#I’m like the reverse of Harker. in a way

[theheartmold]

I hope you know I am LIVING for your kotorblogging. as someone who's been playing this game since I was in the single digit age range it's genuinely a treasure to see people with media literacy enjoying it now, even with its completely outdated mechanics and graphics. I hope you enjoy the roller coaster friend and I cannot WAIT to see the posts that come of it 💜

the graphics do cause me pain but the mechanics are shockingly not putting me off! maybe it’s bc I’m an idiot and I love simple combat mechanics. Okay click and queue easy mode. Yay. Miss me with my Elden Ring combat combo bullshit 😔

I’ve gotten into it bc of @scrollofgrease who has been replaying and also purchased both games for me as a gift! I’m starting with kotor ii so I can keep up with what they’re telling me but I’m told it’s fun to play the twists backwards anyway so 👀

We will see if I keep kotorposting here or if I feel bad for my dragon age mutuals and move it to a sideblog—I normally don’t for other games but kotor feels like a continuous liveblogging experience and it’s not like I’m done with dragon age. So. We shall see

[crochetedblorbos]

"Actually, it’s not fine at all, but we’re all in the same horrifying boat together at this point, so…"

Character Name: Madeline "Maddie" Townsend Fandom: The Holmwood Foundation [Podcast] @theholmwoodfoundation Voiced By: Rebecca Root Yarn Used: Hair: CraftSmart Value - Butter Skin: CraftSmart Value - Peach Dress: Loops & Threads Soft Classic - Aqua

"I think I would very much like a friend in all this. It is nice not to feel so alone."

Character Name: Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker Fandom: The Holmwood Foundation [Podcast] Voiced By: Rebecca Root Yarn Used: Hair: CraftSmart Value - Burgundy Skin: Loops & Threads Soft Classic - Taupe Dress: Loops & Threads Soft Classic - Navy

Basic pattern here.

Look. I didn’t necessarily PLAN to do Maddie and Mina so early, but the one-year anniversary of the pilot dropping was last month and it seemed fitting. Plus it’s the start of Dracula Daily season, so here goes nothing. Anyway, here’s our girls!

For anyone who hasn’t listened to the pilot of The Holmwood Foundation, or isn’t familiar with the premise, Maddie Townsend, former history teacher, is a junior archivist at the Holmwood Foundation, an organization founded by Arthur Holmwood (Lord Godalming) and Mina Harker to study vampires, especially Dracula (the book really happened, just…slightly differently than their friend Bram wrote it, with their blessing). Something goes catastrophically wrong, and long story short, Maddie is possessed by the ghost of Mina. (Her cranky, crotchety wet cat of a boss, Jeremy Larkin, is possessed by Jonathan Harker and is rather pissed about it.) I wanted to find a good way of displaying that, and since I don’t think I can adequately do one of those turn-me-inside-out toys, I figured this would do.

Obviously, Mina and Maddie are wildly varying from the base pattern! I modified it as follows:

Maddie: I actually went top down with her, so inverted the pattern starting with 6sc in a circle and proceeding in reverse from R77 to about R36, except I never increased to 38sc. When I hit that round, I did the same thing I did with Mini, Azu, and Alice and crocheted the round in front loops only. I did her hair with the same method I’ve been using for long hair since Gerry, except that I gave her a side part like in the official art.

Mina: I let Mina have a high collared blouse, which seemed appropriately Victorian/Georgian, and basically did her according to pattern starting with R37, in the back loops of the previous round. (I’m not sure why her face came out more angular than Maddie’s.)

Mina’s Hair: I wanted to give Mina a classy turn of the century updo, so I made the strands twice as long as I would have expected and stitched them around the outer edge of the scalp, then took the long ends and crossed them back and forth over the head to form the hairstyle. I actually really like how it turned out! (I also untwisted one of the bits of yarn in the front to give her an errant curl over her forehead.)

Skirt: I did Mina’s skirt first, not for any real reason other than I was at the ballpark and only had the navy yarn with me rather than the aqua. It went as follows: R1: Join yarn to middle back of R36, ch 1, sc in each front loop around, sl st in first sc (36 sc). R2: Ch 1, sc in back loop of each st around, sl st in first sc (36 sc). R3: Ch 1, [sc in first 4 st, 2sc in next st, sc in next 4 st] 4 times, sl st in first sc (40 sc). R4: Ch 1, [sc in first 9 st, 2sc in next st] 4 times, sl st in first sc (44 sc). R5: Ch 1, [sc in first 5 st, 2sc in next st, sc in next 5 st] 4 times, sl st in first sc (48 sc). R6: Ch 1, [sc in first 11 st, 2sc in next st] 4 times, sl st in first sc (52 sc). R7: Ch 1, [sc in first 6 st, 2sc in next st, sc in next 6 st] 4 times, sl st in first sc (56 sc). R8: Ch 1, [sc in first 6 st, 2sc in next st] 8 times around, sl st in first sc (64 sc). R9: Ch 1, [sc in first 7 s5, 2sc in next st] 8 times around, sl st in first sc (72 sc). R10: Ch 1, [sc in first 4 st, 2sc in next st, sc in next 4 st] 8 times around, sl st in first sc (80 sc). R11-R13: Ch 1, sc in each st around, sl st in first sc (80 sc). R14-R17: Ch 2, hdc in each st around, sl st in first hdc (80 hdc). R18-29: CH 3, dc in each st around, sl st in first dc (80 dc). Fasten off.

I then flipped her over and switched to the aqua for Maddie’s skirt. I wanted the style to be a little different (in the official art, it’s a tea-length skirt, but I had to make it go all the way to the ground to cover Mina’s face), so I did as follows: R1: Join yarn to middle back of loops from inner skirt. Ch 3, dc in each st around, sl st in first dc (36 dc). R2: Ch 3, [dc in first 4 st, 2dc in next st, dc in next 4 st] 4 times, sl st in first dc (40 dc). R3: Ch 3, [dc in first 2 st, 2dc in next st, dc in next 2 st] 8 times, sl st in first dc (48 dc). R4: Ch 3, [dc in first 5 st, 2dc in next st] 8 times, sl st in first dc (56 dc). R5: Ch 3, [dc in first 3 st, 2dc in next st, dc in next 3 st] 8 times, sl st in first dc (64 dc). R6: Ch 3, [dc in first 7 st, 2dc in next st] 8 times, sl st in first dc (72 dc). R7: Ch 3, [dc in first 4 st, 2dc in next st, dc in next 4 st] 8 times, sl st in first dc (80 dc). R8-10: Ch 3, dc in each st around, sl st in first dc (80 dc).

At this point, I decided to do a bit of a fancy pattern for the rest of the skirt. To do this, I did a triangle pattern. The first round I did it in dc and did it too narrow - a “V” of two dcs crocheted together like a decrease (dc2tog) followed by 2dc in the same stitch - but that didn’t math right, so following that I did it triple crochet and did three stitches crocheted together (tc3tog) followed by three tc in the same stitch, as follows: R11: Ch 3, [dc2tog, 2dc in next st] 26 times, dc2tog, dc in next st, sl st in first dec (80 dc). R12: Ch 4, [tc3tog, 3tc in next st] 20 times around, sl st in first tc3tog (80 tc). R13: Ch 4, [3tc in first st, tc3tog] 20 times around, sl st in first tc (80 tc). R14-15: Repeat R12-13. R16: Hold both layers of skirt together. Ch 1, [sc through first st on both skirts, sk 3 st, 7dc in next st through both skirts, sk 3 st] 10 times, sl st in first sc (10 sc, 70 dc). Fasten off.

[sseanettles]

@lasarusbird you wanted my essay sooo I’m gonna word vomit for a bit about the dichotomy of Arthur Holmwood/Lucy Westenra and Jonathan Harker/Mina Murray and it's gonna be really rambley and not fully fleshed out and start with me just going off about lucy and then forced emotional repression so bear with me but likeeeeee okay. okay. hm.

I know there are less kind (& tbh likely on point to stoker’s authorial intent given he was a Victorian man) analyses to do of the women in this book and their relationships and of lucy specifically & her whole portrayal/her death/the way Stoker’s vampiricism vilifies women for having a sexuality and how a staking death is very phallic apparently and Lucy’s death was “overly graphic.” but like. I think that’s a highly unimaginative, easy take because. um.

there’s also an entirely different way to read it?????

(to preface, I am a romantic sex-repulsed/indifferent ace, so I really, truly adore Lucy and relate so fucking hardcore to the whole loves big, loves broadly, it’s confusing, it’s hard, you don’t want to hurt people but do not mistake my intent thing, and the horror of being twisted into something that went from loving broadly and romantically and within her own control to lusting uncharacteristically with an insatiable hunger with no other drive than to hurt and to drain just….really hits in a way that I get can offend allosexual folks but like for me is a very deep-hitting horror.)

So anyway the BIG fucking thing for me is that it's NOT that lucy is “punished” for wanting three husbands. Dracula does not pick her because she dared to have desires. Lucy’s big-hearted love kept her alive for so much longer than Dracula intended. Lucy’s love saves her for as long as it can, it staves off Dracula for as long as it can until that gluttonous, cruel being who seeks only to destroy, who seeks to covet and absorb and steal, finally, finally gets what he came for. Lucy’s love fills her with the blood of four men, pulls her from the edge of death time and time again, but because she’s a sleepwalker, because her mother thinks she knows best, because the gang doesn’t communicate openly and effectively and honestly with each other, because they can’t talk openly and honestly with Lucy’s mother given her own illness (and as someone who literally works with heart patients for a living, the high stress will kill them thing at ESHF is very real), because her husband is not home to see the extent and speed of her deterioration because he is simultaneously tending to his beloved, dying father, because Dracula gets what he wants once he’s decided he wants it, Lucy dies. Lucy dies, in the end, because she is alone.

Lucy lived as long as she did because she loved so much. And because so many loved her.

She is not penalized for her love. Her love keeps her alive for as long as it can until the unstoppable march of the Count claims its final victory.

And Arthur…Arthur knows about her love for Seward and Quincey!!! When he goes to Lucy’s body after her first death, he brings Seward in with him. He tells him I know you loved her, she told me, and she loved you, you were her best friend, she told me everything. He does not hate Seward. There is no jealousy, no grandstanding, no you had your fling, your fleeting romance, but she was mine, your grief has no business here. There is instead I loved her. And I know you loved her, too. And I know she loved you. Please…please come with me. Please stand in my grief with me, because I know it’s your grief, too. There is Quincey staying with Arthur throughout his mourning, keeping him steadfast company because his grief is Arthur's grief and reverse, there is Quincey giving Mina a passing glimpse into his own grief that he keeps smothered down to tend to Arthur as best as he can.

And yes, you can read this as the “mother-ing” of the women, the diminishing of them to the angel in the house and the caretaker.

But you can also read it as a pulling back of the curtain on the tragedy and pain that is existing in a world that demands such stoicism of men in the face of such loss and grief. Arthur lost his wife, killed his wife, and he is not allowed to mourn openly. He has no less than three separate breakdowns, and the only one who gives him the space to lean into it, to fully release to body-wracking sobs and self-harm, is Mina. Mina is the only one who has a place in Victorian society that allows her to feel grief to that depth (hell we STILL fucking deal with that toxic bullshit mindset today), and Arthur needs that space, he is denied that space, he is denied that release, and until he steps into Mina’s world, he has been suffering on a level that cannot be healed for a man in this society. But Mina’s world gives that mercy. Patriarchy is a double-edged sword. And Quincey gets a passing touch of that mercy too when he sees Mina’s own emotional aftermath to Arthur’s breakdown and offers her some compassion for her pain, for Arthur’s pain. Which is why they all react in the way that they do to Mina’s gentleness and kindness (hey, Harker, your wife is a goddess among women). It’s not oh look, fucking mother-role and caretaker and angel-wife strikes again.

It's you have an emotional intelligence and freedom I so desperately need but cannot access for myself. I have never been given this. I don’t know how to do it. How do you do this, how do you mourn like this, Arthur is shouldering the grief of his father, his wife, his mother-in-law, the grief of his friends, of Mina—how does a single man bear all of this?

The answer is, he doesn’t. He shouldn’t. He should be allowed to cry and to scream and to sob and to beat his hands upon his head and to weep like a child because this is so much pain. It is so much pain, and it needs to be released, and he is not allowed by societal script and mandate to do so.

Until Mina enters.

You can read it as perpetuation of the same sexist dysfunction. Of the separation of the spheres and of emotional labor.

You can also read it from today as a (likely accidental) critique of it…as a good god, look at this extra level of tragedy. Look at this extra level of fucked up. Look at how this system has failed everyone in it. And look at how they are starting to chip away at the boundaries of it all by talking to each other, by sharing in their love, in their pain, in their sorrow. Look at how it binds them together and in the end lifts them to victory over the Count who operates by isolating and coveting.

Anyway. Now we get into Arthur vs. Jonathan. Because oh MAN do I have thoughts and I know we all go feral over Jonathan and Mina and for like. Obvious reasons. But if we can also go apeshit a bit over Arthur/Lucy uhhhhhhhh I would love that folks okay let me get on my soap box real quick.

Jonathan/Mina and Arthur/Lucy are two sides of the same coin. We all know all the pages and pages of meta about Jonathan and Mina that we’ve all written about the Victorian Addamses of it all and the “I would damn my soul to stay at your side” and the “if you’re damned, I’m damned with you” and the sickbed wedding in a world where the man was the breadwinner and the financial and inheriting power, if he was disabled or insane or died, you as a woman were fucked. We know all that. We were all at the devil’s sacrament, we’re all that good place meme. And I do adore them very much.

But Arthur/Lucy.....Arthur/Lucy is “you asked me to bring you peace…and even if it robs me of mine forever more, I shall bring you peace.” Arthur/Lucy is “I will open my veins for you until there is nothing left to open, even if our hope of a happy ending is slimmer than that Arthurian sword at sunrise, I will open my veins for you and I would fill you with my own self until I am on death’s threshold myself.” Arthur/Lucy is “you are my wife. And our vow was til death do us part, and I will honor that. I will honor that, I will ensure that death has truly parted us, til death do us part, and this is not death, so I will not yet be parted from you.”

Arthur/Lucy is “like the figure of Thor.” And this part is what makes me so goddamn feral over them. Okay, so I’ve done quite a lot of research into Norse mythology both for my own interest and as a pagan and particularly through sources that do their best to separate (to the best of our historic ability) Nordic faith from Christian missionary distortion and common misrepresentations that exist because of that lens. And one of the big ones Thor is not a battle god or a war god or anything like that. If you’re thinking battle frenzy beserker that’s actually O∂inn. What Thor was the god of was the god of hallowing. Thor rendered things holy/drove out dark and troublesome elements. Lightning, thunder, the hammer--all means of that hallowing. Thor was a defender, a god of honorable men and honorable fighters. Thor was invoked at weddings to bless the newly married couple and the life they were about to embark upon together…to bless the way ahead to be traveled.

Now, again, I doubt Bram Stoker knew this. I doubt that was what he intended as he had Seward describe Arthur staking vampire Lucy as “like the figure of Thor.” But it is, nonetheless, what he has written on an actual factual level.

And that (please read sarcastically) “phallic, overly violent, misogynist” death scene that “punishes Lucy for having desires?” With the imagery of Thor, god of hallowing, the blesser of marriage and unfolding life, husband to Sif goddess of the earth’s fertility…that becomes a husband fulfilling his vows to his wife. That becomes him honoring their vows in the way they never could because the Count robbed them of their future. That becomes him reclaiming Lucy’s soul and spirit and heart and love from the Count, giving it back to her, to how she existed and how she loved and how she lived, because that is what a husband and wife do. They safeguard each other, and he promised. He promised he would give her peace. He promised he would love her and protect her. And so, he kills the monster that had made a home within his wife’s body, banishes it from his beloved’s form until she is herself again. Until she belongs to herself again and is granted peace in God’s rest. And yeah. The monster writhes and screams and sprays blood everywhere because it’s an animal getting put down with a stake. There is a lot of blood in a body that has been drinking nothing but blood. If you want to read that sexually, go for it. You can also just. Not. Do that. Also, she made her main food source kids, what the fuck do you mean Lucy’s vampiricism is unhinged sexuality. As a vampire, she tries to lure (if I remember right) exactly one man to her, her husband, with a temptress’ voice and trance state. When it doesn’t work, she doesn’t start luring men left and right which is what she should have done if her vampiricism was truly punishing her for “sexual desire of multiple men.” Instead, she lures children to her and eats them as a twisting of the mother she would have been. She becomes the perversion of the life that was stolen from her, of the future the Count robbed from them. And Arthur gives her back to herself. He gives her the peace that she asked Van Helsing on her deathbed to give her.

Even if it destroys him. Even if it leaves him sobbing and wrecked. Even if it brings him such pain, even if it distresses him so much that he is just drenched in sweat and collapses at the end not from exertion but from the sheer emotional and psychological toll it took on him, even through all of it….

Where Jonathan looked Mina in the eye when she said “do not let me turn into this godforsaken monster” and he replied “I’m sorry but I cannot promise that, I cannot kill you, but I can promise you won’t be alone,” Arthur Holmwood looked his beloved Lucy in the eye, kissed her on the brow, and said “no matter how it pains me, I promise I won’t leave you barred from your peace.” Where Jonathan went from sweet and wide-eyed to the world to jaded and driven and almost angry, Arthur went from generous but solemn lord-in-waiting to a vulnerable and open, kind, sorrow-edged man. Jonathan’s pain drove him inward. Arthur’s drove him outward.

And call me basic…but I see you, Lord No-Don’t-Call-Me-Godalming-Not-Yet. I see you, Arthur Thor Holmwood. I see you, Mister Peacegiver. And I give you your flowers.

up next a rant about claims that van helsing was creepy with lucy on her deathbed or infantilizes only the women

[lauroftheuniverse]

Idk if any of yall both know the song Cupids Chokehold and are big fans of Dracula but that song I feel like describes Jonathan and Mina to a T.

Like the whole song is about how the narrator loves his girlfriend and everything about her. That’s Jonathan Harker. And I’m obsessing over it.

Some lines I drew connections to:

Starting off small, “I mean she even cooks me pancakes”

Start of the book, first introduction to Jonathan and he’s wanting to get Mina a recipe for a dish he had while traveling (the paprika hendl obviously)

THE FIRST INTRODUCTION YALL

“But I can tell by the way she says my name”

This might be a stretch but the way he calls her Mina, but when he’s thinking he’s about to die he calls her Wilhelmina and says he loves her.

“It's gonna be a long drive home but I know as soon as I arrive home I open the door, take off my coat, and throw my bag on the floor she’ll be back into my arms once more for sure”

They’re both anxiously waiting to see each other in the beginning of the book. When Jonathan’s trapped Mina’s wondering what happened and if he’s okay. Jonathan misses her dearly, and when he finally returns, Mina rushes to him.

“And we can be on the phone for three hours not saying one word”

THEY LITERALLY GOT MARRIED WHILE HE WAS IN THE HOSPITAL BED AND JUST ESCAPED DRACULA, THEY TREASURE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.

“And when I start to build my future, she's the main component”

Yet again, Jonathan Harker constantly mentioning Mina in his journal, and they were clearly planning futures around each other.

And the lyric that fully sells this as Jonathan and Mina:

“I know I'm young, but if I had to choose her or the sun I'd be one nocturnal son of a gun”

After Mina’s encounter with Dracula, he was fully ready in case Mina’s vampirism couldn’t be reversed. He’d choose Mina over the Sun, any day of the week, any hour of the day, any minute of the hour, any second of the minute. He’d be willing to call God wrong if God cast her out.

Anyways Cupids Chokehold is literally Jon and Mina.

[vigilskeep]

HARKER!!! How do you create and develop your OCs!!!! Your brain is so big!!!!

Whenever I make characters, I have a hard time getting past the surface level and really understanding what makes them tick. WHATS YOUR THOUGHT PROCESS? I am full of admiration.

honoured u think so!!! um Advices

when it comes to viddy game characters. make ur oc a product of the world and centred on the game’s main themes/conflicts. for example, dao has main themes like duty, vengeance, and sacrifice, so those are all good choices for what your character is About. bg3 so far seems to be about agency, bodily autonomy, power, and what it costs to achieve those things, so you want your character to be in dialogue with that. get that done, and congrats: everything in the game is now about your character and their journey personally! all quests & side quests will echo you and your character will have unique perspective on them

don’t be afraid to make the ‘wrong’ choices, or, more specifically, don’t rush into choosing the ‘right’ one. instead of thinking about the objectively best way to resolve a situation from your uninvolved position as the player, let your reactions be personal. your character isn’t always going to say and do the unbiased neutral best thing and that’s good!!

first of all try to think about your character’s frame of reference for it. everyone has a sort of reference library of experiences which they can use to interpret new circumstances. games are your friend and will usually try to help you with this; for example da2, a game in which your characters always has siblings, has a lot of sibling-focused quests that your character will have a unique take on. but it can be much simpler; what does your player character notice about an npc? do they have something in common? is your character physically stronger and bigger or smaller and weaker? what does your character assume about people who talk a certain way? how does any of that make them react to them? etc. etc. keep track in your head of how the location and enemy types make them feel too. my poor hawke had an ongoing anxiety meter to represent his dislike of real danger to his allies especially from darkspawn, and the more overloaded that was, the more rash and aggressively i would let him react. that was a fun way combat could affect other gameplay; for instance i fully killed some npcs that i could’ve let go, specifically because they’d knocked out one of my people in a fight

when getting into backstory try to sort of reverse engineer why they act the way they act? people tend to behave in certain ways because those are the methods that have gotten them through their life. what are the strategies that have helped them survive? being aggressive? being charming? following orders? staying on the sidelines? lying? and then you can sort of create the environment that encouraged them to be that way. (this doesn’t always mean complying with what the environment valued/expected/wanted of them; often defiance is what people needed to do to get through it with their soul intact.) that’s good for getting a little under their skin to see what makes them tick as u say

uhhh what else. try to be aware of their physicality and the way they look and move and how that affects others’ perception of them. how tactile are they and how much do they gesture? basically think about what comes across when you look at a companion talking and figure out what they get when they look at you. for example, i have a very tactile hawke and i typically imagine a lot more of that casual physical contact when i’m doing companion conversations, and a lot more imposing physical aggression when he’s talking to people he doesn’t like. obviously this requires you doing a bit of imaginative work on top of the game visuals but i believe in you. it just makes them come alive a bit

that’s my kind of... standardised method... more generic advice: people don’t have good or bad traits they have traits which are good or bad in extremes and sticking to a trait whether the consequences are good or bad is often fun; don’t be afraid to be bitchy or aggressive when the occasion calls for it, you often get a lot more life out of this and if you can love a companion for it they can still love you; try maintaining “in character” priorities during combat or when just walking around and figuring out what they’re noticing; sometimes making a big decision that seems “out of character” is actually character-defining because you discover what makes them break from their usual nature

i hope that helps?? that’s how i do things anyway :)

[princefleabitten]

Very random Drizzt question. You have read The Last Threshold (I adore those comics you draw for the books, btw). The wikipedia plot synopsis (forgive me, I am FAR behind and have a short attention span, I need to cheat to get the lore) describes Drizzt's time in Quick's manor as a "guest/prisoner." I am curious how accurate that is. Was he a "guest" in the same way Johnathan Harker was Dracula's guest? Did he actually have a semi-nice time aside from having to see his friends' petrified bodies every day? Was he like, free-range during the day and then ushered into a cage at nighttime?

Drizzt time in Quicks mansion was wild (I swear like genre change wild. But I liked it, it was interesting, I was just like woah what’s happening🫠)

Effron and Drizzt were separated from the group during a fight in the mansion. At first he was held for a while in a small magical prison together with effron (they bonded there and talked about her life stories) They didn’t get food and they didn’t have guards or something so they didn’t know what would happen. Then Drizzt was kept in a dungeon chained to a wall for months. Here he was fed spoiled food and Quick beat him. He could hear them torturing Effron from the other room. Then after months Quick bid Drizzt to a private quarter where he can live from now on with is warm and comfortable and has good food.

The deal here was that Drizzt didn’t know that Entreri, Dahlia and Afa were petrified but he knew that Effron was tortured if he didn’t obey. That’s why he couldn’t do anything. In this time Drizzt pondered about that he now kinda likes Quick and described his Stockholm syndrome in his diary text. So the range was from the most terrible time to an ok-ish time.

I think it was kinda reversed Johnathan Harker when I think about it 😂 the creepy I’m kept in a strangers house part is at the end of his stay

(Thank you for liking my sketches btw💕)

[dominadajarvispokan]

Apparently they are keeping an eye on my post, but I’m blocked so I can’t reply. No matter.

This is my response to why I do not buy the OP's claim that Dracula is an antisemitic caricature.

The eponymous vampire is the scion of an ancient warrior tribe best known for defending the borders of Christendom. His descendants as well as ancestors are repeatedly said to be noble and admirable people, barring the ones who consorted with the Devil.

So right there I ask, what kind of Jew-coded villain is said to belong to a warrior race? Much less a defender of Christendom. What kind of Jew-coded family is repeatedly spoken of in such glowing terms?

But let's move on.

Our ancient evil drinks human blood, and in doing so creates an army, or dare I say, a pandemic of vampirism.

Since when was blood-borne contagion a part of the Blood-libel? Or maybe, just maybe, this was a new and different beast unrelated to the Jews which also happened to be a blood-sucker.

But let's pretend that the contagion here is a metaphor for the OP's so-called reverse imperialism and colonisation. That Drac wants to turn the entire world into slaves for his coven of vampires.

For reasons that are not clearly spelled out, he has chosen to target the heart of the British Empire, rather than literally the rest of Europe with its numerous metropoles, which are headquarters of other powerful colonial empires such as the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and yes, the Dutch.

The problem is, Jews were hated in all of Western Europe. So why is his master plan specifically built on evading the European mainland (to the point that he chose to sail around it), rather than infiltrating all of those countries. Remember this creature is feared as far as China. What prevented him from conquering every country that fell on the Trans-European railway line?

What, he can take on Britain, but they're too much for him?

But maybe he really is an anglophile, as the memes claim. Or maybe this is a case of creator provincialism, in which aliens always invade the USA (or in this case, Britain).

Now for what he actually did. His modus operandi is the control of animals (none of whom like to be controlled, incl. the Norwegian wolf unimaginatively named Berserker), association with gypsies, and preying (for food, and to create an army, but in a very rape-like way*) on women, children and the insane.

The OP spoke of "what resonances were being invoked to evoke horror". They claim it is the use of libelous stereotypes typically ascribed to nineteenth century British Jews.

But has the OP read the book I wonder?

Because the horror of Dracula does not lie in the vampire.

It lies in the fact that Jonathan Harker ignored the natives. In the fact that the four men failed to loop in first Mrs Westenra (on the pretext of sparing her a fatal shock) and then ignored Renfield's pleas on the grounds that he was previously insane. The real horror lay in the fact that they exploited Mina's skills and then excluded her purely because it was 'not women's work'.

The horror lay in the fact that the only reason Dracula could gain any sort of foothold is that our White Male Protagonists constantly ignored and belittled the marginalised people - the natives, women, the insane.

That the war against Dracula was finally won only by the re-inclusion of Mina in the campaign.

It seems in their fervour for proving Dracula to be an antisemitic screed written for a White British audience, OP completely forgot that it was a harsh criticism of toxic male stereotypes and white supremacy, written by an Irish author.

*That is entire the extent of sex and sexuality in the book BTW, that their hunting and feeding is akin to sexual predation. There is no commentary on repression or expression or anything. Just the implication that male vamps are like incubi, and female ones are like succubi. Both common monster templates that date back to ancient Mesopotamia.

Citations:

I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood.

Chapter XVII, 30th Sept, Mina Harker's Journal

He told me that for days and nights past—weary days and sleepless nights—he had been unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of sorrow. There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow was surrounded, he could speak freely.

Ibid

She has man’s brain—a brain that a man should have were he much gifted—and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination. Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us; after to-night she must not have to do with this so terrible affair. It is not good that she run a risk so great. We men are determined—nay, are we not pledged?—to destroy this monster; but it is no part for a woman.

Chapter XVIII, 30th Sept, John Seward's Diary

There are no fewer than five separate occasions after this entry in which all the men (except Quincey) congratulate themselves for keeping Mina out. Why would Stoker go to such an extent to tell us this, I wonder.

[thiswasinevitableid]

feel free not to take this but it is still technically march so. vampire sternclay nsfw, a hungry submissive vampire being so, so good in the hope that their human will let them have a taste?

Here it is! I guess it’s april now but eh, on this blog it’s always monster time.

Content Notes: Mentions of blood, since we’re dealing with vampires. The roleplay in this could read as dubcon, since Stern has something Barclay needs, but aftercare is shown and even in the scene it’s clear Barclay feels safe and happy.

“I thought we could act out that, um, request you had for me tomorrow night”

“The one where you let me…”

“Yes, big guy, that one.”

------------------------------------------------------------------

Barclay waits in Mt. Sterns study, clock on the mantle reading three minutes to six. Lamps are being lit up and down the street as the citizens of London flock out into the first warm night of the year. Barclay will not be joining them; Mr.Stern has other plans for him, and the crosses over the windows and doors to the street ensure Barclay doesn’t go anywhere without his permission. 

It could be worse. Much worse.

Mr. Stern frequents the gentleman's club where Barclay is (was) a cook, is polite and charming when he discusses the latest evidence of monsters in the Himalayas or the depths of the sea. He’s American, like Barclay, which meant someone appreciated the pies he made for dessert. Every visit, he stopped by the kitchen to compliment Barclays food, insisting was the best in the city. 

So imagine Barclays’ horror when, half-starved and foggy-brained, the man he pounced on in an alley turned out to be none other than Joseph Stern. The fear intensified when the human easily overpowered and pinned him, revealing that he was an agent of the crown, a member of the Royal Order of Vampire Hunters.

“I can’t let you free, not in good conscience given you attacked me and could attack someone else. But I don’t want to hurt you, Barclay.”

The agents solution was to bring the vampire home with him, lock him in the safety of the cellar (so he wouldn’t get burnt), and use him as a subject for his research. Mr. Stern prides himself on being the preeminent scholar on the subject of vampirism (“Dr. Helsing’s research is sorely lacking, but everyone goes to him because of the Harker Affair”), and couldn’t pass up the chance to make use of his live-in vampire. Generally, he peppers Barclay with questions or submits him to minor medical tests, always giving him a glass of blood to drink while they work. That glass is conspicuously absent tonight, as was the note Mr. Stern usually leaves him detailing what to expect. 

Barclay bounces his knee as his stomach growls; they ran out of blood last night and a new supply has yet to arrive. Then the door opens, and he perks up like a bloodhound offered a bone. 

“Hello, Barclay, thank you for being so prompt.” Mr.Stern is in his full suit, hair styled as if he just returned from the office. 

“Of course, sir. I, uh, I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” He smiles, licks his lips as the human removes his jacket, revealing more of his throat in the process. 

“You like being my research assistant?”

“Very much sir.”

Mr. Stern rolls up his shirtsleeves, “I think you’ll like tonight's experiment quite a bit. On the desk.” He pats the strangely empty hardwood and Barclay sits on the edge, tall enough that his feet still touch the floor. The human opens his dictograph, stops before turning it on, “lie down.”

Barclay does as he’s told, jolts in confusion as Stern pulls three leafs of wood from the desk; one on either side of Barclay and one at his feet, meaning that his whole body is on the table with a few inches of room to spare on all sides.

“This isn’t your normal desk, is it sir?”

“No, I had it made just for us.” The dictograph clicks on, “April 14th, experiment twenty-nine; determining the relationship between sexual arousal and bloodlust in vampires.”

“Wait, what?” Barclay bolts upright, starts climbing off the desk only for Stern to firmly cup his cheek. 

“Barclay, you want to be a good specimen, don’t you?” Something sharp and wicked as a scalpel glints behind the clinical curiosity in his blue eyes. 

“Yes, sir.” He does, he really does, but he’s so hungry. Hungry and terrified that whatever Stern is planning will cause Barclay to admit the feelings he has to keep reburying in his chest thanks to their reemerging whenever Stern smiles at him. 

“Then do as you’re told.” He takes his hand away, Barclay mourning the loss of contact as the reclines back onto the desk. 

“Much better.” Stern walks around the desk, patting Barclay’s head along the way, “If you’re good tonight, I’ll give you a special reward. One you’ve never had before.”

Barclay resolves to be better than he’s ever been. Stern's rewards are well planned and generous, leaving Barclay positively spoiled when he’s done. He buys him the expensive draught that lets vampires consume non-blood foods without illness, then takes him to dinner. Brings him rare teas and books to read while he sips them. When he learned Barclay liked theater and opera, evenings out in finery became part of the rotation. He can’t imagine what the extra special reward will be, but he hopes it involves more of Sterns gentle touches on his skin. 

“I’m starting the experiment now. To establish our baseline, how aroused are you?”

“Like, a little?”

“Are you craving blood?”

“Yeah, I’m kinda hungry, but not like, crazed or anything.”

“Good. I’ll keep checking in with the subject throughout the process.” He pulls a notebook from his shelf, and Barclay can see a checklist running down the page, “I’ll start by relaxing the subject.” 

The detached manner in which Stern refers to him should aggravate him; instead, his cock twitches in his pants and he squirms, hoping the human will say it again. 

Stern rolls Barclays pants up to his knees, picks up his right foot and kneads his thumb along the arch. He finds all the sore spots with ease (almost as if he’s done this before), Barclay moaning softly as he works his way up one leg and then other. The vampire is so relaxed by the end he almost misses Stern guiding his wrists into the cuffs on either side of him. 

“Sir?”

“It’s for your safety and mine; you may get agitated later on, and I don’t want you injuring yourself. Arousal level?”

“About the same.”

Stern raises his eyebrow.

“Uh, I mean, about the same, sir.”

“Hunger?”

“The same, sir.”

The agent turns back to the dictaphone, “Subject is now restrained. Proceeding to step twoOW, shit.” He sets the notebook down and shoves his right pointer finger into his mouth. 

It’s only a small paper-cut, bleeding a bead of red when he pulls it out to examine it. To Barclay, it’s like someone cracked open a fine wine and is taking their sweet time pouring.

Stern notices his interest immediately, “Is this what you want, Barclay? To taste me?”

He whines, nodding his head. Stern’s hand hovers over his face; he could reach it with his tongue, but if he takes it without permission the human will no doubt revoke his reward. 

The cut finger strokes his neck, leaving a faint trail of red that he can smell but neither see nor reach. 

“Then I guess it’s convenient that’s your reward for tonight.”

“Ohfuckyes, sir, thank you sir.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, we’re only through step one. Where was I” he flips to the same page in his notes, “Oh, right. Addition of even a faint trace of blood lead to increased arousal in the subject. Testing the reverse pathway now.”

“Ohhhhhhfuck” Barclay bucks his hips as Joseph palms his cock through his pants. The warmth and pressure are enough to tease, to coax his cock up, but too little for him to do anything but rut like a needy dog on his hand. 

“It looks like stronger stimulation is required.” 

“AHahgodOWfuck” tears prick his eyes and he wishes, not for the first time, that he’d been less prone to taking the lords name in vain when he was human. The habit is hard to break and the word burns his tongue whenever it’s uttered.

Sterns eyes flick up to his face just long enough for him to see Barclay isn’t hurt, then they return to his cock. His hand moves in calculated, steady strokes, his voice calm even as Barclays grunts of pleasure fill the room. 

“Good boy, Barclay. Let’s see what happens if I…”

“Fuck, ohfucksir.” He jerks his hips as Stern quickens his hand, pre-cum slicking the shaft.

“Subjects fangs are emerging, salivary glands seem more active, eyes-Barclay, be quiet, you’re going to drown out my notes.”

This statement does not have the desired effect, as the thought of the device picking up his moans, of Stern playing them back with a clinical ear or fucking himself to them or letting other hunters listen to just what a vampire will do in order to feed, makes him moan louder. 

Stern stops entirely, his tone a warning, “Barclay.”

“S-sorry sir, it, it just, it feels so good, wanted you to, to know I like it. It’s, it’s an honor to feel your hands on me.”

“That’s very sweet. So sweet that I’ll make you a deal; if you can be quiet until after you cum, you can make as much noise as you want afterwards. Understood?”

“Yes sir.” He clamps his jaw shut, fangs pricking the inside of his mouth. Stern works his cock relentlessly, smiling as Barclay’s legs begin jerking and twitching with his impending orgasm. 

“That’s much better.”

Barclay smiles, proud, swallows down a moan, and cums all over Sterns waistcoat.

“Messy boy.” Stern wipes himself off, then covers Barclay’s mouth with a cum-streaked hand, “clean it up.”

He obeys, ambivalent to the bitterness of his own spend and elated by the taste of Sterns skin on his tongue. When he’s done the human ruffles his hair with his other hand, smiling down at him. 

“I’ll be right back.” Stern leaves his view and Barclay only just keeps himself from whining at his absence. The agent returns with a case which, when opened, reveals a vibrator. 

“I’m not hysterical, sir.”

“Not yet.” Rather than hold it himself, Stern straps the device so it rests against Barclays cock and switches it on.

“AHFUCK, sir, it’s, how many times-” His cock, which was soft only a moment ago, perks back up even as the nerves in it scream for it to stop.

“As many as it takes to complete my study. Let’s see.” The human turns Barclays face this way and that, frowns, and digs his finger and thumb into his jaw to keep his mouth open as he moans, “subjects fangs are now fully out and he” Stern snickers as Barclay’s beard tickles his wrists, the vampire licking and nuzzling at his inner arm, “he’s increasingly submissive and blood focused.”

“N-no, I’m you focused sir, want you, be so good for youAHannn” he cums, cuffs clanking on the table as he arches off it. Stern drags a chair over, sitting near Barclay’s head and leaning with his elbows on the desk to watch as his cock continues leaking and shuddering under the onslaught of sensations. 

Barclay recalls a myth, Greek he thinks, where a man is punished in the afterlife with intense hunger and thirst. He doesn’t remember why it happens, he tends to skim tragic stories. The part that stuck with him was the man being trapped with food and water just out of reach. With Joseph so close and Barclay so aroused and hungry, he can see the veins in his neck, can almost crane his neck to reach them. 

Then he cums a third time and his vision whites out, taking away the temptation for a few moments of mercy. His brain gives up on coherent thoughts after that, and all he can do is moan and sob as Stern forces two more orgasms out of him. His feet and legs go from kicking and thrashing to laying so limp he’s not sure he’ll be able to walk when they’re through.

“I think I have what you need.” Stern shuts off the vibrator, removing bringing a water basin and pitcher over to the vampire. He dips a handkerchief into the warm water, guiding it along Barclays forehead, “you’re doing well, Barclay. I’m so proud.” 

“Thank you sir. 

“I have one more test to run, okay?” His voice is so gentle, his touch so soothing, and Barclay would do anything for him like this, all he wants is to serve him, to make him happy so he’ll keep looking at him like he’s something precious instead of dangerous. 

The agent checks the dictaphone, clears his throat, “Final test: role of discomfort in the arousal-bloodlust dynamic.”

Barclay swallows, so turned on he couldn’t be scared if he tried. The agent pulls a loose page from the notebook, mischief in his eyes and menace on his fingertips. Only Stern could make the snap of a freshly inked piece of paper erotic, and Barclay adores him for it. 

“I will now have the subject read a passage and record my observations.” 

Letters fill his view and it takes his eyes a second to focus on them. His tongue, likely out of self-preservation, fights to stay behind his teeth. 

“We don’t have all night, Barclay.”

The vampire takes a deep breath, “O God, accept me in penitence. O God, l- leave me not. O Lord, lead me not into temptation” his tongue flinches even as his chest burns with pleasure “O God, grant me good thoughts. O God, grant me humility and obedience.”

“I’d say you’re doing well on that front already,” Stern murmurs, saying more clearly, “the subject responds positively to pain associated with holy words, and looks increasingly thirsty.” He gives Barclay a pointed look, “subject should continue if he wants his reward.” 

 “O Lord, grant me patience, courage and meekness. O God, grant me to love Thee with all my mind and soul.” Tears run down his cheeks; the pain is right on the edge of what he can take, and even in his submissive haze he’s certain this alone is deserving of a reward, “Sir, please, please, I’ve been so good, please say you’re satisfied so I can, I can-”

Stern sets the paper aside, “can what? Specificity is important, Barclay.”

A dozen types of hunger well up in his throat as he whimpers, “please say I can taste you.”

An indulgent smile, “Of course. Give me a second to prepare.”

The vampire closes his eyes, breathes as slowly as he can manage as his tongue ceases tingling. There’s a scuff and thud of Stern touching the desk, and Barclay assumes he’s being freed until warmth straddles his chest and a shadow blocks the lamplight from his face.

“Ohfuck.” He opens his eyes, finds Stern--naked from the waist down--bracketing his ears with his knees. 

“Is this the taste you wanted?” Stern guides his head up and Barclay eagerly kisses his cock.

“N-no I wanted to feed but, but this is so, so perfect sir.”

“You think you deserve to feed from me?”

Barclay nods, too busy teasing his tongue along his folds to respond further. The hunter is wet, and the thought of him soaking his tailored trousers just by watching Barclay cum is almost as heady as the scent of the blood beneath his skin. 

“Well, I think this is what you deserve, for being so careless as to attack me, and for having to rely on my hospitality to survive.”

“Uhhummm” Barclay closes his lips around his cock and Stern moans, a sound Barclay would gladly swallow holy water to hear again. 

“Nnn, oh lord, that’s it, you’re doing so well big guy.”

He purrs at the praise, mouth watering as Stern’s body sends more blood south. The skins so sensitive here, so thin, he can practically taste iron through it. He grazes his teeth along Sterns thigh, hoping for the smallest of scrapes, yelps when the agent pulls his hair hard enough to slam his head back against the desk. 

“If you bite without permission, I will leave you here, like this, with that vibrator strapped to your cock, until the morning.”

Barclay whimpers, licks plaintively at his cock to show he’s sorry. Stern’s voice softens, “That’s better. I know it’s hard to restrain yourself, but you--oh lord--you must. I hate having to discipline you my sweet boy, I’d much, much rather-” his hips gain speed, smearing slick across Barclays mouth, “fuck, I’d rather spoil you and then do whatever I want to this perfect body, oh, ohlord, ohyes.” He tenses, gasping, and Barclay wishes his hands were free so he could hold him, keep him safe and steady while he takes his pleasure.

The hunter eases off of him, undoes the cuffs and helps him upright. They move on equally shaky legs to the settee, the human undoing the top buttons of his shirt once they do. 

“Barclay…”

“Yes, sir?” He grips the edge of the cushions to keep from pinning the agent to their deep blue surface. 

“You can have your reward now.” Stern tips his head sideways, revealing a welcoming patch of throat. Barclay growls, lunges forward as Stern makes no attempt to stop him. His teeth pierce willing skin and hot, sinfully delicious blood flows across his tongue. Stern goes rigid in his arms, voice cracking in a moan. Then he relaxes, clinging to Barclays shoulders as the vampire pushes him down, licking and sucking and smearing crimson kisses across his neck. 

Nothing in the world compares to fresh blood, freely offered, swallowed down while the most handsome man you’ve ever seen lets out softer and softer moans of ecstasy. 

Two taps register on his shoulder and he pulls away, lapping at the wounds so they’ll stop bleeding and be protected from infection. Joseph groans, gingerly shaking his head to clear it.

“You feeling okay, big guy?”

“Y’know how pythons will eat a cow once a month and then sleep for days? That sounds really fucking good right about now.” Barclay knows some vampires feel energized after feeding, but for him it’s always followed by the need for a nap.

“Let’s go upstairs first, the bed is better than the couch for that. Last time I fell asleep here my back hurt the whole next day.”

“Someone feeling being in his thirties?”

“Barclay, you’re three hundred.”

“And I don’t feel a day over two hundred and fifty.” He smiles as Joseph chuckles and kisses his cheek. 

They make it up the stairs, Barclay easing his way under the covers and trying not to let them touch his sore cock. Joseph brings two water glasses and a damp cloth. Barclay uses the latter to clean the last traces of blood from his skin, patching over the punctures with the bandages they keep in the bedside table. 

“Fun as it is to pretend to be your, like, pet vampire, I really glad you decided you just needed a roommate after I was stupid enough to attack you.”

Joseph polishes off his water, “You were starving, not stupid. Most vampires who go after humans are. It did put a damper on my plans to proposition you in the club kitchen the next night, but it worked out in the end.”

“They did warn me the clientele might try to bribe me into earning a few extra pounds with uh, ‘special services.’”

“A few pounds is barely a fair price for a kiss from you.” The human kisses him, somehow more sincere and loving than the equally tender kiss he gave him before leaving for work. Then he rubs his leg through the blankets, “do you want some tea? Indrid dropped off a new one he found while traveling with Duck, and it smells amazing.”

“Sounds great, blue eyes.”

“I’ll go make a pot of it while you rest; you did so well tonight I’m inclined to spoil all weekend.”

“No complaints here. You take such good care of me, Joseph.”

“You deserve it, big guy. Don’t go anywhere.” He kisses his brow and leaves the bed, whirling on his dressing gown as he goes towards the stairs. 

Barclay watches him with all the love his unbeaten heart can muster and murmurs, “I won’t. Not when everything I need is right here.”

[hms-chill]

I recommended Red White and Royal Blue on a book recommendations group chat and this dude who's way older than me just completely scolded me for it. I understand that there are people who find the book problematic, but like I really loved it as a book and thought it was great. And I understand the need for Ownvoices stories (cuz that was one of the main problems he had) and I love own voices stories, but do we really have to snap at people who like something else? Sorry I needed to say that.

Ugh, that’s so annoying! No book is ever going to be perfect because no author is ever going to be perfect, and to jump down someone’s throat because they recommended a book you don’t like is incredibly rude.

In terms of ownvoices work, I agree that it’s important to consider, but I think it’s something that works better to uplift writers than as a weapon against them.  As a white person I can’t speak for poc representation, but in terms of queer rep, Simon vs. the Homo Sapien Agenda or Leah on the Offbeat didn’t get any gayer when Becky Albertalli was forced to come out. River of Teeth is undeniably gay despite the fact that Sarah Gailey thought they were cis when they wrote it. I know that if an allo person wanted to write something about an ace character and did so respectfully, I would eat that shit up.

I think in a way that fear/ the weaponization of “ownvoices” comes from the idea that like... only a finite number of voices can ever be heard, which isn’t the case. Yes, there are a limited number of publishers/editors/agents, etc, but one book being published doesn’t necessarily mean that another one won’t be. To go back to being ace (because that’s my least represented identity), Tash Hearts Tolstoy is by a demi author but stars an ace lead. Given that being ace is a spectrum and demi is on it, that’s sort of up to interpretation if it’s ownvoices or not, but she’s talked about doing a ton of research on being ace.

But ownvoices or not, Tash Hearts Tolstoy wasn’t the end of ace lit. Just this year we’ve gotten Loveless, Let’s Talk About Love, and I’m sure there are others I’ve missed. We had The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy a couple years ago, and Vicious and Dread Nation and a bunch of other ones  to the point where we’re not losing our minds over one book anymore. Some are ownvoices, some aren’t.

In a more historic light because I studied English lit, Victor Hugo certainly doesn’t read as ace, but his work has ace-coded characters. At least to me, Hugo’s orientation doesn’t make Valjean or Enjolras any less ace-coded, just like it doesn’t make any of the students less queer-coded. Grantaire is gay as shit no matter what Hugo thought. Tolkien’s straightness doesn’t make Bilbo, Frodo, or Sam or any of the fellowship straight. As a reverse, Stoker’s queerness doesn’t make Jonathan Harker or Lucy’s Boyfriend (who might be named Andrew?) any gayer.

Like I said, I am absolutely not an expert on poc rep as I am very white, but I’m not sure if he’s upset about the mlm aspect of ownvoices or the racial one. Also sorry for the rant lol

[theafictionado]

So we watched (nay, Experienced) the BBC/Netflix Dracula series

Brought to us by everyone’s favourite team, Steve Moff and Mark Gatiss, promising to be an innovative and exciting new vision of the classic novel

Boy it was definitely something!!!

First I will say: obviously Moff is not my favourite TV writer and my fam and I did go into this with a bias. I’m happy to report, though, that it’s going to be one of these shows that haunts me forever, because if it had just been bad I could have said “bleh” and deleted it from my brain. But because parts of this were genuinely cool, interesting, and fun, and parts of it genuinely had potential, all the bits that were bad stand out as so much worse and the whole thing feels as cursed as a 500 year old undead count. 

Things that were enjoyable and well put-together:

Van Helsing has been gender-swapped into a vampire-hunting nun and her cat-and-mouse game with Dracula is rife with belligerent sexual tension. I was ready to hate this, and ready for like, Sherlock and Irene Adler 2.0, but their dynamic was actually pretty fun to watch! Their power balance is kept even throughout most of the show, and Helsing is never struck down because of ~womanly failings~ or infantilised. She’s consistently really clever and, even if there are some cringey one-liners, I found her and Draccy’s playful quest to murder each other one of the most fun parts of the show. It could’ve been better, but it was enjoyable! (I also like how Helsing isn’t Young and Hot, but is a capable older lady, and her actor and Draccy’s even seem about the same age. Amazing)

The second episode is a spooky murder mystery/horror mini-movie on a ship, with a cast full of interesting characters who all had different things going on and different relationship dynamics that were compelling to watch. There’s even an interracial gay couple! And they’re like, written pretty sympathetically and to be layered and flawed in ways that didn’t feel too stereotypical! And they don’t die first!! Wack! I understand the bar is on the ground, but it’s still worth a mention

Some fun with vampire lore: Draccy absorbs knowledge and traits from people he drinks blood from (which is how he learns languages. Get Duolingo, dude, stop eating people), leading to the intriguing suggestion that myths like “vampires will die in sunlight” and “vampires are afraid of holy symbols” have kinda become real to him even if they don’t literally work, because he’s swallowed so many people to whom these superstitions and beliefs were law. I’m sure this isn’t the first time this has been done, but groundbreaking or no it was kinda neat

Things that were not enjoyable and well put-together:

EVERYTHING ELSE

Episode 1: a weird speedrun of most of the original novel, feat. weaponised nuns and a weird fixation on whether or not Jonathan Harker and Draccy boned. They did not. Dracula pops out of the body of a wolf and he’s Whole Ass Naked. Him and Van Helsing have a power play where she stands just on the threshold of a convent and calls him a little bitch, knowing he can’t come and get her. A knife is licked. 

Episode 2: aforementioned cool ship horror story. Definitely the best ep. It really makes me think about hbomb’s critique that Moff is pretty good at doing standalone stories (and pilots), but when things are tied into a bigger narrative things get zonkers. 

Episode 3: Things Get Zonkers!!

Let me just. Okay. I have the most to say about this one because this is where things really got batshit. And yet, also really boring? How does that figure? Anyway:

Dracula emerges from under the sea and finds that 123 years have passed and he’s now the star of a Modern AU. Upon setting foot on British sand he is immediately accosted by what appears to be an anti-vampire task force. There’s a helicopter. It is later explained how they knew to pounce on him at this exact moment, but holy god it was wild to watch the entire British Secret Service descend on this one wet bastard in a suit

The editing shifts aggressively in the direction of Sherlock. Mark Gattis is there playing an amazingly annoying character. There’s a fuckign.... Underground Secret Society devoted to studying vampires and they put Drac in a Designated Glass Prison for Smug Geniuses (also as seen in Sherlock). Van Helsing is dead but her great-great-grand-niece is played by the same actress and. Okay. Van Helsing, vampire hunting nun, possesses her descendent and rises through the ether to roast Drac one last time, and he’s DELIGHTED TO SEE HER AGAIN. 

And she has cancer, right, so her blood is poisonous when Draccy tries to bite her, but in the end, right, the end of the episode, right, the final shots of the show, he comes to a place where he’s willing to die, and she’s already dying, and so he drinks her blood and they die together on a table while cinematic metaphor vision shows them having sex in the middle of the sun

There was a badly CGI-ed vampire baby. Jonathan Harker falls from a tower and a scene later they flash back to this event by reversing the footage of him falling down, meaning we just see him go VWOOP up through the air, bouncing off the wall on the way. Van Helsing says the words “come boy, suckle” when she’s goading Drac into drinking her blood. The show sits in a weird middle ground where the characters talk about sex a lot (”dID yOu HaVe sExUaL iNterCOURSE with COUNT DRACULA?”) and Drac is clearly meant to be super magnetic and sexy but the characterisation and cinematography is not horny at all. People have these sexy-type dreams of their lover of choice when Drac is drinking their blood but even those are very boring and weirdly chaste, except of course for the final one where, if I  can take the chance to remind you, Van Helsing and Dracula have symbolic Mind Palace sex inside the centre of the solar system

I can’t speak too much on its quality as an adaptation since I actually haven’t read the book, but splitting the story so that some characters (the Harkers, Van Helsing) existed in the time the story is set, and some (Lucy, Dr Seward) exist in The Modern AU felt very strange. Was there any reason to set the third episode in modern times, apart from the fact that I guess they wanted to do their Sherlock thing again? Or, perhaps, because they wanted to do their Jekyll thing again?? Oh my god, that’s what the editing reminds me of - the small clips of Jekyll I’ve seen. The zooming. The slow-mo. The emphasis on The Monster Man’s weird goddamn teeth

(Also, I don’t really feel qualified to dig too deep into it, but I will say there felt something a bit uncomfortable about Lucy being black in this version, while also being written to be very promiscuous and vain. idk. Also, since it happened in an ep of Sherlock as well, “weedy white Nice Boy rescues the Very Cool woman of colour he has a tragically unrequited crush on” is now an official Moffattis trope)

Count Moffatula is an experience. Its pacing is buck wild. The speeding through the original plot and the mish-mashing of elements in the Modern AU section feels like another expression of contempt for the source material on Moff’s part. Someone says “reality is overrated” in a show set in the 1890s. Draccy quotes a Beatles song. He also makes quippy allusions to having eaten various famous figures and basically winks at the camera every time. Granted, this wasn’t as obnoxious as I was maybe expecting, but there are still too many lines of dialogue where you think “oh, the writers high-fived each other after they wrote that one, huh”. The fact that Moff has such vitriol against fan fic writers is more and more grating every day because this is so, so clearly a zany-ass fanfic that he happens to be getting paid for. The costumes are nowhere near as nice as they could have been, and Dracula’s cape looks like his mum made it for him for the school play in which he is playing Dracula. 

This show is So Much. Watch it to share in this fever dream. Or don’t, and save approximately 5 hours of your life. God. 5 hours. Who was I before Count Maffatula. Who am I now. Why was his cape so bloody ugly. Why did they bone in the centre of the sun

[stuckasmain]

Rules of the beast-

Rewatch review episode 1.

General idea-

So I do like the general idea of this episode! I like how it is done in a interview style (explaining the first person past diary entries.) and seeing aftermath before the beginning! To see how Johnathan had gotten himself into such a state. I love the mind games plaid by the castle, by Dracula and how poor Johnathan is so turned around and drained he can’t even notice what’s happening in front of his face. The morals of Harker? To seek out and help someone he barely knows. I adore Harker completely how his voice cracks when retelling such things, I love the short glimpse we get.

Again “deliver onto me.” But ass naked in front of nuns will never not be completely hysterical to me. Back off.

“Did you have sex with Dracula.”

*offended british gasp*

The account saying master, obeyed , servant.

Ok I can see where she got the sex shit.

Dislikes-

Again why is van helsing a woman? This isn’t 2016 women power! It’s not the time to cash in on that. (However i do like how overly sarcastic she is , how she is fascinated and treats Dracula like a dog without fear

How they combine Johnathan with Renfeild because “he eat fly” and is a little unstable. That’s lazy and they know it.

Dracula is quippy, it’s funny until he starts overdoing it way to much.

How dare Dracula try to box (put in ) my son >:(

How we get this beautiful wonderful glimpse of Harker and Mina only for it to be torn (literally-) away by Dracula. How like the book, but reversed Mina will NOT allow Her Johnny to go into this alone ans will fight for him, how he struggles actively between hunger and her. He can FINALLY recognize her face, why kill her now? This is beautiful and I HATE that they killed Johnathan off however the scene where “these are not my eyes” is both terrifying and tragic I just really wish it went anywhere! This show LOVES saying “wouldnt this concept be cool? To bad it’s not going anywhere.(there’s going to be posts on that.) same with the concept of the boxed brides which goes nowhere I am F U R Y.

Agatha again. There is absolutely no reason to make her a van helsing past to drop a last name from the book like the “Dr.Holmwood.” Mentioned by Mina a long with a slue of other young men. As her being one does nowhere really (except for her fucking Reincarnation.) I would like her slightly better then I do if they kept her plainly as Sister Agatha. A cynical , sarcastic bad ass NUN of all things, who gets cocky and saves Mina but cannot save herself. Boom. Your welcome. Or yoy could have mentioned Abraham (as she mentioned she has a husband.) perhaps they had a falling out after the death of their son? Boom. Your welcome.

Again over all my main problem with this episode stems from cool concepts that go no where and that , if I’m nitpicking (which I always am.) they showed the GREAT potential with Johnny and Minas love , the beginning in the castle etc that they could be the first to completely follow the book; but no you know. Interesting brain fever blue eyes (I’m also salty as the concept of the nickname ‘Johnny blue eyes’ is interesting and I wanted to see it in more tragic-sweet moments like maybe Mina sick now but nope.)

[luci-yabs]

Why?

Are Games Workshop and Black Library so afraid of having major characters from the Xenos or Chaos factions have consistent victories? 

How do you build up Ghazghkull without showing him winning things? How do you build Eldrad up without showing his manipulations actually having tangible and intended success? How do you build the Swarmlord up without actually showing it as being capable of defeating and winning major victories of a permanent nature?

With Abaddon they at least seemed to make an effort to rectify his paper-tiger nature, they retooled all his Crusades as successes through some means, gave him an actual solid (if heavily tainted) win on Cadia, so that’s better than what virtually every other antagonist has, but the fact remains that Abaddon still flees from far more battles than he ever stays to win.

How do people think the Imperium is the underdog when it is the dominant military superpower constantly kicking everyone’s asses in battles?

I just don’t understand. 

I was looking through the old painting guides on the Xenos, there was some Fluff in there, but again I’m struck by the need to, seemingly, shill Space Marines even outside their own book. In the Drukhari’s own painting guide we’re told about this famous group of deadly Wyches...who were almost all killed by Ragnar on his own, we’re told about this in their own book, about how inferior they are.

Same happens in the old Drukhari Codex. We got an unnamed Space Marine Champion actually wounding Lelith, and then the Archon dies in like two second. Then again the Drukhari Codex seems to have liked Space Marines more than it even likes the Drukhari, and the recent Tyranid Codex does the same, I’m already terrified the Ynnari Codex is going to spend more time waxing lyrical about how amazing Roboute is than giving any shine to the Ynnari themselves except as a tool to restore Roboute.

I understand getting shilled to an extent in one’s own Codice, but why do Space Marines seemingly get treated better in the Drukhari or Tyranid Codices than the factions themselves do? The same thing in the old Genestealer Codex. Are Games Workshop and Black Library so incapable of portraying any sort of balance that they feel the need to even in other people’s Codices make clear that the reader should actually buy Space Marines cause they are so much stronger and cooler? 

It becomes so frustrating having to actually look for places where more than a squad of Space Marines from a non-rando Chapter die. I feel like I’m using a magnifying glass as I try to find some evidence of it. Its not helped by the fact that on the Xenos side there is both the issue of rando factions losing constantly, but even the major ones generally lose more than they win. 

It becomes hard to take the five major Craftworlds seriously when, seemingly, they can barely fight one-hundred Marines without losing, and Ghazghkull and Nazdreg’s Waaagh!!!’s and the three Major Hive Fleets have the same issue. The Hive Fleets have it particularly bad because basically no Hive Fleet is every introduced without its destruction being already part of the canon, making them more akin to filler ‘monsters of the week’ than any legitimate threat.

But I see this writing so often. In most of the HH books any background featuring Xenos can be summed up as; “X Xenos Race was amazingly skilled at Y but Space Marine Chapter V was just way better than them at Y anyway and beat them anyway”, 40k books are hardly better, with Aeldari Seers being outsmarted by everyone from Imperial Guard Colonels to every second Space Marine Sergeant.

I mean here’s a simple example; Harker, an incredibly minor and unimportant Astra Militarum character, has canonically both won the Sacking of Colonia and killed an Autarch personally. Lets compare him to a similarly minor Ork character; Zagstruck, Zagstruck has...well quite literally nothing. We know of nothing Zagstruck has ever achieved.

If we got to Spac Marines it gets even worse; Tellion, a very minor Ultramarine Character, has defeated Old One Eye, won at least three major battles, slain a T’au Ethereal and Commander simultaneously. That’s literally more than Ghazghkull himself has ever managed since his sum total of achievements, not defeats and draws, is winning against Yarrick once on Golgotha. Eldrad too, Eldrad’s had one fight he canonically won, against Nazdreg, and beyond that Eldrad has lost every battle he’s been (where he didn’t play sidekick to Space Marines) in till Gathering Storm.

Farsight and Shadowsun reverse this trend somewhat, thankfully, but the result is that they are absolutely despised. Sadly, predictably almost, Shadowsun is he lightning rod for this hate, and many get incensed that the Raven Guard Chapter Master was simply used to show off her skills. Where was this outrage when a dozen different Ork Warbosses and Aeldari Farseers and Autarchs were used to show off the skills of Space Marine Special Characters? Its absolutely hypocritically, and worryingly focused on female characters.

Same thing happens with Celestine. She dies against Kharn, which is seen as perfectly fine, yet Kaldor is permitted to slay Mortarion, Dante and Marneus to slay the Swarmlord, but Celestine being allowed to actually win a fight is seen as a ridiculous notion, even though she’ s a Daemon Princess of the Emperor himself and can call on far vaster powers than a Chapter Master, particularly in battle against the forces of Chaos.

It doesn’t help that even in the dynamics of the greater plot the story of 40k is essentially the story of humans always beating everyone. Their ‘lowest’ moment, the Age of Strife, still saw them ruling most of the galaxy and being in large enough numbers that they formed a galactic civilization in less than a century, with numerous super power bodies such as the Imperium, Mars and the Interex being vastly superior to any Xenos in existence. It comes to a point where the fact that Xenos even exist is surprising to me since, seemingly, no matter what Xenos will always lose any conflict with humans they have, and have basically been shunted to such backwater peripheries that the most dangerous Ork is an Ork who has only ever won a single fight and cannot defeat a tendril of Leviathen smaller thant he tendril already defeated by the Imperium at Baal.

This is without even then exploring how no Xenos Character can ever match a Chapter Master, let alone a Primarch. We have a setting where Chapter Masters have already slain the Swarmlord, the Avatar of Khaine, Ann’grath, Skarbrand etc. and yet these Chapter Masters are nothing compared to the Primarchs themselves who are now returning to dominate the setting. For crying out loud Ahriman defeats Yvraine, the Yncarne and the Visarch alone in their own book introducing them! Yet a single hammer blow from Arjac defeated him in Wrath of Magnus.

What do I do? Or rather, why are Games Workshop and Black Library so unwilling to portray Xenos in any sort of significant light? This isn’t about dropping Space Marines, they are the most popular, no doubt, but does being the most popular mean they should be better than everyone at everything? That they should win 90% of everything? That their characters should outclass every other faction’s characters at everything? 

[strinak]

i’ve got more stuff now that i’ve got more time!

ok so kindle unlimited is Best Used for selfpub trash (affectionate). so the less mainstream/more niche the genre or trope, the better the ku options are. like, if you’re gonna write the Standard Fantasy Novel, you will try Standard Publishing before doing the work of self-publishing, right? but if what you’ve got is less Standard Fantasy and more “1300 page meditation on the role of the working wizard in a feudal political landscape”, you throw that shit on ku.

so i use ku for m/m, porn, reverse harem, litrpg, portal fantasy, superhero novels, miscellaneous weird stuff.

Richard Roberts: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I’m a Supervillain is genuinely one of my favorite books. Tweens get superpowers - expected, considering their parents - and try to have fun with them for a while before telling anyone and stumble into supervillainy.

Chara Croft: i’ve only read All Dolled Up but immediately after i went and grabbed several of her others. kinky m/m.

Shelly Laurenston only has a few of her books ku-available but you can try her Honey Badger Chronicles. m/f comedic shapeshifter romance. features a lot of entertainingly fucked up hybrid shifters (children of wolves and african wild dogs? people with permanent zoomies.)

Stella Starling does a lot of “what if Hallmark did gay-for-you romcoms?” but with sex. someone’s a small business owner and/or needs a fake date, etc.

Alessandra Hazard is currently doing a space regency a/b/o thing. the 2nd book, Feral, is my favorite. mistaken identities and science crimes and an omega who must Marry Well to Save the Family, oh my.

Marina Vivancos has some novels but i’ve moslty read her shorts. I’ve Walked Where You’ve Been is soulbond trope but make it explicitly not instalove trope.

Jackie May: some of the more readable reverse harem i’ve read (love the genre, it does not love me back).

SJ Himes does good urban fantasy romance.

Terry Mancour: love the Spellmonger series (referenced above), do not read any of his female-pov books. somehow a female character will be fine or good from his main’s pov but then It All Goes Wrong in her solo book.

Lisa Henry does a lot of good kinky m/m in different genres. her current m/m regency series is on my tbr.

Lynn Van Dorn’s Royally Screwed does “arranged marriage resentment” but make it kinky m/m.

JS Harker has an m/m “mortals wandering into different courts of faerie in different seasons” series. enjoyed the halloween one a lot.

Evan Currie: Steam Legion is a fun alt-history set immediately pre-burning of the library at Alexandria. prolific author whose fic i like much more than most of his pro stuff, unfort.

i liked Salem Fitzgerald’s Captivated lots but am finding it very hard to describe. a guy’s kidnapping starts him on a journey of self-discovery?

Pauline M Ross has a whole “complicated family/political drama over multiple countries/generations” fantasy series. for fans of marion zimmer bradley.

Delmire Hart’s The Grumpy Thistle Fairy is GREAT. also liked The Most Eligible Bachelor. fun quick reads.

Dessa Lux has a good a/b/o novella series with a pack dynamics focus (yes, this includes orgies), The Protection of the Pack.

loved Ruby Dixon’s The King’s Spinster Bride (m/f) but the “author” is actually a collective pseudonym so all their other stuff is ymmv. i Know one of the authors is excellent but i don’t know which books they’ve worked on and some of Dixon’s books are heteronormative in such a specific gross way that they are actively My Enemy.

Casey Matthew’s The One Who Eats Monsters is a very cool urban fantasy with f/f that never got continued.

Eileen Glass has a “woke up on an alien planet” culture clash a/b/o series.

Meghan Brunner re-released the reincarnated lesbians at a ren faire trilogy of my high school years on ku. for fans of mercedes lackey’s bardic voices series.

Anna Stone has a bunch of kinky f/f.

Lindsay Buroker does fantasy and urban fantasy (m/f).

I just got kindle unlimited and I was wondering if you have any recs? authors or specific books, maybe search terms? I'm a bit lost and overwhelmed right now lol

--

I love me some KU trash. If you want badwrong erotica, just start searching. If you want something a little more spellchecked and possesed of plot and characterization, I suggest:

E.J. Russell has lots of KU fluffy contemporary mystery/romance set in the Pacific Northwest.

Jon's Mysteries by AJ Sherwood is a series about a police consultant psychic who explodes technology finally getting an anchor and a love interest.

Charlie Cochet is not really my fave, but her contemporary hunky armed forces dudes are popular and she has a lot on KU.

I adored the Lords of the Underworld series by Sam Burns and W.M. Fawkes. It's Greek gods in the modern day.

A lot of stuff is going to be hard to find because authors only have a few books out and amazon's algorithms don't make them show well in search results unless you have an exact title. If I'm looking for new stuff, I'll often go to Goodreads lists, especially ones with a theme like 'new releases' rather than 'best X'. ("Best" = famous authors who don't use KU because they can afford not to. It also tends to be the same 10 recs over and over.)

For example, a quick search finds me December 2021 MM Releases.

[amplesalty]

Day 9 - House of Dracula (1945)

Our house is a very, very, very fine house...

Well, we’re nearly getting towards the end of our journey through the original line of Frankenstein movies. This is the penultimate one, with the last being Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Who’s on First aside, they’re not an act I’m overly familiar with given that they were famous some 40 years before I was born, but even I know they’re a comedy duo so that’s going to be more of a parody/comedy romp. So I guess this is the last of the most straight laced Frankenstein movies.

But before we get to that, I think it’s time for our yearly Dark Universe life check. Apparently they’ve still disowned The Mummy and now seem to have given up on the whole shared universe idea entirely, reverting to just stand alone films. But they’re actually making some progress as they wrapped filming on a reboot of The Invisible Man last month and have it’s release scheduled for the back end of February 2020. Lead Oliver Jackson-Cohen has some pedigree in the Universal franchise, playing Jonathan Harker in the 2013 Dracula TV series. He reminds me a little of Jake Gyllenhaal but I suppose that’s for nought considering he’s going to be wrapped in bandages half the time. Let’s hope he has booming voice to match Claude’s from the original.

As for this one, if this is the end, it’s more of a whimper than a bang. I’m honestly losing track of all the times that someone wants to be cured in these movies. It’s one thing when Larry Talbot is coming back movie after movie, wanting to be rid of the werewolf curse. But even Dracula’s getting in on the act here, coming to Dr Franz Edelmann in search of a cure to his vampirism.

Whilst I am getting sick and tired of Talbot and his constant misery, at least he’s on the up and up about what he wants. He even takes to throwing himself off a cliff here, ending swept up in a cave below the Doc’s castle where they just so happen to find the preserved body of the Frankenstein monster, still clutching the skeleton of Dr Niemann in his arms.

Dracula though, I don’t know what his game is here. The Doc does these blood transfusions on Drac but I don’t know if that’s ultimately accomplishing anything. Drac seems more concerned spending his time trying to woo one of the Doc’s nurses. The more normal of the two nurses that is. One of them is a hunchback which I didn’t even notice for like half the film, just feels like a promotional technique to add another face to the monster mash roll call.

When the Doc finds out what Drac is up to, he makes something up about needing to do another transfusion but this time Drac reverses the transfusion and infects the Doc with vampirism. And when the Doc finds out about that, he just goes to Drac’s coffin and opens it in the sunlight. Man, Drac really got punked out there. There’s something really anti-climatic about Vampire deaths sometimes. It’s almost cheating to kill them when they’re in their coffin. They’re completing defenceless, most unsporting.

Again though, I don’t know what Dracula was trying to accomplish. Was he aware that the Doc knew what was going on and this was like a panicked way of doing something? Maybe sharing his essence somehow gives him some degree of power over the Doc’s body?

I mean, the Doc does become this deranged version of himself when the vampirism takes hold but I don’t know if that’s some element of Dracula coming to the forefront or just the vampirism in general that does that. There’s a very Jekyll and Hyde feel once this happens, the Doc becoming wild eyed and crazy, suddenly displaying violent outbursts and becoming very interested in reviving the monster in search of immortality. Is every doctor in this universe just destined to become enamoured with this monster? It’s like he’s the rebellious bad boy that all the girls think they can change. Sure, every time he’s resurrected he brings nothing but violence and destruction but this time I think I can fix him.

One of the other good parts of the movie is Skelton Knaggs as Steinmuhi, a local whose brother works for the Doc but ends up being murdered when the Doc’s vampiric rage takes over. Just something about his look, accent and the delivery of his lines is off in this creepy way. When he finds evidence linking the Doc to the killing, the police wont listen so he forms a posse to go get vengeance. I feel like people just didn’t have anything better to do in those days so would just form torch wielding mobs at the drop of a hat. You know, I bet those Salem Witch Trials wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if people had Instagram to distract them.

Knaggs was also in a movie with KARLOFF called Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome which I’m sure I’ve got laying around here somewhere on DVD. I think I found it cheap somewhere when this whole monster thing was kicking off and I was looking for backup movies. That’s why I’ve DVD’s like The Bat, The Terror and The Stuff. All the ‘The’ movies.

Speaking of the police, the actual best part of this movie is that Lionel Atwill is back again as a police inspector. Sadly, he was very ill at the time of filming and would pass away only months after the film’s release. At least he got another Universal outing here though, even if it’s not quite the heady days of the fake arm policeman in Son of Frankenstein.

These movies tease this big monster jamboree but it just never turns out that way. The most you get is a very unsatisfying tussle for like 60 seconds at the end, some chemicals get knocked over, there’s a bit of smoke and that’s it. Overall, it’s a disappointment to come to this after the bright start to the franchise in Frankenstein and Bride. I blame Larry Talbot, miserable sod. I just don’t get the obsession with rehashing this same story of the monsters looking for a curse, especially Larry. It’s been going on for three movies now! If he pops up looking for a doctor in that Abbot and Costello movie next year then I’m going to scream.