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Gothic Meter: Computer Analysis of Gothic, Horror, Science Fiction, and Dark Fantasy

March 1, 2021

ambiguity, Gothic, home for fiction, patreon, programming

If all this sounds familiar, you’re right! I’ve talked about this before, but there’s a crucial difference now. I’m giving you a chance to try it for yourself! Introducing Gothic Meter, a program that takes a text and not only tells you whether it falls within the wider Gothic sphere (Gothic, horror, dark fantasy, or science fiction), but also how and why.

This is an invaluable tool for an author, for reasons that will become evident in this post.

In a nutshell, Gothic Meter is a result of my academic-level familiarity with and knowledge of the Gothic. Everything I know about the Gothic, from the role of the supernatural to ambiguity, and from the sublime to the role of time, has found its use in this program.

Let’s see how; and let’s see why you should care.

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Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse: a Gothic Masterpiece

December 3, 2019

Criticism

affect, film, Gothic, grotesque, horror, review

0 comments

A film review on Home for Fiction? Sort of. But this isn’t a typical review. Rather, in this post I plan to analyze how Robert Eggers’s 2019 The Lighthouse is a Gothic masterpiece.

To do that, I will really go deeply into Gothic tropes, to show the seriously great job the director did with this film. Indeed, to this Gothic specialist, The Lighthouse is a Gothic classroom. If I needed to pick only one work from the recent 10-20 years to teach someone about the Gothic, The Lighthouse would be the one.

I’ve tried to balance between not including any spoilers and still being able to talk about the Gothic tropes of the film. In all honesty, the Gothic as a mode doesn’t rely on strictness and linearity. That is, it’s about affect, not plot.

However, if you haven’t watched The Lighthouse yet and you’d like to enter the narrative without any interpretative prejudice, feel free to stop reading at this point. You can then come back to this post after you’ve watched the film.

Otherwise, if you’ve already seen the film and want to know why I consider The Lighthouse a Gothic masterpiece, read on!

The Lighthouse Gothic — As a trope, the lighthouse is a Gothic castle, containing the same kinds of allusions of hierarchy

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Gothic, Metal, and the Concept of the Unspeakable

November 27, 2019

Criticism

defiance, Gothic, metal, music, politics, society

2 comments

First, a warning: This article is not about “Gothic metal” but about Gothic as a literary genre and metal as a music genre. In this post I explore their interconnection, with the concept of the unspeakable as a bridge.

In simpler terms, picture that there is something connecting, say, Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Jinjer’s “Pisces”. This something is what I refer to here as “the unspeakable”.

Two disclaimers before we begin:

the unspeakable is only one possible link between Gothic and metal. There can be several ways to connect them, but I choose the unspeakable as a neat “umbrella term”, in a way.
I’m not breaking any new ground here. Literary criticism has analyzed these concepts extensively. At best, I might be just popularizing these analyses.

And with these out of the way, let’s see how Gothic and metal might be siblings – and, more importantly, why we should care.

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