Queen of Filks
Removed this line, which had just been added:
- Complete Monster: Dorian after he learns about Sybil's death (and arguably ever since he saw her last performance).
Complete Monster is an extremely loaded, heavy term, and I think it's being applied here unjustly. Yes, Dorian does horrible things, but he does not match several criteria, such as: Evoking fear, revulsion, and/or hatred (most people who meet Dorian take to him at once; those who are appalled by him include Basil once he realizes what Dorian is, and Sybil Vane's brother because he has a grudge); Must show no regret or remorse (he does, or at least tries to, which counts against CM-hood); No adequate justification (he's obsessed by beauty and pleasure, and is driven by ennui. He's not doing it for the Evulz, but because he's a total hedonist). I welcome more discussion on this point, but I think that Dorian Gray is discounted from CM-hood on these grounds.
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Hmmm...I dunno. Dorian does provoke revulsion in some people. Basil Hallward reels off a list of people who won't have anything to do with him, and even says no respectable woman will stay in the same room with him. Also, the narration makes it pretty clear that Dorian's "remorse" is just a mixture of hypocrisy and a desire to experience what "goodness" would feel like. I also don't think that "doing it because it feels good" is really that far removed from "doing it for the Evulz." I think there is room for ambiguity, but I think it would not be unreasonable for a reader to consider Dorian a Complete Monster.
Edited by Tannhaeuser
Being a hedonistic ass driven by ennui does not make you any less of a Complete Monster.
A cultist of slaneesh is still a CM.
Dorian feels guilt for his actions and redeems himself in the end. A true Complete Monster wouldn't do either of these things.
Or he just destroyed the painting so people wouldn't find out about his secret.
I agree that wasn't really remorse, but I don't think Dorian does enough evil/the evil he does is heinous enough to qualify. He "seduced and abandoned" Sybil and is indicated to have done the same to other women (probably some men too), but he isn't indicated to be a rapist, and he only commits a single murder, and not a premeditated one at that.
The book has a lot of vague descriptions of Dorian's depravity, but nothing that concrete, and it mostly seems to consist of sexual promiscuity and visits to opium dens.
Probably the worst thing he does is blackmailing Alan, driving him to suicide, but that outcome wasn't the intent of the blackmail.
Edited by 216.99.32.45 Edit, edit, edit, edit the wiki
I wonder if it's Hays Code or my imperfect perception of spoken English that I haven't heard Basil confessing in the '45 movie, only saying he was glad it hadn't ruined their friendship.
Edited by Charsi
What happened to the page picture? (The caption is still there, but without tags. I'm commenting it out for now.)
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On the 27th of April, someone (almost certainly accidentally) broke most/all of the links and formatting in a single edit. I found the version from before this in the page history, so I've pasted that into the page. It has the page image in it as well. I wonder what on Earth happened.
Edit: Okay, now I'm really confused. Charsi was the one who did the original edit that messed up the page, and now whatever edit you made has done the same thing. I'm not accusing either of you, but I'm wondering what's causing it. ???
Edit 2: I'm not going to restore the page again, however. It's just such a strange thing, but maybe the first reversion was deliberate rather than a bug or something.
Edited by Telcontar That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
Sorry. I didn't know what to do with the sudden emptiness of the edit page. I've restored what I could. By the way, why do the edit pages sometimes deflate?
Edited by Charsi
I don't think it's anyone's fault that this happens; it's very odd. I've never seen pages do this when edited – is that what you mean by "do the edit pages sometimes deflate"?
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
I mean I sometimes want to edit a main page, click on the "edit" button, and suddenly the text box is empty. No tropes to format. And sometimes also the discussion pages go crazy, their title becomes huge and whimsical.
Wait, what? Yikes. Since this hasn't been happening for me, could you please make a thread to report it over in Bug Reports
? Thanks!
I wonder whether everyone's love or desire for Dorian is Loving a Shadow. Or even In Love with Love in Sybil's case.
Excuse me, could anyone please send me that sue-inducing scene between Dorian and Basil? I am damn curious.
Is hand-holding, shoulder-stroking and walking arm in arm a Ho Yay or a Values Dissonance example?
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Oscar Wilde wrote the novel. What do you think?
"But Go-wuh, it's mah play!" —Gore Vidal quoting Tennessee Williams
How old are Basil and Henry? I got confused by the text and the movie.
Azor Ahai
I deleted the edits made just now that called Lord Henry a Complete Monster. If Dorian himself isn't one, Lord Henry certainly isn't. The guy really never does anything actually evil. Yeah he smokes opium and reads unwholesome books and his wife leaves him (probably because he's gay), but there's a reason that he doesn't believe Dorian when Dorian tries to tell him that he's done all of these terrible things. Partly it's because Lord Henry believes a version of Beauty Equals Goodness, but it's also because he follows the same philosophy as Dorian (which he taught Dorian), but doesn't do any of the things Dorian has done.
I'm not denying he's a jerk (he acts pretty callously about Sybil), but one important point in the book is that Dorian is Not Brainwashed- he'd like to think that Lord Henry's philosophy or the painting forced him to Face–Heel Turn- but really, he did it on his own.
Hodor
Something that occurred to me is that this novel, notably the characters of Dorian and Lord Henry, is a deconstruction of the Ubermensch concept. Can anyone confirm this or is it just WMG?
Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted. Hide / Show Replies