Uppe på Nammatj, Sarek (by Mikke Blom)
Source: Flickr / mikkeblom
Marguerites -Conrad Kiesel (detail)
The sudden Dracula Daily surge of people with no real idea what happens in the book beyond dust jacket synopsis is so cool and I love it, and every post makes me remember how I and only one other human in existence have experienced reading Dracula.
Since we were kids, my sister has consistently consumed media of any kind, and then updated me episode or chapter or installment/segment by segment, by drawing me a comic version of events on the fly, while retelling the events. This is such an immersive experience that I cried at the end of FMA more than she did when she read it, and remembered more Q&A topics at the next con. So, for Dracula we are on a flight.
A multiple hour flight. And she goes “I finished Dracula—do you want to hear it?” & I am like “Heck yeah bro,” so she goes in. We aren’t loud because this is a shared space, but our third row seat is empty so that works out perfect, and I can hear fine, so we scrunch up & she starts drawing charts as she goes, from Jonathan on his terrible no good real estate venture, right through to the denouement. It’s a fun story! And I love her comics and comments on events. I’m really into it. And it’s about group strategy sesh over Alice’s situation time in the book, when I realize the guy sitting behind us (compete stranger in his early 30s) is leaned forward and up in his chair, silently watching the comics and trying to subtly listen in too.
So, my sister goes through the whole plot of Dracula scene by scene, and fascinated, I keep checking periodically when I remember, just to see, and the entire time,he keeps listening. For something like the next two hours, I and this guy are both just taking the whole thing in beat by beat like
until finally we reach the end, and my sis says “And yeah, that was Dracula,” and he sits back and relaxes and I peek and he’s just staring into space processing eyes huge and like me too buddy & anyway, yes!!! Dracula was meant to be consumed in OG form but the weirdest methods possible, and also Quincy is the best character.
MORE PHOTS IN MUH REBLOG
Psst. Don’t tell the jolkein rolkein rolkein estate, but this is amazing. DO consider buying a print from the extraordinary artist responsible:
Original Twitter thread with the artist’s thoughts and commentary:
mvrtlesnow
The Village (2004)
↳ There are secrets in every corner of this village. Do you not feel it? Do you not see it?
I think I may have solved the mystery of the Romanian Woman Who Gave Jonathan The Crucifix
There was a lot of debate as to whether she was supposed to be Catholic or Orthodox, and whether or not we trusted Bram Stoker to know the difference. Geographically she's more likely to be Orthodox, but they don't use Rosaries, but it's called a crucifix more than it's called a Rosary and honestly do we trust Jonathan to know the difference? (But the associations with motherhood privilege the Rosary read. But you don't wear Rosaries like necklaces. But does Stoker know that?)
I tended to trend Team Catholic but I have now reversed my position: she's Orthodox - and I can prove it.
Here's the relevant bit:
Do you know what day it is?" I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again:
"Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is?" On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:
"It is the eve of St. George's Day"
I was walking by my calendar today and saw something interesting: St George's Day is April 24th. It's England's patronal holiday. Bram Stoker (and presumably Our Good Friend Jonathan) would have known this without needing to think about it.
What this roughly two week discrepancy in dates tells us is that Crucifix Lady is using the Julian Calendar. The fact that she doesn't contradict Jonathan's assertion of the date means that she's using the Julian Calendar for religious purposes but the Gregorian Calendar for civic purposes. Do you know who does that?
The Orthodox.
Not all of them, of course. But there are Orthodox Churches that are still on "the old calendar." The Serbian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7th. This seems like exactly the same thing.
It also means that as Jonathan enters Dracula's domain, time stops working the way he expects it to. There was a scholarly paper once that pointed out that when Dracula is "on top" in the struggle time is given by natural phenomena - moonrise, sunset, midnight etc - but when the Heroes are on top it's given by the clock - 3 o'clock, 12 o'clock etc. This seems like more of the same. Jonathan gives the numerical, calendared, modern expression of the date, but Crucifix Lady gives the older, mystic expression of the date. It's another east vs west Thing.
But yeah, Crucifix Lady is Orthodox, not Catholic, the crucifix is a crucifix (got Jesus on it) but not a Rosary, and Bramothy managed to collect the whole set, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, all working together against Dracula however they can!
#for the longest time i thought it was symbolism of jonathan being st george heading to the dragon's lair
There is literally no reason it cannot be both
this is a cute video but I cannot emphasize enough that only one of them is helping. the goofball climbing the electrical cable deserves no credit
One of my favorite things is modern adaptations that leave people with the same careers they had in the original material, because unless you’re a cop or a doctor that practically never happens.
Irene Adler’s an opera singer. We still have those! They don’t have the same subtext exactly, but nothing is going to because we aren’t the Victorians. She could continue to be an opera singer. I have never seen this happen.
Jonathan Harker can still be in real estate. That’s a job people have. A modern story that still involves Dracula contacting his firm to help him purchase property sounds amazing actually.
A modern adaptation of Dracula where you keep seeing Jonathan Harker’s face on bus stop bench ads for his realtor office.
I was about to joke about Quincey Morris still being a cowboy, but then it occurred to me that he’s not actually a cowboy in the source material, is he? He’s the wealthy heir of a Texas ranch-owning family who just acts like an Old West cowboy. If anything, that’s even more plausible today than it was in 1897.
my favorite book from a specific book series: the chronicles of narnia
And the signs which you have learned here will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances. Remember the signs and believe the signs. Nothing else matters.
There was one of those hyperspecific polls that had an option like “your grandfather told you war stories that he never told anyone else” and now I feel like I have to tell the story about how a spider saved my grandpa’s life in WWII and how my family doesn’t kill spiders because we owe our existence to that One Single Spider
So to set the scene, it's the height of WWII in France and my grandpa—a 6'3" 20 year old upper Michigan farm boy—has been separated from his company after their temporary camp was shelled. My grandpa (who, I have to add, was nicknamed 'the Suicide Kid' at this point because he worked in demolitions and bomb interception and kept taking the jobs no one wanted with the expectation that he was never going home anyway) is scared out of his wits, wandering around the French countryside alone. He has to move at night and sleep in barns and sheds during the day to hide from people who most definitely want him dead.
On one of these days, he finds a farmhouse of a very jittery couple who agree to let him sleep in the barn, with the conditions that he sleeps in the barn loft and if he's found, they disavow all knowledge that he was there. He agrees, because he's exhausted and will sleep in a hay pile if he has to. My grandpa manages to fit all six foot three inches of himself into a feed trough stored upstairs and tries to get some sleep.
However, right when he's half-snoozing, he hears motors outside and sure enough, here are some very angry officers of mixed Nazi and Vichy make confronting the couple saying someone up the road spotted an American soldier walking this way. They wouldn't know anything about that, would they? No, of course not.
All the while, my grandpa—now trying to figure out how to either escape the barn unseen or how to fight off six? seven? eight? people at once—freezes up and waits for the inevitable. While he does, a HUGE spider crawls next to his head and onto the loft railing. For one second, he thinks about swatting it away, but that would risk him being seen and killed.
So, instead, he lays there and waits to either fight to the death or get executed in a feed trough. And while he lays there, the spider starts making a huge web on the railing. My grandpa's transfixed by this thing. He watches her go around and around, building a solid web before plopping herself off to one side and waiting for breakfast. At the same time, the officers finally go into the barn.
My grandpa can hear them searching around, turning over crates and checking animal pens. Then, he hears one say to check the loft.
And then another say, "Don't bother. Look at the spiderwebs up there. No one's been there in a while."
And they leave.
Because my grandpa didn't swat the spider away and let her build her web, the officers thought no one was there and left him alone. They drive off and my grandpa immediately thanks the farmer couple and hauls ass out of there as soon as he can.
After this, my grandpa refused to kill any spider, and his kids did the same. Because if it wasn't for her, he wouldn't have lived and would never have had kids or grandkids. So we owe her one.
There's the man himself. Go grandpa!!
pennant winged nightjar
Oh, that’s an odd name, what’s the bird look li--
...oh.
