Castles - art by Alan Lee (1984)

me: I'm a homebody i like to stay at home!

the home: 

muddles my perception of time

Changes in both size and distance

lulls me into sense of safety and twist it into an oppressive paranoia inducing hellouse-scape

compels me to forget my own autonomous existence 

waters down the outside and/ or exaggerate it to mythical extent 

shrinks front door perron when i ascend, jarringly draws it out when i descend.

all its windows views are other walls of itself

the backyard fence looms in every horizon

bitter to abandonment of what belongs under its roof, including me when i go out to buy some good ol orange fanta

 doesn’t look for me under its roof, it always knows where I'm.

when it sleeps doors never open, i don’t know it’s sleeping schedule

whatever happens silently around the corners is real, my apprehension is valid and understandable, and indeed i should panic. 

'Gormenghast' illustration from the unpublished series from Mervyn Peake's novel by Charles W. Stewart, 1950

Good fantasy-ish secondhand haul. £5.97 for the three, never read any of them before!

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Selected pieces by Christopher Hobbs (1941 - 2024) for the 2000 Gormenghast miniseries

Hobbs worked on almost every arty film made in the UK from the last century; Hobbs was production designer on several films by Derek Jarman and Ken Russell, as well as having worked on Velvet Goldmine and The Company of Wolves. He also designed the body horror/creature effect concepts for the scifi horror oddity Xtro!

𝕯𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖚𝖆𝖑 𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖎𝖙𝖘 𝖜𝖍𝖊𝖊𝖑.

(Several characters from the Gormenghast series by Mervyn Peake.)

Fuchsia Groan of Gormenghast 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

There was Sepulchrave, moving as though in a trance, his tired soul in his eyes, and books beneath his arms. All about were his chains of office, iron and gold. On his head he wore the rust-red crown of the Groans. He took deep sighs with every step, as though each one was the last. Bent forward as though his sorrow weighed him down, he mourned with every gesture. As he moved into the centre of the ring he trailed behind him a long line of feathers, while out of his tragic mouth the sound of hooting wandered.

Mervyn Peake, from Titus Alone (Eyre & Spottiswoode 1959)

image from here

Dave McKean's illustrations for the Gormenghast trilogy.

are you a gormenghast fan?! ive never rlly seen one before. ive read the first one but im saving the second one because I loved the first too much to read it casually.

I AM a Gormenghast fan. I haven't finished the third book but those first two are some of my favorites ever, and it's just criminally underread.

Gormenghast fans on Tumblr rise up. There are about ten of us I think.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Steerpike in Gormenghast (2000)

Christopher Lee (Gormenghast)

kind of interesting how the land and the weather outside Gormenghast are the complete opposite of it in that they're brightly colored and changing and unpredictable, forest to desert to plains to rocks, baking heat to torrents of rain. And Gormenghast stands still and grey and unmoving, unchanging, bound in tradition more predictable than the seasons. Titus runs away to the forest again and again. The Thing lives in it and embodies it, even as she dies. Flay is banished to the forest but learns to love it and comes back gentler. Every time the rain comes in the books, it changes something important in Gormenghast. Fuchsia runs away to the forest when she's younger, but as she gets older and less free she does this less and less, and when she finally falls she hits her head on the grey stone of Gormenghast. Strange how she was looking at the water when she died, hoping it would release her even then.

I wonder if the still grey Gormenghast contrasted with the wild colorful country around it is anything like the English settlement in China where Mervyn Peake grew up. The traditions of the British Empire fading slowly in a fortress surrounded by an alien landscape with wild weather.

My small town feels a little like Gormenghast at times. I wonder if the world outside is bright and wild and dangerous, and if I could survive it.

Book Recs Wanted!

I have recently noticed that I'm drawn to the sub-genre of fantasy books that involve a person, or group of people, who secretly discover a huge magical secret that they do not fully understand and will never fully understand. So yes, fantasy books, but mostly 'other world' books and whatever the opposite of books with 'a good magic system' are. I know some people are into that, but I always avoid books where the magic makes sense, I like it to be confusing and oblique and mysterious. Ditto books with a grizzled anti-hero protagonist, not interested.

Examples of this I've enjoyed include:

The Magician's Nephew by CS Lewis - where Uncle Andrew has learned a few shreds of information from an elderly relative about magic. He then experiments and plots for years and finds the doorway to the wood between the worlds without having any real knowledge of what he has found or what to do with his discovery and gains no benefit from it.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - (spoiler), where a group of academics and hangers-on under the thrall of an outsider anthropologist find the way into a world hinted at in pre-historic texts. I love how the implications of this discovery are so huge, but those that can visit this world are incapable of fully exploring or sharing their discovery because of their competitive and sadistic natures. Even further worlds are hinted at but nobody visits them.

[Limited bits of] The Magicians by Lev Grossman - I haven't been able to re-read these books since they came out because I find many of the characters so unbearable, however, those sections where the students who fail to get into the college try to piece together magic on their own, or where the Chatwin children find their way into Fillory, or particularly where Quentin attempts to create his own world at the very end, are very compelling.

[Bits of] Fairy Tale by Stephen King - I found the fantasy world itself fairly irritating, but the way into it was great, and the discussion of how the fantasy world would likely be exploited if the knowledge was spread further was something I hadn't seen before.

Little, Big by John Crowley - I love how the existence of Faerie is taken as a matter of fact by the Drinkwater family, but there's no rhyme or reason to how it 'works'. It's unclear what exactly is going on half the time and all is enjoyably dream-like.

I also intent to give the Gormenghast books and Mordew a go soon, as they seem up my alley, and I think I've read all the Lovecraft stuff in this vein. I always liked the Lovecraftian bits of the Discworld book Moving Pictures too, which was my favourite as a kid- I like when the magical discovery gets too real and everyone just runs away, realising it's better left alone.

Does anyone else enjoy these tropes and have a book or two to recommend?

Sixfanarts challenge (3/6) - Lord Sepulchrave Groan 📚🔥🦉