defending lenore’s spectre. this was gonna be a reblog but it became so long that i figured it should be its own post. please don’t start wars!
i think the idea that it’s a design based on things one just feels like is cool, not a design mainly based on thought isn’t saying much since i feel like that can be applied to most if not every spectre we’ve seen.
berenice wears a minidress with a bunch of cut outs and fishnet tights
montresor literally has his abs out and has piercings on his nipples
duke’s whole jester look having the chest belts
even arguably the heart shaped hole in annabel’s chest (not to mention the recent panels of her lmao)
lenore’s is actually less, for lack of a better term, fanservicey / gratuitous than those, especially considering there hasn’t been any special emphasis she gets on particular elements, nor additional detail or lack thereof which is in keeping with the rest of the cast. also, the design was gonna be something the creators like no matter what the lore was.
on the contrary, it's not like lenore’s spectre is an exception when it comes to design principles, symbolism and how much of the story was taken into account. aside from the clever detail of there being a chance Bloody Mary shows you a skull to hint that you will die before you get married and a lady in red being a jilted lover.
like many of them it reflects how she died (shot in the head while meant to be the groom to annabel’s wife, so there’s a crack where she was shot with an inner cavity similar to annabel’s one in her chest, plus the red crystal halo that points to the wound and signifies the direction of blood splatter, matching the red crystal dangling in the center of annabel, and the clothes being more or less the same just loosely modified like annabel’s wedding dress, the blood on the top coming from embracing her).
who she was before she died (she used to have long hair before she cut it off in pursuit of being with annabel, and the scissor-ish blades also fit with that). side note i don’t like the idea that it clashes with her androgyny or how she presents her appearance gender-wise, long hair isn’t inherently feminine and can be seen as masculine. additionally that wasn’t the primary reason her hair was cut or why she styled herself the way she did, it was to pass as a man for the aforementioned goal. she was never shown having a problem with the dresses she wore in life and even wore some feminine stuff in dreamland. there’s also how it makes her not resemble theo, which was actually on purpose.
and the emotions she felt as she died (annabel can be said to have died feeling grief, and has a giant hole in her chest where her heart was alluding to lost and unfulfilled love. lenore died feeling vengeful, and her seemingly hollow head and bloodied eyes means she’s “seeing red” i.e cannot see reason anymore, as well as bringing to mind the phrases “blood for blood”, “blood feud” and so on. there’s also how blood is not just associated with death, but it’s also a sign of being warm and alive. obviously no one at nevermore that isn’t named pluto wanted to die, but lenore clearly had a strong will to live and keep fighting as well as has some fire imagery. note how annabel is chronically cold in her spectre form just like a corpse, and had very little resolve in their final moments). the other spectres can have just as many things about them inferred.
also i get that it gives creepypasta (which i dont see the problem with), but:
she’s a Bloody Mary, a figure from an old horror legend portrayed a lot as being, well, bloody, and creepypasta are essentially just horror legends but from the internet. they fundamentally have the same tropes, it was kinda inevitable.
a gunshot to the head damages blood vessels which are also in your eyes and i can’t think of another way other than more broken glass-like cracks on the forehead to imply the head wound.
a quick search shows that red eyes really aren’t that common in creepypasta characters. plus, the story is already dark and horror-adjacent to begin with, a few elements that come off as “edgy” are to be expected, this isn’t even the first nor will it be the last lol.
edgy things are a guilty pleasure for me i can’t lie lmao, don’t kill me pls
and on whether or not it’s monstery enough, annabel, morella, eulalie and duke all have pretty human-like spectres or designs, along with to a lesser extent monty, prospero and berenice. that’s most members of the main cast already. the Bloody Mary is ultimately just a ghost woman, and most ghosts will resemble people with extra sauce for self explanatory reasons.
i also think some of this has to do with the fact that lenore was for so long the only one without a spectre, which led to tons of speculation on what it would it be, combined with stretched out pacing made it so that it would likely never match the reality of what the creators had in mind.
unless you get deep in theorizing (like me admittedly lmao), was there really ever an indication that her spectre would warrant any more significance than other spectre reveals? if annabel’s was revealed to us much later and lenore’s revealed first i think people would've also gave hers more scrutiny (i had to go back and check to see how detailed annabel’s dress was, it has nothing other than some frills at the ends guys lol). the expectation of more elements related to ravens might also have been from this. beyond the subject being mourned in the poem "the raven" being all but stated to be the same lenore in the poem "lenore" both that lenore and this lenore didn't have a tie to ravens the way pluto has a tie to black cats.
i admit that i'm heavily biased in favor of defending her spectre. that being said within what the story’s identity is it serves its purpose pretty well.
addendum - as someone mentioned, her blades not only reference the scissors she used to cut her hair, but also the raven wings in the series' logo and slightly resemble her wheelchair, and this can be seen as turning what gave her hardship into a mode of revenge seeking!
Imagine little Telemachus asks his mother to describe his father, and in doing so Penelope comes to the horrible realization that she had forgotten details about Odysseus’s features
I do not "only engage in media with queer characters." I enjoy the media, and then I actively LOOK for queer characters. If I don't find one, I LOOK HARDER. If I can't find queer characters, I HEADCANON them as queer. You complain about your favorite media not having queer representation? Then I will FIND queer representation. And if I can't find it, then I will FORCE queer representation.
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