maaaan I love that lady's house.

I've just been for a run so I warn you I might fall asleep on the keyboard.

So Lady of the House of Love is the token vampire story of this collection. Interesting as I can't recall many vampires in fairytales. I suppose they come in different forms, nameless monsters that drink your blood. Makes sense, linking to the unknown.

The biggest thing you pick up on when you start this story is the loneliness, despair and inevitability of the lady's tragedy. When she repeats the action of turning over her Tarot cards and gets the death card, we may well wonder if it is her death being predicted or her victims'. Perhaps it's just the omniscience of death in her fate.

I think an interesting aspect of this story is the ending. This girl is living death, trapped in the past and alone. You would think that the introduction of love to the story would be a redemptive feature but it isn't, it is what kills her in the end. So love equals death. But actually it is the death of someone living an awful existence, so is love actually a release from suffering rather than a damning event? Reference to Sleeping Beauty here would be appropriate I suppose. In the original, true love's first kiss wakes the princess up. So assuming the vampire lady's life was something similar to sleep, then death is waking up...I can't make sense of that so I'll just move on.

Question is do I have anything else to say?

Or the strength to say it?

I guess the whole thing is also good for looking at the struggle in the gothic between logic and the supernatural. Logic would lead us to the assumption that when we die, we die. But no...obviously we are wrong. The Countess shows us the supernatural side of things. Then the soldier represents reason, or the natural, with his reliance on technology like the bike. What I'm finding it hard to decide is, which one wins? In Dracula and Faustus it's easy to prove that in the end of the gothic reason triumphs over the absurd. But here, even though the vampire dies, the legend lives on in the rose the soldier brings back to life, and it is not a happy thing that she is dead, as they had loved each other. How sad.

:(

My fingers are tired.

See you tomorrow guyyyyss.