Reblogging Is So Fun When You Have Absolutely 0% Audience. I Am The Dream Sequence In Frog And Toad Rn

IF THE ROUTINE NO LONGER SERVES, YOU MUST ALTER THE PATTERN, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?? YOUR LIFE STARTS WITH YOU

I have one more thing to say regarding the projection of modern gender politics onto the Harkers that's just not supported by the text or taking the contemporary context into account - see my previous post, re: Jonathan being over-idealized as progressive - before I move on to other topics, and I'm not going to go into as much detail right now and may re-visit this later, but - I love Mina, and she's a wonderful character and heroine who both rises above her author's biases and her time period AND is constrained by them in a very realistic, complex way, even by modern standards, but fun memes and character appreciation aside, it's really disheartening sometimes to see her very human and multi-layered character with a complex, fraught relationship with feminism in-universe and on a meta level flattened into some kind of flawless superwoman who is single-handedly going to save the day as the novel's only hero bc she is some kind of Exceptional Woman and stereotypical Strong Female Character TM who is a fearless warrior woman action hero and modern-day feminist stuck in the body of a Victorian woman who is going to slamdunk the men with FEMINISM while she also has to babysit them bc they're useless stupid babies who can't stand a strong, independent woman, etc.

Like, I'm being somewhat facetious and exaggerating for effect, and again, memes are fun, but this isn't actually a feminist reading bc it's ironically dehumanizing, does a disservice to her complex character, posits that she can't be truly heroic unless she's punching or shooting people like a traditional male hero (though yes, she should be included, I'm not arguing against that), gets into gender essentialist woman good man bad thinking that's not fair to any character or the text, and reinforces the idea that individualism is superior to collectivism - which completely goes against the surprisingly progressive, humanistic, and hopeful theme of the novel that teamwork and collective action saves the day for the heroes, in contrast to Dracula the ultimate individualist operating alone.

"You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go." That's some Bluebeard shit.

nothing better than a character who has all the signs of being deeply traumatized by a formative event somewhere in childhood except when you look at their life there's no traumatic event to speak of. guy whose entire existence points backwards to some horrible original sin but when you get to the beginning theres nothing there. did they forget what happened to them or is it the absence of a happening that is itself traumatizing? who knows but they'll never stop searching for something that explains how they feel :)

describing my relationship to someone by introducing them to people as "an old wound"

writing a garbage essay feels like you’re the cow who gave birth to the two headed calf. in the morning, my professor will wrap him in newspaper and dissect him on a cold operating table. but here he is alive, under the pale glow of my computer screen. he is beautiful. there are twice as many logical fallacies as usual.

So Dracula was able to be killed without the stakes and hammer and prayers and all the religious trappings Van Helsing’s research led him to. This supports one or both of two concepts that I am a huge fan of:

- It isn’t Christianity that repels vampires, but sincere faith. Jonathan’s faith hasn’t been in the Christian god for some time now—it’s in this little group’s sincerity in wanting to save Mina, PARTICULARLY in Quincey, who vowed with the same fervor as himself to kill Dracula the moment he had the chance, even if it cost him his own life. So that makes this a “power of friendship” moment suited to our white haired anime prettyboy.

- My old theory related to the shovel attack: Dracula only becomes vulnerable to common weapons when they’re wielded by his victims, or those he has a blood connection to. Jonathan was able to scar him with the shovel after “tonight is mine” and its heavy implication of Dracula drinking from him. With the blood transfusions, Dracula has also tasted Quincey’s blood. The first mate of the Demeter tried to stab Dracula and failed, but Dracula’s cruelty to both Jonathan and Lucy gave them the means to seal his fate.

i cant breathe he just kept on fucking talking