mantisshrimpfrommars

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

MAGNUS ARCHIVE PIN GIVEAWAY

In anticipation of the limited release of my glow-in-the-dark variant pins I'm doing a give away of seconds (seconds are versions of the pins with slight flaws/defects. All pretty much unnoticeable but wouldn't be sold at full price)! Inc. free international shipping! To enter: Just reblog and be following! (Full release is in 5 days!)

I will be choosing five winners at random on the 12th of May (2024) 00:00 BST!

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

MAGNUS ARCHIVE PIN GIVEAWAY

In anticipation of the limited release of my glow-in-the-dark variant pins I'm doing a give away of seconds (seconds are versions of the pins with slight flaws/defects. All pretty much unnoticeable but wouldn't be sold at full price)! Inc. free international shipping! To enter: Just reblog and be following! (Full release is in 5 days!)

I will be choosing five winners at random on the 12th of May (2024) 00:00 BST!

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

★ Frank Doodles ★

Come get your dinner Rocky Horror fandom!

(note at the end)

I have this really fun HC that Frank is a vampire alien in somekind (that's kinda half-cannon because of that cancelled sequel so I'M NOT DELUSIONAL OK I'M NOT CRAZY-) plus he has piercings... Yeah that's it. I'll draw a full body soon but to me he's like 1,60m tall and uses high heels to be taller lol

Also his jacket i totally re-designed It because of... Reasons... It was bothering me a lot so i made It all very punk. also i enjoy playing around with the makeup phases, so in the next art you'll notice that the "fade-out" is more of a "fade-in" because he's trying to... Keep it cool..? IDK How to explain, english isn't my first language lol

But yeah, in my HC he kinda changes his makeup inbetween the scenes to match his humor idk

Well this is something my friends called me crazy and told me i am inventing stuff BUT I'M NOT, OKAY??? THIS IS REAL. On the Dinner scene, when Riff and Magenta serve wine/juice to the guests, They ALL have fancy cups, BUT only Columbia is served correctly, the other guests (Brad, Janet, Rocky, Dr. Scott) are served on the WRONG cups, so in my head that's a passive-agressive posture idk i think it's really funny lmao i don't care If this isn't the case i love to think about It 💅

Also in addition to being served in the wrong cup, the wine/juice is also watery okay, he's evil

Note: Hello again i made some doodles of Frank in different scenes and pointed out some small headcannons i have!! And ofc bonus doodle of murder lab moment because i hate the first art i posted of It hahaha

#dr frank n furter #rocky horror picture show

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Hi i'm a regular Frankie fan so i HAD to draw THAT scene... 💋✨

#frank n furter #rocky horror picture show

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

I love her so much! This is perfect

Goth girls love trains

#THE TRAIN FIEND #mina harker #dracula daily #dracula

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

it’s nearly time

you can almost smell the paprika

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

First page || Previous page || Next page

Dialogue transcripts:

Panel 1 Irene: I-I'm sure it's simply an impostor, like Godfrey says. Someone must have learned my history, and is trying to frighten me.

Panel 2 Jonathan: Perhaps, but...no. No, Mrs. Norton, I do not believe that is the case.

Panel 3 Irene: What do you mean?

Panel 4 Mina: We believe you are telling the truth. Both of you. The King is dead— Jonathan: —And it was him you saw at your window that night.

Panel 5 Caption: West End, London. Townhouse of Arthur Holmwood

Panel 6 Irene: My deepest thanks to all of you for agreeing to help us!

Panel 7 Van Helsing: Think nothing of it, Madam Irene. A matter which concern him that die and yet live is a matter which concern us all.

#dracula daily #dracula #sherlock holmes

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

Blood of My Blood – A recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

Dracula Daily Sketch Collection – An array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.

Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriter – With a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk – An ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

Re: Dracula – Probably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)

The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.

Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.

Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes

The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man

Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles

Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves

…

……

………

…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

The Vampyres – A novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.

What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.

‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.

Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.  

“How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.  

Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.

 “The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.

#dracula #dracula daily #re: dracula #dracula season

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Spock is the fakest hoe in Star Trek. That guy has cried in every single movie. Get out of here with that vulcans don’t have emotions bullshit. You aint fooling nobody, you sensitive fuck

#star trek #tos spock

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

ITS FINALLY DONE RAHHHHHH !!!

BASICALLY WILL WOOD if he's Mad Hatter from alice in wonderland 🤯

Also he and mr boy have (almost) matching hats !!!

#will wood

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.

#the last dinner party

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Photographers all know about polarizing filters. They remove reflections off the surfaces of objects. We use them to see into water or windows that are obscured by those reflections. But anything with an even slightly glossy surface has a layer of reflection on top. So if you have a shiny green plant, it can remove the shiny and reveal a very saturated green underneath. Polarizers also remove a lot of scattered and reflected light from the sky. Which reveals a deep blue color you didn't even know was there.

Here is a photo I took of my circular polarizer.

And the first thing I noticed when walking outside during the eclipse was the color of everything was more saturated, just like in that circle. Apparently, an eclipse significantly reduces polarized light and I got this creepy feeling because I was only ever used to seeing the world like that through the viewfinder of my camera.

The other thing I noticed was my outdoor lights. I leave them on all the time because I never remember to turn them on at night. And usually the sun will render them barely visible during the day. On a very sunny day they almost look like they are off.

But you can clearly see they are shining and even flaring the camera during the eclipse.

Our eyes adjust to lighting changes very well so it was hard to tell how much dimmer things were, but that is a good indication. I took this photo a few minutes ago and you can see how dim the lights appear after the moon has fucked off.

I did a calculation using the exposure settings between these two photos. The non-eclipse photo has 7 f-stops more light. That is 128 times or 12,700% more light.

A partial Pringle eclipse cut the sun's light by 99.2% and somehow our eyes adjusted to make it seem like a normal sunny day (with weird ass saturated colors).

#photography

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

I was still thinking about what colors to use for my vulcan redesign and, needless to say, my brain screamed “GREEN, MAKE EVERYTHING GREEN”

#spock #tos #star trek #fanart

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Once again I have to appreciate that on Tumblr the most anticipated event of the year is a 6-month-long book club and/or listening party of the novel Dracula. Just regular old Dracula the actual novel not a retelling or a TV series just the unabridged novel itself

#dracula daily #dracula

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

These two are hilarious if you get past the horror

#the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #tma season 5

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

Inspired by @spacefroggity post here

[mantisshrimpfrommars]

I’ve been waiting for this one…

#dracula daily #mina harker #Dracula #October 28