Line #29 Literature/GeekLove


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/geek_love.jpg]]
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3	Olympia Binewski did not grow up like other girls. For one, her parents were the owners of a traveling carnival. Lil and Al Binewski came up with a scheme to breed their own freak show, experimenting with a cocktail of drugs to create their perfect children. There's Oly herself, an albino hunchback dwarf; her brother Arty, who has flippers instead of human limbs and a sociopathic personality; her sisters Elly and Iphy, who are ConjoinedTwins, and the youngest, Chick, who appears outwardly normal but has strange telepathic powers.
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5	Then things start to get downright disturbing. Very disturbing. Suffice it to say, this is not a book for anyone except those with the strongest of stomachs.
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7	''Geek Love'', written by Katherine Dunn, is a somewhat obscure book probably due to its polarizing effect with critics, who have called it either brilliant or repulsive and disgusting. Creator/TimBurton has expressed a desire to adapt it for the screen, but whether or not that will ever happen is still up in the air.
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9	Has a [[Characters/GeekLove Character Page]]
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12	!!The Novel Contains Examples of:
13	* AbusiveParents: Oly loves her parents, but their treatment of her is up for debate. They make her feel inadequate for not being "special" enough, because her particular deformities aren't so marketable as those of her siblings. Then there's the whole issue of the parents deliberately taking drugs in order to create freakish, deformed children whom they could exploit.
14	* AccompliceByInaction: Elly often accuses Oly of being this to [[spoiler:Arty and his many travesties]], but the latter doesn't see it that way.
15	* AddledAddict: "Crystal" Lil, once she becomes an old woman and years of abusing pills catch up with her.
16	* AdultsAreUseless: Al and Lil either don't know anything about their children's SiblingRivalry, or don't do anything to stop them. Once Arty takes over, neither will stand up to him.
17	* AllTakeAndNoGive: Arty to Oly. [[spoiler:Also his true intention for his cultists. He makes them think he's giving them purpose and contentment by having them join his cult and become like him, but really they're just giving him their entire lifesavings, their limbs, and ultimately their lives.]]
18	* AttentionWhore: '''Arty'''. Big time.
19	* BabyFactory: Lil becomes pregnant no less than ten times (the first four were stillborn and two more didn't survive infancy) and abuses drugs and radiation each time for the express purpose of breeding new show attractions.
20	* BaitAndSwitch: From the title, no less. Be honest, the first time you read it you thought this book was going to be about brainy, socially awkward people stumbling through dating and/or romantic love, right? Interestingly, Dunn still uses the words correctly: carnival geeks struggling with family love. She just cleverly set up our expectations to tear them down.
21	* BodyHorror: [[spoiler:What the Arturian cultists go through.]]
22	* BlessedWithSuck: Chick, to the extreme.
23	* BlindObedience: Oly towards her parents and Arty.
24	* BlondeBrunetteRedhead: Lil is a platinum blonde, Elly and Iphy are brunettes, and all female carnival staff are redheads (through dye, wigs, or otherwise). Enforced by Al and Lil, the latter of whom points out it makes it easy to spot her daughters in a crowd.
25	* BlueBlood: It's implied that Lil was this before she left home to join the carnival.
26	* BrotherSisterIncest: [[spoiler: Oly and Iphy are both romantically in love with their brother, Arty. Oly even has Chick impregnate her with Arty's sperm, and gives birth to his daughter, Miranda]].
27	* BungledSuicide: The Bag Man.
28	* CainAndAbel: [[spoiler: Iphy and Elly represent the female, conjoined variant.]]
29	* CassandraTruth: Elly is the only person to see [[spoiler:Arturo]] for [[MagnificentBastard what he truly is]] '''and''' fear/despise him for it [[spoiler:([[BlindObedience unlike]] [[LoveMartyr Oly]])]], and she tries to warn Oly and Iphy against trusting him many times, to no avail.
30	* CircusBrat: Oly and her siblings.
31	* [[TwinThreesomeFantasy Conjoined Twin Threesome Fantasy]]: Iphy and Elly make big bucks with it.
32	* ChildByRape: Mumpo.
33	* ChildrenAreInnocent: Inverted. Adults, as far as Oly is concerned, are the ones who're innocent, naive, and view childhood through NostalgiaGoggles, while children understand very well that KidsAreCruel and keep adults in the dark by only sharing shallow hurts like skinned knees and dropped ice cream cones, until they too grow up to be [[SelectiveObliviousness oblivious, starry-eyed adults themselves]].
34	* CloudCuckooLander: "Crystal" Lil, especially as her kids reach adolescence and her drug abuse slowly starts to catch up to her. It takes the form of starry-eyed absentmindedness, though.
35	* {{Cult}}: [[spoiler: Arty starts one where the members have to have their own limbs removed in order to make themselves into freaks.]]
36	* DarkAndTroubledPast: [[spoiler:Lil and her husband make it clear that kids who can't sell tickets have no worth in their family. As such, their children are ''deeply'' jealous and competitive of each other, since they see ticket sales as a physical measure of their own worth as human beings. This breeds Arty's [[TheSociopath sociopathy]], ruthlessness, and tyranny.]]
37	* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Chick when he fails to save Mumpo, Elly, and Iphy. He's so grief-stricken that he takes out most of the Binewski family, the Arturian cult, and himself in a fire.]]
38	* DidntThinkThisThrough: Lil abuses drugs and radiation while pregnant to breed carnival freaks for profit. Most of them die stillborn or shortly after birth.
39	* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Chick again. The strain of being the official Arturian cult surgeon and the twins' caretaker slowly wears away at his emotional health, so his sisters' deaths drive him to such grief that he kills himself, and most of the carnival, in a fire.]]
40	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: By the end of the book, all major characters except Miranda and Crystal Lil are dead.]]
41	* TheEmpath: Chick is so empathic that he feels the pain of everything around him, even things that aren't even alive, to the point where he cannot eat meat and gets physically sick when another living thing is harmed.
42	* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The redheaded carnival staff are all just called "the redheads" or "Red" by the family.
43	* ExtremeDoormat: Oly, Oly, Oly. Poor Chick also qualifies.
44	* FatSlob: Exaggerated with Mumpo.
45	* GoodCannotComprehendEvil: Chick and Iphy, [[spoiler:which makes them easy prey for Arty.]]
46	* GreenEyedMonster: Arty to any sibling who might outshine him, especially the twins and Chick. [[spoiler:Later, Oly is this to Iphy for Arty's affections. Miss Lick, Miranda's would-be benefactor, is also this to all young women more beautiful and desirable than her.]]
47	* TheGrotesque: Played straight with Oly during the 'Notes for Now' chapters, otherwise averted or inverted.
48	* GroupieBrigade: Arty's got one.
49	* ICouldaBeenAContender: Lil wanted to become a trapeze artist, until she fell and smashed her nose. She then settled on being a geek (mangling live chickens in a cage). She then married Al, and the two decided to breed their own special brand of marketable carnival freaks. She's still a little wistful about it when Al tells her story to their children, though.
50	* IJustWantToBeLoved: Oly and Chick, who are both made to feel inadequate by their family for not being as "gifted" as their older siblings, are desperate to please and more likely to cater to their family's whims hoping for affection. [[spoiler:Arty takes full advantage of this.]]
51	* IJustWantToBeNormal: Subverted, as Oly and her siblings take pride in what they are and refer to other people derisively as "norms." Oly wishes she were [[IJustWantToBeSpecial more special]], even.
52	** Played straight with Miranda, who wants to have her one freak trait, her tail, removed.
53	* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: Arty eventually reveals to Oly that he's [[AttentionWhore obsessed with the limelight]] and [[GreenEyedMonster jealous of any siblings that might outshine him]] because his deformities make him different enough that he'll never fit in with norms, but not ''quite'' special enough that he can draw a crowd on his own. Without an audience, he's "just an industrial accident." His obsessive need to be more popular than all his other siblings stems from a desire to crush these insecurities.
54	* InspirationallyDisadvantaged: Averted to hell and back with the Benewski siblings. Exploited by [[spoiler:Arty]] for his cult.
55	* IWasQuiteALooker: Lil, though she's still a knock-out when her kids are very young. Over the story she slowly grows out of her looks as they reach adolescence. [[spoiler:Definitely played straight in the "Notes For Now" sections.]]
56	* JerkassHasAPoint: Elly may be a bitch, but she's right not to like or trust [[spoiler:Arturo]]; something she calls [[BlindObedience Oly]] and [[GoodCannotComprehendEvil Iphy]] out on more than once.
57	* KidsAreCruel: The Binewski siblings.
58	* {{Lobotomy}}: [[spoiler: Arty has Elly lobotomized while leaving her conjoined sister unharmed. Afterwards it becomes a standard procedure for Arturans.]]
59	* LoveMartyr: Oly is a sisterly example to Arty. No matter how much he verbally or physically abuses her, [[spoiler:or kills, maims, or arranges the rape of their siblings]], she's always eager to jump at his every whim, hoping for any ''scrap'' of attention from him. [[spoiler:Turns out to be not-so-sisterly love after all.]]
60	* MadScientist: Doctor P.
61	* MeaningfulName: Chick's real name is Fortunato, "The Lucky One." It actually turns out to be an ironic name.
62	* MindOverMatter: Chick can move almost anything with his mind.
63	* MoralityPet: Chick is this to everybody except [[spoiler:Arty, TheSociopath]].
64	* MurderSuicide: [[spoiler:Iphy kills Elly for killing Mumpo, then dies soon after, as she's a half of a pair of ConjoinedTwins. It's implied that Chick starts and/or accelerates the fire that kills Arty, the Arturan cultists, most of the Binewskis, and himself.]]
65	* OffingTheOffspring: Arty suggests this is what happened to their sister Apple, a vegetable of a toddler who only ever moved her eyelids, mouth, and bowels. (Then again, considering what a ConsummateLiar he is [[spoiler:and the fact that he smothered another sibling the same way Apple was smothered]], whether this is true is anyone's guess.)
66	** [[spoiler: Elly kills Mumpo, her ChildByRape, after Chick brings her back from her catatonic state.]]
67	** [[spoiler: It turns out Arty threatened to do this to Miranda as a baby, which is the ''real'' reason Oly gave her up.]]
68	* OldMoney: Implied to be where Lil comes from, as she's described as being from a very nice, refined New England family.
69	* OutWithABang: The Bag Man, both literally and figuratively.
70	* ParentalMarriageVeto: [[spoiler:The twins try (and fail) to convince their father to give one regarding their "marriage" to the Bag Man.]]
71	* PeopleJars: How the Binewskis keep their "failed projects."
72	* RadiationInducedSuperpowers: Lil takes radioactive isotopes while pregnant with Chick, which is used to explain his psychic powers.
73	* ReedRichardsIsUseless: Chick's abilities, which is occasionally lampshaded.
74	* PolarOppositeTwins: Elly is an AlphaBitch, Iphy is a NiceGirl.
75	* ReleasedToElsewhere: Strongly implied to be the ultimate fate of [[spoiler: Arturan cultists]].
76	* TheReveal: It's strongly implied throughout the novel that Oly's family made her give up Miranda because she was too "normal," and thus unprofitable as a carnival attraction. [[spoiler:Near the end, it's revealed that her family was too broken to care by that point. It was because Miranda's own father, [[TheSociopath Arty]], [[OffingTheOffspring kept threatening to kill her]] that Oly gave her up to save her life.]]
77	* SanitySlippage: Lil slowly becomes more... ''[[CloudCuckooLander absent-minded]]'' over the course of the story, as her pill-abuse slowly increases and [[spoiler:Arty's tyranny becomes harder and harder to [[SelectiveObliviousness not notice]]. She loses it completely when her whole family (sans Oly) is wiped out in a fire.]]
78	* SelectiveObliviousness: Al and Lil toward Arty [[spoiler:after he takes over the carnival]].
79	* SexByProxy: An expected side effect of being conjoined.
80	* SiblingRivalry: The Binewski children often compete for higher ticket sales. Exaggerated with Arty, who [[spoiler: killed several of his infant siblings when he felt that they might overshadow him in the future (and tried the same with Chick)]]. And once he [[spoiler: rises to power with his cult, it's Iphy and Elly, his former biggest rivals, who get ''by far'' the worst of it.]]
81	* ShoutOut:
82	** The name of Oly's daughter, Miranda, is a reference to ''Theatre/TheTempest'', which the author quotes at the beginning of the book.
83	** In the epilogue, Oly says in a letter to her daughter that she is "one of us", a reference to the film ''Film/{{Freaks}}''.
84	* SoBeautifulItsACurse: Miss Lick believes that attractive women are exploited by men and never develop their other gifts. [[spoiler: This is why she arranges for them to be disfigured.]]
85	* TheSociopath: Arty, so, so much. Artificial charm without sincerity, lack of remorse for any atrocities, sees people (even family) as little more than inanimate objects, sees his own fame as paramount but people as disposable tools to use and discard for his own purpose [[spoiler: including his siblings, and ''own daugher'']]...
86	* StockholmSyndrome: Iphy is implied to go through this [[spoiler:after Arty lobotomizes Elly, and locks Iphy up so she has no choice but to carry to term and raise the ChildByRape he forced on her. She becomes as starry-eyed and absent-minded as her mother Lil, cooing over her monstrously large baby, and is so distraught when Elly comes to and kills Mumpo that she kills Elly in retaliation.]]

Context Literature / GeekLove