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positively--speculative · 2 months

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Hi, I’ve read through of your posts on iwtv and media literacy and saw you mention the gothic story telling and genre. I’d please like to know your definition of these words if it’s not a problem?

I am actually quite tickled to get this ask. This will probably get long and it may get sloppy.

First, let's talk about the surface level of the genre, because this is what draws a lot of people in.

We have dark settings--think castles, haunted mansions with attics and/or basements where weird things might be happening. These places might be old or have some sort of dark history surrounding them. For example, think of the house in Henry James's Turn of the Screw. A more recognizable symbol might be Dracula's castle in various forms of media.

We have the paranormal--vampires, ghosts, etc.

We sometimes have romance--Some examples of this are seen in novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. A more recent example in film is Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak.

Mystery--As seen in some of my previously named examples.

These are only a few of the surface-level elements we find in these stories.

Personally, I believe that the difference between a good gothic story and a not-so-good gothic story, whether that be written or visual, is how these things are used to explore uncomfortable topics outside of the story. If you fail to use these themes and symbols effectively, you get either a shocking but sometimes silly horror story (which I think there is a place for) or "shock porn" which I would argue Anne Rice's work leans more towards, but I'll get more into that later.

Is the ghost there to just be scary or is the ghost being used as a metaphor for the guilt or regret that haunts the protagonist? Do the zombies exist just to chase the protagonist or are they there to remind both the protagonist and the readers of their own mortality? Are the vampires just "sexy" or do they confront us with the type of sexuality we are not supposed to want to explore--Think Twilight vs. different versions of Dracula, Carmilla, The Lost Boys, and to a certain extent, The Vampire Chronicles. And if the vampires in these stories confront us with this sexuality, what is being SAID about it? Is the media encouraging us to explore it? Shaming us? How is it being framed?

I think some of the strongest horror stories (not all gothic stories are necessarily horror, but I just happen to like horror movies) embrace elements of the gothic genre. Some that come to mind are The Ring, Candyman, and Get Out.

In The Ring, our supernatural entity is Samara Morgan, a vengeful spirit trapped in a well. Part of the film takes place in Seattle, Washington and an old cabin resort outside of the city. This by itself creates the rainy, gloomy atmosphere known in the gothic genre. The other part takes place on an island that's even gloomier. An island itself is very symbolic of feelings of being "trapped" or isolated. One of my favorite lines from the movie comes from Samara's doctor--"When you live on an island and someone catches a cold, it's everyone's cold." A very clever idiom to describe how Samara's ability to imprint disturbing images in her mother's mind became everyone's problem when she sought help. And that's scary--what loving mother wouldn't seek help for her child even if said child was hurting them? But how terrifying is it to be on an island with said little girl with these kinds of abilities? No one on the island asked to be victims, but it's not like any of them can just move away. And Samara's mother certainly didn't *know* that trying to get help for her child would come at the expense of everyone else's mental health. It's not that easy. There's also an uncomfortable truth about love. Samara loves her mother. Samara is also evil. Both are true and both can be true in the reality outside of the film. She's a "bad kid" who no one can "help," because she doesn't *want* to be helped. She's also the island's secret. A secret that haunts the community but one that cannot be contained forever. Secrets *are* like ghosts. They haunt us and we fear them, because what do our secrets say about us? How long until our secrets get out and spread like Samara's VHS?

Get Out is another good horror story containing the gothic elements of mystery, secrets, dread, and entrapment. The claustrophobic feeling comes in the form of the "sunken place." The feeling of being conscious of our interactions and surroundings but not being in *control* of them is frightening, *but* the sunken place is also a metaphor for the racial sociopolitics in our society. How many Black Americans are burdened with the feeling of having to play "respectability politics" to survive? And what does that cost the Black community as a whole? I should also add that the story mostly takes place on a secluded property in the woods which adds to the "trapped" feeling.

I think Candyman is a very interesting horror/gothic to talk about because this one is very much catering to the white "female gaze." Candyman is very much like a classical vampire. He's handsome but very, VERY dangerous. But he's also BLACK which adds another layer to this. He pursues the white protagonist, Helen, in a very similar way we often see Dracula pursue Mina. In Helen's first, real encounter with this vengeful spirit, she is very much in a trance-like state and very helpless. This kind of thing where the woman protagonist is *helpless* to the handsome villain is very common in gothic stories. It allows the reader/viewer to kind of escape into a situation where they are helpless to the things they aren't "allowed" to pursue in the real world--'Oh, no! Whatever am I to do? This handsome man is also evil, but is also in love with me, and I am *weak* to his charms!' As taboo as interracial relationships are today, I'd say they very much were in the 90's--and I am speaking from the perspective of a biracial woman who grew up in that time and *rarely* met other biracial kids or saw interracial families represented in media. Now, as much as I *love* Candyman as a film, the framing of the story does put Black men in a compromising position, as the idea of Black men being a danger to white women has long been one that has been weaponized by white supremacists. This is an unfortunate and likely unintended feature of this movie.

My problem with Anne Rice and her fandom is that her writing is made out to be the epitome of gothic storytelling when she mostly just incorporates gothic elements but says nothing with them. And her fandom, both those who like the show and those who hate on it, have a nasty habit of talking down to people who criticize her work and who suggest that the show does a lot of things better than she did. They do this especially to Black fans.

One thing that has stood out to me when it comes to the book fandom is the way they have insulted Black people's intelligence when we've expressed discomfort with the racism in her books. I've seen it said among them, 'The book is *challenging* you to have sympathy towards awful people' in regard to Louis owning slaves. But none of them have ever answered a question I put out there in response--*How?* How am I being challenged? Because Anne Rice frames Louis's racism as a simple detail of his character, but there is never any pushback for it. There is no confronting the reader in the writing. There is nothing there to give us conflicting emotions about relating to this guy in *any* way. And Daniel never pauses when Louis's racism pops out, which I think would be a reasonable thing to do in the 1970s even for a white dude. And one thing that has always made me uncomfortable around white fans of Rice is they almost *never* brought up the topic of race when it came to her books. It didn't seem to phase them, and if it didn't phase them, how exactly was it a challenge for them to relate to Louis?

Sexuality is also something very present in Rice's books, but again, what is said about it? What does Rice *say* about queerness and what is the significance of vampirism as it relates to that.

There is also the issue of Claudia. Originally, in IWTV, Claudia was turned as a five-year-old and is forced to physically remain a five-year-old as she grows up and matures into a woman mentally--so, that element of feeling trapped is certainly there. But it also gets uncomfortable. Louis, who raises her with Lestat, later begins to view Claudia in a *sexual* light. And again, it's there. It's disturbing. But Rice never offers any sort of push back for it. Not even through Daniel. Sorry, but the framing of it is yucky. So, either Rice was saying that this is okay or she was saying nothing at all.

I feel as if the show serves as a response to the things neither Rice herself nor her fandom cared to address. By making Louis a Black man of the early 1900s, the issue of race can no longer be avoided. It's there at the center in a way it wasn't in any discussions about the books. It also does a better job of exploring uncomfortable topics such as Claudia's struggle with being a grown woman in an adolescent girl's body and illustrates that there are much *better* ways of going about exploring that than creating an incestuous relationship that, again, says *nothing.*

The show also does a better job at diving into the nuances of love an abuse. This is something I've seen a lot of fans struggle with, and I think there are a lot of reasons for this. One reason in particular is a very simplistic, Disneyfied idea of love. Lestat does love Louis and that's difficult for people because we are constantly told that someone cannot really love you if they hurt you, but that's just not reality. As I said when discussing The Ring, bad people can experience feelings of love while still being bad. Lestat loves Louis, but he loves him selfishly. If Louis hurts him (threaten to leave/choose their daughter over him), he will hurt him worse (physically abuse him within an inch of his life). It's an uncomfortable reality that sometimes a person can be evil but still can love, and love alone does not make them qualified to be a husband or a father. It is also an uncomfortable reality that we can love our abusers. We can forgive them. They can continue to hurt us, and we can forgive them over and over again. It's not always as simple as "just leaving" the first time they lay their hands on us.

As someone who has dealt with "emotional vampires" before, Lestat definitely fits the profile. Vampires in some of the oldest folklore are depicted as insatiable creatures who live off of the blood and energy of others, and this folklore often serves as a metaphor meant to help us be careful when choosing who we associate with. An emotionally selfish person can demand our company and drain us of our emotional and mental well-being if we're not careful. We see this with the way Lestat pursues Louis, even when Louis attempts to put space between them--even when he is mourning his brother. Lestat shows up at his brother's funeral and repeatedly invades his mind, and isolates him by killing Lily, driving Louis into a mental spiral until he finally caves when he corners him in the church.

Now, to understand the flaws of Rice's original work and the strengths of the TV adaptation when it comes to creating a good gothic story, an amount of media literacy is required. I feel like, unfortunately, a lot of Rice's fans read these books when they were probably too young and were not introduced to them with the proper guidance. Young teenagers are usually not equipped to handle the kind of book Rice wrote, especially if the highly charged subjects are rarely challenged. I feel like a lot of those who take offense to Rice being criticized were very young when they read her books and never matured intellectually as they got older. I've mentioned here before that as a teenager, I was not allowed to read Rice's books. It's a miracle I saw either film adaptation. As an adult who has now read Rice's work, I completely understand why those books were deemed inappropriate for me and am grateful I read them *after* taking a good amount of literary criticism classes.

Assuming this was asked in good faith, I thank you for your patience. This took a while for me to write. And I thank you for excusing the sloppiness.

#anon #answered #media literacy #gothic storytelling #gothic #gothic literature #gothic film #horror #vampires #ghosts #monsters #Anne Rice #iwtv #iwtv amc #csa mention tw #incest mention cw

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txttletale · 1 year

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hey i need something to practice my bat swinging on. oh wow what's this big buzzing object i think ill try this. anyway it's funny how 'daddy' has passed into the popular lexicon and step-whatever porn is mainstream enough for it to be every funny streamer guy's joke du jour and dan harmon's had two beloved and successful television shows but whenever a trans woman has an incest fetish it's cause to unleash the internet death panopticon on her

#tattletxt #please do not respond to the post saying 'well i think the other stuff is bad too!'#that's not the point innit i don't care what you personally think about it im pointing out a societal double standard #incest mention cw

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queermania · 1 year

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It's not just about shipping tho. It's about the real world harm that problematic ships perpetuate and promote. If someone is in to something like incest or age gap that tells me a lot about what they think is ok.

and is the real world harm in the room with us right now?

#replies #anonymous #incest mention cw #wank for ts

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autisticandroids · 2 years

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one thing that makes me feel crazy is when people like. man this is about to sound like a "slash fans devalue male friendship" ass take which is not like. what i'm saying. but people like. they don't differentiate between ordinary care and romantic love. if that makes sense. like one thing i have noticed is that fanfictions and posts will kind of blur the line between dean caring about cas at all, or dean being closer to cas than sam is, and dean being in love with cas.

like, to me, the general vibes of evidence that dean is in love with cas goes as follows: 1) i think dean is gay, 2) i think dean essentially treats cas as a life partner, 3) it's clear to me that dean has some degree of repression and secrecy in his relationship to cas, and 4) there are certain specific behaviors that dean engages in with cas (touching him a lot, being obsessed with his sex life, etc.) that i think sexualize their relationship to some extent.

and each of these categories on their own doesn't really mean that dean is in love with cas. like, for an easy example, dean could be gay and simply not in love with his best friend. like just because dean and benny fucked raw against a tree in purgatory doesn't mean dean wants to get with cas.

the life partner thing is sticky specifically for dean because he's also treated sam that way in the past and i don't think dean is in love with his brother lol. like i think for a lot of people their experience of romantic love and their experience of having a life partner-esque relationship are like, the same thing? the venn diagram is a circle? but that's not dean's experience.

the repression is harder to handwave away, but i think you can reasonably argue that dean is repressed in all his affection because he has a masculinity complex about showing vulnerability.

and then there's the sexualized behaviors which like. honestly on their own they are indicative of at the very least a crush. come on man. there's only two things i know for certain etc.

i think these four pieces of evidence, taken together as a whole picture rather than individually, are evidence that dean is in love with cas. but i don't think any of them on their own is really proof of that except maybe number 4, but even then crushes are fleeting, they fade, dean making heart eyes in season five doesn't necessarily mean he was *in lurve* in season ten. like you need to look at all the evidence for a complete picture.

and it's notable that there's a lot of behavior i don't really put here at all. like i don't think a lot of the care dean shows cas can reasonably be argued to be evidence that dean is in love with cas, or like, i don't think dean's extreme jealousy and possessiveness is indicative of that either because he is also jealous and possessive of his family members (at least, sam and mary) and he would probably be possessive of anyone else he was super close to if there was anybody. the only person we've seen dean get that close to and not get jealous over is bobby, which is interesting but i think mostly comes down to the fact that dean sees bobby as an authority figure over him rather than the other way 'round.

(also a little off topic but i'm always saying this and it bears repeating: i also think dean is happy in their relationship as it is in the late seasons, at least 13/14/15, like i think that what he wants, he has. the positive things that would result from them making it official are 1) dean unpacking his own sexuality would be good for him in a variety of complex ways that mostly don't really directly touch on his relationship with cas and are more related to his own identity, 2) cas would be a LOT happier for a variety of obvious and not-so-obvious reasons that i won't enumerate here because they're not really relevant to the dean analysis i'm doing, and 2.5) with the relationship now named, dean would be forced to contemplate and think about his relationship with cas and what it consists of, instead of just using it as a building block of his life without really looking at it. anyway, don't get me wrong, dean would be very happy to be explicitly in a romantic relationship with cas. but he's also very happy in a platonic domestic partnership.)

(also re: the abandonment issues objection: personally i think dean has fewer abandonment issues as the show goes on and sam and cas stop leaving/trying to (for evidence, see the divorce arc: dean is extremely confident that cas won't leave, so he feels comfortable taking out his anger and pain on cas, and is then shocked when this drives cas away), and i don't really think getting into a relationship would either increase or decrease his level of abandonment issues anyway.)

anyway the thing is that this is all motivated by a fanfic i saw that assumed that it would be logical for sam not to differentiate between "dean and cas' relationship is close and intense, and certainly dean has more of a right to cas' time than i do by dint of how close our different relationships to cas are" and "dean and cas are In Love." when it's like... no. i think that from, say, sam's point of view, from what sam has seen, it's perfectly logical to simply think dean and cas are extremely close.

(personally imo if sam knows dean is in love with cas it's because sam already suspects that dean is gay from the evidence he has from other situations (e.g. the siren, the way dean acted with benny), and because he has that information, he can then put two and two together wrt. dean and cas' extreme closeness. like just the closeness isn't enough.)

and then i started thinking about another fic i read which wove the concept of dean and cas being in love into the homeless cas arc in a way that made me feel like the author was failing to differentiate between dean being in love with cas and showing him basic care. like in fact i think that dean was both in love with cas in season nine and a phenomenally shitty friend and person to him during that time, both are true.

anyway the point of this essay is elusive to me it's a collection of thoughts that don't quite fit together in a way i can verbalize but essentially it's... i don't know. people inject too much romance (and too many ideas about romance) into destiel even though destiel is a romantic relationship? that's not right but it's part of it. there's not only one way to interpret most of dean's actions even though overall they paint a specific picture? that's also not it even though it's in there. people can be important to each other without being in love, and person a being important to person b is not good evidence that person b is in love with person a? that's closer to what i was going for.

anyway the thing is i do think dean is in love with cas and that this is the most accurate reading of the text but i don't think it's obvious and it's definitely not obvious to anyone but the audience because only the audience has all the evidence from which this conclusion can be drawn.

#spn #incest mention cw

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aqours · 9 months

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man idk what i expected today to be like but being called "one of the biggest incest shipping proshippers in the fandom" was absolutely not on the list

#starposts #if that's the case why do other tcoaal bloggers i like have me blocked... :(#sobs loudly #but no seriously. wha ta fucking ride that was #incest mention cw

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pianokantzart · 8 months

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GOD NO DONT GIVE ME WAR FLASHBACKS FOR THE TMNT FANDOM NOO NOOO

Yeah... remember TMNT 2003-2012 when half the fandom thought that Leonardo and Raphael's rivalry meant they wanted to kiss with tongue?

#incest mention cw #askbox #anon #I met some really cool people in the tmnt 2012 fandom #but boy howdy am I glad I've learned to use the block button since then

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greenmther · 27 days

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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐂𝐄. a voice that, in her mind, whispers nothing but wrong decision & failure. to know she's had a hand, no matter how inconsequential it felt at the time, in helaena's pain was enough to make her stomach turn. to cause another crack in her heart. like helaena, alicent lives her life in a certain state of discomfort which never wavers . . except now, she feels, when things look to be worsening rather than getting better. was this the gods punishment onto her, then ? ( to see her children, one by one, turn on her or destroy themselves. to witness their suffering & only have empty palms to remedy it. a mother is suppose to comfort her children, to assure them, to make them as content as possible. why couldn't she ever do that one thing right ? why, gods, why ! )

@petitmortes said, " DID IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU THAT I NEVER WANTED THIS TO BEGIN WITH ? "

brown eyes, so full of sorrows as of late, widened as mouth hangs slightly agape. hand rests about her stomach to keep teeth from picking at skin, a shaky breath taken before the mother can speak: ❛ of course i have, helaena. ❜ spoken softly, voice thick. tears well in the queens eyes, but none fall in the moment. ❛ i- . . marrying you to aegon felt like a mercy. it felt better. better you marry someone you know than a stranger. better you remain somewhere familiar, surrounded by those whom love you. ❜ all the things i was not spared, not given, briefly thought internally. lips press together, discomfort settling into her bones, as alicent takes a step forward. ❛ my girl, do you know how it hurts me to look at you at times & see a mirror of myself ? to know i . . i was the cause of some of your pain, your discomfort, when i believed myself protecting you. ❜

#petitmortes #IN CHARACTER.#ouch ouch ouch #incest mention //#incest mention cw

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angorwhosebabyisthis · 4 months

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copying anon over here because i went to save the ask to my drafts and tumblr sent it directly to the shadow realm, welp:

I dug through your rambles about Hermes, so I'm looking forward to thoughts on Erich with the ancient world's everything lol ~

ahhhh thank you, i'm glad you've enjoyed my rambles so far!! i've been taking the second half of the pandaemonium arc more slowly, partly because i'm been Out of It the last few days and partly because the direction the plotline with erich and lahabrea has taken a turn for has been leaving a really bad taste in my mouth. i've been making my way through it, though, and percolating Deeply on the He and how he and pandaemonium as a whole fit into all this. spoiler alert i love him even more now

(on the one hand, it finally helped me articulate some points that imo make or break an 'abusive parent sees the error of their ways and apologizes up and down and swears to do better, and both that and the context in which the abuse happened leave their victim feeling conflicted about it' arc. so there's that! on the other hand it, uh. it did so by very much being the goofus here lmao, and erich deserved better.)

(the way the whole thing is played off is also just, deeply deeply misogynistic. athena is top-tier nastywoman and i love her for it, and 'mothers--in particular white women, especially to their children of color--can be shitty and predatory and abusive and are accountable for it full stop,' is great abuse rep but fucking WOWZERS)

(which like, i will say that the overtones are not at all lost on me that athena repeatedly goes out of her way to prey on, abuse, and violate not just men of color but black men; dehumanizes them and treats them and their bodies as her property; and is strongly implied to have sexually abused erich in particular. and how the one who gets the brunt of it is her biracial, very VERY not white-passing son, who she isolated from the black side of his family to do whatever she wanted with. it is insanely fucking refreshing to see that shit not cushioned at ALL, and it really sucks that that had to come bundled in with the abuse apologia and misogyny.)

(i am also realizing that this is one of the reasons erich whitewashing, and how common it is in the fandom as well as official art, bothers me so much beyond the obvious. while it's uncertain how much of it was intentional, his narrative evokes not just real-world racism but colorism, and a specific brand of it and how it intersects with abuse. even if just on a doylist level erich was abused for being as dark-skinned as he is, and erasing that is even shittier than your run-of-the-mill whitewashing.)

(anyway. ANYWAY. anyway. all that is a post of its own and i haven't even gotten to the parts about ancient society yet. you see what i mean by having a lot of thoughts about him lmao)

i'm hoping to finish the last leg of the questline tonight so i can start fully putting my thoughts together because god there is SO MUCH, and i'm excited even if i foresee having to grit my teeth through the rest of the moments between him and lahabrea lmao

#final fantasy xiv #ffxiv #ffxiv erichthonios #ffxiv athena #ffxiv lahabrea #thank you anon!! the preview for the notification almost gave me a heart attack and this was really nice to open it and find instead lmao #asks #anonymous #the crit files #ffxivcrit tag #abuse cw #abuse apologia cw #CSA mention cw #SA mention cw #racism cw #incest mention cw #(incidentally athena is a perfect example of why i'm so wary of 'teehee i love evil women and support women's wrongs' in fandom these days)#(it really sucks to have to give so much of Enjoy Fucked Up Lady Blorbos for Being Evil and Stop Holding Double Standards About It)#(fandom such a wide berth; but holy shit it is a *cesspool* of racism and childism and rape/abuse apologia)#(from people who want a single-issue pass to be bigoted; and DARVO and direct harassment at people who try to call it out)#(instead of applying any kind of nuance or intersectionality or critical thought)#(and it's how you get shit like people cheering on their white blorbo's Evil Girl Power for sexually abusing men of color lmao)#(i have conflicted feelings abt both athena's portrayal and erich as abuse rep but holy shit it's been such a relief to see none of that)#(any other fandom would be a radioactive nightmare zone about this and thank fuck it isn't)#ANYWAY i do indeed have Manythoughts about him and am looking forward to being able to put them together cogently #FF tag #ffxivtag #the salt files #warning: worm grass #pandae pilled anon

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