#gothic writing

[terrorignitis]

Lovesickness in the Middle Ages | Mary Frances Wack

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

🖤 10 Cool Dark Academia Writing Prompts for Your Next Obsession 🕯️📓

a.k.a. “what if your WIP smelled like old books and reeked of moral decay”

A top student is found dead in the library archives. No one remembers seeing them for weeks, except you, who has a stack of annotated letters written in their handwriting, all dated after they died.

A professor vanishes mid-lecture. Your friend swears the man is still in the room, just in a version of it that the rest of you can’t perceive. And they're starting to draw diagrams of the “other room” on the walls of your dorm.

The most exclusive club on campus only lets in ten members a year. You’re the eleventh who wasn’t invited, but somehow you’re still receiving the club’s nightly riddles. And they’re… personal.

You find a half-burned play manuscript inside a chapel crypt. The final act is missing. When you stage the play for your theatre class, everyone cast in it starts seeing things. Including you.

Your roommate is building a machine to prove time is a loop. It starts working. Every night at 3:41 AM, you wake up screaming the same phrase in a language you don’t speak.

A student writes a scathing essay on a forgotten philosopher’s work, and then disappears. Now the pages of your textbook are rewriting themselves with notes in the same vicious tone.

Someone in your friend group isn’t human. They told you this in passing, like it wasn’t a big deal. You’re starting to realize they meant it literally.

There’s a new elective no one remembers enrolling in. The syllabus reads like a ritual. You’re three weeks in before realizing: the class is teaching you how to forget.

You inherit a locked journal from your estranged uncle, a disgraced historian. Every page you unlock rewrites a piece of the past, and the people around you shift with it.

A girl who went missing last semester is back. She’s quiet, distant, never blinks, and claims to have solved death as a final exam.

🕯️ Which one are you stealing for your next WIP? Be honest.

[ryn-wylde-n-free]

They Yearn For What They Fear For

Masterlist

"We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions."

-Nassim Nicholas Taleb

↟Chapter One

↟Chapter Two

↟Chapter Three

↟Chapter Four

↟Chapter Five

↟Chapter Six

[selene131]

Colors of December

Adrian Tepes x fem!reader

Summary: He returns in a quiet December evening

Tags/Warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, grief, reunion, healing, intimacy (non-graphic), established relationship

Word count: 800

A/N: It seems I spoke too soon when I complained about not having inspiration to write for Adrian… but admiring winter paintings gave me an idea or two 🫣Hope you enjoy this small fic ✨️

Mourning whispers of wind, calling out the name of what once was alive.

No response.

Diaphanous veils of white pour from the sky, kissing the earthly world with a cold hush.

The terrible wails of the shivering branches resound profoundly through the asleep forest.

No one in sight.

Just him.

Obscured, lone silhouette traveling across the dead path. Decaying life beneath his steps.

Silver threads dancing in the ghostly abyss. Cloaked in darkness and sorrow, missing the only softness that soothed his centuries-old heart.

He carves his way through the thick mantle of snow.

Stride by stride.

His soul craving -

screaming,

agonizing,

empty.

Longing for its half.

The smell of burned wood fills the atmosphere.

And there it is.

Between the hidden forest and the valley that unites the land of unknown and civilization sits a solitary cottage, veiled in dried, frozen wisteria.

Clouds of grey smoke leave the old chimney like spirits binding their farewell to the material world and touching the highest points of the celestial realm.

"Just a little more," he keeps telling himself, heart more lively, burning with anticipation.

His steps alert, boots sinking, his long midnight coat sweeping the soft white aside.

And then, he stops.

The cottage in front of him.

His home.

Your home.

Through the frost-laced window, the golden light of the lavender scented candle paints your face in amber hues. Shadows under your eyes from all the sleepless nights you spent waiting for him. Your knees to your chest, a wool blanket over your shoulders. And few loose strands of hair slide across your cheek.

He observes through your façade. You try to focus on the time-worn book, carefully holding between your fingertips the next page, yet the moment to turn it never comes. Absentmindedly, your eyes caress each word and line, rereading the same paragraph over and over again.

The small cast-iron stove crackles steadily, warming the room and the honeyed-linden tea you made this morning. Homemade bread and cheese on the table, yet untouched.

Guilt wraps around his neck like heavy ribbons of steel.

Yet, he has to collect himself.

He shakily exhales and finally approaches the door. The doorknob weighs with all the tension he feels in his body. It opens, the rusty bells ringing gently as they announce his arrival.

"Adrian… is that you?" you question in a low tone, afraid your hearing is betraying you, as your mind did all these months of waiting for him.

"Yes, dearest," his voice almost breaks at the commotion happening in the kitchen, your chair falling with a loud sound - almost a confession of all the days and nights filled with longing.

And at the sight of your tearing eyes, the last string of composure snaps. His own gaze turns blurry, damp paths of torment running down his face.

"No, my love. Don’t cry," you comfort him, one of your hands instinctively reaching to wipe away his ache, while the other grabs his cold hand.

"I apologize for -" he wants to confess his sins to you. Back then, his mind clouded with a rage that wasn’t his own, one that followed him like a shadow for decades. He wanted to spare you that version of himself.

"No need. You’re here now. Unharmed. Alive. That’s enough for me," you respond, kissing his hand. "Also, your hands are frozen, Adrian."

You cup both of his hands between yours, bringing them to your lips to warm them with your breath.

He can’t utter more words. You leave him - Adrian Tepes, Alucard - speechless. How selfless you can be, putting your own pain on pause just to care for him.

"My heart," he breathes, brushing his fingertips over your features, tracing them with tenderness and apology.

"I have no words."

"Such a rare thing," you tease him.

Without warning, he embraces you. His arms envelop you like a layer of yearning, wanting you to feel all the adoration, devotion, and regret he has carried for you, even after months away.

Months away.

Months of worry.

Lonely months.

Months that felt like years.

Months of not even knowing if he would come back.

Not because of you - never.

Because of him.

He hasn’t been himself. The grieving part of him consuming him whole, forgetting what it’s like to live.

But now, he knows.

He doesn’t doubt himself anymore.

He knows what alive means when he sees how you light up at the sight of him.

He knows what love means because you offer him your breath to warm his cold hands.

He knows you deserve the world, and beyond.

Months spent away,

but the love still there.

[futuregodofdadbodnj]

Lots of beer and pie oh my 😋

[space-writes]

Beta Call!

I have finished a decent draft of a new gothic novella, and I'm looking to get some fresh eyes on it before I lock in with detail editing.

The Tower of Briars is a gothic fairytale in the form of a 17.5k novella. I'm looking for general story feedback, though if you are knowledgeable about (very loosely) 1840s England, I would love any extra help improving those aspects.

I'm hoping to have the book out in October, so I'd like to get feedback in by mid-August, to give me time to fix and edit things.

Content warnings for standard gothic elements (death, narrative dooming, incest) apply. This is a work of Romantic Horror.

Anyway, if you're interested, leave a comment or DM me!

[dzgrizzle]