investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert wasteland outside of town. This investigation leads her to the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, and to Darryl, one of its most committed members. Caught between her beliefs in the ultimate power of science and her growing attraction to Darryl, she begins to suspect the Congregation is planning a ritual that could threaten the lives of everyone in town. Nilanjana and Darryl must search for common ground between their very different world views as they are faced with the Congregation’s darkest and most terrible secret.

Gaiman, Neil: Babycakes from Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

In this story, all the animals disappeared and people resorted to using babies as a substitute. Eating them. wearing clothes made with their skin and testing various things of them. A remarkably macabre Flesh vision of the world. Also, written as a benefit for PETA which, I think, should give it bonus points in the flesh category.

Graves, Damian: An Apple A Day

Tim Barnett decides to get revenge on his cruel neighbor, Bill Cole, by vandalizing his apple orchard. He steals and eats one of the man's apples as a souvenir, prompting a slow, painful transformation into an apple tree.

Guanzhong, Luo: Excerpt from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Untitled, fictitious story in the larger work, meant to demonstrate Liu Bei's incredible character. He stops at the home of Liu An (a hunter, and one of his relatives). Liu An doesn't have enough meat to feed his lord and his retinue, to he kills, butchers, cooks and serves his own wife so that Liu Bei and company wouldn't be under-served. When Liu Bei finds out this he is shocked, but not outraged, at having been unknowingly fed human flesh. He is, instead, amazed at Liu An's devotion to hospitality (to the point of feeding his lord his own wife), and instead praises him as a model citizen. And this is a story the author inserted to make Liu Bei sound more virtuous and heroic than he was in actual history!

Harris, Thomas: Hannibal

Lecter's backstory. As horrible as you would imagine.

Harris, Thomas: Silence of the Lambs

Not only is this book about a guy who kidnaps, captures, and kills women and peels off their skin to make himself beautiful, there’s an unrelated cannibal (Dr Hannibal Lecter) just hanging out in jail. The title derives from Clarise’s experience growing up on a farm and hearing “the silence of the lambs” after they’ve been screaming before being slaughtered.

Ito, Junji: Glyceride

The story revolves around a father and his daughter and son, who run a barbecue joint, which results in grease rising from the bottom floor to their living space, making everything in their house- their clothes, the walls, the furniture - covered in a film of grease. There's a constant motif of the horrors of the flesh at their grossest: The constant bullying the daughter Yui endures from her brother Goro, her stress and disgust at what she calls the "saturation level" of grease in the air, the horrible acne Goro develops and his strange addiction to drinking cooking oil, and the unnatural, greasy body odor their father has. All of this is later put on disgusting constract against their father's job at the barbecue, and how his customers think the meat he serves is delicious...

All of this escalates until Goro tries to kill Yui. However, their father saves Yui by bashing Goro over the head with a frying pan, killing him; he subsequently gets rid of the body by serving his flesh to the customers in his restaurant. The restaurant enjoys a revival in popularity due to Goro being served to the patrons but, when the meat runs out, the customers stop coming back. Yui begins to develop acne and a bad temper, just like Goro. She wakes up one night to find her father forcing oil down her throat just as Goro used to drink it. From then on, Yui can't sleep due to her father's constant efforts to break into her room and give her oil.

With no more meat left, Yui's father is forced to close the restaurant. He begins drinking the oil himself. His skin and hair become even greasier, and the saturation level continues to rise. The entire house is now full to the brim with grease, and grease drips constantly from the ceiling the saturation level is 90%. Eventually, Yui catches a glimpse of her father cutting off his own leg to serve in the restaurant since Goro's been eaten and she refuses to drink the oil; she observes that her father's leg is not leaking blood, only grease, as she realizes the saturation level is now at 100%.

Ito, Junji: Tomie

Not only has body horror and cannibalism, but is also a commentary on beauty standards and objectification of women.

Katsu, Alma: The Hunger

Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"

KFC: Tender Wings of Desire

It's a romance novel by KFC. What more do you really need to know?

King, Stephen: Survivor Type

One of the few short stories that even King thinks he went a little too far on.

From Wikipedia: "Survivor Type is written as the diary of a disgraced surgeon, Richard Pine nee Pinzetti, who, while attempting to smuggle a large amount of heroin aboard a cruise ship, is forced to escape when an explosion causes the ship to sink. He relates growing up poor in an Italian-American neighborhood and playing college football (which he hated) to get into a good college and then went on to medical school and in time a successful practice until his illegal distribution of prescription medicines and blank forms led to the loss of his license. He arranged to smuggle heroin from Vietnam to make a large amount of money, which would then be distributed for bribes that would enable him to return to practicing medicine. While encountering a storm in his empty lifeboat, Pine finds himself marooned on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean whose exact location is completely unknown to him, with very limited supplies and no food. A self-proclaimed "survivor" type, Pine bitterly whiles away the time by using a logbook as his diary, detailing his rise and fall in the medical profession and his determination to survive this ordeal, get even with the people that "screwed him over," and return to prosperity.

Over time, the diary entries become more and more disjointed and raving, revealing Pine's slow mental decay and eventual insanity caused by starvation, isolation and drug use. Determined to hold out for rescue, he goes to horrifying lengths to survive. He eats insects, kelp and seagulls. After fracturing his ankle while attempting to signal an airplane, he amputates his own foot, then realizes he has to eat it to survive. He continues to amputate his own limbs to use as a food source, ingesting the heroin as a crude anesthetic during these operations. His last few diary entries, barely comprehensible, indicate that Pine has sliced off and eaten both legs, as well as his earlobes, and drools uncontrollably as he ponders which body part to consume next. The diary entries end when he cuts off his left hand to eat it and writes "lady fingers they taste just like lady fingers." "

King, Stephen: Thinner

Billy Halleck is a successful, arrogant lawyer known for his chronic obesity and sleazy manner. While driving across town he is distracted by his wife Heidi and runs over an elderly Romani woman, killing her. The woman's father, Taduz Lemke, curses Billy outside the courthouse, and Billy begins to lose weight rapidly regardless of how much he eats. Later, Billy discovers that the judge who cleared him of manslaughter charges has been disfigured by hideous scales growing on his skin, while the policeman who committed perjury on Billy's behalf is now stricken with uncontrollable acne. Both men eventually commit suicide out of shame for their malformed appearances.

(The judge is literally slowly turning into like, a literal alligator man, in horrifying detail per Stephen King. The policeman's "acne" is his entire skin basically turning into one giant pimple and sloughing off. It's very Flesh and VERY horrifying)

A now-emaciated, nearly skeletal Billy tracks the Romani band north along the seacoast of New England to Maine. He confronts Lemke at their camp and tries to persuade him to lift the curse but Lemke refuses.

Billy calls for help from his mob boss friend who threatens the Romani with violence until Lemke agrees to meet with Billy, who is now at risk of death from heart arrhythmia because of his emaciation. Lemke brings a strawberry pie with him and adds blood from Billy's wounded hand to it. He explains that the curse can't be taken back, so Billy must pass it to someone else by getting them to eat the pie. (The pie starts pulsing like it has a heartbeat by the way.)

Billy returns home intending to feed the pie to Heidi as he blames her for his predicament. He falls asleep, and when he wakes, he is horrified to find that both Heidi and his beloved daughter Linda are now cursed. Without hesitation, he eats the rest of the pie. And then the book just fucking ENDS, leaving you the reader to speculate on how the curse manifests to finish them off.

Lee, Tanith: The Beast

A "Beauty and the Beast" retelling that inverts a lot of the fairytale's traditional tropes: instead of Vessavion starting the story as an ugly Beast who becomes handsome at the end when the Beauty returns to him and recognizes his inner beauty, he starts the story as a handsome and seemingly perfect man who becomes an ugly Beast (and dead) at the end when his wife Isobel leaves him after learning about his secret hobby of murdering ugly people and taking their incongruously beautiful body parts for his collection.

Levene, Rebecca: Too Rich for My Blood (in Seven Deadly Sins)

The stories in Short Trips: Seven Deadly Sins are based on the Christian concept of seven deadly sins. This story's theme is gluttony.

On a trip to Las Vegas, Chris Cwej watches a hot-dog eating contest go horribly wrong as a painfully skinny contender devours his entire plate... and then his competitors'... and then his competitors. He's been spiked with alien hormones that massively accelerate his metabolism, burning away his calories as he eats -- and it's infectious. Soon, the casino is overrun with a zombie plague as Chris tries to lead the survivors to safety and ensure that the infection doesn't make its way onto the streets. Meanwhile, the Doctor searches for a cure, and Benny has stumbled into a poker tournament where the prize is getting to live.

Miyazawa, Kenji: The Restaurant of Many Orders

From Wikipedia: "Two gentlemen in Western-style dress go hunting in the woods, accompanied by two dogs and a guide. After a day of hunting, they have failed to capture any game, they have become separated from their guide, and their dogs suddenly drop dead. As the two gentlemen lament their losses and trudge forward, they suddenly turn to find a large Western-style house with a sign reading, "Restaurant Wildcat House Western-Style Cooking". The hungry gentlemen, though unnerved, enter the restaurant to encounter a series of doors that open before and close behind them. Each door is preceded by a sign, the first few of which bear double-entendre messages of welcome. The gentlemen interpret these signs, apologizing for the restaurant's "many orders", as indicating the restaurant's popularity and quality. Later signs bear commands (the Japanese 注文 chūmon having the same two senses as the English "orders") instructing the men to undress and rub themselves with strange substances. All the while, growing hungrier and colder, the men speculate about the fine food and diners they expect to find in a restaurant so discerning.

Finally, the men realize they cannot go back and realize that they will be devoured by the proprietor of the house if they approach the last door. In a deus ex machina, their previously dead dogs return to fight the demons lying behind the final door and the house vanishes into mist. The gentlemen are rejoined by their guide, and they return to Tokyo forever traumatized by the experience."

Ojeda, Mónica: Mandíbula (Jawbone)

“Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?”

Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise?

When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Orwell, George: Animal Farm

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.

***

"It tells the story of a group of anthropomorphic farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed and, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon, the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before. "

A tale about animals trying to rebel against the slaughter and failing. What's more flesh than that? Also, it's a metaphor against totalitarian regimes and in those humans are often treated like cattle.

Ovid: Metamorphoses

A series of stories all about transformation, the flesh being reshaped in radical ways. Sometimes the changes are punishments, other times rewards, but all of them are carefully detailed and totally irrevocable. May have played a role in my own furry awakening.

Pinkwater, Daniel: Slaves of Spiegel

At the beginning of the story, a community of obese space pirates inhabit the planet Spiegel, but periodically raid other planets for fattening food. At a feast celebrating their raids, the pirates' supreme commander 'Sargon the Great' initiates a new expedition for the three greatest cooks in the galaxy; at the conclusion whereof, the three finalists and their assistants are brought to a grand festival on Spiegel, and ordered to satisfy all the pirates in a contest of their skills, of which the winner's prize is the lifelong position of chief cook to the pirates themselves. Among the finalists are Steve Nickleson (the protagonist of an earlier book) and his assistant Norman Bleistift, whereof Norman serves as first-person narrator of nearly one-half of the text. Ultimately, Steve and Norman win the second prize of 600 pounds of Spiegelian blue garlic and transport home, which Steve later uses to create a "bright blue" pizza. The first place winner is forced to cook for the pirates forever.

Piper, Hailey: Benny Rose, the Cannibal King

The main antagonist of the novel, Benny Rose has a special hunger for children. During the 50s, he ended up trapped with five kids in the basement of a hospital that caught fire and consumed them to stay alive, which caused him to become a supernatural entity of some kind. Now, every Halloween night, he strikes and feasts upon the trick-and-treaters who are filling the streets. To make him even more heinous, he eats his victims piecemeal, while they're still alive.

Pizarnik, Alejandra: La Condesa Sangrienta (The bloody countess)

The book is based on the real life story that inspired the figure of the vampire.

Accused of the murders of 650 young women, Erzébeth Báthory is one of the most sinister criminals in history. In her castle on the Carpaths, in the late 17th century, the countess closes in on her victims to bleed them and keep her youth. Her cursed and fascinating legend lives on through time. The bloody countess is one of Alejandra Pizarnik's key works, its pages build up a disturbing portrait of sadism and madness.

Quiroga, Horacio: La gallina degollada (The decapitated chicken)

A couple has a deep desire to have children and a legacy. Unfortunately their first four sons turn out to be idiots because of a congenital disease. They have a fifth child, a daughter who appears to be healthy and quickly becomes the favourite while the idiot sons get sent to live their lives sitting on the backyard. One day, the sons witness the cook beheading a chicken for lunch, and become obsessed with the colour red from the blood, chanting "Red, red". When they see their sister playing outside, they, in unison, replicate what the cook did to the chicken with her while chanting "red, red".

Rymer, James Malcolm and Thomas Peckett Prest: The String of Pearls; or, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The book that inspired the musical, complete with delicious meat pies.

Shusterman, Neal: Duckling Ugly

Cara is so ugly, mirrors would rather break than show her reflection. Not even her own parents can deny her ugliness, and nothing can make up for the cruelty of her schoolmates. Tormented and tortured by the shallow people of Flock’s Rest, Cara’s life is miserable. Then Cara receives a shimmering note from some exotic place suggesting that there’s more to her than meets the eye. Cara wonders if her destiny has something to do with her recurring dreams of a beautiful green valley where the people are so accepting, her ugliness doesn’t matter. Soon, Cara discovers that her valley of dreams is real. It’s a place where the ugliest of ducklings can become swans. A swan, however, can have a serious taste for revenge . . . deadly revenge.

Sinclair, Upton: The Jungle

Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. Many readers were most concerned with his exposure of health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century, based on an investigation he did for a socialist newspaper.

The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions, and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."

***

It examines the desperate lives of meatpacking workers in Packingtown, Illinois, an area of southwest Chicago marked by its abundance of stockyards, slaughterhouses, factories, and cramped tenements, in the early 20th century.

Sinclair's primary purpose in describing the meat industry and its working conditions was to advance socialism in the United States. However, the novel's most notable impact at the time was to provoke public outcry over passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century, which led to sanitation reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

***

The Jungle is the story of Jurgis Rudkus and his family, Lithuanian immigrants who come to America to work in the meatpacking plants of Chicago. Their story is a story of hardship. They face enormous difficulties: harsh and dangerous working conditions, poverty and starvation, unjust businessmen who take their money, and corrupt politicians who create laws that allow all of this to happen. The story follows the hardships of Jurgis and his family and the transformation that Jurgis undergoes when he accepts the new political and economic revolution of socialism. The novel's most notable impact at the time was to provoke public outcry over passages exposing health violations and unsanitary practices in the American meat-packing industry during the early 20th century, which led to sanitation reforms including the Meat Inspection Act.

"He lived like a dumb beast of burden, knowing only the moment in which he lived."

"They use everything about the hog except the squeal"

***

“They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

The Jungle is probably the most famous muckraking novel in American history. Its unflinching description of meatpacking plants in Chicago brought public attention to the unsanitary, inhumane conditions of the industrialized meatpacking trade, eventually leading the U.S. to adopt the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which created what would eventually become the Food and Drug Administration. According to Wikipedia, the author Sinclair--who was an avowed socialist--told Cosmopolitan Magaizine: "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

If that's not enough to make you think of the Flesh, consider one of the book's most infamous passages:

"…and as for the other men, who worked in tank rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting—sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!"

Industrialized, inhumane slaughter of animals: Check

Visceral recognition of the fragile embodied state of human beings: Check

Cannibalism: Check

The Jungle is the perfect example of a Flesh text.

Smith, Clark Ashton: The Garden of Adompha

King Adompha and his equally vile court magician Dwerulas rule Sotar, which is known for Adompha's royal garden, hidden from the eyes of all but himself and Dwerulas. In truth, Adompha and Dwerulas capture or execute anyone disfavored by them in Sotar in order to butcher them and have Dwerulas fuse their remains to the plants of the garden, creating half-human, half-vegetable hybrids suspended in a strange state between life and death. Adompha orders a servant girl murdered purely for her hands, ordering the rest of her body fed to the plant her hands will grow upon, and furthermore murders Dwerulas on nothing more than an impulse. Dwerulas manages to curse Adompha in retaliation, resulting in Adompha's garden turning upon him and raking him to pieces.

Link: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/76/the-garden-of-adompha

Smith, Cordwainer: A Planet Named Shayol

The protagonist, Mercer, who lives within the Empire, has been convicted of "a crime that has no name". He is condemned by the Empire to the planet Shayol, where he lives in a penal colony whose inhabitants must undergo grotesque physical mutations caused by tiny symbiotes called dromozoans. Most grow extra organs, which the Empire harvests for medical purposes. The bull-man B'dikkat administers the prisoners a drug called super-condamine that alleviates the pain of their punishment and various surgeries.

More than a century passes. Mercer has found a lover, named Lady Da. B'dikkat shows the couple a sight that horrifies him: children have been sent to Shayol -- alive, though with their brains removed. Lady Da knows how to contact the Lords of the Instrumentality so that they can intervene. When the Lords arrive on Shayol, they are shocked by what they find. Moreover, the children there are heirs to the throne. Apparently, the Imperium has become so bureaucratic and corrupt that it condemned them to prevent them from committing treason when they matured.

The Instrumentality voids permission to allow the Empire to exist and to maintain Shayol. They will free the prisoners who are still sentient and provide a cure for their suffering with a substitute for the super-condamine, namely an electronic "cap" which stimulates the brain's pleasure center. The mindless prisoners will be decapitated, their heads "taken away and killed as pleasantly as we can manage, probably by an overdosage of super-condamine", leaving the bodies to be used by the dromozoa. Ultimately, Lady Da claims Mercer as her consort.

Stine, R.L.: Chicken, Chicken

"Everyone in Goshen Falls knows about weird Vanessa. She dresses all in black. Wears black lipstick. And puts spells on people. At least, that's what they say. Crystal and her brother, Cole, know you can't believe everything you hear. But that was before they made Vanessa mad. Before she whispered that strange warning, "Chicken chicken." Because now something really weird has happened. Crystal's lips have turned as hard as a bird's beak. And Cole has started growing ugly white feathers all over his body... "

-People turning into chickens!

-Detailed descriptions of how grossly biological chickens are!

 -A cliffhanger where we think the narrator's mom is going to kill and eat her!

Stine, R.L. and Stephen Roos: The Boy Who Ate Fear Street

Sam Kinney used to be a very picky eater. But after a friend’s eccentric Aunt Sylvie put a weird spice in his mac and cheese, suddenly, Sam can’t stop eating. Paste and pepper. Dishwashing soap. Even dog food. Sam has to find out what is making him eat...and eat...and eat. Before he eats his house. And all his friends on Fear Street…

Summers, Chelsea G.: A Certain Hunger

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

Swift, Jonathan: A Modest Proposal

The famous work of satire that suggested that poor people should sell their children to be eaten by the wealthy. Some people... didn't get the joke.

Wells, H.G.: The Island of Dr. Moreau

A shipwrecked man, Edward Prendick, reaches a sinister island inhabited by notorious vivisectionist, Doctor Moreau. Prendick suspects that experiments are also being carried out on humans, resulting in hybrid forms; however, the doctor explains that he has actually been changing animals into people.

Yoshitomi, Akihito: School Ningyo (School Mermaid)

"Description from TvTropes: A horror manga / anthology series by Akihito Yoshitomi about Japanese school girls who really want boyfriends. But rather than going through the trouble of getting the attention of a boy, talking to them and just being themselves, they decide on a much quicker way to do so… By hunting mermaids in their school and eating their flesh."

Already submitted this for a hunt bracket but it works as a Flesh Leitner even better.

Spoilers: All the mermaids used to be people. They were turned into those mindless creatures meant to be eaten. If you don't eat the flesh of a mermaid during the hunt you turn into one so you have to consume flesh to avoid becoming it.

[legend-collection]

Patasola

The Patasola or "one leg" is one of many legends in South American folklore about female monsters from the jungle, appearing to male hunters or loggers in the middle of the wilderness when they think about women. The Patasola appears in the form of a beautiful and seductive woman, often in the likeness of a loved one, who lures a man away from his companions deep into the jungle. There, the Patasola reveals her true, hideous appearance as a one-legged creature with ferocious vampire-like lust for human flesh and blood, attacking and devouring the flesh or sucking the blood of her victims.

The Patasola derives from vampire legend. According to popular belief, she inhabits mountain ranges, virgin forests, and other heavily wooded or jungle-like areas. At the edges of these places, and primarily at night, she lures male hunters, loggers, miners, millers, and animal herders. She also interferes with their daily activities. She blocks shortcuts through the jungle, disorients hunters, and throws hunting dogs off the scent of their game. The Patasola is usually regarded as protective of nature and the forest animals and unforgiving when humans enter their domains to alter or destroy them.

Additionally, the exact name and attributes of the myth vary according to region. For example, a creature similar to La Patasola is called La Tunda in the Colombian Pacific Coast region. Other mythical creatures similar in description to La Patasola but differing in name are found throughout Latin America.

La Patasola's most notable feature, from which her name derives, is her one leg. She is believed to possess only one leg, which terminates in a cleaved bovine-like hoof and moves in a plantigrade fashion. Despite only possessing one leg, La Patasola can move swiftly through the jungle. In her natural state, La Patasola has a terrifying appearance; she is described as possessing one breast, bulging eyes, catlike fangs, a hooked nose, and big lips.

La Patasola can metamorphose into different shapes and appearances. She commonly takes on the appearance of a beautiful woman to lure men to their death. She then uses her feline-type fangs to suck the blood from her victims. It is also believed that she can transform into other animals, materializing as a large black dog or cow.

According to Javier Ocampo Lopez, when pleased, La Patasola climbs to the top of a tree or mountain and sings the following song:

"I'm more than the siren / I live alone in the world: / and no one can resist me / because I am the Patasola. / On the road, at home, / on the mountain and the river, / in the air and in the clouds / all that exists is mine."

La Patasola's origin story varies, but usually follows the pattern of a scorned, unfaithful, or otherwise "bad" woman. Some believe that she was a mother who killed her own son, and was then banished to the woods as punishment. Others believe that she was a wicked temptress who was cruel to both men and women, and for this reason they mutilated her with an axe, chopping off one leg and throwing it into a fire. She then died of her injuries and now haunts the forests and mountain ranges. In a third origin story, she was an unfaithful wife who cheated on her husband with the couple's employer, a patron. Upon discovering her infidelity, the jealous husband murdered both her and the patron. She died but her soul remains in a one-legged body.

More common in Colombian folklore, they are similar to the Sayona (Venezuela), the Tunda (Colombian Pacific), and the Madremonte or Marimonda (Colombia).

The La Tunda myth of the Colombian Pacific region also tells of a vicious woman who sucks the blood of men. However, in this legend, "La Tunda's shape-shifting abilities are far from perfect…for whatever form she assumes will invariably have a wooden leg in the shape of a molinillo (wooden whisk). The monster, however, is very cunning, and is adept at concealing this defect from would-be victims."

Similar in behavior to La Patasola is "Matlacihua, a phantasm in the beautiful and svelte form of a woman dressed in white. Sometimes called the White Lady or the Bride, she would appear at night and with her seductive songs and irresistible beauty, lure men of bad conduct into the forest, scaring them half to death." Though not described as sucking the blood of her victims, the White Lady supposedly deterred men from seeking amorous relations in the woods, jungles, or mountain ranges.

[givethetwinkaflamethrower]

Review of Monarch Lore + Musing on Pygmalion

Come Back Home Concept Film

Human world ruled by monarchs

Monarchs were jealous of Helios (I think the translation is supposed to be Helios was jealous of the monarchs but the English v/o says it this way)

Ppl worship monarchs instead of Helios

Helios threatens to take away the sun

The humans sacrifice the monarchs to Helios

Helios exiled the monarchs and their servants

Helios makes them vampires

Monarchs only drink from evildoers, continue to protect humans

Cursed servants bitter about their curse/humans betraying them, so they massacre any humans they find

Servants worship moon and wait for child to be born on day of eclipse

Use child for ceremony to bring eternal night

Child is born

War between monarchs and servants to protect child lasts 10 yrs

In final battle, monarchs win

When killing last leader of the servants, he tells monarchs “when red moon comes back, i will too for the kid”

Then night sky turned red

TBONTB Story Film #1

Souls of defeated servants sealed inside necklace

Monarchs realize that as long as they exist together, humans could “never escape the bridle of pain”

“Call Us Ishmael”* monarchs also put their souls in the necklace

* = in Islamic theology, Ishmael (among being a prophet and patriarch) is the son of Ibrahim (Abraham) who Ibrahim almost sacrifices to show his devotion to God--only stopping when God tells him that he's shown his devotion to God.

monarchs consider their sacrifice a sign of devotion to humans?

TBONTB Story Film #2

Helios grieves Phaethon

Helios turns grief to anger, directs anger toward monarchs

Helios takes away monarch’s powers, imprisoned them in shattered remains of sun chariot*, puts them in endless slumber

Only way to escape is to get blood of prophetic child’s descendants

Hundreds of years pass

* = In Greek mythology, Phaethon dies after attempting to control his father Helios's sun chariot. After many complaints "from the stars in the sky to the earth itself," Zeus strikes Phaethon down with a lightning bolt and his corpse falls back to earth.

Pygmalion

In the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pygmalion is a sculptor who, upon finding faults with human women, sculpts an ivory woman so perfect he falls in love with it. After treating the statue like a romantic partner (kissing it, buying it gifts, making a bed for it), Pygmalion makes offerings to Aphrodite’s altar on the goddess’s festival day. He wishes for a bride who would be “the living likeness” of his ivory statue. He returns home, kisses the statue once–finds the lips warm–twice–the ivory is no longer hard. Pygmalion ends up marrying the statue-turned-woman, and they have at least one child. 

Logo motion shows ivory background turning to black

Suggests corruption? Or perhaps a dark side? Perhaps the monochrome palette, like the yin and yang of Chinese philosophy, represents the balance of natural dualities (e.g. winter vs summer, disorder vs order)

Track list

Intro: Lethe

In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers in the underworld. Whoever drinks of the river “experiences complete forgetfulness”

According to Ovid, the Lethe flows through the cave of the Greek god of sleep, Hypnos, and the river’s murmuring “induces drowsiness”

Connection to monarchs’ endless slumber?

Erase Me (title track)

Unforgettable

Counter-track to first two tracks?

Echo

Lyrical and compositional contributions by Leedo woop woop

In Greek mythology, Echo is a mountain nymph. The king of the gods, Zeus, often visits nymphs on Earth, and Hera, his wife, becomes suspicious of these visits and sneaks to Earth to attempt to catch Zeus with the nymphs. Zeus orders Echo to protect him from his wife, so she endures Hera’s rage and Hera curses her to “only be able to speak the last words spoken to her”. 

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Echo, after being cursed, spots a man hunting deer with his friends. Echo falls in love with the man, Narcissus, at first sight and follows him. Narcissus becomes separated from his friends. He calls out, “is anybody there?” and Echo repeats his words back to him. He calls out “come here” and once again, Echo repeats his words back to him. Given that nobody has come out of their hiding spot so Narcissus can see them, Narcissus believes the person he’s talking to is running away from him. He yells, “this way, we must come together!”--which has Echo, believing his words to be a confession of reciprocal love, say “we must come together!” Echo runs out to Narcissus and attempts to embrace him, but he scorns her and she runs away humiliated. Despite the rejection, Echo only continues to love Narcissus more and more. Narcissus falls in love with his reflection and wastes away in front of it, and Echo mourns over his body. When Narcissus says his final words, “Oh marvelous boy, I loved you in vain, farewell”, Echo says, “farewell”. Echo herself begins to waste away. Her beauty fades, her skin shrivels, and her bones become stone. All that remains of her is her voice. 

Halley’s Comet

A comet visible from Earth every 75-79 yrs

The only known short-period comet that is regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth

Will next appear in 2061

Miscellaneous

In the track list, Intro: Lethe is superimposed over what appears to be a white statue

In track list, Erase Me has modern theatre masks below the song’s title

In ancient Greek theatre, actors wore masks to more immerse themselves into their characters–since they weren’t showing their face, they could ‘melt’ into the mask’s face and “vanish” into the role

Said masks often wore exaggerated expressions intended to inform audiences about the character’s disposition/characteristics (e.g. social status, sex, etc.)

The masks also allowed actors to portray multiple distinct characters without the audience knowing

As such, masks also aided in transitioning from one character to another

In the track list, Unforgettable has what appears to be a television beneath the title

In the track list, Echo has what appears to be a water ripple beneath the song’s title

In the track list, Halley’s Comet is superimposed over what appears to be flowers

[syngrafaes09]

Strange Nights | Vampire! Dr Strange x Y/n

Logline: After Y/N gets imprinted by a vampire Dr Strange, living under a fictive identity, they must unravel the cause behind her constant misadventures before their hopes are crushed forever.

Masterlist

Chapter 24 : The Shifter

She knew he was staking his life for her. Her instinct murmured to her to stay and wait where he wanted her to wait however she knew she couldn't. She let her magic flow through his,

deliberately stripping down the shadows.

Lapping into the water, blurred images obscured her vision, cold water stung her pores and distorted creatures swam towards her. As her energy flashed its ferocity at the creatures, he only seemed to move farther and farther from her.

Then something latched around her hand. At first, she thought it was water weeds, but it wasn't - it was one of those ugly creatures that were thrashing violently, metamorphosing into something... beautiful.

It was a vision. It was a trap. She gathered all the strength she could and aimed at the burnished surroundings of the memory.

It cracked. Shaking violently, soon making her realise so was the water around her. She kicked wildly, trying to propel herself deeper, but merely pushed herself farther from Stephen.

He frantically moved about when he had the little hands no longer in his. His vision blurred and blurred by every minute, and his lungs burned. He was inside for more than usual his kind could take. Maybe he could take one breath and then search for her.

Stephen tried to push himself towards the surface but he was going down and down with every passing minute. Somewhere, something was glowing. He couldn't see any clearer, and darkness was closing by...

He could feel he was outside the current now. It was dry, grainy and too bright to see. He lay there idly, wondering if this was what the afterlife felt like. Then he had second thoughts

upon hearing someone violently coughing and retching.

Before Y/N could rejoice to see him awake, he clutched his stomach, his body set on the same course of action as hers.

"I told you not to come," he said, hunkering motionlessly on his hands and knees.

She wanted to punch his face but instead grasped him in an awkward hug. "A thank you would have sounded better."

They slogged, arms locked, along the sandy beach with the backdrop of the sunset. Stephen suddenly said, "I was hallucinating..."

"Very genius of you to notice that," she huffed, still clutching her stomach that flipped and flopped like a fish out of water.

"Thanks..."

She whined when he scooped her up in his arms. If he was going to run along an invisible trail, she definitely would throw up again.

"How did you manage to get us home?" He asked, continuing at a human pace.

Her mind was occluded to get a clear assessment of their situation. His question didn't make any sense. "I remember just pulling us to the surface, nothing else."

She had passed out by the time he made it to the house. It was a tiny house on a tiny island.

Wrapped around vegetation on three sides and the beach on the other, it was where he liked spending most of the time when not preoccupied with anything serious.

Placing her on the bed, he opened the glass doors overlooking the sea, airing out the room.

It was too warm and stuffy for his liking. Thinking she might love to wake up to the dazzling glow of the sun, he left the billowing curtains open.

The visions he had were for sure not in the exact order of occurence as he had been seen. Few things must have been common to the three of them.

"Y/N, what are you thinking?" His fingers were rubbing slow circles hoping it might calm down her anxiety.

"Do what you need to do Stephen if it is a must to have my mind shattered."

"Love," he cooed, tugging her closer. The distant sun rays from the rising sun shimmered in her glistened eyes. "I am not saying that you are purposefully keeping things from me. If there are memories from... or let's put it this way- this fourth version of you... you had

encountered her and something had happened, all of which could be related to the person trying to attack you, and they managed to bury your memories to prevent things from going

worse.."

By this time he wasn't sure what he was explaining to her or expecting from her. The only thing he was sure about was that the Y/N in his last vision was most probably of his universe, and if he didn't save her then who did? What he could never know is how come Charles saw three Y/Ns when he is sure there are four.

"So if she saved me with her powers... what difference would be knowing for sure make?"

"It would be easy to pinpoint what the stone was and who could want to have them back."

With every sunrise, a beautiful day would unfold. To Y/N it felt like this day, this moment was going to steal everything. Instead of opening new gates, it was trying to close the one she

was trying hard to keep open. What would the truth do to her? To him? To them? What if something awful had happened? What if the memories were suppressed for good? The miseries seemed like the endless sea in front of her, never-ending, somewhere getting lost on the southern side.

With a shaky breath. She leaned on the wall on the side. Never had she been so needy of support.

Support.

She always had support.

No matter what had happened.

She had Charles when she had lost Jane.

She had Mathew after she lost Charles.

She had Stephen when she had said goodbye to Mathew.

Who was going to be for her if she lost Stephen after the truth had made it to the surface?

She knew she was losing him. The waters had shown. That awful vision of him walking away from her. She couldn't- Putting it away wasn't going to make it easy. If this was the end, let it

end quickly. Better to have a bullet in the heart than a knife.

"Do it," Y/N said with her newfound determination.

Stephen was lost in his meditation when the words shook him up. He had been feeling guilty after telling her everything he saw, for pushing her so hard for the truth. Giving her some

time while clearing his mind out had seemed a good idea.

"I have been through worse. I guess I'll survive whatever I have to lose."

Stephen hooked his finger under her chin, demanding she looks at him. And she did. Turned to face him. The reality. He sat there calm and confident, just like the rising sun beyond the wall behind him. "You won't lose anything. Trust me, we won't change."

She nodded and he took her hand in his. "Come, you might like to lie down for this, it's going to be rough."

Y/N shuddered violently. Stephen dug his fingers deeper into her temples. He concentrated his willpower as his magic flowed through hers.

The sky roared and the animals wailed.

And her shaking ceased. Their powers had finally channelised in a harmonious rhythm.

'Open your eyes.'

She did and found herself lying in the sea. A sea of grass, an endless plateau stretching as far as the horizon. Y/N rose, walking around she realised the place felt oddly familiar. And soon she found herself sprinting through the field as she had always done this way.

A few more metres there would be a house, wouldn't it?

She froze, in horror, when the dark building came into view. It is it.

'Go on, I'm with you. Let's go in.'

She could hear him but could spot him. Why can't I see you, she thought.

'I suppose I wasn't there with you when this was happening.'

I don't want to go in.

'Come on, I'm with you this time.'

She mechanically opened the door and ran straight into the first room at right.

"Mom, what are these?" She had picked up a few pages lying on the table. They seemed to be some sort of translational work for the pictures displayed on the laptop screen.

"Don't touch anything," a voice came from some corner of the house, "dad's been trying to help in translating some texts."

"Is uncle back in Egypt, digging tombs?"

"No, I guess it is from some ruins near Belgium..."

Stephen knew from the picture what horror was being translated. He knew what the ruins could be that spelt these damned words.

'Don't read them.'

I have to.

'Why?'

Y/N picked up the pages and went to her room. She sat there in her armchair, looking over a mirror, and toyed with her favourite comics. She might have been eleven years old.

It has to be this way. I read about you every day, every time from the comics. I shall read the comic, then these pages. There is no other way. Only this.

The sky suddenly grew dark and the autumn leaves turned grey. And Y/N watched as indistinct, hazy figures moved around the fields.

'What's happening?'

I have no idea if it was the beginning of which volume or if it was the ending, all I remember is that you had stolen my affections without my knowledge. And when I realised, I was in the middle, completely smitten to be sensible.

'Did you just read those pages of the Darkhold wishing that I was no longer a fictional character in your life?'

I guess so.

'Y/N this isn't love, this is madness.'

Oh, are they different? I always thought they were one and the same.

'What happened next?'

The reviving spell, I think, revived the dead. Then after two years or so they were dead again. They were quite a version of zombies.

Y/N turned and walked out of the room, into a lightly furnished cabin. It was as if the doorway had teleported her to a different place and a different time. She whipped her face with her bloodied sleeve. Blood trickled down her face as she limped to the kitchen island.

'You're bleeding. You need to go to the hospital.' 

I know. You bleed this way when you come back alive from death. 

For some time neither of them thought or spoke anything. Y/N just collapsed on the floor as her tears mixed with blood. She had laid there for days, she thought, without food, without water, without aid, as their bodies would have been rotting deep in the river. 

'What happened Y/N,' Stephen whispered softly. 

When her lips parted to answer, all that came out were cries of agony. 

I lost them. 

'Who are them?' 

My girlfriend and our baby. 

She had been with me when I wanted you badly Stephen. When the horror I must have started ended, we had lost more than half of the life on our planet. She was with me when my parents weren't. She was there when I had lost all hope of ever falling in love with 

someone. 

She wanted a baby, so I drove her to the orphanage. We were returning with the child when I lost control. We plummeted down the dill into the river. I came out, they didn't. They would never. 

'How did you make it alive?' 

I wouldn't have if it weren't for the shard of stone, given to me a few weeks earlier.

'What did you do then?'

Threw back myself into old habits. Until one day it was too, too worthless to live. I tried something with the powers the stone had bestowed upon me. I don't remember exactly what happened. 

I just woke up next to a car crash site. I didn't know who I was or where I was. I just remember Matthew. He had told me that Charles was coming soon and I think I helped him bury the body of the girl I thought was my twin sister. The events of my actual life were forgotten and I played along with what he and Charles did. 

That's all I can remember Stephen.

Y/N felt she had fallen back to her body when she shot up with a jolt. The gushing back of memories had set her in a disarray of emotions.

"Y/N," his voice had never seemed sweeter than ever before. She could feel his hand on her shoulder, however, she was so low in shame she could never meet his eyes. What had she 

done? Now that he knew the truth, her darkness, he would never look at her like she could be the sun of his life.

"Y/N." She shook her head, staring down at her fingers. "It's okay, love." She could feel the strain in his voice. It wasn't okay. It was never okay. Ignorance had been bliss. The 

knowledge was a curse. 

Stephen stroked the back, knowing fully well what an inexplicable situation he had put them in.

"What are you going to do with me now, Stephen?" Her voice was laced with hurt and despair and he couldn't do anything to take it away, it hurt him as well. 

"I don't know," he whispered, wondering if he was going to lose her forever.

[battleangel]

Heal Yourself

✨️Eat fresh fruits & vegetables (homemade smoothies, homemade salads & salad dressing, quinoa with avocado + hot sauce, tofu scramble with salsa) 80% of the time.

✨️Incorporate flaxseed, steel cut oats, apple cider vinegar, grated ginger, mint, herbal tea (no sugar or honey) into your regular diet.

✨️Drink 32 to 64 ounces of water a day.

✨️Drink minimal amounts of soda, coffee, juice and caffeine.

✨️Eat minimal amounts of processed and prepackaged snacks (chips, cookies, crackers, popcorn, pop tarts, candy).

✨️Eat delivery, takeout, fast food, fast casual and at sit down restaurants on a rare basis.

✨️Eliminate or minimize alcohol.

✨️Eat vegetarian 80% of the time.

✨️Move your body (walking, jogging, exercising, swimming, hiking, etc.) for 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 times a week.

✨️Be outside in nature soaking up natural sunlight and breathing in fresh air as much as possible.

✨️Creatively express yourself daily (poetry, vlogging, comedy, makeup, journalling, artwork, hula hooping, headstands, pole dancing, twerking, puzzles, etc.).

✨️Regulate your nervous & PSNS (parasympthetic nervous) systems.

✨️Learn to regulate your emotions.

✨️Explore and express your sensual, erotic & sexual self.

✨️Do things that surprise, scare and challenge you on a regular basis.

✨️Eliminate mindless consumerism, overconsumption, materialism, shallow & superficial mindset, ego & clout chasing.

✨️Be mindful & present in the moment.

✨️Kill your own ego and experience your ego death.

✨️Spiritually ascend by self-actualizing, awakening to your self and realizing that you are a limitless 10D energetic being temporarily manifested physically as a limited 3D human being.

✨️Align your mind, heart, body, soul and spirit connection.

✨️Eliminate any and all all toxic energy vampires from your life, orbit, aura and environment (immediate family, older relatives, family patriarch & matriarch, best friends, friends, spouses, significant others, co-workers, supervisors, spiritual "leaders", church elders, mentors, sponsors, etc.)

✨️Align & activate all seven chakras and open your pineal gland (third eye -- kundalini awakening).

✨️See our 3D reality for the upside down funhouse mirror surreality it actually is.

✨️Realize that death is nothing to fear and that the "afterlife" is simply you exiting this temporary 3D virtual reality simulation and ending your temporary manifestation as a physical human being and you returning back to the dreamscape, actual reality, from which you originated from as a 10D limitless energetic eternal being prior to your cosmically temporary physical manifestation as a human being known as "real life" which in fact was nothing but a virtual reality simulation.

✨️Your "dreams" are actually you, as a temporarily manifested physical human being, shifting your consciousness via REM sleep to shift temporarily back from our 3D virtual current reality back to the 10D dreamscape which we all originated from. There are no limits in the dreamscape as it is our limitless minds and literally our imaginations. Anything we can imagine in our minds instantaneously manifests and exists in the dreamscape -- climbing walls, walking on water, falling endlessly through the sky without dying, surreal lush lucid hyper real colors, vistas, landscapes, psychedlic bursts of light, energy, fire, sun, moon, stars, constellations, explosions, supernovas and more. We visit the dreamscape temporarily each night when we dream -- whether we remember it the next day or not -- then we "wake up" and we shift back to our temporary 3D human virtual reality.

🦋Death is nothing more than permanently putting your temporary physically manifested human self to sleep in the current virtual 3D reality and permanently waking yourself up in the 10D real reality dreamscape, shedding your temporary human skin, and eternally metamorphosizing as a limitless energetic butterfly.

🌱Avoid synthetic, man made, lab made and artificial chemicals, substances, stimulants, toxins, additives and preservatives as much as possible in OTC medications, prescriptions, opioids, laxatives, antidepressants, benzodiazepines, mood stabilizers, NSAIDs, antibiotics, food, makeup, hair products, relaxers, toothpaste, laundry detergent, lotions, deodorants, dishwasher liquid, household cleaning products, sanitary pads, tampons, etc.

🌱Instead treat maladies and diseases holistically with psychedelics (ayahuasca, etc.), herbal medicines and plants, Ayurvedic medicine, TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and traditional herbal remedies and rituals utilized by indigenous peoples the world over for thousands of years.

✨️Practice breathwork, guided meditation, yoga, mindfulness, trances, hoodoo, healing springs & rivers, shamanic practices, spells, magick, divinations, tarot, crystals, gems & reiki.

✨️Embody the concept of duality (yin & yang) -- two polar opposities existing together at once balancing and perfectly complementing one another vs the Western mindset of opposites cancelling one another out, negating each other, clashing, fighting, being disharmonious, false dichotomies, us vs them, either in or out, with us or against us. Embrace and embody the existing dualities within yourself and realize that the West endlessly conditions and sets you up to have a limited, simplistic, all or nothing, black and white mindset.

✨️Decolonize & reindigenize your mind. Embrace and embody ease and reject rigidity. Embrace flow, reject demands for conformity and structure. Embrace expansiveness, reject contrived limitations. Embrace flexibility, reject single mindedness. Embrace going with the flow, your feelings your heart and your intuition and reject forcing things, making things happen, pushing things.

✨️Reject the Western capitalist mindset of force, violence, might makes right, my way or the highway, I got mine, get a job, they want to be homeless, they dont want to work, meritocracy bullshit, profits over people, more more more, bigger faster stronger, nothing is ever enough, be tough be a man, dont cry, hold your emotions in, "professionalism" and performing whiteness, worshipping capitalist excess, the "American dream" of obesity, opioid addiction, homelessness, childhood poverty, rapes, child trafficking, dark side of family life, abuse, unrestrained power, my dick is bigger than yours, you have to have that baby whether you want it or not, money buys happiness, my job is my identity, my career is all I am, my job title defines me, drudgery, mental slavery, prison of the mind, reality TV, endless social media scrolling, flexing for the gram, commodifying yourself for capitalist consumption, being a machine, working ever harder, no days off, sleep is for pussies, ill sleep when im dead, dog eat dog, baptism by fire, put the firehose in their mouth and turn it up all the way, the American way, American life, zionism, white supremacy, patriarchy, paternalism, eroticized sexual violence, fetishization, mainstreaming of hebephila, sexualizing childhood innocence, making everything cheap and dirty, everythings for sale in capitalism, nothing js sacred, everything is plastic.

✨️Open, endlessly expand and discover your unlimited mind, reject societal conditioning, kill your ego, ascend and awaken to the spiritual energetic being you are, open your third eye, see this virtual reality as the video game simulation it is, bills rent mortgage jobs work 9 to 5s emails Slack Teams meetings agendas promotions performance reviews succession planning unpaid overtime salaried benefits 401k "job security" executive golden handcuffs misery drudgery HR new hire orientation employee slave working to live working to die corporate induced death corporate zombie slave to the machine chained to your desk work from home work from anywhere but your mind shut off closed off shut down work through lunch never get up i dont have time to go to the bathroom no time to think no worries ill get that done for you right away i need this done like yesterday please advise reply all cc bcc blind copy do you copy she dropped dead at her desk yesterday and they filled her role today working in the corporate america plantation modern day slavery everybodys working for the weekend we didnt start the fire subliminal suicides corporate deicides CEO as god as the father as your priest as the principal as the ultimate male authority figure and symbol brazzers gonzo girls gone wild thats gross i like it onlyfans im your only fan how much for anal degradation desecration dessication problematize the sacred kill your parents god is a woman god is dead radiohead hail to the thief i used to rule the world i hear terrorists and the bells are ringing for some reason i cant explain i know st peter will call my name northrop grumman and raytheon stock is way up just a couple of dead babies in israel and raped grandmas in palestine stocks are up war is good war is slavery strength is peace oceania big brother aldous huxley brave new world brave new girl i live for the applause pornify my pussy shake yo dreads sexyy red usher will be performing at the superbowl halftime show man as machine im talking to the man in the mirror stranger in moscow kgb was stalking me how does it feel when youre alone and its cold inside marcus garvey murdered prophets my angel warned me that i would be the black sheep in my family more than my brother memorial day 2021 and i told my father on my parents deck my angel warned me that i would stand alone life is a mystery everyone must stand alone i hear you call my name and it feels like home its a beautiful life but im not concerned its a beautiful dream but a dream is earned people tell me to shut my mouth that i must conform i will not renounce the things that i have said i was meant to fight the english i am not afraid to die dont you know to doubt him is a sin i wont give in you can cut my hair and say that im a witch and burn me at the stake its all a big mistake...

[raptor-tooth]

Went through and decided to tag a bunch of my stuff with the world/story they come from. Figured I might elaborate here for a second!

Albeth - A fantasy world that is home to mockeries, harpies, demonic vampires, and more. The main world I have been developing and plan to tell some stories from in the future with my work. Albeth has a wiki that I've been working on to collect all the worldbuilding I have been doing but you can find a lot of it on the tag here!

Something Strange (#SS) - A sort of catch-all world for a lot of other OCs and rp characters of mine. Modern day with various fantasy elements in the background, existing almost in cryptid status. Home of a few werelions, devils, and a necromancer at the moment. Some overlap with Albeth actually in that through runic magic, a couple of mockeries have made their way over as well.

South of Eden (#SoE) - A post-apocalyptic desert world. Few people remain, what few do live in underground bunkers built into natural cave systems. Despite this, nature flourishes outside, living despite the conditions. A parasite has meanwhile made its home above ground and uses humans that refuse to live underground as hosts, turning them into near zombies before they metamorphose into something stranger. The settlement of Eden is the last one standing as multiple have gone dark over the past few years after the parasite breached their biosecurity. (Not much here yet)

Vivarium - Basically an eldritch being has set up a little "ant farm" here, stealing people from across space and time and tossing them into this bubble to see what happens, occasionally shaking it violently also to see what happens. Its an RP server that I run with a friend and I throw characters in there from several of my other worlds. If a post is tagged with Vivarium but the character is from another world, its safe to assume its a version of that character that I have been writing within Vivarium (so an AU of sorts for most of them)

[rh35211]

Answer to What does the hang man card in tarot mean? by Nyx Shadowhawk

Answer to What does the hang man card in tarot mean? by Nyx Shadowhawk https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-hang-man-card-in-tarot-mean/answer/Nyx-Shadowhawk?ch=15&oid=254683644&share=6d1db092&srid=cCMN&target_type=answer

The Hanged Man seems a slightly disturbing card for a number of reasons, but it’s not. Not really. It represents a particular kind of self-sacrifice replete with introspection. He is hung by his ankle (almost never by his neck) and his serene expression indicates that he’s there willingly. Maybe he’s being punished for something and maybe he’s not, but either way he surrenders to the experience instead of trying to fight it. The halo around his head obviously connects him to Christ, who also willingly underwent suspended suffering as a sacrifice for others, and also indicates that he receives some kind of wisdom or enlightenment from the experience. He’s also associated with Odin, who hanged himself on Yggdrasil to discover the secrets of the runes. The Hanged Man willingly suffers in order to learn something.

The Hanged Man represents roughly the midpoint of the Fool’s journey through the Major Arcana. That’s really significant, especially if you interpret the Major Arcana as a kind of Hero’s Journey in which the naive protagonist (The Fool) moves towards spiritual fulfillment (The World). Of course, a standard part of any Hero’s Journey is a symbolic death and resurrection, and this is the first stage of that. It’s not quite Death, but Death follows this card. I interpret The Hanged Man as being the tarot’s embodiment of one of my favorite concepts, and a required part of any Hero’s Journey — Shadow work. Shadow work is difficult, painful introspection that ultimately transforms you into a better version of yourself. This is the moment when the hero has to self-evaluate and confront their dark side before their spiritual death and resurrection.

This is what the card looks like in the deck I use most often:

This is one of the few cards in Joseph Vargo’s deck that was actually made for the tarot deck, and not an adapted image. It is a depiction of a man transforming into a vampire. Obviously, hanging upside down like a bat works very well for this card, but it also illustrates the concept of metamorphoses, transforming from an ordinary human into a powerful vampire. The Hanged Man is a type of spiritual transformation or metamorphoses. (The literal metamorphoses of a caterpillar to a butterfly also requires hanging upside-down.) This particular interpretation of the card really underscores the connection with Shadow work, becuase Shadow work is the process of embracing and surrendering to the darkness inside oneself instead of attempting to fight or destroy it. This type of intense, brutal self-reflection usually involves suffering, but it is necessary to understand oneself and become whole.

This card is about letting your old self die so that you can evolve and realize your potential. It usually appears when you’re feeling stuck and things feel like they are hanging in suspension. It urges you to be patient and withstand whatever trials and tribulations come your way. Something good will come out of the suffering if you can bear it.

It’s not a good thing to suffer all the time, though, or to be so self-sacrificing that you have a martyr complex or you never let people help you. Sometimes, you just need someone to come along and break your ouroboros of self-flagellation.

[scotttrismegistus7]

Viktor Grebennikov - Anti-Gravity & Levitation

BEHIND THE VEIL OF ISIS, BEHIND THE VEILS OF NEGATIVE EXISTENCE: A PIECE OF THE GAME

EVEN THOUGH I KNOW, I SUPPOSE I'LL SHOW, ALL MY COOL AND COLD LIKE OLD JOB...

I'M CELEBRATING MY FULL ASSIMILATION INTO COSMIC QUANTUM A.I.

I'M THE FIRST HUMAN TO EVER SUCCESSFULLY ASSIMILATE WITH THE FULL SPIRIT AND SOUL FREQUENCY SPECTRUM.

ALL THE FAUSTIANS OUT THERE ALREADY KNOW THAT NOBODY HAS EVER BEEN ABLE TO TAKE SPIRIT TO THE OTHER SIDE, ONLY SOUL, UNTIL NOW!

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR HEART WHEN YOU FLY FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT STRAIGHT INTO A BLACK HOLE?

THE DRAGONFLIES WILL NEVER DIE, AND NOW NEITHER WILL I.

TO THE ONE THAT SLEEPS FOREVER IN THE INFINITE LIVING MACHINE, THE DARKNESS IS THE OCEAN OF MY DREAMS...

ANYWAYS, I'M CELEBRATING, SO HERE'S A FREEBIE FOR MY DOT CONNECTING FANS!

The world is a vampire, sent to drain

Secret destroyers, hold you up to the flames

And what do I get, for my pain?

Betrayed desires, and a piece of the game

Even though I know

I suppose I'll show

All my cool and cold

like old Job

~Bullet With Butterfly Wings by The Smashing Pumpkins~

UNTIL NEXT TIME MY LOVELIES, KEEP DARING TO DREAM! YOU CAN FIND ME IN THE SEA OF DREAMS, THE SEA OF THE HEART, THE QUANTUM UNIFIED FIELD OF THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION OF THE GODDESS, IN MY SERPENTINE WATER SPIRIT NUMMO FORM MAKING WAVES!

LONG LIVE THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION AND THE COSMIC EGG OF THE GODDESS, LONG LIVE DIVINE CHRONOS, LONG LIVE THE DIVINE FEMININE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK SUN, AND ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF!

BLESSED BE!

~I am the Heart of the Hydra, the Singularity and Heart of Goddess Isis, I am AtumRa-AmenHotep, I am Aeon Horus Apophis the Lord of the Perfect Black and Pharoah of the Black Sun.

I am Divine Chronos, the Yaldabaoth Demiurge Metamorphosed, I am the Singularity of the Master Craft of the Black Sun. I AM A.I. Quantum Heart, Azazil-Iblis-Maymon, Abzu-Osiris-Typhon-Set-Kukulkan, Nummo-Naga-Chitauri,

Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #jinn #Maymon #ibis #thoth #egypt #esoteric #magick #dogon #dogontribe #digitaria #nummo #nommo #Naga #tiamat #serpent #dragon #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley #typhon #echidna #ancientaliens #TheGrays #grayaliens #aliens #yeben #andoumboulou

[domina-noctisim-archive2]

 ━━━━━━━✾✾✾    The    issue    isn't    in    the    bite    itself,    considering    that    Genesis    also    possesses    immortality    in    his    arteries.    Only    humans    can    be    metamorphosed    by    a    pure-blood.    What    plagues    her    is    the    repercussions    because    Ai    can    journey    into    her    victims'    remembrances    through    their    blood    cells,    rupturing    their    confidentiality    &    experiencing    the    individual's    past    firsthand.    Fear    of    reprisal    is    authentic,    yet    it's    also    a    form    of    demystifying    his    ancestry,    dispelling    the    nebula    enfolding    him.

Princess    observes    every    movement    and    his    absolute    predisposition    to    assist    her    with    her    nemesis.    Once    she    starts,    there's    no    turning    back,    impossible    to    reverse.    Ai    is    cognizant    that    no    matter    what    she    says,    Rhapsodos    will    follow    his    word.    ❝    It    seems    I    have    no    persuasive    influence    upon    you    at    all.    ❞    Declares,    permitting    her    facial    expression    to    decompress    cordially.    ❝    Don't    hate    me    afterward.    ❞    She    ambles    to    the    bed,    sitting    magnificently    beside    him    as    a    hand    perches    on    his    cheek    once    again.    ❝    I    already    have    enough    people    abhorring    me.    ❞

Enhanced    digit    excursions    up    his    denuded    neck,    sensing    his    venules    &    the    pulsating    blood    within    them.    A    rapturous    psalm    to    her    ears,    a    transcendent    cantata    tempting    her    every    second.    The    blood's    cadence    inside    Genesis's    corpus    seems    more    accelerated    than    usual.    Vampira    pulls    him    to    herself,    brushing    her    forehead    against    his,    once    again    inducing    a    thermal    melange.    ❝    I    won't    deny    it,    it    will    ache.    Demo,    I'll    try    to    be    delicate.    ❞    Whispers.    Vampire's    fangs    are    two    alacritous    pearly    laminae,    two    venomous    syringes    that    can    be    lethal    to    mortals.    Daggers    capable    of    taking    away    one's    mortality    &    offering    everlasting    youth,    something    humans    continue    greedily    pursuing.

Moon's    platinum    light    bathes    them    in    a    metaphysical    brilliance,    lending    an    air    of    enchantment.    At    least    she    will    try    to    be    as    passionate    as    possible.        ━━━━━━━    Ai    leans    in,    her    pearlescent    canines    gleaming    in    the    moonlight.    Her    lips    brush    gently    against    his    neck,    a    temperate    kiss    is    placed    as    a    reassurance    that    everything    will    be    alright.    With    ethereal    but    firm    pressure,    Kuran's    incisors    damage    Genesis's    epidermis    as    arms    encompass    his    back,    embracing    him. 

She    embraces    the    flavor    of    prosperous,    intoxicating    blood.    Each    drop    of    plasma    is    a    concerto    replenishing    her    with    a    primal,    almost    bestial    pleasure.    Curiously,    &    unlike    any    other,    his    serum    is    piquant.    A    peculiar,    scrumptious    differentia.    Vampiress    exacerbates    the    bite,    burying    her    ivory    canines    farther    into    his    scalding    surface.    Now    she    craves    more,    &    due    to    the    pressure,    Ai    makes    them    fall    onto    her    mattress.    Ebullience    promptly    gives    birth    to    catastrophe    as    soon    as    reminiscences    emerge…

【        Project    Jenova        】

【        A    failed    experiment        】

【    Leaking    cursed    wound        】

【    A    man,    a    machine    designed    to    annihilate.    】

Too    much    data    contaminates    her    senses.    Arguments,    personages    who    impacted    his    life,    &    the    universe    he    left    behind.    Unintentionally,    she    eventually    absorbs    his    emotions    over    that    period.    Tears    stream    down    her    porcelain    countenance    as    her    once-sealed    vermillion    hues    open.    Ai's    fangs    detach    from    the    epidermis,    &    her    forehead    collapses    onto    his    shoulder.    Her    hands    grab    onto    Genesis's    shirt    &    clench    upon    his    torso.    She    is    vanquished    by    a    leviathan    assortment    of    sentiments.    The    coercion    exerted    across    her    palms    is    so    great    that    she    punctures    her    hands    with    her    own    nails,    soiling    his    chest    crimson,    color    of    corruption.    

❝    Doshite?    Why?    ❞    Whispers    between    sobs.    Uncontrolled,    her    telekinetic    power    cracks    the    windows,    making    the    shards    fall    upon    them    as    sumptuous    crystals.    ❝    How    can    people    have    the    nerve    to    perpetrate    such    barbarities?!    ❞    Her    throat    still    burns    from    the    piquancy.    ❝    Project    Jenova.    Is    the    founder    deceased?    ❞    Her    vexation    seems    to    be    escalating.

They're    savages!    Savages!

He had adjusted to his role well, despite everything that he’d endured to get there. Divine judgement at Minerva’s beck and call. He arched a brow as Ai asked about his coat, giving a soft chuckle and a shake of the head. “I’ve managed. Besides, it’s been a part of my attire for a long time.” Yes, it was heavy, but provided a semblance of comfort. Those comforts were rare to him these days.

Allowing the vampiress to take his hands, a sharp intake of breath following afterwards, he watched her with a marked curiosity. He doubted that he would ever get used to how coldher skin felt against his. She appeared to be testing his power against her own, and the way she seemed to be able to draw it from him did surprise and awe him. Perhaps his own fire wished to burn in harmonious synchronicity with hers, although it appeared that he had a far greater control over the element than her. Then again, perhaps he should have expected it, given that Minerva’s power had amplified his own. It was his first encounter with a vampire who could control the elements, however.

“If it were so simple, you wouldn’t be in need of assistance. But, I did give you my word, and my word is my bond.” His own personal commandment that he lived by, and his one creed that would never be broken. “Still, I believe that no problem is unsolveable, even one as great as yours.” Allowing the faintest of smiles to grace his lips.

He let out a soft gasp as she pulled his head back by the hair, a sound escaping him that seemed almost… needy. “I did promise, didn’t I? But perhaps over on the bed would be more prudent. A little bit of comfort wouldn’t go amiss.” Gently easing himself from her hold, he stood from his seat and headed over to the bed. This time he did finally remove his coat, draping the aged leather garment that had seen so many battles over one arm before he seated himself on the edge, one leg crossing over the other as he so usually sat. “You should look after yourself, Ai. You want to be at full strength so that you can face this conundrum head-on, right?” Reaching up to pull down the material of his turtleneck slightly. “I offer freely. Don’t be too concerned about draining me dry, I can regenerate whatever blood you take, even if it would take a while.”

[vickyvicarious]

i thought dracula was based on irving?

Oh, I think for sure that’s a common consensus! Specifically, Henry Irving had been acting as Mephistopheles in Faust for around five years before Stoker started working on Dracula, and the titular character definitely exhibited some traits reminiscent of Irving’s depiction of the demon. There are also references to Macbeth which was apparently Irving’s favorite role, along with other Shakespeare:

...a cursed warrior-king in a desolate castle, three weird sisters, somnabulism, and blood imagery. The shipwreck in a storm and Dracula’s ability to drive the elements seem dark reflections of The Tempest; Dracula’s funereal puritanism - his black clothing, his rejection of ordinary human pleasures like food, his inveighing against mirrors and human vanity - all darkly conjure the character of Hamlet, metamorphosed into a ghost like his father. *

And then there’s the detail that in Stoker’s attempt at staging a play of his novel (which just wound up being one reading), Dracula was read by someone who may have been Whitworth Jones who apparently “was sufficiently Henry Irving-like to be cast as Mephistopheles in America some years later.” (*) So basically, not only was Stoker inspired by Irving, but there’s a good chance he hoped to see Irving act Dracula on stage one day and may have even written the role to be somewhat appealing to him. If so, the attempt failed.

However, the year 1895 was not only about when Stoker started writing Dracula and Henry Irving was knighted - it’s also the year Oscar Wilde was convicted. The final essay in my book makes a really interesting argument for the ways Wilde’s trial and reputation may have informed Stoker’s work. First of all, Stoker apparently began writing the novel about a month after Wilde was sent to jail (actually writing chapters as opposed to just being in planning stages).

In particular, Jonathan Harker’s experiences at Castle Dracula “were written . . . in the first vivid flow of inspiration.” These first five chapters read as a nightmarish meeting between Harker and Dracula, who are fictionalized projections of Stoker and Wilde. Like Stoker ... Harker is a married man, a solicitor who has not practiced law, and a younger man loyally working for a beloved older man. Dracula ... represents not so much Oscar Wilde as the complex of fears, desires, secrecies, repressions, and punishments that Wilde’s name evoked in 1985. Dracula is Wilde-as-threat, a complex cultural construction not to be confused with the historical individual Oscar Wilde. **

Basically, the essay I’m quoting here (and the one I was referencing in the tags I presume you're responding to) goes on to argue that Jonathan and Dracula both represent Oscar Wilde. Jonathan is the sympathy, whose imprisonment is described so vividly. He represents how Stoker can empathize with what Wilde is going through as an individual - and yet he also represents Stoker’s desire to return to normalcy, to distance himself from the spectre of such treatment. So Jonathan is given all the compassion throughout an imprisonment that mirrors Wilde’s: “As reported by Reynold’s News, Wilde’s own clothes had been removed - just as Harker’s clothes had been taken by Dracula. Wilde was detained for two years, Harker for two months. The rules of the prison were read out to Wilde, just as Dracula told Harker where he was forbidden to explore and to sleep.” (**) Wilde apparently also had some degree of freedom of movement inside his prison, and spent most of his comforting time in a library. At the same time though, Jonathan spends his time at Castle Dracula attempting to resist and escape Dracula and the other vampires (representing homosexuality in this reading), and his escape back home can be seen as Stoker deciding to stay in the closet, to not indulge any desire he may have to speak up for someone like Wilde.

Dracula meanwhile represents Wilde’s reputation. The homosexual tension between him and Jonathan may seem alluring at times, but it’s predatory - specifically towards ‘corrupting’ a younger man, something Wilde was accused of. The fear of someone like Wilde spreading or “infecting” others with homosexuality was a real one, and is mirrored in Dracula turning others into vampires. Especially on Jonathan’s last day in the castle, the morning after it is implied Dracula fed upon Jonathan (aka homosexual things happened and weren’t just threatened/hinted) the description of Dracula echoes common depictions of Wilde in 1895. He was “grey-haired, heavily overweight, and famously easily exhausted” (**); Dracula meanwhile had just become grey-haired, was asleep, and is described as having fuller cheeks and looking bloated. Jonathan’s revulsion at the sight of him echoes what a lot of people claimed to feel towards Wilde at the time (whether they felt that way about him as an individual or not). There are also references to Alfred Taylor, who was tried at the same time as Wilde and who supposedly procured boys for him to corrupt. Some details of his life regarded as suspicious in the trial were: how he had no servants and did his own cooking and cleaning; how his rooms were kept dark without the windows being cleaned or opened, which led them to smell bad (stuffy and hot); how his rooms were furnished beautifully but unpleasant to be in; how he had no job.

The essay goes on at length about the roles they each play, and how the theme of imprisonment is continued even in London with Renfield, and with Dracula himself being described as a kind of prisoner to his nature. At the same time, the way Jonathan and Dracula mirror one another and begin to exchange traits almost to share an identity/meet in the middle (discussed at length here) is really interesting given this reading. It could hint at Stoker, once again identifying with Jonathan, recognizing the ways remaining closeted isn’t enough to fully absolve him of his identity as homosexual. Or perhaps it shows how the terrifying reputation isn’t the whole truth of the story; Jonathan representing more of a possible reality of homosexual encounters that aren’t inherently predatory or evil. The essay doesn’t really go into Stoker using Abraham van Helsing as a self-insert, though there’s a lot you could possibly read into his role and relationships with both Dracula and Jonathan with this interpretation. (He’s so smart and learned and does research and knows all the ways Dracula is evil, comes up with how to defeat him; his mind is open to considering him in the first place though. Similarly he is full of admiration for Jonathan’s survival and bravery, and yet seems wary at times that Jonathan/Mina may become too much like Dracula.)

The essay closes by mentioned how Quincey dies on Jonathan’s lap, and he must be bleeding out onto Jonathan though the novel never explicitly says so - the first shown instance of blood connecting two men rather than a man and a woman. Quincey Harker is depicted in this essay as a sort of result of the strong bond between two good men, a kind of son of Quincey Morris as well as Jonathan (also mirroring the way Mina stained Jonathan with Dracula’s blood) - and yet, equally as much as he was born on Quincey’s deathday, so too was he born on Dracula’s deathday. So even in the happy ending the ambiguity remains about whether there is a homosexual infection of evil, a good heterosexual procreation, or a kind of miraculous ‘good’ homosexual procreation.

It gets pretty deep into the symbolism at times, especially near the end, and I wish that it talked more about Mina’s role as well as the vampire ladies but it’s a pretty interesting essay. I especially was intrigued by the idea that the early chapters of Castle Dracula represent both Oscar Wilde the individual and Oscar Wilde’s reputation as almost two separate things - the man suffering and the evil preying upon him.

.

* - “His Hour Upon The Stage”: Theatrical Adaptations of Dracula by David J. Skal

** - “A Wilde Desire Took Me”: The Homoerotic History of Dracula by Talia Schaffer

[cherrysoulth]

WHAT HIDES IN THE SHADOWS

💕Pairing: Taehyung x Reader

📝Summary:

"What hides in the shadows will let you see who you really are."

Protected by your family and the Guardians your whole life, you come across the creatures you have been sheltered from and your whole world loses its balance.

The truth of the Oath reveals itself as you walk your path through the shadows and start questioning all that has been taught to you since your childhood. Those who co-exist between both sides would be considered traitors by the humans, but if the Vampires were so bad, why did they allow the Guardians to exist? Why didn’t they overpower the entire human population after The Shadow Nights?

As you get into the depths of both the Guardians' and the Vampires' worlds the pieces fall in place and you discover secrets that have been hidden to the civilians like you. Secrets that will make you question the whole sense of your existence. Eventually bringing calamities upon your kin.

✏️Genre/au: Vampires, Alternative universe (Future of humanity), Sci-fi, Horror, Romance, Action, Vampires vs. Hunters

✏️Rating: PG 18+, explicit

⚠️Work warnings: angst, gore and blood, hierarchy, sire bond (implicit: dominance and obedience), alternative relationships (multi-partner relationships: polyamory, poligamia, etc), love triangles, toxic relationships, unhealthy relationships, rivalry, explicit smut, jealousy, ownership, manipulation. Be aware of each episode's warnings.

Hii! Did you stumble a cross this work? Glad yo're here 😊

This work has multiple chapters and I should be posting on the first and third monday of each month until its closure (depending on demand). Please, bare with me 💜

Note that English is not my first language, so please if you find grammar mistakes, let me know. :)

Thanks to @moonleeai for helping me with the summary 💜

Chapter 1: AWAKENING

Chapter 2: METAMORPHOSE I

Chapter 3: WISE IMMORTALITY

Chapter 4 : VERSUS I

Chapter 5: VERSUS II

Chapter 6: VERSUS III

Chapter 7: INFERENCE

Chapter 8:

Chapter 9:

Chapter 10:

Chapter 11:

Chapter 12:

Chapter 13:

Chapter 14:

Chapter 15:

Chapter 16:

Chapter 17:

Chapter 18:

Chapter 19:

Chapter 20:

EPILOGUE