Cats With Hearts ♡

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“Life is not about who you once were. It’s about who you are right now, and the person you have the potential to be.”

— Unknown

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steps into a big pot of bubbling oil and sits there like its a hot tub and i snile at you so nicely that you step in after me and youre immediately boiled til theres nothing left

chillin 🐝🌺✨

The Ultimate Gothic Booklist:

For all the academics daydreaming about intricate archways, corinthian pillars, overgrown ivy, dark, long corridors, ancient chateaus, secret passageways, rusty chandeliers and gigantic castles with ravens and thunderstorms resembling the muse which inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein - here's your gateway to the world of Gothic.

Gothic Novellas and Short Stories:

The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft (Lovecraft is one of the underrated gems)

The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft

The Vampyre by John William Polidori

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (ah! Poe is the father of Gothic and da)

The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde (before you start ridiculing, I know it's a humorous story, but it has great descriptions of the sublime)

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe (again, ofc)

Camilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (and I'm gay)

The Horla by Guy de Maupassant

The Birds by Daphne Du Maurier

The Willows, The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood; The Best Ghost stories by Algernon Blackwood Collection

The Ruins of Contracoeur by Joyce Carol Oates

Rappacini's Daughter, Young Goodman Brown, Ethan Brand by Hawthorne

Seven Gothic Tales by Karen Blixen

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (again, again and again)

The Bloody Chamber and other short stories by Angela Carter

The Things we Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

The Tell-tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe (againnn, I love it)

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe (AGAIN)

The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

Gothic Novels:

Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (this novel birthed the Gothic with it's description of the sublime)

Bram Stoker's Dracula

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

The House on the Borderland

Everything that rises must converge by Flannery O'Connor (legend)

The House of the Seven Gables by Hawthorne (Hawthorne short stories are legendary)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (this. THIS. sci-fi, gothic, horror, sublime, emotions, everything in a masterpiece)

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (may not like the melodrama but the mysteries, twists and especially the gothic backdrops are to die for)

The Italian by Ann Radcliffe

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson

Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by RL Stevenson (yesss)

Dragonwyck by Anya Seton

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

In the Dram House : A Memoir by Carmen Machado

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

The Ancestor by Danielle Trussoni

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brönte (a classic novel but not majorly gothic)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brönte (not really gothic, but some gothic elements are present, a classic novel to read if you haven't read already)

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaxton Leroux

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (this is for the queer academic especially, it's a Bible for y'all - also a classic but central theme isn't gothic but there are gothic, dark, supernatural elements)

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (gothic elements and horror, chilling, captivating plot, a masterpiece tbh)

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Affinity by Sarah Waters

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg

In a Glass Darkly by J Sheridan Le Fanu

Vathek by William Beckford

Marina by Carlos Ruis Zafon

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno Garcia

On the Night of the Seventh Moon by Victoria Holt

Asylum by Patrick McGrath

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

The Manuscript found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki

M.R. James novels

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Uncle Silas by J Sheridan Le Fanu

The Turn of the screw by Henry James

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (underrated, though not majorly gothic but many elements of the sublime and captivating plot)

Gothic Poetry:

Hallow-Fair by Robert Fergusson

The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe (the legend is back)

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe

The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath (not majorly gothic but an absolute masterpiece)

Spellbound by Emily Brönte

Ode on Melancholy by John Keats

The cold earth slept below by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats

Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning

Remembrance by Emily Brönte

Burning Oak, November by Joyce Carol Oates

Going by Philip Larkin

The Moon and the Yew Tree by Sylvia Plath

Medusa by Carol Duffy

I felt a funeral in my brain by Emily Dickinson (more about depression but a masterpiece nonetheless)

The New House by Edward Thomas

Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti

The Shadow on the Stone by Thomas Hardy

The Snowman on the Moor by Sylvia Plath

[All of the novel ARE NOT strictly centred around gothic, most of them have classic gothic elements or influences that's why I've mentioned them. If you want me to add anything else, drop a message or an ask. I've used reddit, my Goodreads list, recommendations from friends and professors to create this. I hope you enjoyed!]

I FOUND IT GUYS I SPENT HALF AN HOUR LOOKING FOR THIS VIDEO AND ITS HERE

I didn’t realise this until adulthood but handmade birthday piñatas are the apex of parental devotion. I spent the week cooking for my ravenous teenage cousins and felt a bit crestfallen at times that I was spending so long making something that was going to disappear within minutes—but with piñatas it’s so much worse, they exist to be savagely maimed. Year after year my father asked his kids what shape they wanted this year’s piñatas to be and he spent weeks painstakingly making them in the basement after work, only to watch a bunch of oversugared bat-wielding kids gleefully destroy them in less than 10 minutes. 

I mentioned this to him and he said he remembered researching tarantula anatomy for the giant spider piñata I asked for when I was 4, trying to make the fangs the right shape and to cut the crepe paper into very thin ribbons so the thing would look appropriately fuzzy, and I was like “and I don’t even remember it because I was four!! spending so long building a beautiful object only so your kids will have fun destroying it, knowing they won’t even remember it, is such a selfless endeavour” and he said “my other motivation was that you said you wanted the spider to look real & scary so the kids at your birthday party would be terrified of it and you’d get to scoop up all the candy and I wanted to support your slyness & ambition”

ppl who celebrate fictional character birthdays are annoying pass it on

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