#liebestod

[nosferatu-roberteggers]

Spoilers! Why the 'Nosferatu' remake embraces a 'death and ecstasy' ending

Adolf Emil Hering; “Der Tod und das Mädchen” (1900) // P.J Lynch; “Death and the Maiden” (2014)

[7pleiades7]

Tristan and Iseult (Death) (also known as Tristán e Isolda (La muerte) and Tristan and Isolde) (1910) by Rogelio de Egusquiza y Barrena (Spanish, 1845 – 1915), oil on canvas, 160 cm (62.9 in) x 240 cm (94.4 in), Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

[soracities]

These hands that are yours. They ache To dig into your flesh And open each blue vein To hear your murmuring blood.

Federico García Lorca, from "Blood Wedding", Three Plays: Blood Wedding. Yerma, The Hous of Bernarda Alba (tr. Michael Dewell & Carmen Zapata)

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996, Baz Luhrmann)

02/09/2025

[nemetonisevilpassiton]

Lydia Martin and Liebestod

this meta was one I didn't think I had to write, but I was losing my temper with the teen wolf reddit [yes, I'm still banned for being a pedant] because to me the answer was super obvious because I understand the literary concept of liebestod and then it occurred to me how are you supposed to know what it is if no one takes the time to explain it.

So, yes, liebestod.

Literary theory steals words and uses them out of usual context to explain something complicated, then other people will use the same word to explain something similar but equally complicated and then everyone agrees on those definitions and people use the word and skate on by.

Liebestod is a great example of this because it has - 4, yep 4, basic definitions which are like a balloon over on a bigger topic.

Liebestod is for those who don't speak German a conjoined noun meaning love-death, what it means in German I don't know but in literary theory it means the following

The belief that the only successor to pure and perfect love is death

the belief that the only way to achieve a pure and perfect love is death

the belief that withou a pure and perfect love the only successor is death

the belief that without death the only successor is the pure and perfect love for the avatar of death

It's fun right, now let's expand it with examples so you can see how it works in practise

After the perfect moment the only way is down and I'll never know it again - see Othello "perdition catch my soul but I do love thee, and if I love thee not chaos is come again". That quote is the example they teach ou because after that line everything falls apart and dies. Its the most famous example so you can see why I saw it.

love is swallowed up by minutae which destroy the love itself, so imagine Romeo and Juliet as middle aged with kids and sniping at each other with spit up and his philandering because life just got in the way and that perfect love couldn't surve reality. So it is pure and perfect because they died before it happened.

Your serial killer narrative. A sociopath creates death because they have nothing else- the tv show hannibal is great for showing two sides of it, because Will Graham approeaches the same outcome from another angle

Deadpool. I swear when ever I do a hardcore literary meta I end up using deadpool as the example. Deadpool, unable to die, is in love with the avatar of death, [so is thanos] she appears to him as a female figure in a robe with a sugar skull and she manipulates him to her own advantage and knows they can never be together but she likes him better than thanos

so which one applies? Lydia is the hint but 4, absolutely 100% 4

all of the characters who have died or cannot die fixate on lydia, all of them, yep, all of the characters who fixate on Lydia die and come back. The exception character who doesn't come back [Valack] is killed by Lydia's scream, but he is seeking an escape from death

Lydia is a character who has one foot in death so you get Peter, who actively protects her from void in s3 and again in s4 [preventing her from going to Mexico], Jackson dies on the lacrosse dield, Stiles dies in the ice baths, Parrish died in Kandahar and was replaced by Garmr, Void snatches her, Jennifer is fascinated by her. The list goes on and they are all excluded by death

so if you find yourself asking "why are all these creepy people fixed on lydia"? the answer is that they're not interested in who she is - but what, they are in love with the avatar of death who happens to be Lydia.

It really is an "oh, of couse, it's liebestod", answer, they were close enough to dying that death is their pure and perfect love but that death happens to be lydia

[derangedrhythms]

…the room was full of the clamour of the forest’s Liebestod…

Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; from ‘The Company of Wolves’

[coffincoitus]

they need to invent a dating app for ppl who wanna do this:

[vermilliongrey]