History Literature / WhatMovesTheDead

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's (and indeed Vernon's) point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since the tarn is the mental equivalent of a small child and it didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since Alice killed herself rather than continue as a host for the fungus, Alex regards it as a monster who ate kan friend, and ka weeps with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists' choice to protect humanity by destroying the fungus is completely understandable.]]

* ItBeganWithATwistOfFate: The whole plot begins because [[spoiler:Madeline had an episode of catalepsy and fell into the tarn, which allowed the fungus to enter her body. Aaron the manservant mentions at the end of the story that the inhabitants of the house never drank from the tarn since there was a deep well on the property that they used instead; while the fungus had been able to get into the hares that drank the lake water, without Madeline's acceptance of it into her body, plus going on to nurture and teach it, the tarn probably never would have become a danger to humans.]]

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with fungus-infested-brains are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for so long that it's learned how to comprehend and use physical senses like sight, and thus it's capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour.]]

* AllThereInTheManual: The afterword mentions that [[spoiler:the tarn is a symbiosis of biofilm, fungi, and macroalgae that over time developed into a crenellated structure capable of acting as a brain using electrochemical signaling]] that the characters would've had no way of finding out, it being the 1890s.

* FesteringFungus: Signifying its decay, the lands surrounding the house of Usher harbor an exceptional abundance of mushrooms (which is what drew the mycologist Eugenia Potter to it), while the house itself constantly has attention drawn to its infestation of mold and fungus. The worst of it inhabits the tarn beside the house -- the water is so stagnant with it that it's almost gelatinous, and a SicklyGreenGlow sometimes emanates from under its surface.

* NonMaliciousMonster: [[spoiler: The tarn doesn't want to hurt anyone, and if you managed to explain to it why what it was doing horrified people, it would probably stop. But it's so alien in both senses and outlook that this wasn't possible in a way that was safe, not to mention the trauma all the characters had been through.]]
* NotHisSled: ''Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher'' famously ends with the reveal that when Madeline "died", she was actually just having a catalepsy fit, and the narrator and Roderick unknowingly (probably) buried her alive. Here, [[spoiler: Alex goes to check on her body because ka is on edge from everything going in the manor...and discovers that she has a broken neck and clearly hand-shaped bruises. ''Then'' it's later revealed that Madeline had already been dead for at least a month before Alex arrived -- which evidently didn't prevent her from moving and talking.]]

* MercyKill: [[spoiler: Roderick tries this on Madeline. It doesn't take.]]

* PronounTrouble: Gallacian has six sets of pronouns: one for men, one for women, one for rocks, one for God, one for children and priests/nuns, and one for soldiers. This causes some translation headaches when the soldiers hire out internationally, but mostly people muddle along (a soldier's a soldier, at the end of the day). The child pronoun causes slightly more trouble -— it is extremely taboo to call a child by adult pronouns, tantamount to saying you're a paedophile. Hence native Gallacian speakers are never quite comfortable in languages that lack this separation (a Gallacian spy once blew their cover because they were just a little too hesitant to call a child "she"), and new learners are prone to greatly embarrassing themselves.

* ItBeganWithATwistOfFate: The whole plot begins because [[spoiler:Madeline had an episode of catalepsy and fell into the tarn, which allowed the fungus to enter her body. Aaron the manservant mentions at the end of the story that the inhabitants of the house never drank from the tarn since there was a deep well on the property that they used instead; while the fungus had been able to get into the hares that drank the tarn water, without Madeline's tutoring it probably never would have become a danger to humans.]]

* MurderWater: It's no secret that there's something extremely sinister about the lake and its sick fish. The local people know better than to drink from it, but unfortunately the local ''wildlife'' don't realise the danger...

* NotHisSled: ''Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher'' famously ends with the reveal that when Madeline "died", she was actually just having a catalepsy fit, and the narrator and Roderick unknowingly (probably) buried her alive. Here, [[spoiler: Alex goes to check on her body because ka is on edge from everything going in the manor...and discovers that she has a broken neck and clearly hand-shaped bruises. And ''then'' it's later revealed that she's already been dead for at least a month -- which evidently didn't prevent her from moving and talking.]]

* RecklessGunUsage: Conversed when Alex explains why ka doesn't sleep with a gun under kan pillow: ka ''tried'' that, when ka was younger and stupider, and then it went off in the night and nearly blew kan head off.
* {{Ruritania}}: The dust jacket actually calls the country they're in Ruritania as if that was the name. It's not, it's Ruravia. But Ruravia is a small, fictional, and poor European monarchy.

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various mycological societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, Madeline's motivation for welcoming the tarn into her body is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object for men to admire, and she felt that hosting and teaching the tarn human behaviour, treating it as a child, gave her a purpose]].

A 2022 retelling of ''Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher'' by Ursula Vernon, writing as T. Kingfisher.

When Alex Easton, a retired soldier, receives word that [[PronounTrouble ka]] childhood friend Madeline Usher is dying, ka races to the ancestral home of the Ushers in the remote countryside of Ruravia.

What ka finds there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsating lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

* AdmiringTheAbomination: Potter is very impressed with how thoroughly [[spoiler:the fungus has taken over a hare's body, as well as how it's able to continue moving the body despite its' dismemberment, staying put to observe even when everyone else screams in horror and gets as far away as possible.]] However, she still thinks it's dangerous and needs to be destroyed, [[spoiler:in stark contrast to Madeline, who's not only perfectly happy with the tarn possessing her body but regards it as a child, teaching it how to speak and delighting in how clever it is and how fast it's learning.]]
* AmbiguousGenderIdentity: There is a complicated gender element to Sworn Soldiers. Once women join the military, they're more soldiers than women and are afforded certain rights they wouldn't have otherwise. Gallacian women, therefore, often join the military to get said rights as well as money, but Alex hints in kan narration that there are some people who just don't identify as women and, in Gallacia, becoming a soldier is the closest thing you can get to changing your gender, as it gives you a legal way to change your pronouns. It's also left unclear how Alex kanself would identify, given the modern understanding of non-binary people and trans men, considering that ka publicly says ka joined up because someone had to send money home to the family, but ka would still bind kan's breasts even before the military and mentions that ka is also of the mindset that ka's more of a soldier than anything else.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's (and indeed Vernon's) point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since the tarn is the mental equivalent of a small child and it didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since Alice killed herself rather than continue as a host for the fungus, Alex regards it as a monster who ate kan friend, and kan weeps with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists' choice to protect humanity by destroying the fungus is completely understandable.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: Madeline's maid, Alice, killed herself a few months ago by jumping from the roof. [[spoiler: She was infected by the Tarn and enlisted as a host for Madeline to teach it, but found the whole thing too horrible to deal with.]]

* HistoricalCharactersFictionalRelative: The British mycologist is ''not'' Beatrix Potter, renowned mycologist and children's book author. She's her fictional relative, who has a lot in common.

* ItBeganWithATwistOfFate: The whole plot begins because [[spoiler:Madeline had an episode of catalepsy and fell into the lake, which allowed the fungus to enter her body. Aaron the manservant mentions at the end of the story that the inhabitants of the house never drank from the Tarn since there was a deep well on the property that they used instead; while the fungus had been able to get into the hares that drank the Tarn water, without Madeline's tutoring it probably never would have become a danger to humans.]]
* ItCanThink: [[spoiler: The Tarn is very intelligent - after all, it's a fungus that has learned to understand such insane concepts as vision and even speech. It just hasn't grasped that most people find animated corpses and being assimilated into a hive mind horrifying.]]

* KillItWithFire: Everyone is enormously relieved to discover that [[spoiler: burning the corpses keeps the Tarn from raising them.]]

* MercyKill: [[spoiler: Roderick tries this on Madeleine. It doesn't take.]]
* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with fungus-infested-brains are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the Tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for so long that it's learned how to comprehend and use physical senses like sight, and thus it's capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour]].
* MundaneSolution: Once the immediate threat of [[spoiler:the Tarn-infested Madeleine is dealt with]], Alex and Denton still have to figure out what to do about [[spoiler:the tarn itself, since they can't exactly [[KillItWithFire burn a lake.]] Cue Angus and Miss Potter turning up with twelve hundred pounds of sulfur, which is commonly used to treat fungal ailments in fruit trees and which they bought from several nearby orchards; once dumped into the tarn it manages to kill the fungus in the water]].

* NonMaliciousMonster: [[spoiler: The Tarn doesn't want to hurt anyone, and if you managed to explain to it why what it was doing horrified people, it would probably stop. But it's so alien in both senses and outlook that this wasn't possible in a way that was safe, not to mention the trauma all the characters had been through.]]

* ObliviouslyEvil: [[spoiler:The Tarn]] doesn't realize it's doing anything wrong, but unfortunately, without ever meaning to hurt anyone it could assimilate the entire human race, and there's no safe way to explain ''why'' this would be bad.

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various mycological societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, Madeline's motivation for welcoming the Tarn into her body is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object for men to admire, and she felt that hosting and teaching the tarn human behaviour, treating it as a child, gave her a purpose]].

* TechnicallyASmile: Alex finds Madeline apparently sleepwalking, and after she has some difficultly speaking she smiles -- which looks more like a scream. Alex, narrating, says that "I do not delude myself that I have seen every way the human mind can fail, though I have seen a hundred ways that soldiers and civilians can break in war. But I had never seen a smile like that." [[spoiler:Understandable, since it's actually the tarn controlling Madeline's body and trying to smile as it probably had seen her do in the past.]]
* WillingChanneler: [[spoiler: Madeline treats the Tarn like a child, has been teaching it to speak, and doesn't think its control of her body is at all burdensome.]]

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Ursula Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with fungus-infested-brains are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the Tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for so long that it's learned how to comprehend and use physical senses like sight, and thus it's capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour]].

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and an American doctor named Denton, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since Alice killed herself rather than continue as a host for the fungus, Alex regards it as a monster who ate kan friend, and kan weeps with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists' choice to protect humanity by destroying the fungus is completely understandable.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since the evidence is very clear due to Alice killing herself rather than continue being a host for the fungus, Alex regarding it as a monster who ate kan friend, and kan weeping with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists' choice to protect humanity by destroying it is completely understandable.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since the evidence is very clear due to Alice killing herself rather than continue being a host for the fungus, and Alex weeping with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists' choice to protect humanity by destroying it is completely understandable.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: Madeline's maid killed herself by jumping from the roof. [[spoiler: She was infected by the Tarn and enlisted as a host for Madeline to teach it, but found the whole thing too horrible to deal with.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since the evidence is very clear due to Alice killing herself rather than continue being a host for the fungus, and Alex weeping with relief upon learning that ka and the other residents of the house have been drinking well water and haven't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists choosing to protect humanity by destroying it is completely understandable.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since the evidence is very clear due to Alice killing herself rather than continue being a host for the fungus, and Alex weeping with relief upon learning that ka has been drinking well water and hasn't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists choosing to protect humanity by destroying it is completely understandable.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Madeline and Roderick are dead, as is the tarn; while the protagonists are obviously glad about the latter, depending on the reader's point of view this can also be seen as tragic, since it's the equivalent of a child that didn't realise most humans don't ''want'' to be taken over and puppeteered. However, since the evidence is very clear due to Alice killing herself rather than continue being a host for the fungus, and Alex weeping with relief upon learning that ka has been drinking well water and hasn't been exposed to the tarn, the protagonists choosing to destroy it is entirely understandable.]]

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various scientific societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, part of Madeline's motivation for welcoming the Tarn into her body is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object for men to admire, and she felt that hosting and teaching the tarn human behaviour, treating it as a child, gave her a purpose]].

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with fungus-infested-brains are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the Tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for so long that it's learned how to comprehend and use senses like sight, and thus it's capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour]].

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various scientific societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, part of Madeline's motivation for welcoming the Tarn into her body and teaching it human behaviour is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object for men to admire, and felt that hosting and teaching the tarn gave her a purpose]].

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with fungus-infested-brains are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the Tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for so long that it's learned how comprehend and use senses like sight, and thus it's capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour]].

* AmbiguousGenderIdentity:
** There is a complicated gender element to Sworn Soldiers. Once women join the military, they're more soldiers than women and are afforded certain rights they wouldn't have otherwise. Gallacian women, therefore, often join the military to get said rights as well as money, but Alex hints in kan narration that there are some people who just don't identify as women and, in Gallacia, becoming a soldier is the closest thing you can get to changing your gender, as it gives you a legal way to change your pronouns. It's also left unclear how Alex kanself would identify, given the modern understanding of non-binary people and trans men, considering that ka publicly says ka joined up because someone had to send money home to the family, but ka would still bind kan's breasts even before the military and mentions that ka is also of the mindset that ka's more of a soldier than anything else.

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Madeline doesn't have catalepsy. Her "symptoms" are actually the result of being an imperfectly animated corpse.]]

* NotHisSled: ''Literature/TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher'' famously ends with the reveal that when Madeline "died", she was actually just having a catalepsy fit, and the narrator and Roderick unknowingly (probably) buried her alive. Here, [[spoiler: Alex goes to check on her body because ka is on edge from everything going in the manor...and discovers that she has a broken neck and clearly hand-shaped bruises. And ''then'' it turns out that this injury ''technically'' didn't kill her...]]

* PronounTrouble: Gallacian has six sets of pronouns: one for men, one for women, one for rocks, one for God, one for children, and one for soldiers. This causes some translation headaches when the soldiers hire out internationally, but mostly people muddle along (a soldier's a soldier, at the end of the day). The child pronoun causes slightly more trouble -— it is extremely taboo to call a child by adult pronouns, tantamount to saying you're a paedophile. Hence native Gallacian speakers are never quite comfortable in languages that lack this separation (a Gallacian spy once blew his cover because he was just a little too hesitant to call a child "she"), and new learners are prone to greatly embarrassing themselves.

* AmbiguousGenderIdentity: There is a complicated gender element to Sworn Soldiers. Once women join the military, they're more soldiers than women and are afforded certain rights they wouldn't have otherwise. Gallacian women, therefore, often join the military to get said rights as well as money, but Alex hints in kan narration that there are some people who just don't identify as women and, in Gallacia, becoming a soldier is the closest thing you can get to changing your gender, as it gives you a legal way to change your pronouns. It's also left unclear how Alex kanself would identify, given the modern understanding of non-binary people and trans men, considering that ka would still bind kan's breasts even before the military and mentions that ka is also on the mindset that ka is more of a soldier than anything else.

* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Vernon set out to deliberately address this, due to one of her friends ranting on social media about how horror stories with brains being infested by fungus are unrealistic since the interfaces are deeply incompatible. So in this story [[spoiler:the Tarn has been infesting and controlling the local wildlife for long enough to grow accustomed to the initial totally alien concept of senses like sight, and thus is capable of being taught by Madeline to speak and emulate human behaviour]].
* MundaneSolution: Once the immediate threat of [[spoiler:the Tarn-infested Madeleine is dealt with]], Alex and Denton still have to figure out what to do about [[spoiler:the tarn itself, since they can't exactly [[KillItWithFire burn a lake.]] Cue Angus and Miss Potter turning up with twelve hundred pounds of sulfur, which is commonly used to treat fungal ailments in fruit trees, and once dumped into the tarn it manages to kill the fungus in the water]].

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various scientific societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, part of Madeline's motivation for welcoming the Tarn into her body and teaching it human behaviour is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object for men to admire, and felt that hosting and teaching the tarn gave her a purpose]].
* StiffUpperLip: Alex notes this about the British in general and Potter in particular.

* ItBeganWithATwistOfFate: The whole plot begins because [[spoiler:Madeline had an episode of catalepsy and fell into the lake, which allowed the fungus to enter her body. Aaron the butler mentions at the end of the story that the inhabitants of the house never drank from the Tarn since there was a deep well on the property that they used instead; while the fungus had been able to get into the hares that drank the Tarn water, without Madeline's tutoring it probably never would have become a danger to humans.]]

* MurderWater: It's no secret that there's something extremely sinister about the lake and its sick fish.

* StayInTheKitchen: Potter is resentful that, as a woman, she's not allowed to join various scientific societies even while far less qualified men are welcome. [[spoiler:At the story's climax, part of Madeline's motivation for welcoming the Tarn into her body and teaching it human behaviour is her intense frustration at never being allowed to do anything other than be an object of adoration, and she believed that this accomplishment will make people take her seriously]].