3/2/2023 0 Comments Mediunic novels![]() It’s that loneliness that attracted me to writing AS DEAD THINGS DO as a novel. It’s a recipe for mental anguish and eventual destruction, and one that leads many, myself included, into substance abuse and eventual addiction. Be “Normal.” It’s that sense of otherness that resides in the recesses of a queer person’s psyche that tells us we’re not good enough, not worthy enough, that we’re alone. I think it’s a familiar story among queer folks, that wishing we could be like everyone else. Though I knew I was “different” from a very young age, I fought it, thinking that my queerness was something I could ignore long enough that I’d forget it existed, or that I could tuck it away, securing it in a chain-wrapped trunk to be tossed into the bog and swallowed by the earth, never again to be discussed. There was no fear of being rejected or unloved by my family, nor was there a concern that I’d be ostracized or shunned, I just had to go through the process at my own pace. I wasn’t honest with myself about who I was until I was thirty years old. ![]() That recognition, that there’s no use in fighting what just is, is another concept that speaks to countless queer people’s experiences, including my own. As characters move through these dark places, we watch as their ability and will to reasonably explain away supernatural events slowly erodes, leading to the inevitable realization that there is more to this world than their stunted understanding can grasp. It’s within that cloudy veil that separates the natural from the supernatural that many of the best Gothic tales live. They’re less about the fear of pain or physical injury, and more about the fear of psychological torment of the type many in the queer community inflict upon themselves as they struggle to find their place in a world that far too often feels made for others. Though there are always exceptions to every rule-hence the fun in writing- masked maniacs with kitchen knives and vivid depictions of squirm-inducing body horror generally take up no residence in Southern Gothic tales. Particularly Southern Gothic literature, with its terrors presenting in much less brutal and nihilistic ways.Īs a partition of the horror genre, Southern Gothic conjures images of blue moonlight filtering through trees, lantern-lit rooms full of antiques, lost loves and heartbreaks. These are real fears faced by queer people in the real world, and fiction is a way for many of us to explore and understand those fears safely. There are countries in 2022 where saying aloud the words “I’m gay” is a death sentence. While being openly queer in this country carries much less of the stigma it did just mere decades ago, there are still countless pockets of this nation, particularly in the South, that hold on to that antiquated bigotry with sweaty, terrified, abandon. It’s not hard to see all those once grand plantation homes, framed by massive moss-draped oaks, long ago abandoned and left to rot, as standing relics of the hetero-normative expectations placed upon most young queer people-societal expectations rejected, discarded, and left to be reclaimed by the humid southern climate. ![]() The murky waters of the countless stagnant ponds that populate our favorite works in the subgenre can easily represent the muddy family relationships that litter the landscape of the queer community, hiding unknown skeletons. Demons-both literal and mental.Ĭountless signposts of Gothic Literature are in lock-step with the queer experience, making the metaphors both simple and poignant. ![]()
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