I PROMISE you the old rich white “respectable” people in any given Southern town are the most terrifying things in it. I guarantee you. I don’t care who you are. I am white and originally from the South and I tell you the world of the genteel Southern white is the realm of nightmares. On that topic, real and semi-universal things to incorporate into your Southern Gothic re: rich old white “respectable” people:
- a large china cabinet. Made of nice wood, large glass windows, full of porcelain or crystal with gilding and has a lot of flower or fruit motifs. May have a mirrored back, to make it look twice as big and show off the contents from multiple angles
-mirrors in general, I don’t know why
-everything is varying shades of pastel or brown, with sudden transitions between brown rooms and pastel rooms. The brown rooms are full of leather furniture and smell faintly of leather and pipe smoke. The pastel ones smell like powder and potpourri. The smells also abruptly transition between each other
-alternatively everything is cream and color is prohibited
-old white Southerners rival the Fair Folk for gatherings where not knowing all the rules and obeying every one will have seemingly unrelated but dire consequences
-gilt and flowers on everything
-painting of a landscape, hunting dogs, or ducks, relatively skilfully executed but something’s not right about it. You can’t put your finger on what. When you ask about the painting, someone says their cousin/aunt/mother painted it and aren’t they such a talented artist?
-painting of a battle from the Civil War in which someone is heroically raising a Confederate flag. It is not even remotely historically accurate but it’s painted like it was meant for a history book.
-perfectly arranged quilts on perfect beds you’re pretty sure nobody has ever slept in. The sterility of the arrangement somehow deprives the quilt of its essential quilt-ness, rendering it a kind of uneasy anti-quilt.
-family photos posed around a large dead animal
-family photos where everyone looks like they came off a fashion shoot but they’re all holding guns, even the small girl whose gun is pink
-walls of family photos in which these two are the only ones taken with a modern camera, and everything else is in blobby old-school color, sepia tone, or black and white
-THOSE SMILES. SOUTHERNERS KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. THOSE LITTLE SMILES AND THE LITTLE LAUGHS LIKE THEY’RE GRANDMOTHERLY/GRANDFATHERLY IF YOUR GRANDPARENTS WERE PERPETUALLY DEBATING THE PROPRIETY OF TEARING YOUR THROAT OUT WITH SUDDENLY TOO-LONG TEETH
-framed illustrated bible verses
-framed cutesy inspirational quotes
-Too Many Rooms For One House
-Too Many Rooms combine with the mirrors everywhere to make the house’s layout uncertain and confusing
-brass letter openers shaped like daggers
