Okay wait, I need to know about your BBRae gothic AU, are there any details you'd be willing to share?
Ok thank you for giving me an excuse to post about this again:
So my gothic au is inspired by a bunch of my favorite pieces of gothic fiction. Mexican Gothic, The Last Tale of The Flower Bride, and Crimson Peak are the main inspirations. Last Tale of The Flower Bride got me hooked on the idea of an mmc filling the role of the typical gothic heroine, and my comic book brain rot naturally brought me to thinking about my favorite guy to put in situations (Gar) in that role.
The plot as it exists now is as follows:
Garfield Logan has been cut off by his adopted father after getting caught up in scandal (read: massive bender and rumors of bisexuality) following the death of his adopted mother, Rita Farr. In an attempt to keep himself out of society gossip rags, he accepts an invitation to join Mr. And Mrs. Richard Grayson for their summer getaway (along with some other familiar faces) in [location currently undetermined]. There, he meets Miss Raven Roth, a mysterious but not altogether unappealing New England Heiress. Gar spends the summer trying to figure her out. As the summer draws to a close, Raven makes him an offer: he needs to a wife to fix his image and social standing and she needs a husband to actually inherit. Marriage of Convenience ensues. After the wedding Raven receives word from her father's lawyer that there the details of the inheritance still need to be ironed out, and they need to go up to the estate for a few months. Once they arrive, they're greeted by the lawyer Sebastian Blood, who Raven seems to equally detest and fear. The longer they're there, the stranger things get; Gar has strange dreams, Raven sometimes acts like a completely different person and has unexplained gaps in memory, and sometimes Gar thinks the manor itself is trying to keep him from leaving. There also seem to be unending conditions to Raven's inheritance, keeping them on the estate longer and longer.
Personally I don't like reading fics written in first person, but I also can't really imagine trying to play in gothic fiction *without* some sort of first person element, so I plan to have an epistolary element woven in while the majority of it will be third person limited.
While we're at it, here's some stuff from my Pinterest board for it:
cw: discussions of Victorian period inspired sex work, specifically underage [teen] sex work, intense values dissonance between our time and the Victorians. I don't know what to tag this as, sorry in advance.
Reader discretion recommended.
If there was safety in the arms of the Goddess, there was security in the walls of the Palace Mysterie. High walls, where discreet discussions far less polite or proper happened than any Aurum entertained inside or out. There his friends with chilled glasses of spirits in hand awaited him, eager for the news of his personal quest. And what stories did he have to tell.
"Well!" Said Lord Allen Brynte as the door closed. "Seems you are in some intense spirits, Aurum. How did your trip go?"
Perhaps the light in his eyes burned too bright, perhaps he tossed his top hat aside too strong, for when he looked at them, the men assembled sat up straight, with expressions of almost youthful eagerness.
"A disappointment!" Aurum said. "I would have done better to stay inside in the warmth."
"What did you see?" Lord Talbot James asked, handing Aurum a square glass full of amber liquor.
"Nothing I did not already know," Aurum said, settling into his preferred chair. "Battlenew has not changed, nor has the poor fellow his wife assigned to him before her death. Their papers churn out the same drivel they always have, and their columnist "Quiet A" is no more secretive about her identity than she ever has been."
The men mumbled, looked between each other, flashes of disgust and disapproval crossing on their faces.
"And what of the boy?" Sir Dartling Sonne leaned forward. "The Rosedown child."
Now Aurum paused, thinking. He took a sip and let the burn of it fill his words.
"A child," he said, narrowing his eyes. "As if any who lived on the streets of Ripper's Alley could retain any innocence." He shook his head, his gaze turning to the bleak darkness through the window across from him. "And plucked from the muck by who he was, with such a sweet face, I've no doubt what his nature is."
"A jam tart?" Someone said, "At fifteen years?"
"Old as one could start, with the new laws," another said. "Unlikely to have been with any much older than he. The Sanctum youth pass money between each other for all types of entertainment. He will find some fellow and abandon such ways as he ages. We cannot expect them to understand good values from the start, not without good mothers and good teachers."
"Good mothers indeed, if he is so sweet-faced," Talbot James said. "Lord Aurum, can something be done?"
"For his sake?" Aurum raised a brow. "Or for mine?"
"Well, if he's guided by Battlenew as mentor - both!"
Aurum looked to the window again as the conversation stirred. Battlenew certainly stood a lot to lose in this trial. Society tolerated him and his strange ways, his peculiar beliefs. He would preach, of course, that the boy under his care was just an innocent - but was he?
If he ordered the boy to be checked for venereal diseases under the law, then that would solve many issues. None would even have to know he'd planted it in the ears if the judge. But the thought of anyone, youth or adult, being put through such a cruel thing, with painful restraints and cold fingers and laughing onlookers… it turned his stomach.
Aurum knew the shivering caverns of his heart better than any other. Even still, he had limits.
"Lord Aurum, what of you?" Another voice said. Aurum looked from the window.
"What do you mean?"
"What will you do with the boy? What would you do with him, if you could?"
That gave him pause. Him? What was he supposed to do with that runt?
"If the stories are true," another said, "then he is certainly wasted, wandering from bed to bed."
"If they are," said a third. Someone chuckled.
Aurum tapped his free fingers on the arm of the chair. What would he do? What could he do? Enlist the boy into the Knight Hunters? He'd find use there but it would be no different from what he knew on the streets. Pull strings, find him an apprenticeship? But who knew what substandard education he'd been given?
With his reputation and face, Aurum knew, the runt would have no troubles as a courtesan. The whole elite would flock to experience him. But he'd not yet begun the potions to transform his body. What would he become as his appearance shifted from a girl's youth to a man's maturity?
"I'll see what I can do, for him," Aurum said. "Perhaps it is the least I can do. I will show no kindness in this trial."
The answer seemed to please his friends. They smiled, conversation shifting as the spirits flowed. Of course, Aurum took another. And when he looked out the window again, his thoughts did not go back to the boy. In the reflection of the glass, Aurum watched his eyes narrow.
The real challenge of the trial was not the prosecution. It was, and would be for humanity forever, the circling steps of the vampires and the hungry smile of the Scarred Man.
---
*A few notes:
'Jam tart' is Victorian slang for a prostitute.
A lot of this is taken from the books on the Victorian period I've read for research. The age of consent at the beginning of the period was 13, but was upped to 15 after a horrific and possibly sensationalized news story was released about what we'd consider human trafficking of children as young as 8. It was only after the Victorian period that it was bumped up to 18.
Prostitution was extremely common among people we'd consider minors during the period. According to Ruth Goodman, iirc, for many working class women, they'd become prostitutes in their teens and marry in their mid to late 20s or early 30s. It was just part of the life cycle of the working class women. Most were completely independent, at most renting a room out instead of using their own homes. Life was hard but for a lot of them, factory work was harder. That said, from what I remember reading, teens hung out with teens and adults with adults, so to speak. Even back then, people didn't like pedophiles.
I actually probably could've given the men in this scene harsher perspectives on all this, and maybe in a published draft I will. However, while it was railed against on all the pulpits and in all the papers, men of the period slept with prostitutes and had a lot of mistresses and there was nothing their wives, present or future, could do about it.
I don't even want to get into the examination of prostitutes for STDs in the time period. I will, eventually, and how I plan to draw parallels between it and modern day transphobia, but not right now. I don't have the time.
This is why I made that post earlier about how the Victorian period was fucked up. It's so fucked up. But the gothic has a tradition of exploring the taboo and what we'd find morally disgusting. It doesn't often approve of those things, but it does make us look at them. So I guess this is par for the course for the genre.
There's a portion of the first chapter of the gothic fic that could realistically be separated into its own chapter as a prologue, which I could do if I *reeeeeealy* wanted to get this shit started in earnest but at the same time I think having it in the first chapter makes the chapter better
Stuff I'm pulling inspo from (everything from vibes to writing to setting to certain plot threads) for this gothic fic I'm kicking around (I've started plotting lmaooo)
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshni Chokshi
Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier
O, Caledonia by Elsbeth Barker
Crimson Peak
The Gilded Age (HBO)
A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
Beauty and the Beast (the fairytale not the Disney movie)
Asked my friend Jay for three words, then tried to write 100 words or more based around but not using those words. I will probably do this again.
Brotherhood
They didn't say it but he saw it in their eyes as he walked through the halls. Smiles of relief formed on their faces, grins of familiarity that were not too familiar flashing at him in the shadows.
Voices called greetings - "Lord Vim-Calyx! Welcome back, Commander!" - and he greeted each with his own smile.
It had not been easy, making it home. The journey back to the capital caught them all off guard with the struggles that met them in every stage. They didn't even run any bloodsuckers.
But now, in these sacred halls of the Knight Hunters, he could rest his body and soul. In his office, he sank into his favorite chair, and, without thinking, mumbled a prayer of gratitude and relief. A moment later, Lord Aurum closed his eyes and chuckled at his own folly.
Headache
It came back. That throbbing, stabbing pain, starting in the back of his skull and creeping forward until it reached behind his eyes. The Scarred Man leaned forward against his desk, rubbed his eyelids. Nothing would soothe this. No human potion or pill did any good against this. This was his reward for all his cruelty, all his spite. All the monstrosity he was and could be, this was what he'd earned for it.
Oh, he'd never take any of it back. Yes, they were horrible acts. He had no shame in it. He'd done things even his own kind whispered of, voices thick with dread and disgust. But they were worth it.
They had, in part, brought back his goddess.
And that thought eased the pain.
CW: inhumane treatment, ask to tag
Display
The crystal lantern went out, and he was thankful for it. Owen closed his eyes and though they did not see what the next flash of light illuminated, he could still see it in his mind. They had not cleaned this part of the castle, after humanity reclaimed it. They'd let this place fall to rubble, and for good reason.
A museum, this place was. A laboratory of sickness, the disease of evil, caused by some kind of moral miasma, to which a cure would never be found. This place was a memory of horrors, and smiles with dead eyes, lest you and those you loved join the still living bodies hung from the outer walls.
There is, somewhere in Theria, I'm not sure where, a single statue of the evil God, husband of the Goddess, grandfather of vampires. If you've ever seen that statue of Lucifer, called the Genius of Evil? It's kinda like that.
The main characters have varied reactions to seeing the statue for the first time...
- Owen is darkly fascinated. He never really thought much about the Goddess's husband, the cause and creator of so much suffering. This is a reminder that the God could be more than just a story, more than just part of the myth that builds up their society. It makes him wonder, if the Goddess remains, is the God still around too?
- Lenore thinks it's a beautiful piece of artwork but it doesn't inspire any deep feelings in her. It's just a statue of a handsome man, and she's seen her share of handsome men.
- Locke is disturbed. He has done more research and discussion on the God than anyone else in the cast. He doesn't know why anyone would make such a thing. The God shouldn't be honored or respected in any form. Despite his stated disinterest in the reality of the divine, he is shaken.
- Lord Aurum laughs in disbelief. "This is what precious time and money has been spent on?" He thinks the statue is absurd and ridiculous. It almost seems better to destroy it than leave it intact. But for plot reasons that can't be, so he just mocks it.
- The Scarred Man leaves an offering to the God, the grandfather of his kind. He knows the face he looks upon is not the true face of the Grandfather, but the statue is a very rare, special monument to a powerful being - a being that many people, human and vampire alike, believe he is...
