atundratoadstool

[atundratoadstool]

Made a cake and cards for my friends this year. :]=

Leah, why is today Dracula Day? :D

It is World Dracula Day because 120 years ago Dracula was published on May 26, 1897. It is also Dracula Day because every day is Dracula Day.

[atundratoadstool]

I'm still alive, eight beautiful years of Dracula Days later. Make every Dracula Day of your life shine, friends.

Leah, why is today Dracula Day? :D

It is World Dracula Day because 120 years ago Dracula was published on May 26, 1897. It is also Dracula Day because every day is Dracula Day.

[atundratoadstool]

Thank you so much for rehosting it! Just anted to give a heads up, just in case, that all links on the drop-down menus work (haven't checked in-text ones), except from the ones on the Timeline drop-down menu. At least for me.

Yeah. The timeline didn't get transferred when we re-hosted. My apologies. I'll try to put it on the to do list for some weekend when I can take a nice delve into my old files looking for the original.

[atundratoadstool]

Will the Dracula project website ever be back?

It's been a long long time since I was active here, but the project page has a new home here! https://www.draculaproject.org

[atundratoadstool]

I made a cake this year even. :)=

Leah, why is today Dracula Day? :D

It is World Dracula Day because 120 years ago Dracula was published on May 26, 1897. It is also Dracula Day because every day is Dracula Day.

[atundratoadstool]

Seven years of Dracula Days later, and yet another Dracula Day is upon us.

Leah, why is today Dracula Day? :D

It is World Dracula Day because 120 years ago Dracula was published on May 26, 1897. It is also Dracula Day because every day is Dracula Day.

[atundratoadstool]

are you still going to do an Invisible Man substack? it seems someone else has already started one

I'm so glad to hear somebody is taking it up--especially given the fortuitous Leap Year. I've been--both fortunately and unfortunately--busy to the point where I haven't had much time for socmed and related undertakings, and while I hadn't forgotten, I'd been uncertain as to my ability to get things running.

[atundratoadstool]

Update: My spouse spent the day fixing several of the chapters that were broken--thanks to everyone who reported issues.

Do you know if your annotated Dracula website (the old one) is still accessable through the wayback machine? If so, would you mind sharing a link?

Sorry to have been absent from this blog for so very long that some time has probably elapsed since this was asked, but the good news is that while the old site probably has some accessibility via Wayback, I finally finally finally got it up and running at a new domain. You can check it out here. :)

[atundratoadstool]

Do you know if your annotated Dracula website (the old one) is still accessable through the wayback machine? If so, would you mind sharing a link?

Sorry to have been absent from this blog for so very long that some time has probably elapsed since this was asked, but the good news is that while the old site probably has some accessibility via Wayback, I finally finally finally got it up and running at a new domain. You can check it out here. :)

[atundratoadstool]

Is your annotated Dracula up somewhere? I was hoping to link my dad to it. The link in your bio doesn't seem to have anything at it.

I has been down for a while--alas--although I still have the original files and I keep trying to coordinate with my spouse (who was responsible for most of the code) to relaunch. It's been much slower going than I initially anticipated though, given the confluence of major life events this year. I'll try to look into it again shortly.

[atundratoadstool]

Boat trips feel a lot longer when your aren't actively hunting down the crew

[atundratoadstool]

Very important question, my friend visited Hungary and brought me some paprika (both sweet and hot). Obviously now I have to make the paprika chicken, but what would be the recipe closest to the one Stoker describes?

This has been sitting around in my inbox forever, and I hope you've managed to find a recipe to your liking in the meantime--particularly as my advice on the topic probably isn't all that stellar.

Stoker's knowledge of paprika chicken came from his sources on the topic (all of which should be noted tend to be inaccurate and condescending as regards the regions they describe), and we can get a rough idea of what he was envisioning pretty readily. Of the sources he listed that mention the dish, he took his notes for the novel from Andrew Crosse's Round About the Carpathians (cw: slur on linked page), but Crosse doesn't give us much more information than "chicken with red pepper." Nina Mazuchelli's Maygarland elaborates a little more by telling us how "a fowl that, in blissful unconsciousness of the immediate future, has been picking up the crumbs that fell from the traveller's table as he partook his first course, may, at his last, appear in the form of a hasty stew, thickened with red pepper." E. C. Johnson's On the Track of the Crescent probably gives us the most description of any of the books we know Stoker accessed, stating that paprikas csirke "is prepared by giving some ancient chanticleer the 'happy despatch,' cutting his remains to small pieces, and putting them into water, in company with flour, cream, butter, and a great deal of paprika or red pepper." Consistently, we can see that writers with whom Stoker was familiar are describing a chicken dish featuring some manner of thick paprika-based sauce, which is in keeping with most paprikash recipes I've encountered.

I, however, have always used variants on Leonard Wolf's recipe, which he included amidst his various other incredibly zany footnotes in the 1975 Essential Dracula (I tend to omit the tomato and add a touch more sour cream though).

PAPRIKA CHICKEN (Paprika Hendl) 1 young fowl (about 4 pounds); 2 tablespoons fat; 2 large onions, chopped; 2 tablespoons Hungarian sweet paprika; 1/2 cup tomato juice; 2 tablespoons flour; 1/2 cup sour cream. Cut chicken into service pieces, and salt. Lightly brown onions in fat. Blend in half the paprika. Add tomato juice and chicken. Simmer, covered, 1 hour or until tender. Remove chicken. Add remaining paprika to sauce, then add the flour beaten into sour cream. Simmer, stirring, 5 minutes or until well blended. Put sauce through sieve, food mill, or blender. Heat chicken and pureed sauce together over a low flame. Arrange chicken on warm platter. Pour half the sauce over; pass the rest separately in a sauceboat.

I will in no way vouch for its authenticity, but I feel that even were it not terribly Stoker-accurate it meshes pretty well with Dracula fandom in spirit, having been connected to the novel by the annotator who also tried to recreate the vampiresses blood sucking noises with his own mouth and had an undergraduate student pretend to be Seward and demo cutting through an iron bar with a medical saw.

[atundratoadstool]

I was working on some drawing dracula entries, but this idea was too silly to ignore

[atundratoadstool]

Mina is Dracula's archnemesis in so many ways, but the most obvious ones are

Mina was Dracula's very first adversary in England

Mina is personally hurt by him over the same man and the same woman

Dracula claims Jonathan. Mina promptly marries Jonathan

Mina is the only one that Dracula openly attacks with personal malice, in the most intimate ways

A single, glaring scar on the same place for both Mina and Dracula

Only these two share the same blood

Psychic link exists only between them

KIN OF MY KIN

Van Helsing hasn't even personally confronted the guy yet come on now

[atundratoadstool]

Invisible Man from my sketchbook!! Love this crazy gal <3

[atundratoadstool]

If someone you only kinda-sorta knew/vaguely remember from college showed up in your home, now invisible, and asked you to help him start a Reign of Terror, what would you do?

Alternatively, if you were taking a walk in the countryside and an invisible man came up to you and was going to force you to help him steal some things, what would you do?

The answers to both of these questions depend deeply on how tired I am. In my present state of mind these days, I'm probably more liable to say yes to the former and no to the latter than I would be in the best of circumstances. Some mornings pre-coffee, I think I could be sold on giving into some misanthropic scheme to bring humanity to it's knees. On the flip side of the coin, I feel I could also find myself not terribly caring if some ill-tempered floating rock threatened to bludgeon me.

[atundratoadstool]

Finally settling into some sort of routine where I might have some free time in the near future, and I'm eying my long neglected asks at long last.