Welcome to the Gothic: A Quick Intro To The Classic

Every year I try to include some "classic literature" into my summer reading schedule. This started back in college when I picked up Treasure Island, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and Dracula. I loved these books and I would recommend them to anyone who wants to check out.

There were also the books that I never managed to get through. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are two books that I don't think I'll ever be able to finish, though I've tried. Sometimes "classic literature" isn't to my taste (i.e. I find it boring). Other times, I find that the text hasn't been updated enough into the modern lexicon that I can't figure out what's going on at all.

I'm using quotes around the word "classic" because the term and status has primarily been determined by academia (who are typically of the demographics: wealthy, white, and male). Authors such as Agatha Christie and Stephen King have largely gained "classic" status through their fans and shifts in pop culture attitude. The Phantom of the Opera would have likely been forgotten about if the 1925 silent film starting Lon Chaney and the many remakes hadn't been such a huge success.

One of the oldest genres of "classic" literature that I'm quite fond of is the Gothic novel. Spanning nearly two centuries, Gothic literature was cultivated during late 18th century. Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) is largely considered to be the first published work in the Gothic genre.

There's more to the Gothic genre than horror (though there are a lot of horror elements to it). Considered to be the darker, edgier side of the Romantic arts movement, and largely inspired by the actual Gothic ruins found throughout Europe (but mostly the British Isles) are the key inspirations for the Gothic genre. British writers predominately shaped the Gothic style, though they weren't the only ones. French and American writers also heavily contributed to the literary genre, especially the great-granddaddy of modern western horror, Edgar Allan Poe.

But what exactly makes something worthy of the title Gothic?

A Gothic story might start out in a place like this...

Well, TV Tropes has an entire page dedicated to the genre, with even more links for hours of reading until you've fallen so far down the rabbit hole that even the Red Queen can't find you. In the simplest and most broad terms, I consider something Gothic if it meets any of the following:

• There's a creepy big house
• There's a creepy cemetery
• Creepy religious symbolism everywhere
• Dark and stormy nights
• Mist and/or fog
• Someone mentions the moors of England, Scotland, or Wales
• There's a ghost
• A dark and tragic past that one character can't get away from
• Secret passages
• Did I mention a ghost or two?
• There's the possibility of a curse causing mayhem
• Werewolves, vampires, and/or evil fairies
• Women fainting
• Someone - likely a beautiful young woman - has tuberculosis (also known as consumption)
• Did I freaking mention a ghost?
• There are creepy people around - a butler, caretaker, gardener, etc.
• Someone is brutally murdered

This list doesn't contain every possible trope that makes up the Gothic genre (in fact it seems to have a lot of the Gothic horror genre in it), but it's what I've noticed in the Gothic media I consume. It's not a genre full of sunshine and rainbows. It's dark and full of deep emotions that need to be expressed in the most dramatic way possible, with several chapters in a row dedicated to that character's tragic past.

Gothic literature eventually morphed into the pulp horror fiction of the early 1900s. H.P. Lovecraft has a lot of Gothic elements in his short stories. I would also argue that elements of the genre have managed to stick around, though they are not as frequent as I would like. Genres such as Steampunk and Neo-Victorian all have some elements of the Gothic style.

Movies are far more likely to play with updated versions of the Gothic genre. Hammer Horror, the horrible CGI monster movies of the 2000s, and pretty much everything Tim Burton has ever made has elements of the Gothic aesthetic. Sleepy Hollow is one of my all time favorite Halloween movies and it just oozes Gothic atmosphere. Guillermo Del Toro also released a Gothic style movie, Crimson Peak, that heavily draws on Gothic tropes.

I somewhat blindly stumbled into Gothic literature when I first picked up Dracula. I knew it was a classic Gothic horror story, but I didn't really understand what that meant. In fact, it takes a lot of liberties with Gothic tropes and in many cases subverts them. One example of the subversion comes when the horror that is Dracula follows the character Jonathan Harker home. In most Gothic horror stories of the time, once a character leaves a creepy location, they were safe from it.

I would totally live in that castle!

The Gothic genre wasn't without parodies. The Canterville Ghost contains the bones of a Gothic tale, but Oscar Wilde chose to take a much more comedic tone by having a very British ghost meet a very  American family. While Jane Austen poked fun  at the genre in her novel Northanger Abbey as early as 1803 (though the novel wasn't published until after her death in 1817). 

This year, I picked up The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. I recently saw it on Broadway and loved it. The music is amazing, the story is interesting, and it has a feel that's reminiscent of a fairy tale. The play also made a lot more sense than the 2004 movie (though I love that too).

I brought this book

I've only just started the book and it's sucking me in. It's quite a bit different from the play or movie, but I can see how they adapted the story. Now, the book itself wasn't all the rage back when it was first serialized (that was a gimmick early news papers did to try and keep sales high), but it has since risen to be considered one of the lesser "classic" Gothic tales.

Next week, I'll continue my dive into the Gothic side of literature. Hopefully, The Phantom of the Opera continues to be as entertaining as it so far has been. Until next week!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Dog Days of Summer

If you're anywhere in the northern hemisphere right now, you've probably noticed that it's hot, like Satan-decided-to-build-a-sauna hot. It feels like we haven't had any relief from the heat since June. We've entered the Dog Days of Summer.

Except, what are the Dog Days of Summer? Why do we refer to the extreme hot weather that occurs between July and August as Dog Days? I know dogs can be cute and fluffy, but unholy hot?

Look at this face!!!

This question popped up while I was at work last week (or I think it was last week - time seems to be melting together as I age). I'd always heard the phrase Dog Days of Summer, in fact I can recall several songs that feature the phrase. Florence + The Machine have the song "Dog Days are Over" and I remember Fear Factor's cover version of "Dog Day Sunrise" (originally by  Head of David) from the mid-nineties. However, I never actually knew what exactly a Dog Day of Summer was.

I'm not entirely sure how the topic was brought up, but I think it had something to do with our office building sponsoring an adopt-a-dog day while it was unbearably hot outside. One of my coworkers explained that it had to do with astronomy, specifically when the star Sirius (not the Harry Potter character) is spotted at sunrise during the summer months. This astronomical occurrence always occurs in a 40 day period after the summer solstice - typically July to August. The star Sirius is part of the dog consultation and literally means the dog star.

Hear that guys, you have a star named for you.

For the Harry Potter fans out there, this is there is a character that turns into a big black dog called Sirius Black,

This cycle has been known and recorded since as early as the ancient Egyptians. For the Egyptians, the rising of the star Sirius signaled the fortuitous time of the year when the Nile River flooded, bringing life to the desert. According to The Old Farmer's Almanac the new moon after the first siting of Sirius also signaled the Egyptian new year.

On the flip side, the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't as fond of this period of summer as the Egyptians. In fact the Greeks thought that Sirius brought heat and drought to the land as well as lethargy and fever to humans. This belief continued until the modern age of science and medicine took over. Apparently purging through vomiting and blood letting was frowned upon during "Dogge daies" of summer because "the Sunne is in Leo" and "then is nature burnt vp & made weake" (from the 1564 English medical book "Hope of Health").

So the next time the Dog Days of Summer are referenced, remember it's not our best furry friends that are being blamed for the heat. It's just an extremely bright star in the sky.

Also while we're on the subject of our furry friends, please remember that the heat does affect doggies too. Keep your dog well hydrated and try to keep their paws off of the pavement while the sun is directly shining down on it. We wear shoes, dogs don't.

Stay cool until next week!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Merit of Stunt Journalism

Last week, I wrote about yellow journalism and how "fake news" has been around a long time. This week, I want to focus on another type of journalism, one that is both important and controversial.

Before the advent of yellow journalism of the early 1900s, the mid-Victorian era newspapers would use stunt journalism to sell controversial headlines and bring to light stories of the oppressed, underrepresented, and the often forgotten about. Consisting of people immersing themselves in a situation or lifestyle in the attempt to better write a graphic description of the experience, these journalists would dive head first into their assignments to write emotional first person narratives and sway their readers into empathizing with their narrative.

Not to mention some of the best Victorian era stunt journalists were women.

Nellie Bly

One of the most famous stunt journalists (well journalists period) was a woman who went by the pen name Nellie Bly (real name: Elizabeth Jane Cochran). Her most famous story helped lead to changing America's perceptions on how to treat mentally ill people.

Bly agreed to do an undercover expose on the treatment of patients at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island in New York. For ten days, Bly pretended to be "insane" (at least by the time's standards) to shed light on the reports of brutality and neglect at the asylum. She described the asylum as "a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out."

Her story went viral.

It directly lead to reforming the asylum and an increase in awareness of what life was like for those who had been committed there. Nearly a month after the story ran, improvements for the patients had been made and a budget increase passed.

She wasn't the only reporter to try to make life better for an underrepresented group of people.

Another stunt reporter, Nell Nelson (real name Helen Cusack) wrote about working conditions in the city of Chicago. Her story brought awareness of the extremely unsafe working conditions for women and girls in factories and raised public sympathy. This lead to new laws being passed favoring workers' rights to humane working conditions and child labor laws.

(You can read more about Nellie Bly by clicking here to see a biography or here for her wiki page. For more on Nell Nelson click here for a description of her work - she's a little harder to find information on).

Today, stunt journalism is known as immersion or immersive journalism.

It's a controversial style to say the least. On the one hand, these journalists are bringing attention to a critical issue which more often than not affects a group of people whom society tends to overlook. On the other, the journalists aren't actually a part of the group being affected overall. At the end of the assignment they get to go back to their regular lives, while the people being written about don't have that luxury.

I first learned about immersive journalism from a subplot from the movie "Get A Clue". In the subplot, there's a homeless man who continues to pop up in relation to a missing teacher. It's first thought that he might be related to the teacher's disappearance since he has the teacher's coat for an unknown reason. It isn't until the climax of the movie that it's learned that the homeless man was actually a journalist posing as a homeless man for a set amount of time to write a story on how homeless people are treated. Also, the reason he has the missing teacher's coat is because the teacher gave it to him.

In case you didn't see last week's post. Here's the Disney Channel Original movie "Get a Clue"

I had mixed feelings on how this subplot was used. On the one hand, the journalist pretending to be homeless helped solve the case of the missing teacher. He helped the kids solve the mystery and gave their story credibility to the authorities.

On the other hand, why didn't the newspaper hire an actual homeless person to tell their story? Clearly there were plenty of homeless people around that they could interview or ask to write the article. Why did someone with no prior experience as a homeless person have to live through the experience to make it creditable?

These are questions I don't have answers to.

I mean I can take a guess that it has to do with money and name recognition. It could be the ridiculous idea that people being pulled from their more mainstream life to experience what a marginalized person or people in extreme danger (such as those in a war zone) are going through somehow gives the story more "credit".

Regardless of the controversy surrounding this style of journalism, these writers are still exposing problems that need to be solved. They are writing these stories to get readers to empathize with those most affected. They are inspiring their readers to seek a solution to a problem, not cover it up.

We need journalists who are willing to go the extra mile to inspire change for the better.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Unoriginal History of "Fake News"

There was a time in my life where I wanted to be a journalist. Well, more specifically I wanted to be an investigative journalist. I loved the movie "His Girl Friday" and read as many books in the "Cat Who" series as I could find. Both prominently featured journalists who sought to discover the truth and inform their readers. I thought that reporters often worked with the police, not only to get the latest scoop, but also to help catch the villain in these stories.

Even Disney had a made-for-TV movie that falls in this genre

I used to watch the news all the time as a kid. It was hard not to when so much of the national news took place right in my backyard (that being Washington D.C.). I tried to stay as informed as possible.

As I got older, I began to understand there were types of journalism that were less "Get a Clue" and more "Harriet the Spy". Though journalists can't print anything they want, libel laws don't stop hidden agendas, gossip, and bias from seeping into the stories journalists report on. There have been some graphics of how informative and biased certain news organizations are floating around the internet as of late. I didn't post any graphics here as I wasn't sure about the original source for them.

An interesting take on the pitfalls of spying on your friends and classmates

Needless to say, after doing several research papers on the subject and even studying journalism for a bit in high school, I lost interest. When I went back re-watch "His Girl Friday" and it's predecessor "The Front Page", I also noticed more of the nasty and sometimes unethical things the journalists portrayed would do to get their story. One journalist (and head of his news paper) sort of kidnapped someone so his chance at the big scoop wouldn't be ruined.

(I wrote another blog post on seeing the play "The Front Page" about a year and a half ago. You can click here to read it.)

In high school we learned about yellow journalism (journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration). It was a term coined in the 1890s and was tossed around into early 1900s to describe news papers with misleading headlines, scare tactic stories, and sensational pictures or illustrations of events. Basically what we call click-bait and "fake news" stories today. These tactics could be used to sway the public on different topics and mobilize them into action.

To say that "fake news" and click-bait are new problems for the world of journalists is to disregard that the history of the journalism industry is littered with first person narratives that were meant to incite extreme reactions from readers. The purpose of all stories is to cause an emotional reaction with the reader, even in non-fiction pieces found in new reports.

I've heard some people lament that idea that journalist standards have sunk to a new low in recent years, but I disagree.

Journalism, like most writing platforms, is currently going through the biggest revolution seen since the introduction of the television. People are no longer limited to getting their news from a few local news papers, television stations, or radio programs. We can share information from anywhere in the world in milliseconds. We are more aware of what is going on in the world than ever before.

That's awesome.

But it also leads to new problems. Fact checking still needs to be done and misinformation continues to be spread faster and faster. There's also the emerging problem of bias confirmation and echo chambers that litter social media and forum websites such as Reddit, Tumblr, and 4chan. We can't only read and share stories that align with their view points and call people names when they post stories with the opposite view. We might miss out on other view points and facts that could help us better understand the situation.

Journalism and the free press are a right of the American people. It's in the very first amendment to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was important to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. It's a right that should continue to be important now.

And anyone can be a journalist. We all have phones in our pockets. We can take pictures, record events, and share them hundreds upon thousands of times on any social media site. Though, that doesn't mean we can take everything at face value. Under every narrative is a grain of truth.

Even my writing isn't without it's narrative bias.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Speed of Time

Do you guys remember a time when it felt like the school year would never end? Or when summer vacation seemed to last forever and a day? Does it sometimes feel time is now slipping away faster and faster than it did a decade ago?

Apparently this weird shift in how we perceive time isn't unusual as we age. Scientists seem to think its because our brains prioritizes new memories rather than familiar ones, which makes it seem like our childhood lasted a lot longer than a decade as an adult does.

The sense of loosing time is usually accompanied by a the feelings of regret, melancholy, and the idea that there might be missing. I also start to feel the weight of my mortality.

I'm not old. In the description of this blog, it says that I was somewhere in my twenties, at least when I started it. I'll let you guys speculate on my actual age, but it's not like I've "aged" that. What's five years to someone who has graduated college and ventured forth on their own?

This year is the sixth anniversary since the start of a show called Gravity Falls. It was a fun show on one of the Disney channels about two kids spending a summer with their Great Uncle in the middle of no where Oregon. The creator of the show always knew how it would end and that the story would only encompass one summer. The finale was shown three years ago and it lived up to my expectations.

I think you can still watch it on Hulu.

The reason I bring up this show is because the creator explicitly stated that it was inspired by his own summer vacations with his twin sister. He recalls feeling that summers felt endless and that they would be kids forever.

But nothing lasts forever and all things come to an end.

Just like the creator's summer did. Just like the summer Mable and Dipper Pines had in Gravity Falls (that was also the name of the town the show took place in).

I think that's why I get so sad sometimes. It happens when I realize how long it's been since a major life event happened or an enjoyable tradition ended. Around this time last year, I went to the beach with my mom, sister, and aunt. We used to go every year for two weeks at the end of August to this town in Southern New Jersey. I have very fond memories from this time and occasionally I like to pretend that it's still the 90s or early 2000s. But the reality is that we haven't consistently gone to this beach for at least 12(?), 15(?) years old - well it's been over a decade at least.

These are days where it makes me really sad that I can never go back to those times. It's not the same anymore. Somethings seem to be the same, but I can see where time has taken it's toll. Faded paint on the mini golf course, a new store where the ice cream parlor used to be, and the rides on the boardwalk are a lot smaller than when I was six.

Those exact moments only exist in my memories now.

Memories, though, aren't always a guarantee. There are diseases that can wipe out our fondest memories and others that prevent us from creating new ones. I like to try and record what I can, if for no other reason than writing helps me process the things going on in my life. Most I keep private, but some I share on social media and in my blog posts.

Recently, a cousin of mine passed away. Part of me didn't feel it was real until I attended her memorial service. It felt like I was talking to her not all that long ago, promising to see her again at our next family reunion. Then I remembered that that conversation had happened at my family reunion last August. Part of me still feels like I'll see my cousin in just a couple months.

Though it's been over a decade, I still sometimes hear my grandparent's laughter. I can close my eyes and explore the houses I grew up in, even when I haven't been there in years. They're very clear memories and they don't feel like they happened as long ago as they actually did.

I can only hope to create more memories of the new moments in my life and break away from my day-to-day routine whenever I can. I want to have adventures, see the world, and try everything that I can. I want to build memories and fill my life with lots of stories.

Keeping memories is a lot like writing a novel. We only keep the ones that are important to the story we want to tell. We cut out the mundane, ignore the routine, and exaggerate the awesome.

I hope that when I finish writing my story, it's one that's worth remembering.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Inciting Incident of Change

Writing the start of a novel is really hard, especially when I'm anxious to write the "really good" parts first. I suppose I could start with the "really good" parts, but then I run into the issue of people not being attached enough to the characters to care about what's happening to them. I can't just start with action, that might leave the readers confused. And characters need to be invested in what's going on around them for readers to become invested.

For example, how often do you walk to your desk to find your phone with a hundred rubber bands around it?

All this was going through my head while trying to start a novel and justify why this one specific character had the main point of view. 

I'm currently trying to get back into the swing of writing this novel, but I admit that it's been hard. For a while I couldn't quite figure out why I'd been struggling, but now I think I do (other than the whole not finding time to sit and write issue - that's something else entirely).

It's supposed to be a horror coming of age story. One where two boys are going to a supposedly cursed high school where they feel oppressed by the administration and their peers are dying in horrific "accidents". There's also a mysterious girl that one of the boys has a crush on, while the other finds her extremely annoying (she really likes the color pink).

A rough picture of what the "love interest" looks like

This story, in theory, should be easy for me to write. I've long since survived high school and coming of age stories are everywhere. Horror has often featured teenagers in the narrative, especially in the campy horror movies that were snuck into middle school sleepover parties.

Despite the vast number of genre examples I can pull from, I also need to balance the cliche with novelty. I need a reason for people to pick my story to read. It has to be genre compliant and just different enough to stand out.

And this balance has to be established right at the beginning.

The inciting incident is the hook that catches the reader and keeps them reading. This usually happens within the first chapter of the novel with a similar incident happening by the end of chapter 3. It's the event that launches the story from "another day in the life of" to "I'm going on an adventure!"

It's when the writer asks, "what's different about today?"

For my story, this happens when the protagonist starts his first day of freshmen year at a "cursed" high school. That small change to my character's world changes his life forever. It's not too dissimilar from the start of other coming of age stories. Mine just happens to include murderous ghosts to go along with the huge pile of homework.

So if you're struggling with the start of your story or novel, be sure to ask yourself what the change to your character's routine is. Maybe they go to a new coffee shop or a person was rude to them at a restaurant. It could be that the sky lit up bright orange in the middle of the night or cat followed them home.

A change in my everyday routine doesn't always lead to a crazy adventure, but in the world of fiction it can be the difference of winning the lottery or ending up in outer space with weird guy in a blue police box.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please, like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Change that Wasn’t

I know it’s a weird title. Especially since last week I wrote how change is everywhere and needs to be embraced to reach fullest potential. So, why this title?

I often treat change like a life altering event. Sort of a one time shift in my life and everything will be different. Except that’s not how change works,  nor is that how change should be treated.

How many times have I told myself that by X date I will do Y thing, only for me to forget two weeks down the line and realized I’ve missed my deadline?

Too many to count.

And I bet dolllars to donuts that you guys (my readers) have too. These are the changes we are conscious of. The ones we try to plan for, but rarely have the opportunity to follow through with because life gets in the way. Sometimes I’m disappointed that I didn’t follow up with this plan, while others feel so trivial by the time I remember them.

When I moved to New Jersey, I made a rough sketch of my plan for the next five years. I thought I had the whole thing figured out. I’d take the GRE, find a Masters program (though in what was flexible), and move again to be near one of my parents.

I’m now three years into that five year plan and I’ve done maybe two things that I had listed out. Neither of those two things turned out remotely how I thought they would. In fact, looking back on it, I’ve had so many other changes to manage that I pretty much have to scrap that plan all together.

Change still happened, even if it wasn’t the change I was looking for.

There are quite a few days were I don’t feel like I’ve changed all that much and others where I hardly recognize my current self from how I was a year ago. I don’t notice my changes from day to day, but I occasionally realize that the person I was a year ago would have made a very different choice than the choice I ended up making.

Subconsciously or consciously, change happens. One day, I’m pretty sure I’m going to wake up and wonder why my mid-twenties self ever thought they’d always feel so out of focus.

It’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month in the USA and some people might be thinking of coming out to their friends and family. It might seem like everything from that point on will change, and it might. It’s unfortunate and disheartening that the LGBTQ+ community continues to face prejudice and stigma.  But being true to yourself is even more important and I’ve found that most people are accepting and happy for others who are able embrace who they are.

I can’t help being me no more than a tree can help being a tree.

If you’re in the LGBTQ+ community and need someone to talk to, please feel free to call a hotline such as the Trevor Project (866 488 7386) or reach out to a local support group such as a local GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) chapter.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.