#That’s a real thing that happened. Bram Stoker was inspired by it

[aspiringhorrorauthor]

For a moment, imagine you are a late 1800s British gentle person. Having read recently the newest novel Dracula, and finding it quite enticing, albeit quite fantastical, you decide to travel to this “Whitby” where Dracula landed in England.

And now, picture yourself talking to a local old fisherman, who has not read the book yet speaks as if he was Mister Swales come alive, and imagine the cold hard dread as he tells you what you dreaded to hear, a tale that will surely keep you awake late into the night.

The local does not know the book, but he knows the story. How the boat pulled into the harbour on a foggy night with nought but a corpse lashed to the wheel. The ship existed. The story was real.

For Bram Stoker did not invent today’s entry. He merely used a piece of local legend to make his story seem more real.

[rattbastard]

BSD Sigma Theory

Ive been seeing people speculate about if Sigma is based upon an author or not. Some of the most popular theories are that he is Sergey Nikolaevich Syromyatnikov who used Sigma as a pseudonym, BUT I raise you yet another theory.

An American author, Julian Osgood Field, also used the pseudonym Sigma. And he happens to have been responsible for multiple financial scandals including fraud and even forging some officials signature or something. I found this intriguing because of the whole Sky Casino thing.

He was also alive around the same time as Bram Stoker who is also in DoA if Im not mistaken (I've only watched up to season 4, so I could be missing crucial info, but idk bare with me I feel like I cooked). So We know the org. is not exclusivley Russian. Julian Osgood Field wrote "A Kiss of Judas" which is also a story about a vampire. In fact, I believe he and Stoker had some actual real life connection, but I havent looked into it enouch to deduce what it was if it existed. Its somewhat mentioned in a book about vampires in literature: Vampyres : Lord Byron to Count Dracula, by Christopher Frayling. I think its an anthology of works that inspired Stoker's Dracula. I could be wrong, though.

Many of the things he wrote seem dark and have titles that include "Devil" and such with biblical themes, so it also reminds me of Fyodor in that regard. He even has one called "The Luck of the Devil".

Idk lmk what you think. This just fits more than Sergey Nikolaevich Syromyatnikov. I cant find any reason for him to be the link, if there is any link to a real author at all.

edit: let it be known that, as a slav, i want this mf to be slavic so bad but i cannot find an adequate link to a slavic author 😭

[thenightling]

Review of Interview with The Vampire episode 6:

I notice more and more that this show borrows from other vampire fictions, as if the show runner and his crew don’t really like the writing of Anne Rice and so seek out other vampires for inspiration.

The teenage Claudia concerned about still being a virgin is actually Jessica from True Blood.  Louis’s “Prescription” turn-of-the-century tinted sunglasses are clearly inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 movie), and even, perhaps, the manga and anime, Hellsing. When Claudia wanted Charley to look up at her it was reminiscent of Dracula’s “See me.  See me now.” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992 movie).  Even the name Charley for the teenage boy Claudia was attracted to. Charley doesn’t exist in Anne Rice’s novels but he is the name of the teenage boy protagonist of the 1985 vampire movie, Fright Night. When Lestat and Louis claim they sell incinerators to explain away why they have one- that’s how Dracula hastily explained his box of soil in The Dracula Tape, when his luggage was searched.  He claimed he was a “portable closet” salesman and was showing the “Closets” capacity.  Also an incinerator is how the vampires got rid of the bodies of their victims in Whitley Strieber’s The Hunger (never mind that the smell of the burning corpses should be unbearable to someone with heightened senses.)  Even Lestat composing a song and having it made into a music box for Nicki (now spelt “Nicky” in the subtitles for some reason) was “borrowed” from Barnabas Collins and the music box he had made for Josette from Dark Shadows (original 1960s series). 

Now in episode 6 of Interview with The Vampire we have Lestat singing a new version of “Come to me” to Louis.  The lyrics and melody might be different but “Come to me” is the vampire love song from Fright Night (1985).  It’s sung by a man in the first movie and sung by Deborah Holland in the sequel,  Fright Night: Part 2 (1988). Each representing the vampire antagonist of the story and the lyrics of the original 1980s versions of the song are very vampiric and honestly superior to what was written for this show.  I happen to very much like Deborah Holland’s version of Come to Me.    

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they would have a vampire write a song called “Come to me” when two popular 80s Vampire movies had “Come to me” as the vampire’s main love song.

 And now they reveal that Rashid is a vampire via flashback to the 1970s. Way ahead of you, show.  I already figured out it’s Armand. 

Lestat literally threatening that he would kill them if they leave him and hacking off the finger of his mortal lover really rubs me the wrong way but I’m getting more and more numb to this show.

The flashback to the 1970s was probably the most Anne Rice-esque the show actually got to be.  When they start repeatedly calling the power of flight “Cloud gift” I was reminded how much I dislike the later books and the terms Anne Rice coined in the late 90s to early 2000s to try again shift the vocabulary of vampire fiction. I never liked the term “cloud gift.” Cloud Gift, Mind gift, and fire gift, all later novel terms for basic things like fight, telepathy, and pyrokinesis. Though based on how the cloud gift is described the correct term would actually be transvection.   

There’s something very cynical and mean about this show and the way the showrunner laugh-talks when he says “When you take him back when you know you shouldn’t.”  The way this showrunner acts about domestic violence really bothers me.

I get the impression this show runner has no real love for things Gothic.  He talks like a cynic, a mean one at that.   He doesn’t have any sense of romance.  And I don’t mean romance as in “love story” I mean romance as in the exaggerated and emotional drama that is Gothic fiction.  He’s too jaded to really seem to “get it.”  

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I can say for episode 6.  

[maxwell-grant]

Might I please ask whom you would pick if you were casting a version of Count Dracula for WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS? (Assuming, of course, that we're not shameless enough to cast Mr Jemaine Clement as Vlad's identical grandson who just so happened to become a much, much more famous vampire than Vlad himself ...).

Pretty much the same actors I mentioned here, on my “designing Dracula” post. I wrote a post once pitching some ideas for how the Vampires would react to Count Dracula, and since Dracula's the big elephant in the room everytime you do a vampire story that tries to take a look at the larger history of the archetype, so I assume at some point they're gonna get to addressing what Dracula is like in this world. But if I was gonna do actual Dracula appearing in WWDITS, I think the joke I'd go with, the one I think makes for the funnier outcome, is the idea that Dracula, of ALL fictional vampires, doesn't actually exist, and never has.

Even though every vampire in existence thinks he does, even though many of them are dead certain they've met Dracula. No, even the Council is not aware of this, they all are torn between those who think Dracula was real but died, and those who think he’s just biding his time. But unfortunately, it's one of the few things humans happen to be fully right about. Quite embarassing, really.

Yes, the Van Helsing bloodline exists, and yes, the non-Dracula cast of the novel does exist, there really used to be a group of Victorian train nerds who put an end to some of the biggest and nastiest vampires ever back in the 1880s, the book Dracula is a fictionalized retelling of how they met. And true to the book's infleunces, "Dracula" is really just an amalgam of several different figures merged into a single character, who ended up inspiring legions of copycats who ended up being mistaken for the real deal. 

Yes, Bram Stoker had insider knowledge of vampires thanks to a slightly scandalous affair with a certain Mr Cravensworth, which also means Laszlo's antics have indirectly gotten countless vampires killed and he never faced any consequences for it. Yes, Bela Lugosi was The Council leader for a while, vampires worldwide still bemoan his passing. Yes, Nandor had a fiercesome rivalry with Vlad the Impaler, who was not a vampire, but in fact the fiercest vampire killer of his age and a distant progenitor of the Van Helsing bloodline, I mean, who do you think discovered that a stake through the heart is an effective way to slaughter vampires? This is a fact that the vampires (sans Colin, who can’t keep secrets for shit) all collectively agree Guillermo must NEVER be informed about. You can imagine how pissed off Vlad the Impaler’s ghost would be, if he were to be aware of what his legacy turned into. 

Yes, there are a lot of dumbasses running around pretending to be Dracula, some of whom are even pretty believable. No, none of them are Dracula, the way the novel describes. Dracula really is just a name for a fictional character that all vampirekind believes to be real. Really, most monsters of this world are also fooled. The werewolves all largely hate Dracula and particularly hate him for his lording over wolves, it’s a pretty sore spot to bring up. Zombies, witches, necromancers, pretty much all characters with a foot in the supernatural also believe Dracula is real.

With, one exception.

Yeah, of course Colin Robinson, of all people, would be the one character in the entire world to really know what’s going, the only being alive who’s 100% aware of the fact that Dracula isn’t real, just because vampires are. He figured it out pretty quickly by snooping through the Council’s biographical reports on “the Impaler” and finding nothing but moth-eaten records of old Dracula plays, and just Googling stuff. He’s pretty good at that, too. 

He really doesn’t give a shit about this, but he likes to bring it up on occasion next to other vampires, who treat him like he’s the vampiric equivalent of a flat earther (which he pretends to be, also). He gets to both feed on their annoyance as well as lord over them in some small, petty capacity, like a playground kid just waiting to break the news that Santa isn’t real (which he is, but NO ONE knows what kind of being he is, and frankly that’s been a major cause of concern to vampirekind for centuries now).

OR, keeping in spirit with the movie: There was a real Dracula, an extremely powerful vampire lord who went by that name in England and fought a group of heroes and was recorded by Bram Stoker in a very popular and famous novel, who miraculously survived those events and was just biding his time until he was ready to reclaim his place as the King of all Vampires.

It was Petyr.

But then, y’know, Nick happened.

Fucking Nick.

[wanderer-chronicles]

"We have Beth from Tampa on the line. Hello.”

“Hi, Kitty. I have a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a long time. Do you think Dracula is still out there?”

I leaned on the arm of my chair and stared at the microphone. “Dracula. As in, the book? The character?”

Beth from Tampa sounded cheerful and earnest. “Yeah. I mean, he’s got to be the best-known vampire there is. He was so powerful, I can’t really believe that Van Helsing and the rest of them just finished him off.”

I tried to be polite. “Actually, they did. It’s just a book, Beth. Fiction. They’re characters.”

“But you sit there, week after week, telling everyone that vampires and werewolves are real. Surely a book like this must have been based on something that really happened. Maybe his name wasn’t really Dracula, but Bram Stoker must have based him on a real vampire, don’t you think? Don’t you wonder who that vampire was?”

Stoker may have met a real vampire, may even have based Dracula on that vampire. But if that vampire was still around, I suspected he was in deep hiding out of embarrassment at being associated with the book.

“You may be right, there may be a real vampire who was Stoker’s inspiration. But the events of the book? Sheer fabrication. I say this because Dracula isn’t really about vampires, or vampire hunting, or the undead, or any of that. It’s about a lot of other things: sexuality, religion, reverse imperialism, and xenophobia. But what it’s really about is saving the world through superior office technology.” I waited half a beat for that to sink in. I loved this stuff. “Think about it. They make such a big deal about their typewriters, phonographs, stenography— this was like the techno-thriller of its day. They end up solving everything because Mina is really great at data entry and collating. What do you think?”

“Um . . . I think that may be a stretch.”

“Have you read the book?”

“Um, no. But I’ve seen every movie version of it!” she ended brightly, as if that would save her. I suppressed a growl. No need to chew her out, when she was being so enthusiastic. Patiently I said, “All right. Which is your favorite?”

“The one with Keanu Reeves!”

“Why am I not surprised?” I clicked her off. “Moving on. Next caller, you’re on the air.”

-Carrie Vaughn, Kitty Goes To Washington

[marypenelope]

A lot of people have posited that Guillermo's blood might be poisonous or he might have special abilities or whatever because of his relation to the Van Helsing family. Its understandable, because it's mostly what the show has been implying, but I'm not convinced.

(Under the cut bc this got long)

For one thing, the Van Helsing heritage makes up a very small percentage of Guillermo's ancestry. If Guillermo has special powers because of this heritage, there should probably be a bunch of other people who are a lot more closely related and therefore are either just as powerful or more so, yet it doesn’t seem like something the vampire community was aware of until Guillermo.

Plus, I'm still not sure Van Helsing is... real? In the wwdits universe?

I mean, it's been kinda implied that he is, especially with the 'Van Helsing's Dick' artifact from s3e2, but like... still.

I mean, if Dracula is an actual historical figure in the world of wwdits, I'm pretty sure it hasn’t been mentioned. And Dracula is, after all, where the character of Van Helsing originally came from.

Now, I did a bit of research and there’s apparently some unsubstantiated claims that Van Helsing was based on a real person, but no one can agree on who, specifically. And none of the proposed inspirations actually have the last name Van Helsing. Which means that, if Dracula is a work of fiction in wwdits the same way it is in our world, even if Bram Stoker did know a legendary vampire hunter, their name probably wasn’t actually Van Helsing.

Of course, this is a TV show where vampires are real, so maybe the events of Dracula really did happen.

Now, I haven’t actually read Bram Stoker's Dracula before, but I did do some research on the character of Abraham Van Helsing. According to annotations by Leonard Wolf, Van Helsing had a son, but he had died some time before the novel. His wife subsequently went insane with grief, leaving her "dead to [Van Helsing], but alive by Church's law", so I'm doubtful he would have had any other children. This leaves him without any direct descendants - it's possible Guillermo could be related through a cousin or niece/nephew or something, but he wouldn't be getting the actual genes of the famous vampire hunter, which to me makes it unlikely he'd get any special powers via that relation.

Now, it could be that wwdits has made it so Van Helsing does have direct descendants, Guillermo being one of them, but again, we can't know for sure.

Now, based on what I can find, Van Helsing doesn’t seem to be a common last name, but it is a real last name that some people have. So, whether or not Abraham Van Helsing the vampire slayer actually existed in the world of wwdits, it's possible his family is not the same Van Helsings that Guillermo is related to.

"But wait!" I can hear you saying. "If Van Helsing doesn’t exist/Guillermo isn’t really related to him in a way that would give him magic DNA, why is he so good at killing vampires and why is he immune to hypnotism?"

Well, Guillermo was already doing a lot of physical work as a familiar pre-vampire slaying - disposing of bodies, keeping house, capturing victims, etc. Despite what some people think re weight and health, Guillermo was never exactly out of shape. And it's possible that he is just naturally gifted at fighting - sometimes people are just good at things. It isn’t necessarily because of who their family is. As for the hypnotism, Guillermo said it himself - the vamps used it so often he became immune.

Honestly, the thing that convinces me most that this theory is correct is the way they went about establishing Guillermo's supposed ancestry. Through his DNA test, we know it's an undisputed fact that hes related to a Dutch family with the last name Van Helsing - maybe one of them was even named Abraham, we don’t know. But after that fact is established, Guillermo largely comes to the conclusion that he must be related to that Van Helsing as a way to justify why and how he killed both the Baron and that random vampire security guy. It wasn’t bad luck or an accident, it was fate.

Except that, well, none of that really holds up. The Baron was a genuine mistake - the vampires technically should have been asleep by that point, there was no way for Guillermo to realize that he was behind the door when he opened it. And while he did deliberately ward off the security vampire with his cross necklace, he didn’t actually intend for the guy to end up dead impaling himself. In fact, Guillermo only starts deliberately killing vampires after he learns of his supposed heritage - he can't help it, after all. It's in his nature. In his blood.

Unless it's not. Unless all the bloodthirsty, violent impulses and outbursts have just been a part of Guillermo all along, a part that he never wanted to acknowledge.

At the very least, it's an interesting thought.

[a-little-slice-of-fandom]

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Irish-ness of Dracula, if you wanna ramble about it!

(Okay I just want to apologise for how long this took to answer because I know it’s been sitting in my inbox for over a month but..depression and work happened and I just didn’t have the time or energy to complete it. I seriously do apologise for this but I hope you enjoy the post anyway!)

So the first thing I need to clear up is this: the concept of a monster or a demon that feeds upon the life force of humans is not limited to one singular culture or folklore. In fact, this core concept is a wider cultural phenomenon and variations of it exist across both countries and continents. And no one country can take sole credit for the this core concept of vampires. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise either doesn’t know much about vampires or is intentionally being disingenuous. There can be cultural variations that are specific to certain folklores (and to just blatantly steal these would be cultural appropriation), but the main idea of vampires exists across a wide range of folklores and no singular person, group of people or culture can take credit for the creation of vampires.

However, arguably it was the work of Bram Stoker that aided in the solidification of the concept of Vampires that we know today. While there were other authors from a wide range of nationalities who wrote about Vampires before Stoker (including John William Polidori who wrote the Vampyre in 1819)...Dracula is the best known. (Now I personally believe that’s because Dracula is an absolutely banging novel, although I do concede that the prevalence of adaptations of Dracula from the 1920’s to today helps keep Dracula in the forefront of audiences minds.) In addition, it’s important to remember that Stoker was inspired by another Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, who wrote the novel Carmilla. As far as I know, Le Fanu and Stoker actually worked together on a magazine!

Another thing I think that needs clarification is the common belief that Stoker heavily/religiously based Dracula on the historical figure Vlad the Impailer. This is heavily debated by scholars. While there’s an obvious, undeniable similarity between the names of these two...the similarities start to wain after this, with only small similarities between the two and there’s even literal contradictions between the history of Vlad the Impailer and Dracula’s history in the novel. In fact, there’s not much indication that Stoker based the character Dracula off Vlad the Impailer, or even that he had a working knowledge of Vlad the Impailer beyond the name. In all 124 pages of his notes, there’s nothing to indicate that Stoker’s inspiration for Dracula came from Vlad the Impailer.

(Plus Dracula in the novel wasn’t even originally called Dracula...he was called Count Wampyr in the original drafts of the novel and this was only changed, from what I can gather, in the last couple of drafts.)

In fact, I’d personally argue that that connection between Vlad the Impailer and Dracula is actually something that’s been retroactively added by other artists, for example the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” heavily leaned into this idea that Dracula and Vald the Impailer were one in the same, and as time has progressed people assume that these elements were in the original novel when that’s simply untrue! Stoker didn’t write that! It’s a retroactive addition by other artists that’s just assumed by the masses to be canon. This phenomenon is actually super interesting and it’s absolutely not limited to Stoker’s novel Dracula/the modern day perception of Dracula (another example would be Mary Shelley’s version of Frankenstein versus the modern day perception Frankenstein). I’m not sure if there’s a word for what this is, but I like the term “cultural canon”, where something that’s been added in by other artists has become as good as canon within the minds of the masses and as such is ingrained within the cultural perception of something, despite it having no basis within the original piece or even directly contradicting what is in canon.

(Now I’ll absolutely concede that Stoker taking the name of a historical figure and possibly their likeness from another country and making them into a literal monster is something that should be discussed. I don’t know how Vlad the Impailer is viewed within Romania - whether he’s viewed positively or negatively or a mixture - but regardless he was a historical figure and Stoker did eventually use that name for his own creative purposes. Again, Stoker didn’t say that Dracula and Vlad the Impailer were the same person, that’s other artists doing, but there’s still issues with Stoker that needs to be discussed)

Now, I’ve seen people talk about how Stoker took a lot of inspiration from the Baltic folklore surrounding vampires for his novel, but I don’t really know this folklore very well and therefore I don’t feel like I’m qualified to discuss it. If anyone is more well versed in this topic wants to add to this post then they’re more than welcome to! I don’t deny that Stoker too inspiration from places other than Ireland (like the novel is set in Whitby) but I just feel like people over hype the relation between stokers Dracula and Vlad the Impailer.

Now, onto the Irish mythology side!

So the most obvious inspiration for Dracula comes from the story of Abhartach. here is a link to an actual, respectable retelling of the story of Abhartach which I’d highly recommend people read (it’s really not that long) but the key points go as follows:

There was this Irish chieftain called Abhartach, who was really cruel and the townsfolk didn’t really like him. So, the townsfolk and another cheiftain (known as Cathain) banded together to kill Abhartach. They did succeed in killing him (yay), however, Abhartach just sort of...rose from the dead and began another reign of terror (not yay). However, Abhartach needed to be sustained by blood and required a bowlful every day to sustain his energy. Cathain comes back and kills Abhartach once again, but Abhartach rises from the dead once more and now needs more blood. Abhartach is only banished when Cathain uses a word made from yew wood and wounds Abhartach with it. Abhartach is buried upside down with a grant stone over the grave to stop Abhartach rising once again.

Sound familiar? The similarities between Abhartach and Dracula are undeniable! Yes, there’s some differences between the two but the core story here is almost identical. I could totally reword that paragraph, omitting the names, and it would be indistinguishable from a short summary of Dracula! Even the way that the main characters find out about the wooden weapon that can kill the monster is similar, as both Jonathan and Cathain go to wiser and older members of their community to learn more.

(Also please mythology blogs don’t come for me I know my retelling was an incredible oversimplification but I’m writing on my iPad and my thumbs are starting to hurt. People have wrote full papers on the similarities between Dracula and Abhartach and there’s so many more people more qualified than me, I’m just an 18 year old trying to make a fun and interesting tumblr post. Again, if anyone wants add anything like extra sources or more information or even to point out my mistakes then I more than welcome the additions)

Another piece of folklore that’s also said to have inspired Dracula is the Dearg Due. Now there’s multiple different versions of the tale, but the version I have heard goes like this:

There’s a noble woman who wants to marry a penniless peasant boy, but her dad disapproves and wants her to marry another man who is much richer. The rich man and the noble woman were eventually married but the woman didn’t love the rich man. In retaliation, the rich man locked the woman in a windowless castle where she starved to death. The woman was buried by the locals who took pity on her, but because she was buried hungry she came back to life and drank the blood of her father and her husband as revenge. The version I heard says that the dearg due now basically wanders ireland drinking the blood of men who have hurt or wronged women (as one should) but there’s other endings to the story.

(Again is anyone has a reliable source they want to share then please feel free to add!)

So this is another Irish piece of folklore that clearly includes some elements that we now associate with vampires. Now people (including Wikipedia) claim that this story was specifically what Stoker based Dracula on, and while I definitely think that Stoker was aware of this story and took inspiration from it, I personally think that the Dearg Due inspired the concept of Dracula’s wives more than Dracula himself.

However the key point still stands: Stoker was likely aware of these legends and even the most staunchly anti-Irish person would have to concede that there’s similarities between all three stories. And very rarely are these similarities discussed in classes about Dracula...which I feel is a real disservice. I don’t think students should have to have an intense knowledge of Irish mythology (my knowledge is spotty at best) nor do I think it should be an exam question...but even a brief acknowledgment of “hey, Stoker was inspired by these stories and you can clearly see similarities between them” would be nice. Moreover, it further solidifies my original argument that Stoker was, at least to some extent, Irish and that his Irishness inherently influenced his work.

Also...the social context of what was going on in Ireland in this period can’t be ignored! Again, while Stoker did spend time in both England and Romania, he spent a lot of his life in Ireland and therefore would have known what was going on in his own country.

Dracula was published in 1897, which is exactly 50 years after the worst year of the Irish Famine/ The Great Hunger/An Gorta Mór. Now I don’t have time to do a whole history of the Great Hunger but the effects of the famine were greatly exacerbated by the horrific mismanagement of Ireland by the British government and the British system of ruling in Ireland. How many people died during the famine isn’t clear, but we do know that the population of Ireland at the time was 8 million and the population today is 6 million...200 years later and we still haven’t recovered. So while we all like to joke about the fact that Stoker wrote about an unfeeling member of the aristocracy literally feeding off others with no remorse and basically ruining their lives...are we really going to pretend that there isn’t social commentary there? Scholars specifically think that Stoker was commenting on the absentee landlords (basically British aristocrats who owned land in Ireland but didn’t live there and as such didn’t care about the well being of their tenants) who would often have tenants forced off the land when they couldn’t pay rent...despite the fact that their tenenants were already starving and had no money because their only source of food and income failed.

(I’m not being shady by the way, I also love to joke about the social implications of Dracula, but I feel like people forget that the jokes have actual points behind them)

There was also a cholera epidemic in Ireland in 1832 which is generally accepted to be one of Stoker’s biggest inspirations. You can read more about the epidemic here if you wish, but I’ll summarise what I feel are the key points. Not only was Stoker’s mother from county Sligo and lived through this cholera epidemic, but Stoker also asked her to write down her memories of the epidemic and used her accounts to aid in his research of the cholera epidemic. Now the fact that he was actively researching this should indicate that it would influence his work, especially considering the situation in county Sligo was incredibly morbid. There’s accounts of the 20 carpenters in Sligo town being unable to make enough coffins to keep up with the amount of people dying, resulting in hundreds of dead bodies just lying on the street. However, the most horrific account from this epidemic was the stories of terrified nurses placing cholera patients into mass graves while they were still alive. Stoker himself literally stated that Dracula was “inspired by the idea of someone being buried before they were fully dead”. So while at first there seems to be very little relation between the novel and a medical epidemic, it quickly becomes clear that Stoker’s fascination with this historical event influenced his writing.

My overall point is that Stoker’s irishness inherently influenced his writing. Writers don’t write in their own little bubble, divorced from the world around them, their views and work are shaped by their position in society and their upbringing (it’s why I dislike death of the author as a literary theory). So when people try to claim that Dracula is a piece of British literature...it indicates either a lack of understanding of the context in which Stoker was writing in or a wilful ignorance founded on colonialist ideas. His influences are so obvious to me as an Irish woman but they rarely get discussed, and even if they are it’s seen as overreaching! To call Dracula British literature and to ignore the inherent Irishness of the novel does a great disservice to Stoker!

Anyways I really hope you enjoyed this discussion my love! Once again I apologise for how long this took to write. Also I’m sorry if this comes off as argumentative or anything, that absolutely wasn’t my intention, I just have a particular style of writing long posts haha.

[secretlives]

Lord Byron

Truth is always strange,” George Gordon Noel Byron once wrote. “Stranger than fiction.” In one line of verse he gave us both a truism still heard today and the perfect tagline for his brief, scandalous, hedonistic life.

When you’re the son of a guy known as “Mad Jack,” chances are you’re in for a wild ride. Little George didn’t get to know his father very well, for dear old dad drank himself to death when the boy was only three. But Mad Jack’s legacy of excess seeped into his offspring’s consciousness, if not his genes. In any case, Byron had little choice but to be his father’s son, since his mother hated him. She called him her “lame little brat,” on account of his clubfoot, and once tried to beat him to death with a set of fire tongs. Even worse, Byron’s governess, May Gray, reportedly molested him at the age of nine. About the only good thing to happen in his childhood was that he inherited his uncle’s wealth along with his title: Baron Byron of Rochedale. From then on, George Gordon was known as Lord Byron.

He grew into a strikingly handsome man. Other than his lame foot, for which he compensated through displays of athletic prowess, Byron’s only imperfection was a tendency to put on weight. In typical nineteenth-century fashion, he overcame this predisposition by starving himself and taking copious quantities of laxatives. Sex would prove to be his real nourishment, anyway. Byron was the Wilt Chamberlain of his day, reportedly bedding 250 women in Venice in one year alone. His long list of lovers included Lady Caroline Lamb (who famously described him as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”), her cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke (who became Lady Byron in 1815), and, reportedly, his own half sister, Augusta Leigh. Nor did he restrict himself to one gender. Byron had numerous homosexual affairs, often with underage boys. Other than the exotic animals he kept for companionship, there didn’t seem to be too many creatures he wasn’t interested in having sex with.

As a consequence, Byron became Europe’s most celebrated rake. His poetic achievements never garnered as much attention as did the wild rumors that sprang up about him. Oddly enough, a lot of the gossip involved Byron drinking wine out of someone’s skull. (Sometimes it was a dead monk’s, sometimes an old mistress’s.... The legends tended to outrace reality.) Fed up with the philandering, Lady Byron gave her husband his walking papers in 1816—just one year into their marriage. He then left England for the Continent and never returned. It was the only way to avoid public censure by British society.

Byron spent that summer in Switzerland with his personal physician, John Polidori. They struck up a friendship with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his fiancée, Mary Godwin. During a stretch of rainy weather, the group entertained themselves by writing monster stories. Mary produced an early version of what would become her novel Frankenstein, while Polidori used Byron as the inspiration for “The Vampyre.” The story of a suave British nobleman who sucks the blood out of unsuspecting victims, it would prove to be major influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

From Switzerland, Byron traveled to Italy, where he had an affair with the very married Countess Teresa Guiccioli. He remained there until 1823, when he left for Greece and a rendezvous with destiny, helping the Greek independence movement repel the Ottoman Turks. Despite a complete lack of military experience, Byron helped drill troops and provided needed cash to the rebel forces. To this day, he is still considered a Greek national hero.

Before he could see any action, Byron was felled by an attack of malarial fever and died on Easter Sunday 1824. Soon after his death, which was mourned throughout England, a group of his friends gathered in London to read over his memoirs. The manuscript was filled with vivid descriptions of Byron’s sexual escapades, which, the group felt, might just destroy his hard-won “heroic” reputation. Determined that the memoirs never see the light of day, they proceeded to set them on fire.

[serialreblogger]

Hey! I'm thinking of reading Dracula, and knowing that's your eternal hyperfixation, I wanted to ask your thoughts, if you had any comments, suggestions, ect.

HEY WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS SOONER I’M SO SORRY FRIEND

okay okay okay okay (...several people are typing...) SO

the first thing you should be aware of when reading Dracula is that it’s quite Victorian, so you might find it easier, especially on a first read, to get an annotated version (the Norton Critical Edition version is quite good) that puts footnotes in to explain all the outdated references to like, London penny-meat merchants and stuff. I would say it’s significantly easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but because it was written 200 years ago the difference in language means it’s not a simple read. (However, if you have absolutely any attraction to the Gothic aesthetic, Dracula is so very much worth the brainpower to slog through the rougher sentences. Like. “...the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.” The whole book is like that. A bit stilted to contemporary readers, but also breathtakingly spot-on in its Spooky Factor.)

the second thing you should be aware of is that Dracula is extremely gay, but in a Tormented Victorian Closeted way. There’s a part where Jonathan climbs out a window that just. It’s uh. The descriptions are very,, metaphorical-sounding. Again, the whole book is like that, and sometimes it’s very fun and sometimes (lookin at Lucy’s whole thing) it’s significantly more unsettling if you pay attention to the weirdly sexy descriptions of how the protagonists interact with the vampires, but I think that’s part of what I find so fascinating about Dracula--it’s unsettling and strange and the pieces don’t fit together clearly, and I still don’t know quite what to make of it, but all the same the feeling of what Stoker’s saying comes through quite clearly. There’s a reason why so many Dracula adaptations have this narrative of a protagonist falling in forbidden love with the tormented Vampyre, yknow? There’s something so unmistakeably sympathetic about the character of Dracula, even when the narrative of the story goes out of its way to establish that he has no redeeming qualities or even proper personhood, that he’s just a monster. Because there’s something about the story (even without getting into the whole “Mina and Jon murked their boss” thing) that makes a reader wonder if that’s really the whole truth. If there isn’t something tragic about Dracula. If there isn’t something in him, if not of goodness, then at least of sorrow, instead of only fear.

Anyway I digress but I think we all knew that was gonna happen; point is: Jonathan and Dracula definitely had sex, Mina and Lucy were definitely in love, Seward’s got something weird goin on with the old professor (and also he’s just very weird, full stop. sir. sir please stop experimenting on your asylum inmates. sir i know this is victorian england but please Do Not), and Quincey, well, Quincey is an American cowboy with a bowie knife, and I think that’s all we really need to know.

ok and! the third thing you should be aware of is The Racism. Imperialist Britain, yo. Bram Stoker was Irish so like, it isn’t half as bad as some other authors of his time period (Rudyard Kipling anyone), but the racism is real and I don’t wanna gloss over that. The g**sy slur is used with abandon for a huge assortment of people groups, there’s a tacit as well as overt acceptance of the idea that West is superior to East, and because the educational system where I grew up is a joke and I can only learn things if I accidentally fall down the wikipedia hole of researching the insect genus hemiptera, i genuinely still don’t know how accurate the extensive history of Romania recounted in the first third of the book actually is. Oh also casual and blatant anti-blackness is verbalized by a character at least once. I’m pretty sure the racism has a metaphorical place in the framework of Dracula’s storytelling, but I couldn’t tell you what it is because I am not going to bother putting myself in the mindset of a racist white Victorian man. This is the mindset I am trying to unlearn. So: read with caution, critical thinking, and the double knowledge that even as the narrators are meant to be unreliable, so too is the author himself.

Finally, regarding interpretation: so personally I’m running with the opinion that Dracula is, at least partly, a metaphor for Stoker’s own queerness and internal conflict re: being queer, being closeted, and watching the torture his friend Wilde went through when the wealthy father of Wilde’s lover set out to ruin his life for daring to love his son. Whether this is true or not (I think it’s true, but hey, that’s analysis, baby), you can’t understand Dracula without knowing the social context for it (as with all literature--the author isn’t dead, not if you want to know what they were saying), and the social context for it is:

- Stoker was friends with Wilde, growing only closer after Wilde was outed

- Wilde was outed, as I said, because the father of his lover was wealthy and powerful and full of the most virulent kind of hatred. This is especially interesting because of how many rich, powerful parents just straight up die in Dracula and leave the main characters with no legal issues and a ridiculous amount of money, which is the diametrical opposite of what happened to Wilde

- Stoker idolized his mentor Henry Irving. Irving was a paradigm of unconventional relationships and self-built family, in a world where divorcees and children born out of wedlock were things to be whispered about in scandalized tones, not people to love and embrace. Irving was also famous for thriving off of manipulating those close to him and pitting friends against each other. Given the painstakingly vivid description Stoker provides for his titular vampire and how closely it matches Irving’s own appearance and demeanor, Irving was widely understood even at the time of writing to be the chief inspiration for the character of Dracula

- the book is dedicated to Stoker’s close friend, Hall Caine, a fellow writer whose stories centered around love triangles and accumulation of sins which threaten to ruin everything, only to be redeemed by the simple act of human goodness

- Stoker was Irish, but not Catholic (he was a Protestant of the Church of Ireland, a division of the Anglican Church). This may come as a surprise when you read the book and see All The Catholicism, Just Everywhere. Religion is actually a key theme in Dracula--most of the main characters start out your typical Good Victorian Anglican Skeptics, and need to learn through a trial-by-fire to trust in the rituals and relics of the Catholic Church to save them from Dracula’s evilness. Which is interesting. Because not only do these characters start off as dismissive towards these “superstitions” (in the same way they dismiss the “superstitions” of the peasant class on the outskirts of Dracula’s domain), but the narrative telling us “these superstitions are actually true!” cannot be trusted, when you know the author’s own beliefs.

(Bram Stoker is not saying what his characters are saying. This is the first and most important rule to remember, if you want to figure out Dracula.)

- The second-most famous character in the novel, after Dracula himself, is Van Helsing, whose first name is Abraham. Note that “Bram” is a declension of Abraham. What does this mean? I legitimately have no idea. But it’d be a weird coincidence, right? Like what even is the thought process there? “Oh, yeah, what should I name this character that comes in, makes overtly homoerotic statements willy nilly, and encourages everyone to throw rationality out the window and stake some vampires using the Eucharist? hmmmm how about ‘Me’”

ok wait FINAL final note: you legitimately do not have to care about any of this. I love Dracula because it has gay vibes and I love trying to figure it out, like an archaeologist sifting through sentence structure to find fragments that match the patterns I already know from historical research; but that’s not why you should love Dracula. The book itself is just straight up fun to read. Like I said, Stoker absolutely nails the exact vibe of spookiness that I love, the eerieness and elegance and vague but vivid fear of a full moon crossed by clouds at midnight. The characters are intriguing, especially Quincey gosh I love Quincey Morris but they’re very,, sweet? if i can say that about people i, personally, suspect of murder? They come together and protect each other against the terrible threat that is Dracula, and you don’t get that half as often as I’d like in horror media. I don’t even know if Dracula could qualify as “horror” proper, because it’s not about the squeamish creeping discomfort that “horror” is meant to evoke, it’s not the appeal of staring at a train wreck--it’s not horrifying. It’s eerie. It’s Gothic. It has spires and vampires and found family and cowboys, and to be honest, I don’t know what could be better than that.

[oftincturedwords]

For the unique writing ask: 18 (+ loved your answer on (I think it was) 1, about the platonic love. I totally agree with you ^^)

unique writing asks🖋️ : accepting !

18. What writers have inspired you with their use of language? What are some of your favorite quotes?

i’m glad to hear more are of that opinion , thank you for saying so ! platonic love is just as important as romantic love , it’s sad that it’s usually brushed off as not or that it must develop into romantic love to have any merit.

&& i’m so happy that you asked this question ! i was really hoping that someone would send this one in , so thank you !!

one author who inspires me in my writing is patrick o’brian because of his descriptions in his writing. i love the detail he places in describing a scene ! i’ve hear some say he’s too descriptive but i love that , it’s truly helps me see what’s happening in my minds eye & i think a lot of authors nowadays rely on the reader to fill in the blanks or just assume what’s happening / the finer details of a scene / the microexpressions & subtle notes within body language or tones. which is fine , but i do much prefer & feel all the more inspired when i read an author’s in-depth descriptions. ( not to mention i love the dynamics between aubrey & maturin <3 ) he inspires me to add how much detail i want , that no amount of detail is too much.

favourite quote(s) : “ For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it ; ” — Master & Commander ( book 1 ) , it’s thought by jack about stephen upon their first meeting , this line never fails to make me laugh when i read it because stephen can be so pretentious & jack just wanted to enjoy the music agdjfkglg but hey they turn out good friends in the end

““ Jack, you've debauched my sloth. ”” — H.M.S. Surprise ( book 3 ) , said by stephen when he came back from a lesson in teaching bonden to read to find that jack had got his sloth drunk on grog & cake , it’s just a very funny line & i find the interaction between jack & the sloth rather adorable the entire thing. although i don’t condone his actions in giving the animal alcohol , that is bad.

i fear this post would get too long if i were to quote my favourite descriptions from patrick o’brien or any more quotes from him , but i will mention another funny one is when stephen basically trips over the ship’s cat down a hatchway & when i believe it was a wombat of stephen’s tried to eat Jack’s hat , when jack called stephen to help him , the doctor just said it wouldn’t hurt the wombat ahdkflglg. another sweet one is when jack accepts hollom as midshipman even though there’s hardly room on Surprise for him , jack suspects hollom is near tears at the look on his face & changes his mind.

another author who i very much love is j.r.r. tolkien. again i love his attention to detail in describing things. as well as all the detail he placed into his world building for his books , creating his own languages & all the names / maps , events , theology , etc. that he created or took influence from to create middle earth & all its content. plus the overall stories ( meaning the hobbit & lotr ) are inspiring in themselves. as well i love his words choice / sentence structures , it’s reads wonderfully & archaic when i love ! he inspires to me add details that some may not think of & to add detail wherever i see fit.

favourite quote(s) : “ All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. ” — The Fellowship of the Ring , The Lord of the Rings ( book 1 ) , i like this quote because it simply sums up that our time is important & we must do our best to spend it how we see fit because it is our time & our life. I just remember this quote being very impactful to younger me when i first read it & it still rather is.

i love all the scenes in two towers with gimli , legolas , & aragorn as well. not a specific quote but their interactions are some of my favourites , their dynamics & path are something i can always reread & never tire of <3

again there are several quotes i could take from tolkien’s works to say here as a favourite , but this answer is already so long. i apologise. this is a topic i could converse about over countless hours.

as well i want to mention c.s. forester because his descriptions on sailing are very good & too i like that hornblower is a very flawed yet brilliant character who battles with low self esteem , he just seems a very real character. so it’s definitely an influence to ensure characters i write aren’t glorified to the point of being without flaw or always choosing the correct course the first time. let your character screw up & make mistakes , have doubts & be human. that’s what he inspires me to do when i write. ( as well bush & hornblower <3 love those two )

favourite quote(s) : directing you to this post of mine so as not to add more words here but it’s very much one of my favourites.

too i love the scene between hornblower & kennedy in Mr. Midshipman Hornblower when they get caught by bolton being absolute dorks. it’s nice to see a lighter side to hornblower. same with the scene in Lieutenant Hornblower after bush hear that hornblower has been promoted & they drink , bush is still recovering & gets a bit drunk so hornblower is helping him away & bush is just grinning & singing ‘he’s a jolly good fellow’

&& some honourable mentions since this response is getting rather long ; jane austen , mary shelley , charles dickens , bram stoker , leo tolstoy , william shakespeare , john flanagan , neil giaman , terry pratchett , c.s. lewis , alexander dumas , oscar wilde , ernest hemingway , madeline miller , f. scott fitzgerald , tim o’brien , & etc. so many others.

*please note that it is the writing of these authors that i adore & take inspiration from , this does not i particularly praise the author as a person

[collectsfallenstars]

WARNING: Absolutely long post

IN DEFENSE OF KIM EUN SOOK'S "THE KING: ETERNAL MONARCH"

The King: Eternal Monarch has been getting mixed reviews 10 episodes into the season and it has boggled my mind as to why this has been happening. It’s a grand project, has a robust storyline, beautiful cinematography the likes of which is done for full-length films, and has a love story between two adults who behave like adults and not in perpetual high school. It is very different from most Korean dramas I have come across, and that alone is reason enough to watch it.

 

Granted, I have not watched many of them so maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But what I am sure of is that I get tired of things very easily when they’ve become predictable.

 

See, before watching The King: Eternal Monarch, the last Korean drama I watched was Something Happened in Bali back in 2004. Then coronavirus happened, billions of pesos were to the government but no mass-testing happened, ABS-CBN shut down, people speaking against the government were being put in jail, and I thought, hmm let’s go to Netflix to escape. K-dramas with beautiful autumn colors should do the trick.

 

I watched maybe one or two series in full but soon found myself giving up on the ones that came next. Watching them one after another made it clear that they were built like romance novels – no matter how different each premise was for a series, they always followed a pattern. And patterns, while they may be dependable, can sometimes be boring.

 

And then I decided to give The King: Eternal Monarch a try even though the binge-watching monster inside me disagreed with it. So there I was last week, Netflix open and a lunch of Sinigang na Baboy with rice laid out in front of me.

 

The series opened with a serene view of a bamboo forest, wind blowing gently through it, and the voice of a man talking about the legend of a bamboo flute back when monarchs ruled Korea. Oh, a historical series.

 

1 minute and 40 seconds later, it cuts to a man covered in blood, in a police interrogation room in modern day Korea. Oh, it’s also detective fiction. Gotta watch out for red herrings then. Oh but wait, the man covered in blood, Lee Lim, is supposed to be 70 years old but he doesn’t look a day over 30. I mean, yes Korean genes and skin care are magical but not to this extent. The idea of immortality is introduced which suggests that the series has supernatural elements too. This means world building for these magical elements and forming rules that govern them. (I mean, Bram Stoker and Anne Rice made their vampires perish under the sun and Stephanie Meyer chose to make them…sparkle.)

 

And then 4 minutes in, we get a flashback to winter of 1994 in the Kingdom of Corea. Uhm. Typo? No? Lee Lim, the bastard son of the former king, murders his half brother, the current king, in order to steal the bamboo flute that grants the owner much power. The king’s young son, 7 year old Lee Gon, witnesses his father’s murder, struggles with Lee Lim, splits the power laden bamboo flute in half, and nearly dies if it weren’t for a mysterious figure coming in to save him.  The mysterious figure drops an ID card with the name and picture of Lt. Jung Tae Eul on it and Lee Gon clutches it along with half of the bamboo flute. Lee Lim escapes to the forest with only a broken half of the bamboo flute. He comes upon a pair of obelisks, passes through it and lands in Korea with a K. Lee Lim comes face to face with the face of the person he had just murdered, except he isn’t a king anymore. He’s just an unkempt unemployed man. We now have the introduction of parallel worlds and doppelgangers. It had only been 18 minutes into the first episode.

 

I put it on pause, finished my lunch quickly, cleared the table, and settled down on the couch to watch. I did all that before resuming to watch it because it clearly wasn’t the kind of K-drama you could easily watch while eating, glancing up and down between the screen and your food, missing bits of the subtitle here and there and not paying any mind. Because of its structure, the kind of story it wants to tell and the breadth of its narrative, it demands your full attention.

 

I get why people find it difficult. I found it difficult. But it was infinitely exciting. It’s as if someone laid out a puzzle with a thousand pieces, a maze, Connect the Dots, Spot the Difference in front of me and told me to play with them all at the same time.

 

What kind of story did the writer, Kim Eun Sook, want to tell? She began with the murder of the parents of Lee Gon by his bastard uncle, Lee Lim, who feels he has been deprived of power for too long and intends to take it all for himself. It becomes a story of both sides seeking justice for their own separate tragedies. To flesh out this story, she has to give Lee Lim a plan for world domination and give Lee Gon a defense strategy in place, as well as an active pursuit to entrap his uncle. She has to give them motivations, conflicts, moments of doubt and triumph. If this were the only story she wanted to tell, a linear storyline with flashbacks and flash-forwards should be enough. Throw in a romance, love triangle, one final obstacle, 2 chaste kisses, 1 passionate kiss, 1 tearful kiss, 1 reunion kiss and you will arrive at your happy ending.

 

But Kim Eun Sook wanted to do more. She expanded Lee Lim’s plan for world domination into two parallel worlds. Adding science fiction to the mix complicates matters because you will have to build another world that is visibly different from the other even if they are parallel to each other. Audiences should be able to tell one apart from the other quickly in order to keep up with the story. The difficulty that The King: Eternal Monarch faces is that the Kingdom of Corea and the Republic of Korea look almost exactly alike. It takes almost a few seconds to recognize the Royal Seal, or the European inspired trams running in the background to ascertain that the scene is in the Kingdom of Corea. But once the characters appear, it becomes easier to tell which world we’re dealing with. Jung Tae Eul and the police force belong to Korea. The Royal Staff and family, Prime Minister Koo and cabinet members belong to Corea. The only ones to traverse between both worlds are Lee Gon and his uncle.

 

Therein lies one of the criticisms for Kim Eun Sook’s work – the pace is too slow. I would argue though that the pace is just right when you’re creating two worlds, with very different characters in each, whose stories run parallel to and interweave with each other. It is very easy to place all evil characters in World A and all good characters in World B. But that’s lazy writing, and also ugly.

 

Kim Eun Sook humanizes and fleshes out a significant amount of the supporting cast with such care, developing them alongside the major characters. Usually in dramas, the side characters will get hints of a back story in an episode or two, and then have just one episode dedicated to them. Kim Eun Sook did so much more and in effect, her two parallel worlds became so concrete, with real, moving characters contributing their bit into the two separate forces of Lee Gon and Lee Lim that are about to clash. It creates anticipation, excitement, and spreads your heart out amongst many characters instead of investing your emotions into just the main leads.

 

But aside from the science fiction element, Kim Eun Sook also takes on the task of writing detective fiction into her already robust narrative. Lee Lim is essentially building an army of doppelgangers from the Republic of Korea and planting them in key positions in the Kingdom of Corea. He then takes the dead bodies of these Corean citizens and dumps them in the Republic of Korea, leaving Lt. Jung Tae Eul and her squad in the police force with a trail of unsolved cases. Detective stories are by themselves difficult enough. You begin with a dead body, a search for clues, weeding out which clues are significant, chasing a lead, failing, planting and then ignoring red herrings, closing in on a suspect, interrogation, a surprise turn of events, and so on until the murder is solved.

 

But Lee Lim didn’t leave just one dead body in Korea. There’s an entire army of them and Jung Tae Eul has to be on the trail for some of them in order for her to work with Lee Gon in order to solve them and in turn, help him uncover his uncle’s evil plans.

 

This brings us to one of the major criticisms of this drama – the romance between Lt. Jung Tae Eul and King Lee Gon. Apparently, there’s not much of it as it has taken a backseat to the struggle for power in Corea by the Prime Minister, Lee Lim’s murderous spree and body switching between the two worlds in a bid for a two-world domination, and murder investigations that Jung Tae Eul and her squad must carry out in Korea.

 

Would I like to see more of the actors Lee Min Ho and Kim Go Eun on screen? Why, yes of course! But as early as the 1st episode, it was already apparent that this was not going to be the usual K-drama. They weren’t going to meet cute, fall in love, fight their feelings, work on a murder mystery on the side, finally confess, become a couple, fight the final boss side by side, and then live happily ever after. Fantasy, science fiction, and detective fiction all seem bear equal weight with romance. It was different, and I found that absolutely interesting. And just because romance doesn’t dominate 80% of the story does not mean that the romance is lacking.

 

The first episode tricks you into thinking that there is very little romance in this drama. The lead characters of Lt. Jung Tae Eul and King Lee Gon meeting each other for the first time in the last 6 minutes of an episode that was 1 hour, 12 minutes, and 15 seconds long. What can possibly develop and deepen in 6 minutes? Not much, right?

 

But what happened in the last 6 minutes? Lee Gon rides into Gwanghwamun Square on his white horse after having crossed over from Corea and into the parallel world of Korea. He creates a slight commotion what with his royal handsomeness and almost ethereal white horse. Lt. Jung Tae Eul reprimands him. Lee Gon recognizes her as the woman on the ID card his savior had left behind 25 years ago. And in dramatic fashion, he alights from his horse, walks towards her, stops, and then engulfs her in a tight hug. He tells her, “I’ve finally met you” and the episode ends with a shocked Jung Tae Eul in the arms of an almost reverent Lee Gon.

 

In Kim Eun Sook’s other, wildly popular work, Goblin: The Lonely and Great God the first meeting between Kim Shin and Eun Tak also had that moment of finally finding the one they’ve been searching for. But for the Goblin, his bride’s existence was merely functional, as he needed her so he can finally die in peace. So their first meeting was your typical first meeting in K-dramas. There were no feelings yet, but they develop from there. So the whole drama then became a stage to establish the growth of their relationship that would give him the will to live instead of dreaming of death all the time.

 

But now, in The King: Eternal Monarch, the first meeting isn’t an easy blank canvas.

Lee Gon bursts into the first episode, already halfway in love with Jung Tae Eul long before he’s even met her. As a child, Lee Gon had held on to Jung Tae Eul’s image as his a savior. There is deep gratitude.  As a young orphaned monarch, he held on to the idea of her to ease his loneliness. His first duty as a king was to bury his father and learned to cry only in the privacy of his own room when he was 7 years old. But somewhere out there, there was someone who had cared for enough for him to have saved him. This thought sustained him as he grew up.

 

And at this point in the first episode, we’re working with the idea that time travel hasn’t been introduced yet. Which means we’re treating time as a straight line, allowing Lee Gon and Jong Tae Eul to age at the same time. So if Jong Tae Eul had been 25 years old when Lee Gon was 7 in 1994, then she would be 50 years old and he would be 32 in the present year, 2019.

 

Then, as a man in his 30’s, he still keeps on searching for her. But in his head she is frozen in time as the 29 year old woman in her ID picture, and at this point he might possibly be half in love with her already. And when he finally meets her in the flesh, he had spent nearly all his life loving her in different iterations. Finding out that she hadn’t aged as he thought she would have gives him another possibility of loving her as a man would a woman.

 

Now the audience has to grapple with this idea, that he had loved her for 25 years already, prior to seeing her in the flesh. But then if you add the idea of time travel as hinted at by the 10th episode, then this first meeting becomes heavier. Not only would he have loved her for 25 years, but he also would have loved her for 25 years multiplied by the number of timelines he had crossed as a time traveller.

 

That’s why their first meeting had to happen in the last 6 minutes of the first episode. Everything that happened in that first hour and 6 minutes, all the murders, plotting, collision of worlds, and clash of doppelgangers in the past 25 years had to happen in order to bring Lee Gon and Jung Tae Eul to that fated meeting at Gwanghwamun Square. Kim Eun Sook had played with the idea of destiny with Goblin: The Lonely and Great God’s Kim Shin and Eun Tak. Now she takes the same idea of a fated meeting between two souls, Lee Gon and Jung Tae Eul, and proceeds to tear them apart with time loops, parallel worlds, and a frozen dimension to test how their love can endure all of that.

 

There can be no slow burn; there is no chase that starts with attraction, denial, bickering, jealousy, no you-make-me-worry-so-much love confession that is so often found in K-dramas. The lovers don’t even have that poor girl-rich boy/immortal-mortal or whatever uneven power dynamic that’s so popular in dramas. I guess that's what most people inevitably look for because these things were built to be formulaic.

 

But now you have a writer who is trying to build a bigger, more ambitious story, who is willing to take some risks with that formula in order to tell a love story that can transcend time and universes.  The stakes had to be raised higher, the backdrop made grander, in order to hold a love story as epic as this.   How can this not be romantic enough?

 

There are six more episodes left in this series.  Quarantine has been extended. Give this series a chance. 

[kolbisneat]

MONTHLY MEDIA: July 2020

……….FILM……….

Palm Springs (2020) I feel like there was a big marketing push for this movie at the start of the month and it totally worked. All the good buzz and fun artwork I saw relating to this was perfect and it was a fun time at the movies...at home.

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) It’s been yeeeeears since I last watched this and it turns out I remembered next to nothing. The worldbuilding was fantastic and while I still can’t piece together how the aging/curse on Sophie, it just feels that much more magical. Absolutely going to pick up the book to see if I can get a more in-depth narrative.

……….TELEVISION……….

What We Do In The Shadows (Episode 2.01 to 2.04) Hot dang this is continues to be a great series! I really hope Nadja’s doll sticks around for the whole season (or the rest of time) and it’s all just so fun!

Mad Men (Episode 4.07 to 4.11) Knowing there are 7 seasons really makes me feel like we’re in the middle of act 2. Things are getting real low for Don and I’m still baffled at the idea that anyone sees him as a role model/inspiration. It’s feeling bleak and I hope season 5 starts to point upwards again (not for Don but for everyone else).

Dear White People (Episode 1.01 to 2.10) So good! I don’t want to give too much away but what’s started out as a drama/comedy seems to be evolving into something else and I ready for it! I hope season 3 and 4 expand on what I hope it’s building.

……….READING……….

Forever and a Day by Anthony Hororwitz (Complete) A really fun Bond prequel and I think this is going to start me off on reading the original Fleming novels! Filled with all the best tropes from the movies (and maybe the books? Time will tell) and it was such a light and fun read. It was the perfect birthday gift as I needed a beach read.

Dracula by Bram Stoker (Complete) The pacing of this book is a good example of why I tend to prefer modern takes instead of the classics themselves. I appreciate what this book contributed to our collective consciousness, but the back drastically reduces the amount of vampire content in favour of Mina’s deteriorating health, the hunting party discussing their plans, and recounting an extensive travelogue. 

The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Classic by Jason Surrell (Complete) I’ve always loved this ride so I was hoping to learn more about what’s happening with each illusion and effect. While I got sooooome of that, they clearly held back a bunch of secrets and I suppose I understand why. With that said, the history of the original ride’s development was super interesting! Same goes for how the attraction has evolved over the years and when moving to other parks.

Delicious In Dungeon Vol. 8 by Ryoko Kui (Complete) Everything about this series, from the world to the characters, strikes a perfect balance (for me) between familiar and new. The monsters are typically based off of well-established mythology, but there’s usually enough of a twist that it feels more unique to this world. It’s excellent. And the same goes for the characters; at first glance they may look like simple tropes but the series consistently breaks them down or adds depth to inform why a character acts a certain way. Please go read this series.

Fun With Milk and Cheese by Evan Dorkin (Complete) This has the sort of confidence and frantic energy that it could only come out of the late nineties. Some of the stories work better than others, but I think that’s just my own taste.

Dragonball 3-in-1 Volume 1 by Akira Toriyama (Complete) Decided to return and reread this series and I always forget how jarring some of the early stuff is (mostly around gender and Bulma)...I know it’s likely cultural or a product of being over 30 years old, so I won’t fault it too much.

The Perry Bible Fellowship Almanack by Nicholas Gurwitch (Complete) It’d been years since I’d read through most (if not all) of the PBF comics and I appreciate the variety of style even more now. Despite each comic being illustrated in a way that suits the narrative/joke/premise, it all still feels cohesive. It’s something I need to remind myself as I question if any of my own work is unified by anything. Also the insight into the abandoned and forgotten comics at the back of the book were so interesting to read! I love seeing how other creatives think.

The Mushroom Fan Club by Elise Gravel (Complete) Very cute all-ages introduction to mushrooms! Illustrations are so fun and personable and it really encourages outdoor adventuring and wandering around in the woods (safely), so that gets an A+ from me.

Death Wins a Goldfish by Brian Rea (Complete) A wonderfully charming book about Death on vacation. The art is breezy and the light text was surprisingly funny. It was a good reminder to kinda just take a break and recharge, you know?

……….AUDIO……….

Cuz I Love You by Lizzo (2019) After hearing Juice on a friend’s birthday playlist, I couldn’t NOT check this album out. It took me about three listens to really get into and it’s all great.

Bastionland Podcast - Tabletop Roleplaying Game Design (Podcast) If you’re interested in what goes on behind the curtain of game design (specifically tabletop role-playing games, but I think the principles and takeaways are fairly universal) then check this out.

……….GAMING……….

Neverland: A Fantasy Role-Playing Setting (Andrews McMeel Publishing) The party has recovered a Mermaid’s prize coat and have a few other goals on the go, but most pressing is the weapon (an umbrella) of a Lich that they need to destroy in the lava flow of Neverland’s mountains (very Lord of the Rings). Also I’ve been doing more detailed write-ups on Reddit, if you’re into that sort of thing.

D&D Homebrew Adventure (Menace of Merlin) The group spent a session saying farewell to their undead minion (a yeti named Norm); role-playing games are fun.

And that’s it! As always, please feel free to send any recommendations my way and happy Friday!

[aion-rsa]

Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu: Terrifying Facts You Need to Know About Tall Vampire Lady

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Ethan Winters can’t catch a break. After surviving the horrors of Baker Ranch in Resident Evil 7, it seemed like the everyman hero would finally get to go back to his normal life. But when seasoned zombie killer Chris Redfield shows up at his door with a new mission, Ethan is suddenly thrust back into the nightmare.

In Resident Evil Village, Ethan is dropped into a haunted European village, where he’ll have to survive a gauntlet of monsters, including werewolves and witches. Then there’s Lady Alcina Dimitrescu, the giant vampire villain who has taken the fandom by storm since she was first revealed.

Here’s what you need to know about the new game’s most interesting baddie:

Taller Than the Tallest Human

Before Resident Evil developer Capcom revealed her name, the villain was referred to as “Tall Vampire Lady” on social media, and for good reason: she’s 9’6”! That’s taller than the tallest human in recorded history. That would be “The Giant of Illinois,” a man named Robert Wadlow, who was 8’11” and at one point toured with the Ringling Brothers Circus.

Fortunately, his act didn’t involve anything quite as gruesome as what the Lady of Castle Dimitrescu has planned for her prey. Not only does she tower over Ethan but she also has long, sharp claws for fingers. The better to impale our hero with!

The First Vampire in the Series

Her appearance isn’t the only thing that makes Lady Dimitrescu so interesting. She’s also the first vampire villain in the franchise’s history. Resident Evil has largely avoided the classic monster canon up until this point, favoring zombies and monsters grown in labs over the creatures found in Universal and Hammer horror films.

Dimitrescu represents an evolution for the series. However, this isn’t the first time Capcom has considered experimenting outside of the franchise’s wheelhouse. At one point, Resident Evil 4, which is clearly a big influence on Village, was going to feature a killer ghost with a hook for a hand, but the idea was scrapped before release.

Callback to Castlevania

While she marks a first for Resident Evil, Dimitrescu’s role as the bloodthirsty Lady of a giant castle full of spooky creatures is rooted in a classic video game trope. The concept of a vampiric final boss was originally popularized by the Castlevania series, which is largely set in Dracula’s haunted castle full of monsters.

What makes Dimitrescu’s house of horrors unique is that it’s populated only by women. “With Lady Dimitrescu as the cult’s guru, we have created this hierarchy of women,” Resident Evil Village director Morimasa Sato told IGN. “Men have their blood drained by these women, so you could say it’s the opposite of Dracula.”

Dimitrescu’s Daughters

Lady Dimitrescu isn’t the only vampire in the game. She has three blood-sucking helpers she refers to as her daughters. While Dimitrescu’s attire exudes elegance, Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela lean into the grotesque, down to their smiling, blood-covered faces.

It’s teased in the trailers that Ethan will have to make his way past Dimitrescu’s vicious daughters before reaching the Lady, and it won’t be an easy fight, as these vampires not only carry sharp weapons but also have the ability to transform themselves into even more hideous forms. The way they creep towards Ethan and huddle over him to feed may remind you of Dracula’s movie brides. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Gruesome Inspiration

According to art director Tomonori Takano, the game’s “bewitching vampire” was partially inspired by real-life serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noblewoman who is said to have tortured and murdered hundreds of women in the early 1600s. Legend has it that Bathory bathed in her victims’ blood because she believed it would stop her from aging.

Another inspiration was the Japanese internet urban legend Hashaku-sama (or “hachishakusama”), an eight-foot-tall evil spirit in a wide-brimmed hat who lures her young male victims to her by imitating the voices of their loved ones. Likewise, all of Dimitrescu’s victims are men, many of their bodies decorating the outside of her castle, “blood drained, looking like skinny scarecrows,” according to Sato. Terrified yet? 

The Name “Dimitrescu” Has a Long History

Unsurprisingly, this vampire lady’s name can be traced back to Eastern Europe, especially Romania, where Transylvania is located. Romania also happened to be the home of Vlad the Impaler, the brutal warlord who inspired Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula.

The name “Dimitrescu” could also be derived from Demeter, the Greek goddess of harvest, grain, and fertility, which makes sense since the Lady rules over and terrorizes a village of farmers. Interestingly enough, in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula travels to England on a ship called The Demeter.

Maggie Robertson and Helena Mankowska Brought Lady Dimitrescu to Life

Maggie Robertson, a stage actor from the Washington D.C. area who has also appeared in a few screen projects, voices Lady Dimitrescu. While this is her first major role in a video game, her performance as the already uber-popular lady of Castle Dimitrescu could be the breakout role that turns her into one of the industry’s up and coming voice talents.

Meanwhile, Polish actor Helena Mankowska provided her likeness for the character, turning her overnight into one of the most popular faces in survival horror. She has another interesting connection to the franchise: Mankowska was Milla Jovovich’s (Alice in the Resident Evil movies) stunt double in the movie Paradise Hills.

Resident Evil Village is out on May 7 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Stadia.

The post Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu: Terrifying Facts You Need to Know About Tall Vampire Lady appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3h91Iy7

[mnthpprt]

Chapter 46: Thorns

[Sorry for the lack of updates, life has gotten busy lately. But I’m back and I bring some big bad interactions!]

“Of course, Anaïs,” the pureblood agrees. “Walk with me.” Though he politely offers his arm, it is more of an order, one I do not dare to disobey. I look at William for reassurance. There is no playful smile on his face, no witty comment. Oh, no. Instead, all he gives me is a slow, serious nod. All the words in the five languages I speak are not enough to express how wrong this feels.

“Alright,” I finally sigh, taking a hold of Vlad’s arm. It feels surprisingly robust under the sleeve of his coat, dark and billowy, which only ads to his already mysterious air. Usually, that is a quality I would appreciate in a man. Right now, however, it just makes me want to run for my life.

“Come,” he says, “I want to show you my garden.”

To my surprise, neither William nor Charles follow us out of the room. They know not to question the pureblood’s authority. I make a mental note to do the same. Vlad guides me down a hallway, and then another. The deeper we go into the building, the warmer and better lit it becomes, it seems. I was wrong about this church. It is far from abandoned, let alone decrepit, and it is certainly a lot bigger than I previously estimated. I think he lives here. As much as I dislike the idea of a murderous vampire in such close proximity to the city and all the people I have come to care about, I can at least appreciate that he is taking good care of the place. Even if the hairs standing on the back of my neck prevent me from enjoying it.

We come out through the other side of the building, where I am met by the sight of the beautiful city below us. The neighbourhood of Belleville, perched atop a hill on the North East edge of the city, is - and remains, even in my time - mostly inhabited by immigrants and the working class. In my present, most of the buildings, including Vlad’s church, don’t exist anymore, having been demolished and replaced by housing projects.

While the temple itself is nothing special, safe for it’s larger than usual size, I can’t help but mourn the inevitable disappearance of something so beautifully old, of all the history that will be wiped out from this place in favor of modern gentrification. I can see why Vlad chose to make his home here. Ironically, I doubt he knows what will happen to it.

“Ah, I see you enjoy the view from here as much as I do,” he chuckles, breaking my distraction. I nod, suppressing the chill his calm voice sends up my spine. “This way, Anaïs.”

Despite the majorly bad vibes I get from him, I let him guide me around the back of the building. We come to a stop on its side, where the sparse rose bushes along the wall become dense and frequent, melting into a lush garden that even the one in the mansion couldn’t compete against.

“It’s breathtaking,” I mutter, looking down at the vast expanse of white roses before me, flanked by a myriad of flowers of every shape and color. I glance at Vlad. He smiles, satisfied. “May I...?” I hesitate to let go of his arm and step onto the narrow path that cuts through the vegetation.

“Go ahead,” he nods. I do not like the smug smile on his face, but even I have to admit he has a right to wear it. This garden is... Wow. Just wow.

I walk ahead of him, marvelling at the pristine state of every single petal that has yet to wilt under the impending summer heat, but slow to a stop when I spot a plot of unfamiliar buds near a corner. They look like a bizarre cross between dandelions and arnica, only bigger, unlike anything I have ever seen. It is not until I approach them that I notice the thin mesh cage that has been built over them. Despite their odd shade, white with a slight blue tinge, they seem too unassuming for such measures to be taken. Most of the species they resemble tend to be considered weeds, not treasured and protected like these are.

“What are they?” I manage to ask quietly. Though I do not take my eyes off their striking petals through the mesh cage, I hear Vlad’s footsteps settle beside me.

“I presume you already know what blanc is, correct?”

My eyes widen in surprise, and I crouch to get a better look. I knew they were rare, but I was not expecting these little things to be the only source of nourishment to vampires. They look so... plain. Ordinary, even, were it not for my knowledge in the topic. There is nothing magical about their appearance at all.

“I have never even drank blanc before,” I say from the ground. “I have tasted it, though, and it is disgusting.” I scrunch up my nose, making Vlad laugh.

“I have to agree, Anaïs. But that is not why I keep them. I prefer my food fresh,” he concludes, leaning over me. His voice is somehow menacing and detached at the same time. I purse my lips, unnerved, but give him a questioning look. “They are extremely prized, which I enjoy. Besides, they have a certain beauty to them, don’t you think?”

“I guess they do,” I shrug before standing up again. I have been distracted for long enough. He’s good. “So now I know why you keep those flowers, but what about your friends back there? Why did you bring back Salieri?”

His eyes become a darker shade of red, almost like blood, though his expression remains unreadable.

“Be careful how you address me, fetiță.” His tone is cold, a mortal warning. I am quick to throw my open hands in the air between us in an attempt to appease him.

“I mean no disrespect, but you do kinda owe me an explanation.” He narrows his eyes. Shit, I should not have said that. I take a deep breath to calm myself before I go on. “Look, I might be new to all of this, but I am not stupid,” I say slowly, taking a step back. He responds by taking a step forward. “I know that you could tear me apart without breaking a sweat. All I want is to understand you, so I can avoid doing something that will get me killed a second time, okay? Please, at least give me that.”

My plea seems to make him relax, and I smile, relieved.

“I suppose you have a point,” he concedes. “I will do my best to answer your questions.”

My smile grows wider as I hold onto his arm once again. He wanted to walk, so let’s walk.

“Let’s start with something easy,” I muse, breaking the ice. “That word you called me just now... What language is it?”

“Romanian,” he answers as we begin to stroll through the garden. “It means ‘little girl’.”

“Of course it does,” I chuckle under my breath. Our height difference is more evident now that he is standing by my side, towering over me. Then again, most people do. “Wait. Romanian? Did you fight against the Ottoman Empire, by any chance?”

“So you’ve heard the stories too,” he sighs. I hear a tinge of amusement mixed in with the resignation of being found out. “I have not used this name in a long time. I suppose history never forgets...”

That confirms my suspicion, and I must admit, I really hoped to be wrong about this one. But no, I happen to be casually hanging out with the man whose notorious cruelty inspired Dracula. Funnily enough, at least Bram Stoker got the vampire thing right. I wonder how the author would react to finding out they are real. He’d probably lose his mind, and I would not blame him. I almost did too.

“Okay, next question,” I move on, eager to change the topic. I must get to the juicy stuff before I get distracted again. “Why are you going after Saint Germain’s people? I mean it’s obvious that it is him you are trying to get to, but I would like to know the reason for that. Weren’t you friends or something?”

“Something.” From his deadpan tone, I can tell Vlad does not want to talk about their relationship. However, he did promise me answers, and I intend to get them or die trying. Again. “That door of his, the one he brought you through? He is selfish with it. Collecting some of the greatest men in history for... what, exactly? It is such a waste...”

“What would you do with it, then?”

“Put that talent and influence to good use, of course,” he laughs, as if it were obvious. “As you must have figured out by now, I have a door of my own at my disposal. However, it is... tainted. Unstable. I have tried to convince your sire to let me use his on multiple occasions, to no avail. Alas, even our centuries long friendship is not enough to sway him. I believe we could see eye to eye if I could show him the truth. Maybe then he would not look down on my ways as he does now.”

“And by ‘your ways’, I guess you mean sending your henchmen to kidnap me so you can use me as bait?” I can’t help but retort. “You say you want to put these men to good use, but what does that even mean? For what?”

“You shall find out soon.”

I open my mouth, but my stomach grumbles loudly before I manage to voice my protest. Worst timing ever.

“Would you like some rouge? I am feeling rather peckish myself,” he cheerily offers. There goes the conversation, along with my chance to discover what he’s up to. I am forced to nod, however, as I have not eaten since early this morning. As much as I hate to cut the interrogation short, I am starving.

I follow Vlad back into the church, resigned, and we make our way to a hallway on the second floor. I smell the scent of human blood before I notice that the voices I can hear behind a closed door are new. There is a man, whom at first I mistook for Faust, but he sounds too cheery. And too French. I hear a woman too, giddy and nervous due to Shakespeare’s charming approaches.

I want to ask what is going on, but I am not sure I want to know the answer. I have a bad feeling about this. Vlad opens the door, revealing the sitting room on the other side. Along with William, the other two vampires I met are there. Faust stands to the side, merely observing, as Charles chats with the young couple, seated around a coffee table. They are unmistakably human. I can only think of one reason for them to be here, and I do not like it in the slightest.

As the now familiar feeling of bloodlust shoots through my veins, I clench my hands behind my back and smile politely. Vlad ushers me into the room, closer to the group, and soon lets go of me to offer his hand to the woman, motioning for her to stand up.

“This one will do,” he murmurs, stroking her cheek. She looks surprised for a brief moment, but any expression immediately disappears from her face when she locks eyes with the pureblood. “Listen to my voice. Relax.” The woman’s arm goes limp and falls to her side. “Good, good. Take of your necklace.”

She obeys. Is she... hypnotized? Can he do that? When the lady’s choker falls on the floor, the reality of what is about to happen sets in. The man I assume to be her husband does not react. He is looking at the woman, but his eyes are out of focus and his face blank, nothing but an empty shell.

The king of the castle eats first, of course. Vlad pulls the woman close and leans down slowly, almost tenderly, as if he is going to kiss her neck. He stops short of touching her skin before violently sinking his fangs into her. The horrible, wet sound her flesh makes causes me to bite my own lip in an attempt to hold back. I shuffle closer to William and lean over the back of his chair.

“I can’t do this.”

“It would be improper to deny your host’s food, my nightshade,” he says nonchalantly.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “I won’t be able to stop, Will. I can’t-”

“You can’t what?” Vlad calls out. “It is your turn, come. Don’t be shy.”

Fuck. I am not in a position to reject that offer for two reasons: the first one being my hunger, and the second being that he might kill me if I offend him. I cough and begin to turn away, but feel William’s reassuring hand over mine. I hope I can trust him to stop me in time. If I end up killing this poor girl, he’s going next.

I exhale a shaky sigh as I hesitantly make my way to the center of the room, where the woman stands frozen, a lifeless doll. She is slightly taller than me, so I hold her body close and stand on my toes.

“Lo siento muchísimo (I am so very sorry),” I whisper in her ear. I don’t know if she can even hear me, but if she could, I doubt she’d understand my foreign words. I feel everyone’s eyes on me, expectant. Vlad clears his throat behind me. He is starting to lose his patience.

But so am I. Just like that, any control I had over my body fades when my eyes catch a glimpse of the two fresh puncture wounds on the woman’s neck, of the twin drops of blood oozing down from them. I make sure to bite over the same spot.

The familiar wave of relief that comes from feeding washes over me, but this time it is much more intense, much sweeter. Everything disappears around me. There is just me and my prey, her blood pulsing into my mouth as I barely have to exert any effort to drink it. But it is not enough. I bite harder. It is dripping down my chin now, and I hold onto the yellow satin blouse, now tinged with red, like my life depends on it. I cease to exist in this moment. There is only blood and my pure, unadulterated thirst for it.

“...Anaïs.” I vaguely recognize my own name being spoken. “That’s enough.”

“Come on, let her have her fun,” another voice says. I can barely tell who’s who.

“Anaïs, stop,” I hear again, this time more sternly. Strong arms pry me off and pull me into a tight hug, restraining me until I come to my senses. “That’s it, my nightshade. Well done.”

“Will?” I manage to pant, leaning back into his chest. “Shit, is she okay? I didn’t drain her, did I?” My voice wavers with dread.

“No, my dearest,” he softly says. “Thou stopped in time.”

“Thank you,” I sigh in relief. Still holding onto William’s arms around me, I glance at Vlad. He does not look pleased.

[thenightling]

Horror movie Tag Game

I got this survey from another page and copied and pasted it.

Favorite:   This changes based on my mood.  I’ll list ten right now.   The order and titles are subject to change on my whim.  Trick r Treat, Fright Night (1985) Fright Night: Part 2 (1988)  Dracula (1979), Frankenstein (2004 version starring Luke Goss, not the other 2004 version), The Company of Wolves.  The Raven (1963) Sleepy Hollow (1999) Crimson Peak  Faust (1926)  

Least favorite: Low budget: Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula. Mainstream: Frailty.  

Scene(s) that scared you the most:

The first time I saw Lestat come back from the swamp in Interview with the vampire it made me jump even though I knew it was coming. When Louis hears the doorbell and thinks it’s the carriage.  I knew it was not the carriage and when no one was there I knew the jump scare was coming, but I somehow still jumped.  

While watching a documentary about Dracula on the History Channel many years ago they talked about how at the real castle Dracula (Poenari castle, not Bran) some priests were sent up to bless the place since the locals heard strange noises and claimed to see lights up there.  But as the priests neared the castle a storm broke out so they had to do the blessing from a distance and I remember thinking “Conjuring storms is supposed to be one of the vampire Dracula’s powers.” and as I was thinking this, that’s when the door creaked open and I practically jumped out of my skin.   

While watching Let the Right One In it was at the scene where Eli was climbing up the side of the hospital and I remember thinking “Ah, this isn’t so scary.” but then the power went out, and it just happened to be snowing heavily out side and it was the middle of the night so for a split second I thought “Oh, crap.  Child vampire is coming for me!” I don’t really count gross-out as scary but I always used to have to look away at the face ripping scene in Night Breed. 

When I was little I had a major fear of skeletons so anything with skeletons in it used to scare me when I was little, like that pool scene in Poltergeist.   I once had a 1941 Wolf Man inspired Nightmare where I dreamt I woke up after having slaughtered people I care about as a werewolf.  I couldn’t remember doing it but I knew I had done it and I remember the guilt I felt in the dream.  Scene(s) that made you laugh hardest:   I know it’s not really horror but the scene in Ghostbusters 2 when The Titanic comes to dock. “Well, better late than never...” Best soundtrack:  Anything by Danny Elfman.  Best plot twist:   My favorite horror plot twist is actually from a TV show but my favorite plot twist is in Penny Dreadful when after you get used to the cliche, simple minded, child-like Frankenstein Monster with the shaved head suddenly the real Frankenstein Monster, based on the literary version with the long black hair and yellow eyes, turns up and rips apart the zeitgeist version.  “Your first born has returned, Father.”

Legend of Hell House. I started watching Legend of Hell House because Roddy McDowell was in it.  Roddy’s character was such a cliche sort of character to die in those sort of Haunted House movies.   He had survived it before. He was timid.  He was meek.  He wore glasses. He was withdrawn.   He was practically a check list of “dead character walking” but instead he became the hero.  It was a pleasant surprise.   Best directed:  Anything by Guillermo del Toro.  

Most unique characters:   Human:  Peter Vincent in Fright Night (1985).  A loving homage to both Peter Cushing and Vincent Price you get to see the has-been actor evolve and grow into the hero he always pretended to be.  Peter Vincent is the first character I can think of who fits this description. Non-human:   Possibly the faun in Pan’s Labyrinth. Most underrated:  The Company of Wolves.

Most stress-inducing:   Pretty much every suspense thriller made by USA network or Lifetime.   They got very frustrating.

Most overrated:  Most H. P. Lovecraft related things.

Favorite to rewatch: Depends on my mood.   See the top 10 list at the top.  

Funniest:  Gremlins 2.

Greatest inspiration: Really tough call.   At the moment I’ll say Tales of Terror since that was inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and who hasn’t been inspired by Poe in some level?   

Guilty pleasure:  If it brings you pleasure it should never make you guilty.  However... Films that I know to be bad but I watch anyway and like incude  I, Frankenstein, Van Helsing, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.   I, Frankenstein is at the top of this list.  

Fell asleep watching:  Lust for a vampire.   Somehow that film was very boring.  

Deserves a sequel:  The original Fright Night franchise (not remake.)

Coolest makeup:   American werewolf in London, and pretty much anything Doug Jones has been made to wear by Guillermo del Toro.    

Prohibited to watch growing up:  My mother never forbid anything.   

Left the biggest impression:   Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  What 90s Goth teen wasn’t inspired, at least, somewhat, by this?

Tagging:  @sorry-for-the-chocolate @endlessemptynight @lamb90 @treebrooke79 @thesaramonster @unnecessaryhorns @mrgoldsshopofhorrors  @jr4cats @winterbirdybuddy @a-m-automaton @kaimaciel  @drawing-down-th3-moon  @good-times-bad-food @sunagirl @everthewildeone  @syra-syara @theartofthecover @artwinsdraws   @girl-with-cat-eyes @mentallydisturbedllama221b  @thegreatvampirekiller  @theimpossiblescheme  @iknowwheremytowelis

If there’s anyone who wants to do this who I forgot to tag, by all means, feel free to do it.   

Note: If you want to do this but feel unqualified because you don’t know enough horror, feel free to use Supernatural / Gothic fantasy / even PG spooky kid friendly Halloween films.  You don’t have to do the survey if you don’t want to but know I am laid back on the criteria of what counts as horror.

[alicescripts]

Bonus: The Window & The Mirror

Transcribed by olanovena. Many thanks!

It was a dream, but not a dream. I was awake, I knew that. But it wasn’t real. I can’t explain it, I can only tell it.

I’m on the waterfront of a city. I don’t know which one. A lot of high-end stores, Louis Vuitton and the like, but those are everywhere. Like a Starbucks, they give up no secret of their location. Palm trees. But that could be anywhere, too. Across the water... Is the water a river? A bay? There are three skyscrapers in a row, and laid across the top of the three of them is what appears to be a cruise ship. An entire boat perched on top of three skyscrapers. But it is not a dream. I am not dreaming. I start walking. I pick a direction and go. I appear to be wearing clothes and sensible shoes, so, there’s that. It doesn’t take me long to figure it out, as I pass through the shadows of the tall buildings. I am in Singapore. I have never been to Singapore. I don’t remember getting on any flight to get here, but here I am. It all feels entirely real as I walk. The heat, and the crowds, so different from the lonely highway, the air-conditioned truck. I usually see the world from inside a capsule. And now I am in a city of tall glass capsules, and I am the one on the outside. I pass down a road, and there are a series of trees. But instead of leaves, they have brightly-colored umbrellas growing from them. But this is not a dream. Eventually, I have gone very far. Farther, I think, than I can walk. I don’t remember how I got here. I am on a quiet road surrounded by dense foliage. But I can see planes landing overhead. I am near the airport. A yellow sign with red text points me down a path to what is described as “The German Girl Shrine.” I follow the sign and discover that it is true to its word. A German teenager who died in World War One and is now worshipped as a Taoist deity. [chuckles] Well, we all leave legacies, I suppose. I go past the shrine, down to the water. Houseboats float quietly. I smell the dampness of the ground where it meets the gentle waves. And in the distance, above the water, attached to no building, I see a window with a red curtain covering it. But I am not dreaming.

I am in a hallway. It seems to go on for miles, but I think it is a trick of perspective. I think the hallway gets narrower and narrower, making it seem to go much farther than it actually does. The walls are all window, and I find myself looking out onto green hills. It could be Minnesota, maybe. Maybe Michigan. I’m not sure. I turn away from the view and see that I am in a structure jutting out from a house. There doesn’t seem to be any supports for this hallway over the drop, and so I make my way into the building. It’s empty, but has the look of a well-trodden tourist attraction. I am here before or after visiting hours, I don’t know which, because I don’t remember coming here. Every room is a new surprise. A full-sized carousel, silent and dark. I pass by it, and every light blares suddenly. Manic carnival music pops on, with a drum section I would describe as deeply aggressive. I scream. But there’s no one in sight. The horses bob up and down to the tinny march, and I leave. Another room. A staircase leading down intricate stained glass of religious themes. Lambs and crosses and such. The sunlight dapples the religion onto the steps. One room is just an entire old-fashioned main street, shop fronts and streep lamps, but covered in dust and never lived in. I realized I know this house. I read about it once in a novel, although I can’t remember which one. I had enjoyed the novel, I remember that. It was something spooky, something about road trips and weird America. But I can’t put my finger on the name. Finally, I find the exit. Outside, the sun is dead center overhead, but still, there are no people. This must be a dream, but I know it is not. Over the road in front of the house, in the middle of the air, and attached to no building, is a window with a red curtain. I step toward it, but already know that this is not the time I will reach it. Maybe next time.

I’m at the end of a valley leading down to the water. It’s sunny, but cold. The trees are deep green, the green of a place that gets a lot of rain, or a lot of melted snow, or a lot of both. Clouds cling to the mountains, like they do for reasons I’ve never bothered to look up. I walk by a yellow building, a hotel, apparently, although it does not appear to have been used as such in quite a long time. There is something especially haunting about an abandoned place where people once slept. Sure, abandoned office buildings and abandoned warehouses can bring up strange feelings, but it’s abandoned places that still hold beds where people dreamt and woke again, those are the ones that stick with you. On the third floor, I see a woman in a white dress looking out the window. A squatter, maybe. I raise my hand to her, and she raises her hand back, smiling sadly. And then I keep on walking past. It doesn’t take long to figure out I am in Skagway, Alaska. There are signs saying so. I try to think about what I know about this place as I walk. As it happens, I know about a strange miracle near here, just across the border. The Carcross Desert, the smallest desert in the world. A patch of arid sand, incongruous in the Yukon, kept a desert by the rain shadow of nearby mountains. Again, all of these amazing things caused by how mountains affect clouds. A subject I just have never bothered to learn anything about. I make my way to the port, where a cruise ship the size of several city blocks has docked, towering over this scattered little town. I’ve never seen the recreational appeal of these behemoths. They make me a little nauseous with the size of them. Looking closely, I realize with a sinking feeling that there is something off about this cruise ship, and it is something that I am becoming familiar with. One of the windows toward the bottom of the boat is not like the rest of the stateroom windows. Instead, it has an old-fashioned wooden arch frame, and a red curtain is drawn across it. As I look, the curtain moves, as though something on the other side had brushed against it.

I am under an archway made of bone. I am not dreaming. A vast being had lived and died, and then we built a structure of the skeleton. What strange creatures we are. I feel the bite of ocean air, and I look out. I am on a hill over a town. Seems quiet. Irish or British, probably. Cosied around the mouth of a river. I have no memory of coming here, but here I am. I reach out my hand and touch the archway. It feels like stone. It is not stone. All the way across town, on the opposite hill, is another kind of skeleton. The ruins of a church, it looks like. Gothic and ominous. Failing any other direction, I head toward there. Soon enough, I pass a bench with a plaque on it, informing me that this view of the town inspired Bram Stoker to set part of his novel Dracula here. Well, that totally tracks. There is a lovely welcoming town, glared down upon by that empty-eyed church, and the contrast between the two is riveting. Descending the hill and crossing the river, I make a left on Church Street, a narrow cobblestoned road of pubs and shops with names like The White Horse and Griffin and The Shepherd’s Purse. Next to The White Horse is a place called The Black Horse. Wonder if there are arguments. Church Street ends at a steep set of stairs, curving up the hill, and I take them. They go up and up and end in a graveyard of a more modern-looking church. I say more modern in that it’s still standing and has all of its doors. It’s probably hundreds of years old. Modern is relative. Beyond the cemetery is what the sign tells me is Whitby Abbey, a husk of place. What once was floor is lawn. Depending on the tone of light, this could be beautiful or horrifying. At this moment, it’s both. Of course, I already know that it won’t be missing all of its windows. I look up the high wall and see a single wooden arch frame set into the stone. A red curtain covering it. The curtain moves. And for a moment, I see the flash of a hand.