I'm Nick.

Your Modern Romantic! “An Artist, more or less” Previously “thepelvicsorcery”, now less funny.

[didoofcarthage]

Silver tetradrachm of Syracuse with head of Arethusa (obverse) and quadriga with Nike crowning the charioteer (reverse)

Greek (minted at Syracuse, Sicily), Classical Period, c. 405-400 B.C.

MFA Boston

[nemfrog]

“Choice colored slides with motion.” Dancing skeleton. Photographic illustrations for projection. 1897. Lantern slide catalogue. 

[nemfrog]

“Complete skeleton of the gigantic Irish deer.” British deer and their horns. 1897.

Internet Archive

[lisablack000]

Alchemical Laboratory.

[gothredy]

[vv-itchy]

[snydog17]

they love me because I be saying shit like alas and perchance

[snydog17]

last night I said 'how fortuitous' unironically

[strausswinter]

The Secret History Translation Masterlist

i was going to put this on a spam account but then decided to put it on a public one. who knows, maybe someone will benefit from it! if i’ve made any mistakes, do let me know

à moi. l’histoire d’une de mes folies (to me. the history of one of my follies or my turn. the tale of my madness)

quod erat demonstrandum (it can be shown)

cubitum eamus? (will you sleep with me?)

consummatum est (it is done)

hoi polloi. barbaroi [the many/majority. barbarian (person who doesn’t speak greek)]

bei nacht und nebel (at night and in fog)

deprendi miserum est (it is wretched to be found out)

khairei (hello)

bakchoi (initiates)

cuniculus molestus (annoying rabbit)

arrectis auribus (attentively/ears peeled)

dormir plutôt que vivre (sleep rather than live)

dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort (in a sleep as sweet as death)

requiescat in pace (rest in peace)

n’est-ce pas (isn’t that so)

amor vincit omnia (love conquers all)

raison d’être (reason for existence)

nihil sub sole novum (there is nothing new under the sun)

quel plaisir de vous revoir (what a great pleasure to see you again)

genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus (smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, well-educated and rich)

dénouement (outcome)

salve, amice (hello, friend)

valesne? (are you well?)

quid est rei? (what is the matter?)

benigne dicis (i thank you)

bureau de tabac (tobacco store)

Χαλεπά τά καλά (beauty is harsh)

mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! (oh, truly, i have wept too much!)

les aubes sont navrantes (the dawns are heartbreaking)

hinc illae lacrimae (hence those tears)

sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat (such eyes, such hands, such looks)

[weirdletter]

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic, edited by Clive Bloom, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Cover image by Angela Waye / Alamy Stock Photo, info: palgrave.com.

The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic is the most comprehensive compendium of analytic essays on the modern Gothic now available, covering the vast and highly significant period from 1918 to 2019. The Gothic sensibility, over 200 years old, embraces its dark past whilst anticipating the future. From demons and monsters to post- apocalyptic fears and ecological fantasies, Gothic is thriving as never before in the arts and in popular culture. This volume is made up of 62 comprehensive chapters with notes and extended bibliographies contributed by scholars from around the world. The chapters are written not only for those engaged in academic research but also to be accessible to students and dedicated followers of the genre. Each chapter is packed with analysis of the Gothic in both theory and practice, as the genre has mutated and spread over the last hundred years. Starting in 1918 with the impact of film on the genre’s development, and moving through its many and varied international incarnations, each chapter chronicles the history of the gothic milieu from the movies to gaming platforms and internet memes, television and theatre. The volume also looks at how Gothic intersects with fashion, music and popular culture: a multi-layered, multi-ethnic, even a trans-gendered experience as we move into the twenty first century.

Contents: Introduction to the Gothic Handbook Series:​ Welcome to Hell – Clive Bloom     Global Gothics Latin American Horror – Sandra Casanova-Vizcaíno and Inés Ordiz Dark Tourism – Joan Passey Two Twentieth-Century Mexican Writers – Antonio Alcalá González Dark Urbanity – Tijana Parezanović and Marko Lukić Contemporary Australian Trauma – Jessica Gildersleeve Postcolonialisms​ – Gina Wisker Strains of the South – Naomi Simone Borwein Indigenous Alterations – Angela Elisa Schoch/Davidson Hillbilly Horror – Tosha R. Taylor Southern Agrarianism and Exploitation – Gerardo Del Guercio     Hostile Environments British ‘Hoodie’ Horror – Lauren Stephenson Green Trends in Euro-Horror Films of the 1960s and 1970s – David Annwn Jones Ecocriticism and the Genre – Emily Alder and  Jenny Bavidge The Wilderness – Kaja Franck ‘Queer’ Representations of Rural and Urban Locations – Paulina Palmer James Herbert’s Working-Class Horror – Simon Brown Re-defining the Genre with Mo Hayder – Sian MacArthur Stephen King – Brian Jarvis     Occult Gothic Aleister Crowley and Occult Meaning – James Machin Aleister Crowley and the Black Magic Story – Timothy Jones     Gothic Romance The Gothic Romance – Holly Hirst Georgette Heyer – Holly Hirst The Body in Pieces Abjection and Body Horror – Xavier Aldana Reyes Torture Porn – Tosha R. Taylor Clive Barker’s Hellraiser – Mark Richard Adams     Psychological Gothic The Asylum – Laura R. Kremmel Psychopaths, Sociopaths and the Psychotic Mind – Lauren Ellis Christie Beyond the Unfeeling Narcissus to Patrick Bateman – Robert K. Shepherd     Zombie Gothic Zombie Folklore to Existential Protagonists – Kelly Gardner The Sentient Zombie – Kelly Gardner     New Vampire Gothic Transmedia Vampires – Simon Bacon The Post-human Vampire – Simon Bacon Monstrosity, Performativity, and Performance – Laura Davidel     Young Gothic Encounters with the ‘Hidden’ World in Modern Children’s Fiction – Chloé Germaine Buckley Gender and Sexuality in Young Adult Fiction – Michelle J. Smith and Kristine Moruzi Horror Hosts in British Girls’ Comics – Julia Round Lemony Snicket – Valeria Iglesias-Plester     Gothic Film Ghostly Gimmicks:​ Spectral Special Effects in Haunted House Films – Laura Sedgwick Universal Horror – Brian Jarvis Arthouse Cinema – Stacey Abbott The Horror Genre in Balkan Cinema – Tanja Jurković Slavic Cinema – Agnieszka Kotwasińska Gender Politics in a High-Camp, Lowbrow Musical – Joana Rita Ramalho Roger Corman – Murray Leeder David Lynch – Brian Jarvis     Gothic Television Doctor Who:​ Identity, Time and Terror – J.S. Mackley Nigel Kneale and Quatermass – J.S. Mackley Dark Costume in Contemporary Television – Stephanie Mulholland Wildlings, White Walkers, and Watchers on the Wall of Northumberland’s Borderland – Chelsea Eddy Grand Guignol, Inside Showtime’s Penny Dreadful Demimonde – Tanja Jurković     Gothic Music The Blasphemous Grotesqueries of The Tiger Lillies – Joana Rita Ramalho The Return of the Past in the Lyrics of Black Metal – Antonio Alcalá González     Interactive Gothic Interactive and Movable Books in the Tradition – Jen Baker The Evolving Genre of the Vampire Games – Jon Garrad The Digital Haunted House – Erika Kvistad Anxiety in the Digital Age – David Langdon Horror Memes and Digital Culture – Tosha R. Taylor Virtual Desert Horrors – Alison Bainbridge Immersive and Pervasive Performance – Madelon Hoedt     Gothic Lifestyle Fashion Gothwear – Victoria Amador Walking with the Lancashire Witches – Alex Bevan The Influence of the Genre in High Fashion – Jennifer Richards The Geisha Ghost – Jenevieve Van-Veda     Theoretical Gothic Three French Modernists – Giles Whiteley Dark Modernisms – Matt Foley     Post Modern Gothic The Postmodern Genre – Joakim Wrethed Heterotopian Horrors – Marko Lukić and Tijana Parezanović The New Batman – Michail-Chrysovalantis Markodimitrakis     Post Human Gothic Global War from Tokyo to Barcelona – Naomi Simone Borwein Posthuman Interstellar Gothic – Holly-Gale Millette Degeneration in H.​P.​ Lovecraft and William Hope Hodgson – Antonio Alcalá González Lovecraft, Decadence, and Aestheticism – James Machin List of Contributors   Index

[eirene]

Vogue, November 15th, 1917

Artist: George Wolfe Plank

[rocktheholygrail]

Hannibal (2013-2015)

Hannigram + 🧍

[medusas-daughter]

The Creature calling itself Viktor and following Viktor around is so much more tragic when you know how babies develop and how newborns don't yet realise they and their mothers are two separate people. And one of the first things babies realise about themselves is that they're a whole separate person. And one of the first things they do when they start developing as a person is find out they have hands and play with them and with textures and start exploring. And when they want to start talking, they put their hands and fingers on their parents lips and throats to figure out how that sound is coming out of there and then they start imitating. Guillermo Del Toro nailed every single step of human development in such a beautiful celebration of life.

And Viktor abused the crap out of the poor creature for not being smart enough when it was only following natural developmental milestones. Because, like most men, like his own father, he wanted to create life but he wasn't interested in raising it beyond that and instead wanted it to be born a doctor ready to show the world how smart Viktor is for creating a carbon copy of his brain except in a stronger immortal body. Elizabeth gave him five minutes of love and let him explore how sounds come out of her mouth and he started talking.

Idk why some people are complaining about the movie being different from the book when the essence is literally the same, Viktor created life as if it were a godly feat and not something women have been doing since the dawn of humanity, and then he abandoned that life as deadbeat dads do. And that abandonment is what created a monster out of an innocent souls who could have become a beautiful being had it been nurtured. That's literally what Mary Shelley wrote. She would have been proud of this story. On top of being an incredibly gorgeous visual story, the narrative is very loyal to the point Shelley wanted to make.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

ultimately the truth about frankenstein is that we are all grotesque amalgamations of the best and worst parts of everyone who came before us. and sometimes the people who are supposed to love us because of and in spite of this will not. and we can kill them with hammers for that. and i think that’s beautiful

[rosie-tyler]

Frankenstein (2025) dir. Guillermo del Toro + paintings

[so-many-ocs]

no dude it's so cool how attached you are to that character who is singled out and ostracized due to the external monstrousness that clashes with their internal spark of humanity. and i love how drawn you are to themes of horror and love, nature versus nurture, otherness, isolation, and the abject. i bet you have normal feelings about your own personhood

[plant-based-person]

had a fascinating english class that resulted in the notes header “the forcefeminization of victor frankenstein”

[plant-based-person]

what the people want, the people get

you see

my professor’s take is that mary shelley is feminizing victor throughout the novel, as a way of flipping gender roles and putting a male character through female experiences.

evidence as explained:

victor is creating life. he is putting his health at risk (spends two years with little sleep or socialization) to bring life forth into this world

his illness after he is shocked by the creature coming to life is akin to both ‘hysteria’ and postpartum depression

he pretty much swoons, let’s be honest

henry clerval, a man who has been characterized as manly and heroic, has to chase after damsel-in-distress victor and care for him as he convalesces 

afterward, he hides what he did and went through, for fear that others will label him crazy and emotional and not believe him. sound familiar?

Victor in general is more emotional than the other characters and is constantly tempering his reactions to not be seen as irrational 

the book does not otherwise have central female characters 

Also, Shelley’s mother died in childbirth. It’s interesting, then, that Shelley presents the creation of life as something horrific and damaging. She parallels Victor with her mother.

in conclusion, Frankenstein (1818) by Mary  Wollstonecraft Shelley is one of the first examples of mpreg in English literature 

[just-call-me-the-old-hag]

[darksidecat]

I hate how completely dismissive takes like this are of Mary Shelley's actual life as an individual human being, or even of her mother's life as an individual and her knowledge of her mother's life.

As if Mary Wollstonecraft never wrote about her life or her own political views. Wollstonecraft was sometimes still used as a public example of how radical views would destroy a woman's life during her daughter's time, but her own words and life become nothing in the above analysis, just her death.

But, most critically for this post, the fucking fact that Mary Shelley (then still Mary Godwin) had birthed two children herself before she wrote Frankenstein, one of which had by that point already died. If you're going to view this as an allegory for pregnancy/post-partum, it absolutely matters that she had children, and one of those children was with her on the trip when she began writing Frankenstein. She had her own experiences of pregnancy and motherhood, including socially disapproved of pregnancy and motherhood (both children were illegitimate, the suicide of Harriet Shelley occurred after their birth and the beginning of writing Frankenstein).

And also, you know, stop pretending like men are never dramatic or ridiculous. Percy Shelley abandoned his pregnant wife and their children when he ran off with Mary. Maybe, you know, that a man who would do things like abandoning his children yet celebrating the birth of his son in the company of his pregnant mistress isn't inconceivable as male behavior because that was how Percy Shelley just actually behaved.

Lord Byron and John Polidori were also on that trip where the initial story was written, and were also incredibly dramatic men.

Literally none of Victor Frankenstein's behavior would be shocking as an example of behavior from any of those men. A woman is not necessarily "feminizing" by writing a male character accurate to the men around her.

[mintaii]

to simply exist