noveeleven

[noveeleven]

no results button this time, if you can't decide either then i guess we can all find out in a week

PLEASE reblog this poll, i really want to get a fandom consensus

[noveeleven]

Dracula season may be over now but I am still very much obsessed with these two

[noveeleven]

I'm trying to figure out who I'd put in an elf fight club to determine the mightiest elf

So far I have:

Glorfindel

Ecthelion

Gil-Galad

Galadriel

Maedhros

Finrod

[noveeleven]

*sigh fondly* Now I've got to watch Fangs of Fortune, whatever it's, right?

Anybody from the Tolkien to C-drama pipeline: are you watching "Fangs of Fortune" and realise that this director could totally and elegantly adapt "The Silmarillion"? Which none of us would ultimately trust PJ with? Would we not love to see this guy's take on Morgoth, on Feanor, on Luthien? Do we not admire how much Edward Guo's aesthetics are truly universally human, beyond the scope of culturally defined roots?

[noveeleven]

HE MEANS "IT HAS TO BE ELEVATED TO THE RANK OF A FAIRYTALE".RIGHT?? RIGHT?!?

Fairytales are the supreme genre. I don't make the rules, sorry mr. Skal, you have to kindly sort out your priorities.

Stoker's book was ending up quite unlike the lurid sensation novel he had first envisioned. In making his final revisions, he fell back instinctively, if perhaps unconsciously, on the sturdy substructure of the litary form that had sustained him since childhood: the fairy tale. The plot took on an archetypal simplicity, drawing on the folktale motif of abused and abandoned children. An orphan (Jonathan Harker, bereft of parentage like most of the main characters) ventures into the woods and is confronted with a terrifying demon king, who chases him home, but the young hero must return to the dreaded place to destroy the monster and restore moral order. Among the many calssic tales evoked are "Bluebeard" (the castle with locked rooms and bloody secrets), "Jack the Giant Killer" (the ogre who chases the protagonist to his homeland and is slain), and "Little Red Riding Hood" (explicitly cited in Stoker's text and mimicked when a wolf crashes through a bedroom window to menace Lucy and her mother). In short, for Dracula to be saved as a publishable tale, it had to be shrunken, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedtime story of childhood abandonment and rescue.

david j. skal, something in the blood: the untold story of bram stoker, the man who wrote dracula

[noveeleven]

Hot take: lily flowers and garlic flowers are very much alike. Lilies are a holy flower, a protection from heaven...Just like garlic flowers are supposed to shield from demonic vampiric thereats. I'm NOT saying that somewhere in the tradition lilies and garlic got mixed up or our beloved goofy Dutch Van Helsing got a lapsus, but I'm NOT denying it. (Lucy's flowers worked for her in the same way the crucifix worked for Jonathan. The protection is on when one believes it's on)

[noveeleven]

goodbye dracula time loop see you next year 🙁

[noveeleven]

Actual things that happen in the 1897 Dracula novel, without context:

A character has ominous nightmares and attributes them to eating too much paprika

Dracula first appears wearing a fake beard

The person he was trying to fool with the fake beard immediately realizes Dracula and Beard Guy are the same man, due to both having really firm handshakes

We are told parrots are immortal unless fatally wounded

A Texan cowboy opens fire on a bat flitting around a window, and lodges a bullet in the wall of an occupied room

A woman is called a polyandrist for receiving blood transfusions from multiple men

An incorrectly addressed telegram leads to two deaths, multiple druggings, and several children being assaulted

Dracula, while trying to maintain a low profile, takes a lovely trip to the zoo and freaks out the animals so badly that he gets mentioned in a newspaper article

The one character who knows anything about vampires spends a good two-thirds of the book refusing to talk about vampires

Dracula went to Satan's Witchcraft Academy and somehow this is only brought up in two throwaway lines

A character gets stuck inside a circle of communion wafer crumbs

A major plot point of the book is Dracula (who was said to be a brilliant scholar and has the strength of twenty mortal men) realizing he can move boxes without human help

Someone is referred to as "manifestly a prig of the first water"

Two characters have a hobby of reading train schedules

A hospital lets a mental patient escape to see what will happen

A character starts vomiting up feathers from eating whole birds

A doctor refuses to give a medical diagnosis and instead makes a speech about growing corn

Dracula impersonates another character just by wearing the same clothes, despite being taller and visibly much older. This deception is successful.

A character "cleans" a room by eating all the insects in it

Suddenly: rats. Thousands of them.

The heroes progress in their efforts through "the wonderful power of money," i.e., bribery

Dracula has three other vampires in his castle. Their relation to him is never explained, nor are any of them named.

A character insists his salvation depends on having a pet cat

Dracula is thwarted by flowers on more than one occasion

A group of vampires stand in the hall outside a man's bedroom, talking loudly about their plans to eat him. When he comes to the door to confront them, they run away laughing

Dracula wears an unfashionable hat and gets roasted for it

A group of Romanians encounter a disheveled, shouting man and, "seeing from his violent demeanour that he was English, they [give] him a ticket for the furthest station on the way thither that the train reached."

A boat crashes due to Dracula having the munchies

A wolf is thrown through a window and immediately runs off, confused and covered in glass

Dracula makes a bed

[noveeleven]

You are in a post-apocalyptic story. A war destroyed much of your country, and it fell under enemy control. Almost all who lived there have fled. Your father, who should be the lord of the land, leads a small group of guerilla fighters still resisting the enemy, you among them. The enemy forces have not found your hideout, and you've managed to survive for a while, but really, you all probably know it's only a matter of time. Realistically, you don't have a chance to actually beat the enemy forces back. But among your small group, most have lost loved ones, whether that be father or wife or another relative. Many don't have much anything more left to lose. None of you are willing to forsake your homeland, war-torn and abandoned though it is, so you're just going to stay here, taking as many enemy soldiers with you as you can, making a point... to the enemy? to the world? to yourselves? about your stubbornness and strength and love for your home. You are in a post-apocalyptic story.

Slowly, your life becomes a horror story. One of the others is tricked into betraying your group, telling the enemy where to find your hideout. When the enemy has got what they wanted out of him, they torture him to death, even as they send troops to attack the hideout. You are not there when they come. You find this out, when the ghost of the traitor comes to you in a dream, confessing what he's done, urging you to go warn the others. You come too late. Your father is dead, all the others are dead, the beautiful lake that was your hideout tainted by their blood. You bury your father, and go to take what vengeance you can. You kill the ones that killed your father, you take back a golden ring they took from his corpse - a token of an oath by a king to help your father if he needed, an oath your father never called him to fulfill. You continue the fight, now a one-man-war, you alone against an enemy that has defeated mighty armies.

You are in a horror story. Slowly, the influence of your enemy turns your beloved homeland into a corrupted nightmare. The woods are filled with enemy soldiers, and maybe with worse things. You are all alone, with only the trees and wild animals for company. You continue the fight, until you can't.

You are in a horror story. Forced to retreat further and further, at last there's only one way to escape your enemy, and it's no way for any kind of escape at all, unless maybe that of death. Mountains on the southern border of your homeland, steep and treacherous, with no known pass, no path over them. No one has ever crossed them, as far as you know. And beyond the dangers of the landscape, evil magic lies upon the mountains. There are monsters there, and madness-inducing magic in all the water of all the springs and streams. You drink from them anyhow. You don't have a choice.

You are in a horror story. You crossed the mountains, and no story afterwards will know to tell how you did it (maybe you don't know yourself, the madness and corruption ravaging your mind until you're stumbling forward on instinct, the most primal parts of your nature driving you onward, refusing to accept lying down to die as an option). For all your troubles, your reward is more horror, a land so twisted by strange magic that even servants of the enemy fear to tread there. You get tangled in what seems like spiderwebs. There are monsters, in this dark (is it truly dark, or does the corruption of the land just make it seem so, or is it your mind playing tricks on you?). Monsters like spiders, whose webs you are caught in, that will eat you if you can't fend them off. Distantly, the small part of your mind that's still capable of coherent thought, recalls stories of a monstrous spider that ate the light before the sun and moon, that made the god of evil scream like a frightened child. Maybe these spiders are related to her. You fight them, and you stumble on and on, hacking your way through the webs, driven by fear and by that primal animalistic part of you that only wants to survive. You don't - can't - think, any semblance of conscious thought or even sense of self long since drowned out by pain and hunger and weariness and the madness and horror inflicted on you by these lands. You are in a horror story, and there's no way out of it, but you don't know how to lie down and accept your fate either.

You stumble through woods with less and less spiders, woods that, if you were capable of noticing or comprehending such things, begin to seem more normal again. In daytime, the sun shines. The darkness of the night is lit by stars and moon, it's not the heavy darkness that drowns out thought. But the madness still has you in its grip, you still stumble forward like a wounded animal without a den to hide in, unthinking, incapable of feeling anything but fear and pain. Perhaps that state of madness is what lets you through the magics meant to ensnare and stop outsiders, perhaps to the magic you don't register as anything but a wild animal. Or perhaps it is fate that lets you through. Or both.

One night, you hear music, a flute playing. You don't know when you've last heard such a beautiful sound, if ever. It awakens some curiosity somewhere in the back of your mind, in the more human ones, the ones drowned out by madness. You stumble towards the sound, until through the leaves you can see a little clearing, and-

a woman more beautiful than you've ever seen, than you've ever even imagined could exist, singing and dancing there. She seems happy, and she's dancing, right there, out in the middle of the woods, not a care in the world. As though all the horror and suffering and fear you're so very familiar with has never touched her in the slightest.

She can't be real, nothing so beautiful, so happy, so free of pain and fear, could possibly be real. You've lost it, you're seeing things. But maybe you're not, and you have to make sure, so you stumble forward, finally stumbling towards something and not just blindly away from something.

The music stops. Someone yells something. The woman stops, and stands and looks at you for a moment, as you stumble towards her, and then... she runs. You try to follow, but lose her soon, and are left alone in the nightly forest, still half-mad, utterly uncertain whether any of what you just witnessed was real or just a hallucination.

You have to know if it was real. You have to find out. You begin to look for her. It's the only coherent thought in your mind, taking over the empty space left by the madness. You must know if what you saw was real, so you search and search. Not knowing her name, you name her Nightingale, because of the beauty of her singing.

You think you see her again, and then a second time. But it's from a distance, you can't reach her, you still don't know if she's real. Maybe you're so desperate and mad that you're just imagining it.

And then, suddenly, you see her again, singing and dancing, and winter turns to spring as she does so. And you run after her, and you call her, call her by the name you've secretly given her. And against all hope, she halts, and turns, and looks at you again. You come to her, you touch her. She's real! She really exists!

You have stumbled into a fairytale.

[noveeleven]

Silmarillion AU Where all the Elves are Hobbits and the Stakes are Significantly Lower:

Finwe is mayor of his part of the Shire, happily married to both Miriel and Indis because they all have two hands

Miriel doesn't die after childbirth she just goes off on a trip to find new artistic inspiration and doesn't come back

Don't worry she eventually shows back up again– turns out she got lost and a kind elvish warrior named Vaire helped her find her way back

Feanor has a good relationship with his siblings, although he and Nolofinwe have engaged in several bouts of passive-aggressive one-upsmanship

The most famous of these ended with Nolofinwe swimming several miles across a lake in winter to prove that he was the more dedicated brother. Feanor agreed after telling him off for being reckless.

The Silmarils aren't pseudo-holy gemstones here, they're a set of three really intricately carved pipe-weed pipes that the Finweans pull out on ceremonial occasions

Morgoth isn't a fallen god he's just an asshole elf who regularly breaks into the Shire to steal things

One day he steals the Silmarils; he doesn't kill Finwe though he just knocks him out

The rest of the First Age is mostly just increasingly convoluted plots by various Finweans to break into his fortress and steal back the pipes (and all the other stuff Morgoth has stolen)

The first of these attempts involves Feanor stealing one (1) boat from Mayor Olwe. No one dies though and he puts it back afterwards. It still results in a lot of petty gossip.

After one of the attempts Morgoth catches Maedhros and hangs him up in a really tall tree

He's stuck there for three weeks before Findekano finds him and gets him down with the help of a homemade hang-glider called "Thorondor"

One of the other hobbit mayors is Thingol, a dear friend (and possible ex boyfriend?) of Finwe

Most of the Ainur are elves here but the concept of hobbit Thingol marrying an eldritch goddess is too funny to pass up so Melian is still a Maia here

She and her descendants look pretty hobbit-ish but they have fairy wings and little antennae

It causes a huge scandal when their daughter, Luthien, runs off with a dwarf prince named Beren

Thingol even writes a very strongly worded letter telling her not to marry him, which is a very extreme measure by hobbit standards, but she doesn't listen

Eventually Beren decides to steal some hobbit stuff back from Morgoth to prove his worthiness

He ends up stealing back one of the pipes and giving it to Thingol

Thingol grudgingly accepts him and Bluthien settle into a nice, quiet life in the Shire

There's no Doriath kinslaying either there's just a long, very passive-aggressive series of letters between Thingol and Feanor until Finwe eventually steps in and Thingol returns the pipe

[noveeleven]

Reading the Jewel of the Seven stars by Stoker. Fifty pages in it, someone already mention an iconic kurki knife, the main character is a lawyer, he's scared to death by reverence and admiration for his crush (a gentlewoman who's also the fierce posessor of a feral cat) and he dreams of her like a lovesick teenager in the most romantic setting imaginable, some pages later enter an anxious doctor and his master (although not likable like Van Helsing still), there is a mention of Hamlet "there are more things in heaven and hell than in your philosophy", the whole thing is a detective story soon to turn supernatural. Never change Bram, never change.

[noveeleven]

She could have been a prostitute herself and the pimp. Either way, we see in different occasions that she's ready to defend herself (she carries her Derringer) and the girls (in heart of Yukon a Peeping Tom is slapped with a brush)

I’m glad I’m allowed to say Goldie O’Gilt was a prostitute and not get kicked out of the Duckblr Cafeteria Table

[noveeleven]

proposition: Lancelot is White's self-insert

[noveeleven]

Don Rosa trying to piece together Scrooge McDuck’s life based on random info Carl Barks casually brings up once and then never mentions again

[noveeleven]

Proof that Elrond is the evil twin n. 389272829929

Elrond: *evil laughing*

Annatar: I can't tell if he just hatched an evil plan or if that is just how he laughs.

Celebrimbor: Unfortunately for us all, that is just how he laughs. It would be better if it was just evil.

[noveeleven]

Elrond: *evil laughing*

Annatar: I can't tell if he just hatched an evil plan or if that is just how he laughs.

Celebrimbor: Unfortunately for us all, that is just how he laughs. It would be better if it was just evil.

[noveeleven]

WAKE UP UNDEAD, STOKER DROPPED A NEW SHORT TALE.

That was about time! Thanks Bram, now we are settled for the Dracula hiatus. Welcome among the Horrors TM of "Gibbet Hill". It'll be out October 26th!