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Gothic Fiction - Blog Posts
Getting nostalgic about early book Jonathan Harker writing down paprika hendl recipes for Mina. ♥
Edward no! Put that conical flask down right now or so help me!
(Quick little sketch of Jonathan Harker as I try to settle on a design for him.)
Another sketch of Dr. Henry Jekyll.
Every time I draw my design for him he seems to become more of a "tall, fine build of a man" and I think Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud XD
Let's see how many people I can get to join me in the "Henry Jekyll is a strawberry blonde" club.
Mr. Utterson the lawyer.
Just a little sketch of Henry Jekyll.
A Smol Edward Hyde.
Happy New Year! On 1 January 1818 the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published! So here's some more artwork of my own design for Victor Frankenstein to mark the occasion :)
Dr. Henry Jekyll "a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness"
Mr. Edward Hyde from the gothic novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson.
I have no idea why This is how I imagined him looking XD
*pats Edward's curly hair*
Carnival: Preview
From chapter one. This is the Call to Adventure. If you like what you read, go to the book’s profile below.
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Lakewood, Colorado. In an apartment unit, a dim lamp lit the upper right corner of the front room. Brain, Caleb, Jackie, José, and James sat on a grey couch right of that lamp. On the carpet floor lay Chaz, too sad to notice his friends. They glanced at him, then at each other, unsure how to comfort him.
“Why?” Chaz whispered to himself, “why, why, why, why, why?” A moment later, he said, “no use crying now.” He sat up, wiped the tears off his face, stood, and noticed his friends. They stared at him.
“Why are you staring, and how long have you—”
James stood, “you killed her, didn’t you?” Chaz blinked, “what?”
“You heard me.” He smirked.
“Phoenix is dead,” José whispered. He stood, but Brian pulled at his t-shirt. So, he sat back down.
“What makes you think I killed her!?” Chaz said. James shrugged, “I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t trust anyone—”
“I trusted Rebecca- “Chaz pointed at him- “and you know it!”
“Yeah, right. So, you decided to—”
“No, I didn’t.” He clenched his fists. “They said there was a leak in her car’s gas tank! I was here when it happened, and I didn’t know until Brian told me!”
“You probably poked a hole in it,” James said.
“I didn’t touch Rebecca’s car when she left!”
He pointed at Chaz, “you did something to her car to make it explode—”
“No, I didn’t! Why the fuck are you accusing me in the first place!?”
“You—”
“I DID NOT! WHY WOULD I WANT TO KILL HER!? I LOVED HER!” The room fell silent.
Chaz felt shaky, so he lay on the floor again. He cried again. James sat on the couch and lowered his eyes.
"Happy now?" Jackie whispered to him.
Brian stood and walked towards Chaz.
“Don’t touch me.” He found a box of tissues and placed it next to his friend instead, respecting his vulnerability.
Ten awkward minutes later, Chaz took a deep breath, sat up, used a tissue, stood, and turned to face Brian.
He said, “you said the police won’t investigate because as far as anyone knows, the explosion was caused by a gas leak from a bad fuel tank.” Brian nodded (as if it weren’t said earlier.)
“But they didn’t see any body!” Jackie kicked José's leg.
“Let’s go to Lakeside and find Rebecca ourselves.”
Carnival: Profile
Title: Carnival (links to Amazon) Edition: second Genre: gothic horror comedy Year self-published: 2022 (through B&N Press), 2024 (through KDP)
Copyright status: CC BY 4.0 (do whatever you want as long as you credit the original work.)
Blurb: A car explodes while leaving Lakeside Amusement Park. Rebecca is assumed dead. After James and Chaz argue over what happened, they and their friends go there to look for her. Instead of entering Lakeside, our heroes find themselves in Carnival, the park’s Faerie counterpart. It is a backdrop which makes finding Rebecca only one of their worries.
Format: novella Page count: 76 (seventy-six)
MPA Rating: R (Restricted) Reasons: profanity, violence, child death, drama, spirit possession, and horror
Price: $6.50 (paperback), $13.00 (hardcover)
Note: This is the one we portrayed ourselves in. It was like acting in a movie. Chaz, Brian, and Rebecca are the only tulpas in this story that still consider themselves part of the phalanx. The rest chose to live in a place we call The Background to relieve head pressure (a sense of pressure, not actual pressure.)
Books
In the most recent years, I have been trying to read more. With some struggle I have been able to finally accomplish that task. My focus has switched to the most suited genre for this blog’s aesthetic which is a mix of gothic/romance/classic fiction. I have read The Great Gatsby, 1984, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, and Frankenstein. Each of these stories, I feel, are relevant even in today’s time. There is a reason classics are deemed as such and it’s from the way they remind you of events so subtly similar of your own. They are timeless. The Great Gatsby focuses on the struggle of fate, missing your moment to succeed and living in a shadow. While 1984 relies on a more political stance shining light to how even in today’s world totalitarianism is not so far out of reach and nonsensical as George Orwell puts it. Both Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice hold romance aspects differing far from each other. Jane Austen is able to write about two contrasting characters overcoming those boundaries to be more open to another person, while Emily Bronte’s characters are fueled with differing emotions ranging from longing to bitterness. Frankenstein is a classic horror story, passed down from many media reiterations done. However, the concept of overreaching rings heavily throughout today’s society. The complex emotions the monster feels towards Frankenstein offers an outlook on how wrong it is to play God when you cannot live up to your creations. These books are as they were, whether written in 1813 or 1949, timeless and unforgotten remaining poignant in the modern 21st century.
Where to purchase: This website is a great alternative choice to cheaper online book shopping. Each book is available on this website for purchase.
HTTPS://WWW.THRIFTBOOKS.COM/
I fit most of this criteria and I am slightly afraid that Utterson is going to break into my house now-
DNI if: youre under 5 feet tall, you’re a child trampler, you’ve been appointed as the sole heir to a fortune, your appearance makes people uncomfortable for some reason, you’re pale and hairy, you‘ve ever brutally killed an MP, you’re blackmailing Dr. Jekyll for money, you tilt your hand to the left to write.
What are your "Oh no, if people I know read this, they'll be concerned," writing projects?
I don't often talk about these original characters, Lolly and Stephen Wargrave, since their story is quite twisted and hard to make into funny posts. Well, I had the urge to cattify them today, and it's sort of funny, so here they are.
These gory weirdos are brainrotting me now, so maybe I'll blab about them again soon.
Blog post: The Freedom to be Grotesque and Gothic Authoresses
"I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so frequently asked me—How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?"
- Mary Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein
In the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explained how she, as a 19-year-old young woman, wrote a work that shook contemporary intellectuals.
“I didn’t mean anything by it; it’s only flight of fancy,” the writers who defined gothic literature said to a world that was not prepared to accept that women with no formal education were capable of the intellectual prowess woven into these tales of dark, profound, terrifying worlds.
We have long lived in a society that is quick to denounce, demonise and deny the voices that speak in a different tone. Even if you never show it to a single soul, write. Write, because to write dark, terrible things is to accept that they exist inside you without shame.
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Unedited post - with a short piece I published years ago - linked above!
My go-to source for the history of scientific romances is Brian Stableford’s 1985 book Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950. (While long out of print, this book is worth its weight in gold.) In Stableford’s account, scientific romances are very much the products of the environment they evolved from. Before the 1890s, publishing in Britain was divided into two rigid categories. On the “respectable” side were the great triple-decker novels, conservative in both style and content, and physically inaccessible to anyone who wasn’t wealthy or who didn’t have access to a circulating library. On the less reputable side were, of course, the penny dreadfuls; cheap to make, quick to read, easy to forget, and not that well-written. Scientific romances (and to a certain extent modern sf) tend to work best in the range between short stories, novellas, and single novels; long enough to properly extrapolate from a central idea, but not so long as to wear out their welcome. It was only at the end of the 19th century, with the decline of the triple-decker, the rise of a literate middle class, publications that catered to them, and of writers that could comfortably support themselves writing for this new audience, that scientific romances had the space and opportunity to emerge. Naturally, this was a different class of writers with different influences that those who had written the gothic works from earlier in the century, so scientific romances evolved in both style and content in a much different direction. (As an example, scientists in 19th-century Britain had a unique tradition of penning essays to explain their theories and their significance to a more general audience, a tendency that was absorbed wholeheartedly into the scientific romance, to the point that both scientists and novelists tried their hands at both essays and stories every so often.)
I was thinking about the literature of 1897 and it got me thinking about the Scientific Romances and how they differ from the Gothic Romances or Gothic Horrors of the age. Clearly, there is some overlap and Frankenstein (much earlier but still relevant) crosses those borders many time without showing a passport for either but by the late 19th you couldn't really compare say 'The War of the Worlds' to 'Dracula'. Where did they diverge so wildly? Or did they?
That’s a really good point, and I’m sorry I took so long to get to this question! Arguably, Frankenstein himself brings this up- he started out reading ancient mystic texts and moved to more scientific ones later- but I guess there started to be a clearer divide between what we’d call fantasy and what we’d call science fiction as science itself became better known. You could probably write gothic science fiction in the mode of Asimov, where the science is there to set up philosophical and psychological issues- I’d certainly read about the drama between robot heirs to their creators’ estate and legacy- but the divide certainly feels there. Returning to H. G. Welles, maybe The Invisible Man is the midpoint? Or maybe it’s when “scientist” became a common enough profession to not seem mysterious? Any followers with ideas on this subject, help me out here!