how is werewolf formed?
Jul. 6th, 2015 09:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I got the most amazing package from
executrix. Thank you so much. *hugs* Every single book in this box is something I want to read. :)
I finished Trigger Warnings. I didn't like it as well as Gaiman's other short story collections. The Sherlock Holmes piece was exceptional, and a couple other stories were very good but I was pretty take it or leave it on the collection as a whole. He included a fair amount of poetry in the collection, most of which I didn't care for, but one poem about a witch was wonderfully done. Glad to have read it, but nothing to re-read.
I've blown through Uprooted in the past couple days and will be able to post a review of that soon.
I want to read some very, very sad fic. Anybody have recs for tearjerkers? Any fandom or pairing, but I would be especially grateful for newish HP recs.
I keep thinking I am going to make some awesome meta-tastic post about Penny Dreadful or Game of Thrones and then not doing it, so here's the truncated version:
Game of Thrones: damn you, show, for making me root for Cersei. Show!Sparrow seems scheming and cruel in a way the book version didn't, and I couldn't help wanting her to get her revenge against him and those awful nuns. Please, please, don't be dead Jon Snow. I think probably that he's dead and Melisandre will resurrect him. Tyrion, Missandei and Greyworm ruling Mereen is kinda made of awesome. Jaime is going to raze Dorne to the ground. *hugs him hard* And Bronn still lives! Yay!
Penny Dreadful: what an uneven season. Some of my favorite moments of the whole show are from this season and yet it doesn't form the same cohesive whole as the first season. Dorian's story arc with Angelique was incomprehensible to me and completely divorced from the rest of the show. I love Brona's reveal that she's known about her origins the whole time and that she's going to be the big bad in the next season. Dorian was finally interesting in these last two episodes with her. I love that John Clare has decided that he doesn't want to kill Victor or set London on fire with Brona and I adore that he asked Vanessa to go with him. I equally adore that she would have gone with him if she didn't genuinely believe she's bad for him. When Vanessa told the devil, "Beloved, meet your master" and fucking destroyed that sucker, I may have squealed at the television in unholy glee. That moment was the money shot, my friends. I am less enthused that Sembene is dead; that was unnecessary and horrible, and I am convinced that on route to Africa, he is going to turn into a werewolf and not be dead at all. I loved poor, brave Ethan going to his death and instead being tricked into returning home. I just can't imagine the mechanism that will reunite them all in the next season. Looking forward to it, though.
Speaking of Victorian horror, I know that werewolf (and other skin-changer) stories already existed in folk tales and fairy tales, but is there a nineteenth-century novel that popularized the werewolf the way Dracula did for vampires? I suppose that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a kind of werewolf story, but not really what I'm talking about. Did werewolves really only enter the literary public consciousness in the 20th century? Is there a seminal werewolf novel (trying to think of one and failing), or does our pop culture sense of werewolves stem entirely from film?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I finished Trigger Warnings. I didn't like it as well as Gaiman's other short story collections. The Sherlock Holmes piece was exceptional, and a couple other stories were very good but I was pretty take it or leave it on the collection as a whole. He included a fair amount of poetry in the collection, most of which I didn't care for, but one poem about a witch was wonderfully done. Glad to have read it, but nothing to re-read.
I've blown through Uprooted in the past couple days and will be able to post a review of that soon.
I want to read some very, very sad fic. Anybody have recs for tearjerkers? Any fandom or pairing, but I would be especially grateful for newish HP recs.
I keep thinking I am going to make some awesome meta-tastic post about Penny Dreadful or Game of Thrones and then not doing it, so here's the truncated version:
Game of Thrones: damn you, show, for making me root for Cersei. Show!Sparrow seems scheming and cruel in a way the book version didn't, and I couldn't help wanting her to get her revenge against him and those awful nuns. Please, please, don't be dead Jon Snow. I think probably that he's dead and Melisandre will resurrect him. Tyrion, Missandei and Greyworm ruling Mereen is kinda made of awesome. Jaime is going to raze Dorne to the ground. *hugs him hard* And Bronn still lives! Yay!
Penny Dreadful: what an uneven season. Some of my favorite moments of the whole show are from this season and yet it doesn't form the same cohesive whole as the first season. Dorian's story arc with Angelique was incomprehensible to me and completely divorced from the rest of the show. I love Brona's reveal that she's known about her origins the whole time and that she's going to be the big bad in the next season. Dorian was finally interesting in these last two episodes with her. I love that John Clare has decided that he doesn't want to kill Victor or set London on fire with Brona and I adore that he asked Vanessa to go with him. I equally adore that she would have gone with him if she didn't genuinely believe she's bad for him. When Vanessa told the devil, "Beloved, meet your master" and fucking destroyed that sucker, I may have squealed at the television in unholy glee. That moment was the money shot, my friends. I am less enthused that Sembene is dead; that was unnecessary and horrible, and I am convinced that on route to Africa, he is going to turn into a werewolf and not be dead at all. I loved poor, brave Ethan going to his death and instead being tricked into returning home. I just can't imagine the mechanism that will reunite them all in the next season. Looking forward to it, though.
Speaking of Victorian horror, I know that werewolf (and other skin-changer) stories already existed in folk tales and fairy tales, but is there a nineteenth-century novel that popularized the werewolf the way Dracula did for vampires? I suppose that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a kind of werewolf story, but not really what I'm talking about. Did werewolves really only enter the literary public consciousness in the 20th century? Is there a seminal werewolf novel (trying to think of one and failing), or does our pop culture sense of werewolves stem entirely from film?
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:35 pm (UTC)Tell me why they're awesome.
*chin hands*
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-09 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 04:02 am (UTC)shrinkdoctor says that Ferdinand has "lycanthropia" like he expects everybody to know what he means. And then says that some wolves have their fur on the inside. Probably it's just that he went off the deep end and THINKS he's a werewolf (although it's not a good sign that he's wandering around town schlepping a human leg) but again, it must have been culturally available to have a delusion about it.no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 05:47 am (UTC)Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. 901Aetius and 902Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. 903Donat ab Altomari saith, that he saw two of them in his time: 904Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; 905Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look.
That sounds more like "sick people who think they're werewolves," though, not a 19th-century novel, right. Hmmm.....I really just can't think of anything from that era. Weird.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:40 pm (UTC)I looked on wikipedia and there are a handful of Victorian novels plus a few medieval and earlier texts. It seems that the 20th century is really the heyday of werewolf stuff though and primarily in film.
I think it's weird that there wasn't a hugely popular Victorian novel.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-08 10:20 pm (UTC)i think vampires were more popular at the time because of the erotic sub-text & the victorian age was such a suppressed culture. werewolves probably got more popular during the age of film because of what make-up & special effects could do for the story.
(Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-08 10:40 pm (UTC)Re: (Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-09 01:53 am (UTC)Re: (Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-09 02:26 am (UTC)There is a whole *book* about the Balderston version of Dracula, although I can't remember the author or exact title--but David Skal wrote a bunch about the play. In an actor-manager company, Dracula was probably played by the boss!--otherwise, the Heavy Man. BTW when Paul Darrow (B7's Avon) was in weekly rep, he played Dracula at least once.
If you ever want a readable quick guide to Everything You Need to Know About Victorian Theatre, Robertson Davies was a big fan-- try The Mirror of Nature.
Re: (Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-09 01:33 pm (UTC)I am now imagining Paul Darrow as Dracula. It's a Good Thing.
At least one of the books you just sent me is about Victorian theater, so maybe there's something there about Dracula.
Re: (Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-10 05:24 am (UTC)Re: (Black) Mass Media?
Date: 2015-07-10 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-09 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:38 pm (UTC)I feel like Fur on the Inside is a good band name or novel title.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-09 12:52 am (UTC)Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose
by
SGA
Rodney/John *whimper" sort of *whimper* yes, it is
no subject
Date: 2015-07-09 01:54 am (UTC)I shall prepare to weep.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-10 05:33 am (UTC)I'm with you on GoT, particularly the idea of those three trying to sort out Mereen - I got frustrated with the lengthy build-up to (what will presumably be) the meeting of Dany and Tyrion in the books, so it was a relief when they fast-forwarded that bit for the show.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-10 02:06 pm (UTC)I have grown frustrated with the length build up of many things in the GoT books, but that is certainly one of the worst offenders. LOL