#animate-mush

[thirddoctor]

Yeah the notes on that post were super upsetting actually. "If you said no you're virtue signaling." What? What?? It's actually very easy to not wish death on other people?

someone in the notes was like "this is the kill yourself website" meanwhile I can still remember when the general consensus here was that suicidebaiting was always wrong and unacceptable. obviously there were plenty of people doing it, but it was rightly looked down on as edgy loser behaviour. I hate the fact that it's become so normalised now

[lauralot89]

So... do you think Sir Francis Varney would make a good whist partner for Phileas Fogg?

For a period of time, at least. Varney being Varney, I feel he'd then get caught up in some sort of scheme, or perhaps multiple schemes, which would fail entirely and Fogg would ignore the whole thing. He's got a timetable to keep.

[laurasimonsdaughter]

This is neither European (...sort of) nor Fairies, but how do you classify the situation in Turandot where the hero must hide his True Name from the Cruel Princess he's trying to court or his life is forfeit. It seems like a fairytale sort of thing that I've seen before but I am not immediately recalling other examples.

Ah but (as far as I know) all versions of Turandot were (re)told or adapted by Europeans, and I'd say that the guessing of a name as a final task is most likely borrowed from the Rumpelstiltskin type stories.

There are a lot of variants of that story around where the forfeit for not being able to guess the name isn't taking the firstborn child, but having to marry the name bearer! (Examples: Doubleturk, Kugerl, Tarandandò, The Girl Who Could Spin Gold from Clay and Long Straw, The Golden Spinster.)

Of course this is a rather different context than those stories, because the princess is at once the threat (she wants to cut the prince's head off) and the reward (he still wants to marry her) and the person being set the "impossible task" (guessing the name so she'll get to kill him instead of marrying him). But the task itself is indeed very fairy tale-ish.

Not that there aren't quite a number of fairy tales in which men are absolutely desperate to marry women who are openly trying to murder them, because there are, but so it goes

[vickyvicarious]

Mina might transcribe on this when she wakes up and gets up to date on October 26th

Just pasting in the anon who wrote me an ask about this as well, since it's all the same topic:

Now I am curious too about when Mina transcribed this! It might be revealed in future entries but I can't remember. But my guess is not before they leave because Mina doesn't want her eyes or ears to reveal to Dracula anything. Maybe she could do it during dawn or dusk but those times are restricted for hypnosis...

See, the issue with Mina transcribing is that for now at least, Jack is presumably still recording his entries on wax cylinders. Certainly the end (the first end) of today's reads like someone else transcribing him getting choked up and unable to talk, rather than him writing down his own difficulty continuing. I mean, we don't have to assume - we know that is the case, because he says his voice fails him.

And I don't think they are in any way counting on Dracula not being able to read her mind during dawn/dusk - or even if they did think he can't, she would still remember and he might be able to access those thoughts. They don't know, so they're gonna play it safe and they certainly won't tell her. So they wouldn't give her access to any documents during her brief moments of freedom even aside from it being reserved for hypnotism sessions.

The 28th is likely the first time she can access any new documents from between October 5 till the ban on telling her things is dropped. And funnily enough, there aren't actually a lot of documents she's missing. A total of 9 in all that time, mostly covering particulars of what they know of where Dracula is. This is important to hide from him in the moment still, but it's not a ton for her to catch up on, especially since most notes are short. She could probably type them all up that same day without any trouble.

Except for Jack's recordings. These aren't on paper that can be just casually carried along; they are recorded onto wax cylinders. Would they take those too? The question leaves his entries from October 5 and 11 in a sort of limbo. This one in particular only covers his impression of the conversation Mina led, and so it would probably be fine for her to type it up since it doesn't contain anything she wasn't there for, but would they tell her that? Would they report it to her and let her type it up before they leave? ...I see a couple options:

Mina types both. October 11 she transcribes the day of or shortly after, before they leave the country. The October 5 cylinder is taken along with them and she listens to and types it on the 28th.

Mina types both. They're both brought along with them and she listens to/types them both on the 28th.

Someone else (likely Jonathan?) transcribes them both. Probably shortly after they are made, or just before everyone leaves the country, and he brings the transcriptions along with them.

No one transcribes them until after everyone is back in England, mid-to-late November. Someone (likely Mina) organizes the final accounts then. Possibly not that month even... there is a seven-year gap before the epilogue and while I don't think it took anywhere near that long to fit these documents in, she may not have jumped right to it immediately.

I feel like, given Jonathan's interest in making sure a record is kept for Mina, it's possible he did make the effort to transcribe these two entries and bring them along. But then again nothing else seems to have been typed/compiled, so maybe he just made sure the record was kept somehow and left the compilation for later.

I also instinctively doubt they brought wax cylinders on their trip (it just feels like they'd be too delicate? but that may just be me overthinking and they are traveling to nice hotels at least initially, so there should be a phonograph there to use if they want to listen), though if they did that leaves the awkward possibility of Jack crying here being played aloud in a hotel room for potentially everyone to hear. It would give the swiftest access to the information within, though.

Honestly, I'm not sure. I feel like the first option is least likely, but I could see the argument for any of them.

[coruscanttojerusalem]

Language learners with kids, how do you practice and keep your progress?

[thebibi]

Your post has got me thinking again about how Dracula ruins Lucy & Arthur, almost ruins the Harkers but they come through okay by the skin of their teeth... but very much saves both Jack and Van Helsing. Jack is on a downward path here and then he gets his Unselfish Cause and he comes out better for it. He loses sleep and blood and the love of his life and his preconceived notions of masculinity and has a good cry about it and his life is uncontestably better now. Today sees him at a low, standing on a brink - and instead of going over the edge he goes through the fire and it helps. Dracula ruins everything but Jack is in such a bad place here that that's an improvement. That's wild!

Yup! That's why at the beginning of this year's DD, previous readers were arguing how Dracula ruined everyone's lives. And its blatantly untrue. Dracula gives Jack and Van Helsing a second chance at life, which is overwhelmingly positive. They get back in touch with each other, they reaffirm and make new friends, they both learn to rebalance their lives. It also makes them relevant. Van Helsing's obscure knowledge is finally helpful, and he's rewarded with a new found family and adopted grandson. Jack lets go of his prejudices (which will make him a better doctor in the future) and finds love again. And ultimately its all thanks to the worst thing that happened to everyone else.

I'm sure there's something to be said about how Dracula can be interpreted as a positive change in the story, but ironically it has less to do with Mina and more to do with the Victorian medical community....

[carnivorous-horses-lover]

I have to ask - have you read the Belgariad (and/or the Malloreon) by David Eddings? Fairly standard Chosen One High Fantasy but there is a race of carnivorous horses with big scary teeth. The guy from Horse Girl Culture wants one so bad and the other characters have to be like. My dude. Your nation's economy is based around herding. Do you really think that having horses that see your livestock as prey is a good idea? Think about it carefully now. And he's just like "but they're horses that eat people! They is literally nothing cooler!"

I haven't, but this sounds hilarious and is embarrassingly close to what I think of carnivorous horses!

[serpercival]

Alright so you spun the wheel and ended up in the Horror of Fang Rock. We all know that one's a TPK. So what's killing you? The Rutan, your fellow humans, your own hubris, or sheer dumb luck? Or does the addition of K-9 mean you might pull through?

It was so funny to spin that wheel and genuinely just get Horror of Fang Rock ft. K9. I'm the example death to show that the stakes are high.