love of the wolf – hélène cixous (tr. keith cohen) // the union of souls – max zabinsky // il bacio – francesco hayez // monster movie – nicola maye goldberg // the confession – frank dicksee // i set it in stone – venetta octavia // paolo e francesca – gaetano previati // it's a circus and we all paid to be here – ashe vernon // monseigneur love – thomas cooper gotch // the affliction – marie howe
If you want to read an academic article that's behind a paywall just email the author and ask politely if they will send you the article. Most academics will be thrilled that you want to read their work and will gladly send it to you.
Oh, when you are the reason it has become so mangled.
He came from the sunset
He came from the sea
He came from my sorrow
And can love only me
And if you don't love me now, you will never love me again... AKA sea monsters and their heart wounds, sea as a cruel mistress, queer desires, terrible crimes and drowning, in love, in hate, in liquor
list of used images and fragments + brief commentary for each under the cut
'Moby Dick', a fragment from the end of chapter 44, Ishmael talks about Ahab's obsession with finding the white whale, Herman Melville
My commentary: Ahab's obsession transcends a simple thrill of the hunt, it's not just hate that fuels him, the whale took something from him both literally and metaphorically, his obsession is not unlike the obsession of a scorned lover searching for revenge
'Our Flag Means Death', Backbeard/Edward Teach at the end of episode 10, creator David Jenkins
My commentary: Ed, assuming he had been abandoned by the man he loves, eventually descents into drunkenness, despair and cruelty, he becomes 'The Kraken' again, a monstrous identity he crafted to distance himself from trauma and guilt
'Disco Elysium', a fragment of a screenshot of the text bar in the game describing the effects of blue-lensed glasses, produced by ZA/UM, concept creator Robert Kurvitz
My commentary: Harry, the game's protagonist, experienced a failed relationship that was followed by a period of complete breakdown with disturbing, violent behaviours, in that context water/sea imagery reappears as inherently lonely, but pleasantly escapist
'The Lighthouse', Thomas Wake appears as a sea creature to Winslow, dir. Robert Eggers
My commentary: throughout the film, the tension between the two men is growing, the scene of Winslow beating Wake up comes up after a period of their heavy drinking when the tension, consisting of anxieties over their respective secrets, mutual distaste and desire alike, has a violent resolution
'Disco Elysium', a fragment of a screenshot of the text bar in the game, the protagonists mind tempting him into escapism, produced by ZA/UM, concept creator Robert Kurvitz
My commentary: the entire proposal sounds like a beautiful promise, but can be quite ominous, it could mean drowning, either literally, or metaphorically in alcohol, and the person waiting might be the past lover or even death itself, instead of the closeness and love Harry craves
'What The Water Gave Me', a fragment, Florence and The Machine
My commentary: the song is about a sense of loss and the things that are overwhelming
'The Old Guard', two shots of Quynh in an iron coffin at the bottom of the sea and Andromache preparing herself to fight, dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood
My commentary: Andromache sees herself as monstrous and drinks throughout the film to numb the sense of overwhelming guilt of abandoning the search for her perpetually dying lover stuck drowning in the coffin (additionally Quynh herself becoming monstrous out of resentment towards people as suggested by her comic original, Noriko)
'Start Here', a fragment, Caitlyn Siehl
'Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End', Tia Dalma/Calypso and Davy Jones, dir. Gore Verbinski
My commentary: in this scene it's revealed that although they love each other deeply, there is justified resentment between the two, Calypso is far from faithful and Davy Jones became a terrible, cursed man after learning of her betrayal, he's unable to accept her overwhelming, sublime nature and becomes a sea monster himself
'Come Wander With Me', a fragment, Sea Power
'Black Sails', episode XIII, Flint and Thomas' kiss, created by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine
My commentary: the series has a running theme of monstrosity, often attributed to pirates, and to Flint, who, indeed, can be violent and unpredictable, but at least part of his actions stem from the despair of losing the man he loved when they were discovered
'Love's Wounds', a fragment, from Sonnets of Dark Love, Federico Garcia Lorca [trans. Paul Archer]'
My commentary: it's worth to acknowledge here Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered, and it is not unlikely that his homosexuality was one of the reasons why he was targeted
'Hannibal', the last shot of the series, after Will and Hannibal fall off the cliff into the sea, creator Brian Fuller
My commentary: the sea loves it's monsters, it welcomed the monstrosity of Hannibal and Will as killers as well as their overwhelming desire for each other, it's the escapist nature of death and drowning in each other, the sea consumes indiscriminately
Oh. My. God. I barely use this blog and English is not my native language. But I can’t keep silent anymore! I’ve been obsessed with this book for over a year. Larsen/Van Weyden happened to be my first slash OTP ever, and I’m still not over it and can talk about them for hours. I mean, I’ve written 50k+ words fanfiction and meta (sorry, all in Russian), so this is pretty serious.
Well, this will be the first time that I’m composing a post here, I will try desperately not to mess up but for sure I will...
OMG!!! I think I’ve seen your fics, they’re on Ao3, right? (
Citizen_Of_Matratzien ?)
YES!!! This is me! There are several authors on Ao3, who write in Russian, how did you guess who I am? Wow!
And yeah, I’ve never seen before a fandom with, like, ZERO fics in English? And quite a few fics in Russian. And maybe I will make your frustration only worse, but there is Ficbook: Russian website with more Sea-Wolf fanfics, and here is my profile, there a several fics that I haven’t posted on Ao3. Yep, everything in Russian, so...
But even if I don’t feel ready at all to translate any of my creative writing, maybe I could offer you a couple of remedies? First of all, I’ve written a meta. Probably, my English should be enough just to summarize what I’ve written there. Okay I may need some time, because I have to say like... a lot:
I’ve read it in original and all the three Russian translations. I hope, no one here is scared of me.
And I haven’t even finished replying!
As for the second remedy... For no reason at all I tried to read my fics translated into English via Google. I will not lie to you: it was light years away from the quality of the original. I'm a total beginner and I started writing only a year and a half ago. So, even in Russian I am not that good and machine translation hasn’t improved anything for sure. So, the result was cringey. BUT! It was still not THAT bad as I expected. More or less, the story still made some sense??? Ok, I still DON’T recommend it, but maybe that’s better than nothing.
Ayyy you’re so welcome! I’m honestly delighted that anyone genuinely in the fandom found it, much less the ship writer in the tag! I hope you liked the rest of it! And heck yes song recs are always welcome!
Of course I did! I haven’t checked out lyrics of everything, but what I adore is the atmosphere and the ultimate feeling! I, personally, always have problems with finding songs that fit into the setting. It just doesn’t work and I have no idea why! So I’m just... listening, for instance, to “Swan Song“ by Dua Lipa and suddenly realize that I get Larsen vibes from the song!
My mind doesn’t have any trouble to mix Wolf Larsen and Dua Lipa, great. And everytime, when I decide to put together a playlist that at least remotely feels like 19th century, my brain just goes “lol nope“.
But you succeded where I failed, that’s why I enjoyed your playlist so much.
Would LOVE to read and/or see those! I made one fan art which you can find here. It was actually supposed to be a canon illustration but I’m uhhh shy about drawing nudity so it’s not. quite canon. But yeah, like the way it turned out and would love to see some of your content too! Thanks for writing in!!
I’ve seen your fanart first as a cover for Spotify playlist, and the first what I was thinking was “damn, cover is so gay and fits so well. Playlist with such a cover has to be good for sure!!!”. Anly later I realized that this is your art.
Honestly, when I try to imagine this scene, my brain just has to put some underwear on Larsen, else I just can’t... basically, anything.
Also, there is a question that bugs me till this day. From the book we know that Larsen had serious injuries 1) on his head 2) on his leg
So, why the fuck did Wolf Larsen take ALL his clothes off?! It would be enough just to roll up the trouser leg. So.. Why? Jack, why? He didn’t try to seduce Hump, or did he?
Okay, I’d better leave the unsolved mysteries be, and show you a couple of fanarts.
First, there is a person who explicitly has forbidden me to credit any of her sources, but permitted me to share art. So, here it is.
1) Wolf Larsen
2) Illustration of a scene where Larsen strangles Hump. 100% Canon ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Another amazing artist Nabrovsky (Набровский, here is link to his page) also made a contribition
1) Hump as a mate (Source)
2) Hump in the galley (Source)
3) Hump and the crew of Ghost as recreation of a famous meme (Source)
4) Hump has a dream about sea-wolves (Source)
As you see, I was blessed with insanely talented folks in Russian part of fandom. Ok, I did not dare to draw, bit I made some aesthetics.
1) Wolf Larsen
2) Humphrey, but it’s more my vision of post-canon. I don’t believe in his happy ending with Maud, I’m convinced that he will never get over Larsen.
Well... That’s more or less it. If you want to share something from this post, then no problem at all.
I just wanted to shortly add, that my headcanons directly contradict the “official” reading. I cannot explain here in detail why, but here are some hills I’m ready to die on:
Humphrey is an unreliable narrator. His actual personality is, at the very least, puzzling and he is by far not that noble knight with moral high-ground as he likes to picture himself. In reality Humphrey is flawed in many ways.
Humphrey was never interested in Maud’s personality. He shoved her into some hollow picture of how he imagines the woman of his dreams and didn’t care what a person she actually is. He never admired her, actually, he only admired himself like “Look, I’m so in love! In the most heteronormative and manly way possible!” (I also have a strong suspicion that Humphrey isn’t interested in women at all and is actually not bi, but gay, so on Kinsey scale between 5 and 6).
Humphrey was not able to accept his homosexual attraction to Larsen on a conscious level. But in his subconscious Humphrey was terrified of this feeling. He tried to cope by demonizing Larsen in every way possible and couldn’t even acknowledge that their relationship had, let‘s say, some complexity.
Wolf Larsen isn’t a sociopathic abuser or sadist. If we pay attention exclusively to what Larsen says and (most of all) does and leave out Hump’s interpretation... By no means is Larsen a nice person, he is still a total prick. But he is far from some soulless monster and actually doesn’t enjoy inflicting pain just for pain’s sake — but Larsen won’t hesitate to do it, if he considers that it’s worth it.
The relationship between Larsen and Hump isn’t inherently abusive. Yes, it’s problematic and complicated, but, in theory, it isn’t completely devoid of any positive perspective. There are some moments that could be interpreted as “Larsen was also into Hump” and we can easily read Larsen as bisexual (what I do).
Jack London, for sure, has meant none of it.
As I said, I still have to provide arguments, but this is a short summary of how I intepret the story.
Ok, no idea how to end it, but I hope you enjoyed!
*curtsies* Dear Duke, I have a kind of strange question today. Do you know of any books featuring both sailors (or pirates or whatever) and queer characters? I know there's some queerness in Moby Dick and Melville's other novels, but Google is not being helpful and I can't find anything else. Also, I'm not looking for porn or trashy romance, but good literature, preferably classic but modern is great too. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all the asks you get! <3
OH MAN. CAN I TALK TO YOU ABOUT JACK LONDON’S THE SEA WOLF? BECAUSE THIS IS FAR AND AWAY THE QUEEREST FUCKING CLASSIC BOOK I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE. ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE TO YOU WOLF LARSEN, NIETZSCHEAN HULK-MAN WHO PUNCHES SHARKS IN THE FACE AND CHOKES THE LIFE OUT OF INCOMPETENT SAILORS. AND ENTER AS OUT OF THE WATER, THIRTY-YEAR-OLD CABIN BOY HUMPHREY ‘HUMP’ VAN WEYDEN, I SHIT YOU NOT THEY CALL HIM ‘HUMP’ FOR THE WHOLE FUCKING BOOK. THESE TWO DUDES ARE SO GAY FOR EACH OTHER AND SO REPRESSED AND FRUSTRATED THAT THEY REACH A GLORIOUS FEVER PITCH WHERE THE OPTIONS ARE EITHER FUCKING OR KILLING EACH OTHER, and then London’s publisher panicked and said, “No sir, this is just too gay and we’re just too Edwardian to be comfortable with that,” so the second half of the book is an absolute mess but it’s still worth reading. At one point this book resulted in one of my friends and I texting each other nautical sex puns in an uninterrupted stream for three days. If you’re not convinced I recommend this review because it’s possibly my favorite review that has ever been written of anything.
Hi! Sorry for my English, I'm not a native speaker. I am a shy one, but I enjoyed your art since, maybe, 2013? Because of SanSan. All this time I just visit your blog or DA, admire and leave notes. But your recent PotC sketches... I just got a flood of flashbacks just by looking at them. Now I really want to ask you, what is your opinion on Davy Jones? I mean, I see many parallels between him and Norrington and the line "I'm honest. It is the world that is awful" could totally be said by Jones.
Hi! Your English is great! omg @xcenticyellowzebra I feel like I should give this over to someone like @norrington-hell because my knowledge of potc and it’s characters is lacking, but YES…Yes I do see parallels between him and Norrington, and it’s heart wrenching. I’m sure there’s some awesome parallels and theories drawn between the two. But yeah, my opinion….I don’t know? I mean, I need more time to think about him. heh.
Tia Dalma: You know of Davy Jones, yes? A man of the sea. A great sailor. Until he ran afoul of that which vexes all men. See, it was a woman. He fell in love..It was a woman… as harsh, changing and untameable like the sea. Him never stopped loving her.
Also, I was looking at pics of what a young Davy Jones might have looked like, and I bummed myself out.
Oh my God! This was my first ask ever and you answered me! Holy shit, I am getting a little too emotional about it! (if running around the room and screaming is “a little” heh…)
Well, before experts arrive, I can reference this amazing post. Although I don’t 100% agree with it, but it has a lot of valid points. I mean, I can see that the author certainly prefers Norrington over Davy Jones. Ok, it makes sense, Jones is a total a*hole when James for sure is not.
Long face, high cheekbones… Why does almost every anti-hero/tragic villain have these face features? I have to stop thinking about Sandor
And, last but not least. A while ago, I was reading PotC-Wiki and this one sentence just left me screaming “Holy shit! This is freaking amazing! Why the hell wasn’t it in the movie?!”. They don’t give any source, so this can be fake. But I find the idea alone so genius it almost hurts:
In earlier drafts of At World’s End, Jones had a sort of friendship with Admiral James Norrington due to their mutual dislike for working for Beckett; which might explain why Jones offered Norrington a place in his crew.
When I was younger, I read a lot of Christian books. In high school, I wrote a paper on Christian literature, specifically, what it is about Christian literature that makes it often flatter and less compelling than other genres. I’m not saying it all sucks, but I am saying that somehow, I’ve noticed through my life that Christian books suck more than their secular counterparts on average. I found them to often be juvenile, one-dimensional and derivative, and I didn’t think it had to be that way. I didn’t think that being Christian made a book bad, but I observed that the genre was stuffed with a lot of bad books, and the bad books were far worse than bad books outside the category.
I’m not intending to start a discussion about Christian literature; I’m not alone in feeling this way or noticing this phenomenon if you believe it’s a thing. Online, you can read a lot of articles discussing the same thing: that Christian lit tends to be lower quality. So I wanted to know why.
To answer the question, I looked at interviews of Christian authors and submission guidelines for Christian publishers. I wished to understand the intent behind writings in the genre and what might lead to the difference in quality. And what I found was very illuminating.
Essentially, many Christian authors and publishers feel that:
1. their books have a responsibility to promote morality in their readers, and authors are somewhat responsible for the moral fiber of their readers
2. there has to be a strong delineation between “moral” and “immoral” behavior in books
3. many topics either can’t be addressed at all or must be very clearly pointed out as “bad” if they are
4. certain topics and ideas ought to be brought up in a book and pointed out as good as part of the purpose or meaning of the book
The conclusion I came to was that these ideas were resulting in flat, one-dimensional characters and dull plots. The responsibility of promoting moral integrity, and having to make absolutely sure that nothing you write could condone or promote immoral behavior, was of paramount importance.
And what that caused was preachiness, one-dimensionality, a lack of compelling moral conflict, flat characters, and intellectually numbing stories.
Why am I talking about this?
Because a lot of the ideas I’ve been seeing spread around in writeblr and in the online writing and reading communities as a whole are identical.
A lot of the posts I see online now about writing are almost exact echoes of the ideas I wrote about in my paper.
Nowadays, I see posts constantly urging people to think about why they want to write their stories, and whether they are good or helpful or edifying. I see authors being slammed for not condemning characters with disgusting beliefs hard enough. I see people being dragged for liking characters that are not morally and ideologically pure. I see posts telling people to approach any difficult topic with extreme caution and crisp, unmistakable condemnation. Media is widely vilified when its fandom becomes toxic or nasty, assumed to be at fault for the moral fiber of its fans.
I see authors and publishers advertising their books as “feminist”, as if that makes any sense at all (is the author feminist? Does it just handle female characters well? Are the characters feminist? Is it focused on women’s issues?). I open a book and see poorly-integrated lines of dialogue dropping ideas about prejudice or gender that seem like a Tumblr post or part from a nonfiction book on racism inserted directly into a character’s mouth. I don’t think feminism is bad. I think feminism is great. And I don’t think talking about prejudice or gender is bad. I think these things need to be talked about. I definitely don’t think these ideas can’t be expressed in fiction. On the contrary; I think fiction is one of the best ways of expressing important ideas.
But, I see some kind of preoccupation with the ideas your writing promotes, prominently including the idea that you must promote and you must condemn certain ideas, and that everything you write makes a statement about morality, and you’re responsible for edifying your audience and making them better people. And it’s really, really familiar.
The conclusion that my paper came to is that you can’t clean up the reality of humanity. You can’t make the messiness of existence crisp and clear so you can feed your readers the ideas you want them to absorb bite by bite. You can’t have light without darkness, and you can’t have either without shades of gray.
In life, racist people will not always be obviously horrible. (Even though sometimes they are…) Sometimes they will be people who love their spouses and kids and are generally “nice” and adopt dogs and love kittens, and they will still be racist. Sometimes even “good” people will say or do racist things and have to realize their mistakes and then make mistakes again and have to realize THOSE mistakes. Sometimes getting out of ideas you grew up hearing is long and difficult and you have to catch your brain repeating them even years after you tried to change. Racism can be passive, subtle, it can exist in people who are “good” in some ways. Sometimes people make progress toward changing but still have problems. How do we show this in books? Is it an author’s responsibility to solve all this and sort out everything?
Is it racist for a racist character who is seeking redemption to not have entirely overcome their prejudices by the end of a book? Is it the author’s responsibility to make sure racist behavior in the book is clearly labeled? Is it a reflection of the author’s views if a character says something racist?
Note that I’m asking these questions. I’m definitely open to and would like perspectives from other people on this, people of color foremost and especially. The idea I am exploring is, does giving an author the responsibility of making sure their book clearly and unequivocally promotes certain ideas and condemns others impair them? Could it make it more difficult to address the ideas they want to?
When I analyzed Christian literature, the conclusion I had to reach was that it does. I found christian lit as a whole to be excessively black-and-white, simplistic, shy of tackling anything with complexity, and almost dishonest about human nature. Is there an analogy in this situation?
In life, relationships aren’t always pure and unproblematic. People don’t fall neatly into “people who have never done anything to hurt their partner” and abusers. People can sometimes have problems in their relationships and have to change their behaviors to preserve their relationships. Relationships have difficulties and arguments. Sometimes a person needs to change or become better in order to have a healthy relationship. Sometimes a relationship can be unhealthy without being abusive, and sometimes relationships are abusive. Must the author draw lines about “toxicity” and “problematicness” in super clear neon spray paint so people know the difference?
These arguments come up about all sorts of morality-related things in books. And on some level I agree, you shouldn’t promote racism, and you should be careful and sensitive about portraying some things, but I am also extremely apprehensive about certain aspects of this culture that has sprung up.
It’s really almost totally identical to what I noticed about Christian literature, and imo there it has done a lot of damage. I don’t really believe that authors are totally past being responsible for damage their ideas do, quite the opposite. But there is this expectation of dictating what’s bad and what’s good on a very clear level.
That was part of the problem i noticed in Christian literature, the teaching of ideas rather than forcing readers to consider them.
I’m not trying to talk over anybody at all, esp with things about racism, I’m white after all. And I really urge and ask my white followers and people-who-see-this-post to listen to the opinions, ideas and feelings of people of color who reply on the topic of racism. What I really want is everybody to consider this: is it an author’s job to make sure all “bad” and “good” things in their book are clearly delineated? If not, what is the best practice for an author? If not, might this cause problems? The culture I am seeing in the writeblr community seems to hold that it is, and rejection of redemption for villains, morally ambiguous situations and characters, addressing of complicated topics, and portraying anything “bad” without making absolutely certain that it’s clearly wrong is growing.
When I analyzed Christian literature, the conclusion I had to reach was that it does. I found christian lit as a whole to be excessively black-and-white, simplistic, shy of tackling anything with complexity, and almost dishonest about human nature.
That’s what I find, although my primary lens isn’t race; I come from the domestic violence prevention world, and have been watching frothing about “unhealthy” and “abusive” ships with alternating bemusement and dismay. I do care, deeply, about preventing intimate partner violence; but I think the current mania for pure, unproblematic relationships is honestly getting in the way of honest conversations about abuse.
Part of this is because, if you can only show good things as good, you cannot talk about the appeal of an abusive relationship, about why people stay in it. You have to deny the power and magnetism of loving a flawed person, and can’t talk about the profound yearning to be loved despite our flaws. If you don’t understand why people repeatedly return to an abusive partner–if you can’t empathize with their feelings and reasoning, and acknowledge their motivations as often being deeply compassionate and altruistic–then you cannot help them ever decide to walk away for good.
The other part is that, if people decide they know what is Good and what is Bad and They Are Against Abuse, they will justify anything they like as Good and Pure, even if the thing they like is harassing and abusing other fans, or a contentious ship that argues all the time but hits their id buttons. Anything that threatens their fervently-held self-image as being Against Abuse, any acknowledgement of their own complicity in anything resembling the thing they profess to hate, is strictly guarded against–never admitted to or corrected.
As a Christian, I’d say the funniest part of the Moral Purity Panic of these Christian Bookstore-esque books is that the Bible itself would probably not make their cut for what is morally acceptable. Saul persecutes Christians only to be redeemed and become an apostle of the Church? King David not only commits adultery but knocks up the woman in question– and then has her husband sent to the front lines to cover up his mistake? And this guy is considered one of the most important figures in the Abrahamic religions? King Saul commits suicide? You could literally just go on and on from there.
Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Kierkegaard? These are all Christian writers who were not afraid of nuance– who in fact saw nuance as the key to their entire philosophical enterprise. Crime and Punishment alone is one of the most famous examples of human depravity in Western literature– human depravity, and redemption.
Even if you do believe in real ideas of good and evil, it’s still a moral cop-out to provide stories with no nuance and act as though you’re not doing a massive disservice to people who live in the real world and therefore need complex tools to deal with complex situations. This sort of puritanical censorship should be the enemy of everyone.
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Any recommendations for reunited SanSan fanfics? Preferably having their storylines twine back together after Sansa's experiences on the run with Petyr? No pref on book or show-centric. Thank you loves!
Thanks for the shout out! Just as a heads up, Bones and Rubies isn’t abandoned. I’m in the process of re-writing things I didn’t like and adding to it before going forward again. I plan on updating all of it with the new version along with posting a new chapter.
origamiaround
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