HELLO. I AM HERE TO YAP AT YOU/LISTEN TO YOU YAP ABOUT DORIAN GRAY AND TIoBE AND THE LIKE. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST. :3
Tell me every headcanon you have that would make Oscar Wilde want to bitchslap you and I will give you historical context on the man the myth the legend and the horrors of the 19th century that you never would have asked to know ‼️
I knew those instagram "like for good fortune" would pay off someday//j
I have unfortunately never read tiobe though i surely should man. But i have read tpodg two times to completion and several times just extracts that make me giggle kick my feet. Now that we're on the disclaimers, beware that most of these hcs are of personal, free interpretation by me and me alone (or me and like. five other people), some of them i cant defend seriously because they might even go directly against what's verbally stated in canon and i just went "ok but they were lying", TL:DR Im fond of this story, and i've spent an absurd amount of time thinking about it
I was going to conduct this from less strambotic takes to most but Lord it ended up being so long that i dont even know where to begin. Its all over the place.I dont know just expect the worst, good luck to anyone who reads through 🙏
1- I think Dorian, as it is implied he looked younger than he was, had some sort of benign hormone imbalance, or growth impediment, my guess is from the time he spent under Kelso's wing. It was not uncommon at all in that time for kids to suffer something similar, for reasons varying by class status. Also while yapping with twin we came to the conclussion that Henry probably lived under the assumption that Dorian's ordeal could be justified by Consumption/tuberculosis or something like that until too many years passed for that to be a plausible explanation.
2- This one's more popular in the fandom i believe, and anyone that knows me knows im so very fond of it, Basil and Henry DID have something ish in college. They have this thing so unapologetically grieving about the way they interact with each other: "no you're not like this" "i know you" "you do this for this reason" " i never thought that you'd do this" that genuinely reads to me as fondness with a thorn that will never quite go. My exact take is that Basil was the first (and probably last) person Henry gave a genuine f about, i like to call it love, i also call it exception person but that is for one of the more outlandish takes, but for Basil it was just a centerpiece of atrophied self-discovery. Basil has a very.......specific taste, and i think this is obvious, Henry didn't grow to be of that taste at all. And this is going purely out of romantic and not entering on sexual preference, though i think they go hand in hand for Basil Hallward and the importance that he gives to both true love and purity. Simply put, Basil has this oath of loyalty to Henry that he thinks he cannot escape, he's his oldest friend, first lover, and the man who's seen him at his lowest. Henry has this oath to meddle and ruin Basil's life in revenge of what he thinks he's owed after Basil made him vulnerable just to be hit with a nothing burger and have him yapping about this guy he can't even show the painting of because "he's too in love".
3- Nnnnot so a headcanon more like an overishanalisis. Dorian learned to synonimize aesthetics and attention to love based on the lack thereof that Kelso gave him, what Basil complimented him for and what Henry ever so eloquently hammered in him, we all know this. So when he says he fell in love with Sibyl on the stage, and continued to be in love with her for as long as she preformed to his liking, that is just him replicating what he'd been taught. The moment she showed a real sign of love, to not be afraid to fumble, or change, he did not recognize it, saw it as an insult and as he'd done time and time again, threw a tantrum, using the same "oh im not going to be taken seriously so i better be as loud and mean as i can" that he uses with everyone else. This does NOT excuse what he said, what he did and how he treated her and the ultimate victim here will always be Sibyl Vane, but i cant in good faith blame solely Dorian for that without tilting my head and looking behind him at the tail of older men yapping to him about what is and what isnt romantic, sexual, neither or both.
4- As i've said before ahah i think Alan Campbell resembled Basil physically and psychologically. I think he was the only other man who genuinely thought to be in love with Dorian during their affair. This does not mean i think the relationship was wholesome on the slightest on his or Dorian's part.
5- I wont go into too much detail since this is not an easy subject to tackle, and let it be said i dont speak for anyone else's experience with a diaspora and there's not two equal experiences, but i like to imagine Basil as bengali indian. Full on adopted child fruit of the British Raj. I think this is interesting, specially because out of everyone else he's presented as the one that gives the most importance to catholic religion! Something about screaming the name of a foreigner's god.
6- Psyche wise, and you need to hold thy horses, this is where Oscar would begin to question my genius (silly). Dorian is, to me so obviously bpd, even if the diagnosis wasn't a long quite there at the time, everything from his actions and mannerisms to his INNER MONOLOGUE (the best example of this being basil's death scene, he went from being desolate to, paraphrasing, not being able to feel anything other than hatred for the man before him.) He acts on impulse, he's susceptible to other people's bad faith takes, specially from Henry, who became his entire worldview the moment he entered in scene. Huge, monstruous fear of abandonment. And last but not least, in constant search of short-lived stimuli. Your honor, this man is borderline.
7- If you thought that was a random ass take get ready for this one. While there are a large quantity of men just like Henry fucking Wotton that can spill that amount of bullshit and really believe it, even if for a split second, Henry believed nothing of what he said, constantly searched for a new bullshit to spill or a way to virate the conversation back to what he's saying, hell, the talk that ruined Dorian's entire life had canonically little to no importance to him, sure he believes beauty is a virtue but that's about it. He sounds convincing, we're told he's charming despite his attitude. He's constantly bored of what's in front of him, rarely genuinely interested or moved and creepy in such a casual way. He could just be an asshole without much of an explanation but as certified sufferer myself i would not be surprised if he could be catalogued under the antisocial spectrum. Bored, bored hes SO BORED all the time of anything in front of him that has been there for more than ten minutes, with the sole exception of, ahah, well. The most boring man he knows, (traceback to hc numero 2)
8- I think that dorian really fits the Alloaro label and that makes me happy because i dont see a lot of good rep of it. He values and depends of his friendships deeply (as doubtful as those friendships may be) yet he has not shown any actual romantic feelings for anyone, not Sibyl!!! He liked Sibyl because she was a cool person and immediately related that to romance, which is something that alloaro people have described struggling with before in a very romance-led society. He depends so deeply of his relationships because he spent his entire childhood alone and has no concept of personal space or socially respectable boundaries. Not to even start with how he was taught by numerous people (one hedonist mf in particular) to, quite literally, romanticize life's mundanities and tragedies alike. I really don't think, to Basil's dismay, that he needed anymore attempts at romance to fulfill his life or change his ways, he just needed better friends😭 save this man
9- This is just straight up extreme levels of overthinking about this book and kinda projection that i wont dwell into haha, but Basil's obsession with Dorian's specific kind of petite, ephemeral physique and beauty could be explored very much vicarious of him. There's a very unhealthy mindset plenty of people find themselves in unconsciously, even, or specially today, when you cant physically achieve a thing for yourself you look and fixate on that "virtue" in other people, this is again under a lot of liberties and also piggybacking off the fact we know Basil never evolved or learned as a character during the novel. Back then there was a general lack of any sort of education about body morphology, much less for queer and non-conforming spheres, and victorians already have a well-known array of dangerous practices to achieve a literal illness look, (article about it here). I think its an interesting way to interpret, partly, Basil's obsession with both himself and with Dorian. In other words, i am a Basil had Extremely Unhealthy Eating and Medical Habits (Specially During College) truther and I'll stand by it in my little corner. I could name some of these habits because research is not something im lacking but it gets a little dark so i'd rather not 🙏
10- Victoria Wotton has a lot of potential that we never saw and it irks me alas. I hc she was an avid romance reader as a teenager and as Henry and her exchanged letters before they were even engaged, it was much easier for her to fall for Henry's bs, because he's good at wordplay. She really thought this guy was cool and then when they got engaged it was just far too late for her to look into the very odd comments he'd make every now and then, and it's not like he was the worst of the worst, he was socially relevant and all bark no bite. They ended up in this, as Henry puts it, mutual agreement to not meddle in eachother's lives; not so much partners as colleagues in the most barebones definition of the word. Nothing like what she expected, teenage her and adult her are day and night to me, which is sad as hell. I genuinely believe living with Henry was the most gaslighting experience you could come up with, and like that it lasted until Victoria had it and divorced him just as the suffragette WSPU was acquiring force. I need at least one innocent to have a happy ending merry christmas everybody !
11- Speaking of innocent without happy endings. Sibyl was to me like every other teenage girl of her time, i think that is part of the point, and the same way we forget sometimes about dorian's age we also forget about her age, shes a girl!!! She was an amazing actress, she liked to sing and dress up as nicely as she could, i think her knowing how to read was a huge flex that she had going on... she was a girl. And that's why it is so tragic that she got dragged into this whole upper class hedonistic fictive clusterfuck that Dorian had around him. Alas this is the book of lost potential in favor of aesthetics, and corruption of the youth, and she had the unfortunate luck of being able to transform in any character that she was told to do, of course she was going to consider a "prince" as she puts it, pouring all his attention on her as a call of good fortune, and mind you this is when Dorian was actually still plenty of himself and enjoyable company to be around specially (and ideally) for someone closer to his age. But as i went over on point three she was met with a guy that had no clue what he wanted . If i was a teenage girl with a teenage love straight up out of the plays i partake in and it ended like That i too would lose it.
I could add more but its been so long and this IS so long and i am not even sure it doesn't sound like absolute gibberish straight out of an ass. This is my favourite fiction book i've thought about it for an unhealthy amount of time and made an entire array of questions and answers in my mind. I feel like miku binder thomas jefferson rn. Im so sorry for the yap and here you go. Have a good night unfortunate victim, please do share your insight in the man the myth the legend i will gladly read through it <33333