Part of the process of recovering from my first psychotic episode has involved revisiting all of the famous gothic horror literature i read and was fascinated by as a preteen and reading Poe has been a constant experience of yeah I’ve been there before buddy and it really does feel like he was ahead of his time in terms of presenting reality as inherently absurd in a way his peers didn’t often touch upon. People often stop their analysis at “Edgar Allan Poe utilizes unreliable narrators a lot” instead of going a bit further to put themselves in the shoes of the characters and asking what it feels like to live in an unreliable reality. Reading Poe stories feels so very melancholic at a moment in my life when I don’t know how to get care for these issues, whether or not I’m actually sound of mind or just convincing myself I’m losing touch with reality-- in other words “faking it.” Ever since the incident moments of joy and curious hobbies have gone from being seen by those around me as quirky hyperfixations to something more sinister and unwell. Others who I thought really cared for my health and safety seem to treat the revelation that I am “losing my mind, no literally. . . please let me tell you what happened” with the if i’m retelling the story of what flavor of soda i picked at the vending machine. It’s so alienating as if being terrified of your own mind and it’s capability to break apart the rules of reality isn’t alienating enough.
I think Poe really captures that feeling I get when things are just a bit off until they crescendo into an event that seems massive and tiny and inconsequential all the same. I really can’t describe it because the fear I feel is unlike any other fear I’ve felt and you don’t know it until you’ve felt it and it clicks. Out of curiosity I wanted to see how well H.P. Lovecraft held up or if my distaste for his work was strictly from the knowledge of who the man was in life.
The answer is no, it does not. Frankly I find it insulting that H.P. Lovecraft is put at the same level as Poe, far above the tens of Gothic writers that preceded him by decades to nearly a century. . . of whom Lovecraft would openly take influence from just to water down down everything that makes those works interesting.
The “indescribable” horrors that Lovecraft describes are paradoxically comprehensible. I’ve had many discussions with my partner about why more grounded surrealist art feels far more surreal and uneasy than art that is comprised of endless “weird” imagery. To keep this topic brief, think something like David Lynch. His films are utterly bizarre compared to your average hollywood blockbuster, sure, but as far as surrealist media goes? His films are very grounded in reality, but that reality feels off and strange in a way that genuinely is indescribable. When I read Lovecraft on the other hand, it feels like he read a lot of gothic literature about the sublime, indescribably transcendent nature of the universe and replaced that with essentially. . . a big scary monster.
When Lovecraft writes “indescribable” or other similar words as a descriptor for what his characters see, it feels akin to when 14 year olds discover the SCP wiki and think that the more you write REDACTED or [DATA EXPUNGED] the scarier the object of horror is. It feels lazy when you’re not given any other reason to feel afraid. When I read Dagon it feels like I’m reading an early 2010s creepypasta written by someone who hasn’t been writing long enough to analyze what makes something scary. It genuinely feels like someone trying to write what they think psychosis might be like. His stories are so inhuman (and not in the way he’s trying to achieve) and detached, and I never get the is it real or not feeling I get from older gothic stories dealing with notions of sanity and humanity’s role in the universe. I know the big spooky space creatures are real in the universe of the text, so I don’t really connect the Lovecraftian hero’s lapses of sanity. You don’t see the same tragic decay of mind and body and ill-fated social dynamics that permeate so many of Poe’s stories. I genuinely don’t know what purpose there is to be gained from the oft-quoted declaration that the core of Lovecraft is about uncovering knowledge you aren’t supposed to know. I frankly don’t know how you can separate the art from the artist for HPL when so much of his work seems to pretty clearly match up with antisemitic “secret global society” conspiracy theories that go back centuries upon centuries.
Think about it for two seconds: the “terrible knowledge” that gets discovered is typically the existence of some all-powerful cosmic race that seems to hide itself at all costs and could possibly end humanity’s pitiful existence should they so choose to do so. So much of his work involves this utterly unsympathetic view of otherness as an “indescribable threat” in society whereas I think a lot of Poe’s writing really captures the terror of being othered at a time when the treatment of mentally ill and disabled people was at one of its all-time peaks.
I might revisit this idea again when I’m not tired as shit but I think in all, Lovecraft feels almost boring. Nothing feels really impressive despite the scale of its horror. In some ways, Poe really feels almost shockingly similar to a lot of postmodern man-vs-reality narratives, whereas Lovecraft feels like he takes a lot of the same aesthetics of gothic literature and uses it to craft a narrative that is far more simplistic than it seems at first glance. It hardly even qualifies as a man-vs-god narrative prevalent in the time of the Illiad, but given HPL’s track record when it comes to respecting human beings it’s all just a bare bones black and white us-versus-them man-vs-man narrative.
Now, art doesn’t have to be thematically complex to be good, but I find it a bit insulting when the man with the copy-paste self insert characters with the personality of soggy paper wants to profess understanding of profoundly existentialist, indescribable terror. . . and the vast majority of his work is just an allegory with a metaphor writing-hand heavier than CS Lewis’s own that gives me no insights about the world other than that he literally couldn’t get over the “indescribable” fear of “grug look different from ogg, grug bad!” dog you didn’t make a cosmic discovery you are literally the fuckin meme “men will smoke weed once and think they’re enlightened for discovering empathy” or whatever. i have more transcendental experiences railing twinks and cuddling with pretty girls talk about smth really indescribable!!!!!
it’s fucking caveman shit. mf really would be writing shitty fanfic of shadow puppets if you locked him in the cave fr fr. prolly wouldn’t notice he’s in an allegory fr fr life is indescribable and that’s what makes it beautiful and tragic and precious just eat a cock like the rest of us instead ur scarin the hoes with your shitty octopus fursona!
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still losing my mind at the way houses relationship with john would have fucked up the way he sees being an omega. just,,, teen house, young and confused, experiencing these absoloutely brutal heats. not understanding why they are so bad and hard when theyre supposed to be a time where an omega feels good. already feeling broken and wrong, and then having to face john's anger and disappointment over him being an omega
like i can only imagine how it would affect him in heat, a time where he would be less able to think coherently. and constantly remembering how traumatic and horrible his heats as a teen were, the memory making him feel bad and in turn making him feel physically worse. just like,,, a constant feedback loop of remembering and feeling bad -> feeling physically worse in turn -> reminding himself even more of his childhood and feeling worse
i feel like after having to deal with his first few heats without a strong family net to acclimate to the changes, once house is outta there and doing his own thing he tries to never deal with his heats alone. he marks his cycle religiously, makes deals with alphas in med school to help him through them, or even finds street suppressants if he's especially desperate.
man. you just know john has put him outside for some of his heats, too. nothing to nest with, no scent blocking patches, just left him in the yard like a sacrificial lamb. it goes without saying how dangerous that is.
hell, once he's employed i wouldn't be surprised if he stole something from the hospital to bring home in case a heat comes up that he can't deal with, something that'll knock him out for the worst of it.
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Idea that the reason Lupin looks so skinny is because due to his fast metabolism as well as his habit of constantly losing a substantial amount of weight during the planning of heists, either due to poor self care, or intentionally starving himself to properly fit through vents if needed, Lupin actually has a terrible time holding his own body weight no matter how much he eats. As a result he’s actually a couple of pounds underweight. It looks exceptionally worse during heists because he actually looks emaciated afterwards to the point it’s actually kinda worrisome how skinny he looks.
tw // eating disorder, ED, anorexia i thiiink? (idk what other keywords people might blacklist for this oops)
oh yeah definitely
feel like lupin has had a weird relationship with eating in general? not necessarily an eating disorder in the mental sense, he just more forgets to eat alot of the time
jigen is somewhat concerned about his weight, whenever he sees him naked he realizes how skinny this mf is and silently worries about it
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us vs the dnf apocalypse except im just cowering like a fool while wallace and wisp do the vs-ing
couldn't decide on a wallace-marte design so other option beneath the cut
i really wanted to give someone raccoon stripes and whatever your hair ended up as seemed like a pretty good one for raccoon stripes so,,, enjoy
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