#but i picked up writing my novel again

[otomehonyaku]

DIABOLIK LOVERS アニメ公式ノベライズ Official Novelization ☽ Chapter 2 Translation

[Previous chapter] ☽ [Next chapter]

Originally written by Yukuzuki Hiroha 結来月ひろは Translated from the Japanese by @otomehonyaku

STORY Following her father’s job transfer, Komori Yui is sent to live with the Sakamaki brothers. However, these six brothers turn out to be sadistic, ill-tempered vampires. The men are after Yui’s sweet and incredibly rare blood, and go to great lengths toying with her body and soul to get it. Before long, Yui finds herself trapped in an alluringly dangerous love game(1)...

1. 吸血愛戯 (ラブゲーム): Stylised as ‘love game’ but written with the characters for bloodsucking (吸血), love (愛), and play (戯). The latter character also has a connotation of playfulness/mischief.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

DISCLAIMER This is an unofficial translation intended for those interested in reading the story of the Diabolik Lovers game/season in a slightly more literary format in English. I have no affiliation with Rejet or Frontier Works whatsoever. All rights belong to them, but PLEASE DO NOT POST THIS TRANSLATION ELSEWHERE OR TRANSLATE TO OTHER LANGUAGES WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.

Now that that’s out of the way—have fun reading! ❤️

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Episode 2

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The evening sun cast a warm glow on the mansion. By the time the chandelier was lit, Yui was sitting on a bed in an unfamiliar room. 

Where am I?

Yui sat upright and looked around. In the corner of the room was the suitcase she had brought to the mansion, as well as her bag. The room was gorgeous with its pink tones and large bed with a lavender-coloured canopy that most girls her age could only dream of. However, Yui wondered why she had been sleeping in this room. 

I arrived at the mansion, and then…

Yui gasped. Right. I found out that they are vampires, that’s why. Remembering the moments leading up to her losing consciousness, she inattentively pressed her fingers to her neck. 

“Thank God, I wasn’t bitten.” Feeling reassured, Yui lowered her fingers to her chest, but suddenly noticed something. “Huh?”

She wasn’t wearing her own clothes, but instead wore a négligé that she had never seen before. 

“Did I change clothes earlier?”

However, Yui had no memory of doing so. In fact, she didn’t remember anything after Ayato pushed her to the floor and she lost consciousness. That meant a stranger had undressed her while she wasn’t conscious. 

“Why am I here? I want to talk to my father…”

Yui wrapped her arms around herself, a thought ran through her mind.

The fact that she is not my own child bears no meaning at all. 

That was what her father’s diary had said when she found it in the forbidden room. I’m not my father’s biological daughter after all… Still, she wasn’t quite sure if she really believed that. She didn’t want to.

“Dad… What’s going on? Please come back home…” Tears started welling up in the corners of her eyes when she remembered the days she’d spent with her father, but the moment was cut short.

“Oh, Bitchlet. It’s no use crying, y’know?”

Yui yelped in surprise. 

When she looked up, Laito was sitting there on her bed, watching her intently. 

“You look hot in your little négligé,” he said, “and you smell delicious, too.” 

Painfully reminded of her current lack of clothing, Yui scrambled for the bed sheets and used them to cover up her chest. Still, the smirk that had been on Laito’s face the entire time grew deeper.

“I wonder if you’re trying to seduce me, little bitch.”

“Why would I…” Yui made an effort to get away from Laito, but soon felt the headboard press into her back, and she knew she had nowhere to run. Oh no… If I don’t do something, he’ll…

The boy was only a hair’s breadth away from her face when he abruptly disappeared from her line of vision, along with the sound of an impact.

“Don’t go touchin’ my things without permission.”

Ayato was the one who had sent his brother flying. 

Laito repositioned his hat onto his head and looked at him. “Ayato, you’re too rowdy.”

“Shut up.”

Has Ayato come to my rescue? If he hadn’t come in, Laito would surely have bitten me. But why would he help me? Even though Yui had not said anything aloud, Ayato called out her wishful thinking immediately.

“I’ll have her.”

So he didn’t come to save me… he was only acting because he didn’t want me swiped away from under his nose.

“Please, don’t!”

“You three. If you do not hurry, we will all be late.” In the blink of an eye, Reiji had also appeared by the side of the bed.

“Again, Reiji?”

“Aw, man, things were just getting good…”

Ignoring Ayato’s and Laito’s complaints, Reiji turned to Yui. “You too. Hurry up and get dressed.”

Yui was glad that the second son had saved her from getting bitten once again, but grew suspicious at his words. “Get dressed? Are we going somewhere?”

“Of course. We’re going to class.”

“Class… at this hour?”

“Please, Yui. Your dull-wittedness is astounding. Do you really not understand anything until I spell it out for you? We attend night classes.”

Yui cast a glance upon the clock at her bedside, and the hands pointed to 5:20 PM. Had she not been here, her classes would have already ended at this time.

“But… we still have an entire day of classes ahead?” Having attended a regular school until now, Yui could not hide her confusion.

“Contrary to what is normal to humans, going out during the day is bothersome for us. As you will be living in the Sakamaki household from now on, we expect you to conform to our lifestyle.”

“But…”

“If you have any complaints, you are welcome to leave at any time,” Reiji said. He then turned to walk away..

“But you said you’d kill me if I ran…” The complaint slipped past Yui’s lips in a voice that was too quiet for Reiji to understand.

“What was that?”

“N-nothing.” Yui shook her head vigorously.

“Then please hurry and put on your uniform.”

When she followed Reiji’s gaze, she saw that a brand new uniform had suddenly appeared on her bed. It consisted of the same blazer that the brothers wore, and a skirt that had white frills attached to the hem. The white shirt ribbon that came with it was tied together with another red ribbon on the centre of the chest. Did they go through all that trouble to get me a school uniform?

“Um…” When Yui raised her face, the three brothers had disappeared from her bedside. And now they’re gone. They really are vampires… 

Alone once again, she sighed heavily. When she tried to get up from the bed, her hand grazed past her rosary.

“Right…” Yui tightly gripped her rosary. “This might be the time to look for the room where I found that diary.” The brothers would be gone, and she would have the room to herself. This chance might not present itself again. 

Yui went to the door and eased it open the tiniest bit in order to check her surroundings. Good. Nobody’s outside my room. Ready to seize the opportunity, Yui prepared to leave the room.

“Yo.”

“Huh?” Somehow, Ayato was standing right in front of her. 

No way. There was nobody here. 

He looked at her scantily-clothed form with an amused grin on his face. “You’re still wearing that? C’mon, I’ll help you change.”

“I’m fine, thank you!” 

Yui shut the door in his face and sighed again. 

Not a chance after all… because I’m not dealing with humans, but with vampires. I should keep my head down for now.

Having given up the idea of going to the forbidden room today, Yui reluctantly got ready to head to class.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When Yui finished getting ready and descended to the ground floor, a large black limousine was waiting in front of the mansion. Are we… going to school by limousine?

She hesitated for a second, but the driver opened the door for her. 

Well, I guess I have no choice, then.

“Thank you,” Yui said to the driver before she climbed into the limousine, but he kept silent as he shut the door.

The limousine was spacious enough to fit all of the brothers, and Yui was the last one to arrive. When she sat down on a seat near the door, the limousine quietly departed from the mansion. 

The brothers didn’t talk to one another. The only sound that could be heard was the car’s engine, and the lack of conversation was in stark contrast with their behaviour yesterday. 

Yui looked at the brothers. They couldn’t have been more different from each other—they each had their distinctive hair and eye colour. Are they really brothers?

Reiji was reading a book, and Subaru was sitting next to him, staring out the window with a sullen look on his face. Maybe they just don’t get along. On the opposite side, Laito’s face lit up like he was scheming, Kanato was talking to Teddy, and Shuu was listening to music with his earphones in. 

They really aren’t talking.

“What’re you thinking about, Pancake?” 

Yui had been lost in thought until she was surprised to see Ayato coming towards her, and she instinctively held out her hands to avoid him. The vampire didn’t seem pleased by that. 

Taking advantage of sitting right next to her, Ayato moved in closer. “You got some nerve trying to disobey me, Pancake.”

“All this time, it’s been ‘Pancake,’ ‘Pancake’… I have a name, you know. It’s Komori Yui. Please use it properly.”

“Shut up. Names lost their meaning to me about a hundred years ago, Pancake,” Ayato retorted, drawing out the syllables. Obviously offended, he suddenly bent over Yui, his mouth going for her neck. 

SNAP!

The sound of Reiji’s book slamming shut broke the tense atmosphere.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Ayato? Take such behaviour to your own room.”

Grumbling, Ayato let go of Yui.

Thank God…

“And you. Take this.”

“Huh?”

Reiji held out a juice box for her. “It’s pure cranberry juice. It works best against anaemia.”

“T-thank you,” Yui said in earnest, feeling a little surprised at Reiji’s sudden kindness. 

“No need to thank me,” he responded, sending her a cold glare. “You will have to learn that you are simply our prey, and drink that every day.”

Their… prey? Yui’s hands trembled. She had known it deep down already, but still, Reiji’s cold words struck a chord. Her body was seized by fear. Soon, she was shaking.

“You know, Teddy? When humans are scared, their teeth start ‘chattering.’ Interesting, isn’t it? Let’s observe closely.” Kanato held out Teddy toward Yui.

To these men, all I am is prey. 

The one eye Teddy had that wasn’t covered by an eye patch gleamed at Yui.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

With her lips forming a tight line and her body absolutely rigid, Yui sat in the limousine for another while until it passed under the moonlit gate of Reitei Academy. So this is the night school they were talking about… This was her first time to attend a night school, but Reitei, with its courtyard bathed in moonlight, looked to be a particularly prestigious one.

Yui trailed behind the brothers after they’d gotten out of the limousine and followed them into the courtyard. It was bright and enormous, and the staff had done a good job keeping it tidy.

That’s good. Even though they teach classes at night, it still seems to be a normal school. Yui had felt a little uneasy when she was told to go to the school the brothers went to, but most of the students somehow seemed to be normal humans just like her.

The moment the Sakamakis entered the school’s courtyard, all students stopped and stared. 

Well, if you count out the fact that they’re vampires, they certainly are handsome… When Yui looked at them properly once again, their outward appearance was very well-put together. It certainly wasn’t strange for them to attract attention looking this good.

However, nobody tried talking to them.

Even when they passed through the hallways and a group of female students looked over while chatting with one another in a low voice, they fell silent when Yui returned their gaze. When Yui averted her eyes again, the girls hurriedly moved past them.

What was that for? She turned around and looked at the girls’ backs as they walked away, thinking it strange. Reiji stopped in front of the staircase and called out, pulling Yui out of her daze.

“You are in the same class as Ayato and Kanato, so please go with the two of them.”

“Okay.”

In all earnest, Yui had been looking forward to some time away from the brothers, but she had no choice. She did as she was told, but Reiji’s cold voice stopped her before she could leave with Ayato and Kanato.

”I am not done talking yet.”

Yui reluctantly faced him again.

“If you do not wish to be struck with a whip, I would advise you to not do anything reckless. Understood?”

Meaning that if I tried to run away…

Reiji’s unrelenting gaze gave Yui the chills.

“Answer me.”

“…Yes.”

Feeling Reiji’s ice-like stare on her back, she walked away and headed to the classroom.

This should be it.

When Yui went into the classroom, Kanato was sitting at the very back, a book open in front of him as he cradled Teddy in his arms. Ayato was slumped over on his desk. For some reason, they were the only students there.

But class is just about to start. Why isn’t anyone else here?

Yui considered asking Kanato, but seeing him talk so animatedly to Teddy made her close her mouth again. She quickly glanced at the blackboard. It said Today’s Home Economics class is cooking practice. Please assemble in the school kitchen.

“So we’re doing a cooking class today.” That’s why the classroom was empty—everyone else must have already gone to the kitchen.

We should get going, too. I can’t be late on my first day here. But where is this kitchen?

“…Cooking practice?”

Yui’s voice roused Ayato from his nap, and his face twisted into a suggestive grin. “Hey, Pancake.”

“Ayato, please don’t call me weird names at school.”

“Shut up. You’re better off worrying about where to find the school kitchen.”

As if he had read Yui’s mind, she fell silent.

“Yours Truly could do you a favour and take you there.”

“Really?”

”Yeah. C’mon.” Ayato grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the classroom.

“Ah, wait!”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“…Um, Ayato?”

“What?”

“Where are we?”

The room Ayato had dragged her to was filled with cooking utensils and supplies. However, there were no other students in sight.

“It’s the school kitchen.”

“Then why is nobody here?”

“‘Cause this is the old kitchen. They teach the cooking classes in the new one.”

In other words, Ayato tricked her into coming here.

“So why did you bring me here?”

“As for the reason…” Ayato stood up from the chair he’d been sitting on, and stalked towards Yui.

Oh no, not again… Yesterday’s events were still etched into the back of her mind, making Yui freeze in place, but the answer coming out of Ayato’s mouth surprised her.

“Make me some takoyaki.”

“T-takoyaki?”

…Like, actual takoyaki?

“Well, I don’t expect anything but the world’s best takoyaki.”

A takoyaki pan was already present on the table, making Yui realise the height of his expectations. So that’s why he brought me here? She wasn’t sure if this was the actual reason why, but this wasn’t the time to think about that.

”But… we should head to class, quickly.”

“Don’t talk back to me. Yours Truly will eat your takoyaki. Now get cooking!”

“You could at least ask nicely…”

“You say something?” Ayato clearly wasn’t intending to go back to class. 

Yui did as he said, and started the preparations to make takoyaki. Fortunately, most of the ingredients were already there, and Yui somehow managed to make takoyaki with them.

“Here you go.”

Ayato stuffed the takoyaki into his mouth without hesitation. “So good!” 

Next to an innocently grinning Ayato, who feasted happily on the takoyaki, sat a rather dreary-looking Yui. “It’s only my first day of school and I’ve already skipped a class…”

Yui had never expected it to come to this on her first day after transferring to Reitei. She had never skipped a class before, even at her old school. 

“No use worrying ‘bout such small things. Have a bite.”

Before Yui could answer, Ayato pushed a ball of takoyaki into her mouth. “It’s delicious!” 

“Right?”

For something she had made herself, it had turned out pretty well. As the two sat and enjoyed the takoyaki, Yui caught a glimpse of the clock hanging on the wall. 

Their next class was about to start.

“We need to clean up. I don’t want to miss our next class too.” Yui began carrying the cooking utensils she used to make takoyaki to the sink. To avoid her getting wet, she took off her blazer, and hurriedly began washing a bowl. She had not realised there would be so much washing-up to do. 

Ayato, satisfied with a belly full of takoyaki, stretched out his legs and reclined in his chair, watching Yui as she did the dishes.

“Give me a hand, Ayato. You were the one who wanted me to make takoyaki, right?”

Silently, the vampire got up from his chair and crept over to her. He stopped just at her back. Yet Yui had not heard him coming over the sound of the running water, and so she called out to him again.

“Hey, Aya—”

When Yui looked over her shoulder, Ayato was right there. He was looking down on her quite literally, and as soon as she saw the look in his eyes, she immediately squirmed away from him.

“What’re you running away for?” He stalked over Yui, who was now standing by the window. “I’ve been going crazy since yesterday. I don’t wanna hold off any longer.”

I have to run…

Ayato captured her in his arms with ease.

“Let me taste you.”

“Please, don’t…” 

The words did not reach him. Ayato grabbed her chin and turned her face to the side, exposing the nape of her neck.

“No bite marks at all. Your skin looks delicious, really.”

Taking in the sight of her slender, pale neck right in front of him, a satisfied smile played at Ayato’s lips.

“Yours Truly will be the one to take all your firsts.”

The next moment, Ayato’s teeth hovered above the skin of her throat. A predatory gleam clouded his eyes before he buried his fangs deep in her neck. 

Yui gasped. The pain of Ayato’s sharp teeth piercing her neck and the feeling of her blood flowing freely into Ayato’s mouth made her body tremble. Even if Yui wanted to run from him, he had a strong grip on both her jaw and her waist. 

“Fuck… what is this? I’ve never tasted blood this sweet before.” Ayato briefly pulled away from her neck, his eyes twinkling with delight. “I like you.”

Before long, Ayato’s fangs brutally punctured Yui’s skin a second time.

“Please…”

Yui was not sure whether it was because he was sucking her blood, but her head began to grow numb, as if she was not herself anymore. 

I’m… scared… If he keeps feeding on me, I'll truly become their prey… I’m so scared.

Yui gathered all her strength to push Ayato away from her. However, the force of her push made the skin tear where Ayato had punctured it with his fangs. The intense pain shooting through her neck knocked the breath out of her, and her face contorted in agony.

“Idiot. If you move around while I bite you, you’ll only make it hurt more, you know.” When Ayato looked up, his lips were stained a bright red when they pulled away from his teeth in a smile.

“Ah…”

His lips were stained the colour of Yui’s blood.

I’ve really been fed on.

With the pain and shock of having her blood sucked, the fear showed plainly on her face.

“Seeing you in tears with your face twisting in pain… It’s too tempting.” Ayato wiped the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, and then licked it off before reaching out to Yui again. 

“Please, stop…”

“No stopping now.”

Ayato pushed her up against the window and bit down on the nape of her neck again.

The moonlight illuminated the two of them through the window, contrasting with the dark room behind them. The moon above Yui was the last thing she saw before her consciousness fell into a deep darkness.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“You two are an embarrassment to do such a thing on school premises.”

Before long, Reiji was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed and his eyes fixed on Ayato and Yui. Ayato clicked his tongue as he turned around to face his brother.

“Damn it! Shit was just getting good.”

“Look at the state of her. That is your fault, Ayato. Take responsibility for your actions and take her home.”

When Ayato glanced at Yui, who was still in his arms, he noticed that she had already passed out. Might’ve been a bit too rough. The colour of Yui’s face was past the point of flattery, and she did not look like she would be waking up anytime soon. At the same time, Ayato could not simply leave her there. He knew exactly how Reiji would react if he did, and he wasn’t looking forward to that.

“Hmph.”

Ayato swept Yui up into his arms, and the next instant, they had disappeared from the room completely.

“Good grief. If only they could just behave.” Reiji let out a heavy sigh and walked out of the room.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

“Ugh…”

Yui opened her eyes on a bench next to the indoor pool inside the mansion.

Why am I here? I thought I was at school…

“Yo, you’re awake.”

Ayato was sitting on the armrest, lazily playing around with the uniform ribbon that had somehow found its way from neck into his hands.

Right, he fed on me…

Yui tried sitting upright, but the loss of blood had also drained the strength from her body. Seeing her struggle, Ayato walked over to her. 

“S-stay away!” 

Ayato halted.

The fact that vampires needed human blood for nourishment, Yui knew. But Ayato, on the other hand, only seemed to be toying with her. 

“Why are you doing this?” Yui asked.

Ayato stood over her, staring at her coldly. “You still don’t get it?”

“Huh?”

In a flash, Yui’s body was raised in the air, and Ayato’s face was a hair’s breadth away from hers. He’d picked her up with ease and began walking. Yui struggled to have Ayato put her back down, but he leisurely strode over towards the pool. He came to a stop right by the edge of the water.

“Yours Truly is the one who controls you. Stop complaining about everything!” 

Ayato had barely finished speaking before he threw Yui into the water. 

Yui screamed. A loud splashing sound echoed off the walls of the indoor pool. 

Oh no, I can’t swim…

To make matters worse, Yui was still wearing her uniform, and it weighed her down even more as it absorbed the water. She tried to wrestle herself to the surface, but despite her desperate efforts, she still felt herself sinking towards the bottom of the deep pool.

Ayato watched her struggle from the poolside.

“Tell me that I’m the best. Tell me that I’m better than anyone else, and that you’re mine.”

In a stroke of luck, Yui managed to come up for air. She begged for Ayato to help her, but she kept getting pulled back down. 

“Ayato—I can’t—I can’t swim…”

Yui desperately screamed Ayato’s name, but she had already disappeared under the surface of the water. 

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Whether he had heard her or not, Ayato's expression remained unchanged as he stared down at the water. This is Pancake’s fault. She disobeyed me…

Memories from his childhood haunted Ayato as he watched Yui’s struggling form in the pool.

In his thoughts, Ayato travelled to a lake far away, one hand strenuously reaching out of the water, flailing desperately. The blurry shape of a woman seemed to come closer from under the surface of the water. Ayato fought his way up, and reached out a hand towards her.

However, the woman had not come to save Ayato from drowning. She merely looked on, her expression flat.

Help me…

Ayato’s face twisted in despair knowing that his words would not reach anyone, but rather disappeared into the lake.

Help me…

Yui’s screams for help lined up with Ayato’s distant memory and without giving it any more thought, Ayato launched himself into the water. He did not know why he did it. Even though he harboured a sliver of doubt about his own behaviour, he took Yui into his arms under the surface of the pool.

Well, he did tell us not to kill her.

Reminding himself of this fact, Ayato cupped Yui’s face in his hands, and pressed his lips to hers.      

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

It’s warm… and I can breathe again.

When Yui opened her eyes, she realised that Ayato had been transferring air to her with a kiss. Ayato pulled away as soon as he saw that she had regained consciousness. 

Why is he looking at me with such a forlorn expression?

In the deafening silence of the water, Yui saw herself reflected in his eyes, which were clouded with sadness.

Don’t look at me like that, Yui wanted to say, but the air Ayato had given her became bubbles under the water. 

I can’t breathe…

Seeing the struggle on Yui’s face again, Ayato undid the top buttons of her blouse to expose her shoulder, and sank his fangs into her skin.

“Nnh!”

Bubbles rose to the surface of the water again when Yui cried out. When Ayato switched to a different spot, biting her again and again, the blood seeping from the wounds in Yui’s skin floated around the two of them like a red ribbon that bound them together.

I have no air left…

Just when Yui was about to lose consciousness again, Ayato held on tight and pulled her with him to the surface. Yui coughed heavily to clear her lungs of water and desperately fill them with air at the same time. Ayato’s head was now above the water as well, and his eyes gleamed with a bewitching ferality that she had never seen of him before.

“Fuck, I can feel your blood flowing through my body… I can feel its power…”

“Please, no more…” Yui begged in a soft voice. Her face was white as a sheet, and the cold water and Ayato’s feeding had left her trembling incessantly.

“It can’t be helped. Let’s call it here for today.” Ayato held on to Yui as he swam to the edge of the pool, and hoisted her upwards onto the tiles.

Feeling an intense relief at being on solid ground again, Yui fell to the floor. Ayato threw a towel over her head.

“Huh?”

Yui was surprised by Ayato’s small gesture, but before she could thank him, Ayato turned his back on her and walked away without saying anything.

What does he really want with me?

Unable to figure out his motive, Yui tightly gripped the towel.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Around the same time, a man in a long, dark coat appeared in the woods surrounding the mansion. His motives seemed unclear窶派e merely stood there. However, as if he had noticed something, his head suddenly snapped up, and his red eyes focused on the sight in front of him.

Ah… Brings back memories.

The man’s eyes were trained on the Sakamaki mansion.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Yui had used the shower room adjacent to the pool, and when she returned to her room, she was stopped by the faint sound of a door unlocking once again. With suspicion, she followed the source of the sound, and reached another dilapidated spiral staircase.

“This staircase should lead to that room…”

Since then, Reiji had forbidden her from entering, but Yui was not prepared to give up on finding her father’s diary. I might be able to sneak into the room unnoticed from here, Yui thought as she ascended the stairs and found, as expected, the forbidden room.

Yui entered quietly, and immediately began the search for her father’s diary. It should have been right around here…

Carefully tiptoeing around the shards of broken glass, Yui eventually found the diary among the books on the floor.

“Gotcha!” She opened the little notebook without delay. “Huh…What’s this?”

Yui’s eyes widened in surprise. Her hands trembled as she flipped the pages. 

The pages were all completely blank where her father’s handwriting had been.

“It’s all… gone…” So what on Earth did I see before?

In a daze, the notebook slipped out of Yui’s hands and fell onto the floor, the sound reverberating through the quiet, empty space.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[jansuta]

oc art? in this economy?

[seventeendeer]

I do tons of creative stuff that I'm really proud of and love to death, but I never have any good creative tips to share with anyone bc my workflow is literally just "wait until the moment the idea of working on the thing makes you sooooo happys and then do it perfectly on the first try! and if it's not perfect on the first try, give up and do something else :)" like idk maybe I'm built wrong. or maybe it's everyone else in the world who's built wrong. anyway pro tip for making cool stuff all the time for all the artists and writers and whatnot out there: follow every stupid whim that comes over you, don't fuck up ever, and make sure to give up when things don't go your way 👍 it just works

[princess-of-purple-prose]

hi, if you don't mind me asking (since i saw you reblog a post about the orv webtoon): how far into the novel is the webtoon, approximately, now that it's starting the dark palace (?) arc? is there still a long way to go, would you say? sincerely, a huge webtoon orv fan who is trying to muster up the strength to pick up the novel

Hi, anon!! I'm so excited you asked this, because I myself picked up the webnovel right around the dark castle arc! So, um... yeah, chapter 172 of the webtoon is chapter 151 and a good portion of chapter 152 of the webnovel, and there are 551 chapters of the webnovel total. (To be even more precise, with the formatting I have on my phone, chapter 172 covers up to 2290 pages out of 8807 pages-- just over a quarter of the way through the story both ways.) There is, uh, QUITE a ways to go

That said!!!! I literally cannot recommend the webnovel enough, and this is from someone who started with the webtoon as well and then transferred straight to the webnovel where it left off at the time! The webnovel is such a different experience, since there are so many small characterization details that the webtoon doesn't adapt, and I actually bitterly regret not starting the webnovel from the start (I'm in the process of backreading, and I find new things to scream about every day!). There's no rush at all to read the webnovel all at once when the webtoon will take so long to finish, but at the same time, the pacing is so addicting that you'll probably speed through it till you're caught up or even beyond regardless! In case you'd like it, here's some info on accessing the epub file :) Happy reading!!!!

[cool-as-steel]

not getting my hopes up but this might very well be the most compelling polyamory setup I've seen in a long while

[barefootcosplayer]

I have had the nicest people commenting on all my old bioshock fics recently and it is just so heartwarming and affirming like thank you and ily ily ily, I’m just feeling the love 😭💛🥰

[kangaracha]

wouldn't expect a lot of queenmaker until ~christmas time, which is not what i would like to say but my body is just telling me to ease up after november and i'm hitting that pre-holiday slump so we're just chillin. we're playing a game for the first time in six months. we're doing a puzzle. my eyes are really blurry rn so i think i'll go to bed.

[glmfic]

Okay, so my dream is to be a published author. I've had that dream since I was a little kid reading the first book that knocked my socks off (I want write a book like that!). It happens to be NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month) and I had told myself I was going to put chapter 34 on hold and focus only on word count for the novel I've been planning for ages...but over the last three days, I've been nothing but stressed about it? I'm a perfectionist, and I just want everything to come out just right...there's so much pressure with my original work!

I feel like it's cheating slightly, but I've decided to write on chapter 34 and spend this month outlining and working out the details of my novel instead. It's not writing on my novel per se, but I think it's a good compromise. I feel much happier.

I've been writing GLM for so long- it's really comforting to me to spend time writing on it...and I'm dying to tell share with you what happens next! I think my heart is just in chapter 34 right now, so that's what I'm going to follow <3

[brad-bakshi-loves-bugs]

hey sorry to push but are you releasing another wafwaf chapter soon?

YOURE NOT PUSHING!!! I was HOPING to but nanowrimo actually has me inspired to write for my ocs for once and im doing a prompt competition with my friend so I've been super distracted 😭😭 I haven't even started working on chapter 7, to be completely honest! it WILL come out I promise but I really can't say how long it'll take im so sorry anon :(

[thanatoseyes]

I haven't been interested in romance novels since I was in highschool and was completely enamoured by Sherrilyn Kenyon's work. And I don't think anything can compare to that. Acheron is my favorite and his book made me cry.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Apparently I can meet my goal of roughly 400,000 words in 6 months if I just somehow write at least 2,200 words a day ghbjh... Almost 2,500 today... huzzah...

[artistic-m3nace]

Wolf's Eye: Demon Strike

Redone Outline

I pitched a very minimally edited version of the outline from this post with absolutely NO prep and when my professor very carefully told me none of it made sense (after I stumbled through a twenty-word stuttering explanation of the story itself at 10:30am while my brain went blank) I cried.

Because I knew that and my brain was still being a little shit and refusing to process that. Not because I was upset at HIM. Mike was entirely within reason lol and he handled my misdeeds and my emotions quite well for a man who likely had no idea what was happening (with the story or with me).

But tl;dr I mortified myself. So to resolve the pain that caused me, I wrote up a proper outline (to resubmit) and now it's here for you all to admire! It's great. I'm proud of it. This is the most I've thought about Demon Strike in YEARS! And even if I don't use it for this class (which I probably won't because WEC has NO relation to me and this is one of those story and concept classes in which you have to base things off personal experience), I can still use the outline for my Graphic Novel thesis project thingy for my minor capstone next fall. So I still win.

Enjoy!

PART 1:

opens with Caitie Davis riding through the forests of Voaden (city), Iron Archs (dimension) on her motorcycle, the radio blaring some news story about the changing of hands of the WEC title—her and Jason assuming command. Gives a set time until that formal takeover date.

some things the radio man might discuss: the death of Jason’s father and how Jason is linked to Wilson’s death. Caitie’s surprising choice to co-lead with Jason and her adamancy about their working as a team together. Trails off with “and now the weather…”

arrives at the property and is let in. Greets the guards and Pitch, meets Jason at the front desk and goes up to talk to the temporary CEO—the doctor Wilson Alder appointed to take over until Jason was old enough to take on the family business. 

Are given instructions to take the day/next few days off, rest before the storm so to speak. Warns them of the curse, of Myrixel, and suggests shoring things up during their downtime.

Caitie, Jason, Pitch, and Harper meet on the roof that night with beers and food over the fire pit

Reminisce, talk about Jason and Caitie taking over, mention Lou and how Caitie’s family still thinks it’s too dangerous for her to take on the mantle but how she’s going to anyway.

Mention the lycanthrope “curse” and Caitie blowing it off, and how she thinks they’ll be able to deal with Myrixel easily too. (Tattoo that indicates a hybrid??) Harken back to the radio man’s mention of Caitie’s adamancy that she and Jason co-lead because this is part of WHY

Jason goes down with Harper to get more beers and find they’ve run out in the aviary. Jason goes back down to the main floor, then to the desk to take the lift down to storage. Harper goes back to the roof. When Jason tries to take the lift back up, the handprint scanner fails. The lights start to flicker. He tries again. The lights go out, then flash on a grim purple.

“It would be you, Son of Alder.”

Or something else ominous

blurry first-person images of things going black, getting back to the first floor, someone at the front desk asking Jason if he’s okay, Myrixel turning them, the lights flickering purple

Back on the roof, the power shuts off and Harper says something about having a bad feeling about it (#StarWars reference). Goes down to check things out. Pitch gets onto the security network; Caitie tries to call Jason on HOLO.

Pitch goes silent, Caitie can’t get Jason.

the lights in the parking lot come back on, glowing the same grim, ominous purple as the basement where Jason was.

PART 2:

Caitie frantically tries to comm Jason again, spamming her HOLOscreen until it fizzles out in stark disgust with her. She curses at it, looks over the roof wall to see people filtering out of the building and one poor tech running out in a panic before toppling over themselves, getting up, and walking back inside unnaturally calm. Turns back to Pitch, who is still looking at his own screen, unreadable.

“Pitch...? What’s going on?” “Something’s wrong. The security network is on the fritz, everything is shutting down and the lockout measures are failing. Someone got in.” Caitie looks back at the parking lot. “We’ve got to get to Jason.”

They head back into the atrium where Caitie immediately goes for the training weapons (“they’re better than nothing”). Turns around to find Pitch halted on the stairs, hand on his hip holster, his eyes glowing purple. Has to fight her way away from him—or run, more like. Gets his indent pass off of his neck in the tussle (dog tags, which is unusual for an LA, they’re usually welded into their exoskin), runs for it.

Pitch is SCARY. He’s six feet tall and his color scheme is all red, yellow, and black. He has a fairly humanoid design for an LA, but he’s fitted with hidden blades and has high magic usage tolerance, as well as an android’s enhanced strength and durability. He’s formidable in a fight. Caitie gets the hell out of dodge.

Makes her way through the fifth floor (next floor down from the aviary atrium) in stealth mode, finds out the human members of the outfit are just as possessed as the LA members, and all of them have Myrixel’s glowing Hell’s Aisles sigil over their heads (on their foreheads?). Has to fight one of the weapons techs she interned under.

PART 2 has commentary from Caitie in caption boxes. PART 1 features mostly dialog bubble and special word bubble for the radio.

Gets down to floor four and has a view all the way across and through the building. The lights on the ceiling (underside of floor five) are a sickly purple and Jason is standing on the second-floor central platform, but Caitie can immediately tell it’s not her Jason. He’s giving orders and everyone is following them

Myrixel is directing the humanoids and Living Androids to track down anyone who didn’t slip under his command—anyone off the network. He doesn’t want a mistake like what happened with Alder (Jason witnessed, got away, and got to safety after his father’s commissioned murder).

Caitie is not on the network. She was riding back from university, having freshly graduated (this will have been made clear in PART 1), and hadn’t logged back in officially or gotten her new clearance codes. Immediate target on her back.

Gets spotted while watching. Temp attacks her, unleashing all three rings of his magic stabilization levels at her (i.e., he is very Unstable). Alerts Myrixel to her presence, runs through the fourth floor to try and escape Temp, then Bronze, then Alex. gets pinned in a closed room by Bronze and Temp (notorious prank/disaster duo, like brothers). Myrixel marches in after them.

Temp: wiry, avg. height LA with a lavender color theme, rabbit-like ears, and red highlight colors (stabilizers, eyes (not while possessed), wrist bracer runes. Bronze: same height, browns and blues for color themes, looks like a prep. Neither of them should be terrifying but they are (framing, power/control, dangerous, no holding back, VERY armed and dangerous). Alex is built like a mountain; six feet of metal alloy and crimson, orange, and heavy armor.

Myrixel gives some quick villain speech and then just. Fatally stabs her. He’s done this before; he’s not messing around. Locks her in the room (cleared-out storage?) to die.

Caitie still has Pitch’s indent tags. Tries to triage herself but is generally shit at healing magic and has inadequate supplies (searches the storage containers after Myrixel-Jason leaves with Temp and Bronze (which is WRONG because Temp has field training and hates seeing blood and Bronze is a medic).

overrides Myrixel’s technological control over Pitch, hopes it cracks the rest of him. Wraps his core coding in her own security spells (magitech functions as a code-runeset hybrid) and hopes for the best.

fades to black.

Cut to Pitch while Myrixel sizes him up and makes some comment about stealth force being useful for his takeover of the Archs, how he needs to be successful this time or else his contract will fall through “and, well, you know what happens to demons who don’t fulfill their contracts.”

Pitch wakes up. (All yellows)

PART 3:

Pitch wakes up as Myrixel leaves the aviary atrium, setting him up as a sentry “in case anymore haughty, stubborn miscreants try to make their way in.”

Comes out of it with a jolt and some magic sparks, then everything CRACKS open in full color and he stagers into a wall.

First person shots with yellow code overwriting purple, and a bright yellow sigil blinking in his viewscren. Pull back out and that same sigil is glowing over his head (forehead?) where Myrixel’s just was.

Flashback panels/flashes to a blurry/cut-off image of Wilson Alder talking over a yellow-orange HOLopad and Pitch’s voice laughing. “You can’t possess something twice, after all.” (Said as a joke, you can see Wil’s smile and the crinkles by his eyes. You can tell the two of them were friends.

Pull back to reality and Pitch repeats what Wil said. Moves out of frame.

Moves through the building the same way Caitie did, but doesn’t get recognized. He doesn’t give as much commentary (caption boxes) the way Caitie did. Just enough to pull you through the pages by the color of the boxes as he moves through the building.

commentary on his origins and what Will meant. Show don’t tell, but as it applies to dialog/narration in written media, if that makes sense.

Finds Caitie. Checks her vitals, checks the poorly packed stab wound, knows she isn’t going to make it. Makes some comment to her about being too stubborn to die like this. She makes some mostly-unconscious wisecrack about it. Hits her with a strong painkiller from the medkit she was able to find, grabs a blade and draws the zio’andar onto her shoulder.

“If you’re stubborn enough, you’ll be back. I hope you’ll be back, Davis. You… [insert some cheesy reference to when she was a kid and they played some game or another together and he stubbornly refused to let her win so she’d have a challenge]”

narration boxes briefly explain the zio’andar (for notes here: the zio’andar, or Void Death Rune, is a promise rune that, when activated with blood upon one’s death, the gods are bound to resurrect that person in fulfillment of the promise. The caveat is that the gods usually want something from that person/assign a quest, and sometimes the resurrection isn’t immediate. Pitch overrides the “not immediate” bit by tracing HIS sigil on her forehead, claiming her as his ward.

Pitch and Harper have been around since Jason and Caitie were little. They were the kids’ babysitters, which always wigged out Caitie’s parents

goes to find Myrixel-Jason

PART 4:

Caitie wakes up exactly where she died (all pinks, reds, and blues, NOT Myrixel’s purple).

panics, very confused. Realizes she’s sitting in a pool of her own dried blood but there isn’t any on her or her clothes, and the stab wound is gone. Even more confused.

Gets up, fishes a weapon out of some storage crate or another (it’s Wolf’s Eye. It should be very clear visually and thematically that this is just how the place operates) and creeps out of the storage room. It’s been a few hours, morning light is streaming in through the windows.

Pitch overrode the lock codes to get in and left it unlocked.

hears blaster fire, looks over the railing to the find the first floor consumed in a firefight between those still under Myrixel’s control and those under Pitch’s—yellow vs purple.

Myrixel-Jason and Pitch are alternating between shooting at each other and dodging each other’s hexes on the catwalk across the second floor

Caitie decides to go down and help Pitch

Caitie is still a little delirious at this point, both as a side effect of nearly dying, and falling asleep, and of the resurrection in general. Still doesn’t know how she’s alive or healed. Ends up blearily making her way through the fourth floor to the stairwell, no opposition is met because they’re all downstairs or, as we are shown, cowering in the offices.

Gets to the second floor, meets opposition. Bronze is fighting a purple-eyed Temp, who is overpowering him.

Caitie stops to help Bronze, even if she’s still not happy that he was one of the ones who cornered her (even though it’s not really his blame to shoulder).

Raises her blaster pistol to shoot only to realize there’s no battery pack—but it shoots anyway. Tattoos she did NOT have just a death-nap ago are lit up down her entire arms and Temp has a smoldering hole in his side.

Temp’s eyes gutter out and he collapses. Bronze makes a put-out noise, Caitie winces and tells him “At least when we fix him and upload his memory back up he won’t remember being possessed.”

While getting shot at by a couple purple-eyed techs, Caitie scrambles across the second floor while Bronze attempts to draw Myrixel’s attention with gunfire

Myrixel: “I thought you were the medic!” Bronze, who is also trained in combat and weapons handling because he works at Wolf’s Eye: “I have bad days!”

Caitie tackles Pitch right before he can shoot Myrixel-Jason down. “That’s still Jason’s body! We’re trying NOT to kill him, right?” Pitch, meanwhile, is seeing in double vision and can see the miasmic possession grip Myrixel has on him and is more focused on that. He is also, unfortunately, deeply attached to these kids and agrees that yeah, we probably shouldn’t kill Jason just to kill Myrixel.

immediately tries to bodily tackle Jason, who is her height and has less muscle anyway, but Pitch yanks her back before Myrixel can whack her to the side. Makes a comment about how she’s supposed to be dead. She throws some witty comment back at him.

He starts shooting again, Pitch and Caitie fall back. Bronze, meanwhile, has disappeared (presumably caught in the aftermath of whatever distract he caused)

Pitch is trying to figure out what, exactly, to do to stop Myrixel without killing him. Even before his memories were unlocked, he was a lethally trained fighter. Caitie, meanwhile, starts asking if he can just like, exorcise Myrixel

Pitch has a lightbulb moment.

Caitie is and can tackle Jason’s body to the ground. He’s seen her do it, and he knows how much Jason weighs. He decides to let her. Tells her to get him down and unconscious, which she is loath to do on purpose, but agrees anyway. Pitch gives her cover and Caitie uses her new glowy powers to draw Myrixel-Jason’s attention, then full-body tackles him to the catwalk and makes sure he hits his head real hard.

Myrixel may be a powerful contract demon, but he is currently possessing the comparatively frail body of Jason Alder, who does not yet have a plate in his head. He goes out like a light.

Pitch exorcises Myrixel from Jason with extreme predjudice. He retreats, trying to maintain control over the building and its inhabitants, but the outfit members start falling out of his control and the lights flicker.

The key to a contract demon like Myrixel’s powers working is their tether to the world they’re working in; they have to have a strong and receptive (forcibly or genuinely) host to possess. Without that, Myrixel’s power and plans fail and he loses control of Wolf’s Eye.

It’s for this same reason that Pitch (and Harper, but he’s not relevant here) has an LA body. He was originally sent to kill Wilson but ended up getting held hostage by whoever he possessed (probably Wil, he’s nutty like that) and through experience decided that he didn’t want to be the one to fuck up these people’s lives. So he had an LA body made and his Hell’s Aisles memories and powers locked away until he needed them. They were supposed to be easier to access, but the retrieval failed when Myrixel killed Wil.

the building falls back into its natural state—not its previous state. It’s pretty trashed. A couple hours of active close-quarters blaster fire and metal people tackling other metal people through walls will do that. Caitie gets off of Jason and Pitch decides they probably need to get him to a medic. Caitie remembers Bronze and goes to hunt him down.

Cut to a week later, when Jason is several days free of medical and healing from a pretty nasty concussion. Caitie is doing research on what, exactly, Pitch turned her into by using the zio’andar on her.

“No, but what the hell is a ziojic? Or ziorisa demonica? Pitch, whatever you magicked me into isn’t even researchable and has two names dude. What the fuck.” (Cue Pitch giving one of those long-suffering sighs and accepting that his new fate is to mentor a newly resurrected immortal-with-a-catch.)

Jason, meanwhile, is not entirely unaffected from the possession. In addition to lingering demonic eyes that might never change back, he’s also paler, has worse vision, and is left with a curse of his own.

Jason’s curse: Myrixel cursed him before he lost his ability to appear in the Archs. Jason’s body is essentially frozen in time...? He’s kind of like a walking corpse, in a way. His heart his stopped mid-beat, his pupils are stuck dilated, he’s got muscle rigidity and joint stiffness, it’s a whole thing. (Mobility aids? Vision impaired? Expound on what this means for him going forward and how he handles it)

casting Myrixel out, Pitch explains around this time, broke the contract curse on Wolf’s Eye since it rendered him unable to fulfill his contract terms. He makes some comment about how hopefully the person who commissioned him won’t try again, considering three Hell’s Aisles demons have now failed to take WEC down for good

alludes to the big bad of installment 2, aka the guy who commissioned Hell’s Aisles to take down Wolf’s Eye.

Cue that explanation, or maybe it’s already happened.

Pitch mentions something about knowing who contracted him, Harper, and Myrixel—and how Harper still doesn’t remember anything, and he’ll respect that choice. Other closing lines, some comment about how they can still take on anything, even if Jason is a cursed walking corpse (see notes).

View pulls out to a view of the whole main building and repairs beginning. Maybe Caitie issues a nonchalant challenge to the multiverse (which would be in character, and will totally come back to bite her in the ass)

-

Some other notes:

WEC adopts purple as its tech color to mark their triumph over Myrixel and to brandish as proof of it. It’s not his shade, its a pleasant lavender shade like Temp’s colors, kind of. Caitie’s eyes are a similar color permanently. Jason dyes his hair purple for shits and giggles, gives Caitie and Pitch war flashbacks in the process.

Caitie and Jason are not related, but they consider each other family. They grew up together, and when Wilson died, Jason came to live with the Davis family (he was around 12)

“Demon Strike” is the first installment of 3. “WEC: Order of the Puppet Master” deals with the people who contracted Myrixel and takes place the year after this (roughly). “WEC: Dark Pheonixes” takes place much later, after an interdimensional upset that isn’t relevant here.

magic system is pre-established but not necessary to understand beyond the fact that most of it is color coded, so the same color will generally do the same thing across the boards. Gets a little confusing with Light magic involved, but again, not important.

yes this did genuinely give me closure to write

[see-arcane]

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

Blood of My Blood – A recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

Dracula Daily Sketch Collection – An array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.

Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriter – With a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk – An ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

Re: Dracula – Probably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)

The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.

Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.

Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes

The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man

Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles

Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves

…

……

………

…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

The Vampyres – A novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.

What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.

‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.

Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.  

“How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.  

Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.

 “The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.

[neil-gaiman]

Hello!!

First of all, THANK YOU!!! The world has been feeling harder and more hopeless to me in recent years, and individuals like yourself help more than I will ever be able to express to bring light and hope back into my world. Loving and obsessing over gems like Good Omens, and American Gods (the novel at least, I must admit I never saw the show 🙈) have always given me motivation, sparked my creativity, and made me feel so much love for this, often unfortunately cruel, world. I can't express the solace it brings to me when the creators of the things I love are thoughtful and decent human beings. So, again, THANK YOU 🫀🫀🫀

I just finished my second viewing of Season 2 and have a question for you (my apologies if it has already been asked and/or answered and I missed it)!! 

How did you select the song "Everyday" by Buddy Holly? It is absolutely perfect on so many different levels, and for so many different threads and characters, all while still encompassing the perfect feelings of this show. I always include playlists with the stories I write, and often agonize over which song is the best choice for certain moments. You had to pick one song to encompass the entirety of it, and it truly blew me away! 

Thank you this Season and for everything you do; it really does mean the world to so many of us 🫀🫀🫀

In February of 1991 (I think) Terry Pratchett and I were staying in the Chateau Marmont hotel in LA. These days it is a very fancy hotel but back then it was pretty manky and run down. We were being put up by a film company and each morning we would fax over an outline for a new version of Good Omens the Movie and each afternoon we'd go to the studio for a meeting and we would realise that nobody had actually read what we had sent over that morning. Then we would go back to the hotel and work on trying to incorporate the studio notes on the outline they hadn't actually read into what we were doing.

We worked up in Terry's room because it had heating, and it was incredibly cold in LA that February, especially cold because I was in a chalet out in the grounds and there weren't heaters or extra blankets or anything in the chalet.

And at some point in there we were talking about music, and I suggested a few scary and ominous songs that might work to signal the end times. And Terry said "What about Buddy Holly's song Everyday? It sounds so upbeat and cheerful. But what if it was about the end of the world?" And I got all excited at the idea of Everyday being the Good Omens theme song.

So it's really just there to make Terry happy.

[calmlb]

It’s been clear that the Tanizakis aren’t siblings from the very beginning

here’s some evidence now that it’s been confirmed canon…

everyone who’s read irl Tanizaki’s book knew that Junichiro & Naomi weren’t siblings as soon as they introduced themselves

BUT just because the Tanizakis aren’t siblings doesn’t mean you can’t feel uncomfortable about them. if you feel uncomfortable, GOOD. that’s exactly what they want

the Tanizakis, Mori— they all use these disturbing ruses to disarm or distract people in order to protect themselves, or to accomplish their goals. this is a writing device that asagiri commonly employs as a way to parallel the irl literature (it’s actually ingenious)

there are 4 main indicators that have always made it clear to me that Junichiro & Naomi are not siblings:

1. most obviously— their character designs. Harukawa is extremely intentional with character designs, & she very intentionally made Naomi & Junichiro look nothing alike

their eye shapes are purposely different

their color palettes are contrasting

even their differing styles of clothing have meaning

this was all done so that the audience could PLAINLY see that they’re not related— so that WE know that they’re lying when they say they ARE related

2. how the people around them respond to their act.

the general reaction is “don’t question it”— which is exactly what they want. “be distracted by how uncomfortable you feel so that you look away from what we’re hiding” (this is likely a protective measure)

3. most importantly, this is meant to parallel irl Tanizaki’s book “Naomi,” where the main character Joji picks up Naomi to raise her into his ideal woman, but since she's so young (& a minor) they call each other cousins (Joji makes no sexual advances on young Naomi btw)

however, his plan backfires because when Naomi gets older & they get married, she flips the script on him & manipulates HIM so that he's under her thumb (which is why bsd Tanizaki is at a domineering Naomi's mercy). Joji let her have her way because of his masochistic tendencies

4. lastly is the emphasis that Asagiri and the Tanizakis themselves put on calling each other siblings.

over & over, it’s “my brother this” & “my sister that”

like they’re desperately trying to convince us that it’s true (“don’t let your lying eyes deceive you”)

here are just a few of many examples from the light novels…

again, if you’ve read “Naomi” you knew that Junichiro & Naomi weren’t siblings as soon as they introduced themselves

just like if you’ve read irl Mori’s works, it’s clear that bsd Mori isn’t a pedophile

just like if you’ve read No Longer Human you know that Dazai’s an unreliable narrator. he makes you think he’s a bad person bc he believes he’s a bad person, but those around him see him differently (btw this doesn’t mean he’s never done anything “bad,” though bsd isn’t about morality— but that’s another discussion)

anyway, i’m so excited for the Tanizakis backstory to be revealed so that we can better understand why they use this defense!!

also let this be a reminder to READ THE LITERATURE if you’re able to!! even reading synopses & analyses of the coordinating books makes bsd make much more sense 🥹

reminder that this how you’re supposed to react while reading bsd:

also, if you’re interested in a post explaining how Mori isn’t a pedo, i wrote this analysis on twt. OR you can read this document that one of my moots sent me (remember: analyzing a character does NOT mean you condone any actions they may or may not commit!)