to define–

–is to limit. #usergeets

[doriangray]

on hiatus.

[marksfarrows]

MAKE ME CHOOSE — @percyokonjos asks oliver marks or selwyn kane

actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. sometimes disaster.

happy birthday lily ♡

[henry-marchbanks]

somebody – one of those damned toddlers, I guess – got my favorite scarf off the bed and wrapped up part of a chicken leg in it. that nice silk one with the pattern of clocks on it. It’s just ruined.

[spinfastdizzy-deactivated202211]

And the rest of us rise too, and clink our glasses across the table, like an army regiment crossing sabres: Henry and Bunny, Charles and Francis, Camilla and I. “Live forever,” we chorus, throwing our glasses back in unison.

[monstress]

This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

[marksfarrows]

MAKE ME CHOOSE — @percyokonjos asks oliver marks or selwyn kane

actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. sometimes disaster.

happy birthday lily ♡

[kazbreker]

READ IN 2018 → If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

[marksfarrows]

MAKE ME CHOOSE — @fahey asks these violent delights or if we were villains + @hcrror asks if we were villains or sorcery of thorns

our squabbling was good-natured and usually harmless. we had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.

[parhelias]

[kerahs]

                                                 Till this moment I never knew myself.

                                                                                 ― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.  

[chewbacca]

Dead Poets Society (1989), quoting Henry David Thoreau.

[roxelll213]

OLIVER MARKS  — If We Were Villains 

❝ You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.❞

secret santa gift for @markoliver​

[catlaila]

Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.

[dogsyears]

@storyseekers event 08 : favorite 2020 read  —  if we were villains

how could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding?

[featuresofinterest]

fun fact for you all: bram stoker started writing dracula just weeks after oscar wilde’s conviction…….we really are in it now

[housmania]

Dracula! And Oscar Wilde! YES! *drops papers everywhere*

I’ll just casually drop this here–it’s a long (and good) read, but essentially, the author argues that:

Stoker wrote Dracula as a direct reaction to the Wilde trials

Many of Dracula’s characteristics actually echo Wilde as described to the trials, and Dracula’s lifestyle resembles an exaggerated version of precautions to hide homosexuality

Stoker is basically the pro-closeted 1890s alternative to Wilde’s flamboyancy, and that comes out in how he portrays Dracula and Jonathan Harker

Like if you look deeper into Stoker’s letters to Whitman, he’s practically obsessed with feeling “naturally secretive” and “reticent”

(Also he and Wilde had some weird personal rivalry going on, since Stoker married Wilde’s definitely-not-straight ex-fiancee, though later they were friendly…there’s a lot to unpack here)

So, arguably, Dracula was Stoker’s way of apologizing for his silence during Wilde’s trials.

Some highlights:

Wilde’s trial had such a profound effect on Stoker precisely because it fed Stoker’s pre-existing obsession with secrecy, making Stoker retrospectively exaggerate the secrecy in his own writings on male love.

It is difficult, Stoker admits, to speak openly about “so private a matter” as desire. In carefully calibrated language, Stoker asks forgiveness from those who might see that his silence is a sin-to those few nameless souls who know his secret affinity with Wilde.

Since Dracula is a dreamlike projection of Wilde’s traumatic trial, Stoker elaborated and distorted the evidence that the prosecutor used to convict Wilde. In particular, the conditions of secrecy necessary for nineteenth-century homosexual life–nocturnal visits, shrouded windows, no servants–become ominous emblems of Count Dracula’s evil.

Dracula…represents not so much Oscar Wilde as the complex of fears, desires, secrecies, repressions, and punishments that Wilde’s name evoked in 1895. Dracula is Wilde-as-threat, a complex cultural construction not to be confused with the historical individual Oscar Wilde.

tl;dr:

Stoker is actually too repressed to function

Oscar Wilde (especially his trials) absolutely influenced Stoker

Dracula gay

[solarpunkarchivist-deactivated2]

Classic vampire lit really was just about exorcising one’s complicated feelings about one’s ex boyfriend huh?

[evilsupplyco]

So when YOU sew a bunch of unmatched parts together, it is “a quilt” and “a beautiful gift” and “will assuredly become a family heirloom” but when I sew a bunch of unmatched parts together it is “A MONSTER” and “AN ABOMINATION, AN AFFRONT TO THE GODS” and goes on “A MURDEROUS KILLING SPREE.”

[dykenstein-archive]

It’s so funny to me how, after creating a life and abandoning it, Victor Frankenstein just like… ignores it for the next two years. Did he really think it wouldn’t ever affect him years down the line? “Oh yeah, remember the time I made life in my apartment and then horribly rejected it? Sometimes that still haunts me.”