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Fangirl's obsessions

@kehlana-wolhamonao3

Fanfic writer and reader, obsessing over Downton Abbey, Jane Austen, classic British literature and fantasy. Any of those interests may show up here, this blog is for fun.
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kehlana-wolhamonao3
abumperprize
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beggars-opera

Oh ho HO let's see what villainy is afoot today *opens up the 1891 London Illustrated Police News*

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petermorwood

Ah yes, "The Illustrated Police News", Daily Mail / Express * (or possibly Sunday Sport / National Enquirer) of its day

* Mail & Express are famous notorious for, when at a loose end, publishing Madeline McCann / Lady Diana stories despite their increasing lack of currency.

In much the same way, IPN published nearly 200 Jack the Ripper front-page stories in the four years after those murders ended. Illustrated stories, of course. Also like them, IPN featured many anti-immigrant "here to take your jobs" stories.

IPN got good mileage from murder (mostly horrible, sometimes ghastly, occasionally just shocking), violent or scandalous goings-on (with illustrations to show how violently scandalous) and things to be outraged at (with illustrations to assist in being outraged...)

It was also partial to the adjective “fair”...

...and I was quite surprised that this one missed out on "fair somnambulist".

The captions didn't miss out on much else.

Stuff like these:

Or indeed these:

Has there ever been a compilation of The Best / Worst Of Illustrated Police News?

I'd buy it for the chuckle factor. ;-P

kehlana-wolhamonao3
draculadailytracker
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animate-mush
thegoatsongs asked:

Gotta love how the coveted key that Jonathan is so fixated on is all smoke and mirrors. I bet he has nightmares about it.

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animate-mush answered:

And he literally never figures it out. He saw Dracula open the door with no key on the 29th, sees that it's locked again on the 30th ....and goes right back to looking for the key. "A wild desire took me to obtain that key at any risk." Honey.

And yet this fixation does lead him where he needs to be. It's looking for the key that makes him go out the window. If he'd given up that quest, or put the clues together that it was impossible, would he ever have found the crypt? Would he ever have learned that he could climb the wall well enough to use it as a halfway viable means of escape? He's not good at making plans - he spent two solid weeks trying to come up with something and ultimately just circled back to the plan he'd made on May 15th: Get Key Somehow.

And his plan fails. He fails to get the key, because it was always impossible, because there isn't any key. But the attempt had consequences, and favorable ones. (Moxy Fruvous has a line in a song: "so we tried, and then gave up, because there was no such song - but the trying was very revealing." There is no such key, but the trying is very revealing!) Just as he fails with the shovel. He wants to kill Dracula before he can spread his evil to England and he entirely fails so to do. But that doesn't mean the effort is fruitless! He cannot kill Dracula because even asleep he can control his body with his mind and fog his brain with madness and fever and call upon Scholomancy to lock assorted doors (again with the locked doors) - the thing he's attempting to do is in this moment impossible. AND YET. He marks him. The shovel falls limp from his fingers but he marks him. He dares to resist even when he can't win, and in so doing he proves that Dracula is not unassailable. On the 29th he doubts that any mortal weapon can harm him but then on the 30th it does. He can be harmed, he can be killed. Maybe not today, maybe not by him, but it can be done. And that's huge! He failed, yes, but the very act of trying makes a difference. You don't have to succeed for something to be worth the attempt.

And this same striving in the face of the impossible, this mystic hopeless Hope that pushes through despair, is a major theme of the novel. Tolkien's Estel. You can't win. There is no key. Do it anyway.

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kehlana-wolhamonao3
en-theos
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worldhistoryfacts

The most common geographical evidence we have from ancient Rome are catalogs of places. Roman maps, to the extent that they existed at all, were almost certainly rare and expensive. Ordinary Romans would not have had access to them. Instead, Romans would have used itineraria, which are just what they sound like — lists of the places a traveler might encounter along a certain road. Many itineraria are catalogs of the milestones that the Roman government placed on its road network.

One of the more famous itineraries is found on a set of cups that were excavated in Vicarello; they describe the route from Cadiz, Spain to Rome.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

Image
How Did the Romans Map Their Empire?
And why didn’t their maps look like ours?
Medium
kehlana-wolhamonao3
see-arcane
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see-arcane

Everything is tainted in Castle Dracula. Every choice, every comfort, every contour and crevice of just existing in that place becomes distorted with an undercurrent of malice. Everything from being a charming guest (or else) to enjoying a moonlit view (the moonlight is made of eyes and teeth and reaching hands) to the privacy of a bedroom (your things are stolen, you are stripped while unconscious, the door is locked) and even to the simplicity of choosing whether you wish to live or die (why is there a third option, no, no, no, not that, please not that, not this, not forever, please, God, no—). It’s all spoiled.

And this latest entry highlights one particular pleasure that I think may be just as soured for Jonathan as things like being touched or appreciating nature’s beauty.

Laughter.

Every time we have heard laughter since Dracula imprisoned him, it’s been at his expense. Dracula’s laughter. His hired workers’ laughter. The Weird Sisters’ laughter.

Ha ha, look how helpless he is! Ha ha, look how afraid he is! Ha ha, look how crushed he is!

What makes it an especially torturous knife twist, though? The idea that the laughter doesn’t just come from cruel amusement at his situation or what’s planned for him. It feels almost like the laughter of an old team snickering over the expected fretting of the new addition. They’ve seen this play out before. The ladies have, in all likelihood, lived this out before.

The welcome to the castle, the impenetrable locks, the tightening noose of Dracula’s attentions and demands, the pleading at the window for help that will never come, the desperate attempt to make it out only to be stopped short by the precipice or the wolves.

I wonder if that giggling little chat outside the bedroom door is a tradition with them. Speaking and laughing just loud enough to ensure the new addition on the other side can hear and know what’s coming. It reads almost like a sorority’s hazing. It’s just so much funnier when you’re in on the joke, on the giving rather than the receiving end of the requisite assault and those final fatal kisses.

All of this with the expectation that someday, some night, there will be another voice laughing with theirs laughing outside the door as someone new makes their last weeping prayers. Ha ha.

kehlana-wolhamonao3
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whatsabriard

(imagine for a second you’re cora, and you’ve spent the better part of the last few weeks (months?) preparing for it to be you in that bed. surrounded by your husband and children, saying a witty and loving goodbye. you’re holding him to lend him your strength and to make sure he knows he’s not alone in this moment. but you’re also white-knuckled, gripping your lifeline, tethering yourself to the reality that it’s not you. and won’t be for some while yet)