reigninhell

[reigninhell]

have we at any point collectively compiled a list of all the works jeremy strong and jesse armstrong keep referencing as character/story inspiration?

[reigninhell]

Could you recommend books about loneliness? Or about all kinds of interpersonal relationships? :)

I am going to focus on loneliness, or solitude, because the second one is so very vast!

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa—he deserves to be at the top of any list about loneliness considering how many alter egos he invented to keep himself company

Solitude: A Return to the Self, Anthony Storr (A quote: “In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”)

Island of the Doomed, Stig Dagerman (Some beautiful prose in there; but it is quite bleak)

The Stranger, Albert Camus

Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo (Very haunting novella; a Mexican classic. Someone on goodreads said “There are passages that I want to cut out and hang upon my walls like a valuable painting” and that is how I feel about it as well…)

Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton

Wish Her Safe at Home, Stephen Benatar (I found this book to be a strange mixture of extremely funny and desperately lonely)

More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon (science-fiction of the “alienated because of special powers” type)

The Eerie Silence, Paul Davies (books about the Fermi paradox tend to be really about existential loneliness…)

Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky

Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse

A Biography of Loneliness, Fay Bound Alberti (there was an interesting part where she compared loneliness to a “contagion” that can “spread” through a given society, and also to a form of hunger, a message from your body indicating that you are deprived of something you need)

Emily Brontë’s poetry has the same atmosphere as Wuthering Heights, which is pretty lonely.

The Wall, Marlen Haushofer (I was a bit disappointed by this one; I thought it was rather insubstantial, compared to what it could have been)

Alone, E.J. Noyes (A woman volunteers for a scientific experiment that requires her to spend four years without any human contact)

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Pond, Claire-Louise Bennett

Everything Emil Cioran wrote was suffused with solitude. I liked reading his Notebooks, as well as All Gall is Divided, because he is at his best when he writes short, biting aphorisms.

The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey (could fulfill your second request if human-snail counts as an interpersonal relationship :) A really sweet book about a woman isolated due to illness)

[reigninhell]

“The Lord, long ago, had taken Abel’s side. Though none of that was Grendel’s doing, he’d descended from bloodstains.”

— beowulf: a new translation - maria dahvana headley

[reigninhell]

[reigninhell]

Podcast recs for people intimidated by the Magnus Archive Fandom:

 Want to listen to the Magnus Archives, but the fandom and the length of the show is a bit intimidating? Consider these shows: each one has a relatively small/inactive fanbase and (most) are shorter in run then TMA, making them a much smaller commitment. Keep reading under the break to check them out :)

 HORROR PODCASTS:

Keep reading

#podcasts

[reigninhell]

hmmmm der erlkönig is to children what lord death is to the maiden

[reigninhell]

I read that “Interment without Earth” article you linked and now I need (!!!) you to give me an expanded reading list on this subject / related subjects / whatever else you’re reading atm bc I’m obsessed now … if it’s not a bother.

ABSOLUTELY NOT A BOTHER i was put on this earth to share information... here’s some stuff (more or less) related to dying at sea

first off internment without earth's bibliography is very fun (relinked for convenience)

dead men do tell tales by brian j. rouleau is considerably more folklore-focused but it does get into death funerals etc etc toward the end

rocks and storms i'll fear no more by david james stewart which i've mostly skimmed bc it's uhhh 328 pages. very sexy of david though

burial at sea: separating and placing the dead during the age of sail again by david james stewart

legends and superstitions of the sea and of sailors in all lands and at all times an. ambitious title by fletcher s. bassett from 1885 which i also have skimmed bc long

ocean funerals: the sea and victorian cultures of death by kirsty reid which i've Also skimmed bc victorian stuff is not hugely my Thing but it might be yours

#to read

[reigninhell]

The repetition of names, as I have already argued, is common in Gothic novels and the subsequent creation of an ever-diminishing familial circle that is reborn in future, near-identical generations causes relationships to be endowed with incestuous undertones […] “these doublings or overlappings of names … they insist upon that general threat of incest that overhangs society, the threat of a union between characters who are too alike”.

My more than sister: re-examining paradigms of sibling incest in Gothic incest: gender, sexuality and transgression by Jenny DiPlacidi

#to read