Epic Sword Pull Sequence

I AM NOT A WHO, ARCHIVIST. I AM A WHAT.

hey me and my girlfriend saw you from across the parking lot and we really fucking hate your vibe. i’m going to hit you with my mercedes

characters whose philosophy is “if i cannot be wanted, i will be needed and if i cannot be needed, let me be used until there’s nothing left of me.” thank you for everyone’s attention. falls off stage and dies

14/06/24

happy pride month to them

NOTE: in a few weeks im gonna have my bachelor's degree!! in the meantime, i've been doing some comms work and i somehow ended up speedrunning painting this piece lol. decided that the flats looked better than a shaded version, so here we are. im esp proud of ayda's hair in this one

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.

Do you guys remember how kidnap fantasies were popular on wattpad because young girls and queer teens were both made to feel shame at the thought of their own sexualities, so the fantasy of being kidnapped totally against their will was a way for them to engage with a romantic or sexual fantasy without feeling morally in the wrong for doing so? Added bonus that the fantasy involved being whisked away from repressive environments like home or school, right?

Finding out that Bram Stoker was in a sexless marriage and that scholars believe that he very likely was closeted gay puts the entire book into perspective as to WHY it reads EXACTLY like a self insert wattpad Dracula kidnap fic:

“I TOTALLY love my wife and would never do anything that an upstanding Good Straight Working Man wouldn’t do but oh nooo, big strong man with broad back and strong enough arms to carry me back to bed like a princess trapped me and claimed me as his, completely against my will 👉👈 But he protects me against the bad evil sexual women (who I assure you, I am TOTALLY sexually attracted to, as any straight man with a choice would be) but trust me, I do NOT want ANY of this. What’s that? The Count is not capable of feeling love? Would be a shame if I had the special ability to change tha-”

when I first watched utena I noted how peculiar it was that people depicted in their coffins were always curled up in a fetal position instead of the typical coffin position of lying on their back with their hands crossed over. it just hit me now that it probably has to do with the egg speech given at the start of the student council sequences. the one inside the coffin shows the chick that died without breaking the shell, or being born. the coffin shows the safety of eternity at the cost of never growing or changing. the coffin is the egg that doesn't crack. the juxtaposition of the egg (new life and potential) and the coffin (death and stasis). the ending of Utena is open-ended, as Anthy has emerged from her coffin and has cracked the shell of the egg/her world, and now she's creating a life of her own. the coffin seems eternal but it can be escaped, that's why they aren't posed as if already dead. oh my god

Cutie-pie of the sea (x)

Hello. My name is Count D’racula Dementia Vampyr Way. I have long white teeth (that’s how I got my name) and a long white moustache with white streaks that reaches my mid back and red eyes like limpid blood and a lot of people tell me I look like my predecessor Dracula (if you don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!!) I’m not related to Attila but I wish I was cause he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire and my teeth are long and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a Count, and I live in a creepy castle in Transylvania where I’ve been for quite some time (I’m an age.) I’m a Goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and the blood of every conqueror ever flows through my veins. I’m also a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. For example today I was wearing a black shirt, black trousers, a black cape, and black mid-thigh boots. I was wearing no makeup. I was walking around inside my castle. It was nighttime which I was very happy about. An English lawyer stared at me. I threw his shaving mirror out the window.