"I read somewhere... how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong... to measure yourself at least once."
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
I don't know if this is in positive sense or negative...... but I think when we're in love, we do the things we never did before.......... We start lowering our boundaries and we try things, we never would have, if not for the other person..........
aphrodite would be jealous of your golden lips, your silver tongue would rival hermes himself
'thoughts' pt. 1
'memories of you' pt. 1
inspired by a dear friend of mine who I have recently lost.
when the gates of heaven open and the world rains down on us, I will open my eyes for the first time and remember you again. remember our years spent together, your eyes of brown and gold. you are the reason why I always eat polynesian sauce with my chicken. the reason that, whenever I go on the zip line at summer camp, I'm not afraid- because you told me not to be. I remember your eyes, your cheekbones; the curves of your lips that would rival Paris himself. and whenever I see a classroom desk I remember how we would sit upon them and talk, as if we were gods above the earth, flirting with the heavens, feeling immortal. so when I see the winged heel of Hermes I think of your fleeting touch, the eye contact you would so desperately hold with me, as if we were drafted in a war against fate. I remember the cocky smile of achilles playing about your lips. my love for you was a Herculean effort; but the honey-sweet hours of our youth spent together will always remain a stain upon my soul. I would hope you remember me the same, my darling, my beloved
☆ thanks also to my beta @ancientoro for his help in writing this <3
☆ new prose content coming soon!
Scotland forever!, Elizabeth Thompson
Charge of the light brigade, Alfred Lord Tennyson
1907, Friedland, Ernest Meissonier
"The scene (Harker's encounter with Dracula's brides) is rich in melodrama, sexuality, and horror."
"This scene suggests, of course, the invitation of the forbidden; everything that the patriarchal, Victorian world, represented by the proper solicitor Jonathan Harker denies him, is offered to him. In many of the representations of the female vampire in the twentieth century what is denied women by the culture — authority, independence, sexuality — will be emphasized, as it is in this central scene from Stoker's Dracula."
— "Not all Fangs are Phallic: Female Film Vampires" by James Craig Holt, published in Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 1999, Vol. 10, No. 2 (38) & A Century of Draculas, 1999
Background photo by Kevin Escate on Unsplash
I'm terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.
—Sylvia Plath
It’s that time again (time to watch Little Women 1994).
The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.
William Blake
i absolutely despise how some people reading classic literature (or just any type of literature; but this blog is about classic lit) in today's age are adamant to find anything romantic about a text that has barely any hint of romance and does not focus on romance. romance novels exist. romantic classics exist! pick up austen if you want something romantic.
(this post is not directed at people who know the text they're reading isn't romantic but like the exploration of characters who are implied to have/have romantic feelings towards one another—e.g. victor/clerval, poly suitors and jonmina shippers i love you guys)
btw weird as fuck to see people say that shipping jekyll and hyde (who is one guy) is a queer reading of the text.
there is more than one queer reading of the text, which has been done THOUSANDS of times because the queer subtext in jekyll and hyde is off the fucking charts (AND IT IS INTENTIONAL, since Stevenson was pro-gay rights and had plenty of queer friends)
if you want a queer reading of the text, you can look at Jekyll's behavior and the way he talks about his past and wonder whether if he's talking about frowned-upon sexual activities. you can look at the assumed dynamic between Jekyll and Hyde pre-twist (are they father and son? lovers? former lovers?) and understand that a contemporary reader could have very well assumed Jekyll was a gay man. you can look at the way Jekyll interacts with other male characters and see romantic undertones. you can look at the identity elements of the book and the recurring gothic theme of the monster as a depiction of women (as a "distorted man") and even make a trans reading (Jekyll can be transmasc or transfem coded, depending on who you ask).
going "I think the main character should fuck his evil persona that he made up" isn't a queer reading of the text, it is projecting fandom "ship something no matter what" mentality into a book that wasn't built for that. im not saying you CANT do that, I mean its not illegal and I'd say that gothic fiction has problematic elements much worse than any fucked up ship you could come up with... but when you do that, it shows a rather blatant disregard of the stories' themes and plot in favor of looking for two white men to draw making out.
if you so desperately need to ship characters from Jekyll and Hyde with each other, I suggest ships that don't involve non-existing fake people, or that don't so clearly show the substance addiction metaphor flew over your head because you were too focused on twisting the text to make it fit your weird selfcest fantasy.
saying "we are due a queer reading of Jekyll and Hyde" is like saying "dracula should have had vampires"
(also, for the ship to work you have to give hyde the evil split personality treatment. I shouldn't have to explain why that is sketchy. that, or you could just acknowledge you're describing masturbation, which is something that Jekyll very likely already does on the regular, given the way the victorian era was.)
Libraries, books & music. What a beautiful escape from life.
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
[text ID: I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.]
It's purgatory but it's livable
Dakota Warren, On Sun Swallowing
Hey you... Yeah you... You damned piece of art...
You have my whole fuckin heart
Based on my likes actually
