bakerstreet | Gothic

Gothic

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.
( source )

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ An innocent child, it would seem, until you discover the rot underneath the lace.

~~spoilers: she's a vampire.~~ ]

[ info. prefer historical scenarios, but can maneuver her around period-wise. open to all except smut. ]

( the obligatory dark & brooding doctor with a tragic past who's closed himself off from the world. perhaps illness didn't just take his dad, but the whole mccoy family? add a dash of spooky southern gothic trappings, too. crosscanon & gen welcome. )

[Possible thoughts: if Joanna survived, Jay could be a tutor hired for her. If the whole family means the whole family... in Jay's canon his mother got sick with an unspecified illness and died. Could be he's coming to beg for help from the doctor?]

( I LOVE the idea of Jay tutoring Joanna, the one little bright spot left in McCoy's life :') I'm in. )

Jay nervously fiddles with his tie, watching the two redcaps from the railway unload his luggage from the hired transport. He was told to leave them to their work and not try to help - if he got injured, after all, they would be the ones to get in trouble.

(He still gives a little wince of sympathy when they struggle with the steamer trunk full of his books -- well, books mostly meant to help with his tutoring job, but his books all the same.)

He turns back toward the manor house...

It used to hold generations of McCoys - was the word in town - but pyrrhoneuritis had swept through the family and taken nearly all of them, despite the best efforts of Doctor Leonard McCoy. Now, of that large and distinguished family, only the doctor and his daughter Joanna were left. And Jay had been hired on as Joanna's tutor... the first new servant for the McCoys since the sickness.

And his first private teaching job, only his third job overall. Jay takes a bracing breath and marches up to the front door.

"Jay Wayne, tutor for Miss Joanna. Doctor McCoy is expecting me," he rehearses under his breath softly, before knocking briskly on the door.

[What can I say? She's named for something Poe wrote, and is kind of dead/a ghost. Let me know if you're more interested in her spectre form, the Lady in White, than the flesh-and-blood version.]

[[A somewhat naive but observant young lady from a rural town said to be plagued by otherworldly creatures. 10 comes with the territory, not just because of said creatures, but because she's (maybe) a (disguised) raven harpy...]]

[The cabin on the revenge is ... different. But Ed's certainly made it his own.

Stede steps delicately through the space, cluttered with a few things he recognizes and many he doesn't.]

Planning for a cake or— uh...

[He picks up a little figurine from the desk. Doesn't seem to go with much else, the little dark haired maiden in her seafoam dress next to a suitor of her own. Is that... is that beard on her?]

Is this you?

[Cake toppers pilfered from the aftermath of a raid. Edward targeted the ship the moment he'd noticed it. A ship full of well-dressed, wealthy socialites gathering in the name of love. Edward decided months ago that if he didn't deserve love, no one did.

The groom bears a striking resemblance to Stede Bonnet, and the bride has been painted to match: Of course it's Edward. But pride gets in the way of him admitting this so easily.]

Do I look like I own a dress?

[Ed's hardly ever been so clipped with him. It's not unwarranted really, sure, he gets that. It just takes some getting used to.]

Well. No. But... [A cautious little shrug.] You've never struck me as a figurine collector either.

She's cute though. Is all.

[Well, there's no arguing with that. They are, quite obviously, the only figurines in the cabin. Edward's eyebrows furrow, his only response a glassy-eyed stare, but then Stede says something else that unknits them entirely and makes him squint. unsure.

She's cute. Hm. Well. Edward doesn't feel very cute right now, black makeup smeared over his eyes, but wouldn't it be nice if he did?

Ugh. No, fuck this. He's supposed to fucking hate Stede for what he's done. He means to ask 'What do you want?', but instead, what slips out is:]

Do you want her? [Fuck.]

[That seems promising. He's not sure why exactly but it's certainly an offering of some kind.]

I'd love her! [He chimes and his whole face brightens, but it only takes a moment for realization to set in and Stede sets the little bride back down with a resigned look about him.] But... Without a ship, I wouldn't be able to give her a nice little space on the bookshelf.

Besides.

[He nudges her closer to the fellow in pink.]

I'd hate to separate them. They're a pair aren't they? They'll be happier together.

[Stede's immediate response causes Ed's eyes to widen, and for a half-moment he questions whether or not Stede is aware of the duality of Edward's question. It isn't like he'd intended it to begin with, but Stede's presence alone is already making Edward's brain and heart battle it out, so this isn't really helping on the matter.

He sets his jaw, about to reply about the ship, but then Stede nudges them together and now Edward really can't question what they're actually talking about anymore. At least he thinks.

Edward hisses out an exhale, moving around the table they're sat upon and taking a seat, his bad leg outstretched.]

I thought the same, but the other one went missing for a while and now I'm not so sure.

[It's impossible for Stede to avoid putting some kind of empathy into those little characters when she looks so much like he. Even if he doesn't entirely understand exactly what compelled Ed to miniaturize himself, the little pair looks as made for each other Stede still feels like they are.]

They look like they survived it— no?

[Besides, it seems a little easier this way doesn't it? To talk about this perfect little couple between them rather than Ed and Stede themselves.]

Not so sure of what?

[It simultaneously feels stupid and is something Edward is actually grateful for. It feels safer, less vulnerable. If anyone (including himself) says anything he doesn't like, he can assert they're only talking about dolls.]

Define survived.

[He sighs, leaning back in his seat.]

If they'll be happier. One wrong rock of the boat and he could go missing again. They're fragile. They could break.

[The same could probably be said about himself, but there are so few times Ed's indulged him in a talk —a real talk— that any kind of security blanket feels worth while if it let's Ed open up.]

They're both... here. And up right. And together. No?

[Maybe it's paltry, but it's so much more than he's had for so long it feels monumental.]

Does that mean it's not worth it? The time they could have together?

[Edward takes a deep breath, considering.]

Right. But for how long?

[He chews on his inner cheek, still not quite able to make eye contact with Stede. Staring at the miniature version of him, instead, hard enough to put a hole through it.]

Dunno. It's a bitch to piece together the broken bits. Never fits back together just right. Always feels like there's something missing, doesn't it?

[Stede watches and listens so intently he seems like he's concerned about making any big sudden movements, like Ed's some kind of little critter he might coax back to the palm of his hand if he's patient and gentle enough.

Always is a scary word, and maybe Ed's right, given the way things ended with Mary. It certainly didn't fit back together, but... it did feel more right than ever.]

Maybe... maybe somethings are worth keep anyway. Broken or not.

Have you ever seen— I'm sure you have— kintsugi? It's an art of fixing things—porcelain things like your little bride and groom here— with gold. They melt gold into the cracks to glue it together and polish it bright and smooth, so it's even more lovely and valuable than the porcelain alone.

It's slow and careful work. It won't make something exactly like it was before. It makes something new. Something stronger. Something where the broken parts are the most beautiful.

[Edward's eyebrows furrow. At first, he doesn't understand where Stede is headed with this. Nothing shattered is worth keeping.]

Porcelain tends to be rather sharp once it's broken. [He states, matter-of-factly,] Seems you ought to be careful handling that sort of thing. Add gold to that, I'd reckon a lot could go wrong.

[But he has to admit, the analogy is rather lovely. And while Edward himself isn't familiar with this art, he can picture it rather vividly in his mind. Almost as clearly as he can picture something gold to add between the two of them that would make what they had lovely and new. His eyes drag down to his own gloved hand, staring at his finger where he imagined once that Stede may slide something polished bright and smooth upon it.]

Actually, I think I've been getting the hang of handling some rather sharp and delicate situations.

[He looks a little proud to say so, but plays it off like he might be trying to make Ed laugh instead. He knows about being gracious while being laughed at and that would be better than nothing maybe.]

You're right, I... I've never tried that myself though. I imagine it takes a very steady hand. And A lot of patience. And maybe I'm, a good deal too late in life to think I could master a thing like that.

[He adjusts both of those little figures one final time. Just to leave them seated close to each other before taking his hands away when the sudden familiar anxiety that he might ruin them threatens to rise up in him.

He clears his throat softly to stave it off. They're just fucking talking about figurines.]

If I come across something like that— kintsugi— I'll save it for you. I know I've seen things like it around the markets and trading ports.

[That comment earns Stede a rather pointed look, which is probably worth it, considering Edward hasn't been able to look at him until now. He sighs.]

How patient can a man be?

[This is as pointed as the look, even if it's said with the air of a guy who is trying way too hard to be casual about what may be the most intense conversation of his life.

He watches Stede fumble with the figures again, second-guessing himself, and if it were any other man, Edward would feel some sense of satisfaction that maybe he'd won the non-argument he'd found himself in.

Instead, he feels rotten. Fuck, he's so fucking tired...]

...you know I'm not worried about the fucking porcelain, right?

[He didn't want to admit it, but if Stede meant to continue the metaphor, he's lost Ed on the last part. And besides, Edward doesn't want some gold-assembled piece of China. He wants Stede.]

[He smiles a little at that. Touched to imagine Ed thinks it's his patience Stede's asking for.]

Personally? I've waited a lifetime. I'll wait another if I have to.

[He didn't mean to keep up the metaphor. In fact, he meant the opposite. To dismantle it. To point out how it can't contain all the things he wants Ed to know. To finally put it down and see if there's anything about this conversation Ed's willing to entertain when it's not veiled in easier things.

He shrugs a little. He'd hoped to steer this towards them but the fear that it'll only drive Ed away almost chokes the bravery out of him.]

Porcelain... Gold. Silk. Water. Salt. Whiskey. It doesn't matter what it is, Edward. Everything makes me think of you.

[What the fuck.

If Stede's first sentiment wasn't enough to knock Edward off his chair, the next one certainly is. He inhales so sharply he chokes on it, throat burning as he feels every emotion he's suppressed over the last hour or so begin to bubble up into it. His eyes sting. His mouth is so fucking dry.

It doesn't seem to matter what weapons a man like Stede Bonnet is packing, because his words cut through everything in a way a knife never fucking could. They've cut the tongue right out of Edward's mouth. He's speechless, only broken sounds leaving his lips as he gawks up at Stede, eyes big and wet.]

Fuck off... [He whispers without intending to, stammering to find a real reply, but one can't seem to come fast enough.]

[He's seen those big brown eyes shivering with unshed tears before but they're even deeper and softer and warmer than he remembers and still nothing plucks at the strings of his heart so effortlessly.]

I'm sorry, Edward. I can't.

[That picture of Ed goes blurry when his own eyes well up and without the details to give him excuses to stop he abandons his tact of trying to gently coax Ed back to him and closes the space between him and Ed with a few determined strides.

He should probably brace himself to be shoved away, or stabbed, or slapped if Ed's feeling particularly dramatic. But he doesn't. Instead he holds Ed's chin in his hands and kisses him like he's dreamt of doing since Bridgetown.]

[It doesn't matter what Edward intends to do, because the moment Stede starts moving closer, he's paralyzed. Lips meet and the months he's spent dreaming about and pining for this moment never could have prepared Edward for the real thing. His brows furrow, his eyes clench shut, and fingertips dig into the arms of the chair he's sat in until his brain regains some control. Shakily, they reach up, grip at Stede's shirt, and tug him back, gawking.

He's silent for a moment, staring at Stede, but not letting him go. He's wanted him for so fucking long, why hesitate now, when he's getting what he wants? Fear, anger, pain; all of the above?]

Don't fucking abandon me again.

[It's hissed before Edward dives back into the kiss with abandon.]

[Stede's breathlessly shaking his head before he can find words to make that promise.]

Never. I'll never—

[But Ed doesn't need many words at all it seems. Which might be unfortunate later when he realizes Stede doesn't have much else to his name anymore.

For now though, it works for the both of them as he goes from doubled over that seat to fumbling towards Ed. Looking without looking for a comfortable way to climb into his lap without putting any distance between their lips and if that means straddling him in his captains chair so be it.]

[Stede's breathless promise is enough, for now. They can work it out, later. There are months of pent up frustration that he needs to release, and his hands are already working on it, clawing down Stede's chest to his sides and yanking him into his own lap. At least they're on the same page, there.

Kohl is smeared across Stede's lips and cheeks as Ed kisses him, the sweet taste he's longed for still present, even through blonde scruff. Edward's tongue deepens the kiss and he groans, grasping tightly to Stede in an almost claiming way.]

[Stede didn't think it would go like this. He dreamed it might but all things considered it hardly seemed likely, so far be it from him to question his good fortune. Not when the alternative is kissing Ed Teach with all the ambition and intensity he should have that first time. He would have if he'd better understood how Ed Teach didn't look at him and see a man who cost him everything.]

I love you.

[He huffs between kisses. In case that much wasn't clear.]

I've missed you. I shouldn't have run. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry. But I love you.

[ The words cause a choked-off cry to escape Edward's throat. A sort of gut punch that makes his eyes well up with tears. It only makes him paw at Stede more intensely, heaving breaths and sloppy kisses all desperate and yearning. ]

Stede-- [ Edward breathes raggedly, fingertips finding his soft hair as his short beard drags over Stede's jaw, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses along it and his neck, everywhere he can reach.]

Shhh— [It's a hopeful, soothing little sound as he strokes Ed's hair— unaware that the paint on Ed's face is now damn nearly equally spread between them.] It's all right, Edward. I'm here. I'm home.

Will you— will you let me clean this off your face? I don't mind if you want to put it back on tomorrow or— I just want to see you, love. Your face. Your eyes. Completely. Would that be all right?

[ Edward thought perhaps this would turn into a rauchier, lust-filled dalliance that ended with them both still hurting and weirdly at ends with one another. Stede is treating it like a passionate romance. Edward can't complain, only because he is so immediately swept off of his feet and smitten by Stede's words. If it were a trick, he's fallen for it... but of course, something tells him it isn't.

Another, smaller sob leaves him at the word home. Stede's home aboard this ship is long gone, floating in the ocean, and Edward is all that's left. To Edward, Stede is home.

He sniffs, letting Stede manipulate their positions so that he can look at Edward properly. His eyelid are heavy, lips parted with a shaky breath, but he nods eyes big and wet and annoyingly in love.]

[--->]

[Fiery young woman in over her head, I guess?

Voicetesting.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gothic

claudia | iwtv

Dorian Pearl, a poet || OC {The Yellow King RPG} || OTA

victoire leblanc — original character — f/f

leonard mccoy | star trek (aos)

no subject

no subject

no subject

Dracula | Penny Dreadful | OTA

Annabel Lee Whitlock | Nevermore

Viola Avelide | OC | OTA

Blackbeard | Our Flag Means Death | M/M

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Grace | Stray Gods