Hank with an Eldritch Horror Reader
Here's another thing I wrote two years back! It was an interesting concept which I really liked, so I actually really enjoyed writing this request!
Hank J Wimbleton was a grunt of many things, but not one to be scared unless he had a good reason to be. There were many things in this world he did not understand, you were one of them. Upon meeting you, his first instinct would have been to either fight or run away - who could blame him, it was all he knew. No matter how many times you reassured him that the very last thing you wanted to do was to harm him, he’d draw his weapon, uncertain of whether or not he should believe your words.
Once you show no resistance towards him whatsoever and simply restrain him using your powers or other methods, that’s when, thrashing around as much as he could, he would start listening. You may or may not have seen a grunt up close, but this was your chance to finally examine one. As you scrutinise him from every possible angle Hank realises that you were simply curious about his being and finally lowers weapon.
Your voice would likely hurt his head and freeze the blood in his veins, so you might have to resort to telepathy or speak through a marionette, if you can find one. Though, once Hank’s interest in you has been piqued, he’d be more than happy to find you one. A lot of people in Nevada seem to be redundant in the first place. Regarding telepathy: You will be able to have a two-way conversation with Hank like that, but, for the most part, he doesn’t think in words. Still, he can do so, if needed.
If you’re on the rather small side, he will make an effort to pick you up, or hold you, and bring you back to base. Depending on whether you can float or not, this might be rather difficult, but he’ll try. If you’re large, however, then he will simply “tell” you to follow him. As an eldritch being you could likely either change your form or scare away anyone in your path in the first place, so he doesn’t particularly worry about anyone being stupid enough to attack you.
Spend time with him, he’ll get used to you more and more and, eventually, grow a bond with you. Proud, he’ll show you to Doc so he can figure out what you are, but do not be fooled. Hank wants to know what you are to some degree too. Once comfortable with you and certain you won’t harm him, he’ll start observing you, touching you to some degree. See how you react, how you feel, how you are.
Despite your conversations being, for the most part, one-sided, Hank will ask you directly what you are and if you’re some form of eldritch deity. Since you’re an amicable creature he can’t exactly wrap his head around, it’s worth a try.
Although he would like to do so to some degree, he won’t take you with him on missions. It’s his way of saying “I care a great deal about you, I don’t want you to die or worse even if you are capable of defending yourself.” If you really insist on aiding him, he will let you, begrudgingly. But beware that he will have your back. In fact, having you around will give him a greater reason to fight and improve his overall performance. Though, it will also be a major stress factor to him if something were to happen to you, so choose wisely.
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i have many many thoughts about the portrayal of elizabeth (and henry) in adaptations of frankenstein and they need to be broadcasted immediately. feverish incoherent raving about this subject under the cut. tw for very brief mention of SA
so. elizabeth lavenza. by the time of the wedding, elizabeth is rather obviously portrayed to be just as morose and brooding as victor is, she just isn't as susceptible to episodes of mania and psychosis so it doesn't seem nearly as dramatic compared to victor's trauma. she's been through the gutter herself, being an orphan for starters, then being adopted into a family and having to assume the role of caregiver in the frankenstein family because of the coercion of her dead mother to not only take her place as the maternal figure in the family but also marry her surrogate brother (or literal cousin, depending on which version you read). then her surrogate younger brother william dies, and the within weeks she has to watch her closest heterosexual life partner justine be unjustly hung by a corrupt justice system. and she vocalizes, actively, her pessimism and hopelessness in light of these many tragedies. tldr she's fucked up and rightfully so, and while she's a little less crippled by depression than victor, she still has the distinct appearance of being rather ill, listless, and tired, especially towards the end of the novel. anyways my point is in the novel, the most important thing about elizabeth is not that she's a woman and victor's bride. yes, that's obviously the purpose she was created for, but shelley went out of her way to give elizabeth an extremely definite and unique character. she's gentle and maternal like most woman in early 19th century literature, but she's also introspective, intelligent, and perceptive. she displays agency and self-awareness repeatedly (her guilt over the locket, going to the execution of justine even when alphonse tells her not to, waxing poetic on the failures of the justice system, asking repeatedly and rather pointedly if victor actually wants to go through with the marriage, obvious anxiety and solemnity concerning the wedding) we also have to take into account that elizabeth's personality is being relayed to us BY VICTOR, and he wants to see elizabeth as docile and femininely passive, even if a lot of her actions themselves in the novel actually seem to contradict that. also, i am peppering in that many people can (and have) made a genuine and convincing argument that victor and elizabeth are not in love and were groomed to accept their union by their weirdo parents - that they care for each other, but the text includes important nuances that make it evident that victor doesn't feel anything for elizabeth like that. it is a legitimate interpretation of the book - dare i say it's the correct interpretation of the relationship between victor and elizabeth. but that's another essay for another day and it's not SUPER integral to my rant here today. it just highlights the complexity of elizabeth as a character.
so. for some fucking reason, writers do not understand this when they are adapting the novel, and do not want to apply more than eight seconds of critical thinking and the absolute shallowest 3rd grader levels of reading comprehension to this character, so they simplify her from what she was in the original novel, freshly complex, opinionated, and introspective to boring useless incest lady. victor is never portrayed with the same amount of nuance he deserves in any adaptation (also another essay for another day), because adaptations also have a very surface level reading of him as "guy who was ambitious and played god which immediately cements him as an irredeemable self-aggrandizing asshole and/or a raging insufferable narcissist who's a dick to everyone around him EXCEPT for elizabeth" but at least SOME adaptations are able to kiiinnnddaaaa capture the sympathy meant to be felt for the character in the novel. not so for elizabeth. her character in basically every adaptation can be boiled down to this: "omg victor my brother let me hammer in that you are my brother. im just going to stand here and look clueless and annoyingly naive for the entire time im on screen/stage. im just a little girl and idk what's going on victor but im gonna stay blindly devoted to you and ask numerous but completely useless questions 🥺 let me stare at you with tender worry in my eyes and treat you like a child even though we have absolutely no romantic chemistry and you're an objectifying dick towards me and we have nothing in common and the audience is actively dry heaving as we sensually make out for no other reason than to have characters in this movie sensually make out. im basically a carbon copy of original-novel-henry expect super boring and super useless because im a woman which means the doylist explanation for why im here HAS TO BE ONLY for the main character to fuck me and to hold the attention of the male viewership. now time for me to get SA'd by the creechur for basically no reason" we can observe something approximating this in basically every frankenstein adaptation i've ever seen: kenneth branagh's (my enemy) 1994 film, the 2004 hallmark miniseries, the musical, and the ballet. also in the 1931 film, but that one isn't really trying to be book-accurate so it doesn't really count for this rant.
with this understanding of elizabeth, writers then attempt to artificially generate more romance between these characters, mostly by, yes, replacing a lot of henry's role in the novel with elizabeth, hence why we see so many adaptations (1994, 2004, ballet) make elizabeth nurse victor back to health in ingolstadt instead of henry, which generates... so many problems. one problem with this is that it just sorta ruins henry's original role in the novel in one go. writers recognize that henry is supposed to be victor's character foil, but now they don't have much for him to do so he can demonstrate that role in the story since they gave all of the romantic tension moments to elizabeth. meaning that in adaptations you can tell the writers didn't really know what to do with henry because he's reduced to a comic relief bumbling idiot (1994, ballet, 2004 to an extent) with his only personality traits being "random xd" and "morals good playing god wrong!!!! 😠" (2004, musical, several independent stage adaptations). they keep him as a character foil, but just replace all of his compassion, tenderness, and devotion with elizabeth, while effectively draining henry of all of his original appeal and charm and stamping those traits onto their already stripped-of-all-nuance elizabeth. so now both henry and elizabeth are not only extremely different from their original roles in the novel but extremely, woefully less charming and complex. this especially pisses me off because it's explicitly stated in the book that henry was victor's only friend precisely because he was victor's intellectual equal, so seeing henry reduced to a smiley idiot and/or stupid generic male side character with Morals fills me with a visceral rage. writers will also sometimes make victor and henry meet in college (ballet, 1994) and try to strengthen the bond between victor and elizabeth by making it appear as though she was victor's ONLY childhood friend and companion. other times, victor and henry will be friends pre-ingolstadt (2004, musical) but most of the relationship development will be between elizabeth and victor. those two have all of the tender bonding moments while henry is just kinda inexplicably there sometimes. but i digress. this post is supposed to be about elizabeth. but IF YOU NEED A CHARACTER TO BE A SUNSHINE SOFT OPTIMISTIC LOVER FOR VICTOR IN A FRANKENSTEIN ADAPTATION, HENRY IS ABLE AND WILLING ARE YOU STEPPING ON MY BALLS
clervalstein is true. anyway
elizabeth is somehow more complex and powerful as a female character than the literal adaptations produced almost 200 years later. in adaptations, the most important thing about her is somebody else. the development of all of her character traits (which usually never go beyond standing around and looking helpless) are solely dependant on victor. she feels more like an appendage of the protagonist than an individual with thoughts and experiences separate from victor, and her character is loosely defined and flimsy so the writers can have her conform to her actions in the book whenever it's convenient and then change things up entirely that completely contradict her characterization in the book whenever it's convenient. i have no idea why the fuck this keeps happening with frankenstein adaptations (it's misogyny) and because it isn't looking like guillermo del toro's film (from what ive heard) is going to be super book accurate, i dont foresee too much of a shift in frankenstein adaptations.
look i get it. it's a movie/play/ballet which lasts like 2 hours and you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. i understand you have to make sacrifices for brevity and these characters are, frankly, a lot less interesting and exciting than victor and creechur. people didn't come to see john hughes levels of charm and complexity in the side characters, they came to watch the creechur do scary shit and for victor to say IT'S ALIVE 😱 and be an evil mad scientist you love to hate. they came for their values of "it's wrong to play god!!!" and "too much ambition bad!!!" to be re-cemented even though that's not even the original point of the novel. which is why imo if you're going to adapt frankenstein in a manner that does justice to the beautiful and sublime subtlety of the original novel, it needs to be either a miniseries or a REALLY LONG film. it's a short book, but it's very eventful, and imo for an adaptation to work you have to let the audience sit with it. which is why you all need to donate to my gofundme so i can produce an honest to god frankenstein adaptation. in fact, im running for president in this year's primaries :3
just a disclaimer: im not an academic or a scholar or anything. i just like the book. i probably have no idea what the fuck im talking about. but im a very very passionate little guy and this has been my rant
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Rewatching The Muppet Christmas Carol after rereading the book has me wishing we could have seen Michael Caine play Scrooge in a more detailed and book-accurate version of the story. He's got the perfect face and demeanor for Scrooge as Dickens wrote him. There's a fierceness on the surface, and an underlying good nature that's just waiting to be let out. You can believe he was the young clerk who delighted in a good Christmas party, and believe that he's become the cold, hard, grasping miser who won't even spend money to give himself a good fire, and whose humor comes out in cruel witticisms. He would totally be the Scrooge who gets caught up in the the childish delight of watching past Christmas parties and playing along with the games at the present one.
Unfortunately, the condensed story takes the angle of "Scrooge has never liked Christmas". It makes young Scrooge someone who's worrying over what his employer spends to throw a Christmas party (rather than delighting in a simple affair that only costs a few pounds). Caine's Scrooge shows moments of childish delight, but he doesn't really understand the spirit of Christmas until the very end of his time with the Ghost of Christmas Present. And it's fine. Turning a Victorian book into a ninety-minute Muppet musical for children is going to involve significant changes. Caine did excellently with the material he had. I just wish he'd had the chance to do more.
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