#bastardization

[see-arcane]

Today’s entry is one of many that really drives home why I can never quite bring myself to get into softer ‘uwu he’s just misunderstood and sexy-liberating’ versions of Dracula. Just. I can’t. I really really can’t.

Up to this point, he’s already had a monstrous moment in bringing the ladies their first on-screen kids meal crying and squirming in its sack. He’s had outright predatory back-to-back moments in imprisoning, coercing, robbing, and getting increasingly threatening and handsy with Jonathan. This, capped with the fact that he plans to kill/drink/gift him to the Undead Girl Gang by the end of June.

‘But what about his, “I too can love,” huh? He’s just loving as best a monster can! He could be tearing everyone around him to ribbons for annoying him, Brides and Jonathan included! Instead he goes out of his way to feed the ladies, albeit gruesomely, and has no retort when they laugh at and insult the lonely old bat. And he isn’t planning to kill Jonathan. He wants to keep him! Sure, it’s a sick version of it, but to him conscripting and collecting Jonathan rather than executing him outright is the height of affection! Surely that’s grounds for some of the more ~romantic~ takes in warped gothic flavor?’

To an extent, yeah. 

But he also just dressed up in Jonathan’s stolen clothes to cover up for the man’s own abduction, imprisonment, and undeadifying, while also increasing the odds of Jonathan already getting mistaken for a vampire, bringing home another child for the ladies to devour, and then ordered a pack of wolves to eat a grieving mother alive for making noise at his gate.

And this? This is just the tip of the iceberg for how downright hellish he gets as the novel progresses. 

Dracula can absolutely be a nuanced character within canon, offshoots, retellings, re-imaginings, and so on. And he should be! He’s a very interesting bastard who’s got so much more going on than a few one-liners and a taste for good cloaks and yummy company. But his actual actions in the book--even the smallest ones--just automatically torpedo 90% of my audience enjoyment when I run into yet another ‘Oh, but he did it all because he was in love!/misunderstood!/depressed!/unfairly maligned by the eeevil human Victorian characters in their journals and newsprint and body count records!’ version of the Count. 

Even sillier takes that try to heroify him for kids like Hotel Transylvania just kind of make my brain trip and fall into a pit of ??? 

‘Look kids, Dracula is really a nice guy and a sweet dad who runs a fun little hotel for his misunderstood Universal Horror monster buddies! Isn’t he neat?’

It leaves me biting my tongue and holding this mental grimace as I think about the sacks full of weeping children, the slaughtered mother, a young man imprisoned for making the mistake of endearing himself so much to a sadistic monster that the latter has decided to keep him as a tortured toy and undead pseudo-slave for eternity, with an entire blood buffet of human cattle still waiting to fill out the rest of the novel with trauma, horror, and death. 

‘Ohhh, but look at Francis’ tragique sweetheart version who stole all his redeeming qualities from Jonathan Harker! Ohhh, but look at the funny silly Adam Sandler cartoon and his new everyman-settling daughter! Ohhh, but look at how #cool and modern-sexyedgy an antihero/villain he is when penned by every projecting director and their grandmother! Lighten up, it’s just a different interpretation!*’

*Of the character whose whole deal is psychological torture, being a predatory creep, casual murder, and worse-than-murder of innocents.

I know it skews me towards being a whiny purist. I know. Let folks have fun. I know. But still, it feels so wrong every time I see someone try to ‘awww, he’s not so bad!’-ify him in new media when. No. He is exactly that bad and probably worse. If he’s not, then that’s not fucking Dracula.

tl;dr: Can people just make some new fun/sexy/antihero vampires instead of stapling Dracula’s name on all of them? Can Dracula just be an interesting villainous monster again?? Please??? (Please save me Renfield 2023 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, you’re my only ho--)

#ranting and whining this morning #dracula #re: dracula #dracula daily #jonathan harker #adaptation #bastardization

[substitious-bastard]

stuck in the time loop but i just use it as a free day off. im not even trying to get out. i am teaching myself to knit. i am crocheting. i am cooking. not even doing anything crazy. just escaping capitalism for a week. day 375 and im not sure what lesson it's trying to teach but i've taught myself to handmake lace so all is well

#time loop #hobbies #anti capitalism #idk i think i'm funny #the bastards bullshit #time loop posting

[nando161mando]

#anti cop #anti police #all cops are bastards #cops #fuck the police #police state #police #ausgov #politas #auspol #tasgov #taspol #australia #fuck neoliberals #neoliberal capitalism #anthony albanese #albanese government #nazisploitation #sacha baron cohen accuses tiktok of ‘biggest antisemitism movement since the nazis’ #nazis #nazigate #nazi #antinazi #antinationalist #antiauthoritarian #antifascist #anti capitalism #antifaschistische aktion #class war #eat the rich

[indelibleevidence]

People with low spoons, someone just recommended this cookbook to me, so I thought I'd pass it on.

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It's very simple in places. It's basically the cookbook for people who think, 'I'm really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can't think of anything else to cook that won't exhaust me'.

And it's free!

#disability #spoonie #low spoons recipes #the sad bastard cookbook

[lilithism1848]

#fuck cops #all cops are bastards #police violence #fuck the police #abolish the police #cops #anti capitalism #leftism #communism #socialism #twitter post #anarchy #defund the cops #police #law enforcement #arrest #police brutality #killed #policing

[notherpuppet]

Human AU Vox

#he is such a glorious bastard #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel fanart #Vox #alastor #staticradio #human AU #my doods #human vox #human alastor

[ato-dato]

Go on, burst every one of his bubbles why don’t you

#u gonna tell him the tooth fairy doesn’t exist next?? Santa isn’t real?? sick bastard #i haven’t drawn these idiots in their normal-ish form since my 1941 comic can you imagine???? #that was almost 2 months ago???? #crazy #Ive been pretty busy with comissions but I managed to scramble this together for ya #good omens #good omens series two #good omens 2 #crowley #aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #aziracrow #angel crowley #angel aziraphale #art #artwork #my art #fanart #digital art #drawing #comic #fan comic

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously :) (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <;3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Terry Pratchett: One day he rang me up and said, "I've started a book and, I think it's good, but I haven't the faintest idea where it goes." So, I said, "All right, well, send me the pages." And I read it and wrote him back and said, "I don't know where it goes either, but I do know what happens next."

Neil Gaiman: I was pretty much nocturnal then, so I would write my chunk of Good Omens before I went to bed, and I'd go to sleep about five o'clock in the morning and I'd get up about one o'clock in the afternoon and my answering machine would be flashing on, and I'd press the button and a voice would say, "Get up, get up you lazy bastard, I've just written a good bit."

Terry Pratchett: We did it as a kind of holiday, because if it crashed and burned, nobody would notice.

#good omens #gointerviewedit #terry pratchett #neil gaiman #terry and neil #terry interview #interview #neil interview #gnu terry pratchett #neil gaiman dream dangerously #fun fact #btb #dream dangerously #❤ #get up get up you lazy bastard I've just written a good bit

[see-arcane]

After reading and watching several adaptations, I have come to the conclusion that Quincey gets much more respect than Jonathan. Yes he appears much less, but he gets his heroic sacrifice when he does instead of getting bastardised. Three times I have seen him be the one who kills Dracula without Jonathan. In two of those he has the kukri.

Also idk if vampire Quincey is underappreciated, there is a novel all about him.

And in this one Jonathan is revealed to have been a cowardly cheater all along.

You know. Sometimes I think I might be going too overindulgent with my Harker Horrors and lavishing of attention on my favorite special little haunted gothic heroine lad.

And then I get lovely reminders like these that not only am I not being indulgent, I have to actively burn every daydream of an inhibition I have as a writer to unfuck 126 years' worth of doing the whole cast dirty, but Jonathan Harker the absolute worst.

#in all ways but physical I am ripping the Harkers out of the hands of the directors and writers #who came before me #setting those hands on fire #and running into the sunset of self-gratifying undiluted literary junk food #if people get to wipe their rancid ice-cold take Barely Skimmed the Wikipedia (of the Movie) fanfiction of these characters on the world #I get to do whatever I damn well please #jonathan harker #I will torment the hell out of you buddy #but I refuse to gut your character while I do it #dracula #my writing #adaptation #spinoff #bastardization

[blitzy-blitzwing]

Victory.

#anything to get one up on that deer bastard #hehehe #my doodles #Hazbin Hotel #Lucifer Morningstar #Charlie Morningstar #Alastor

[anarchywoofwoof]

you almost can’t make this shit up.

the police drive their SUV into a gay couples place of business and then proceeds to arrest one of them for refusing to show identification. allegedly they were swerving to avoid a dog which totally exists

what kind of shit is this.

#acab #all cops are bastards #1312 #fuck the police #ftp #united states #us news #missouri

[nando161mando]

#cartoons #cartoon #comics #comic #comic art #rent is theft #landlords are parasites #landlords are scum #landlords are leeches #landlords are bastards #landlords #homeless #class war #eat the rich #eat the fucking rich #ausgov #politas #auspol #tasgov #taspol #australia #fuck neoliberals #neoliberal capitalism #anthony albanese #albanese government #housing #rent is too damn high #fuck the gop #fuck the police #fuck the patriarchy

[memingursa]

Joe Biden would rather risk full on war than stop genocide.

#burn in hell you rotten bastard #joe biden #free gaza #free palestine #palestine #gaza #israel #iran

[angiethewitch]

I can't quite convey how shocking it is to see a mainstream British newspaper publish an article like this. quoting Karl Marx and essentially calling for a rebellion against landlords - this is one of the most radical things I've ever seen a British newspaper publish, and this is a newspaper sold in shops. you'd expect this in an obscure news outlet that nobody really knows about, not the guardian. they snapped. this is beautiful.

#angie talks #ukpol #uk politics #all landlords are bastards

[britcision]

Hey when you move out on your own the most important food tip I can give you is “maybe you don’t hate x maybe your guardians just cooked it wrong”

The number of foods I have learned I really like if they’re Fucking Seasoned

The number of foods I’ve introduced friends to that they warned me they’d always hated til I let them try a piece of mine

Also marinade things for 24 hours the second you have your own fridge it is a GAME CHANGER you thought you knew food but you have never met her

#food tips #food #usually pork #you can’t just fry pork plain #it’s fucking boring #no #even just the tiniest bloop of teriyaki #a teaspoon of lea and perrins #or my preferred bastard mix: honey garlic honey mustard teriyaki bbq lea and perrins #leave it in that bitch overnight #i did a 48 hour marinade once and OH MY FUCKING GID #i wish i had energy to do it every day

[razornevermore]

Remember these terms for professions to help encourage gender neutral language!

#r/196 #196 #gender neutral language #meme #all cops are bastards