#what in gothic horror

[lightsinthemist]

I finally watched A Cure for Wellness......

[dangeroustaintedflawed]

[fuckmeyer]

the choice between Edward & Jacob is not a question of which relationship is healthier or which partner is best suitable for Bella. neither is correct. neither is best. neither produces a happy ending for Bella. at the end of the day this is still a vampire novel. any choice Bella could make would yield, at best, a bittersweet happily ever after.

if she chooses Edward, she gets the terrifying Breaking Dawn ending: a girl who rejected her call to grow up has hung her love & her eternity on an emotionally stunted partner who hates himself marginally less than he loves her. she's a teen mom with a kid she never wanted who perpetuates the generational trauma passed down from her parents. by keeping this child, the Cullens have set the stage for an uprising/cold war against the Volturi who are likely to take revenge in order to maintain power. Bella is living in a tenuous "dream come true" wrapped in a nightmare & doesn't realize it.

choosing Jacob is the true coming-of-age ending that rips the stitches out of a wound that never fully healed. even if we ignore the fact that she ends up with a man who sexually assaulted her (we must bear in mind Jacob's character is influenced by smeyer's racism, but it did happen), they can't have a secure romantic relationship. based on the high imprinting rate of the pack, Jacob will likely find his imprint in his lifetime & will lose himself to the imprintee. he will no longer be her Jacob. he will inevitably abandon her (whether he wants to or not), & she must reconcile with the reality that she will always be inadequate to Jacob's imprint. & say he never manages to escape the vampires? he will presumably not age for a long time, meaning the relationship Bella always feared with Edward (her being an old grandmother while he stays forever young) remains a possibility. this is the story of a girl who slaps a Band Aid on an open wound & calls herself healed while flinching every time she sees the shadow of the knife that cut her.

if she chooses neither (team therapy), her healing requires her to lose or be at least partially disconnected from everyone she cares about. Bella must spend the rest of her life shut out from one world while never fully existing in her human world ever again. she must always keep secrets. she can never go back home. even in the unlikely event that she manages to escape the Volturi, the threat of being hunted by vampires will never leave her. in addition, she must face her worst fears (aging, losing Edward) while always keeping in mind the immortal life that could have been hers, if only.

even the "healthiest" option produces scars that will never quite heal.

Twilight is a horror. Twilight is a vampire novel. Twilight is gothic. Twilight is fiction. neither Edward nor Jacob is a "bad" choice because neither will give Bella her happily ever after. the choice between Edward & Jacob is simply a matter of which horror story you prefer to read.

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

It takes forever and a day for someone to notice, but after decades of crime fighting, the Justice League finally catches onto the fact that—-

Batman doesn’t seem to be aging. At all.

Sure there are some lines on his face but anybody with as many children as him would have them. And yes, he does complain of back pains every now and again, but he’s been doing that since the day the JLA first formed, so who knows.

Come to think of it, his gaggle of kids don’t seem to be a day over twenty-two either. None of them. Even Nightwing, who should be well into his fourties’ (fifties?? Sixties???) still looks exactly the same.

The JLA decide to investigate.

Which isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do, because it’s Gotham, and every single person in that godforsaken city is bloody insane as they come to find out. (With a side dish of plausible deniability to boot)

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price and Gene Tierney -

Dragonwyck (1946) dir. Joseph L. Mankiewitcz

[grungeprincess2]

Creepy nails

[mother-lee]

within each burning frame is a tale of its own

[femfirehazard]

Toss out some love for a first-time trans tummy poster?

🖤💀💋

I'd love to know I'm doing it right

[ultrataintedviolence]

[theatsthetic]

After the funeral, Mary saw her husband everywhere. She wished she hadn't.

[recklessfiction]

Keep an Eye Out As You Travel West

You see a church, you just keep on walking. Most are abandoned anyhow, nothing left in 'em but the hollowed out husks of their priests. The rest have been filled by now; old pretenders, zealots, and self proclaimed prophets snatching up any man fool enough to worship. And that's if you're lucky. There are older things, other things that have curled up amidst the altars of the Lord like worms in dirt. If you're wanting to do any worshiping, best do it out under the sky.

There're things that roam the dust, figures of men with eyes deader than any corpse and smiles as bright and pretty as a lady's. They come around sometimes, always trying to pawn off some bizarre thing; elaborate crowns made of rusted nails, gold lockets with strange portraits inside, letters that can't be read without getting a deep pounding in your head, and keys rusted with so much blood it'd be a wonder if they turned anything at all. Now, I've seen what comes for folks who trade with them and I'll tell you this. Wherever they got their goods, it sure as shit wasn't from here.

You'll be hearing now about the "Oil Baptisms," I'm sure. Black sea water dredged up from some abyss, thicker than any water I've ever seen and you can smell it long a mile away. They say it gives people "the sight" but of what I can't say. All I know is that once you start smelling that briny shit on the wind, the screaming don't start long after.

Be careful what deals you make out here. There're plenty of strange folk who would be more than glad to work you down to the bone and long after, too. Work is work, crops need harvesting, graves need digging, meat needs carving, and idols need worshiping. Watch your words and read your contracts, else you might just be stuck washing the feet of the righteous until doomsday.

Best stay indoors once night comes, that's when a lot of the "families" start movin' out. They take to the roads, long lines of them, a parade of the ugliest sons of bitches you've ever seen. In the daylight, their skin never fits quite right and stinks to high heaven but once the sun dips past the trees, they start taking it off. They move from place to place, sloughing off their decayed flesh and stealing new off any traveler they come across. Lock your doors and put out your lights before they coming knocking on your door, asking sweetly, "Do you have anything I could wear?"

I am of the opinion that the woods ought not be traversed by folk who ain't been called there. Keep to the roads and towns, there's enough foul mess there if it's strangeness you're looking for. But what's in the woods has always been in the woods and if you pass the treeline with no business being there, well. The woods will give you business.

While a useful tool, a gun won't save you from drowning in the bathtub of a family of fanatic prognosticators, or from having your skin torn clean off by the night sky. Keep your ears up for any kind of protection you can get and learn to speak well because a lot of smart talk can get you out of a whole mess of trouble.

Keep on moving, friend. If you're looking to survive this trek, don't stop for anything, not even to bury the dead or feed the starving. It ain't worth what'll catch you, cause there's always things waiting for a fella to slow down so's they can get their claws in faster, deeper. You wanna be stuck here, in the fields and the dirt, under the big sky while hymns are burned into your skull? No?

Then keep on moving.

[dangeroustaintedflawed]

[potato-lord-but-not]

CLASSIC HORROR LIT JUMPSCARE !!

[hellgirl666xx]

Oh they are!

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price as Nicholas Van Ryn

Dragonwyck (1946) /// dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz

[grungybill]

Poison Ivy, The Cramps