#first time reading: frankenstein

[chemblrish]

20 April 2024

It's raining outside and I'm lying in bed sipping coffee and reading after studying for a couple of hours <333

#first time reading a classic in english! #ive read a lot of books in english but never anything written before like #late 20th century #bc i was too intimidated #but apparently my comprehension of english is at that point #where frankenstein isn't too challenging #so that's nice :) #mine #studyblr #chemblr #studyspo #study motivation #chemistry #stemblr #sciblr

[cairafea]

houseki no kuni brainrot doodles. ichikawa please release the new chapter soon the hnk countdown twitter account is gonna run out of pages to attach to each tweet

#houseki no kuni fans how are we handling the chapter drought #houseki no kuni #hnk #land of the lustrous #lotl #phosphophyllite #hnk phos #art #my art #doodle #ichikawa really combined the two most aesthetic themes (gems and space) into a monstrous masterpiece of a manga huh #i really liked lapis-phos' design can you tell #i also really like baby phos' design their green is so <33333 #that's MY emotionally unstable prosthetic-having frankenstein's monster-like theseus ship of an enby character #gem hair... oh gem hair i love you so but why are you so hard to draw..... #non-hnk readers please go read hnk. you are going to be emotionally destroyed by themes of mortality/immortality/loss/body horror #no funnee commentary this time because. well. Post-Moon Phosphophyllite. #no watermark or signature #don't commit internet crime by reposting but if you wanna be a cyber criminal at least credit me #first time writing alt text please evaluate it

[turtletoria]

#turtlearts #frankenstein #young frankenstein #gene wilder #i fucking loved frankenstein when i first read it in highschool #i remember watching young frankenstein in class bc the teacher showed it to us one day. and i thought that gene wilder was so handsome - #as frederick. and you know what? young me was right i still think hes so ham some.......... who said that #also the film's actually so goofy and funny. its a good time (i didnt like some of the bits though... #some stuff aged really well while others didnt. but overall good movie!)

[vatrocvet]

a personal take on. that one panel from the end of chapter 60. lineart under the cut because i like it a lot.

#soul eater #crona #soul eater crona #i have drawn something #i remember reading the manga and the way crona was drawn in that scene ticked me off so much i had to put my phone down #i was just staring at a wall for like 10 minutes #it's such a good fucking reveal. it's jarring. BUT WHY WAS IT DRAWN LIKE THAT. #so i wanted to do it with more of a 'frankenstein's monster waking up for the first time after being animated' vibe #i struggled a lot with this one but that's because i did 0 warm ups and went right in after a week of only studying

[bodywhorror]

getting a library card would fix me I think

#also! forgot to say my poll ended up 50/50 but I've decided i'll read frankenstein first #it's shorter and i've owned it for longer #unfortunate i didn't get to read it for school but better to take my time now actually

[imsorryimlate]

I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.

this is horrifying in all sorts of ways, but it also seems to me a perfect example of incestuous anxieties as a horror trope. victor dreams of embracing and kissing his cousin-wife, but she turns into his dead mother.

which is interesting, because one of his mother’s dying wishes was for elizabeth to take on her role in the family and become a mother to the younger children – elizabeth is to literally become her, just as in victor’s nightmare – but she is also to be the wife of the oldest child. it crisscrosses all sorts of familial boundaries, and could bring many problems into the family. for example, by taking caroline’s place, elizabeth could have (inadvertently) attracted the attention of alphonse, or further down the line, her union with victor could have been non-productive in regards to offspring, since she had not just a sisterly role in the household, but a motherly as well; it could very well disturb their sexual relation to each other.

this alone makes me feel like the novel could easily be a horror even without victor’s experiments and his creature.

#frankenstein weekly #meta #it’s my first time reading so no spoilers please #my meta

[13eyond13]

.

#here's some of the classics on that list i have beef with btw: #i have tried to read A Confederacy of Dunces several times and it's funny but it's also so cringe and Ignatius is so obnoxious #that i find it too difficult to finish like i just feel depressed and bad for everybody around him too much #i tried reading Infinite Jest like a decade ago and i got like 200 pages in and i remember thinking it felt like #such a slog the entire time because he's just so gd wordy and also i stopped liking DFW after i heard the abuse allegations against him #frankenstein i didnt read that long ago but i just remember finding it so boring for some reason?? i feel i might need to read it again #dracula ngl i feel like im cheating a bit saying ive completely read it because i loved the beginning and then HATED so much of the rest #the characters were just so boring and melodramatic hahaha i just liked the part where jonathan was doing a travel diary #and trapped in the castle tbh and after that i skimmed quite a bit #i almost flipped my shit when i saw ender's game on there because I ALWAYS mix it up with ready player one by ernest cline #which i bought the audiobook of a while back and hated every minute of it i dont think its good at all #but it wasnt that so phew my faith in this list is somewhat restored #i read most of the first game of thrones book and was disappointed tbh maybe because id seen the show already #so i was like 'this feels almost exactly the same except worse?' because i'd been expecting it to give me more depth and insight #into the characters but instead it felt exactly the same and i still didnt love any of the characters enough to feel attached to them #also i am fully aware me not personally liking or vibing with a book doesnt mean it doesnt deserve to be considered great btw #but i think if youre gonna be like me and force yourself to go through a bunch of lists like this very seriously then you also need to just #let yourself be like 'yeah not for me' without feeling too bad about it sometimes too #often times i dont particularly love the classics or 'important books' but at the same time #i still feel like im getting more out of reading them than just grabbing the newest hyped up books that also dont do anything for me #maybe not in a 'wow i loved reading this' way but in like a #'i now have first-hand knowledge of this thing that is so influential / so frequently referenced' #or 'this challenged me and i feel like i did a mental/emotional workout or gave me some new food for thought' #or 'made me more aware of what gaps in my knowledge and reading skills and what my tastes are too' #sort of way... #it really just depends on what you're reading for and why and what you're hoping to get out of it a lot of the time maybe #it's like the homework i give myself to go through these lists that i also intersperse with the stuff i read more just for fun #p

[hittingthebrainsfunnybone]

An Ex-Whumpee, teetering into the role of the Whumper they hated

Inspired by and paraphrased from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Humanity is defined by its determined heart and resolved will. Since mine was taken away, fully cleaned from my consciousness, I can comfortably act knowing I am already inhuman and monstrous.

With you, I was thrown through a flurry of shock, chaos and pain. The last agony I was dealt: I believed relief would come after. All I can experience is the grey dead calm of inaction, and the certainty that it will never lead to anything more vivid. You deprived my soul of both hope and fear.

No matter the warmth of the people around me, I'm trapped in the cold empty place in my mind I hollowed out to survive. I am confined by my own will, because their warmth would only burn me. Only someone made just as brittle and deject could truly love me.

Back then, I couldn't fathom how someone who fully understood the difference between right and wrong could hate and hurt and torment another person like you did to me, but now I'm beginning to understand that when man is miserable, he is malicious.

My heart was too susceptible to love and sympathy. In their absence, it was wrenched by misery to vice and hatred. If I had never let my heart idle in that enviable gentle state, then the violent change might have been a torture it could endure.

Never claim you freed me. You played god when you warped my mind, my identity, and my heart. God at least had the conscience to make man lively and alluring. You made me in your own image, but only leaving the most filthy and deplorable parts. I'm only free to be isolated and hated since I resemble you.

For and instant, I dared to shake off my chains and look around me with a lofty and ambitious spirit. We were both men, neither with more purpose or value than the other. But the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank down again, trembling and hopeless, into my wretched and lowly existence.

I was benevolent and good; the evils of the world made me a fiend. I asked for kindness and sympathy so I could become virtuous again, but was denied. Instead I am something to beware: hopelessness lead to becoming fearless, and therefore powerful.

For the genuine sympathy and understanding of one human being, I might make peace with it all yet. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and the rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge the other.

#whump #whump prompt #whump writing #whumpee #writing #whump prompts #whumper #literature #whumpblr #i like writing these but it also feels like im faking being into reading classic literature #truth is i just have like #5 books i think are cool but ran out of energy to read novels a long time ago #F #revenge whump #whumpee turned whumper #psychological #psychological conditioning #kinda #victor frankenstein might have been my first #flushed emoji i can make him worse type of reaction #maybe in another post

[fantasy-the-final-frontier]

“There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.”

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley | Iron Man, Ozzy Osbourne | Michael, The Good Place | Morgana to Uther, Merlin | Monster, STARSET | Iron Man, Ozzy Osbourne

(Image ID below)

(Not used to doing the image ID thing, please don’t judge me too harshly)

(Image ID: a series of five images, all quotes from various media. First image reads: Nobody wants him / He just stares at the world / Planning his vengeance / That he will soon unfold. Second image reads: The point is, people improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t? Third image reads: First I want you to suffer as I suffered. To know what it’s like to be alone and afraid. To be disgusted with who and what you are. Fourth image reads: You’re the pulse in my veins / You’re the war that I wage / Can you change me / Can you change me / From the monster you made me? / The monster you made me? Fifth image reads: Nobody wants him / They just turn their heads / Nobody helps him / Now he has his revenge.)

#a day in the life of aurora #frankenstein #the good place #merlin #ozzy osbourne #starset #my first time trying one of these #it’s about monsters being a story of tragedy #because with love and kindness they could’ve been good #but all they were given was hate and neglect #if enough people treat you like a monster why not act like one #I’m reading Frankenstein for the second time and just having a lot of feelings #feel free to add on #esp any about rage against one’s creator

[darchildre]

Sara Reads an Infuriating Book, part 2

Chapter 2 of W Scott Poole's Wasteland is entitled "Waxworks". This is where I got angry enough to start taking notes in earnest rather than just annotating the ebook, so this is longer and has more actual quotes.

First, a disclaimer: I do not in any way disbelieve that WWI had a huge impact on early 20th century horror. Of course it did; how could it not? What I object to is Poole's assertion that it is the only thing that could possibly have had such an impact and that that impact always and only comes in the form of fear of bodily death and the corpse as an object of horror. Any time anyone gives you a Grand Unified Theory of Horror that claims to explain all of reasons that humans create scary or disturbing art, that theory is never going to be correct. People are more complex than that. And now, bullet points!

Okay, first off, I do have to apologize for ranting about Poole talking about Machen's "The Bowmen" without actually talking about it last chapter, because he talks about the story explicitly in this chapter. This is a structural thing he does repeatedly: he'll mention a writer/director/etc and hint at a work he's going to discuss later without actually naming it. (In this chapter, he does this with Fritz Lang and Metropolis.) This structural choice is not well-signposted and I don't care for it, but at least now I know that's what he's doing.

He also touches on Lovecraft again here, so I apologize as well for accusing him of skipping ol' Howie. Here, we talk briefly about "Herbert West: Re-animator", as it's the only Lovecraft story to a) actually feature WWI explicitly and b) deal much with corpses. There's also this quote about Cthulhu which is...a big fucking stretch: "He raised great Cthulhu, a monster that has haunted the century, a new death’s head spreading wide his black wings of apocalypse, which was clearly recognizable as the Great War and its meaning continued to menace the world."

Like, there is absolutely an argument to be made that WWI was a major influence on the invention of cosmic horror at the beginning of the 20th century. Again, how could it not be? WWI was proof for a lot of people that the universe fundamentally didn't care about them. But that's the thing that I don't think Poole gets - cosmic horror is not about the fear that you are going to die. Cosmic horror doesn't care about your corpse because it doesn't care about you. Cosmic horror is about the fear that no one cares that you exist at all. That is a huge and important difference.

As the chapter title implies, there is a lot of repeated discussion this chapter of waxworks, dolls, puppets, poppets, etc. Poole insists over and over again that a) all of these simulacra can be collapsed symbolically into a single image and that image is of a corpse and b) these objects became horrific after WWI because of the corpse thing. But then he'll go through the history of the fascination with creepy wax figures stretching back to wax images of saints through Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors, or he'll talk about dolls and reference E T A Hoffman's The Sandman (from 1817), which, to my mind, totally undercuts his point. You don't need the Great War to make waxworks creepy, my dude.

(Somewhat relatedly - there is a really interesting book to be written about the prevalence of hypnotism/mind control/sleepwalking in early horror film, but it is not going to be this book because Poole thinks all that's happening there is more corpses.)

Which leads us to the discussion of The Cabinet of Caligari! Poole spends a lot of time rehashing a widely accepted interpretation of the film proposed by Siegfried Kracauer in his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler: Kracauer reads the film as a warning about the dangers of authoritarianism, with the somnambulist Cesare standing in for the people of Europe who unconsciously do the evil bidding of their authoritarian masters. Not saying that's the only possible reading of the film - I don't believe there's only one possible reading of any film - but it's an interesting and persuasive one. 'Nope!' says Poole. See, his theory is that the filmmakers wanted to get artist Alfred Kubin to design the look of the film (he did not end up working on the film), Kubin's work has a lot of doll-like figures in it, dolls are always corpses, and therefore Caligari is, once again, only about how all those people died in the war. This is the only thing the filmmakers could have meant.

(On the positive side, this did lead me to look up the art of Alfred Kubin, which I was previously unfamiliar with. It's pretty rad.)

"There’s not enough evidence, for example, that the world understood that their somnambulistic obedience helped produce the outrages of the Great War." I don't see that the world as a whole has to see that in order for the film to attempt to convey that meaning - surely what matters is that the filmmaker saw it and made a film about it. It's not necessary for the world to understand the meaning behind a work of art for a person to make that work of art.

(Somewhat ironically, Poole complains that Kracauer is only capable of interpreting German film in the 1920s through the lens of his pet theory. Who does that remind me of? Couldn't say.)

Oh my god this is already so long, I haven't even talked about J'accuse. Poole thinks J'accuse is a zombie movie which I won't argue because I've only read about it and haven't seen it yet - that could be a valid interpretation for all I know. But then he compares it unfavorably to Romero zombie films and complains that the director of J'accuse "did not really know what to do with [his zombies]", just because they rise from their graves, make their point, and then return to their graves. The entire point of the film is to make the viewer bear witness to the dead. Poole even says this: "The film’s theme of marital infidelity, that inescapable trope in the cinema of the Great War, became a symbol for the larger question of whether the nation had been faithful to the cause of its soldiers.  The dead came back to make sure they had." What else did you want the zombies to do???

God, the whole section about Vampyr made me crazy. Poole is all, "Carl Theodore Dreyer had little connection to the war and I’m not going to show any actual evidence that the war had an impact on his work but he made Vampyr in 1932 and it’s weird and scary and full of shadows and creepy imagery, so obviously it’s about WWI." (nb not at all an actual quote.) There's just no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film that was inspired by something that happened to them that wasn't WWI. Hell, there's no acknowledgement that a person might make a horror film because they like making spooky stuff. I was a monster kid basically from birth - I suffered no trauma to make me that way. I certainly didn't participate in WWI. Explain that, W Scott Poole.

Lastly, he's just factually wrong about The Phantom of the Opera, in that he claims that the 1925 film presents no explanation for Erik's deformity, unlike the novel. This is not correct - there is no reason for his deformity in the novel either. Later films added that. The lack of explanation in the 1925 film is not a response to mutilated war veterans; it's just an accurate adaptation. Poole says, "No one in the Western world could have looked at the visage of Lon Chaney and not thought of what the French called the gueules cassées…" and maybe that's true, but he's just stating a theory based on a mistake and presenting no evidence.

On the plus side, I'm making a very cool list of books I want to read from the works cited, and also some films that I haven't gotten around to seeing yet.

#i left out the bit where he talks for several paragraphs about the first italian horror film: 'il mostro di frankenstein' #before revealing that this is a completely lost film #to the point that what remains of it is some promotional materials a photo one still and a single contemporary review #but he's sure that it supports his thesis #and also the bit where i'm sad every day that i don't have a time machine that would allow me to attend performances at the grand guignol #sara reads an infuriating book

[yousaytomato]

tumblr, ily, but don't you think maybe we should get to the end of Dracula before we rush into something new? We can't read five different books simultaneously, especially not in this weird disjointed way

#woes of emily #That Being Said. I think i probably will sign up to the frankenstein one that's set to run next year BUT let's get through Dracula first #August onwards is going to be a lot of reading! we are going at a very slow pace rn #i understand wanting to rush in but let's see how we're feeling in November hm? #dracula daily #this isnt serious lol it's 3am i'm not your dad you can do what you want #but when you're unsubscribing from 10 different substacks in 3 months time just think back to this post okay

[marcyjacks]

ao3 was down so I started to read Frankenstein again, one of the first quotes in the page where I dropped it says : "Justine died, she rested. I was alive"

Why would you hurt me like THAT

#frankenstein #mary shelley #Opening the Frankenstein tag on Tumblr was the worst thing I could have done actually bc I didn't remember the ending at all #And the first post I read has LITERALLY ALL OF THE ENDING SUMMARIZED IN ONE SENTENCE LIKE I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TIME TO REACT AND CLOSE MY EYES #Crying

[eileenleahy]

i cant believe nobody told me that one of the most acclaimed novels of all time is mind blowingly good

#actually thank god im reading frankenstein for the first time in a college class so that im surrounded by people that do actually care and #have a professor that knows what their talking about. if itd been in high school i wouldnt have recognized i was reading an actual #masterpiece. and reading it on my own i wouldnt have known the depths of shelley's genius. i love my english prof if that wasnt obvious

[quibbs126]

Christ, Mary Shelley’s life sucked

#frankenstein #mary shelley #I’m in a class discussing world literature #and our second book is Frankenstein #thankfully I’ve already read the first half of the book twice before #so the fact that I haven’t been reading will give me time #random stuff #this is from the copy of the I have #well the second copy bc I left my original book back at home and I needed it for class #this one only cost like 3 bucks though so it’s not a big deal #and it’s old

[nancywheeeler]

so besides all his other famous crimes against humanity, victor frankenstein also fell in love with and married his adopted sister

#maybe this is common knowledge but i'm reading frankenstein for the first time and am shaken to my core #a shout into the void #btw dracula daily truly is the gift that keeps on giving #i downloaded the serial reader app based on the last email's rec and it's a game changer #as much as i already hate the sun also rises and will likely continue hating it for the next twenty days

[imsorryimlate]

frankenstein weekly is a distinctively different experience from dracula daily/whale weekly. the latter two are jovial and welcoming, while the former very much isn’t.

not only are people hostile in the frankenstein weekly tag, but they are posting a lot of spoilers without any warning, and even put them in replies/reblogs, which is pretty bad etiquette i think.

i’m not trying to be an asshole here, but please, people who are doing frankenstein weekly but have read the book before: you cannot be upset about people misinterpreting your blorbo when we don’t have all the facts yet.

maybe our interpretations will change, maybe things will happen that alter our understanding of events and characters, maybe there will be revelations later on that turn our reading upside down. we just don’t know yet! so if you’re seething about how people aren’t reading your blorbo “correctly” and feel overly distressed about it, maybe sit this one out.

and for the love of god stop leaving replies/reblogs that are littered with spoilers. that if anything should tell you why getting upset is a bad idea; if you have to defend your blorbo by bringing up things that haven’t happened yet, maybe that’s why we aren’t seeing what you see.

#again i’m not trying to be an asshole #i just feel like people are forgetting that a lot of us are reading this for the first time #frankenstein weekly