back from the dead

Monster Theory - Really great anthology to start with, especially the first reading, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's famous "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" which is a personal favorite

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts - A general SF/F journal, but there are definitely a lot of great monster theory and gothic horror readings sprinkled throughout. Consider taking a look at Veronica Hollinger's "The Vampire and/as Alien," the special issue on Dracula, and Faye J. Ringel's "Genetic Experimentation: Mad Scientists and the Beast," among others

Werewolf Histories edited by Willem Blécourt - Phenomenal anthology on werewolf scholarship, especially if you're interested in the connections between werewolves and witchcraft and/or witch trials in Early Modern Europe

Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Jack Halberstam - Of interest to those who are interested in the connection between the gothic and gender (among other topics). Halberstam has written extensively on both

The Journal of Dracula Studies - Exactly what it sounds like.

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural - Another journal, which focuses on the connections between witchcraft and occultism, monsters, demonology, and the like.

Susan Stryker's "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix" - An absolutely landmark piece of writing on Frankenstein and the transgender (and in particular the transfeminine) experience; one of my favorite pieces of academic writing of all time.

Speaking of Monsters: A Teratological Anthology - Another solid monster theory anthology

Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene - A really, really good anthology about the ecological gothic that I cannot recommend enough. As a known werewolf guy I especially like the piece "Wolf, or Homo homini lupus" by Carla Freccero

The Vampire Lectures by Lawrence Rickels - So many vampires

Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader - Another anthology, I in particular recommend Rosalind Sibielski's "Gendering the Monster Within: Biological Essentialism, Sexual Difference, and Changing Symbolic Functions of the Monster in Popular Werewolf Texts" in this one.

"The Trans Legacy of Frankenstein" by Jolene Zigarovich - Definitely a good read if you enjoyed the Stryker piece earlier; it's a more general survey of the idea but might give you some ideas for further reading

TransGothic in Literature and Culture - A whole anthology of works on transgender identity and the gothic!

Twenty-First Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion - Not to be confused with the other similarly named anthology earlier, this one is on various modern perspectives on the gothic.

"Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Werewolf Renaissance" by David A. Shyovitz - Stand-alone article but really really interesting

Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 by Lorraine Daston & Katherine Park - Incredible volume that gets into several different subjects surrounding the fantastical in the medieval and early modern eras, monsters among them. The same authors have written some other fantastic work, such as "Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England" and I honestly would recommend any of their work.

Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters - A more anthropology focused volume, I particularly like Rozanna Lilley's "Drawing in the Margins: My Son's Arsenal of Monsters—(Autistic) Imagination and the Cultural Capital of Childhood"

Marvels, Monsters, and Miracles: Studies in the Medieval and Early Modern Imaginations - Another anthology, this time with a historical perspective

5. What’s something you learned while researching a fic?

🤔 Hmm lets see. I once wrote a fic with music as the central theme for TMFU, my 1960's forever-fandom. The pov character has experimental tastes, so I listened to a lot of different genres to try & find the perfect song to base the fic off of... Contemporary classical, minimalist, modal jazz, etc. I probably did not have to try that hard as few would recognize the song, but I ended up developing a genuine fondness for minimal music artists & still listen to some of their pieces~

10. Is there a character or ship you'd love to write for, but haven't yet?

I really want to write some soft sweet Lawtsuda... And maybe also toxic Matsulawlight but in a way where it's not all happening at the same time & is like 3 dimensional chess. Where Matsuda & L have a soft relationship, but L & Light are also in love with each other & don't know themselves well enough to be aware of it. Matsuda is the only one who knows, can see it easily, but doesn't want to tell them because he doesn't want to lose L to him, and he can't imagine that Light would ever be interested in Matsuda too. But then L dies, & Light starts to indicate interest in him... so what was it all for? Did he do the wrong thing by keeping the truth to himself? From his perspective, the chance to see what the 3 of them could have been together has been snuffed out, and it's his own fault by omission. And then in the warehouse, he finds out the truth... That his current lover killed his previous one... 😭

28. What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?

so Ig I never posted this til now

Lawlight || E || D/s-verse Read on AO3 Contains: BDSM, sex work, face-slapping, other such delights BDSM AU. Light has never taken a sub before. Finally, at twenty-four years of age, he accompanies Misa to a sub parlour in Kabuchiko, where he meets a black-eyed man named L.

On his eighteenth birthday, Light’s mother brought him to the doctor’s for his test. He wore a black sweater over a blue button-up. His mother wore a turtleneck that very nearly covered her day collar.

He sat on the white paper covering on the exam table and held out his finger. The test was simple — the doctor pricked his finger and he watched the crimson blood well up before she pressed it to what looked like a piece of transfer paper. She fed it into a little black machine and pronounced the results.

He was to be a Dom. Just like his father.

It was a label that opened doors.

She gave him a little slip of paper with his results, as if he could possibly forget them. He would get his card and his ring in the mail.

His mother smiled at him, proud. He smiled back. --

Peter Pan edited by Anne Hiebert Alton (2011)

(sorry to interrupt joke post but) this is true!

Children not clapping did happen too, (and some were even expected to have hissed, which was later written into the 1928 playscript and 1911 novel). But my all time favourite anecdote about it is from Pauline Chase (who played Peter)'s intro to Peter Pan's Post Bag 1909:

Children love to clap their hands at the play because then they feel that they are really part of it, and you can see them holding their hands poised ready to seize an opportunity. Their great chance is when I ask them to clap their hands if they believe in fairies, and so save Tink's life. But they are very wrathful if any one claps who has the reputation of being a cynic, and once there was quite an uproar in the front row of the dress circle because of a girl who clapped. Those about her pulled down her arms angrily. "How dare you clap," they cried, "when you know you don't believe in fairies!" There was one dreadfully hard-hearted little boy who came to the theatre not to clap. That was his object for coming, and he came round "behind" to tell me so in the middle of the play. His teeth were firm set. "I won't clap," he said doggedly; "I'm not going to clap." And when the time came he didn't clap; above the clapping of all the others I could hear him shouting from a box, "Peter, I'm not clapping."