#still though i really loved those scenes

[senadimell]

It’s been several weeks since I started watching Nosferatu, and I finally picked it up last night since I now have a knitting project suitably mindless that I can do without having to look at it and can watch the movie in peace. I’ve finished the third act, and I have to say, this is honestly really faithful to Dracula. Since it’s never been a secret that Nosferatu is heavily inspired by Dracula (read: an unauthorized adaption), I’m going to assign Dracula names to the roles characters play in the story rather than use their actual names most of the time.

The character combinations are interesting, but make a lot of sense given the large cast of characters in the book. I haven’t gotten far enough for most of the secondary characters to be a major presence, but I’ve read that they’re mostly absent, so the focus remains mostly on the Jonathan and Mina figures.

One of the biggest changes so far is that Mr. Hawkins and Renfield are combined into Knock, a now-malicious solicitor secretly in kahoots with the Count.

Narratively speaking, this actually makes a more of sense than it might sound at first. Mr. Hawkins is mostly a plot device in the original story, not really a character, and given the restraints of a silent film, it would be rather challenging to establish why and how the Count wants to visit England. When you strip down the conversations from the captivity portion of the novel, you’re left with the challenge of how to convey the Count’s desire or to establish how exactly he made arrangements with a foreign solicitor, so giving him an agent abroad is a pretty economical way to convey that. Then, when the Count is travelling, using Knock as a Renfield-figure and thrall of the Count serves to heighten the tension, and while the “the life is in the blood” speeches are a little less mysterious, they do pair very well with the back-and-forth between the not-Demeter and not-Van Helsing teaching a botany class about carnivorous plants. 

The major downside of that choice is that it removes much of the nuance present in the books regarding the characters under the Count’s sway. Renfield and Seward’s back and forth about the nature of sanity is so far completely absent, and I expect this will be the case through the movie, going off of the visual language’s cartoonishly malicious depiction of Knock. Renfield’s humanity is really just not shown, and while Knock’s gleeful manner while eating bugs is quite similar to Renfield’s manner in the book, I highly doubt the element of resistance will show up.

Still, overall, this feels like a simplification rather than a warping of the story. Unfortunately, it’s a simplification that results in a caricature of mental illness, and yet I don’t think it’s a fundamental misreading of the story, unlike Drac/Mina pairings.

The second major change so far is that Mina and Lucy’s role have been combined into one, and given their similar narrative roles as vulnerable and beloved targets, this makes a lot of sense. Now, the Mina-figure is the sleepwalker. There is a slight change in that the prophetic dreams start earlier, but it also serves to emphasize her connection with Jonathan without the letter and journal devices. It also establishes her vulnerability early on, pretty much as soon as we realize that Jonathan is in peril, which is an effective way to convey the peril of Lucy-Mina without diary entries and serves to jump-start the middle act of the story (which I admittedly found rather slow during Dracula Daily)

In a related vein, there’s another convenience change that’s either big or small depending on what you view as an important theme. In Dracula, the Count seems primarily interested in England, and his later vendetta is the result of his predatory nature, not the driving motivation. In Nosferatu, that’s flipped, and his primary motivation to leave his castle is to track down not-Mina. He presumably did first send for a solicitor, though, so the motivation isn’t absent, it’s just less developed.

Apart from character changes, the biggest other change is that the Count spreads plague rather than just killing or turning characters. So far, it doesn’t feel fundamentally different from the book, but I don’t know yet if it will have larger plot implications down the line.

I will say, though, that the time period is always waiting a little bit uncomfortably at the back of my mind. It came out in 1922, and there’s just so much going on in the Weimar Republic at this time. It’s a culturally wild time. I don’t know a lot about this film, or its make, or how it was received, so I’m just left with vague implications about the various changes and how they would be received. What does it suggest that he spreads a plague? What does his increased focus on preying on Mina mean? What are the implications of the fact that he has an apparently willing agent abroad, or that Renfield is only a slavish caricature, totally devoted to the count?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they’re always looming somewhere as I watch.

[guildling]

i appreciate him very much

[flufflecat]

Got to stolen century in my relisten and started tearing up at work because of magnus carving the duck. Just me in the back room, crying over the dish sink for normal reasons.

[fictionadventurer]

I didn't realize just how much Little Town on the Prairie meant to me as a book. I've barely started and every bit feels iconic. This one and Little House on the Prairie feel more like home than most of the other books do.

[icewindandboringhorror]

reminders of the passage of time moodeboard

[fuckingguide]

Well, that should teach a man to mess with me, he was never seen again and I’m still wandering the beach | Edward “The Kraken” Teach + The Lighthouse by Halsey

[todayisafridaynight]

any hopes for kiwami 3? like things u wanna see added or changed stuff like that

if they dont keep kiryu's goofy walk stance and the hoof-like walk sounds i dont wanna play it

[mariathechosen1]

Was Anyone But You a good Much Ado About Nothing adaptation? No, not at all, but fuck it was fun!

[oh-meow-swirls]

the anime's unhingedness is even funnier when you remember that the dub aired on disney xd. this shit was airing on disney-

[vlindervin7]

the thing abt red white and royal blue is that the premise is fucking stupid. however, reading the book i was able to more or less look past it bc i really enjoyed the characterisation and the way the story was built and the dynamics between all the characters, but when you make a movie and you erase key character elements, take away the chemistry, and refuse to focus on family (biological and chosen) dynamics for more than a second, while everything is also being incredibly badly acted. what do you have left? the stupid plot, which just does not hold up

[hetianxmomo]

My favorite part:

[pynkhues]

so keen to hear your thoughts on the iwtv finale... that last line....

Oh my god, anon, I finished the ep like - - literally ten minutes ago, haha.

Below the cut for spoilers!

My first thoughts are that I loved the episode overall. I love that it especially and frankly painted Louis' unreliable narration - particularly his editorialising and hypocrisy - as inherent in the story that he's telling; from the pages (again) cut from Claudia's diary to the editing choices, both in the cuts after Lestat's murder, and in the way they paralleled Lestat and Claudia's feeding and juxtaposed Louis doing the same.

I love that that casts a palour on everything, from Daniel rightly calling Louis out on the way he disposed of Lestat's body as giving him a chance to survive, to the fact that I mmm, lowkey wouldn't be surprised if it was later revealed that Louis was the one to kill Antoinette, not Claudia (her being dead gives him a lot of power over their narrative, both shared and individual, which the show has lent heavily into already).

That narrative distrust makes the whole episode feel like a fever dream, and it was so well done both in the story iteslf and the way the show utilised Mardi Gras and the poisons and the telepathy and Daniel's in-and-out-of-it-ness as a result of his medication, that the episode just had such a pulse to it, y'know? I loved that.

The Armand reveal wasn't really a surprise to me, and I think in many ways that's actually a testament to Assad Zaman. He's been so great as 'Rashid' and the reason people were speculating him as Armand already were that he really embodies the role so well. I'm really excited to see where the show takes him, but also !! That last line!!!

God.

If Lestat hasn't arisen yet, that'll make him, haha.

It does seem like Armand and Louis have been companions for a long time at this stage, and Armand's energy is Different to Lestat's to put it lightly, but it's one of the things I love about these dynamics overall. Louis and Lestat are both possessive nightmares when it comes to each other, and the reality of that in the time and space their relationship started, and staring down the barrel of immortality, is insane.

Louis dictating his relationship with Lestat to Daniel while Armand as Rashid is effectively playing house with him has such person-recounting-true-love-with-the-person-they-settled-for energy, and I love every part of it. I want every simmering moment of jealousy and transference and fracturing heartbreak in slow motion, and I can't wait until Lestat reappears to just throw a grenade in everything.

[t-u-i-t-c]

chapter xlvii

[normalbrothers]

tommy's faith and trust in arthur's ability to take charge/take responsibility/be The Man is so astounding and bitter sweet, both in terms of how much the war broke arthur but also tommy's own sentimentality when it comes to him. and it's not a belief based on nothing at all either! it's knowledge and experience, and it's sort of the core problem when it comes to the frustration and resentment they feel towards each other; the constant back and forth and never seeing eye-to-eye despite craving that very thing and wanting something from the other that is impossible to give, because they are both so damaged in such irreparable ways

[babisawyer]

paramount+ has given up on me suddenly so I've only been able to watch a tiny bit of scream 6 so far.

[elisacifuentes]

Private Practice - A Step Too Far (4x17)