Waltonstein - Blog Posts
FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | FRANKENSTEIN: A NEW MUSICAL, Mark Baron | MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady | WISHBONE CLASSICS FRANKENSTEIN, Micheal Burgan | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley | A CATHEDRAL OF ALMOST LOVERS, cornflakesortoast | MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN, Steph Lady | FRANKENSTEIN, Joellen Bland | FRANKENSTEIN, Frank Darabont | FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley
waltonstein, throughout several adaptations
behold: the doomed unrequited waltonstein manifesto courtesy of twitter user ustfile
walton is a stronger man than me because if i found the man who was the culmination of my lifelong dreams of true connection and everything i could possibly want in a friend, who talked to me about my interests at length and encouraged me and told me i would be successful in my endeavors, who wept for me after i confided my deepest desires and ambitions to him, who used the language of my heart, who sympathized with and loved me, and who told me all of his greatest flaws and mistakes and his harrowing several-hundred-pages long life story including the murders of his entire family, upon which i treated him with nothing but understanding and kindness and would do anything to return him to happiness and shoulder his woes, all while tenderly nursing back him from the brink of death while expecting nothing in return, even despite my growing concerns of a mutiny going on, and after all this he told me "I thank you, Walton [...] but think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any man be to me as Clerval was?" i would just walk off the boat
anyway like. walton in the beginning says he dislikes the typical masculine crassness and brutality associated with sailors, because he was raised under the "feminine fosterage" of margaret, and then goes on for pages about how he wants a "friend whose eyes reply to his" or whatever, and that he found something close to this in his lieutenant specifically because his lieutenant has traditionally feminine virtues (dont remember exactly but it was gentleness, kind-heartedness, etc) and then this friend that hes been waiting for all along turns out to be victor. all this to say victor and walton are t4t
this is what waltonstein is to me
Robert Walton laying on his bed kicking his feet up while he writes in his diary letters to his sister about the cute new guy onboard and how he's like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, and how even now in wreck he's soo attractive and amiable, and omg he is like so gentle yet so wise, and when he speaks, ugghhh, although his words are culled with the choicest art, yet they flow with rapidity and unparalleled eloquence 💖💝💞
tfw u rly want this dying guy you found whimpering on a floe of ice but one can ever be to him as clerval was, because even when the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain (rolling eyes emoji)
imagine: picture of henry and walton staring at each other intensely. captioned “team jacob vs team edward”
soft jazz music plays as the love of walton’s life enters on-stage, the world goes all pink and slo-mo and dreamy. record scratch, pans to victor frankenstein coughing up a hairball
we as people should be more like robert walton and henry clerval (hopelessly in love with victor frankenstein)
what if you were willing to do anything to achieve your ambition of making a geographical and scientific discovery to benefit all of mankind via being the first to find the northern passage and get to the north pole but i said "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (and we were both boys)
oh yes their dynamic is so absolutely fucked and weird and sad. i think if victor hadnt died when he did, they would have just ended up making eachother worse and miserable
if victor ever requited walton’s love for him (be it platonic or romantic) i think walton would fall LESS in love. i think walton just loves romanticizing the unobtainable, he chases the unknown, and that’s why he hangs all his hopes on things he feasibly cannot reach - first becoming a famous poet, then sailing to the arctic to find the northern passage, and then victor, who is dying and too hung up on his past to love again
also, if victor HAD lived long enough to recover and be well again, i think walton would have lost interest in victor. victor and walton’s relationship was built and founded primarily on their dynamic as sick and caretaker, and without it i’m not sure walton would know what to do with himself, or he would become overbearing to compensate
at this point, victor would have already exhausted his whole story as well, so there’s no air of mystery around him anymore - nothing for walton to glorify or romanticize
Also it's very uncomfortable to see how much Walton romanticizes Victor's depression. "Noble and godlike in ruin" dude he's just educated in the same way as you and hyperfixating on revenge, please stop
