#is somehow against criticism or being a little hater is wild to me

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[maidenvault]

Favorite gothic horror novels? Just finished rereading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Finished reading Rebecca about a month ago after not being able to concentrate on books for awhile and it brought me back to the gothic genre

Hey! 😁 So I don’t have a more recent memory of many books in this category and I don’t trust my own taste from 8+ years ago lol, but these are some novels you didn’t already mention (+ some short stories and other stuff) that I’ve loved enough to read more than once and know pretty well.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” This one is so effective in how it very gradually turns into horror, opening with lush descriptions of the beauty of a garden in the first scene and then, as Dorian moves toward becoming so evil over the course of the story, taking you to darker and darker places, to depravity and decay. Basically a scathing criticism of English aristocracy and a defense of problematic art in which Wilde was also deprecating himself a bit, which seems to suggest that total innocence is the greatest sin because Dorian's inability to think for himself makes him so easily corrupted by challenging ideas.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 

“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within.” I'm a bit of a hater of the Netflix Hill House, mostly because even taking it on its own terms it's just not that good, but also because it erases the real horror at the center of the novel, which is the harm the traditional family can do and the reality that one can never completely escape where they came from. The ending feels horrifyingly inevitable because of how incredibly well the protagonist and her weaknesses are fleshed out throughout the book. Few pieces of horror media have truly gotten to me and spoken to some of my own personal fears like this.

Interview With the Vampire / The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

“Do you know what it means to be loved by Death? Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?” These aren't all-time favorite books of mine or anything, and I wouldn't quite call myself a TVC fan, but so much about these first two books in the series are exactly what I want when I feel like reading something moody and gothic in a historical setting. When I finally got around to reading these after a life of being exposed to stuff like True Blood and TVD, it felt like running my hands through bolts of authentic silk and velvet after only encountering synthetic imitations of those before. Somehow they still hold up as something special in the vampire genre and aren’t just laughable after angsty vampires and other things in them have become cliché. Knowing Anne Rice was, in a way, dealing with the death of her daughter by writing the first one certainly helps to still give it some real power.

Swamp Thing by Alan Moore (Saga of the Swamp Thing #20-61)

“There grows yet in Hell a flower that’s named for her.” In this run, Moore famously retconned aspects of Swampy's origin story and put him in a very Frankenstein-like state of questioning the nature and meaning of his existence as a monster. It's beautifully atmospheric and you can practically hear the insects in the Louisiana bayou in the more still and quiet nighttime moments. You get a mad scientist villain, a beauty-and-the-beast love story, truly terrifying vampires, truly terrifying occult magic stuff, and an unforgettable portrayal of Hell that Neil Gaiman would later build on in The Sandman.

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving

“Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere.” If you're not the kind of reader who can enjoy, in and of itself, being immersed in a setting through lengthy descriptions, this may not be your thing, but I just love the picture it paints of historical New England. It’s the ultimate spooky autumn vibes story, in a sort of wholesome and cozy way. I think of certain passages every year when the leaves start to turn and I start seeing pumpkins everywhere.

"The Masque of the Red Death" / "The Tell-Tale Heart" / "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe

I mean, it's Poe. WYD if you haven't started with some of these.

"Goblin Market" by Christina Rosetti

If you were exposed to this as a kid like I was, it’s worth revisiting! A favorite poem of mine which tells a very moving and dark fairy tale.

“The Rats In the Walls” / “The Call of Cthulhu” / “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” The problems with Lovecraft are well known and you can absolutely live without reading his work if you don't want to take the gross stuff with the stuff that works, but the stuff that works no one else can really do quite like he did. It's not that his prose was even that great, but....his imagination. 🤯 He was consciously taking a lot from Poe, and I think his work seems to partly fit right in with gothic works of the classic canon because it was dealing with the anxieties of an increasingly secular world, perhaps during the last gasp of a time when that could still feel like a relevant theme in horror, but obviously in a very new way that was uniquely his own and came to define cosmic horror.

[peppertaemint]

Controversial ask ahead, but I know you’ve never been a blog to avoid unpopular opinion so I’m coming to you with this one. I see a lot of Army praising RM for his statements at the las vegas concert and the vlive after. But all I’m getting from his statements is a bad case of whiplash. First at the end of the show he’s all like they don’t give a shit about the grammys and they’re in vegas for the concert and army and not for the grammys and they don’t care about haters. Which tbh comes across as a tiny bit arrogant and bitter to me but if that’s how he feels well ok then. But then he goes to vlive moping about the very same haters he just said he doesn’t care about and goes on about them always being underdogs (don’t see how that still rings true in 2022) and talks about having to work harder and go back to their roots and change their artistry or whats not to earn the grammy. I know people can have mixed responses to disappointment but I just feel like he should probably choose his public stance and stick with it? This being said, I love BTS and RM to death and this is in no way hate but it’s a criticism against their public response (or lack thereof) to certain things.

Hi Anon,

I meant to respond to his sooner because I did happen to catch his comments post-Grammy. I think that, realistically, his slightly contradictory stance is a symptom of the disappointment he must have been feeling. Anyone nominated who thought they had a shot at winning might feel varying degrees of disappointment. I'm sure I would. This seemed to mean a lot to him; everyone has a different take on awards and accolades.

Him sorta pretending like they weren't in Vegas because of that might be seen as disingenuous, but I think it's just a symptom of going through that mini-grief. He even admitted it to a degree from what I recall: I'm just saying that to make myself feel better. Well, yes you are and that's understandable in my view. Is it arrogant? Idk maybe but he's also a two-time grammy-nominated artist. You could say no one should expect to win but maybe he just... really did think it was in the bag? Idk.

The other stuff he said felt like a wild mish-mash of so many things many of us had assumed were happening, but him saying it all out loud just confirmed it. They did change their sound and saying, now, that they'll need to go back to their roots to win makes me wonder if he somehow didn't realize that going down this road chasing a US contemporary sound was never the way to go in the first place? I mean, profit-wise it was brilliant. People dine out on Billboard number ones for their entire lives if they play it right. I just find it hard to believe he didn't understand what the critical response would be to the direction they took, and how a certain section of their fans would feel.

Regarding him making an attempt to tell people to settle down on Twitter or wherever, I don't think it was too little too late even if in some ways it felt halfhearted. I wish the group did this more because their fans will listen to them. Not all, but most. They are the leaders and they set the tone. The whole scrappy, underdog narrative creates an us vs. them that ultimately no longer works. The group and the fans need to stop claiming the world as their enemy.