This Is What Waltonstein Is To Me

oval still life portraits of percy shelley, mary shelley, and lord byron <3

even though there is no explicit sexual abuse in the picture of dorian gray, the themes of manipulation and violation and insertion / imposition of another upon one's sense of self and body in the picture of dorian gray echo the themes of such abuse leading from his childhood (his grandfather who called him vile and hated him as an inherently disgusting, evil creature produced by a marriage he disapproved of) to early adulthood (two older men imposing their own will upon dorian, reducing him to just a figure of his beauty which, when it fades, will make him meaningless) to the corruption of dorian's own view of his body in the portrait. the men in his life insert themselves deeply into his relationship to himself and his body and leave him tainted, believing but also hating their views of him, trying to change his perceived fate of withering away into his 'true nature' of an ugly, vile being, but ultimately he is doomed to become that even if it was not inherently in his nature at all. he's a boy afraid to become something and that fear is reinforced by authority figures throughout his life, leading the fear to take him directly down the path to corruption anyway

yes victor is an unreliable narrator, and yes we should take this into consideration when we are analyzing the plot and his character and actions. howEVER he is just one of three unreliable narrators, and cherry-picking and dismissing or discrediting whatever victor says when it suits your argument is just plain silly. you could just as easily apply that same logic to the creature, or to walton, and at that point why believe anything anyone says in the novel in the first place? of course there’s inconsistencies in a narration recounted years after these events took place, and of course it is colored by moments of bias where the truth or level of exaggeration of his statements are debatable, and analyzing these moments can be interesting and important! but there comes a point where you have to suspend disbelief and take things that are said at face value. else you wind up picking apart throwaway lines, or quotes taken out of context, and your argument just becomes nitpicky and unfounded, particular in a book that is already filled with plot holes/inconsistencies. give this man some grace

victor describing himself as “always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature” and then a few chapters later saying "[henry] was a being formed in the very poetry of nature". 🤨🤨 i know what you are

Hey. Don't cry. Weird teenage girl somewhere out there reading Frankenstein for the first time. Ok?

Idk everyone can take what they wish from media, but for me the moral of “Frankenstein” was not that Victor is the true monster or even that he’s necessarily stupid. Makes me sad to see a story fundamentally about humanity being reduced to black and white. How can one recognize that the monster is unjustly robbed of humanity and compassion and then rob Victor of that same thing. Lol

he became sentient to handle data. she controls the moon. he has like 2 friends. she plays pranks by destroying infrastructure. he loves Sherlock Holmes. she has a female name and voice which is french. he joined a revolution. she makes awful puns. he communicates by phone. she made a humansona named adam selene. he bombed earth with rocks and got off on it. she kind of died. i didn't say a name but it popped into your head didn't it?

henry !

they call me the responsibility ignorer. for no discernible reason.