#Dracula Daily starts tomorrow!

[the-illustrative-interloper]

It's a love song

It's a tale of a love from long ago

It's a sad song

We keep singing even so

It's an old song

It's an old tale from way back when

And we're gonna sing it again and again

[sonnywortziks]

honestly completely unprepared for dracula season this year. i shouldve made chicken paprikash yesterday to celebrate but unfortunately i woke up at 5pm and ate warmed up leftover spaghetti for dinner and then didn’t do anything else

[anime-academia]

Thinking of my good friend Jonathan Harker on this fine night. I hope he will have a good trip to Transylvania

[mmxxviii]

i’m already reading three books rn and i have two more borrowed from the library BUT there’s no wait for the tdou ebook. should i check it out (to reread, not first time)

[draculadrawalong]

May 2 - Prelude

Dracula Daily starts tomorrow, but in the meantime our dear friend jonathan harker is dealing with some train delays. 🕒🚂 Hopefully everything's gonna work out once he gets to the Count's castle

[atundratoadstool]

Before Dracula Daily starts tomorrow, people eager to hear from Jonathan Harker might be interested in knowing that there's good evidence that the first chapter of the book was originally Chapter III, and that in the first two chapters, Jonathan was possibly supposed to have:

Checked out the Pinakotek art museum.

Visited a leichenhaus in Munich where Count Dracula was seemingly hanging around pretending to be a dead body before apparently popping back to life.

Attended a performance of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (which probably ties into Stoker's fascination with the play Vanderdecken, which Henry Irving starred in) .

Done all the stuff in the short story "Dracula's Guest," which includes (1) having a scary time on Walpurgisnacht before having his scary time on St. George's Eve, (2) finding a mysterious mausoleum in which a blonde woman--implied to be the blonde vampiress who later features in Dracula's castle--has a giant iron stake in her and gets struck by lightening in a storm, (3) spending the night in the snow with a wolf--who is probably Dracula--sitting on him to keep him warm and abrading his throat with its file like tongue.

[starlitartworks]

Dracula Daily 2024 starts tomorrow, and like last year, I'll be drawing along! You can follow along here on tumblr, or on my instagram. Make sure to pack some garlic and crucifixes for your travels! 🦇

[the---hermit]

More cross stitch updates! In the past few days I've made so much progress!

30|04|2024

Today was quite productive and still I managed to get enough breaks and rest when I needed it. I am very happy about this and I hope I can keep this up. I am still procrastinating in picking a new fiction read because nothing from my unread shelf calls to me at the moment. I do have a couple of non fiction books I have been slowly reading so I am not left without a read, but I would like to finally settle on a good fiction book to escape from reality in my free time. Still I will have to read a lot for uni so maybe it's better for me not to start any new books I cannot keep up with. I am listening to Monstrous Agonies a lot, and I can confirm it has turned into my comfort thingsTM. The way it makes me feel calm and comforted is unreal. I am also very excited for dracula daily to start at the end of the week. I think I will be listening to the podcast version like last year because it was phenomenal. As for actual study updates I have finally started to dive in the articles I found yesterday and I can proudly say I have read and annotated two full articles today. I was expecting to get less done. I still have to write a couple of general notes on my notebook for the last article, but I'll be doing that tomorrow.

today's productivity:

read in the morning (still reading the historical essay because I cannot pick a new fiction book uuugh)

started reading and annotating the articles I found to write my English lit paper (I worked on two today, which feels like a great start)

practiced Irish on duolingo

continued working on my cross stitch project

planned the rest of my week since I will be working on a couple of mornings

[love-liberty21]

Listening to "Dracula's guest" in anticipation of Dracula daily and @re-dracula starting again tomorrow ♥️

[spider-xan]

I'm not going to write a post about this myself, but amidst the fun of the three suitors in today's entry, if you're a first-time reader who may have psychiatric abuse, institutionalization, etc. as mental health or trauma triggers, I recommend checking out this excellent post by @crepuscol last year which marks off which Seward updates involve the asylum and doctor-patient interactions, as that part of the story involving him and Renfield starts tomorrow on May 25; I know someone last year also wrote detailed summaries of those entries for people who might not want or be able to read them directly, but I don't remember who it was - if anyone does, please add a link!

This could be an entire post itself, so I'll try to keep this brief, but Seward is arguably the most complex character in terms of morality in a story where everyone else is either Good or Evil, as he is ultimately capable of both great heroism and great harm, even if he harbours no evil intent; as such, he is a difficult character to discuss on many levels and things will get heated for understandable reasons, but it's important to remember that we should look at his character as a whole - neither sanitizing nor exaggerating his bad actions, neither erasing his good actions nor using them to excuse the bad ones - in good faith when analyzing him, as all aspects of him are important to the narrative and themes.

Also, since we're all doing Dracula Daily for fun, no one is obligated to read those updates if you can't or don't want to, and similarly, be understanding of those people even if you disagree, especially when a lot of the ableism in those entries still happens today, as psychiatric wards are the modern successor to asylums.

[secretmellowblog]

Okay, here are some random panels I’m personally looking forward to at the online Les mis convention Barricadescon starting tomorrow!! (note that this off the top of my head, and they’re in no particular order, and that I am excited for all of em.)

(Also note that it’s the last day to register, which you can do on their site here. You can also see the full program of all the panels/their descriptions here.)

1. I’ll say any of the Guests of Honor (Jean Baptiste Hugo, the descendant of Hugo will be talking about his project photographing his ancestor’s house; Christina Soontornvat, author of the award-winning Les Mis retelling “A Wish in the Dark;” and Luciano Muriel, playwright of a 2018 play about Grantaire.)

2. @psalm22-6 ‘s panel “Early Transformative Works,” which is about the earliest Les Mis retellings, parodies, and “fanfics” from the 1800s/early 20th century. They’ve shared deeply cursed sneak peeks with me. Apparently in 1863 a man wrote a “proper Christian” retelling of Les Mis where Javert is reimagined as a proper Christian woman following poor criminals around giving them charity while they keep rejecting her kindness. Powerful. Javert as Mary Sue. (Note that I may be explaining poorly because I haven’t seen the panel yet.

3. History podcaster David Montgomery’s panel “The Yellow Passport: Surveillance and Control in 19th Century France,” which dives into the role of the police and strategies of government surveillance at the time Les Mis is set!

4. My own panel “Why Is There a Roller Coaster in Les Mis,” which I shared the first five minutes of here. There’s an actual scene in Les Mis where Fantine rides a roller coaster so I made a full defunctland video on how that roller coaster got to Paris in 1817, the fascinating historical context behind early roller coasters, and why it became defunct.

5. @thecandlesticksfromlesmis ‘s panel “Beat for Beat,” analyzing the script of Les Mis 2012 and contrasting it with the book and musical. Discussion of 2012 is almost overwhelmingly always about its music or cinematography, and I’m fascinated to hear someone finally analyzing the screenplay/ structural changes.

6. Morbidly curious for “Lee’s Miserables,” the academic panel discussing the paradoxical popularity of a censored version Les Mis in the Confederate South (with all the references to the evils of slavery carefully removed of course)

7. “Barricades as a Tactic,” a panel discussing how barricades actually functioned as a tool of warfare historically and the echoes of them in the modern day.

8. All the little social meetups, including the Preliminary Gaieties drinking game!

9. I’m biased because I’m also helping present this one, but the @lesmisletters panel (on the Dracula-daily inspired Les Mis readalong happening now.)

10. “The Fallibility of History in Les Miserables,” by @syrupsyche. It’s a panel analyzing the way Hugo often treats Les mis as a story that he learned about through research/gossip, rather than a fictional narrative— analyzing where Hugo does that in the text and what it means thematically.

11. The Unknown Light Examined, by Madeleine— a panel analyzing the chapter where the Bishop confronts the elderly revolutionary, and is forced to re examine his political beliefs! An iconic chapter, and the abstract is very compelling.

But also a lot more, check out the exhaustive list here XD. And also register at this link!

[stjohnstarling]

The first installment of What Manner of Man goes out tomorrow! So if you'd like to read the experiences of an innocent priest sent to a forgotten island and confronted by a seductive vampire — a queer gothic romance sent to your inbox in the form of Dracula Daily-style letters — this is your last chance to sign up before it begins.

At the moment We're at 2960 subscribers, which honestly blows me away. Where did you all come from???

I do wonder, though, if we could possibly get that number up to 3000 before it starts tomorrow? 😈

Sign up here!

[shiro-e-tan]

Dracula daily is starting tomorrow and I am excited to finally join it after missing it for 3 years in a row!

Join now

[theriverpointace]

so dracula daily starts tomorrow, aka the day after my college classes end

it's nice, it feels like a little reward for finishing my work :D

[fandomcrazy6226]

Liveblogging Dracula Daily - May 4

Part 2 of this with another journal entry from Jonathan. In other news that's just me, today is my senior prom and tomorrow starts tech week for the spring musical so I'm about to be very sleep-deprived in the coming week.

But that's not why you're here, you're here for my first reading of Dracula. So I'll get into that now

I mean, how bad could Dracula really be, he's so dedicated to good hospitality! And that landlord is either being rude or is too scared to keep it up. And I'd bet him and his wife know something and just don't wanna talk. Media literacy for the win! /s

Bilingual moment, too excited to stay in one language. Is it worth making the guess that the language she was mixing in there was Hungarian? I got an anon saying how there's a lot of Hungarians that are called something different in this sort of sense, so I'd assume that's the other language she's speaking.

O H fun, all the evil things having power. Y'know, if those trains had all been on time I think he would've missed that by a day. Oh and I guess this is where the whole crucifix-against-vampire thing comes from?

And a late coach, so wonderful. Will this poor man ever get transportation on time? Jonathan loves Mina so much, he's always referencing her and they're not even married yet like I really hope they both survive so they can get married and be happy together

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[songofwizardry]

i'm going to be attempting @batmanisagatewaydrug's 2025 book bingo! full details of the books i've chosen (and options where i've got multiple) under the cut. it is, as most things i read are, sff heavy, but i have really tried to include other genres too!

literary fiction: detransition, baby by torrey peters. a book that i somehow still have not read, in spite of everyone reading it and talking about it. 2025 is gonna be the year i feel it.

short story collection: lesser known monsters of the 21st century by kim fu. this one came from the recommendations in the challenge post!

a sequel: the stone sky by n. k. jemisin is the last book in the broken earth trilogy. for some reason this is a trilogy i can only read in hard copy (possibly because i started reading the first book in hard copy?) and so while i adored the first two books (incredible worldbuilding, absolutely devastating), i was not able to get into the third one that i had as an ebook. so i'm gonna get a hard copy and finally read it.

childhood favourite: oranges are not the only fruit by jeanette winterson. stretching the definition of 'childhood' a bit here as i first read it when i was 15 (the summer i started coming out!) and also i clearly just want devastating books, but this is my choice. i'm interested to see how it holds up as an adult.

20th century speculative fiction: snow crash by neal stephenson (1992) or kindred by octavia butler (1979). both have been on my tbr for ages, but i'm leaning towards snow crash.

fantasy: jade city by fonda lee. i bought a copy of it ages ago and it sounds exactly like the kinda thing i'd like

published before 1950: dracula by bram stoker. maybe this is the year i read this book and/or keep up with dracula daily!

independent publisher: time to orbit: unknown by @derinthescarletpescatarian. stretching the definition of independent publisher here a bit, but i've wanted to read TTO:U for ages, and now it is in an ebook format, so i have no more excuses!

graphic novel/comic book/manga: this one was really hard for me, bc there's so manyyyy i want to read. i have narrowed it down to alone in space by tillie walden, lights, planets, people! by molly naylor, the fade by aabria iyengar and mari costa, and nimona by nd stevenson.

animal on the cover: while filling this out i realised so many of t kingfisher's books have animals on the cover, so this could have been what moves the dead, but in the interest of picking a new author, i went with weyward by emilia hart.

set in a country you've never visited: also lots of options here. i went with the weight of our sky by hanna alkaf (set in Malaysia), which i started when it released but never finished, but i am also looking at kiffe kiffe tomorrow by faiza guene (focused on a Moroccan family in France) and aluta by adwoa badoe (set in Ghana). i wanted some more ya on this list, so this list of ya books set in different countries was helpful!

science fiction: man, so much of this list is sci-fi already. but i went with the school for good mothers by jessamine chan. or alternatively i might read the long earth by terry pratchett and stephen baxter.

2025 debut author: i stumbled across an excerpt from motheater by linda h coega on the stone soup newsletter, and it sounds so good! my other option is anji kills a king by evan leikamp

memoir: again, i have picked two books that will probably hit pretty hard because i am making things difficult for myself. the year of the tiger: an activist's life by alice wong or alternatively i'm glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy.

read a zine, make a zine: i'm going to be browsing the queer zine library, which is a mobile zine library based in the UK (i went to a zine fair they hosted several years ago!) for inspiration.

essay collection: the book of queer prophets: 24 writers on sexuality and religion, edited by ruth hunt. another book i've owned for ages and never read!

2024 award winner: some desperate glory by emily tesh, which won the 2024 hugo award for best novel.

nonfiction - learn something new: the age of surveillance capitalism by shoshana zuboff. of all the books on this list, this is the one i'm least confident about my ability to actually finish. it's a hefty book. but i'm gonna give it another shot!

social justice and activism: there were a lot of books on my tbr that could've fit this. i went with saving our own lives: a liberatory practice of harm reduction by shira hassan, which i got as a present last year. the other option is care work: dreaming disability justice.

romance novel: i'm quite proud of finding a romance novel my partner didn't rec for me for once. make room for love by darcy liao.

read and make a recipe: i love ruby tandoh, so i am going to read her cookbook, cook as you are! i also considered london feeds itself by the vittles team, but i don't think that counts as a cookbook.

horror: coup de grace by sofia ajram. i didn't know much recent horror, so this list of 2024 horror releases was helpful!

published in the aughts: white teeth by zadie smith. apparently it's very 2000s london, so i'm intrigued!

historical fiction: gods of jade and shadow by silvia moreno-garcia, which is a historical fantasy set in mexico. my other option is plain bad heroines by emily m danforth, who wrote one of my favourite books of all time (the miseducation of cameron post).

bookseller recommendation: thank you to the bookseller who recommended brandon sanderson's tress of the emerald sea when i was checking out the adventures of amina al-sirafi! apparently it also has ocean vibes, and maybe this is the year i finally read a brandon sanderson novel.

there's some other books i'm really looking forward to reading that didn't fit on my bingo list, which are: the river has roots by amal el-mohtar, the lighthouse at the edge of the world by j.r. dawson, death of the author by nnedi okorafor, and exordia by seth dickinson. i'm including them here so everything is in one place. i'm super excited to get a start on this challenge!