forever-monika

[forever-monika]

what if you grew up self-educated and lonely and all the while nursing this dream for this impossibly idealistic image of a companion who would be perfectly tailored to your interests and manners, a soul whose intellect and ambition would be a mirror to your own, and then, against all reason, you find this friend? what if he comes to you not as the bright, unblemished vision you carried through years of solitude, but as a man fallen from grace and on the verge of death, and rather than meet him where he is and grant him the simple dignity of rest and silence, you seize upon him as the long-awaited fulfillment of your fantasy? what if you coax his secrets out of him and parade them in the private theatre of your mind, not from malice, but from that selfish delight of being first to know them? what if you wedge his fractured reality into the ornate frame you have been polishing in the backrooms of your mind since boyhood, and you touch his grief and find in it cause for reverence that makes him more beautiful and ethereal and celestial to you, because it heightens the drama of the part you have written for him in the narrative of your own life? what if you ignore the inconvenient truth that he is flesh and fever and guilt, and instead you fashion him into a figure of mythos, because you have dreamt of this friend too long to let the real man displace the imagined one you have adored in secret for years? what if your tenderness was only another kind of hunger?

[forever-monika]

and if i just started posting all my edits on here too. What Then

[forever-monika]

mr bingley is so marius core do yall see my vision

[forever-monika]

relatively minor Schubert-related aspects of the anime that shouldn't bother me as greatly as they do:

Him and Beethoven are the only two Classicaloids that aren't canonically attractive. 'Bulldog of music' Anton Dvorak is canonically hotter than Schubert. This pains me greatly.

Mr Antisemite of all people is the one to tell him off and he is framed as some sharp mind who hands out tough truths. This would piss me off even if it was unrelated to Schubert because I know everything that comes out of Richard Wagner's mouth is either a lie or amounts to 'give me more money'.

s1e20, the episode where Mozart gets depressed because he can't prank people and is rewarded with a cool piece of musik played straight, an emotional scene invoking Kanae's grandma and sympathy from everyone comes immediately before s1e21. This in particular feels like whoever was in charge harbored genuine, deep hatred towards Schubert

The Schuicide attempt. Now every time he gets treated badly I remember it and feel genuinely uncomfortable and worried for the poor man instead of laughing

Casual disrespect of Salieri by making him accuse Schubert of plagiarism. Antonio Salieri my GOAT loves all his students equally and would not fucking say that

In the scene where everyone's getting their musik back in s2e24 Schubert vows to not plagarize and write his own music. There's no "ever again" or "from now on" there but it really feels like it's strongly implied when in reality he has nothing to make a vow about because he never fucking plagarized in the first place gstqgkqknknqrrrrtrgbkh

[forever-monika]

has this been done before

[forever-monika]

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

a formal complaint from a deeply wronged reader

Spoilers under the cut

“Mary Shelley was only 18 when she wrote this, cut her some slack!” No. I’ve seen 12-year-olds on Wattpad write more compelling protagonists than Victor Frankenstein. She doesn’t have an excuse.

So let’s talk. Let’s beef.

First of all: The protagonist. The fucking protagonist.

I hate Victor Frankenstein with every molecule in my being. For several reasons! Those being:

He’s a whiny, pathetic little loser.

He’s a whiny, pathetic little loser.

He’s a whiny, pathetic little loser.

Oh, and did I mention? He’s a whiny, pathetic little loser.

I don’t even remember half the damn book because his narration is just so. Damn. Boring. Whiny. Whine whine whine—that’s ALL HE EVER DOES.

This bitch stitched together a humanoid corpse and gave it LIFE. And you're telling me instead of saying, “It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!” like any normal scientist, he thinks:

“Ew. Ugly. Maybe if I go to sleep it’ll get out of my house.”

Bitch what??????????

Any real scientist would’ve LOST THEIR MIND over reanimating even one single cell. Let alone a full-grown humanoid creature. They’d be publishing their findings. Running tests. Contemplating the future of humanity.

But NOOOOOOO. Victor Frankenstein isn’t like the other scientists 🙄 He’s too busy being offended his creature doesn’t look like a Calvin Klein model.

Second: The writing.

My edition was 276 pages. I skipped nearly 100 of them. And missed ZERO important plot beats. Why? Because it was just endless poetic simping for the fucking Alps. Like sir. The mountains are PRETTY. We GET IT. SHUT UP.

Like yeah, "the standards were different back then" or whatever but Jane Austen wrote the masterpiece known as Pride and Prejudice in the year 1796 and Mary Shelley wrote her garbage in 1816 so clearly its NOT A STANDARDS THING. IT'S JUST BAD WRITING.

Edit: '100 pages' is a hyperbole. I did not, in fact skip 100 pages. Only like 70.

Third: The plot holes.

Let’s talk about the Justine Moritz case.

Justine, loyal servant for YEARS. Never stole. Never lied. A literal saint. She’s found with a necklace and that’s all it takes to convict her???

SHE COULD’VE SAID:

“He gave it to me so it wouldn’t get dirty while he played.”

BAM. Charges dropped. Case closed.

And VICTOR. FUCKING. KNEW. He knew Justine was innocent. He knew the creature did it. He said NOTHING.

He could’ve told the authorities. They could’ve gone after the creature.

You really think one (1) chonky guy stitched from dead people could defeat 20 armed officers??? They could’ve stopped him. Captured him. Killed him. Or studied him (LIKE VICTOR SHOULD'VE BEEN DOING IN THE FIRST PLACE)

But NOOOOOOOO, Victor "whiny, pathetic little loser" Frankenstein went was like:

Victor was like:

“Ugh… if I tell anyone… people might be disappointed in me… 🥺”

SIR. GET A FUCKING GRIP.

Your family is literally the sweetest, most forgiving, loving group of people in Europe.

They’d be like:

“Oh Victor… poor thing… have some soup and rest your head…”

Fourth: The wedding night scene.

Victor is???? So fucking stupid????

The creature tells him:

“I will be with you on your wedding night.”

And Victor thinks:

“Oh no 😰 he’s going to kill me 😖”

HELLO??? Let’s review:

He killed your little brother.

He framed and got your family’s servant executed.

He murdered your best friend.

AND YOU THINK YOU’RE NEXT????

He told you he was going to ruin your life. You FORGOT your wife is part of your life???

Bitch just stood around on his honeymoon with a pistol while Elizabeth got brutally murdered upstairs.

No thoughts in that head of his.

Fifth: Victor's weird sense of Morality™

The creature LITERALLY offers a clean deal:

“Make me a wife. I’ll leave. Forever. No contact, no humans, no murder. Bye.”

It’s EXACTLY what Victor wants.

But does he do it? Of course not! Because:

“OMG 😱 what if they spawn children 😱😱😱”

SIR. YOU BUILT HIM FROM CORPSES. You can make her WITHOUT A FUNCTIONING REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM. YOU COULD GIVE HER AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DIGESTIVE TRACT IF YOU WANTED.

OR, YK. JUST PERFORM A TUBECTOMY???????

Sixth: Victor’s health.

GOD does this man faint. In the whole book Victor must have fainted like, 40 times. This isn't even an exaggeration. In a word count of like 75k, Victor Frankenstein faints nearly FORTY. FUCKING. TIMES. And the number of times he GETS SICK?????? HELLO?????????? We need to stop analyzing this as a gothic moral epic and start figuring out what fucking ailment Victor had because it CANNOT be normal to pass out so often from your own feelings.

Edit: It's been pointed out to me that he does not, in fact, faint forty times; only three times. Which makes things marginally better. Still not off the hook, but better.

Seventh: The horror factor.

Surprise! There isn't one.

No tension. No suspense. No fear.

The scariest thing about this book is how preventable every single plot point is.

The monster? He could’ve been terrifying. He should’ve been terrifying. But no! Instead we get:

Emotional monologues.

Paradise Lost quotes.

“Nobody understands me” speeches.

Frankenstein’s creature walked so all the ✨dark, mysterious, tortured, misunderstood hot boys✨ in YA romance could sprint through the fog in slow motion with a violin score playing in the background.

I went into this book with such high hopes. Gothic sci-fi pioneer! A literary milestone! Written by someone our age!

FUCKKKKKK

[forever-monika]

every time i have some medical problem i resort to animatic because it will make me lose my mind instead. so have mid frankenstein animatic

ignore the quality tumblr standard 8p or whstever

inspired by @dudaddd ‘s post about victor and this song and augh

[forever-monika]

DRINK WITH ME (BUT GRANTAIRE IS PLAYING THE GUITAR AND JEHAN PROVUAIRE IS PLAYING THE CONCERTINA

(for those who had trouble finding it in YouTube)

[forever-monika]

My most strongly held Les Mis Hot Take is that Éponine wasn't in love with Marius, so much as she wanted to be him. She wanted to be free and well read and interesting. She wanted people to look at her and respect her, to listen to her, to let her take up the space that she wasn't allowed to, because of her sex and her poverty. She only loved what Marius represented.

Dare I say it, she also wanted to smooch Cosette

[forever-monika]

SCREAMING AND CRYING WITH THE GERMAN VERSION OF "EMPTY CHAIRS AND EMPTY TABLES"

(THE WAY HE SAYS THEIR NAMES, ESPECIALLY GRANTAIRE, ENJOLRAS -oh my gosh my jaw dropped with Enjolras- AND COURFEYRAC)

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YOU CAN SEE MUCH MORE INCREDIBLE LES MIS RELATED VIDEOS LIKE THIS IN THE ACCOUNT THAT APPEARS IN THE WATERMARK, ITS FULL OF WONDERS AND MY FAVORITE "LES MIS" RELATED ACCOUNT EVER!!!

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Link to the whole performance:

[forever-monika]

Frankenstein is, in pair with TBK, the most foundational reason I started drawing in 2021. I decided to redesign Victor and Henry on my reread :)

[forever-monika]

‘Over the garden wall’ changed my brain chemistry I think….

Some silly Henriel art + some fancy outfit designs for them. :p Been dealing with some chronic pain and they comfort me so much so idc I’m cringe I’m free❤️❤️❤️

[forever-monika]

hi

[forever-monika]

realising that my personal interpretation of the creature in frankenstein comes not only from the threat of the “other” and the fear of that which is considered monstrous found in gothic horror but also cosmic horror’s eldritch dread and fear of the incomprehensible and unknowable, and it makes him infinitely more interesting to me on so many levels

the idea that the process by which victor created him was so deeply unnatural and wrong that the human mind/“being”/whatever you want to call it fundamentally cannot comprehend—and thus seeks to reject—his presence is super compelling to me. it could account for the visceral reactions of fear and disgust that we see in the book, in the sense that the creature is so preternaturally ugly that people react the way lovecraftian characters do when they see a shape or a colour that’s not supposed to exist

dgmw i think the “i would simply be nice to the creature and not run away screaming” reactions that people tend to have makes sense when you read the the creature’s treatment as (among other things) a metaphor for prejudice against othered peoples and marginalised groups, which is very valid—nobody wants to think that they’d react so awfully to a person who only seems to long for connection with others.

but i often find myself wanting a bit more than that straightforward response. like, sure, but what if you couldn’t be nice to him, on a fundamental psychological level? what if he was so hideous that every fibre of your being was telling you that the man in front of you, who should be worthy of basic respect by virtue of his intrinsic personhood, was not a person at all, but something else entirely—a threat? what if you were no better than the people who stoned and spurned the creature because your own ancient human response to fear kicked in, against your best wishes?

personally i find that to be a really interesting concept for a horror antagonist, as opposed to simply thinking of him as a sort of strange and spooky but otherwise relatively conventional looking person who people are mean to because of an arbitrary aesthetic evaluation. to me, both his hideousness and his very existence transcend the scope of typical human understanding (with potential exceptions—victor and walton being able to look past everything and actually speak to him definitely Means Something but i’m not getting into all that here) and the inevitability of the fear and hatred that it invites is what’s horrifying, in the end

all of that is not to say that the characters are necessarily correct to feel those things and act on them, even if it’s instinctual, and i don’t think that it makes the creature any less sympathetic (if you’re inclined to consider him that way) or more justified in his own actions, either. but just consider the implications of victor basically summoning a nightmarish eldritch abomination who has to claw and scrape at any sort of link to humanity or personhood he can get and kinda fails miserably at every turn rather than just a kinda-fucked-up-but-maybe-hot-if-you’re-into-that human guy. isn’t that fun! and horribly tragic! yay!

anyway tl;dr hot take i think ugly ass eldritch horror creech is neat

[forever-monika]

not immune to yaoi

[forever-monika]

The Raoul (de Chagny) Navy: An Exploration of the Vicomte's Naval Background:

Our beloved Vicomte, Raoul de Chagny, is a young junior officer in the French Navy ("le Royale"), but this hardly gets much exploration. It's a detail that is often glossed over--I anticipate because Naval historians and Phans often do not have much Venn diagram overlap--until now. Let's just say my username is a Naval reference.

Note: the "Raoul Navy" is not my invention--our hilarious and wise "Phantom Dark Web" friends at Leroux Less Traveled (incl. @box5intern) came up with it, and I love it.

I've started digging into book Raoul and his Naval background and turns out we are missing out a whole lot about Raoul's character background if we don't dig into it. So I'm going to tell you what the book tells us and what that means. I'm going to give you the overall pieces up front, and then explain:

Raoul looks very young and feminine (except for his "little" mustache, which he effectively has grown to prove that he can)--and everyone treats him like a baby

Raoul at this point has already completed three years of Naval training including a world tour, so he is fairly experienced and even worldly for his age. He is described in the French as a "cadet", but he would likely be a sub-lieutenant at this point since he has graduated from the Naval Academy.

He's on a six month leave before going on a very dangerous mission to recover remains of a lost Arctic mission--a mission he himself is unlikely to return from.

And everyone still treats him like he's a baby (especially the old dowager widows), even though he has had quite a bit of life at this point--so he has something to prove.

What we know about Raoul and the Navy (Here is the English):

"He was admirably assisted in this work first by his sisters and afterward by an old aunt, the widow of a naval officer, who lived at Brest and gave young Raoul a taste for the sea. The lad entered the Borda training-ship, finished his course with honors and quietly made his trip round the world. Thanks to powerful influence, he had just been appointed a member of the official expedition on board the Requin, which was to be sent to the Arctic Circle in search of the survivors of the D'Artois expedition, of whom nothing had been heard for three years. Meanwhile, he was enjoying a long furlough which would not be over for six months; and already the dowagers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain were pitying the handsome and apparently delicate stripling for the hard work in store for him."

We also learn in another paragraph that the de Chagnys had admiral in the family, so the Naval connection is likely a family business for second sons. Raoul is a second son, so a career as a military officer would have been a distinguished career for him.

Borda: First ship

Brest is the main port of the French Navy and home of the Ecole Navale (or French Naval Academy. In the 20th Century it moved, but Brest is still, along with Toulon, a major naval base)

According to the French: Le jeune homme entra au Borda, en sortit dans les premiers numéros et accomplit tranquillement son tour du monde (Note that the French calls him a "young man", not a lad)

The Borda is traditionally the training ship of the French Navy, and there have been six of them. This would have been a cadet/midshipman cruise for Raoul. He would have been on the ex-Valmy, an 120-gun ship of the line, which became the Borda training ship in 1864.

The Borda is also the ship of the Ecole Navale (French Naval Academy)—this means that Raoul attended the academy.

The Naval Academy is two years in Brest, and then their third year is the World Tour—so that timing also aligns with where we are in the book. Raoul would have begun at the academy at 18, and he is at the start of the book, 21 years old.

After the Borda, which he completed with honors, he did an uneventful world tour.

This would have been his third year, still as a midshipman.

He could have been assigned to any ship for this training cruise—possibly a cruiser (the d'Estang is pictured below in 1884 in Algiers), which did long range missions. Note: Their max speed was about 15 Knots (which is a very respectable speed that some warships still transit).

This world tour cold have been as far east as what is now Vietnam, or through the Suez--but likely near French colonies.

With influence, he is assigned to the Requin expedition.

French: Grâce à de puissants appuis, il venait d'être désigné pour faire partie de l'expédition officielle du Requin, qui avait mission de rechercher dans les glaces du pôle les survivants de l'expédition du d'Artois, dont on n'avait pas de nouvelles depuis trois ans.

The Requin was a real ship in the Mediterranean fleet, but did not go on its first mission until 1885, which means that this is a deliberate or unintentional oversight of either Leroux himself or his narrator. The Requin was a steel hull—and the Artois was actually a 18th century Royal Navy ship so this piece is a complete fabrication. However, Arctic missions at this time were frequent and tended not to go well.

However, Raoul could also be excited about getting to go on a new steel-hulled ship. The Redoutable was already in commission—commissioned in 1876.  Most of the rest of the fleet at this point were ironclads.

[forever-monika]

Am I the only one that thinks the tts fandom tries too hard to “dethrone” varian? If your not the biggest fan of him or don’t even like him that’s fine but so many confessions are like “Varian is overhyped” or “fans think Varian is more important than what he is” or “Varian is only a side character and fans are just whiny” when fact of the matter is Varian has A LOT of reason why he’s as popular as he is. He’s really not overhyped because by making his dad in the brotherhood they instantly gave him a connection to the dark kingdom and then had stuff like being a demanitus fanboy and partnering with the seporians and being the main character actively investigating the rocks and not just waiting for the answers to come to them. And then I get the fixation on varigo but once again Varian is the one actively learning about the seven kingdoms and more about demanitus in 7k, plus just saying even for varigo the hyper fixation with it by extension lets you find out more about the villain donella and of course is fun character drama. So yeah like to me anything regarding “Varian is an overhyped side character” is nonsense to me when he has enough plot tied to him to rival rapunzel both in tts and 7k. Also I do get it that people have their preferences if they prefer Varian or Cassandra’s arc, while I do think Cassandra’s is weaker I will admit neither are bullet proof. But it honestly baffles me how hard people try to poke holes in varians arc to make Cass sound better. It’s not enough to like Cass and her arc more we have to try and act like she was definitely the better villain even though varians arc had a life and entire village on the line while Cassandra’s arc just doesn’t have as high of stakes for Cass besides validation. Again I do get it if you vibe with Cassandra’s arc more but I just find it crazy to pretend Varian is overhyped when they actually went as far as to make a teenager believe he might lose his only family forever.

This opinion is so valid, personally I still think the fandom does favor varian but your right the fandom has lots of reason to! It’s not like people just like varian just because, well some do which is fair but anyway he’s a genuinely good and interesting character who didn’t get a lot of screen time. I usually see people use varians villain arc to to make Cassandra look worse instead of vise versa, so hearing about people doing that the other way around is really interesting but also annoying, can’t we just leave two good characters alone? Without putting them against each other 😒 I liked Cassandra’s villain arc better but when I rewatched season one the other day varians blew me away! I always underestimate just how good it is, (meaning both are good if you didn’t catch that) but yeah yall leave varian alone

(Why is he so sassy)