#renfield is my baby and any attack to him is personal

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I get Jack you're repressed and depressed now quit your job and stop being a dick.

[yallemagne]

I FUCKING LOVE HEARING MULTIPLE OPINIONS BC NONE OF THESE ARE WHAT THE OTHER PERSON GAVE ME!! SO VERSATILE!! I swear you can say any sign and really just stuff a character in there, no sweat.

AGH AND YOU GAVE ME REASONS!!!! BLESS YOU!

aguh. ugh. thank you. thank you so much.

I'll just analyze birthdays okay.

Jonathan: April 20 - May 20

You have the potential of having his birthday some time before the story starts or... once he's already in the big bad zone. Funny and tragic if Jonathan is like "okay... just turned 21 today, that's cool. also I know now the span of my life. God help me". Also this is just cute bc several of my friends are Tauruses.

Dracula: December 22 - January 19

This doesn't matter... prolly doesn't remember his birthday. Bitch.

Mina: January 20 - February 18

Wouldn't come up. Mina being born in the winter makes sense to me though.

Lucy: August 23 – September 22

My range!! Also, an Awful Time for Lucy. She gets to spend her birthday in bed... slowly dying... my poor girl. Potential for it to be on the night she is fatally attacked, the day she dies, or the day Mina finds out. I mean, there are other days, but these are very sad to me.

Art: February 19 - March 20

Don't have much to say. Got that winter-to-spring pipeline. Interesting. Also if I had a nickel for every fictional nobleman I made a pisces... now there'd be two nickels.

Seward: September 23 - October 22

Ugh, so much stress, this poor man. He probably already doesn't celebrate his birthday. But it's gotta sting to have your birthday right after the death of the woman you wanted to marry or your lady friend asking you politely to murder her. Though, you could have his birthday when he and Mina meet, and it's like a neat lil birthday present for my baby boy.

Quincey: May 21 - June 20

You could have his birthday on the night that all the boys met up and they had boys night together. With the boys.

V. H.: July 23 - August 22

Man was probably at home celebrating with his friends. Good for him, good for him

Quincey 2 electric boogaloo: November 6.

This is just canon.

And again, no mention of Renfield so I can keep saying he's a Scorpio and no one can stop me. Now, no matter how many times I look up Scorpio traits it's just gonna be the mean sexy one... but then I realized the Scorpio myth... actually fits... with Renfield's death... so fuck sites telling me about sexual compatibility or whatever because this shit is now poetic.

Can someone who knows more about star signs just tell me what each member of the cast of Dracula would be so I don't have to research?

[ssaalexblake]

The Dracula updates for today were such a weird mix of horrifying and hilarious to me? 

You have the viscerally horrifying image of the count feeding on Mina, forcing Mina to feed off of him, both of them covered in red blood as he restrains her in an odd and creepy way. Jonathan unconscious at their sides all the while, hypnotised into submission as much as Mina, but at least with the vague mercy of being unaware of the proceedings (for now). What Mina tells us the count said to her, that he’d brutally murder Jonathan. That there’s no point in screaming anyway, because he’s already fed off of her, no reason to stop him now! That he will turn her into a monster and his slave and there’s nothing she can do about it, he crossed him and he will punish her. 

Jonathan embracing her after this attack, rejecting that she is in some way tainted by this all and all the while smearing the blood of both Mina and Dracula over himself without a care of it. Van Helsing declaring that the count would sleep well as he is so full from a large meal and will be tired and plump, having briefly forgotten that the meal and her husband are right there next to him struck into horror by his words. This isn’t even going into what was done to poor Renfield, who was brutally and viciously murdered by Dracula who was trying to kill the only person to treat Him like a person we’ve seen in the book. 

I haven’t really genuinely thought of any of the proceedings as viscerally horrifying before these events in the book, but the passage where they find Mina being fed upon was truly disturbing. That we can look back and remember Lucy’s implied awareness of what will happen at the very end, coupled with Dracula cruelly torturing Mina with the knowledge of what he’d do to her as she is in a situation equivalent to being drugged and only half aware, it paints a picture about what may have occurred when Lucy and he were alone that we did not get to know about. 

But at the same time, lets be honest, the mental image of the four men barging their way into the Harkers bedroom by literally body slamming it till it gave way and stumbling into the room, Seward noting that Van Helsing did in fact literally fall over into the room was legitimately a funny image to me. Meanwhile, Dracula looks up from his meal, shocked at four grown men suddenly falling into the locked room he’s in. It’s like a sketch from a cartoon. Two doctors, one Lord and a cowboy bottleneck through a locked door to interrupt count Dracula's lunch. Everybody is frozen in shock for a few seconds. 

And then to make it worse later on in the day, Dracula is cornered by the five of them in Piccadilly, four whom have crosses and one who has a Kukri knife that gets so close to nailing Dracula that it slashes his pockets and he drops all his cash. Sensing the writing on the wall, Dracula ducks down, grabs some of his money off the floor (i assume he has a reason for this, but that it makes the rich guy look like a cheap old bastard adds to the humour), and runs away from them and launches himself Through A Damn Window, runs across the garden and locks himself in the shed to keep them away from him while they stand there shocked at the course of events. I can almost see the Dracula shaped hole in the window! It’s like a scene ripped out of tom and jerry! It’s hilarious! Dracula gets mugged, jumps out of a window and locks himself in a shed to get away from the baby lawyer with the big knife. 

I was laughing really hard. 

It’s the dichotomy that gets me here. I am both horrified but laughing my ass off at how the count is, actually, laughably ridiculous. The vampire can’t even get a decent meal and a nap without some random men ruining it all. 

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

🌻

Still in Dracula-writing mode!! Last ask I dumped a lot of thoughts and feelings, so I’m keeping this one relatively light-hearted. Can I just talk about how staggeringly bizarre the ensemble in this book is?? I love them. I really do. We all joke about “haha there’s a cowboy”, but everybody else has weird bits and pieces to them that makes them truly delightful. Jonathan never asked to be involved in any of this, but he goes from feeling victimized and threatened to smacking vampires in the face with shovels (!!!) and chasing Drac down with a kukri knife! Mina is equally, if not more so, wonderful. Not only does she own the brain cells among the crew of light, she weaponizes what was meant to harm her (the psychic link with Dracula), leans on her own strength and the people around her to survive her trauma, and somehow gets a gun during the final battle because that’s what happens when you’re friends with Quincey P. Morris. Speaking of the yeehaw- what more do I have to say? Extraneous cowboy who does little over the course of the book except bring me joy and summarize things laconically. Love Himb. Seward is also splendid (he proposes while fidgeting with a scalpel and sitting on his top hat; awkward much?) and filled with feelings, but I put feelings in my last ask response, so I’m not delving into that. He’s also never hit, stabbed, or otherwise harmed a vampire, which mostly everyone else has done, but he’s here for...moral support? Ok. Good, the crew needs that. Arthur may have the approximate background and early characterization of a piece of buttered toast, but he’s really put emotionally through the wringer and likely needs a hug. He also has some weird aces up his sleeves (and by aces. I mean random terriers that show up for one scene and are never mentioned again) and somehow knows how to drive a steampowered boat. Weird hobby, weird dogs, sad man. Van Helsing is delightfully weird- simultaneously the most knowledgeable person in the group and a guy who’s figuring this out as he goes about 90% of the time and mangling metaphors along the way. Dad friend, designated driver, wielder of sacred crackers. Excellent! Lucy Westenra is (the prompt for a whole essay on views of feminity in Dracula, but that’s another post) a plot victim who deserves so much better (see the last post for more details) and somehow attracted the quite possibly three most different men in the world, who all remain bros because they care more that she’s happy because she’s Just That Wonderful. Might eat a kid or two, but that’s not relevant right now. Silliest villain nickname in the world, but a four year old gave it to her, so no blame can be placed there. Renfield is (a prompt for an essay on mental illness in Dracula, but that’s yet another post) an interesting dude, and I have quite a bit to say about him, but of all of his weird traits, it’s his random knowledge of Arthur’s Dad, American politics/the Monroe Doctrine, and Van Helsing’s research that gets me. Where he learned all this remains untold. The Brides are not characterized in depth, but I’d like to see them in a girl band. “The Brides” sounds like a band name. Somebody get on that, please! Mr Swales is a random 100-year-old guy with an indecipherable phonetic accent here to tell you all about local spookiness before dying on a bench. Good for him, I guess. Last, but far from least, the Count himself! Floppy straw hat, silly mustache, shovel bruise, solid-black attire, conspicuously not-Transylvanian accent (take that, 1931 Drac), and overall rancid vibes make for a considerably bizarre man/monster. He will keep you up by talking about history. Hell even make you food. But he will also steal your baby, drain your blood, crush your spine, attack your wife, attack you, murder a random customs agent, and attempt to take over England. What a guy.

[jq37]

Have you done breakdowns of the last few episodes yet? If not 👀

**spoilers for a new york wedding**

Prologue: I had a partially free day today (as in the day I started writing this which is now two days ago) so I decided to swing by Central Park and check out the Bethesda Fountain where I saw both a proposal and a man on a segway with a live snake around his neck so, yeah, New York is just Like That.

"Here's a possibly magic crown. Why don't we ask the butt stuff guy about that?"

The face Brennan makes when Emily says, "I used to do colonics at the salon," is great. Like, "We are two minutes into this ep, your sentence isn't even complete, and I already can't handle it."

So they get out of the sewers and Bethesda Fountain has been attacked (which is a shame just aesthetically because, having now seen it in person, it's a really pretty fountain). Em is devastated and explains that the fountain is like a Important magical symbol of good change and a source of divine purification magic.

Another side note about the fountain: There are these little cherub figures around it in additional to the Angel. I wonder if those are sentient too. Also-also, the promenade across from the fountain has these cool murals of the seasons. My point is, there's a lot of fodder for possible lore just in that small area of the park.

Misty finds ashes by the fountain (concerning) and wipes it on Kugrash's fur (rude).  

I love that Emily thought Pete was pouring one out (one being one bag of cocaine).

"Sophie, your magic is that you're a wonderful person and you jump really good."

"The Bread Wedding"

Kudos to Brennan for all the wide range of crazy voices he had to do in this ep. Don Confetti. The Golem. Perry the Pigeon. That can't be easy on the throat.

Sophie is fully ready to fistfight Don Confetti over their last names which is wild for a lot of reasons we're not gonna get into.

So Brennan has everyone roll a Wis save and everyone did OK except I think Ricky. Brennan never explains why he had them roll that. Concerning. I'm wondering now if it was something that would have needed a nat 20 to save from it or something where the people who saved didn't realized they saved from it and the people who didn't are just ticking time bombs or sleeper agents or something else awful.

Pete is such a dangerous friend to be around when you're emotionally compromised. His solution to everything is drugs.

"It's an off-white!" --Misty upon being called out for wearing white to a wedding.

Brennan has Perry go on a wild 39 second monologue about relationships that Pete interrupts by stuffing drugs down his gullet--see again my previous bullet about Pete.

Sophie notices that a lot of the pixies recognize her which pm confirms her brother is In This which, to use the word of the day again, *Concerning*.

Emily having Sophie get really emotional but also struggling to keep the laughter out of her face is always super funny to watch.

So Pete finds a table of vampires. Brennan spends a couple of minutes describing them before he gets to it outright but it's pretty immediately clear they're vamps. Well, vamps plus a suspicious older guy and a girl (Melissa) who seems to be playing Renfield to the vamps. Getting high so they can drink her blood and get high. Pete brilliantly confirms this by getting the suspicious guy (Rob, as far as we know) to go off on Politics and then deep mind-reading the girl. That's one of the most clever RP things I've seen a player do. Pete also sees that Rob is hanging out with the vamps but he doesn't seem to be one.

Pete fails his wild magic check but nothing happened that we know of. A lot of stuff on the wild magic table is situational though (like the reincarnate spell from Bloodkeep with the potion Sohkbarr drank).

Rob implies he knows what happened with Pete's dad. Pete goes into a tailspin, as if he isn't constantly in one.

Everyone dancing so they can talk in public instead of just, like, having a sidebar. Just that entire sequence is peak comedy.

Ricky, the good boy, is dancing with his pigeon date while everyone else is mystery solving (or, in Soph's case, crying in a closet or something).

Rob is supposedly in finance. Last time there was a character involved in finance/banking in D20 it was the whole KVX fiasco in FH.

"Did I use up my favor? I could have had anything in the world."

Sophie upon seeing anything young woman in any kind of situation immediately springs into action, ready to drag them out by any means necessary. I love her.

Robert works at a hedge fund and Kug recognizes him. Brennan explains how he knows him in a very vague way which the rest of the table clocks instantly. Murph asks if Rob knows Gabriela. He does. Who the hell is Gabriela, Misty and I wonder.

Emily goes galaxy brain and theorizes that the bad guys are laundering souls which is equal parts bonkers and brilliant. The camera unhelpfully *doesn't* cut back to Brennan so I can attempt to read his DM poker face. I am reminded of Emily wondering if [redacted] was in the sword in a recent ep of Naddpod and Murph just deciding that they were on the spot because it was cooler than what he had planned. I know you can't win at DnD but I think Emily is winning at DnD.

I mentioned this in passing I think last recap, but Pete's magic is really interesting to me because Pete doesn't know what his character sheet looks like and he's not someone like Kingston or Ricky who's been doing their thing for a while and knows that they can do and what the things he can do are called. So Ally has to get a little creative about activating abilities (like True Strike in this ep) without being too meta, if that makes sense.

Kug knows Rob from a while ago (from the 80's he later says) but he doesn't seem to have aged. The group is thinking vampire, but he wasn't drinking blood in the memory Pete saw. Suspicious. Put a pin in that with everything else on my conspiracy board.

Misty: Eyyyy Macarena!

Kug kisses the pigeon. Sure.

Misty/Siobhan also does a clever thing and suggests taking a selfie with the vamp table in the background to see who shows up. Only Melissa and Rob do, so they're not vamps for sure.

So they go back to Kingston's place and he, Pete, and Sophie cook for everyone which has basically nothing really to do with the plot but I think it was a nice character beat for them.

Kingston and Misty fought a mummy on Long Island back in the day. As you do. Sidenote, when I was in Central Park today (two days ago), I passed by a big-ass obelisk that apparently exists and that I am *certain* Brennan has lore for, even if it doesn't come up.

Misty, a very wealthy Broadway star: If you pay for the Metropolitan Museum, you're a Goddamn fool.

Sophie had not put together that Misty is a fairy before now and I was like ??? for a second but, actually, with the info she has, that's not necessarily the conclusion she would draw. She could just be a really short lady with magic. It's been that kind of week.

Kingston presses Kug on how he knows Rob and Kug reluctantly confesses that HE USED TO BE A GUY. Zac blindly guesses that he was a stockbroker which is ALSO CORRECT.

"movie horse breeder" is such a specific job to pull out of thin air.

Siobhan, making a choice: Let me tell you about my good friend, John Wilkes Booth.

Brennan's total break of composure when Zac/Ricky says, "I wasn't always a firefighter." Zac lowkey has the best comic timing of everyone on the squad. He's just really understated about it.

Anyway, there are levels to this. How long has Kug been a rat??? I feel like it must have been a while because of all the weird ass stuff that he does. Also, he excuses a lot of his behaviors due to being a rat considering he's actually a rat-MAN, emphasis on the man. The stock broker thing surprised me more considering that Kug is introduced doing some pretty altruistic, non-stockbroker-y things. Did Kug piss off a homeless witch and get Beauty and the Beast-ed? He never actually answered the question about how he knows Rob since everyone got sidetracked by the fact that he used to be a whole-ass HUMAN MAN. Did Rob curse him for less moral lesson reasons? What's going on here????

Esther and Ale have been researching. The grey baby is apparently named Nod, just like the place, and it (it specifically, not him or her) like the ruler of there.

There's this whole group bit Brennan, Ally, and Siobahn do about how you can take the L train really far and then catch a shuttle bus that can only be seen by the pure of heart to get to Nod and it's really funny but how funny would it be if they actually tried to do it in a dire moment and also Ricky could do it for sure send tweet.

Kingston is trying so-so hard to keep everyone on task all episode. Bless him.

Kug asks Esther about her mom, which surprises her. He says they used to be friends (Did *SHE* curse him????). Esther says she hasn't seen her in a long time, since she was 5 or 6. Of course, it's easy to want to connect this to the Gabriela he was asking about earlier but we'll see about that. I think I saw some people speculating that he's Esther's dad which I'm even more skeptical about considering what we learn later but wouldn't that be wild?

Ricky decides to shoot his shot with Esther. His brain is full of love, determination, civic responsibility, and absolutely nothing else, bless his golden retriever heart.

Brennan as Esther drops the best stealth joke (though, it has a very high likelihood of crossing from joke to plot point) in D20 so far with the Imperial Axiom/Sinatra's Law explanation. It was a full, "Wait. What? Oh!" Big gold star for Brennan for that one. I had to take a second and recover from that when I heard it the first time.  Beyond the joke, it also seems like a likely hook for the eventual Big Bad of the campaign. First NY, then the world, you know?

The fact that the highways go against the grain of magic leylines of NY in this world is such a good detail and it makes a lot of sense intuitively.

Zac breaks Brennan again with the, "Traffic's really bad," comment.

Please let Ricky's big dumb puppy self win over Esther. "It's really hard for me." Riiiickyyyy.

So Kingston goes to see Willy, the Williamsburg golem about Lazarus from the Bible (New Testament). Aren't golems de facto Jewish? I think. I am correct. However, as much as Willy doesn't know about the New Testament, he *does* know about the Statue of Liberty which is convenient because--shoutout to the people who figured it out in advance--Lazarus is not Lazarus from the Bible. It's Emma Lazarus who wrote the poem on the Statue of Liberty. This of course means that I need to do a close read of that poem at some point but not today baby because I need more information before I start going full Pepe Silvia. Sidenote: What a great place for Kingston to be when figuring out that info. Close enough that Willy can just point out the statue. It's cinematic. Fantastic.

(Also, I made a post about the fact that Siobahn just knew Emma's name off the top of her head, but when it cut to the other side of the table, Emily's eyes got all big too).

Emily gets a nat20 which RUINS her plans because she runs into Isabella aka the woman her husband left her for. They have an adult Means Girls stand-off where Sophie finds out they're getting married (or at least having a ceremony bc Dale didn't send her divorce papers yet). Big ups to Emily for staying in character and ditching all the sleuthing she was going to do because there is no way Sophie would be stable enough for that to be her top priority at the moment (even though I really wanted her to do all that stuff!)

Also, I'm looking forward to watching Sophie rip her to shreds when she inevitably turns out to be a succubus/demon/fiend/whatever. Honestly, she can just barfight her and I'd be satisfied.  

So Misty goes home and finds a present waiting for her. It's a big ass mirror. Correction. It's a big ass mirror that Titania immediately uses to angry Skype her. Yikes.

It seems like her shoes of Titania are literally that, stolen from Titania (love that Titania was barefoot in her character art btw). I know they let her cast a certain spell in an earlier episode but I'm wondering why she stole them. Maybe they helped her cross over from Faerie (which happened ~400 years ago we ind out)?

Titania is pissed that Misty is stealing "glamour" that should be hers (via playing her in the new show). Glamour in the fairy sense is like a disguise. Glamour in the DnD sense is a fey-based bard option (which is the class I'm guessing Titania will be if they have to fight her). Curious to get a deeper explanation on that later.  

Misty is able to cover back up the mirror but she breaks a hip in the process because of Titania's mojo and has to call Kingston. I already said this but I love their relationship.

(Sidenote, I meant to mention this earlier, but I think whiffs of the undead came up a couple of times in this ep which makes me wonder if the mummy situation Kingston mentioned is going to come back).

"Please, use any one of the guestrooms."

I FORGOT ABOUT KUG'S STUFF AT THE END

Ugh, this ep is an emotional roller coaster

"Wherever you are Rat Jesus, know that I love you. From Wally." What a good boy. 

Everyone reacting to Murph's reaction to Wally before they Find Out is like, an experience. It's like that airpods meme.

OK, I'm not going to go through a whole play by play because nothing I could say would be better than watching the scene but I guess Murph/Bren decided in for a penny, in for a pound because we find out via a conversation between Wally and his businessman brother David that he is Kug's SON. HIS SON. S O N.

Wally is convinced that their dad wouldn't have just left them. David thinks Wally is being naive. I want to die.

Everyone around the table except maybe Ally is so visibly upset at this new information and Ally goes, "FUCK!" at the end so you know we all express emotions in different ways.

God, it's so sad! And I'm not gonna say, "I knew it!" because I didn't. I super didn't. But when Wally was introduced (man that scene hits differently now) I remember thinking, this is such an oddly specific NPC. Like, you know when you're playing a game and the stuff you can click is slightly better rendered and you can kind of tell what you should focus on and what's background art? That's how he felt.

Anyway, again, I'm sad. (GMYeah!.gif)

Watching *OVER* you Murph. OVER you. That's how you make it not creepy!

Meanwhile, Pete lets a bunch of bug monsters out of his dream into real New York City which, tbh, I'm not surprised. This seems like the kind of thing that would happen. Pete is exactly the worst kind of person to be the dream avatar in terms of being responsible.

I love that Siobhan is like, “I have a broken hip” as if all but one of them don’t have literal magic powers. That’s a very fixable problem compared to other stuff they’ve dealt with that day alone. 

Anyway next time, a wasp centaur (thanks, I hate it) and a nat 20! See you then.

[yeah-oh-shit]

so im still trying to figure out wtf dracula was all about and if there is a deeper meaning at all. i compiled a list of all my observations - especially places where it might relate to sherlock, things that seem odd/out of place, important thematic moments, anything that is unexplained. idk if i will come back to this to try to piece it together more, but i needed to get it all down so i could look at it in its wholeness. in case you are interested, here is my commentary, any “points of interest,” i found, below the cut. 

episode 1:

vampirism is a contagion, sister agatha asks harker if he had “sexual intercourse” with dracula right away - aids

flies everywhere, on windows, the camera lens, one flies into harker’s eye

why did dracula let himself become such an old man? no one good to eat? (i’ve been telling everyone for years that you are what you eat)

story told by harker w/sister agatha interviewing him, almost leading him on

harker’s written account is unreliable

woman in disguise - mina (reminds me of mary)

rainbow lighting

spiral candles match spiral bedpost

sister agatha mentions a “point of interest”

dracula calls jonathan johnny (john mirror?)

inconsistencies: picture of mina changes from right to left, harker says no one calls him johnny (but mina later shows that she does - johnny blue eyes)

THERE IS NO BABY

dates - 12th, 19th, and 29th (!!)

scene very similar to the fall - “you are me,” dracula tries to get harker on his side but harker refuses

dracula says he will “destroy everyone and everything you love” in england

harker is found by sailors and said to be a drowned man walking/talking after he falls from castle dracula

lots of queer coding and it’s during the parts where dracula is shown as the most monstrous and coercive

sister agatha taunts dracula, calls him a beast (rules of the beast), he is indeed shown as beastly

dracula licks a knife in a suggestive way (moriarty)

inviting dracula in leads to death

harker doesn’t remember what happened to him (doesn’t know he is dead)

harker doesn’t know what mina’s face looks like

mina says a line much like mary’s (“i decide who you are”)

sister agatha mentions having a detective acquaintance in london (!!)

dracula is an old man for most of the episode, doesn’t come off as flirty or sexy to me, just seems coercive, controlling, and creepy. we barely get any time w/harker and dracula together, doesn’t seem like they have much chemistry

jonathan in and out of dream, weakened, coerced

he keeps going deeper into the castle and eventually discovers dracula’s undead and even dracula’s crypt itself but can’t find the person who wrote him a note

castle is a maze but jonathan discovers the map (hiding behind a portrait, deduces this in a way that makes pretty much no sense)

sun is equated to lover’s face

dracula never seems to lie, just says things in a truthful way that is obfuscated (except for when he knocks the mirror over and claims to being clumsy)

dracula wants to go to england bc he thinks the most cultured and rich people live there (aristocratic bullshit) but it is reinforced so many times that somehow him being choosy has helped him to live a long time .. confusing

episode 2:

starts w/dracula and agatha talking in his castle. dracula talks about how a story has to be interesting from the beginning, the contract between author and reader, “quality of time”

“there’s a game in progress” “a knight is menacing a queen” “whose knight, whose queen?” “Who’s black, who’s white”

ship in a bottle

whole episode takes place on a big ship

sokolov (anderson) is captain (steering the ship)

mind palace/dreaming (sr. agatha and dracula) in castle but actually in room 9 on ship

mr balaur (dragon - dracula) brought all these people together

7 passengers on the ship (unusual, stated multiple times, i don’t think we are ever told significance?)

one sick - captain is only one allowed in

piotr isn’t who he says he is

dracula kills dorabella (very flirty with her) talks about mirrors showing the truth - “one can always find a mirror if one tries” “mirrors are a deeper and more dangerous magic than most people understand. mirrors can give us space to imagine or worse, show us the truth”

“this marriage is a necessary evil”

confirmed gay couple (lord ruthven and adisa) - lord ruthven talks about sleeping with his wife in front of adisa constantly (cruel), adisa is disguised as a servant, adisa seems to really love ruthven

many people jump ship when everyone starts dying

lord ruthven is both very gay and very mean - and into dracula

dracula and agatha play chess

“the purpose of an alias seems to have alluded you” (mr. balaur means dragon means dracula, a disguise is “always a self portrait”)

dracula says he is choosy (so does agatha) but also recognizes that he is an addict (agatha’s word)  - claims to be choosy and to be like everything in same breath

dracula called a beast, acts very animal around blood - can’t control himself

agatha loses time during chess, notices dracula is winning now, is also drinking blood out of a glass

he tells her to “forget about the chess and concentrate on the game”

dracula frames agatha, almost kills her via hanging (despite trying to “savor” her)

sister agatha claims she is a vampire and then tries to prove dracula is one

lord ruthven wants to be “partners” with dracula

somehow dracula appears out of nowhere in the cabin of dr. sharma

vampire’s kiss is an opiate - makes people dream

emphasis on the fact that the daughter can see (eyes!), her father has a scar over his right eye

dracula flirts with everyone

no one suspects dracula even though its really obvious it is him?? he is being hella suspicious?

daughter (who sees dracula killing) doesn’t tell anyone, later kills herself by drinking a potion to avoid becoming infected

sister agatha is infected/dying, losing fingernails (like harker)

dracula will die without his soil

captain sokolov stays behind in ship w/agatha, piotr and cook escape

agatha discovers extra soil in dracula’s bed, realizes the fire didn’t kill him

dracula attacks sokolov but somehow he doesn’t die and can’t walk even though his wound is in his neck but still is able to DRAG himself?

dracula explains fear of cross as fear of oppression that he has inherited from eating peasants (but he is very choosy with his diet?)

ship sinks, sister agatha dies (implied, which is confusing bc harker also goes into the sea and doesn’t die.. maybe it has to do with the fact that she doesn’t have any soil? but neither did harker? vampire lore seems convoluted and confusing) dracula finds his soil (in the water)

dracula wakes up, goes ashore, its modern day and helicopters, a spot light, police cars, and modern day sister agatha greet him

episode 3:

weird vibe generally.. almost reminds me of tfp w/lighting and how it feels so off from the rest

dracula shows us that what he sees in the mirror is who he truly is (at least that is what is implied) an old ugly man

dracula is weird and kinda cute when he is amazed by modern times

we learn that agatha apparently died even though she was just in water and harker survived and was a “drowned man walking and talking” ?

jack (another john mirror?) is in love with lucy, there are a lot of scenes in a club ?, lucy gets engaged to a texan named quincy (who was apparently a main character in the original book and is an asshole in this). all these characters kind of suck

jonathan harker keeps calling jack, we are supposed to think he saved the jonathan harker foundation’s phone number in his phone as just “jonathan harker”? seems weird

jonathan harker  foundation was started by mina, supported by agatha’s family

lots of allusions to jonathan harker foundation getting money from a “bad” source - too much money to just be about science

mercenaries - one has a tattoo like assassin in sherlock

there is a moving clock on the floor of dracula’s cell/cage

dracula asks why he has a toilet when he is a vampire and we never get an answer

dracula’s cage looks like silence of the lambs (like A LOT)

blood is LIVES, dracula helps zoe get a sample of his blood by cutting his wrist with his fingernail - tells her “you have everything you need to know” when she takes his blood (dracula tells zoe, she drinks his blood)

“women don’t have rights, no one has rights” “dracula has rights” ???

zoe starts hallucinating/communicating w/agatha

zoe is agatha’s great niece apparently

dracula does a weird deduction thing about people from smelling or tasting their blood

dracula can’t drink zoe’s blood bc she has cancer and he can’t drink blood of the dying (which seems weird but ok)

renfield (mark) is dracula’s lawyer and seems to become obsessed with him

dracula identifies as a “warlord”

renfield is helping dracula w/“world domination”

dracula is on dating apps, renfield tries to find him people to eat, but he seems dissatisfied

dracula works out (like mycroft)

dracula (d) texts lucy uses vampire emoji

lots of gay/bi/purple lighting

dracula becomes obsessed w/lucy bc she is not afraid of him (or anything) and seems “almost in love with death”

lucy is shown as shallow and obsessed with her looks, but also seems to not like always being seen/watched bc she is beautiful

dracula and lucy are meeting up and she is letting him drink her blood

they meet up and he talks about liking having her “consent” because no one has ever given it before, but also says that it doesn’t really matter and that he doesn’t love her and will never love her

lucy likes the dreams dracula gives her - no one can see her

9 graves of undead

dracula tells lucy not to be cremated because its painful

“boofer lady”- beautiful lady - undead child follows lucy home

renfield sits in a car during their meeting and eats a fly

dracula kills lucy so she can become a vampire, she can’t move but the mirror shows that she is still alive?

we see dracula’s old man face in the mirror multiple times

lucy is burned, and for some reason keeps seeing herself as beautiful in mirrors

agatha (in zoe’s head) talks about the money coming from a bad place again but says she “can’t see it” because zoe doesn’t like to think about it

lucy, jack, zoe, and dracula all meet in dracula’s house

lucy flirts w/jack and he seems disgusted, they force her to take a selfie and see herself as she really is

lucy freaks the fuck out about being ugly and burned and seems to be more obsessed with her beauty after dying which is weird because she seemed to be almost bitter about it when she was alive (didn’t care about or fear anything)

dracula says she will always be burned (why? jonathan survived being drowned, etc. dracula survived fire?) and that he doesn’t care

jack says he will always want to kiss her (even though he was just freaked out by her like 20 seconds ago) kisses her and kills her (at her request)

dracula seems unfazed? even though she was his “greatest bride” ?

zoe has been taken over by agatha? and realizes what the one thing is that dracula fears (the thing that ties together the sun, cross, and needing an invitation - apparently the soil thing doesn’t matter anymore..)

“only one thing in this world you are truly afraid of” - she knows, he doesn’t

he cannot bear to look in a mirror, won’t stand revealed in the sun, needs an invitation to come in - not real things, he has internalized the legends

zoe/agatha says that he was a warrior and so was his entire family (all his relatives, father, brothers, sons, were war heroes who died on the battlefield but not him)

he is the warlord who “skulks in the shadows and steals the lives of others”  and is “unwelcome everywhere” “sleeps in a box of dirt but dreams of a warriors grave”

he fears death the most - the cross represents going willingly to death to him, somehow the sun represents this too? (possibly he is afraid to seeing himself/the truth, same as the mirror)

it is never explained how the invitation thing is tied in.. assuming its because he feels “unwelcome everywhere” ?

she pulls the curtain and he doesn’t burn in the sun, shows him it was his fear of death and his shame all along

can’t conquer death until you face it without fear - “the game is over, you lose, you will live forever in shame”

dracula steps into sun, faces his shame

he faces his fear of death by drinking agatha’s blood, thus dying by suicide (which we were already told vampires can’t do)

gross fiery sex scene with agatha and dracula, he gives her a dream so she will have a nice death

“after all this time did you think I’d let it hurt?” ???

they are in a burning sun and are naked together in a circle, we see dracula’s butt again

it ends with the sun

[xx-psych0-rabbit-xx]

ok cant get this out of my head

jonathan:both were trapped in a place that worsened their trauma and mental health, both were also traumatized by dracula, renfield also works as a version of jonathan that actually did get locked up for his declining mental health

seward:seward self isolates due to his mental illness, renfield is isolated by others due to his, both have nobody to properly rely on for support due to those, difference again being seward causes it on himself due to internalized ableism while renfield is denied it by others by overall ableism

lucy:both were used by dracula? both died due to medical irresponsibility on the hands of seward and van helsing? both were extremely alone at a crucial moment (lucy getting fatally attacked, renfields whole death event)? theres something here but im not sure i got it

mina:being ignored by the crew due to not being a man/neurotypical, and that leading to nearly the absolute worst outcome (mina gets turned/renfield gets murdered)

worth noting also renfield using his trapped flies to feed his trapped spiders (and eventually the spiders to his sparrows, and the sparrows to himself) is similar to dracula kidnapping babies and leaving jonathan to feed the sisters/brides he keeps trapped, i believe the spiders feeding started around when jonathan got attacked by the brides as well

i dont believe he has any with quincey and arthur since we dont get much details on them having notable depth, he may have some with van helsing? i dont personally give him a lot of attention so i may have missed something

...ik its bc the cast is small but damn renfield parallels with a lot of characters huh