animen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bakerstreet2023-08-07 11:47 am
animen) wrote in bakerstreet2023-08-07 11:47 am
If you have ghosts, you have everything.
Gothic  |
Lightning streaks across the inky blackness. Somewhere far off in the deep woods, a single wolf howls. Go ahead, bring your meager candle close, no matter the danger that the flame presents to your luxurious satin clothing - you won't find any warmth to relieve you in this mansion built just as much of regret as it is of stone. But you have no other choice since you've been imprisoned here. Or perhaps you're the one who's keeping a less-than-willing soul here to ease your own pain. Either way, you've found yourself the subject of an atmospheric, suspenseful gothic romance! a type of novel that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th cent. in England. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and they were usually set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole was the forerunner of the type, which included the works of Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and Charles R. Maturin, and the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey satirizes Gothic romances. The influence of the genre can be found in some works of Coleridge, Le Fanu, Poe, and the Brontës. During the 1960s so-called Gothic novels became enormously popular in England and the United States. Seemingly modeled on Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, these novels usually concern spirited young women, either governesses or new brides, who go to live in large gloomy mansions populated by peculiar servants and precocious children and presided over by darkly handsome men with mysterious pasts. Popular practitioners of this genre are Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, Catherine Cookson, and Dorothy Eden. HOW TO PLAY 1. Comment with your character, info, and preferred role/trope or even setting. Is your character a bright-eyed ingenue? A tortured soul with as many skeletons in their closet as their are rooms in the castle? Hired help who has fallen for the mansion's newest guest and wants to save them from a certain doomed fate? How about a vampire, werewolf, or ghost? The only limit is your imagination! 2. Reply to others. Hash things out or go with the flow. Just get your gothic, creepy shipping on. 3. RNG the prompts if you need to. Otherwise, have fun. Treat this as seriously or as irreverent as you'd like. PROMPTS ( change the gender/pronouns out for appropriate ones! | source ) 1. Powerful love. Heart-stirring, often sudden, emotions create a life or death commitment. Many times this love is the first the character has felt with this overwhelming power. 2. Uncertainty of reciprocation. What is the beloved thinking? Is the lover's love returned or not? 3. Unreturned love. Someone loves in vain (at least temporarily). Later, the love may be returned. 4. Tension between true love and father's control, disapproval, or choice. Most often, the father of the woman disapproves of the man she loves. 5. Lovers parted. Some obstacle arises and separates the lovers, geographically or in some other way. One of the lovers is banished, arrested, forced to flee, locked in a dungeon, or sometimes, disappears without explanation. Or, an explanation may be given (by the person opposing the lovers' being together) that later turns out to be false. 6. Illicit love or lust threatens the virtuous one. The young woman becomes a target of some evil man's desires and schemes. 7. Rival lovers or multiple suitors. One of the lovers (or even both) can have more than one person vying for affection. 8. Dark (and brooding?) At least one member of the pair has a tragic past or experiences that have left them closed off to the world. 9. Less than ideal beginnings. It's an age-old story: falling in love with the person who locked you in the dungeon. Or the attic, if they're a bit more hospitable. 10. Supernatural elements. Strange dreams about a shadowy place or a mysterious face. Blurry figures that linger just out of the line of sight. And the master of the house, always indisposed around the time of the full moon. |
alice liddell • american mcgee's alice • ota
Dorian Pearl, a poet || OC {The Yellow King RPG} || OTA
Leif Graie | Original/D&D
ciel phantomhive | kuroshitsuji
Hob Gadling | Sandman (Netflix)
josephine montilyet | dragon age : inquisition | ota
integra hellsing / hellsing
Millions Knives 𓏶 Trigun Stampede
Sherlock Holmes | Moriarty the Patriot | 1, 5, 10 locked to facioutfacias
Here he was, standing inside the Moriarty mansion.
Unfortunately this wasn't the prize it once would have been. The mansion was crumbling, burnt and ransacked, and even worse in some areas. Cold drafts blew through broken windows, spreading the mixed scent of damp and burnt wood. All its treasures and secrets were long gone.
It had been abandoned, after all. Soon after the fall of Moriarty had come their home.
Sherlock lit his single lantern and trudged up the stairs to the second floor, trying not to think about the staggering loss this building symbolized, or why he was even here.
He explored without much care, stepping over debris here and there, avoiding puddles. The rooms were a mess, full of overturned furniture and broken glass. There was little left to salvage, let alone learn anything from.
The last room he found turned out to be William's. The books shelved from floor to ceiling gave their owner away. Sherlock spent some time poking around, but he wasn't here for anything specific. In the end he chose a book that hadn't been ruined by damp or mold. The bed was still standing and looked sturdy enough, so he took a seat there, set down the light, and flipped open the book, reading idly while lighting the opium cigarette he'd brought with him.
Blue smoke rose in lazy curls towards the ceiling. Sherlock tried to concentrate on his reading, but all he could think about was William, and how his hands had once cradled this very same book.
Those beautiful hands, wet with sweat and blood and damp from the Thames, that had slipped from Sherlock's own on the Tower Bridge. The shock on William's face, his mouth moving to say a name that Sherlock would never hear- 'Sherly-' and the way the fog seemed to swallow him up.
How John had held him back from jumping at the very last minute, surely a suicidal move but for Liam, of course he had to try--]
I'm sorry, Liam.
[His voice practically echoes in the empty house, sounding entirely too loud.]
no subject
The initial reaction to that had been confusion. Had he survived? A question quickly answered with the state of things, of himself; the burnt-out mansion -- who would have brought him here? -- the fact that while he touches things, he cannot feel them.
Ah, how ironic, he'd thought. Even the one thing he'd longed for had not been given to him. Perhaps that was truly the payment for his sins, the inability to rest. There was no way to find out the fate of the others, either, nothing for him to do but accept what he had been given as penance.
He does not know how long it is before he hears the familiar voice. William would know the sound of it anywhere; he has been replaying it in his head as long as he has been here, and it is just as laced with regret as it had been the last time he heard it.
Of course he would come here. Sherlock isn't content with allowing William to forget for even a moment, is he? Apologizing like it's his fault, like it wasn't William's wish to fall from that bridge. What a fool.
...Maybe a peek would not hurt. It's not as though Sherlock will be able to see him; the man likely doesn't believe in this sort of thing, anyway. William himself wouldn't have, were he not experiencing it. ]
no subject
Liam. I'm really sorry. Not just about that, but all this... and here I am, stinking up your room with my drugs. Shit.
[He doesn't even know why he's here. As soon as the idea had come to him he hadn't been able to get it out of his mind.
Perhaps Liam had left him something here. A message. Anything.
Deep down, he knows it's impossible. It wasn't Liam's style, for one thing. But Sherlock can still feel his presence in the room, and it makes his chest hurt. He pictures Liam at the desk, or plucking a book from a shelf to research something- but no, he has to stop this, or the pain will be too much.]
Guess it doesn't really matter. Nothing really does, with you gone.
no subject
He sighs.]
As though there is anything for you to apologize for.
[There's no reason for him to speak, other than for something to do, a semblance of a connection that is no longer there. Talking to himself... foolish.]
There are better things for you to do than wallow in ruins.
[What about John? Ms. Hudson? London? Sherlock was meant to be what the people needed, not wasting his time speaking to ghosts.]
no subject
What the hell. That was definitely Liam's voice right then.
He must be hallucinating, although the cigarette isn't nearly as strong as some of the other drugs he indulges in these days.
Or perhaps it was some sort of defense mechanism left in place, to keep the mansion from further destruction? Sherlock's mind roves. He hadn't seen a victrola or anything similar anywhere in the house...
In the end, he decides to just go with the flow. It's that, or lose his last nerve.]
Hey, Liam. What're you doing here? You're supposed to be dead.
no subject
Of course Sherlock would take it in stride.]
Maybe this is something you're imagining. Wouldn't it be better that way?
[No... better would be if William had simply ceased to exist after everything.
Well, for the briefest of moments, he will indulge.]
Are you seeking closure? If so, then you have it.
no subject
That doesn't keep his heart from beating quicker every time he hears William speak, however.]
Nah. If I was dreaming this, I'd at least allow myself to see you.
no subject
Then again, he isn't sure what to make of most things lately. He doubts Sherlock would be able to see him, but the fact that he can hear what William is saying is good enough.]
Ah, are you telling me you can control your own dreams?
[The idea of Sherlock dreaming of him, even now, is regrettable. William had truly hoped he would have moved on long ago.]
no subject
Kinda weaker. Like from a distance, even when I replay the times we were... close.
So I think you're really here, Liam.
[Sherlock takes a long drag on his cigarette, holds onto the smoke nearly long enough to choke, then exhales through his nose. The discomfort seems to wake him up, and he wonders if this really is just from the opium.
Maybe he's finally gone insane, like John always frets over.]
That, or I owe my dealer a good tip.
So, did you miss your room? 'S that why you're here?
no subject
He exhales; a sigh. Of course Sherlock is relying on substances. William had hoped John could at least reign him in, but Sherlock is a man who can't be tamed, after all.]
Did I miss my room?
[William considers it.]
I suppose I did, but I doubt that's why I'm here. A room is simply a place.
[He had never been one to be attached to places, considering his childhood. Still, there is a nostalgia here. Why had he returned to this place, specifically? Perhaps because it was where he spent the most time.]
And you? Did you miss my room, too?
Abraham Whistler | Blade | OTA