#ok. dorian gray. finished it. so

[j0lyn3]

.

[rye-kin]

Erm

Dumbass dorian gray illustration from a while

ANYWAY POSTING THSI BCAUSW: I used to joke abt having designs for ever literally character from every book I’ve EVER read…which isn’t a lot but leik I have a lot of classic book character design OK?

Anywayuhhh I literally Erm… THIS DESIGN HES been through a lot but I decided to just draw the deisgn from when I was??? 12??? and my mum thought it would be sweet to introduce me to goth lit… she regrets it prolly….

It’s actually the first gothlit book I read… ANYWAY I LOVE IT…. THOUGH IT REMINDS ME OF MY MUM (so it literally depends on how I feel abt her at a given moment)

[winterandwords]

I just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and I am not OK. I will never be OK again. I definitely have to read this again at least fifty times until I've fully absorbed it into my soul.

"The curves of your lips rewrite history." Fucking EXCUSE ME?? How actually dare you, Mr Wilde??

This book is so good it broke time and influenced things I wrote before I even read it. Morally bankrupt queer beauties doing fucked up shit and being indulgently introspective and dramatic, my beloveds.

(I'd learned about Oscar Wilde as a person before I ever read anything he wrote and my heart is breaking even harder for him now. Please have a queer history moment about him if you haven't already)

[klaasje]

how would you overhaul orin

SOOOOO ok… i like her sense of ambition/her backstory with the dark urge but i’d find her more compelling if she was less cartoonishly crazy. if i could only change one thing i’d make the shapeshifting process cost her something. maybe it could be a dorian gray situation where her real body is rotting bc she spends so much time in the shape of other people…? or maybe shifting is painful and grotesque like an illithid transformation. maybe it’s swallowing orin’s mind the way the tadpole is swallowing tav’s and that’s why she’s so unhinged. UM what else. i think orin fears powerlessness way more than death but on the flip side i think respect & infamy are more important to her than living (ie. she’d happily die if it meant she went down in history as Bhaal’s #1 Candy Baby) and that contrast (fear of being forgotten vs desperate determination to be taken seriously) would be fun to see more of… i haven’t finished the final fight against her yet so maybe she does get more desperate towards the end

also her fucked up backstory is one of my favourite things about her but you only get teeny glimpses of it!! her family & allies have all universally rejected her - is that why she spends so much time outside herself? is she ever lonely? what would loneliness even mean for character like orin. what would it look like. i have many questions

[dorianslayyy]

13 Books Tag Game

Tagged by @bubblegum-blackwood

1) The last book I read:

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros - I absolutely devoured this sequel, omg. Obviously it’s nothing fancy or anything like that but hey what’s wrong with a smutty YA? Not to mention DRAGONS

2) A book I recommend:

Perfume by Patrick Süskind - when I read it I had no idea it was a whole entire modern classic, I just picked it up at Oxfam for like 3 for £1 or something but, wow, I can 100% understand how it earned that status! If you like an eery not-too-long horror story with the most beautiful imagery describing some fucked up gothic storylines and a lot of social commentary, you’ll love this book!

3) A book that I couldn’t put down:

Ahhh ok, im gonna say In Memoriam by Alice Winn. The ending was… idk I wasn’t really a fan of the ending, I thought it kind of disengaged and took away from the struggles and severity of war and sexuality the rest of the book portrayed but until that point the rest of the story was everythingggg, there’s a sweet forbidden romance/coming of age/found family in the 1910’s propelling into a story of the horror of WW1 and losing everything you know. All I can really say is that I read it all in one go (more or less) and it had me laughing and sobbing throughout

4) A book I’ve read twice (or more):

I mean… there’s an obvious choice here - The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. HOWEVER I’m going to absolutely cheat and also say Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, the drama, the trauma, the vast majority of these characters are awful and I love it 🤌🤌

5) A book on my TBR:

So many… so so many… I’m gonna say House Of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski tho because it was expensive and it’s cool looking and I’ve actually been meaning to read that for a while but boy howdy it’s huge

6) A book I’ve put down:

The Tale Of The Body Thief by Anne Rice UGHH I’m trying so hard!! It’s so many words with so little going on, and I do enjoy it, I really do, it’s so goofy, but it’s so.. i mean verbose isn’t really quite the right word but you know what I mean. Sorry mutuals :( I just need a break to read something short and silly - which I’ve almost finished the little series I’m currently reading

7) A book on my wish list:

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - it sounds absolutely soul crushing and miserable, I know this completely contradicts what I just said about being in the mood for a silly read but <333

8) A favorite book from childhood:

Omg 10000x the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy, guys you don’t understand, as much as I would love to talk about how my mum and I used to sit and read Anne Of Green Gables before bed or my Enid Blyton obsession when I was like 6, Skulduggery Pleasant was my absolute jam - I must’ve read that series (the original 9 + spin offs) a million times in primary school. I did keep up with phase 2 when that was coming out but I don’t know if I’ll bother with phase 3, I’m just too old now and phase 2 wasn’t all that imo - I think it’s sort of beating a dead horse at this point :( but the original 9 and Maleficent Seven/Armageddon Outta Here were my childhood and I definitely absorbed Valkyrie Cain into my identity as a child so that series probably shaped a big part of who I am and my hobbies as an adult

9) A book you would give to a friend:

Love On The Brain by Ali Hazelwood. Silly, nerdy, fun, a cute little Pride and Prejudice-esque enemies to lovers feat. women in STEM

10) A book of poetry or lyrics that you own:

Ok so anyone who’s seen my other poetry blog @apoemadaykeepsthehoesaway knows my obsession with The Complete Poems of Wilfred Owen (I have a lot of difference versions) AHHH by far my favourite poet - as you can imagine with such a young man, you can clearly see his changing mentalities, his growth as a person and a writer, his influences, and really gather a lot of context for what’s going on with him in general through his poems. And he grew up in all the same areas I grew up in and hung around as a kid/younger teen, which I think adds to my personal interest in him too. Idk ig we’re very close friends on a parasocial level lol.

And ofc there really aren’t that many poets around that give such visceral, truthful, and emotional insights to the First World War as Owen does (also a queer icon). He was my intro to war literature and I have tattoos relating to him, he and his work are just incredible to read about, would highly recommend having a look at Siegfried Sassoon’s war poems too; another very blunt poet who was a celebrity and war protestor at the time and happened to mentor Wilfred Owen, as well as being linked with other influential folks of the time such as Robbie Ross, Stephen Tennant, Rupert Brooke, and Ivor Novello. Ok Ill move on :,)

11) A nonfiction book you own:

Surprisingly I quite like nonfiction, mainly history and essays from philosophers and the like. Speaking of, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good And Evil is a pretty solid one I own, I’ve never read anything where the author begins by calling himself and all his coworkers socially inept incels 🥹 but even though I don’t remember the specific reason I bought it (I was reading it to argue against some other philosophers in an essay in college and I really don’t remember who or what it was) I remember it being a really interesting read

Or yknow in a more traditional sense of non-fiction, I also have Notes On A Nervous Planet by Matt Haig. Really helped me get through some stuff, if you’re struggling with anxiety or feeling a bit down lately I’d very much recommend

12) What are you currently reading:

Omg ok, The Hitchhiker Trilogy by Douglas Adams, I’m currently on book 3 of 5 - Life, The Universe, And Everything. Really silly and nonsensical space bs but somehow also a bleakly satirical social commentary on the unseriousness of our ‘serious’ world. Really enjoyable, fairly political to some degree, really short (around or less than 200 pages a book), really fun. Martin Freeman truly was the perfect casting for Arthur Dent in the film of the first book. Full of that quintessentially British cynical humour and of course plenty of cups of tea

To give a little preview, the second book literally opens “The story so far: In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

13) What are you planning on reading next?

Books 4 and 5 of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, and then I suppose I had better carry on reading The Tale Of The Body Thief :D

Tagging whoever wants to have a go, it’s super fun, sorry if I went on a bit on some of these 😅

[vraiment-amoureux]

hi uhh what kind of classic lit are you into?

OMGOMGOGMOMG ok so. well.

my favorites are

Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

The Awakening - Kate Chopin

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

honorable mention to Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami cuz i started it and never finished it (lost the book but i really liked it)

but as far as types... i'm not a very big fan of american lit. trying to get into russian lit since one of my college majors is russian!!

[mel-vaz]

astronomy tower

Dinner was boring no one talk to you, so you just read your book and left early not like anyone cared.

That how you ended up here sitting on the railing of the Astronomy Tower reading The picture of Dorian Gray waiting for James Potter, popular, funny, sweet James Potter. Wait are you falling in love with James Potter, the man that stole your brothers and ruined your life.

“Hey sorry you waited so long” James said bring you out of your thoughts. James was out of breath form running, as he look up there you were sitting on the railing CRAP you were sitting on the railing. James ran towards you swiftly picking you up form the railing and holding you bridal style “What were you thinking you could have fallen” James yelled at you “ What are you thinking, you just pick me up with no regard for how heavy I am” you yelled right back at him embarrassed by how he was holding you “your not heavy,” he said with absolute certainty “ Just put me down so I can finish the story” and with that he sat on the ground with you in his lap “why I’m I on your lap?” you ask with confusion “because pretty girl don’t sit on the ground” said James with his cute smirk.

“Why don’t you just do as you told Sirius” your mother yelled. She had been yelling more since Sirius came back home from school. Cry and holding your hands over your ears with Regulus holding you. It wasn’t until late at night that your mother sent Sirius upstairs. After hearing Sirius door slam you and Regulus walk over “Sirius are you all right” ye it ask in a small voice “I’m fine” Sirius growl out “but you were yelling” Regulus commented “Shut up both of you, I hate this house and I hate this family so just get out.” 

“Why would Sirius say those thing” James says shocked “he was mad, he finally got freedom then I was taken from him” you say in a small voice “ok I see what happened with Sirius but why is Regulus mad”

It had been 2 years since that night and now it Regulus was coming home from school for the first time,so you and Kreacher came to get them. As soon as you see Regulus you run to him “Regulus” you shout hugging him “get off of me” he pushed me to the ground. 

“What happened” James ask sounding sad “I don’t know” you said sad. Getting off the ground “that the story of why the black siblings are on more” “not anymore we’re getting siblings back together”

[flowersforfrancis]

hello hello! how are you doing today? you seem like the type of person to have excellent taste in books so do you have any recommendations? (I just finished a series and I need something to fill the gaping cavity in my heart right now)

Hello! Pftt thanks for assuming I have good taste <3

I’m alright. I hope you’re well. Anyway, yes, books!

I can think of a few recommendations. I don’t know what you’ve read or what you like reading, but I’m going to assume we have similar tastes and recommend these:

Lapvona- Ottessa Moshfegh.(this one is somewhat good, but I’d most definitely search up the tws before reading- there were a few scenes that did make me physically sick). Norwegian wood- Haruki Murakami. These Violent Delights- the Micah Nemerever one and the Chloe Gong one. (They’re both completely different stories, but they’re both pretty good). Little life- Hanya Yanagihara (this one definitely isn’t for everyone). Better Than The movies- Lynn Painter. (a much, much lighter one). A Gentleman in Moscow- Amor Towles.(this one was ok). Circe- Madeline Miller. Maurice- E.M Foster. (This one, if you haven’t heard of it, is, as well as being an all round good read, quite interesting to me as it’s a queer novel written in 1913. Bunny- Mona Awad. The Secret History- Donna Tartt. The Song Of Achilles- Madeline Miller. If We Were Villains- M. L. Rio. 1984- George Orwell. The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt, The Picture of Dorian Gray- Oscar Wilde. Lie With me- Philippe Besson.(this one is a sad but beautiful, queer story that I read in french, but I believe the English translation is very easy to come by).

Uh, yeah. I don’t know. I’m sure you’ve heard of a lot of these, but I hope this was helpful. <3

[kota-the-dumpster-fire]

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Ok my loveliesss! So I just finished re-reading the Picture of Dorian Gray, and here is a dump!

So. If you didn't know what The Picture of Dorian Gray is a wonderfully macabre tale about our protagonist, DORIAN GRAY, and how he becomes corrupted by his vanity.

!!SPOILERS FROM BELOW HERE!!

But Anyways, let's get into the real stuff. So the picture of Dorian Gray is focused on themes of Hedonism. Hedonism is basically the virtue that self-pleasure is the end aim in life. Which…Oscar Wilde proves is absolute and utter B.S…but onwards! The portrait itself, which reflected Dorian's vanity, was such an enigmatic entity for the entirety of the book. When I first read it, I found myself wondering if the portrait was simply a figment of Dorian's hysteria, or truly existent.

What I find most fascinating about this book is the underlying tones of homesexuality. IT IS SO RARE. When I tell you: SO RARE to find a book-especially a classic, that is-that has such obvious underlying tones of GAYNESS. I MEAN. C'MON DORIAN!! SLAY~

Of course, it wasn't completely canonized in the novel, but in the 2009 film starring Ben Barnes, the relationship between Dorian and Basil was made canon!

I also wanted to elaborate on the more macabre themes that are spoken of in this book. In the end, we finally discover that Dorian was responsible for killing Sibyl. In all honesty, Sibyl deserved better. Was she a bit manic? yes. Was she…just a tad bit irrational at times? Yeah. But still, her death was UNCALLED FOR. Except for the fact that it was. Throughout the book, Sibyl was a symbol of purity. When Sibyl dies, her death is the death of this symbol. Wilde later goes on to explain how this was also the end of Dorian's possible chance to reclaim his beauty.

Overall, a wonderful, beautiful, enigmatic, and FRUITY read!!

So yeah! READ IT.

[victortalkingmachine]

1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, and 12 for the artist asks

1. what is your favorite color to work with?

probably dark grey—it is a very simple and versatile color 😑

2. who is your favorite character to draw?

probably sibyl vane :-) she's like the only character i can get to look similar between drawings and get to look right...

but if ocs count, then definitely venus botticelli

4. how often do you draw?

very very often, at least once a day... i just hardly ever finish anything lmao

5. digital or traditional?

both... digital when that's available, and pencil-on-paper and whiteboard drawings for when that's not available. neither is really primary

8. show us at least 2-3 drawings from 1-2 years ago.

ok....... i don't feel like scrolling through my gallery and witnessing the Horrors (old art) so here. 24 of them in quick succession

(fun fact: 5 of the drawings on the 2021 one are the same character)

10. are you right or left handed?

right handed ^_^

12. draw one of your favorite characters in 15 seconds.

woah! it's dorian gray!

[anaid-queen]

y'all, i hear your Loustat--Hannigram parallels, i hear your Spangelus-was-literally-based-on-Loustat-holy-fuck.

but as for who i most want Lestat & Louis to meet onscreen / who i think would get the most out of an interaction with?

i want them to meet Dorian and Toby.

ok, i'll admit, there's possibly no character better suited to giving Louis a lesson or two than Will Graham. i'll own up to that.

But.

i'm not sure how much help Louis would even still need if Lestat got his fucking shit together (even moderately)??? so Lestat i will focus on.

(and no, this didn't just turn from 'most fun crossover' to 'character best suited to slap sense into [other character]'. this was a thinly veiled excuse to yell about parallels between Lestat de Lioncourt and Tobias Matthews, and it was this from the start.)

because there is just so much.

[spoilers from here for Big Finish's The Confessions of Dorian Gray]

Lestat and Toby both...

are vampires that have lived way over the length of a human lifespan

will flirt with anything that moves and love being the center of attention / absolutely adored

hide great insecurities / fear / depression / struggles behind their charmer attitude

fall in love just once but deeply, tragically, irrevocably, so much that it changes the course of their entire life

and while of course, there are also differences -Toby is all but domesticated by his love for Dorian (whereas Lestat remains A Lil Shit (TM)), and Toby is also a lot more withdrawn und upset and struggling with things other than their lifespan - it is those differences especially that would make interactions between those two characters so damn interesting!!!!

[coll2mitts]

#58 Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Happy Halloween!  Let's show these industry music phonies what a REAL artist looks and sounds like by murdering everyone that goes against our vision!

I will admit, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into watching Phantom of the Paradise, and how intense its Phans are.  Its production is probably one of the most well documented out of all the movies I’ve written about on this list so far... so much so I had to cut off my research phase before the materials ran out because I never would have released this on time otherwise.  Conventions, and interviews, and painstakingly written breakdowns of every scene in the movie, oh my!

I’m going to have to release a redux version of this next year, aren’t I?

I thought this would be a weird 70s rock version of The Phantom of the Opera, which it is, but it is also Faust, A Picture of Dorian Gray, and like 3 decades worth of musical genres.  Phantom of the Paradise is directed by Brian De Palma, who is probably more well-known for his work on Carrie and Scarface.  I've never seen a single one of his movies, but that's OK, everything I need to know about him is succinctly outlined in this review of The Black Dahlia, and while you could prolly watch the entire movie in the time it takes you to watch Willie's recap of it, why would you want to?  

Apparently Mr. De Palma wrote Phantom of the Paradise after hearing a muzak version of The Beatles in an elevator and was so salty about it he had to make an entire movie about the music industry bastardizing creative genius and like, sure.  This isn't the first movie on this list to bitch about how exploitative the music and film industries can be, but this is the only one where the dude wears a metal bird helmet and murders people.

Phantom begins like any other Twilight Zone episode, with narration from Rod Serling warning us a monster may live in the opera house, but it might not appear as one in the beginning.  Then we're introduced to The Juicy Fruits, Death Records' latest retro musical act, put together by their President and first bird-related character name, Swan.  They sing a song about how some dude killed himself to sell more records, which isn't at all foreshadowing the events that happen later in the film.  After they're done recording, some Ben Folds motherfucker who was acting as their pianist starts playing exerts from his original cantata Faust.  

Swan likes what he hears and asks his lackey Arnold Philbin to get a few songs from the ironically named Winslow Leach so The Juicy Fruits can record them.  When the doo-wop band is mentioned, Winslow loses his absolute shit and insists "Faust" can only be sung by him and him alone.  Arnold is like, "Cool, dude, that's chill, just give me a few of the songs from your weirdly long 300 page sonata and Swan will think about producing your new album."  Winslow gives up the goods and Swan *surprisingly* never contacts him again.

About a month later, Winslow tries to approach Swan at Death Records, and immediately I'm reminded of greasy pop-punk kids wearing Atticus t-shirts roaming the halls of my high school.  In Phantom, this logo was awkwardly plastered over building signs, podiums, television sets, tape recorders, cameras, and whole mess of other things in post-production, and it uhhh, stood out.  

I thought perhaps this was to cut costs on props, but turns out these signs originally read "Swan Song Records", which is morbidly poetic.  Unfortunately for everyone involved, Led Zeppelin formed Swan Song Records in the time between the film finished shooting and the film being released.  To avoid a lawsuit, 20th Century Fox forced the team to edit out any references to Swan Song, and it is super noticeable and several years later people are still screaming about releasing the Swan Song cut.

Winslow gets booted from the building, and tracks Swan down at his home compound, Swanage.  TURNS OUT, Swan is holding auditions for his latest rock opera, Faust!  Winslow meets Phoenix while she's rehearsing his song while waiting and instantly falls in love.  He reveals he wrote the song, and she fawns over him in an attempt to get cast in the background chorus.  He takes her kindness as a sign of affection, and spends the rest of the movie obsessed with her.  

After Philbin tries to casting-couch Phoenix and she runs off, Winslow disguises himself as a hot chick in order to gain access to Swan.  He politely inquires what the fuck is up with Swan yanking Faust out from under him, and the confrontation goes about as well as expected.  Winslow gets physically removed, framed for possession of heroin, and lugged off to do time in the aptly named Sing Sing.

Swan, played by Paul Williams, is also the composer of this film.  He wrote songs for the Muppet-based movies that appear on this list, including "The Rainbow Connection", "Movin' Right Along", and "When Love is Gone", but also found success writing for pop acts like Daft Punk, David Bowie and The Carpenters.  While Phantom of the Paradise pretty much bombed upon release, the soundtrack went gold in Canada because 20k copies of it were sold in my motherland of Winnipeg, Manitoba.  For context, that's 40% of its total record sales.  The movie had a 18-week run in the city, and had a brief resurgence later that summer when Paul Williams played a concert there.  There have been a few retrospectives conducted to understand why exactly Winnipeg, of all places, clung to this story, including an entire feature-length documentary that I couldn't watch because you can't stream it anywhere.  There's been several Phantompaloozas hosted there for fuck’s sake.  But best I can tell, it really caught on with the kids in Winnipeg because it was marketed toward children on television.  The author of this article regaled a time where him and his other school-aged buddies would reenact scenes from it at recess, which is equal measures delightful as it is disturbing.

Winslow is having a terrible time in prison, as the Swan Foundation pulled all his teeth as part of what they called “Dental Health Research”.  6 months later, while Winslow is assembling board games as part of the government's legalized slavery program, he overhears his worse nightmare - The Juicy Fruits are going to be opening Swan's new venue, The Paradise, with Faust!  Winslow is so incensed by this, he hulks out of prison and attempts to destroy the recordings at Death Records.  He instead gets his head caught in a record press, becoming horribly disfigured with a copy of his bastardized work.  

When Winslow reappears, he is sporting a lovely metal beak and an appetite for revenge!  During rehearsals for the new 60s surf-rock branded Juicy Fruits, the Phantom starts the kill counter by blowing up a car on stage.

The fact there are not one, but two uncut shots on the screen at one time is bananas.

Swan seems generally unaffected by this, and tries to appease Winslow by offering him a job.  Swan invites Winslow to attend auditions so his vision for Faust can be realized properly.  Phoenix is there, and after agreeing to sell her voice to Swan, Winslow also agrees to rewrite the cantata with Phoenix’s performance in mind.  Winslow then signs a contract in blood without a lawyer present after Swan fucked him over once before, because it seems Winslow is incapable of learning anything from the story of Faust, even when he's currently living the plot.  

Swan begins to conduct his own secret auditions to replace Phoenix as a lead, seated at a desk that Ron Swanson would be disgusted by.

Swan settles on a showy glam-rock star named Meatloaf Beef, which presumably is the opposite of what Winslow wants.  Beef is from Transylvania, so of course they introduce him by having him emerge from a coffin growling.  On the day of the show’s opening, Swan drugs Winslow, grabs his latest version of the Cantata, and Cask of Amontillado's him into his recording studio.

Winslow hulks himself out of that, as well, and decides to threaten Beef's life in the shower, psycho-style.

For a second, Beef forgot about Winslow's whole thinly-veiled death threat thing, and he wondered how clean the plunger was.  

Beef tries to leave the production, but is convinced to stay when Arnold offers him drugs.  This was the wrong call, because moments later, after the newly 70s-updated Juicy Fruits build a Franken-Beef on stage, Winslow makes good on his threat and electrocutes him.

Then, out of the flames of Beef's corpse, Phoenix arises to sing a Karen Carpenter-esque ballad to calm the crowd down.

Winslow is comforted by Phoenix's performance, but so is Swan.  He goes into her dressing room and propositions her for sex, and she's so excited by her future career as a recording artist, she goes back to Swanage and fucks him.  Winslow watches this uncomfortably long love scene through a skylight and decides to stab himself out of grief.  The wound doesn't kill him, however, as Swan informs Winslow that because he signed a contract, he can't die until Swan does.  And also, just for funsies, Swan is immortal because he is under a mysterious contract as well.

Winslow discovers a tape in Swan's recording studio that reveals the secret of his success.  Swan, during a suicide attempt, makes a deal with the devil to stay young forever.  As long as the recording of the deal stays intact, Swan will never age, much like The Picture of Dorian Gray.  It's also revealed that all Swan learned from the Beef debacle is that crowds love murder, so he arranges to marry Phoenix on television at the end of Faust, and have her assassinated on stage shortly afterward to boost the ratings for sweeps week.  Winslow decides he needs to stop this immediately and destroys the videotape, damning himself and Swan to die.

While the records room burns, the Paradise is hoppin' in anticipation for Swan and Phoenix's wedding.  Winslow shoots the priest, which causes a mild frenzy, but not enough to keep people from partying.  He then stabs and kills Swan, which reopens his own stab wound, and The Phantom dies splayed out on the carpet with his one milky eyeball hanging out.  Phoenix can only look on in horror with the knowledge she'll need years and years of therapy to process the last 2 minutes of her life.

I saw this movie compared with Rocky Horror Picture Show several times while diving into this, and there are some parallels.  Both are rock horror musicals, both have a flashy frankenstein’s monster, and they were released within a year of each other.  Other than those surface level items, I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.  Watching Phantom of the Paradise is a weirdly unique experience, as the film acknowledges its campy nature, but still works hard to drive home the overlying message that creative industries care nothing for artistic endeavors and only want to make money.

I’m reminded of a statement former Disney CEO Michael Eisner used in a memo once, which yeah.. I know, hear me out.  He was the head of the company during the Disney Renaissance, and for all the questionable decisions he did make, those movies saved the company.  In an internal memo sent out during his time at Paramount, he riffed on a Don Simpson quote, “We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement… In order to make money, we must always make entertaining movies, and if we make entertaining movies, at times we will reliably make history, art, a statement, or all three. We may even win awards… We cannot expect numerous hits, but if every film has an original and imaginative concept, then we can be confident that something will break through.”

Now, this quote was taken from Disney War, and I couldn’t get a copy of the book to verify it, but I see it floating around in Disney forums constantly to justify why Eisner was the worst CEO ever because he said money was the primary goal of movie making.  But this statement is an insightful peek behind the curtain.  Disney is a business.  20th Century Fox is a business, and if they made a ton of movies that had artistic merit, but didn’t make them money, they’d have to stop making movies.  The goal of businesses is to make money so you can stay in business.

All this to say, yes, being exploited by a huge machine who has more power and money than God is absolutely wrong.  Swan isn’t justified in stealing Winslow’s work and murdering people to make The Paradise more successful.  But hearing a Muzak rendition of "A Day in the Life” isn’t quite the horror Brian De Palma made it out to be.  The Beatles have always been making that bag, so tone it down a bit.

[kerink]

tagged by @bulkhummus 😘

Relationship status: single 😳 i've been wanting to seriously reenter the dating pool but the last two years were dead in the water because i knew i was going to have to move out of state. we'll see what happens now that i'm back home and settled.

Favorite colors: green in general, but mint and forest specifically

Favorite foods: chirashi bowls

Song currently stuck in my head: The Clash - Rock the Casbah

Last thing i googled:

Dream trip: i have two: 1. going back to switzerland, but this time wiht rudy, yule, pepe, and dama; 2. going on a cruise with benny, jove, and dama

Last book read/Currently reading: the last thing i finished was the island of doctor moreau by hg wells. i'm currently reading the house of leaves by mark danielewski. i'm casually rereading both wtnv books and i'm doing dracula daily

Last book enjoyed: i really loved both the island of doctor moreau and it devours!, but something different i can put here is the picture of dorian gray

Last book hated: the poisonwood bible by barbara kingsolver. i actually wrote in the cover that it sucked ass to remind my future self. but...i didn't finish it (everyone boos me). i heard from some people that there's not a twist per se but the story takes a turn that's renewed my interest so i may give it another chance.

Favorite thing to cook/bake: i don't have any favorites, mostly because i never cook anything often enough to fall in love with the process

Opinions on the circus: it's fun, but i don't go often. i like acrobatics the best, and when clowning's done well it can really be a show stopper. i had a friend who was in the circus for many years so i have a soft spot

Sense of direction: i'm not great at all, but i can orient myself ok when i have to. when i was backpacking europe my guide got mad at me because i was able to orient us using the mountain peaks instead of the sun and i was like idk man they're just useful landmarks. but i also get lost easily while driving so don't follow me. i can read maps and gps well tho

tagging @game-warden @damazcuz @petrichorvoices @fleshsupper @bunnidanshi if you guys want

[hergan416]

Just finishing up with chapter 3 of Dorian Gray.

There are two lines that just spoke to me in the last couple of paragraphs after Dorian leaves and leaves Lordy Henry to his thoughts. Each will have separate posts.

The first is his paragraph on experience.

"All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy."

I have to stab at this, because the first time I read through [the 1891 edition], this line yanked me around and was like "oh shit that's so true." And it still has that brain feel for me, that the only point in analyzing ourselves is to find out our tendencies. Especially in terms of hedonism, where you are learning to ignore past self restraint, this feels accurate.

I'm an ex-Catholic. It took a long while before certain parts of what I now consider "the normal human experience" felt safe, or comfortable, or like they weren't transgressive. I still struggle with thought-censure, and an unwillingness to verbalize or act on certain inner desires irl (this may shock people familiar with my blog). I imagine that someone who didn't agree with Victorian England ideals around say...purity would have a very similar experience. It's a particularly good statement for a character like Lord Henry Wotton, who superficially serves the role of the "experienced bad influence" in the narrative.

Most of Lord Henry's statements read like statements by a philosophy major playing devil's advocate to me. Espcially one who is drunk or high at a party and trying to impress people with their wit. Or somewhere extremely anonymous, like 4chan, where ideas can be shared without any espcial attachment to them or their truthfulness. When speaking, he rarely comes across as genuine, merely clever, a good speaker, but not someone to be trusted or believed. [This could be something i as a reader am bringing to the book, I certainly have a different experience with intellectualism as a state school graduate who doesn't use my degree and views my time in school as a pleasant, experimental diversion, compared to Wilde, who went to Oxford and then went on to join high society and be considered a thinker/wit/personality.] But here...Lord Henry is making statements to himself. We can reasonably be assured that at least in this moment he believes them.

BUT this time through, thinking of the statement in isolation and not as a reflection on Dorian Gray's love for Sybil Vane, or specifically puritanism/Victorianism, I don't think it is anything more than a truism. It feels true when you read it because you are thinking of a specific topic, in a specific frame of mind. But if you eat something and it tastes bad, you don't seek the food out again. If a person treats you horribly, you dump them and don't look back. You aren't stuck repeating past mistakes, with the only difference being you enjoy doing it now.

I watched a loved one go through recovery and set aside an addictive chemical, go through hell and high water to get clean. Sure he will always be at risk for relapse, that's how addiction works. But to say experience has taught him nothing and isn't useful in helping him change his behavior, in fact only dooms him to repeat his "sin" and this time enjoy it more seems unequivocally false to me.

People can and do change. This statement imagines people as static, stuck in their personalities and unable to do much about them. This may be true of some things, but not all.

Ok so I've gone and thought about it and had a conclusion. But why do that at all?

What is the point of me trying to parse out what is actually universally true, what the character Lord Henry believes, and what he is merely saying in experimentation (on himself or on Dorian)? An I claiming Lord Henry is serving as a mouthpiece for Wilde here? And why engage as though this is philosophy and not literature? Literature is not philosophy, and Wilde makes it exceptionally clear he does not view this book as morally instructive. Why should I care about whether statements in it can be taken at face value?

First, it's hard NOT to engage with a text so full of philosophy for what it is!

I am a reader. I bring to the book my own experiences, centuries later, and try to parse what this book means to me. And there has to be someplace, in the intersection of authorial intent, text on the page, and reader interpretation that allows for a conversation, where I look at what Lord Henry is saying and make my own conclusions about the veracity of his statements, how his character makes me feel, what I want to happen over the course of the novel. This is my prerogative, maybe even my duty as Reader. In fact, me doing this is probably intended. I can't imagine Wilde lacked the self awareness to not see how people might respond at the time. Surely the audience was doing far more of this in the late 1800s than I am in the early 21st century.

And second, even as Wilde proclaims the separation of art and philosophy, he's still making statements (the annotations suggest) he hopes will impact the growing field of psychology, for instance. In fact, that's what happens in the whole following paragraph!

Conveying ideas does not mean subscribing to them, nor does reading a text. But as I'm learning from the annotations, while Wilde was an artist with the strongest opinions about the role of art in life, he dabbled in MANY other intellectual fields and had opinions about nearly all of them, many of which appear in this book.

While I certainly don't think you should use The Picture of Dorian Gray to convict Oscar Wilde of gross indecency, you can still see many parallels between the ideas in the book and the ideas in Wilde's speeches about art, or his essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, or his private communications to friends. The book is fiction, but the author, even by his own admission is still there.

And regardless of whether you can kill off the author and ignore him...why can't literature and philosophy intersect? What is the difference between a story and a thought experiment?

[greypersonna]

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[unicyclehippo]

Hey I'm like super super pumped for this fic already my god,,,, thank you thank you thank you

yeah it's gonna be super fun hopefully !!!! i have most of it plotted out, i have some of it plotted out. the overarching story yes i know exactly what happens but then within that, probably at least?? a third of the scenes are largely written or at least big snippets & then another third are scene cards. all in all it's shaping up to be about 6 real chapters & five interlude chapters that have little worldbuilding/storybuilding fun things like evidence that the investigators have compiled like letters between imogen & other people or like laudna's death inquest n such (fun!!) (i actually DID do research for that lmao). i wanna do some more reading - i would LIKE to finish dorian gray & frankenstein before i start posting chapters but i dont think its necessary, it's just something that would make me feel even more delighted in the story im writing.

i dont think i'll start posting anything until the story is finished or very close to it just because im SICK of having unfinished stories on my ao3. enough!! im finishing something ok!! anyway who knows how far off that means this story is? i am a very fast reader but im chronically extraordinarily lazy. so. my apologies