Eridian Grace, as in culturally Eridian, not the species Eridian, is so important to me.
Grace who does jazz hands and taps when he's asking a question and says some words three times like Rocky. Grace who makes chirps and trilling noises when he's happy.
Grace who starts thinking and dreaming in Eridian, who sometimes has dreams that are just sound, no visual. (Grace who, if he ever goes back to Earth for whatever reason after years on Erid, forgets some words in English and speaks in the sentence structure of Eridian because he has to translate from Eridian to English when he speaks outloud).
Grace who does scarification (even if Rocky protests at first) - I've read some fics where he does the Voyager pulsar map, or dots and lines showing his route from Sol, to Tau Ceti, turning around towards Sol, and then the line going all the way back to Erid. Even though he already has the scars from Rocky saving him, maybe Rocky's family crest. A scar showing his rank as Captain of the Hail Mary - maybe something to represent her, too.
Grace who wears Eridian gems, as earrings, in a chain for his glasses, in strings draped over him that clink together when he walks - the most important ones, like the earrings he wears all the time, the color of the blueish-green gems (or spots?) in/on Rocky's carapace.
Grace who wears a bracelet on each arm that have ribbed marks like on Rocky's arm so he can properly say goodbye (not something he had to do, but something that felt right to do, something that made him feel more like himself), sound included.
Grace who considers himself an Eridian!! Grace who IS an Eridian!!
"Grace Ryland is Rocky's dog" is such a funny fucking dynamic when you think about it
Eridians are further behind than humans technologically right? They dont have computers, relativity, quantum mechanics, etc. In fact, Eridians probably dont even know about the Big Bang because their atmosphere would filter out most of the cosmic microwave background radiation we use to detect it. On a human timeline, theyre anywhere between like early-mid 20th century. Rocky's basically a cosmonaut.
So the human civilization is pretty advanced from Rocky's perspective. Rationally he understands this. On a conceptual level he knows this to be true.
But at the same time... imagine youre one of the first ever cosmonauts to make it into space. Then you meet a 10 year old alien dog who cant do 2+2 without pulling out its calculator. It forgets everything constantly and has to keep notes everywhere, like it basically lives in Memento (2000). Also if it doesnt nap constantly it gets even stupider. And you somehow has to reconcile this with the fact that this dog has a better understanding of physics than your entire civilization does. Like the dog knows how the universe started.
ok I know everyoneās considered Ryland grace wearing an āI put the ace in spaceā t shirt but. have we considered the infinitely funnier option of putting this shirt on eva stratt
grace, who has been alone for five minutes: oh my god. an alien! im not alone anymore! i hope he wants to be friends :)
rocky, coming up on 50 years of solitude, imprinting on grace in ways baby ducklings can only dream of: if you leave me to sleep where i can't watch your heart beat i am blowing up this tunnel with us both in it
stratt and grace and the rest of the phm science team running on 4 cumulative hours of sleep at an unscheduled conference. dimitri and lokken are trying to explain a new complication in the hail mary's fueling system and the resources necessary to iron it out but they keep getting interrupted by government officials butting in until grace (who doesn't even look up from his laptop and checked out of the conversation two days ago) snaps "we raise our hands to speak"
complete silence for like 3 seconds. the french prime minister sheepishly raises his hand and stratt smiles for the first time that week (grace buries his entire head behind his laptop screen for wont of a better option, like jumping straight into the sea)
I would LOVE to read your analysis of louis as byronic hero as apposed to his reading as gothic heroine. lots of the latter and zero of the former in the fandom.
Sure! Mmm, okay, so ā
What are we talking about when we talk about Gothic Heroes? Ā
When we talk about gothic heroes, weāre really talking about three pretty different character archetypes. All three are vital to the genre, but some are more popular in certain subgenres i.e. your Prometheus Hero may be more common in gothic horror, whereas your Byronic Hero might be more likely to be found in gothic romance. Thatās not to say theyāre exclusive to those subgenres at all, and there is an argument that these archetypes themselves are gendered (in many ways, I think people confuse Anne being an author of the female gothic with Louis being a gothic heroine, but Iāll get into that later), but this is also not necessarily something thatās exclusive.
Anyway, Iām getting ahead of myself, haha, so the three gothic hero archetypes are:
Miltonās Satan who is the classic gothic hero-villain. You can probably guess from the name, but he was originated in John Miltonās 1667 poem, Paradise Lost. He is Godās favourite angel, but God is forced to cast him out of heaven when he rebels against him. As an archetype, heās a man pretty much defined by his pride, vanity and self-love, usually fucks his way through whatever book or poem heās in, has a perverted, incestuous family, and a desire to corrupt other people. Heās also defined as being ātoo weak to choose what is moral and right, and instead chooses what is pleasurable only to himā and his greatest character flaw, in spite of all The Horrors, is that heās usually easily misguided or led astray. (I would argue that Lestat fits into this archetype pretty neatly, but thatās a whole other post.)
Prometheus who was established as a gothic archetype by Mary Shelley with Frankenstein in 1818. Your Prometheus Hero is basically represented by the quest for knowledge and the overreach of that quest to bring on unintended consequences. Heās tied, of course, to the Prometheus of Greek myth, so you can get elements of that in this character design too in that he can be devious or a trickster, but the most important part of him is that he is split between his extreme intelligence and his sense of rebellion, and that his sense of rebellion and boundary pushing overtakes his intelligence and basically leads to All The Gothic Horrors.
And the Byronic Hero, who as the name implies, was both created by and inspired by the romantic poet, Lord Byron in his semi-autobiographical poem, Childe Haroldās Pilgrimage which was published between 1812-1818. The archetype is kind of an idealized version of himself, and as historian and critic Lord Macaulay wrote, the character is āa man proud, moody, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep and strong affection.ā Adding to that, heās often called āthe gloomy egoistā as a protagonist type, hates society, is often self-destructive and lives either exiled or in a self-exile, and is a stalwart of gothic literature, but especially gothic romance. Interestingly too, in his most iconic depictions heās often a) darkly featured and/or not white (Heathcliff being the most obvious example of this given Emily Bronte clearly writes him as either Black or South Asian), and b) is often used to explore queer identity, with Byron himself having been bisexual.
Okay, but what about the Gothic Heroine?
Gothic heroines are less delineated and have had more of an evolution over time, which makes sense, given women have consistently been the main audience of gothic literature and have frequently been the most influential writers of the genre too. The gothic genre sort of āofficiallyā started with Horace Walpoleās 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto and Isabella is largely regarded as the first gothic heroine and the foundation of the archetype, and the book opens even with one of the key defining traits ā an innocent, chaste woman without the protection of a family being pursued and persecuted by a man on the rampage.
The gothic heroine was, for years, defined by her lack of agency. She was innocent, chaste, beautiful, curious, plagued by tragedy and often, ultimately, tragic. Isabella survives in The Castle of Otranto, but sheās one of the lucky ones ā Cathy dies in Wuthering Heights, Sybil dies in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Justine and Elizabeth both die in Frankenstein, Mina survives in Dracula, but Lucy doesnāt. Thereās an argument frequently posited that the gothic genre was, and is, about dead women and the men who mourn them, and Interview with the Vampire certainly lends itself to that pretty neatly.
Of course, the genre has evolved, and in particular by the late 1800s, there was a notable shift in how the Gothic Heroine was depicted. The house became a place of imprisonment where they were further constrained and disempowered, she was infantilized and pathologized and diagnosed as hysterical, and as Avril Horner puts it in her excellent paper, Women, Power and Conflict: the Gothic heroine and āChocolate-box Gothicā, gothic literature of this era āexplores āthe constraints enforced [by] a patriarchal society that is becoming increasingly nervous about the demands of the āNew Womanā.ā
This was an era where marriage was increasingly understood in feminist circles to be a civil death where women were further subjugated and became the property of their husbands. This was explored through gothic literature as the domestic space evolved into a symbol of patriarchal control in the Female Gothic.
Female Gothic vs Male Gothic
Because hereās the thing ā the female gothic and the male gothic are generally understood to be two different subgenres of gothic literature.
While there are plenty of arguments as to what this entails, the basics is that the male gothic is written by men, and usually features graphic horror, rape and the masculine domination of women and often utilises the invasion of womenās spaces as a symbol of further penetrating their bodies, while the female gothic is written by women, and usually features graphic terror, as opposed to horror, while delving more specifically into gender politics. More than that though, its heroines are usually victimized, virginial and powerless while being pursued by villainous men.
The Female Gothic as a genre is also specifically interested in the passage from girlhood to female maturity, and does view the house as a place of entrapment, but she is usually suddenly āthreatened with imprisonment in a castle or a great house under the control of a powerful male figure who gave her no chance to escape.ā
Thatās not Louisā arc, thatās Claudiaās arc twice over, first with the house at Rue Royale, then with the Paris Coven, and Lestat and Armand arenāt the only powerful male figures who imprison her.
Claudia as the Gothic Heroine
Claudia in many ways is the absolute embodiment of the classic gothic heroine. Even the moment of their meeting is a product of Louisā Byronic heroism ā his act of implacable revenge against the Alderman Fenwick which prompts the rioting that almost kills her. Sheās a victim of Louisā monstrousness before theyāve even met, and while he saves her, he arguably does something worse in trapping her in the house with both himself and Lestat, holding her in an ever-virginal, ever-chaste eternal girlhood, playing into Lestatās Milton-Satan by enhancing the perversion of family and ultimately infantilizing her out of his own desire for familial closeness.
Claudia has no family protection before Louis and Lestat ā a staple of the gothic heroine ā she is completely dependent on them in her actual girlhood, and again in adulthood, never developing the strength to be able to turn a companion, to say nothing about the sly lines here and there that further diminish and pathologise her (Lestat calling her histrionic, Louis making her out to be a burden, etc.). This is all further compounded again with the Coven, and when the tragedy of her life ultimately leads to the tragedy of her death. Ā
Louis as the Byronic Hero
Not to start with a quote, but hereās one from The Literary Icon of the Byronic Hero and its Reincarnation in Emily Bronteās Wuthering Heights:
āGenerally speaking, the Byronic hero exhibits several particular characteristics. He does not possess heroic virtues in the usual, traditional sense. He is a well-educated, intelligent and sophisticated young man, sometimes a nobleman by birth, who at the same time manifests signs of rebellion against all fundamental values and moral codes of the society. Despite his obvious charm and attractiveness, the Byronic hero often shows a great deal of disrespect for any figure of authority. He was considered "the supreme embodiment [...] standing not only against a dehumanized system of labor but also against traditionally repressive religious, social, and familial institutions" (Moglen, 1976: 28).
The Byronic hero is usually a social outcast, a wanderer, or is in exile of some kind, one imposed upon him by some external forces or self-imposed. He also shows an obvious tendency to be arrogant, cunning, cynical, and unrepentant for his faults. He often indulges himself in self destructive activities that bring him to the point of nihilism resulting in his rebellion against life itself. He is hypersensitive, melancholic, introspective, emotionally conflicted, but at the same time mysterious, charismatic, seductive and sexually attractive.ā
Louis as he exists in the show to me is pretty much all of those things, and I think to argue that heās a gothic heroine not only diminishes Claudiaās arc, but robs Louis of his agency within his own story. Louis chooses Lestat, over and over again, heās not imprisoned by the monster in the domestic sphere, he is one of the monsters whoās controlling the household, including making decisions of when they bring a child into it and when Lestat gets to live in it ā he wanted to be turned, he wanted to live with Lestat in Rue Royale, and while there are certainly arguments to be made about their power dynamic within the household in the NOLA era, importantly Louis actually gained social power through his marriage to Lestat, particularly through The Azaelia, he didnāt lose it in the way thatās vital to the story of the gothic heroine.
Daniel Hart even said it in a recent twitter thread about Long Face, but there is an element of Lestat and Louisā relationship that is transactional, and to me, for that to exist, they both have to have a degree of control over their circumstances and choices in order to negotiate those transactions. Claudia is the one who canāt, sheās the one whoās treated effectively as property, and sheās the one who lacks control over her circumstances.
While you could perhaps argue the constraints of the apartment in Dubai lend more to the gothic heroine archetype, Iād argue it as furthering the Byronic trope again by being representative both of Louisā self-destruction and self-imposed exile. As Jacob has said a few times, Louis does seem to have known to a degree that Armand was involved in Claudiaās death on some level, and itās that guilt and misery that has him allowing Armand his degree of control. The fact that Louis was able to leave Armand as easily and as definitively as he was I think demonstrates that distinction too ā after all, to compare that ending to Claudiaās multiple attempts to leave the confines of the patriarchal house, both in Rue Royale and Paris, which were punished at every turn ā first by her rape, then by Lestat dragging her back off the train, and then by the Coven orchestrating her murder.
Louis gets to leave because Louis can leave, he has both the social and narrative power to, and the fact that he does is, to me, completely at odds with the gothic heroine. Louis can, and does advocate for himself, Louis is proud, moody, cynical. Defiance is a key part of his character, just as his exile from NOLA society due to his race, and his chosen rejection of vampire society in Paris, is. Heās intelligent and sophisticated, travels the world, and has misery in his heart, guilt that eats him up, and self-destructive tendencies. Thatās a Byronic Hero, baby! Ā
Considering the fact heās set up to be like an antagonist force in the Heavens for Xie Lian Pei Ming is such a wild side character like:
Heās probably aromantic
Heās older than Xie Lian by maybe 5 years maybe 100s itās really vague
He is constantly following his dick into places I wouldnāt go with a gun
He isnāt actually antagonistic to Xie Lian at all despite all the behind the scenes manipulation trying to make that happen
Him and Xie Lian share custody of a 250 year old war criminal
Heās the text book example of why āI was just following ordersā is really fucking bad
He has an incredibly strong sense of justice
Heās best friends with the most evil woman and second most evil man in heaven for most of the novel
Heās genuinely a good person
Heās so charismatic his best friend/situation-ship tried to make him king without asking him
Heās so distraught about what happened with The Rain Master he runs away from her for +800 years of existence
Heās a slut
Heās a Hualian shipper
Despite being probably the third strongest Martial God in the series he spends all of Mount Tonglu with a broken elbow and being comic relief
He genuinely believes he and Hua Cheng are buds
He somehow didnāt have any children so instead he tries to trust fund kid his 17 times great grand nephew who was raised by the most humble man ever and canāt work out why the kid wonāt let him buy his way out of jail
He wants to talk to Xie Lian about his sex life
He spends most of the last book being depressed that one of his best friends is dead and another is on the run
People pray to him for long lasting relationships
A yandre ghost is trying to kill him
Jun Wu was actively running a smear campaign against him the entire time
He was part of the magical girl sword
Heās the slut of the heavens
He is both so tried and living by the motto fuck it we ball
Heās the only other man Xie Lian finds handsome
He was the first person to realise EāMing was a boner metaphor
Heās scared of the bull man who hates him
He is probably going to be the next heavenly emperor since Xie Lian doesnāt want that shit
Heās the only martial god who genuinely likes and respects Ling Wen until Xie Lian shows up
I headcanon that during He Xuan's time in Tonglu, after several years of being alone, the giant Xie Lian statue basically became Wilson from Castaway for him lmao
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