MAY YOU NEVER LOSE YOUR HYPERFIXATION

It's like when I started learning more about plants and suddenly the world opened up even more than before, everywhere there were old friends and new things to learn and fields of flowers to remark on walking or driving by. Dozens of edible things even in an old yard, radically different than what I'd been sold in a grocery store. Edible petals and jams and fig leaf syrup.

Suddenly the bird songs dont all mesh into one, there's the high peep of the hummingbird, and the pebbles falling down a metal washboard of the always-calling towhee, and the little chirps and alarm calls of the robins and their nest full of babies. There's early morning nectar sipping of the scabiosa and primrose, and a mother perched in the oregon grapes picking them alongside me, and the bi-weekly fight between the red-tailed Hawks and juvenile bald eagle above. Nests in the garden entryway and the tree I take breaks in the shade under and the old ash limbs.

And it didnt happen all at once, its interests that were building and being engaged with in different ways and places, but sometimes it feels like there's a moment - like using Merlin to match songs to the birds singing them and suddenly hearing every individual voice in the chorus, or realizing half the weeds in your garden bed are also food - where you unlock a new level. And it makes the world bigger and closer and more familiar and more intriguing and you notice all the differences and you love them each! For what! They are!!!

Keep chasing curiosity!!! Keep trying to find out a little more or identify that new thing or check out a new place! Even in the darkest of times there are 1 million creatures and beings that have shared this earth with us for millenia living alongside us, and there is so much meaning and connection to be found there!

I did.

I wanted a diverse cast of characters. Of the 14 main characters, 6 are explicitly POC, and 2 are up to interpretation.

I wanted a queernormative setting, and have the following represented in at least one character: Bisexual, transgender, polyamory, gay, lesbian, asexual, aromantic, demisexual. Everyone is bi unless stated otherwise, and there are four major acespecs.

I wanted to write the tragedy of a devout ace trying to make it work with an allonormative who thinks he's The One.

I wanted autism rep, and though one is intentional I think my own experiences bled into like five other characters.

I wanted a monster allegory. I love monster allegories. So I pitted slave-keeping vampires against slave-keeping mortals, and asked the classic question of the audience: "What makes a monster?"

I wanted romance, not filler smut. I wanted consent, characters who are allowed to say no, gay pairings that aren't just the straight cis white woman's fetish. I wanted mature adults who can communicate instead of being horribly insecure, and I wanted insecurity getting its just consequences.

I wanted flaws. I wanted imperfect physiques and scars and blemishes. I pitted "you should have known" against "you should have told me" and both were right and wrong. I wanted tragedy. I wanted self-fulfilling prophecies. I wanted soft magic and lore up to interpretation even by the characters in the world.

I wanted violence and I wanted some TLC. I wanted only one bed, and I wanted to tease past other tropes just to fuck with you. I wanted sensuality, I wanted toxicity that owns its toxicity. I wanted characters who self-destruct to cope and don't hide from it. I wanted characters who still want to heal.

I wanted to subvert expectations. I wanted a proper love triangle with two viable love interests.

I wanted a character who didn't expect to have to live with the consequences of his actions.

I wanted a protagonist who is his own worst enemy and is even the villain of his own story.

I wanted lore-establishing worldbuilding with a morally-grey inciting incident that no one is happy with, even those who benefited from it.

I wanted "what might have been" to punch the characters in the face over and over again. I wanted characters who hit rock bottom and then find a shovel.

I wanted a story about vampires that's a commentary on Christianity, but specifically, Christian imperialism. I wanted villains who belong to the Fantasy Westboro Baptist Church. I wanted a Judge Claude Frollo. I want their comeuppance to not come from divine intervention but their own hubris.

I wanted a metaphor for conversion therapy, for misandry, for aphobia.

I want a character who doesn't get to die for their sins. I want a character who doesn't get to self-sacrifice to atone. I want a character who must live.

Dom Claude Frollo visits La Esmeralda in prison.

The book mostly is told from the POV of Pierre, a self-insert who is failed author and, I cannot stress this enough, utterly pathetic 

Quasimodo damaged his hearing as a teenager from years of bell ringing and now uses sign language whenever he can

There is a scene where Quasimodo and a fellow deaf guy have to have a conversation without using sign language because they’re in a courtroom and the jury doesn’t know sign. It goes about as well as you’d expect 

Frollo has a little brother, Jehan, who he raised after their parents died. Jehan is now a frat bro in college whose hobbies consist of getting drunk and being mean to Quasimodo. In his first scene Jehan complains about college DEI because an Italian guy got a scholarship he wanted. 

Esmeralda is accused of witchcraft because she taught her pet goat Djali how to do math

Djali may or may not be sapient. He can and does imitate human mannerisms to make fun of people on purpose. He does this while on trial. 

Yes. They tried the goat for witchcraft, too. 

Pierre writes a whole play riding on the pun of dolphin/Dauphin. Nobody likes it. 

Frollo is an alchemist and has a secret mad science lab where he writes on the walls

Jehan literally pulls a “buy my silence” and frollo gives him money to make him shut up

There’s a trio of catty girls who bully Esmeralda like it’s Mean Girls

Quasimodo and Frollo literally have Cryptid Status— Parisians circulate rumors that Quasimodo is either a familiar, a homunculus, or the result of demonic mpreg, and that Frollo is a wizard with wizard powers and/or a ghost

There is a little old woman who lives in a hole and shouts slurs at people. She has a tragic backstory. 

There is a homicidal con man/king of thieves named Clopin Troillefou (surname translation: The Fool of Fear) who deserves tumblr sexymanhood.

Pierre learns how to carry chairs with his teeth 

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the layout of the streets of Paris in painstaking detail

There’s another chapter that is a rant about interior design 

Esmeralda and Pierre get platonically married due to Clopin’s murderous shenanigans. Pierre tries to make a move in her but ends up being more emotionally attached to Djali the goat than to her. I think that should be grounds for divorce

There is a scene where Pierre has to choose between helping Esmeralda escape or helping Djali. He picks Djali. 

Frollo hides from his own brother by laying face down in mud and playing dead. Somehow this works 

There is a Plot Significant Tiny Shoe. A Tiny Shoe Chekhov’s Gun. And Victor Hugo will not stop telling you just how Tiny this shoe is. 

There’s a soap opera style plot twist that involves a false accusation of cannibalism and the woman in the hole who shouts slurs

Quasimodo makes up a stupid little song that doesn’t even rhyme to confess his love to Esmeralda, who remains oblivious

He then attempts to demonstrate his affection via convoluted metaphors that involve props. She doesn’t get it. Boy please say what you mean

Frollo pulls the classic discord groomer tactic of threatening self-harm if Esmeralda doesn’t give in. 

Jehan rolls up to a party/rescue mission scheming session in Clopin’s secret hideout in full plate armor (how did he get that???), drunk off his ass, and acts like he owns the place. Everyone finds this so ridiculous that they just let him

Hugo goes on and on about how innocent and naive Esmeralda is but then casually reveals that Esmeralda carries a dagger on her person at all times to fend off assault. When Frollo attacks her and Quasi intervenes, she takes Quasi’s knife and almost kills Frollo (fair!) but he flees. She contains multitudes?

Frollo has a psychotic breakdown in the middle of a field surrounded by chickens and hallucinates skeletons everywhere 

For the first half of the book Esmeralda is like 70% sure Frollo is a ghost, not helped by his aforementioned Cryptid Status

Jehan eats a moldy piece of cheese off the ground 

Frollo tries to send Pierre on a suicide mission in drag. Pierre objects to the suicide part but not the drag part  

Clopin’s preferred weapon is a scythe, he’s very good at using it, and he sings when he fights. Again: sexyman potential. 

Victor Hugo has a foot fetish. I initially dismissed it as Frollo having a foot fetish until Victor Hugo included a foot fetish torture scene without any Frollo in it. So I can only conclude that the foot fetish is authorial in nature. Unfortunately the foot scenes are important to the plot. 

Frollo is canonically 36, he just aged like shit and is bald. The narrator will not stop telling you just how bald he is.

Despite being in full plate armor, Jehan gets splatted like a bug

Pierre gets trapped under a mattress and almost accidentally set on fire while he’s stuck under there

Jehan draws a picture of Frollo with a giant nose on the wall of Frollo’s room

Quasimodo is as close to canonically autistic w processing difficulties and/or intellectual disabilities as the Victorian era can give us— “the external world seemed much farther away to him than to us” and “impressions of objects underwent a considerable refraction before reaching his mind”

Frollo has an antivaxxer monologue where he tells a sick man that medicine isn’t real. FROLLO HAS A MEDICAL DEGREE.

Clopin interrupts Pierre’s play to wail pathetically

Frollo and Quasimodo go on little outings around town but they both get bullied by schoolchildren every single time

Quasimodo sometimes likes to tackle the bells and ride them like a bucking bronco carnival ride. WHEEEEEEEE

Frollo and Pierre are friends. Pierre stalks random people recreationally. Frollo stalks Esmeralda specifically because he is obsessed with her. I can’t help but wonder if they bonded over this creepy, creepy hobby.

Djali the goat can tell time. Accurately. Without even looking at a clock or hearing the bells. We don’t know how he can do this.

Quasimodo does, in fact, treat the gargoyles as imaginary friends and talk to them when he’s alone. He also has named the bells and given them personalities (his favorite is Marie).

There’s a character who is so absurdly, exceptionally French that her name is literally Fleur De Lys.

Frollo’s non-pervy hobbies include searching the church for secret clues to the location of the philosopher’s stone, amateur archaeology, and believing in conspiracy theories

Esmeralda does Djali’s mani-pedi and paints his hooves gold

Jehan falls asleep on a pile of cabbages

Quasimodo is really, really good at parkour. He loves scrambling and scuttling around on the walls like a spiderman or perhaps a dracula

There’s a chapter-long tirade about how much Hugo hates minimalistic buildings. Me too buddy

Djali snitches on Esmeralda for having a secret crush. Because he can spell.

the goat

can

In the scene where Quasimodo and another deaf guy try to have a conversation, it's not spoken aloud so that the jury can hear them (there isn't a jury, it's just onlookers), but rather because the other deaf guy is the judge and he's hiding the fact that he's deaf. He's just responding to what he reckons a prisoner would be saying, and Quasimodo is answering questions he thinks he ought to be asked, but both men think that the other can hear them and neither one can. The conversation is utter nonsense and the crowd is in hysterics.

If the tirade is the one I'm remembering, it's specifically about how the state of architecture in Paris has really gone downhill since about 1500, and you can't look at a building and tell what it's supposed to be for anymore, and these facades look like cakes and they're stupid. (I had to take a picture of this page because I was in stitches about it.)

I also had to take a picture of a passage where Hugo complains about a supposed sequence of historical events (which may or may not have happened) that led to the burning down of the Palace of Justice because now he has to describe it and neither he nor his readers want that (in a moment of self-awareness which to my knowledge never again resurfaces).

I can't believe you haven't mentioned once how much of a complete and utter fuckboi Phoebus is. Because he's just the WORST. He can't even pronounce Esmerelda's name right so he calls her Similar instead (at least in my English translation). Worst.

Like seriously, spoiler alert, Esmerelda gets put on trial for Phoebus' murder and the guy isn't even dead, but he doesn't ever bother to point this out to anyone???

I wanted to keep phoebus’s rancidness a surprise but you’re so right. And he SHOWS UP TO THE EXECUTION. AND PEOPLE SEE HIM. LIKE.

“a little while ago we lost our beloved Captain, Phoebus”

“QUIT TELLING EVERYONE I’M DEAD”

“sometimes we can still hear his voice”

"A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it."

—Victor Hugo, Cromwell (Preface) 1827

ΑΝΑΓΚΗ (Greek) can be best translated as "necessity". But a simple translation cannot explain the cultural and religious meaning with which this Greek word is heavily loaded. We will get to this later.

A fact which is often misunderstood is that Victor Hugo’s and Frollo’s perspective and understanding of ΑΝΑΓΚΗ is the same.

It isn't.

Victor Hugo: "La fatalité d’Hernani n’est pas la mienne. Le poëte n’est pas le personnage. Je serais donc alors tous mes personnages ?"

(translation: “The 'Fatalité' of Hernani is not mine. The poet is not the character. So am I then all my characters?", Letter to monsieur Durandeau, 1861)

Let's compare Frollo and Hugo first, because this is extremely important.

The author’s political and historical perspective on ΑΝΑΓΚΗ:

"Victor Hugo explained its meaning in March 1866, in the preface to Toilers of the Sea:

“A triple Ananke weighs upon us: the Ananke of dogmas, the Ananke of laws, the Ananke of things.”

In Notre-Dame de Paris, he denounced the first; in Les Misérables, the second; in this book, he indicates the third. To these three fatalities that envelop humankind is added the inner fatality, the supreme Ananke, the human heart. Here we see the link that unites Victor Hugo’s three great novels. He returned to this theme in a letter to the journalist Durandeau:

“Whenever necessity encroaches upon freedom and oppresses it, it is called ‘fate.’ The poet denounces this abuse of the unknown. This is what I do in Notre-Dame de Paris, in Les Misérables, in Toilers of the Sea.” (July 11, 1867)

Hugo speaks about a triple Ananke with which oppressors or oppressive systems legitimize the oppression of freedom. It is "the abuse of the unknown." (Link to the full article below)

This seems to be a philosophical and political project of Victor Hugo: to debunk the abuse of ΑΝΑΓΚΗ through his works and to push people to fight for freedom. We must remember that he was an activist for the marginalized, for the workers and slaves of the world.

Notre-Dame de Paris is still a social critique, not a moral story. Hugo’s view of ΑΝΑΓΚΗ is seen through this lens.

The fact that ΑΝΑΓΚΗ was allegedly engraved on a wall in the cathedral is probably invented by Hugo, which speaks volumes about his views: ΑΝΑΓΚΗ is something (everything which threatens free will/ freedom) created by humans.

His character Claude Frollo is a high-ranking clergy member, someone with power and ideological knowledge. As an oppressor and an instrument of the state, he abuses the concept (through the invented ΑΝΑΓΚΗ narrative) to legitimize the first.

But Frollo also fights against the ΑΝΑΓΚΗ (of Dogma, laws, societal expectations, his heart which he cannot control etc.) and he looses that fight in contrast to Jean Valjean (Les Miserables) for example, whom Victor Hugo mentions in one sentance with our priest:

"Le poëte dénonce cet abus de l'inconnu. C'est ce que j'ai fait dans Notre-Dame de Paris, dans Les Misérables, dans Les Travailleurs de la Mer.

Au nom de qui cette dénonciation? Au nom de la liberté.

Ananké ! Voilà ce que combattent Claude Frollo, Jean Valjean et Gilliatt."

Translation: "The poet denounces this abuse of the unknown.

That is what I did in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, in Les Misérables, in Toilers of the Sea.

In whose name is this denunciation? In the name of freedom.

Ananke! That is what Claude Frollo, Jean Valjean, and Gilliatt fight against."

Claude’s understanding of ΑΝΑΓΚΗ:

ΑΝΑΓΚΗ vs. Fatum

What does Frollo’s ΑΝΑΓΚΗ mean to him?

"And he [Claude Frollo] flung away the hammer in a rage. Then he sank down so deeply on the arm-chair and the table, that Jehan lost him from view behind the great pile of manuscripts. For the space of several minutes, all that he saw was his fist convulsively clenched on a book. Suddenly, Dom Claude sprang up, seized a compass and engraved in silence upon the wall in capital letters, this Greek word ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

“My brother is mad,” said Jehan to himself; “it would have been far more simple to write Fatum, every one is not obliged to know Greek.”

The archdeacon returned and seated himself in his armchair, and placed his head on both his hands, as a sick man does, whose head is heavy and burning."

FROM: BOOK 7. CHAPTER IV. ΑΝΑΓΚΗ, NDdP (Victor Hugo)

Jehan asks the crucial question: Why not the Latin FATUM?

After all, it is the language most people who could read and write at that time would understand.

Because Latin belongs to Frollo, as a priest, the Latin language and culture are something familiar to him: Latin, from his POV as a priest, is a part of him.

Also, the word Fatum is tied to the Christian God Jesus Christ, because it is seen within the framework of Providentia Dei (divine providence), which surpasses Fatum and works through it.

Dom Frollo, however, suffers a crisis of faith as a priest torn between duty and passion. He must use the word connected with the pagan goddess Ananke (even stronger than Zeus) in Greek.

He carries his entire inner conflict (between duty and passion) in other languages: he turns to Jewish Kabbalah, reading its mystical texts in Hebrew, and at the end of Notre-Dame de Paris even desperately to the Indian philosopher Menu, whose philosophy depicts women as the highest honorable beings (Frollo intellectually agrees, but immediately feels ashamed because he does not live this theory in practice, and is not "in control," bringing us back to his societal position, expectations which condemn his feelings and power structures).

Thus, Frollo, as one of the very few scholars in Paris who understood "the language of pagan gods, from Dionysus to Apollo," writes "ΑΝΑΓΚΗ" (Fate, compulsion) on the wall of his dark cell, while Esmeralda dances Italian sarabands below in the sun.

ΑΝΑΓΚΗ represents compulsion, a force against which one can do nothing. It is associated with Greek pagan culture and therefore foreign to him, like Esmeralda or his passions, which he refuses to acknowledge as part of himself:

"Then I perceived the snare of the demon, and I no longer doubted that you [Esmeralda] had come from hell and that you had come thence for my perdition. I believed it. I believe it still [...] Yes, dating from that day, there was within me a man whom I did not know."

FROM: BOOK 8. CHAPTER IV. LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA -Abandon all hope

Fatum would force him to acknowledge his free will through Jesus Christ and take full responsibility for his passions and actions.

"Perhaps I might have renounced it; perhaps my hideous thought would have withered in my brain, without bearing fruit. I thought that it would always depend upon me to follow up or discontinue this prosecution. But every evil thought is inexorable, and insists on becoming a deed; but where I believed myself to be all powerful, fate was more powerful than I. Alas! ’tis fate which has seized you and delivered you to the terrible wheels of the machine which I had constructed doubly."

FROM: BOOK 8. CHAPTER IV. LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA -Abandon all hope

ΑΝΑΓΚΗ allows him to portray himself as a victim of higher powers—even though he knows it is nonsense.

Instead of accepting that he is both victim and predator and confronting his inner struggle, he convinces himself he cannot act because a higher power (ΑΝΑΓΚΗ) is influencing him.

But Frollo is not a fool; he is not superstitious.

He knows it is nonsense, which is why he blushes when Jehan mentions the Greek word on his wall:

"The scholar raised his eyes boldly. “Monsieur my brother, doth it please you that I shall explain in good French vernacular that Greek word which is written yonder on the wall?”

“What word?”

“ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.”

A slight flush spread over the cheeks of the priest with their high bones, like the puff of smoke which announces on the outside the secret commotions of a volcano. The student hardly noticed it.

“Well, Jehan,” stammered the elder brother with an effort, “What is the meaning of yonder word?”

“FATE.”

Dom Claude turned pale again, and the scholar pursued carelessly.

“And that word below it, graved by the same hand, Ἀνάγνεία, signifies ‘impurity.’ You see that people do know their Greek.”

And the archdeacon remained silent. This Greek lesson had rendered him thoughtful."

FROM: BOOK 7. CHAPTER IV. ΑΝΑΓΚΗ, NDdP (Victor Hugo)

FATUM = fate (connected to Christian culture and God)

In the English translation, Jehan renders

Fatum as fate = general destiny.

In the German translation it is Vorsehung= Providence (like providencia- the "Roman Ananke")

In the French translation, it is FATALITÉ = negative, even deadly fate.

In this scene Jehan exposes him without meaning to: he is like a mirror to him.

His little brother literally tells him (unknowingly): You -as a priest- are betraying your God for a pagan one. Your thoughts are impure:

It can only lead to fatalité.

Frollo blushes, becomes pale and ultimately remains silent: From a Christian point of view it is the truth. And for a moment he sees the consequence of this.

Only to.......

reflect on the fate of a fly eaten by the spider in the next scene. He paints this as something which cannot be prevented (deadly fate, Fatalité).

And again he fails to accept that he has free will.

The "Spider and the Fly" metaphor perfectly captures his duality: he is both predator (Spider) and passive victim (Fly) of his OWN created web.

It's not about good and evil here. Hugo wasn't interested in this.

Our Archdeacon is a fanatic, a hypocrite, and a murderer (Esmeralda: "Assassin!") AND a loving brother, father, and intellectual genius.

He is a curious and romantic soul internally, a gloomy, cruel Archdeacon externally—both at once.

"Thou art the Spider, Claude! Claude, thou art the Fly also."

That is the full complexity of this character. The tragedy is that this sensitive, brilliant man deceives himself and others, calling it ΑΝΑΓΚΗ.

It is human and understandable, but not excusable. We can show empathy with him, as Hugo intended (not only towards Esmeralda and Quasimodo, but towards out priest also), but he cannot be portrayed solely as a victim of circumstance.

He was both predator and victim, too weak to resist the temptation of ΑΝΑΓΚΗ as Victor Hugo understands it (the ΑΝΑΓΚΗ of systematic dogma, law, things and the inner heart against which humans need to fight).

Frollo could not face the fact that he had free will, even if he knew he had. He didn’t want to fight.

He swings from recognizing that he himself is at fault:

"...in making himself a priest, [he] made himself a demon," (BOOK 9. CHAPTER 1: Delirium)

"Thou art the spider, Claude!" (BOOK 7. CHAPTER IV. ΑΝΑΓΚΗ)

"Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother? What have I done with him, Lord? I received him, I reared him, I nourished him, I loved him, I idolized him, and I have slain him!"

(BOOK 11, CHAPTER 1 THE LITTLE SHOE)

to externalizing his guilt:

"He cast a haggard eye over the double, tortuous way which fate had caused their two destinies to pursue up to their point of intersection, where it had dashed them against each other without mercy,"

"Claude, thou art the fly also!"

"[...] because of this woman, because of her."

His relationship with Esmeralda and his role as Archdeacon +

Conclusion:

Behind all his projections and attributions to the exotic "Other", including his ΑΝΑΓΚΗ, lies the systemic:

Frollo perceives himself as a tragic, loving savior, but in the end, he is merely the executioner of a system that allows him only a limited range of choices:

1. He can eliminate the “object woman” (Esmeralda), who renders him functionally incapable as a priest, in order to preserve himself and maintain the system.

Religious justification: temptress, witch, etc.

Or

2. He can possess her in order to control and domesticate her (and thereby keep her away from the society she “threatens”, which would ALSO serve the medieval feudalist system), but in doing so, he risks his position and becomes a renegate. This act of possession can then be framed as "romantic", while constantly being pursued by the authorities, ultimately suffocating Esmeralda herself on the way. After all then they are man and woman: he “saves” her, she “saves” him, until he realizes that, due to his internalized thinking (moral system, his time, limited knowledge etc.), it cannot work—and he spirals again.

Anything else is excluded by the systemic conditions.

For Hugo, the enemy to be fought is the oppressive ΑΝΑΓΚΗ of dogmas and of the human heart. Frollo turns this into his own personal alibi-Ananke. He hides behind the foreign word in order to escape the responsibility that the familiar FATUM (providentia dei) would have demanded of him.

He refuses to acknowledge that he has free will and that he actively uses that will in the service of the political order (even if he “loves” Esmeralda, she is still someone whose mere existance is a treat. Half of Paris was "bewitched" by her. And if it werent for Frollo, anyone else with power would have eliminated her).

He calls his struggle “ΑΝΑΓΚΗ” (necessity), and he does so in a foreign language because he projects his passion onto the foreign—both the culture and Esmeralda.

He could have ignored her, but he blocked that path through his own choices throughout his entire biography.

His parents confined him to university from a young age so that he would become a priest, and after being left alone with his younger brother, he always acted within the prevailing system: sacrificing himself for "Jehan's sake", suppressing his feelings, and working his way up to become Archdeacon to provide Jehan with a “comfortable life.”

And in the end, this man—this destroyed, once innocent soul— ultimately failed.

(I tried to stay as neutral as possible, even if Frollo is my favourite. I wanted to potray him as the complex, flawed and human character he truly is without idealizing him into something he is not. Would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading. Until next time.)

Sources and other stuff:

Victor Hugo’s letter to the Journalist Durandeau 11th July 1867 (in French):

Correspondance de Victor Hugo/1867 - Wikisource https://share.google/LY7bqc0dqy7qxIiCy

Victor Hugo about his works ΑΝΑΓΚΗ (in French, article):

https://share.google/j1Cmk0bbeHrKr5bc5

https://www.gavroche.org/vhugo/cromwellpreface.shtml (Preface, Cromwell, Victor Hugo, 1827)

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2610/2610-h/2610-h.htm (Notre Dame de Paris English translation from Gutenberg, Victor Hugo, 1831)

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19657/pg19657-images.html (Notre Dame de Paris french translation from Gutenberg, Victor Hugo, 1831)

Roman Godess Providentia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providentia

The greek Godess Ananke:

https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Ananke.html

FATUM: https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-literature-i/fatum

Boethus: The Consolation of Philosophy, Fate and Providence 1 (Book IV, Prose 6):

https://sourcebooks.web.fordham.edu/source/con-phil.asp

academically-minded, sexually repressed Christian fanatic

experiences sexual attraction for the first time and goes homicidally insane

obsessed with a brunette whom they simultaneously lust for and despise on religious grounds

uncertain if they want to have sex with their object of desire, kill them, or possibly both, not necessarily in that order

spends the majority of the plot frantically justifying their actions by blaming the other person for tempting them, despite causing the deaths of numerous innocent parties along the way

ends up betraying their faith/condemning themselves to destroy the object of their desire, becoming willing to commit multiple murders to rid the world of the unclean (ie people who make them horny)

connection with a weirdly buff disfigured guy

What if they weren’t, though? What if their life twisted them to the point that they can only love through violence?

What if the narrative doomed them to ever play their role, a role that has already been chosen by forces higher than them?

What if the sweet, gentle character didn’t love them ‘despite their flaws’, or even at all?

Why should they? Especially if it’s a case of kidnapping. ESPECIALLY if they hurt them. Or their friends. Or take away their agency.

What if that strange contradiction of love and hatred in their heart tore them apart and gave them their justified end?

What if they CAN’T be fixed?

What if they don’t WANT to be fixed?