This post will focus on exploring the narratives that could be illustrated, and exploring the “abhuman”

The Abhuman

In literary studies of Gothic fiction, abhuman refers to a “Gothic body” or something that is only vestigially human and possibly in the process of becoming something monstrous,^[4] such as a vampire^[5] or werewolf.^[6] Kelly Hurley writes that the “abhuman subject is a not-quite-human subject, characterized by its morphic variability, continually in danger of becoming not-itself, becoming other.”^[7]

In the same way this leads me some possible purposes of this (probable) zine based exploration, and some questions to ponder, possibly explored within an experimental narrative:

• ero-guro-nansensu speaks of a rebellion and response to instability, and a sensationalised story based off a high profile murder — in this case, the weird, the strange and the almost perverted are captured in a fantasy world with a common theme of fragmentation. How does this speak to the morphic variability of the human body illustrated? In medical illustration, specifically a quote from The Sick Rose, “the images they (artists) made still speak of transience, the frailty of the flesh, the passing away of all things”…
• Leading to this: In that case are escapes like the worlds created within the ero-guro-nansensu transient? How do they live on. Or is the point of the ‘guro’ the escaping of the body’s trappings?
• Similarly is the point of the ‘guro’ to reflect the changing society upon the body, the only medium that people then seemed to have control over?
• Or a narrative demonstrating the futility of everything? A celebration of deviance. 
• Possible narratives include:
  • A graphic novel/strip speaking of common rebellions/deviants
  • a graphic novel on the ways of societal collapse, reflected on the bodies of the common
  • the narrative of disintegration and rebirth