New Weird Goes to the Freaks and Demons

Cirque du Freak was my favorite novel series as an adolescent because I fit right in. The first novel starts with an ordinary boy named Darren and his ordinary friend Steve getting free tickets to the Cirque du Freak. This novel quickly turns freaky when a gothic vampire and a spider force them to change their lives forever.
As the series develops, Cirque du Freak reveals more of its performers. There's a snake boy, wolfmen, 'little people', Vampires and Vampaneze, of course a bearded lady, and a mysterious (probably not human) man named Mr. Tall. In this series of circus performers, my transgender identity made me feel like I would fit right in.
The first strange occurrence in this New Weird novel series is when Mr. Crepsley, the vampire with the spider counterpart controlled her every will with a flute. Some more weird occurrences were when the mysterious Mr. Tall destroyed a character's body and transferred their memories to a new, vacant body. Perhaps weirdest of all, Mr. Crepsley, a powerful vampire, died of dramatic natural causes made worse by hypothermia. These unusual happenings bend the reader's perception of the world they're experiencing. These weird events are the only elements that keep the audience from thinking everything's happening on this timeline.

Week 1: Gothic Elements As Told by George RR Martin

George RR Martin's short story The Sandkings is one of the creepiest science fiction-gothic-thriller pieces I've read in a while. Martin tells a story about a rich man named Simon Kress, who's obsession with exotic pets and ruthless violence leads him to his own demise.

Kress lives in a high-tech house in the middle of nowhere. It's his own castle of sorts. The tension builds when an exotic pet store owner sells Kress extremely dangerous and hilariously tiny Sandkings. The store owner warned Kress that their ability to go to war with each other when inhabiting the same space could be dangerous, but Kress never heed the omen.

Through Kress's abusive and neglectful treatment of the Sandkings, they started to hate him. Kress was angry the Sandkings didn't want to battle for territory in their sand-filled aquarium, but these pets were pushed to a point of no return. As they got larger, starved and were forced to kill each other, their hate for their owner grew, until they literally took over his house. RR Martin bumped up the creep factor when the insects' sentient queen absorbed herself into the basement walls and became the house, dead-set on killing Simon Kress. 

Another nuance of gothic writing includes the treatment of women. Kress, being the tyrannical main character he is, threatened the female pet store owner of killing her business if the Sandkings didn't entertain his party guests adequately. Lastly, the main character goes through acutely intense emotions throughout the course of this story. His affinity for anger foten jumps to impatient distraughtness, but then climaxes when he rekindles anger for his ex girlfriend. Driven by romantic vengeance, he ends up screwing his good karma for the rest of his short life (no spoilers).

Vampires Through the World of Richelle Mead

When we think of vampires, we think of Richelle Mead's villainous type, the Strigoi, however in her world, not all vampires are evil. This is a truth that rings throughout the entire series. However, this kind of evil vampire often chooses to be turned. Like being an asshole in real life, Moroi (Mead's humanistic type of vampire) make the decision to become Strigoi because of the payoff. For power and immortality, Moroi willingly lose their ability to feel sadness, fear, guilt, love; they sacrifice their humanity.
Many power-hungry people hide their emotions for just this reason. When just trying to maintain their place of power, a less humanistic person will often find an opportunity to step over others to get what they want. However, Mead emphasizes that not all vampires lack humanistic values. The long and weathered relationship between the Moroi (good vampires) and Strigoi communicates that not all folks in places of power are without morals or greedy.

The Novel of Spiritual Education

Moral and Spiritual Lessons

Fantasy is written by escapists for escapists and George RR Martin is no exception. Living in RR Martin's world is equal parts enlightening and frightening. When I find myself putting the book down, I'm weary from the war-ridden miles I've traveled.

While this writer focuses on the sensory part of fantasy, each character subtly teaches the reader about moral complexities they'll experience. Depending on which characters resonate with the reader, RR Martin will weather the reader through many moral and spiritual lessons.

When I read Arya Stark, I'm in her skin.

In A Game of Thrones, Arya and the Stark family introduced the reader to the complexities of family relationships (and as the series goes on, builds upon this lesson). In the first 100 pages, Arya's father is killed and within the next 100, her family gets ripped apart. Although the Stark family is separated, Martin emphasizes that distance can't thin blood connections. Before separating, the Stark children find a liter of abandoned wirewolves perfect for each character. Through these pups, Arya often feels that her family is still alive, even though she's thousands of miles away from them, and when one of them dies, she knows it.

Through Arya's water dance training, her coach (or rather, George RR Martin) set her up for a spiritual awakening later in the series. She gets involved in a religion that honestly reflects traditional Christian beliefs, but Martin adds his moral lesson through the humanly immoral way Arya's new religion views death, and how quickly Arya becomes desensitized to it. It's almost as if she gets brainwashed into killing. To me, Martin points out how religion and spirituality can easily turn to extreme measures, much like the Nazi regime. After reading a few more of George RR Martin's works, it's obvious he has opinions about religion and Christianity worth talking about. After all, he grew up as a churchboy, so he'd know better than anyone.