Relistening To Mag 03 And I Do Say This Every Few Months Or So But I Cannot Stop Thinking About How Blatantly

Larian, i'm available for suggestions, please reach me at wyll_simp_4ever@blorbo.gov

I think people get mixed up a lot about what is fun and what is rewarding. These are two very different kinds of pleasure. You need to be able to tell them apart because if you don't have a balanced diet of both then it will fuck you up, and I mean that in a "known cause of persistent clinical depression" kind of way.

[Utena] a single perpetual motion machine

I found a soft quietude come over me. Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last.

This segment gives me so much joy, but is a great example of what makes Jonathan incredibly unique among similar types of horror victims in Victorian literature.

A lot of academic analysis notes Jonathan’s traditionally feminine role in the early chapters of Dracula, but chalk it up to “the horror of emasculation”—that Dracula imposing femininity on Jonathan expresses the gender role anxiety of the time and is part of how Dracula terrorizes him.

But that’s just straight-up not how the book is written. Jonathan is comforting himself with his connection to the sweet, soft ladies of old, wishing he were writing love letters to his own love far away. He soothes himself with the image as a way to escape the horrors surrounding him. He encourages himself with the comparison to Shezerade and her cleverness earlier.

It’s the difference between “Jonathan is facing horrors traditionally imposed on female characters” and “the horrors INCLUDE the connection to female characters.” That distinction is enforced by how he, on his own, finds comfort and encouragement by thinking of himself among their number.

It’s a distinction that wouldn’t be obvious from just reading a summary of the story, which in all honesty seems to be what some academic analysis is working from.

Exclamation marks, but instead of a huge line of them, we do like Roman numerals of them.

You know. To save space.

It appears that today JHark continues your thesis statement of him having an "I will not let such a small issue stop me" pattern

Let us recap!

May 3rd: *paprika gives incredible thirst*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me! *more paprika*

May 4th: *locals crying, hugging his knees, begging him not to go*

Jonathan: *significantly more unsettled* I won't let a little thing like that stop me

May 5th: *this door has no handle*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me...? Though I admit I am at a loss as to what to do about it

May 8th: *dracula yeets the mirror*

Jonathan: *annoyed* I won't let a little thing like that stop me *does his best with his shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal*

May 8th: *the castle is a veritable prison*

Jonathan: *running madly around like a rat in a trap* I won't let a little thing like that stop me!!! *sitting down quietly* ahhhh fuck

May 12th: *envelopes extremely see-through*

Jonathan: *resolving to write to Mina later in shorthand* I won't let a little thing like that stop me *immediately snoops on Dracula's letters*

May 15th: *the door is locked, the key is gone*

Jonathan: I won't let a little thing like that stop me. It's probably in the Count's room

May 15th: *one door not technically locked just suck*

Jonathan: *putting his back into it* oh I definitely won't let a little thing like that stop me...

And a bonus:

Dracula, May 12th: Don't go to sleep anywhere else in the castle or you will Literally Die. From, uh. Nightmares.

Jonathan, May 15th: I won't *yawn* let a little thing like *yawn* that stop me.... zzzzzzzz

Some people have been making the joke about the characters of Dracula being stuck in a time loop but honestly it got me thinking about how epistolary novels feel like a potent manifestation of the concept of being doomed by the narrative

Because when I read a non-epistolary book, I’m not left with this sense that it’s all going to reset because the events of the book aren’t happening according to a very specific timeline. Like, sure, maybe specific dates get mentioned in the book, but it’s not as rigid as having a diary or letters with exact dates laid out over the course of six months.

Because Dracula has a definitive start date and end date, the characters are fixed in time and being (sometimes literally) railroaded. Your sense of the passage time is very concrete and there’s not a ton of wiggle room. Like, a book such as…idk, The Great Gatsby that doesn’t have any dates in it (IIRC) feels timeless. Sure, maybe it takes place in spring and summer, but you can kind of lose track of that because there isn’t a calendar keeping you aware of the date. Gatsby has to die within a certain window of time in the year but you’re free to imagine that as being whenever you want.

Not so in Dracula. Jonathan HAS to be on his way to Castle Dracula on May 3 and 4, he HAS to be there until at least late June. He cannot be already at the castle on May 2, and he can’t leave until after a particular date has come and gone. Every event in the book has to happen on or about the date it’s written about, there’s no room for deviation. We are free to imagine what might happen between specific dates (especially in the long stretches with no updates) but ultimately it all has to conclude in a specific event happening on a specific date.

That really lends the book the sense of being a time loop because we can pin down a pretty much exact timeline of the book. We know that these characters are locked in, and on the dates of the novel they cannot meaningfully deviate from the text. And because of that, they’re doomed to live those events out on the same exact date every single year for all time.

It adds the same layer of dread/grief/futility that you might feel when playing a game and reading in-universe diaries/news stories/etc from the early days of the game’s apocalypse. You can’t change the events of the past no matter how much hindsight you have, and none of us can change the canon events of Dracula no matter how much foresight we have. Jonathan is always going to be on his way to Dracula on May 3, and he’s always going to be completely unaware of what’s waiting for him.

cool drag transformation (im on episode 115 so please no spoilers)

we’ll always have yesterday

remaster of an old piece. i’ll be at yeticon table L7 this weekend if you want to come say hi :^)

Agnes Montague sketches