Part of the process of recovering from my first psychotic episode has involved revisiting all of the famous gothic horror literature i read and was fascinated by as a preteen and reading Poe has been a constant experience of yeah I’ve been there before buddy and it really does feel like he was ahead of his time in terms of presenting reality as inherently absurd in a way his peers didn’t often touch upon. People often stop their analysis at “Edgar Allan Poe utilizes unreliable narrators a lot” instead of going a bit further to put themselves in the shoes of the characters and asking what it feels like to live in an unreliable reality. Reading Poe stories feels so very melancholic at a moment in my life when I don’t know how to get care for these issues, whether or not I’m actually sound of mind or just convincing myself I’m losing touch with reality-- in other words “faking it.” Ever since the incident moments of joy and curious hobbies have gone from being seen by those around me as quirky hyperfixations to something more sinister and unwell. Others who I thought really cared for my health and safety seem to treat the revelation that I am “losing my mind, no literally. . . please let me tell you what happened” with the if i’m retelling the story of what flavor of soda i picked at the vending machine. It’s so alienating as if being terrified of your own mind and it’s capability to break apart the rules of reality isn’t alienating enough.
I think Poe really captures that feeling I get when things are just a bit off until they crescendo into an event that seems massive and tiny and inconsequential all the same. I really can’t describe it because the fear I feel is unlike any other fear I’ve felt and you don’t know it until you’ve felt it and it clicks. Out of curiosity I wanted to see how well H.P. Lovecraft held up or if my distaste for his work was strictly from the knowledge of who the man was in life.
The answer is no, it does not. Frankly I find it insulting that H.P. Lovecraft is put at the same level as Poe, far above the tens of Gothic writers that preceded him by decades to nearly a century. . . of whom Lovecraft would openly take influence from just to water down down everything that makes those works interesting.
The “indescribable” horrors that Lovecraft describes are paradoxically comprehensible. I’ve had many discussions with my partner about why more grounded surrealist art feels far more surreal and uneasy than art that is comprised of endless “weird” imagery. To keep this topic brief, think something like David Lynch. His films are utterly bizarre compared to your average hollywood blockbuster, sure, but as far as surrealist media goes? His films are very grounded in reality, but that reality feels off and strange in a way that genuinely is indescribable. When I read Lovecraft on the other hand, it feels like he read a lot of gothic literature about the sublime, indescribably transcendent nature of the universe and replaced that with essentially. . . a big scary monster.
When Lovecraft writes “indescribable” or other similar words as a descriptor for what his characters see, it feels akin to when 14 year olds discover the SCP wiki and think that the more you write REDACTED or [DATA EXPUNGED] the scarier the object of horror is. It feels lazy when you’re not given any other reason to feel afraid. When I read Dagon it feels like I’m reading an early 2010s creepypasta written by someone who hasn’t been writing long enough to analyze what makes something scary. It genuinely feels like someone trying to write what they think psychosis might be like. His stories are so inhuman (and not in the way he’s trying to achieve) and detached, and I never get the is it real or not feeling I get from older gothic stories dealing with notions of sanity and humanity’s role in the universe. I know the big spooky space creatures are real in the universe of the text, so I don’t really connect the Lovecraftian hero’s lapses of sanity. You don’t see the same tragic decay of mind and body and ill-fated social dynamics that permeate so many of Poe’s stories. I genuinely don’t know what purpose there is to be gained from the oft-quoted declaration that the core of Lovecraft is about uncovering knowledge you aren’t supposed to know. I frankly don’t know how you can separate the art from the artist for HPL when so much of his work seems to pretty clearly match up with antisemitic “secret global society” conspiracy theories that go back centuries upon centuries.
Think about it for two seconds: the “terrible knowledge” that gets discovered is typically the existence of some all-powerful cosmic race that seems to hide itself at all costs and could possibly end humanity’s pitiful existence should they so choose to do so. So much of his work involves this utterly unsympathetic view of otherness as an “indescribable threat” in society whereas I think a lot of Poe’s writing really captures the terror of being othered at a time when the treatment of mentally ill and disabled people was at one of its all-time peaks.
I might revisit this idea again when I’m not tired as shit but I think in all, Lovecraft feels almost boring. Nothing feels really impressive despite the scale of its horror. In some ways, Poe really feels almost shockingly similar to a lot of postmodern man-vs-reality narratives, whereas Lovecraft feels like he takes a lot of the same aesthetics of gothic literature and uses it to craft a narrative that is far more simplistic than it seems at first glance. It hardly even qualifies as a man-vs-god narrative prevalent in the time of the Illiad, but given HPL’s track record when it comes to respecting human beings it’s all just a bare bones black and white us-versus-them man-vs-man narrative.
Now, art doesn’t have to be thematically complex to be good, but I find it a bit insulting when the man with the copy-paste self insert characters with the personality of soggy paper wants to profess understanding of profoundly existentialist, indescribable terror. . . and the vast majority of his work is just an allegory with a metaphor writing-hand heavier than CS Lewis’s own that gives me no insights about the world other than that he literally couldn’t get over the “indescribable” fear of “grug look different from ogg, grug bad!” dog you didn’t make a cosmic discovery you are literally the fuckin meme “men will smoke weed once and think they’re enlightened for discovering empathy” or whatever. i have more transcendental experiences railing twinks and cuddling with pretty girls talk about smth really indescribable!!!!!
it’s fucking caveman shit. mf really would be writing shitty fanfic of shadow puppets if you locked him in the cave fr fr. prolly wouldn’t notice he’s in an allegory fr fr life is indescribable and that’s what makes it beautiful and tragic and precious just eat a cock like the rest of us instead ur scarin the hoes with your shitty octopus fursona!
Happy friday, Duchess! For Theresa and Cullen, from the Poe prompts!
The Purloined Letter: blackmail, coercion, cleverness
Happy @dadrunkwriting! Thank you so much for this prompt, you have no idea how happy filling it made me XD
I actually had the idea for this scene a while ago, but wasn't sure when I'd be able to work it into my WIP, and I'm thinking it works much better as a standalone, if only because the tone is so off from the rest of my story. So here it is, all on its own!
The idea is from the Dragon Ball Z Abridged series' "The Dead Zone", which you can find here (seriously give it a watch if you were a DBZ fan, it's funny). Basic premise is thus: bad guys of the week have kidnapped a child, only to realize with horror just whose child they've taken...
“So, let me get this straight.” The Lord of Fortune tapped his foot impatiently, trying to make sense of the scene before him. “I send you out to fetch a foci and you bring back a toddler?”
Said toddler was toddling about the cramped room, hands already smudged and embroidered hem already dirtied by her grubby surroundings, utterly disinterested in whatever the three grown ups behind her were discussing.
“We had to, boss,” the tallest of the two thieves explained, almost pleading. “She saw us take the orb. We couldn’t leave witnesses.”
“And we weren’t about to hurt a kid,” the short one added. “Not for a lousy snatch job.”
“Neither of you thought to wear masks?” The Lord of Fortune raised an incredulous eyebrow. The pair of thieves looked sheepish, but said nothing. Their employer sighed and pinched his nose. “Well, what are we gonna do with her now?”
“I wanna go home,” the child spoke up, as if anyone had asked her.
“Pipe down, brat,” the tall one answered sharply. “Or we’ll toss ya into the bay!”
“You don’t scare me!” True to her word, the tiny wisp faced down the grown up with shoulders squared. “My mama’s gonna beat you up!”
The Lord of Fortune laughed. “Child, we’ve taken down a high dragon.”
“So did my mama!”
He stopped laughing. “...By herself?”
“Uh-huh.”
He suddenly felt very cold. “Oh shit, your mama’s the Inquisitor.” He whirled on his thieves. “You kidnapped the Inquisitor’s kid? How?? How did you kidnap the Inquisitor’s kid?”
The short one looked pale, mumbling in retroactive horror, “Well, first we beat up her husband.”
“Oh my shit.”
Just then, a thunderous explosion erupted from what used to be the front door. The scent of ozone and burnt cinders filled the room, along with a fog so thick the Lord of Fortune nearly choked on it.
All he could see, in the smoldering frame that was left of the doorway, was the silhouette of a dark-haired, one-armed woman, with tendrils of lightning arcing from her right hand. Her eyes glowed pure white with the unleashed power of the Storm and her own wrath.
“Gentlemen,” rang out a voice like smoking embers. “I believe you have something of mine.”
my beautiful beautiful chiliad*,
this is insane and i'm so so grateful
so let's celebrate!
a somewhat celestial theme slightly inspired by last night's eclipse,
with a guiding "1k followers ~ 1k words" since keeping them shorter will let me get through more if i get enough requests
tell me if you'd like me to write by...
sunlight ☀️
warm, fluffy prompts
moonlight 🌙
angsty, darker prompts
starlight ✨
fates written in the stars: give me a trope or au
candlelight 🕯️
smutty prompts (only request if you're 18+)
and you?
are you a stargazer? an astronaut? an alien?
this is optional but really helps me make something more tailored to you; lmk how you imagine the !reader
just a few examples:
quirky, grumpy, shy, confident, horny, bookish, chubby/fat, tomboy
and with which character...
as always, Remus, Sirius, James
but i'm also eager to write for new characters, here are some options:
Poe Dameron, Miguel O'Hara, TASM!Peter Parker, Wolverine, Gambit, Fred Weasley, Geralt of Rivia
Tangerine, Dean Winchester, Spencer Reid, Billy Butcher, Carmy Berzatto, Roy Kent, Jaime Tartt
or any other character i've mentioned before
or one you really want that i haven't mentioned (good chance if they're from fandoms/movies/tv/actors i've mentioned) but send me a back-up one that is on my list just in case
can be any gender; i know i tend to be heteroromantic on here, but i am bisexual and feel comfortable writing as such
i'll be celebrating all weekend!
send requests through my ask box
thank you for reading, interacting, following, and just being your beautiful selves
*i recently learned this brilliant word and couldn't resist;
chiliad: a group of a thousand things
**secret trivia: the image is my way of rendering our favourite star boy celestial