Pinned
Hey! This is a secondary blog for my main account, @10-4ward. This blog is dedicated to posting incorrect quotes & memes of various forms of literature, currently focusing on Dracula.
All incorrect quotes on the blog will be tagged with "incorrect quotes" and "[media of origin] incorrect quotes" to make searching easy.
Similarly, all onion headlines will be tagged "the onion" and "[media of origin] the onion".
Absolutely overjoyed that people are still losing their minds over the Vampire Book for the second year in a row 130 year old book 1 year old subscription service all that’s happened so far is Jonathan consuming paprika and it’s #1 trending I love it
So I’ve hired a solicitor to help me find a second home in another country, and he had to travel here to help me finalize the paperwork. My house is pretty far from any major towns with an inn, so I told him he was welcome to stay with me while we conducted our business.
I even met him halfway so he wouldn’t have to walk the long road to my house. I had to drive myself, because my lifestyle doesn’t really require a large staff to help run my house. I’ve been cooking all his meals myself, and keeping his room clean, and I’ve even saved him from a super awkward interaction with my roommates. I even offered to pass on all his mail back home, to make sure his loved ones knew he was alive!
He has never thanked me for any of this, and to make matters worse, he’s been quite a rude guest. He’s not willing to keep up to my schedule. He doesn’t follow the simple rules I gave him about the (very few!) parts of the house where he can and can’t go. He tries to spy on my private business. He does his best to avoid me when he sees I’m looking for him.
He’s told me he wants to leave, and so I tell him he can if he wants to! I even opened the door for him once! He just turned around and walked back to his room.
I can’t help but feel like I’ve done something wrong. I don’t have a lot of guests - is there etiquette I’m missing? Or AITA?
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.
Here for a Quincey who wears pristine ten gallon hats and bolo ties with chonky silver and turquoise clasps
Oh Jonathan, my friend, my boy, my absolute avenging angel, I love everything for you in this scene.
Drac Attack Pack: -gets in a melee skirmish with the cart’s guards-
Jonathan, arm-sized knife out, radiating enough Murder Energy © that it can be tasted on the air: Here’s the thing. I’m taking that box. I can do it quickly. Or I can do it slightly slower and covered in the pulp that used to be anyone trying to impede me.
The guards on Jonathan’s side of the cart, all big fans of keeping their skin, limbs, organs, and heads in the same condition they started this trip with, taking a very long step back: Understandable, you enjoy that dirt
Drac Attack Pack: -still mid-scuffle-
Jonathan, already on the cart, physically hoisting the Giant Box Full of Dirt and an Entire Grown-Ass Vampire Man, and chucking the whole thing off like it’s an apple crate: I don’t know why, but I get the strangest feeling someone is watching me with thirsty intent (affectionate)
Mina, Absolutely DELIGHTED to Be Married to All of That 👀, sweating, already mentally planning her journal entry if they survive: Dear Diary, If thing’s weren’t so dire at the moment I would have vaulted down there and climbed my husband like a tree
Dracula, about to rise for a fun evening of slaughter: >:)
Quincey (💔), mortally wounded but still able to pierce the old bastard’s heart in a dying moment of heroism: Take that! >:)
Dracula: Oh shit
Jonathan, no thoughts, only Kill the Count, now a living monolith of hate and righteous violence, swinging that kukri blade through Dracula’s throat like a knife through butter: Rest in Pieces, Asshole
Dracula: OH SHIT– -dust-
Just…wow. At this point I’ll never hold my breath for any Dracula adaptation to do our favorite Victorian solicitor, loving-to-the-point-of-blasphemy-and-madness wifeguy, and white-haired badass anime man any kind of justice. Writer-directors have just consistently decided not to bother with it, being too ravenous to play into the BS that Van Helsing was the one to be Dracula’s nemesis and the one delivering the killing blow.
But we know. We know who Jonathan Harker is and what he did. And that’s something.
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.
Quincy Bush
God help him, they took the train
Van Helsing dropped a ton of Vampire Lore on us last week, and I thought it might be useful to unpack it a bit, so here we go:
The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere passing of the time;
Vampire power: immortality
he can flourish when that he can fatten on the blood of the living.
Vampire power: vampirism
Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can even grow younger; that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty.
Vampire power: rejeuvination. Feeding makes Dracula younger and more powerful
But he cannot flourish without this diet; he eat not as others.
Vampire weakness: obligate haemovore. Now this is muddy. Van Helsing is saying that he can only consume blood, he has no other food source. But it's unclear whether he has to consume blood. It strengthens him and helps him flourish, but he may or may not be able to starve to death
He throws no shadow; he make in the mirror no reflect,
These seem to me two reflexes of the same basic property. They're both images - representations of the thing but not the thing itself. There's a liminality aspect to it. The image is an in-between, liminal state, which is apparently not available to vampires
He has the strength of many of his hand
Vampire power: superhuman strength
He can transform himself to wolf, ... he can be as bat, ...he can come in mist which he create
Vampire power: shapeshifting (but possibly only to forms with which he already has an affinity)
but, from what we know, the distance he can make this mist is limited, and it can only be round himself.
Vampire weakness: limited range / no action at a distance
He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust
Vampire power: moonwalking. I feel like there's a lot to say about the Moon but I don't know exactly what it is, apart from being associated with madness. We might be able to read moonlight as liminal - it is itself reflection, sunlight but not, giving things a dreamlike quality. There's something there, I'm sure
He become so small
Vampire power: shapeshifting (2D edition)
He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire—solder you call it.
Vampire power: insubstantiality
He can see in the dark
Vampire power: night vision
He may not enter anywhere at the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please.
Vampire weakness: Threshold Magic (which is a liminality effect), though it is superceded by Hearth Magic (hospitality and guest-right)
His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day.
Vampire weakness: Nocturnal
Only at certain times can he have limited freedom. If he be not at the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon
...superceded by Liminality. That is, noon is a zenith, the opposite of a liminal space. The fact that noon is a zenith is more significant than the fact that it's still daytime. That is, the strength of it being the zenith is more than the weakness or it being day
or at exact sunrise or sunset.
These are liminal, which is puzzling, because this should be when Dracula is weakest
he can only pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide.
Vampire weakness: running water. This is a liminality thing. Exceptions happen at the zenith of the tidal cycle
Then there are things which so afflict him that he has no power, as the garlic that we know of;
Vampire weakness: Garlic. It sounds here (and from Lucy's experience) that the smell of the garlic seems to interrupt his power, possibly by simply being unpleasant
and as for things sacred, as this symbol, my crucifix, ...to them he is nothing,
Vampire weakness: God
The branch of wild rose on his coffin keep him that he move not from it;
This seems like another instance of wildflowers interrupting his powers. It strikes me that both of these flowers are the wild version of something traditionally cultivated, which might have liminality implications
a sacred bullet fired into the coffin kill him so that he be true dead;
Vampire weakness: God again, now in conjunction with guns
and as for the stake through him, we know already of its peace;
Vampire weakness: destruction of the heart. It's unclear whether it's the stake itself that is significant or the body part targeted
or the cut-off head that giveth rest. We have seen it with our eyes.
Vampire weakness: separation of the brain
------
Most of this is about liminality, and most of the rest seems to have to do with the interplay of body and soul and the vampire's status as soulless and/or demonic. Vampires are weak in liminal spaces and strong at zeniths
Dracula was just unlucky to mess with the Most Intense couple in the island and their Dutch loremaster
He literally decided to chomp on the apparently most Beloved Woman in England who already had a complete and balanced Adventuring Party at her disposal to avenge her AND was incidentally best friends with, as you say, the Most Intense Couple on the island
Whom he'd independently already decided to mess with
Love when I'm watching a bad TV show and I think "It would be a really cool culmination of this plotline's foreshadowing and development if X happened, but I don't think the writers of this show are smart enough to think of it."
But then they DO. And it's GREAT. The show still SUCKS but that ONE SCENE was SURPRISINGLY NARRATIVELY SATISFYING.
And I'm like. Congratulations. You successfully fooled me into thinking you were stupid. And thus I did not predict your plot twist. I hope it was worth it.
Van Helsing: Ah, John. It is a sad thing to ask, but, have you put your affairs in order? Seward: Yes. In the event of my untimely death, I'm leaving all of my worldly possessions to me. Van Helsing: ...to Mina? Seward: No, to myself. If I die and become a vampire, I should still want all my things, I would think. Seward: It's a funny old loophole. Mr. Harker said he'd never had to consider it before while studying law.
#his will is a piece of paper that says 'Don't worry about it.' signed and notarized by Jonathan (tag by @linguisticparadox)
Van Helsing: Mina's been a great contributor thus far, but it's time to leave her out of the hunt. Her poor weak, fragile woman heart couldn't handle such horrors. Women just aren't as mentally or emotionally stable as us men.
Jonathan: *still has severe PTSD and is about to be forced to relive his trauma*
Arthur: *had just had his fifth mental breakdown this week*
Quincey: *thinks its a good idea to shoot a bat indoors*
Jack: *going through an existential crisis upon learning the supernatural exists*
"Quincey and I will find a locksmith. You had better not come with us in case there should be any difficulty; for under the circumstances it wouldn't seem so bad for us to break into an empty house."
What are those circumstances, exactly? How is he expecting the cops to interpret this?
