how rare and beautiful to even exist

• sparrow (she/they) • • theatre nerd by day, generally nerdy always • • current 📚: "pride & prejudice" and "sunrise on the reaping" • • aceofsparrows on ao3 •

[little-moonbird]

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the tortured poet's perfect court analysis series

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[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

[thestuffedalligator]

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson mentions that when he served in Afghanistan he had an orderly named Murray who rescued him after he was shot in the Battle of Maiwan.

And I really do like the idea that this Murray could be somehow related to Mina Murray, that would be a very fun way to connect Dracula and Sherlock that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Unfortunately I don’t know how well it fits timeline-wise to either story, and also Mina having a family would make some scenes in Dracula really weird.

Like she says, “I never knew either father or mother,” so it’s possible that she had an older sibling/cousin/aunt/uncle that could be Watson’s Murray, but if you were going monster hunting and you had an older sibling/cousin/aunt/uncle who was a military trained medical professional, I assume you’d tell them

[hasufin]

So, Dracula is set in 1895. Watson was wounded in the Battle of Maiwand in 1880. It would not be inconsistent for Mina to have an older brother who served and was present at this battle.

One might suppose this relative died in subsequent action in that war. The loss of their beloved son then so devastated Mina's parents, that they departed to Afghanistan to recover his body, leaving behind their very young daughter. They never returned, and Mina was then an orphan. At that age - perhaps as young as 3, or 6 at the oldest (guessing she was between 18 and 21 at the start of Dracula) she'd have little if any memory of her parents.

[thestuffedalligator]

Honestly Mina’s life is such a cartoonishly gothic tragedy that this does track.

[josketches]

enjoys aliens, ghosts, and lifting his tiny partner

[terpsikeraunos]

ancient greek word of the day: κακοθερής (kakotherēs), unfitted to endure summer heat

[aphilologicalbatman-deactivated]

this literally means “bad at summer” pass it on

[zipstick]

Reblog if you, too, are bad at summer

[depsidase]

[wowdanascully]

 Scully + “when she gets computer reflection light on her glasses” {requested by anonymous}

[asneakyfox]

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts

[madlori]

holy shit I've never seen this articulated but OP is EXACTLY RIGHT.

[captainjonnitkessler]

Remember when Little Talks was on the radio all the time? Things were better then. Have we tried putting Little Talks back on the radio 18 times a day to see if that fixes things

[achillesinhighheels]

[illusoryfem]

Franciscan nuns at the Convent of St. Anthony of Padua, Spain, are keeping a giant rabbit breed from dwidling to extinction. To fund their conservation efforts, the nuns sell homemade cookies and ice cream. (People)

[pmamtraveller]

The ‘Dance of the Wilis’ Giselle by Ran Chilipye

[randomfoggytiger]

Look at them.

[aggressionbread]

It sucks that the only way to begin is by beginning

[em-the-mushroom815]

it's even worse that the only way to learn is by playing and the only way to win is by learning

[thats-what-sidhe-said]

But the only way to begin is by beginning. So let's begin.

[gamechangershow]

[katebeckets]

idiots (affectionate)・[56/?] ⤷ 3.12 — “War of the Coprophages”

[loveridden1999]

i don't care what those tiktok and instagram influencers tell you, have three meals a day!!! have a snack!! have that sweet treat!! have food that makes you feel good!!! especially if you're a woman!! starving yourself to look "desirable" will only make you desirable to people who want you to stay malnourished forever. it's a cycle of misery!!

[animentality]