nightmarish-adventures

[nightmarish-adventures]

[nightmarish-adventures]

anyway if dracula daily made you realize how great the book dracula is, please read jekyll and hyde, it's also extremely good. and the audiobook narrated by richard armitage is EXCELLENT.

[nightmarish-adventures]

Continuing my important contributions to the J&H tumblr fandom

[nightmarish-adventures]

Leather

[nightmarish-adventures]

I LOVE LYCANTHROPY AS A METAPHOR FOR TRANSSEXUALITY GRAHHHHH

[nightmarish-adventures]

People underestimate how much of an unreliable narrator every single character in J&H was. In my eyes J&H is less about purely “Good verses Evil” and moreso about like. “Repression verses Unrestraint.” Is it better to bottle it up and be who you must for others, or is it worth it to withstand every emotion you stored up just to be free, even when it harms others?

There’s a lot less of this on tumblr but like. I still see it.

[nightmarish-adventures]

[nightmarish-adventures]

The fact that nowdays Victor Frankenstein owns the title of the original "Mad Scientist" in horror fiction when Dr. Jekyll exists:

[nightmarish-adventures]

post ii17 thoughts

[nightmarish-adventures]

[nightmarish-adventures]

The pop cultural image around frankenstein really doesn't prepare you for the unrelenting suicidality of, like, the entire latter half of the book. Narratively delicious don't get me wrong. Especially with how clearly Victor and the creature parallel each other. Crazy stuff. Very good. Did not fuck around in the slightest. Everything just gets increasingly worse

[nightmarish-adventures]

I’m not super fond of the way vampires turn pale no matter their skin tone so here’s a proposal:

Colder tones!!!

This was loosely based off livor mortis which is the bluish-purple discoloration of the skin of dead bodies. It’s a result of the gravitation of blood but fuck that vamps are purple now

[nightmarish-adventures]

"Oooh, it's bad for vampires to take from blood banks. Because that's stealing from sick people who need it!"

The vampire will die if they don't get blood. I'd say that's a damn good example of "needing" it. Think about it for 3 fucking seconds. If there existed a group of people that need to consume human blood to survive in real life, do you know what that would be classified as? A fucking chronic illness, a DISABILITY.

Honestly that whole concept, of "risking your life by attacking strangers just to not starve is more ethical than using a public healthcare resource, actually", could actually work pretty well as in metaphor for the demonization of disabled people's right to not constantly struggle and take the "hard way". People want disabled people to struggle, to not take the 'easy way" like mobility aids or pain medication, to not listen to their bodies and rest when they need, to just be constant inspiration porn for ableds.

Can you imagine being a vampire, sobbing on the floor of a hospital as your fangs puncture the plastic skin of an IV bag, berating yourself for "stealing resources" just to survive, knowing that the people who would call you a monster for this would rather you risk getting beaten to death by risking a bite from a person. There's no one in your life who can consent to your teeth. No one you can count on for help.

God, doesn't that just feel poignant?

[nightmarish-adventures]

your werewolf girlfriend is NOT breaking into your house to fuck you on the full moon when she becomes a hormonal mess. look at her. she has big stupid paws and can’t use them. she’s been trying to get the pantry door open for five minutes straight. she’s not even horny she’s just really snuggly and kinda melancholy and wants cheetos and can’t get to them because of your smooth ass doorknobs

[nightmarish-adventures]

[nightmarish-adventures]

Honestly, I love the idea of a vampire who only drinks blood taken from blood banks and hospitals, because it so beautifully encompasses someone who's more concerned with the vibes of something than the actual impact of it.

Drinking from someone on the street, barring some other condition they may have, isn't likely to kill them unless you gorge yourself. Taking blood packs? There's always a shortage of blood, and having even less of it runs the very real risk of getting someone killed in a way that is wholly out of your control once you've sipped on that blood. Someone you can't assure the innocence or guilt of, if you're the type of person who cares about that.

Despite that, in popular stuff, I often see discussions of drinking from a blood bank being somehow better or preferable, and yeah. No. The only thing it does is make you feel better while doing more harm, because of that degree of removal. You're effectively drinking blood from someone on the cusp of hypovolemic shock, but since it's not straight from the tap, some people seem to think it's better.

[nightmarish-adventures]

There's something hilarious about how so much subsequent media has positioned Vampires and Werewolves as, like, binary opposite entities, and then you read Dracula (1897) and realize that wolves are that guy's preferred solution to every problem. You'd say something to Dracula about "ah yes, werewolves, vampires' great eternal enemies," and he'd just be like "you mean my subcontractors?"