FANFIC Review: Substance Clad In Shadows

Rodin The Kiss Wrapped in 1 Mile of Twine by Cornelia Parker
"Rodin's 'The Kiss,' re-imagined," the curator closest to me explains in reverent tones. "Tate Britain is exhibiting it as a piece by Cornelia Parker. The artist wrapped Rodin's sculpture in one mile of string to represent the 'claustrophobia of relationships.' You'll notice the contrast of the two materials: the high culture of the marble, and the low culture of the twine." 
ch 19
Fanfiction: Substance Clad In Shadows

Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals

Nietzsche: The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The first time I lay eyes on him that night, I think of the desires of Nietzsche's true man. ch 10

He thinks I don't notice the looks he receives as we make our way to the roof. Women watch him, wistful or lustful or smug, their memories or fantasies playing out in an unsubtle panoply of desire across their features. And then their gazes inevitably catch me walking behind him, after which they occupy themselves either by glaring at me openly or looking down and away.

Look at yourselves, I want to sneer. Waiting for me to leave his side so you can simper at his every word, laugh at his inane jokes as you surreptitiously ask the universe for a way to master your gag reflex so you can suck him off in a back room well enough to warrant a quick fuck and a phone call the next day.

There are blondes and brunettes and redheads of all different shapes and sizes, but the vacancies in their eyes make them all look the same. They part unwillingly for us.

I'm sure their panties are wet already. Small wonder that he's bored.

For now. chapt 9

First, that the burly man does not appreciate Armani-clad barflys attempting to seduce his girl. "He kissed her!" he yells. ch 10

I see him, I think. I see him. ch 10

 This is a man of hidden wants, buried needs, and I'm going to leave him sated, satisfied but first comes the extraction of his longings and I'll dig, god I'll dig right into him until he's free and mine. ch 11

"I see you," I whisper, and his mouth opens to form words he doesn't yet know. ch 11

Mapplethorpe

Akhmotova - Modigliani

"Your women are too easy, Edward Cullen," I whisper in his ear, nipping at the lobe. "They're so happy just to have you look twice at them, do you know why?"ch 11

"Those women take what they can get from you because they don't know their place. They don't know how bland they are, how bored you are." ch 11

 "'We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.'" ch 19

"I am your danger and your play," I hiss. "And I'm going to make you work for it." ch 11

"Bella, Bella, Bella," he breathes, and I'm one fantasy closer to owning him. ch 11

He is everything right now, my prey and my prayer and my captive, my spoils of war, my conquered city and my friendly fire. He is the thief of my skin,

my monster in the maze,

my sun god, grounded.

He is mine. ch 25

I sink down even further and stare as he comes apart, panting and chanting my name and fuck, fuck, fuck. ch 11

"Edward," I grind out, the sound trial and triumph. "You have to know… I'm the best you're ever going to have." ch 11

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"The Blacks are being more than accommodating right now, especially in light of this… indiscretion, Isabella," he says sternly. "Make sure you remember that when making new friends." ch 11

"Have you found her?" a man asks nearby.

"I've got her. I think she was stuck in the maze." ch 12

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Warm us on his skin, my fingers cry plaintively. We are frozen. ch 12

He blinks. Stares. Breathes in, breathes out, and then: "Who are you?"

"I'm the only one in this building who knows what you are," I answer quietly.

He frowns. "What am I?"

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A single glance: a sudden dart of pain

stitching her eyes before she made a sound...

Her body flaked into transparent salt,

and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem

too insignificant for our concern?

Yet in my heart I never will deny her,

who suffered death because she chose to turn.

[Anna Akhmatova, "Lot's Wife"]

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"You already know what you are. I've already told you. You're bored. You're bored and you're lazy and you're mine. You think I don't know what it's like? To be surrounded by people who don't know, who can't know. ch 12

He is stone-still beneath my hand, his eyes hard. "Will you ever want more?"

I am silent for a moment, a series of moving images flashing across my mind's eye: domesticity, predictability, two-sink bathrooms, tragically tight smiles, a home in the

Hamptons, a ring on my finger, a swell in my belly, a staff to clean the penthouse and put a roast in the oven each night. Dinners in the city with his colleagues, his former fucks. Cold brunches spent staring at one another with open resentment. And boredom.

Above all, boredom.

Every bit of that life seems a shackle, another lock to keep me in a different kind of cage.

"Peter Ustinov thought it was true... 'through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.'" ch 18

 I'm not complaining – I have a good life. But it's rare to be around someone real."

"Am I real, then?"

His eyes find mine, unreadable. "I think so. And I think... you may have ruined me for others who aren't," he confesses quietly. ch 16

Hamlet and Ophelia - Louise Bourgeois

This Bella is a Nietzschean strategist. We see her like in Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, a woman who is determined to destroy Howard Roark. Dominique has been interpreted for almost 70 years in the psychological swamp of interpretation as a masochist, rather than a Nietzschean strategist. 

We are married by a French clerk, and I wear red dress. ch 28 

Dominique wore black.

In DeLillo's Cosmopolis the Foucauldian character of Vija Kinski tells Eric Packer in a quote from Foucault, "There is no outside." She adds that money no longer refers to anything at all except itself. Money talks only to money. Foucault in discussing the end of representation in language argues that Cervantes Don Quixote is the first novel in the western world to leave the fetters of representation, Quixote refers only to literature. Substance Clad In Shadows is fanfiction and the first one to make clear that the Edward/Bella/Twilight fanfic refers only to other to itself. SCIS refers to Twilight both the books and the films, to other fanfic, and to Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson in their personal lives and their tabloid lives. All these resonate within SCIS as well as the poetry of Akhmatova whose language has been absorbed by hollelujah along with a multitude of quotes from literature past and present, classic and pop. It is a joy to read, and an erotic joy.