#demeter captain

[lostamber]

A second crew member has gone missing aboard the Demeter

[rain-13s-blog]

I forgot how creepy the song on August 4th is. Soul chilling!

[miralines]

Overly Specific Typecasting in podcasting/adjacent (compilation)

- Jessica Law as sentient inanimate objects that enjoy violence, putting on shows, and stealing vocal chords from living people they have murdered

- Lydia Nicholas as woman with too many knives and not enough social skills

- Alistair Stuart as Ship Dude

- Tim Ledsam having a bad time in tunnels

- and. I cannot get over this. Jonathan Sims as tortured academics named Jo(h)n recording the horrors they uncover into an audio format

[inblackwoods]

Another old unposted Dracula piece. I never posted this one because I never finished it. 

[omaano]

Skyguy joins the Hades AU to Din's great distress

"How's Snips? And my Captain? I bet they've missed me all this time." "I don't know who you or those other people are, but you are scaring my kid."

They definitely missed him, but Rex sure as hell failed to mention his old General by name or description, so Din can be excused for a bit of rudeness just this once. He's looking for a Jedi to teach his kid, and since meeting Ahsoka he at least now knows that a lightsaber does not a Jedi make, please tone down the menacing looming, Anakin, and just help him, he's got a trinket from Rex in his pocket, he's cool. (Depending on the keepsake he runs with, Anakin is more or less likely to turn up as Vader instead to grant a boon only to make Din's life all the more difficult. So he is part Chaos, part just Disaster Lineage.)

As promised: the 501st command is all here for this project by now, all done in the span of a few months, so they even look like they match :)

[treespen]

Remember: The boxes in the Demeter are all firmly sealed.

Dracula's box has a few holes (for misting himself in and out of it), as Jonathan observed, but the boxes are all firmly nailed shut.

There is no way for a person to get out of those. The Captain knows this. That's why he doesn't suspect anyone hiding in there.

[immediatebreakfast]

"I can't make her out," he said; "she's a Russian, by the look of her; but she's knocking about in the queerest way. She doesn't know her mind a bit; she seems to see the storm coming, but can't decide whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here. Look there again! She is steered mighty strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand on the wheel; changes about with every puff of wind. We'll hear more of her before this time tomorrow."

Let's pause the grieving atmosphere between Mina, and Mr. Swales' words about to see the funniest dark comedy tone of the situation.

Dracula, a wealthy nobleman who has been landlocked for god knows how long, decided that the sailors who were just doing their job were expendable enough for him to kill and torture. Why would he care about the fate of simple humans when they are there to serve him as both food, and entertaiment at the expense of their lives; the Count only needs them to steer the ship near enough to Whitby right?

Well, after Dracula pushed the captain towards absolute terror after this trip from hell, which in return strengthen his indomitable human spirit, which made him tie himself to the wheel with the holy object that symbolically makes the ship herself untouchable to Dracula's hands... There he is.

The mighty conqueror of romania, the terrifying shadow that lurks the night, a living myth defying time as he feeds on the life of his victims... trapped in a ship where he cannot touch anything that matters thanks to his over indulgence, lack of actual care for his own plans, and once again underestimation of humans.

A shovel was not enough to make Dracula truly understand.

[barghesthowls]

Now I don't personally believe that Dracula was for real terrified of Mina, however, he did flee after seeing this dainty girl (who saw him in the graveyard with his red eyes and immense figure) not faint or scream or freeze or flee despite her obvious fear but run straight at him.

Dracula is at his worst when something he wasn't anticipating happens. He wasn't expecting Jonathan to pick himself up and literally crawl up the castle walls and dare try to kill him. If he was expecting that, he'd not be having a scar now. He wasn't expecting the Captain of the Demeter to defy him by tying himself up on the wheel with a crucifix. If he did, the logs would have been gone now.

Mina woke up and ran into the night defying every fear, convention, risk, to save Lucy from man or beast. That wasn't on his Bingo card. He was forced to stop hurting Lucy and fled.

Then Mina wakes up again, sensing something wrong, and goes to the window and spots him. He flies closer a couple of times but she remains there. He's forced to flee again. Mina believes she scared the 'bat'.

To me, these two scenes establish a few things.

-Bravery as a core trait for Mina.

-Mina as the one who hunts Dracula down.

Jonathan wounded him in his box, the Captain denied him apotheosis, but Mina made him run.

[bluecatwriter]

Despite being a foreigner and his apparent madness, the people of Whitby buried the captain as a hero. Although he had no connection to the locals but crashing to their shore, they treated him like one of their own. It's reminiscent of how the people of Transylvania cared about Jonathan despite the fact that he wasn't one of them and offered him their wild roses, garlic flowers, mountain ash, crucifix...

I was thinking about this too when I listened to the entry a few days ago... it's such a lovely echo of the townsfolk of Transylvania doing what they could to help Jonathan. Dracula really is all about reaching across divides of culture, space, and understanding to see the humanity in other people. This is such a touching scene!

[see-arcane]

The Wrong Ship

Dracula, misting out of his dirt box: Finally! Time to enjoy this seafood buffet--

The Captain: I see you’re new to the operation.

Dracula: ...You’re surprisingly, unappetizingly calm about a living corpse man leaking out of a box. 

The Captain: Mm.

Dracula: To drink people.

The Captain, checking his watch: Mm.

Dracula: Well, you’re boring me. Point me towards your underlings so I can get on with my meal. As payment you can die overboard. 

The Captain: Ah, very new to the operation. There is no crew that you’ll find aboard this vessel.

Dracula: I can smell blood enough to call you a liar.

The Captain: It’s no lie. You will find no crew here no matter how you search. Sniff them out, chase shadows, run laps around the deck. They’ll be there, but never found. Plenty of fog, though. You should feel quite in your element. If a bit peckish.

Dracula, about to chomp the good (?) captain: Not when you are in reach.

Captain Peter Lukas, dissolving into vapor before the Count can get a bite in: I do hope you enjoy the cruise. It’ll be longer than you think.

[ezkezpez]

I am captain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He, It, dare not touch. And then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. I am growing weaker, and the night is coming on.

- Bram Stoker’s Dracula

1/? Illustrations

[lostamber]

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

whenever i gotta do something inconvenient like take out the trash or do the dishes, i say to myself with all the airs of a tragic hero:

[vickyvicarious]

It seems like the general first impression was "The Demeter crew is suffering and sleepless and dying, while Mina is having a nice sightseeing vacation", but... Doesn't it seem less of a contrast than that?

Lucy's now increasingly odder sleepwalking was there from day one of Mina's arrival, making Mina sleepless. While the crew sleeps with one eye open.

Even on the first day on Whitby, Mina was taking about death and lost ships. While the crew was beginning to lose men. Mina and Mr Swales talk about tombstones and suicide. While the First Mate jumps to his death.

*Mina voice*: the reports of my hot girl summer have been greatly exaggerated...

You're onto something here, definitely. Of course, in the original book, we don't see anything from the Demeter until a little ways into Mina's stay, so it (re)reads as more foreshadowing than it seems like a parallel, but that's one of the really fun things to notice in the daily format! I'm reminded of Lucy's three suitors and her letters about looking into her mirror coming so soon on the heels of Jonathan's encounter with the three vampire women and with his mirror getting broken.

I never noticed just how much a lot of Mina's storyline here lines up so well with the Demeter though. And now that I'm thinking about it... There's a bunch of those kinds of connections!

Of course, there are overall ones. Like you said, Lucy's sleepwalking begins right away, and it robs Mina of her sleep. Meanwhile, the crew of the Demeter are kept awake by storms, by double-watches, by having to pick up the work that no one else is left to do. But though that's pretty overarching, there are also some moments that line up really well. For example, July 27: "Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving about the room." and July 28: "Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom, and the wind a tempest. No sleep for any one. Men all worn out."

Then there are Mina's conversation with Mr. Swales, especially the latter one with its talk of suicide, of going to hell - only two days before the mate leaps to his death rather than allow Dracula to get his soul. Mr. Swales also parallels the first mate a bit in being, as Mina says, "a most dictatorial person in his day" and very insistent that there's nothing supernatural going on, though as yet he's not been proven so terribly wrong about that the way the first mate was.

On July 24, Mina says there is "a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in a mournful sound on the wind. They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at sea." That same day the Demeter is approaching more bad weather, and later on they get lost in the fog. (Though we never get mention of any bell ringing.)

Mrs. Westenra is afraid of Lucy's sleepwalking because she "has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the place." On August 2, the captain is awoken by a cry that sounds close, but which he cannot see the source of in the fog. The next day, the mate runs up onto the deck crying out after being figuratively 'wakened' to the true horror of who he's up against just before he leaps over the side of the ship. Also on August 3, Lucy goes about searching for the key so she can get out, and the mate went searching through the boxes in the hold. He clearly found what he was looking for, and it had terrible consequences; if Lucy finds what she seeks in her sleepwalking, what might happen to her?

And, one that I can't believe never occurred to me before... Mina's not only worried about Lucy, of course. She's very afraid for Jonathan. Because he, much like the men on the Demeter, has vanished unseen. He went off to his work (on watch/work trip) and hasn't been seen since. Even when she hears from him, it's brief and she can sense the letter is uncharacteristic of him, short and lacking detail. The reason, though she doesn't know it, is of course that Dracula stopped him from saying anything else/more. Jonathan's real sentiments and words were 'lost in the fog' so to speak (the false trail laid by the letters being the metaphorical fog here). It reminds me of the one sailor's cry that awoke the captain. And even with that, she's still waiting for more word of him and should have had it by this point. But he's simply gone.

It's not endless horrors for Mina at the moment, but the ominous tone is certainly building over time despite more positive moments happening too. To use a weather metaphor, more and more stormclouds have been gathering over time, looming threateningly overhead. And it looks an awful lot like the weather Dracula brought to the Demeter.

[thedupshadove]

So weep, until your eyes do blur

For the valiant Captain of the Demeter

Yes, weep, until your eyes do blur

For the Captain of the Demeter

[treespen]

art by Becky Cloonan