AspenTree

mostly reblogging and gothic posting

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

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[athimbustanut]

she won the idgaf war

[dduane]

Meanwhile, in Lithuania...

(via Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, over at the Ex-Bird Place)

[orpheuslament]

terrifying when you watch a movie or a show or whatever & youre like that was fun but it felt a little redundant they didnt need to hammer the point home that much & then you go online & theres thousands of people going that was so weird i did not get it what did that mean google.com ending explained please?

[suncaptor]

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

petition to show support

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

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[canisalbus]

⌘ ⌘ ⌘

[monsieur-de-challant]

More Dracula Daily stuff!

Im quite late bc of college exams but im catching up!!!

[free-and-to-none-accountable]

[thecrumbez]

Happy Pride Month to those two women dancing together in the foreground of the boat scene in Godzilla (1954).

I’m sorry your romantic foibles were overshadowed by a big ass atomic lizard thing.

Edit: this post is blowing up so I’m gonna shamelessly plug my art account. Follow me and I’ll draw the Godzilla lesbians @thenonbinaryfriendnamedcrumb

2nd edit: Yes. Female friends dance with eachother. But why can’t they be lesbians?? I’ve seen people on this website ship two men for astronomically less.

[elianzis]

We've already talked many times about how wrong this scene is for Odysseus, but let's also talk about… HOW EASY IS IT TO BREAK A STATUE WITH A BLADE?-

[starweaverblog]

And also how they double down on the poster phrase "DEFY THE GODS"

Because surely odysseus of all people would do such thing yeah surely. If it's Athenas statue this will be awkward

[1000cavalry]

Literally the only reason Odysseus survived in the Odyssey was because of his piety.

In book 1, the first thing we hear about Odysseus from Zeus and Athena, is that he always makes sacrifices to the gods. The gods (barring Poseidon) love him.

He is shown making sacrifices and libations and number of times throughout the book.

In book 13, he doesn’t manage to stop his crew from stealing the cattle of Helios, because he fell asleep while praying.

Athena explicitly helps him countless times in the story.

At the end of the Odyssey he is preparing to leave Ithaca again to find a place to built a temple to Poseidon. This is the gods that has been tormenting him and delaying his homecoming. Odysseus knows you must honour the gods.

I really don’t understand the direction they are going with for this film. Can’t they trust their audience to understand a protagonist with different religious values.

If they really wanted to do a story with a man who defies the gods, they should adapt the Bacchae, or do something with Mezentius from the Aeneid.

[sarafangirlart]

Being mad at Nolan for not casting Greek actors: normal, justified, valid and I agree and most of the castings are ass bc they were focusing on star power rather than casting actors who fit the characters.

Being mad at Zendaya and Lupita Nyong'o bc they’re black but taking no issue with the white actors who aren’t even Greek or even Mediterranean at all: racist and weird, at least Lupita Nyong'o is insanely gorgeous which justifies casting her as Helen, why tf is Tom Holland Telemachus?

[wombrion]

og

[ceruleanheaven]

bad media will piss you off good media will heal your soul bad media that couldve been good will ruin your life forever

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

The crows have arrived!

(Sorry, obvious joke is obvious)

But I'm curious what made you decide that Kostaki could control crows (and wolves, apparently) like this? Was it just needing some way for him to gather information that resonated, or was there some reason in the texts for it? (The ballads from La Guzla and The Pale Lady come to mind)

It's to further establish the Brankovan territory as a character in its own right, and cement Kostaki's connection to, and mastery over, the land as a major source of his power. Smerande is the true genius loci of Castle Brankovan, but Kostaki's connection to their land is just as potent. The vibe I'm going for is "what would it look like if Dracula wasn't evil". Kostaki and Smerande are the guardians of this border land, and the land answers to them; command over animals is just one small part of that. (It was also an excuse to freak Relia out a bit if I'm being completely honest.)

(My spicy theory: Gregoriska flattening the landscape during his duel with Kostaki wasn't the power of God, but him tapping into this same power-of-the-land.)

[corvidcrowned]

Lesbian Carmilla 🐈‍⬛

MY LITTLE MEOWMEOW <3

[mayhemchicken-varneyposting]

Fragment by Byron really is more readable than the Vampyre (ok not a feat, but...), more somber and ritualistic, Darvell is already fascinating, and it's just the prologue of an unfinished bigger story. https://readerslibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/Fragment-of-a-Novel.pdf

From a reviewer of this who you will agree with: Included is Lord Byron’s “Fragment of the Novel,” which is haunting and evocative. (You may have heard that Byron is a pretty good writer.) “Fragment” was only released to demonstrate that Byron had not written John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” which is not nearly so haunting nor evocative. Its final line, “Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a Vampyre!” makes this 21st century reviewer wonder how anyone could have thought this Byron’s work.

Huh. It's definitely more readable; Byron can actually make the interminable-sentences-strung-together-by-semicolons work, whereas Polidori just seems to be rationing periods. The prose is more evocative, mostly because it's actually comprehensible.

In terms of plot I think it's not really fair to compare the two; the unfinished nature of this one gives it an advantage, I think, in that your imagination is allowed to run wild with the directions it could take. I know mine certainly is.

My knee-jerk impression is that this one feels gayer, though that might be partially due to the first-person POV. I want to read Darvell's line with the stork and the snake as a threat directed at the POV character, rather than some conveniently appearing sister or girlfriend of his, but I have no way to prove the story would've gone in that direction. I'm intrigued by the amount of ritual surrounding Darvell's death and (presumed) resurrection; it makes me wonder what the literary vampire would look like in a universe where a finished version of this took off, rather than Polidori's slop.

The 21st century reviewer has left out the hackiest part of Polidori's ending: the formatting. In the Project Gutenberg edition of The Vampyre, the final word "Vampyre" appears in all caps.