#dracula entry lengths

[peachesanmemes]

I saw your DD graph asking for other ideas, so... if you still have any desire to do further Dracula graphs I'd be curious to see how the word count per character breaks down (not how much they speak but how much they write. Adding all their diary entries together, etc.). Obviously Mina wins by default from having typed up the whole novel but outside of that detail, how much did each person author?

Thank you so much for this ask! What an interesting data set this one is! Lots of unexpected information.

So first off, if you just want to visualize the author breakdown, ta-dahhhh!

Seward was staunchly in the lead, talking his head off and burning through those wax recording drums like no ones business. Poor Mina for having to transcribe it all. In total his words made up 39.3% of Dracula. Nearly 40%!

Seward unsurprisingly had the most individual entries overall at 47, and had the longest streak for being the narrator in an entry at 10 days (09/02 - 09/11) with Mina following right behind at 9 days (08/10 - 08/19)

Mina surprisingly was 3rd overall both in word count and number of entries. She wasn't even in the top 3 for most words in a day which is as follows.

1 - Seward October 3rd - 9942 words

2 - Seward September 29th - 7206 words

3 - Jonathan October 3rd - 5944 words

Van Helsing only had 9 entries total but still came in number 4 for word count, in front of Lucy. It's interesting to note that the amount a person writes doesn't correlate to the amount of time they are being written about/appear. Which is why Arthur and Quincey don't even beat out the newspaper clippings for words, lol.

There are lots of authors we only hear from a single time, like Sister Agatha. So I've decided to make a small fry pie as well. (Authors under ~500 words)

The captain of the Demeter and Van Helsing both had more days written than Lucy! Though I didn't break up number of entries, like when the log of the Demeter had 3 or 4 on one day or Lucy wrote a letter and in her diary.

If there is any data I haven't presented here that you're interested in feel free to tag me or shoot me an ask like this lovely person did!

[silver-dusted-scribbles]

ok just listened to the first episode of re: dracula and everyone should listen to it because it’s absolutely amazing.

the first entry was nine minutes long. a completely average and respectable length for an audiobook chapter. but… i’m worried about The Update. y’all know the one. how many hours of dracula are we going to be listening to???

[citizen-of-the-fandom]

Thinking about how we haven't heard from our friend Jonathan in a while, and one of his last entries said "I now know the length of my life" and it was mid-june, that was the day Dracula told him, that was how long he had left, and right now it's about a week away, it's--

[aurora-australis-tumbles]

There are a lot of reasons why Dracula Daily and @re-dracula punch so hard emotionally — realizing Jonathan is fearing for his life on day two, experiencing the sheer length of his imprisonment, the Demeter’s increasingly horrifying entries — and one of them is weekends like this.

What do you mean after a full week of absolutely banana pants entries we’ve gone radio silent??? You can’t just write up your will and then… what? Sit in silence for two days? I happen to know that Professor Van Monologue is physically incapable of that, so what is happening people??

[theoscout]

Hear me out: Dracula D&D (5e) AU

Jonathan's a battle based bard. You need charisma when you're a solicitor. Feel like his charisma was the reason he was able to survive in the castle for SIX FUCKING MONTHS without dying or getting chained to a wall, he got it bad but let's all admit he could have had it a lot worse! Also his bribery phase is pretty entertaining LOL. Think he'd be in the college of Swords or Valor.

Mina's a rogue. From what I understand of her, she's got a wide breath of knowledge that a rogue would have, and she's a teacher so she'd kind of have to be like that. Unsure about subclass because I can't decide between Inquisitive or Phantom.

Quincey's a ranger because obviously

Arthur's an artificer, just because from how it looks, it seems everyone's using him as the Uncle Pennybags of the group, and that's what artificers tend to end up as. Possibly a battle smith, with the steel defender being one of his dogs

Lucy's a Druid. I was originally going to make her a cleric for symbolic and ironic reasons, but I just get druid vibes from how she talks from re:dracula and there's also a bit of symbolism in how Dracula can corrupt nature.

Jack's a wizard because he's interested in advancing knowledge and goes to great and memeically unusual lengths to archive his work. Possibly an enchantment wizard because of how he's interested in studying human minds. He'd write his diary entries in his spellbook using the same method for transcribing spells and use all his expensive ink and stuff in the process.

Renfield's a barbarian, he's been described as being very strong and I'm pretty sure you need a strong constitution to eat all those birds and bugs without getting an upset stomach. Strength and constitution are what barbarians are best known for. Beast barbarian because it gives a bite attack and I just KNOW that Renfield's the kind of person to bite people LOL

Abraham Van Hesling's probably a multiclassed character, but I suppose that if he had any 'main' classes he'd be a bard or rogue for the sake of skills. He'd be all over the place. His player probably optimised him for maximum skills. Probably a Lore Bard or Knowledge Cleric if we had to stick with one class.

[rivermask]

Tumblr Book Clubs I am Currently Following, in order of how hard I think they would be to catch up on if you wanted to join the fun:

Around the World Hourly (Around the World in Eighty Days with entries sent according to the in-story hour of events, started Oct 2)

The Public Domain Book Club (started Frankenstein for the month of October on Oct 1)

Lord of the Rings Newsletter (started late September with some very long posts, but will be variable length as they follow the dates of events in the story)

Dracula Daily via Re:Dracula (chronological Dracula by Bram Stoker - OK, you've missed most of this one, but the audio format is very engaging - you could still catch up for the exciting conclusion!)

My Dear Wormwood (The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis - 22 short letters so far, posted on a weekly basis)

What Manner of Man (original vampire romance by St John Starling - 24 shortish and very fun chapters so far, posted on a weekly basis)

Whale Weekly (Moby Dick by Herman Melville with roughly chronological timescale - we're 70-some chapters in but there are often long breaks between them so you could probably catch up)

Les Mis Letters (a chapter of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo every day for a year - catch-up difficulty level: impossible)

Please add your own!

[nausikaaa]

oh Dracula is so bloody evil in today's entry. Jonathan finally stands up himself and says he wants to leave, so Dracula takes him to the front door and summons a pack of wolves. i was listening to Re: Dracula out on a walk and actually said "oh, dickhead!" out loud.

he won't just force Jonathan to stay, he goes to lengths to make him say he'll wait until morning, when they both know he doesn't want to and won't really get to leave. he's punishing him for asserting himself. Jonathan breaking down and crying right there in front of him broke my heart, he's truly given up any attempt at pretending he's alright.

and then at the end, Dracula doesn't even try to hide his discussion with the weird sisters (i do love that Jonathan calls them that) right outside of his door, because now he has full confirmation that he can say and do whatever he pleases, and Jonathan won't make the mistake of standing up for himself again.

[tinierpurplefishes]

I just looked up the specs for wax cylinder phonographs, and it looks like the commercially available ones in the 1890s had about two minutes of usable recording time per cylinder. The longest I can find mention of were some that Edison experimented with that could hold perhaps four minutes.

This came up because I'm reading Dracula, and Dr. Seward records his diary on them. The thing is, he goes on and on and on at great length, and I'm really curious how fast he must have been talking to fit one of these entries on a single cylinder.

[fandomcrazy6226]

Liveblogging Dracula Daily - May 12

Brought to you on June 26th. Yeah, I've fallen really behind, but I'm gonna try to just straight-through all of these missed entires tonight so anybody who's really following these uh... have fun with the rapid succession. Do y'all think I should put some like.. "previous"/"next" links at the end of these posts? It's about at the length to need a masterlist

Anyway, here's the entry! From what I remember this one has wall-crawling

Always good to start with facts, and better to separate them from your own memories/opinions. Objectivity is a virtue. Wait he spends all day reading and then all night talking? Jonathan I'm begging you get some sleep, you desperately need it

So Dracula is asking a bunch of questions. Question 1, can someone in England have multiple solicitors? Answer 1, yes, you can have it sounds like as many as you want, but only one can be working at a time. That's all understood so Dracula then asks if he can have more than one for like... specialty jobs.

Oooh, an example! Ok, so he asked for Jonathan's help because he doesn't live in London so that only Dracula's needs would be served... sure. And so he wants to know if he can get another solicitor to help shipping things to different areas where those other solicitors would live so it's more efficient. I guess that makes sense? Efficiency 100

And apparently there's a Solicitor Code of Conduct that says that... son of a Jesus what do these words mean I feel like I'm translating Shakespeare... the client can have one solicitor who can then direct other "local" solicitors to do local things, and the client doesn't have to do anything. Am I understanding correctly???

Ok so Dracula wants to direct his own solicitors and starts asking about paperwork and forms, and apparently he might make a really good solicitor (how many flipping times am I gonna have to type the word "solicitor")

Awww, he's so alone. And he's gonna be there for another month? Yeesh. "My needs only were to be consulted" selfish prick! This man needs to get married to his amazing fiancee!

Yeah, still a prisoner. I forgot that like... he's really not here by his own will anymore. And Dracula the master manipulator over here telling him to keep things secret and straight-up LIE to people that he's doing fine. Sharp teeth!

Heck yeah, have a secret code with your fiancee! I should make up a code to use with my boyfriend if we ever need to, that would be fun.

Spying on his mail is either gonna be a really smart move or a really stupid one, but considering how Jonathan seems like one of the brainier horror protagonists I'm guessing it's a smart one

Ok I'm gonna note this just for posterity, one letter is for Samuel F. Billington, No. 7, The Crescent, Whitby (copy-paste works wonders), the second one is for Herr Leutner, Varna, the third is for Coutts & Co., London, and the last one is for Herren Klopstock & Billreuth, bankers, Buda-Pesth. I'm guessing these are all other solicitors

Oh, boy, we're getting a warning! Don't fall asleep anywhere but your own room or you'l have... really bad dreams? That doesn't sound threatening but I'm gonna guess those bad dreams lead to something more sinister

Good idea having the crucifix over your bed, that's probably a good protection. Like maybe it protects your whole bed. Wear it when awake and hang it when you sleep

Again this scenery is so pretty when he describes it, I almost wish this was illustrated just so I could see it. I'm sure people have drawn passages like this, maybe I could look into those later

I'm.... fucking sorry??????? He's not only climbing, but climbing face-down??? I mean that's probably better, the way this is described if he'd been face-up then he'd've spotted Johnathan looking but like jesus Cuh-rist!

"I saw the fingers and toes"... was he climbing barefoot? Is he that level of freak?

Yeah I'd be pretty scared out of my mind if I saw some old dude with various biological impossiblities climbing a wall upside down with no shoes on. Gawd Dayum.

PREVIOUS / NEXT

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

I saw a post estimating the length of re: Dracula based on the length of the text entries of Dracula Daily, and i definitely reblogged it, but alas the I can't find it in my tags

Does anyone have it?

[peachesanmemes]

Total length of each Dracula Daily entry!

Figured I would repost it this year in a less specific date way. Scroll if you don’t want to know! - I’m only tagging this as potential spoiler, as it only relates to the story in a meta way.

Total, the journey takes 189 days, 111 of those have entries (58.73%)

Bram’s longest on streak is 19 days - September 17th to October 6th

Bram’s longest off streak is 11 days - June 6th to June 16th

In the top three positions for length we have September 29th “An Eventful Day” - 9,034 words October 1st “The Attack” - 10,259 words October 3rd “A Day Full of Action” - 15,883 words

There are 160,720 words total, making an average of 1,448 words per entry, (though 22% of the total book is in the top 3 days)

Google says it takes around 5 minutes to read 1,000 words

October 31st has 420 words (yes really)

Let me know if there’s any more data you want! I love making graphs!

[vickyvicarious]

Today's entry is interesting. I'm tempted to say Stoker made a mistake with the dates (again; he does this several times) because everything Mina says seems like it should be separated by more than a single day from her last entry. If Jonathan's letter about leaving Castle Dracula just arrived, it would be reasonable to expect a wait of a few days before another one, even if he were still mailing a new letter at every stop or whatever. Of course, that could be why Mina says she doesn't know why she's feeling so uneasy about him - she recognizes it's illogical to be so nervous if he's traveling. But the explanation for those fears (even if everything about his letter were honest) might be that Mina still hasn't heard directly from Jonathan herself. If Mr. Hawkins has received a letter, she should have too by now - maybe she doesn't expect anything new, but she knows Jonathan would have written to tell her that he is coming home as well, and she's waiting for that letter to arrive. She's probably hoping he sounds more like himself/speaks at greater length and detail to her than he did to his boss. And of course she feels impatient about that.

So the thing about Jonathan can be rationalized away, even if the emotions feel like they'd make more sense with a gap of a day or two to build up this much anxiety. The lines about Lucy are a little harder to do the same, though... in yesterday's entry Mina spoke for the first time about her sleepwalking, and like it had only just begun. But today "Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving about the room." That definitely sounds like it has been more than a single night since the last entry, and going from talking about how Lucy is looking forward to Arthur arriving (like it will happen in the future) to today saying he's been suddenly called away (like otherwise he would be arriving here around this time) also feels odd, timing-wise.

I think I would want to move yesterday's entry a few days earlier in order to make the chronology work better. Nothing huge, just two or three days maybe.

[madhogthymaster]

Master Recs: Horror Cinema!

Do you like Horror films? Yes, you do. Here is a modest selection of 13 cinematic offerings to quench your thirst for seasonal spooks, from lesser-known gems to entertaining schlock and everything in-between. I have good taste and you are welcome.

Renfield (2023), dir. Chris McKay

Renfield rules so hard it hurts, let me tell you. Nicolas Cage as Dracula is already the best selling point imaginable but if you look past the premise, you'll find a heartwarming story about overcoming abuse and codependency, with loads of great action and gore to boot. Good old Nic hams it up to eleven as the Prince of Darkness, channeling the verve of Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Lon Cheney all rolled into a deliciously evil sandwich. He's legitimately monstrous and intimidating in a way the character has not been in decades.

It's very effective when he's presented as the abusive "partner" from which Renfield (as in, classic Movie Renfield) is trying to escape. I'm surprised by the lengths the film goes into depicting the emotional trappings of such a relationship - amidst all the funny jokes, that is. It pulls off the unenviable task of being a tonally cohesive Horror comedy, one that leaves no room for doubt as to which moments deserve to be treated seriously or not. Its homage to Golden Age Hollywood cinema and unapologetic queerness are also appreciated.

The House (2022), dir. Emma De Swaef, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza, Marc James Roels

The House is a stunning work of stop-motion animation and a solid anthology that explores the existential hang-ups and anxieties of the "Middle Class", crafting solid Horror (and not-so Horror) stories in the process. It has dancing bugs too! I recommend it.

Cocaine Bear (2023), dir. Elizabeth Banks

The last film appearance by the late Ray Liotta. Cocaine Bear is a gruesomely delightful time: a spunky schlock with a killer premise that hooks you up from the start, taking a self-indulgent, humorous sniff at its own status of being "Based on a True Story." This film had the audacity to feature a Wikipedia quote. It's great!

Sweet Home (1989), dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Delightedly, I beheld 1989's Sweet Home, as expertly remastered by Kineko Video. It's a cheesy good time with glorious practical effects and a few, effective low-budget trickeries. I personally give it props for an unexpected Laurel & Hardy's Fra Diavolo reference! This classic is mostly renowned for its videogame adaptation which became a major influence for decades to come.

At the time of writing, the film can be watched on YouTube, making it the most easily accessible entry in this entire column.

Jennifer's Body (2009), dir. Karyn Kusama

It took me this long to finally watch Jennifer's Body, an underrated Horror comedy starring Megan Fox that was unjustly dismissed back in the day. She plays as a literal man-eater, by the way.

There is definitely a lot to enjoy from a modern take on Carmilla whereas the delectably gory blood-feasting works as a backdrop for a toxic high school friendship as well as a commentary on the consequences of sexist exploitation, misogyny and trauma. Save for the occasional slur, it holds up very well.

The Color Out of Space (2019), dir. Richard Stanley

A proper skin-crawler based off the eponymous story by H.P. Lovecraft. Its psychedelic and Stuart Gordon-esque visceral interpretation of the source material is a clever way to circumvent the issue of portraying an "indescribable" alien entity. The Colour, being an unfathomable force outside our science and rationale, serves as a reminder of how insignificant we are in the face of a larger universe we can never hope to comprehend. It works as a metaphor for our atavistic fears.

The film is very much about powerlessness, losing control, losing oneself to the madness or, alternatively, to the realization that nothing was ever "under control." It's Cosmic Horror done right - and also without the racist subtext. Oh, and Nicolas Cage is also in it. I might have buried the lead there.

Gretel and Hansel (2020), dir. Oz Perkins

Here's a scary fairy tale that might have escaped everyone's radar, Gretel and Hansel: a beautifully crafted, meticulously composed film that drenches itself in a disquieting, surreal atmosphere subtly empowered by an alienating soundtrack. It's gripping, to say the least.

The Ritual (2017), dir. David Bruckner

Reviewing and discussing Horror cinema is hard as the truly notable films are best experienced without the burden of knowledge: the viewer should be blindsided by the unknowable terror as much as the characters. That is to say, I can't openly talk about why The Ritual (2017) is great. You should watch it for yourself and get absolutely smack-jawed by the experience.

Society: The Horror (1989), dir. Brian Yuzna

This is unpleasant on an existential level and that, in turn, makes it a really effective Horror. It builds itself as a Kafkian nightmare about the dread of Conformism, feeling out of place in a Society ruled by the white and wealthy, a classic Suburban nightmare scenario. It morphs into an indictment of Capitalism and Classism when the grotesque and revolting third act slimes its way into balls-to-the-wall satire. Bill Warlock (Eddie from Baywatch) puts on the performance of a lifetime as the justifiably paranoid teen protagonist. Shout out to the credited "surreal make-up artist", a man named Screaming Mad George. He did too much of a good job, let me tell you. Needless to say, I recommend this perturbing visual madness with all the content warnings imaginable.

Society waits for you.

Overlord (2018), dir. Julius Avery

I watched Overlord and you should too! It begins as a slickly directed World War II drama before it organically develops into a spectacularly gruesome, intense Action Horror punctuated by a Chef's Kiss of a climax. It gets a special recommendation for the cathartic abuse of nazies! This is the Wolfenstein adaptation you have always wanted.

Willy's Wonderland (2021), dir. Kevin Lewis

Since you can never have enough of Nicolas Cage, here's Willy's Wonderland: a self-aware, genre-flipping, D-grade schlock with the presence of our favourite actor silently and menacingly staring at things - which he does, in spades. The fact that he kills off a bunch of Not-FNAF animatronics is just the icing on the cake! Let me be clear: he does not speak a single word throughout the flick. He's effectively playing "Silent Videogame Protagonist" and his sheer magnetism carries this diegesis to the finish line. A lesser actor would have not been able to pull this off. In all seriousness, Willy's Wonderland works squarely because The Cage was onboard with it. The direction is otherwise unremarkable, the production is even cheaper that one might expect and the rest of the cast is mere fodder. The Cage was its only ace and it played the right hand! That's a whole lot more entertainment value than a film seemingly designed to anger Freddy Fazbear's gooners would realistically deserve. You should watch it if you really want to see Nicolas Cage make sweet love to a pinball machine. Apropos of nothing, did you know that pretentious hack/real life human piss stain Scott Cawthon is a top Republican donor and a pro-lifer? I thought that would be cool information to remember.

The Endless (2017), dir. Justin Benson e Aaron Moorhead

Here's another cosmically disconcerting recommendation for the Lovecraft crowd in the back: if you're looking for a uniquely scary film that deals with the Fear of the Unknown, drowns itself in breath-taking atmosphere and exquisite Uncertainty, I recommend you to watch The Endless. It might knock your existential socks off!

Calamity of a Zombie Girl (2018), dir. Hideaki Iwami

I have kept the "best" for last! Calamity of a Zombie Girl is the weirdest Slasher I have ever seen, mostly due to its inability to keep track of its own genre. It's a B-movie with guts, blood and nudity, a supernatural lesbian romance, a martial arts film and a screwy, goofy comedy all rolled into one cheap-looking animated feature.

The editing is atrocious, constantly abusing the fade-to-black transition without rhyme or reason, the dialogues are inane and contrived, the animation is abysmal (it's a low-budget production by Gonzo, you see) and tonal consistency is downright mythical. In spite of all that, or because of it, the aforementioned bizarre nature of its premise and execution makes it incredibly fun (and funny) to behold, especially when genres collide with each other in relentless, brutal fashion. From the victims' point-of-view (the especially idiotic and ultimately useless extras, I should say) this film plays out like a traditional Slasher flick but from the perspective of the killer, the re-animated zombie girl herself, this is her own action packed Ecchi comedy.

Her first kill occurs as a goof on her part: she shoves a man off like a "dainty dame" and accidentally cracks his skull wide open on a column. Soon after, she rips a guy's arm because he was getting "too friendly" with her and scolds him for his inappropriate behaviour. She then proceeds to have a fight scene with one of the expendable extras because her opponent just happened to be a self-taught Kung Fu master. Also, her undead maid (because of course there's an undead maid) gets kidnapped and she must rescue her! This string of barely held-together nonsense leads to a spectacularly convoluted third act that somehow involves an old abandoned church, a school gym, a game of Anime Sports Ball and a literal Saved by the Bell moment. Did I mention this is all supposed to take place in a non-specific university campus in Japan? Because otherwise you might think the film is happening in two completely different continents! Aside from the immensely idiotic fading transitions, Calamity of a Zombie Girl is hilarious and enjoyable. It's pure, untainted, excellently awful schlock carried to the finish line by the sheer strength of its befuddling ideas. Watch it and tell your friends about it!

Merry Spookmas, you little freaks! --- Follow Madhog on:

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[pandoramsbox]

Sci-Fi Saturday: Invisible Agent

Week 23:

Film(s): Invisible Agent (Dir. Edwin L. Marin, 1942, USA)

Viewing Format: DVD

Date Watched: 2021-11-19

Rationale for Inclusion: 

As I wrote in my post about Dr. Cyclops (Dir. Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1940, USA) a few weeks back, most of the purer works of science fiction in the 1940s were being produced in serial or short format, whilst features were mostly horror hybrids, and frequently linked to past Universal Horror movies or adaptations of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As a result, this post will be the last one on sci-fi films of the 1940s, and also will finally feature one of the Universal Monster sequels.

While the sequels to Frankenstein (Dir. James Whale, 1931, USA) leaned more into fantasy and horror, the sequels to The Invisible Man (Dir. James Whale, 1933, USA) showed more cross-genre compatibility. The first sequel, The Invisible Man Returns (Dir. Joe May, 1940, USA), sticks to the horror, sci-fi roots of the original with the added thriller narrative of a wrongly convicted man trying to prove his innocence of a murder. The second sequel, The Invisible Woman (Dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1940, USA), goes the comedy route, and narratively has little to do with the prior films apart from its title. The third sequel, Invisible Agent (Dir. Edwin L. Marin, 1942, USA), puts the invisibility serum of the original film towards the war effort in a sci-fi espionage film. Two more sequels followed, The Invisible Man's Revenge (Dir. Ford Beebe, 1944, USA) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (Dir. Charles Lamont, 1951, USA), which were a return to horror and comedy, respectively.

For all its cultural dominance during the 1940s, World War II rarely shows up directly in feature length sci-fi films of the era. Part of that has to do with the United States' late entry into the war, but also other mediums, like comic books and radio, being the preferred showcase of spectacular worlds and technology. The novelty of its espionage plot is why, out of all the Universal Monster sequels that also fit in the sci-fi genre, I thought Invisible Agent warranted inclusion on this survey.

Reactions:

Continuity within the Invisible Man series is frequently casual, since unlike the Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman films, no characters exist in multiple films. Invisible Agent does narratively connect back to The Invisible Man by having protagonist Frank Griffin Jr., alias Frank Raymond, (Jon Hall) be presented as the grandson of the first film's Dr. Jack Griffin, who possesses a copy of the recipe for the invisibility serum. Never mind the fact that in The Invisible Man Jack Griffin was not married, nor shown to be a philanderer, and deliberately destroyed the only existing copy of the invisibility serum formula; the filmmakers probably figured their audience would not have seen the 1933 film, or at least not recently enough for the change in continuity to be an issue.

Retroactive continuities, or as we say today "retcons", have been fixtures of popular media since popular mass media first took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, anyway. So it is safe to presume that audiences in 1942 were apt to just accept the changes with minimal reaction or thought. Increased access to past works in the post-modern, digital age have prompted a more negative response from devoted fan communities when continuity is deviated from. As a fan spoiled by access who typically watches The Invisible Man annually, I definitely responded to the retcon in Invisible Agent by thinking that it made no sense based on what was present in the original film.

However, retconning aside, having the grandson of Dr. Jack Griffin use the invisibility serum to help the United States government and Allies, instead of giving it to the Axis Powers, or maniacally sewing anarchy as a free agent with it, was the story that the era demanded. The film unfolds as a competent sci-fi, spy thriller with gimmicky yet clever effects moments to convey invisibility that were the true hallmark of the series.

The whole narrative is itself a work of Allied propaganda, but it only goes explicitly heavy handed during a speech of Griffin's whilst trying to get information out of the incarcerated Gestapo Standartenführer Karl Heiser (J. Edward Bromberg).

Given the history of German emigrants playing Nazis in American films during the war, it may be a surprise to modern audiences to discover German emigrant Peter Lorre in yellowface playing a Japanese agent, Baron Ikito. Lorre, who worked his way from France to England to America to get away from the Nazi regime as quickly as possible, had previously played Japanese detective Mr. Moto in eight films between 1937 and 1939, so audiences were accustomed to seeing him play Japanese characters. Between his experience playing Moto, and Lorre's skill as an actor, his performance of Baron Ikito is fairly neutral for a yellowface performance, albeit problematic by its very nature. 

Invisible Agent is an interesting cultural artifact. Its narrative is built on a respectable sci-fi concept and it places middle of the pack when it comes to Universal Monster sequels.

World War II and Nazis factor more deeply in later retro and period piece science fiction works than during the actual 1940s. It is somewhat disappointing, but if anything is an incentive to look more into the print offerings of the era.

Next week we move onto the 1950s: flying saucers, aliens, and all manner of atomic terrors.

[littleliongirl16]

Made a hyperspecific alignment chart!

In my mind, here's what the axes mean:

Chaotic to Lawful: how easy the epistolary element is to understand! This is less about whether the piece of media is confusing overall and more about whether the epistolary element is hard to follow, though they do bleed into eachother. For the record I don't think the confusion is bad in any of these stories, some of them just make you work slightly harder or wait slightly longer for information. For example in The Magnus Protocol we get various records and correspondences without full context because these people don't know the OIAR is listening in and arent intentionally giving it context. This makes some of the episodes, like the plant one, take more effort to understand. And in the short story Frequently Asked Questions About Your Craniotomy, the story is told mostly through the narrator's tangents while she's actually answering questions about craniotomies, so you do really have to wait for information.

Good to Evil: this is the scale of how much people would actually talk like that in a letter/diary/whatever form of epistolary it is. For example, Frankenstein? Nobody writes letters like that! Oh my god! Robert Walton mails his sister the novel length entire life story of his doomed crush instead of giving her more detail on his arctic expedition that she didn't know whether or not he would die on! Hell, Robert writes a good portion of his own life story that his sister definitely already knows in his letters just to give the audience context! Frankenstein doesn't heavily rely on being epistolary, though, it's just a framing device and an amusing one at that. Also despite the fact that I labeled them as good and evil, unrealistic epistolary definitely isn't bad. In both Welcome to Night Vale and Frequently Asked Questions, the strangeness of these characters rambling about their personal lives (and being allowed to ramble about their personal lives) in their respective radio show and FAQ is played for both humor and important, sometimes shockingly emotional characterization. Meanwhile Griffin and Sabine is a pen pal love story that feels a lot more like how people really write letters. To be fair, the author has the advantage of writing the characters' correspondence since their first meeting, so they're learning things about eachother for the first time with the audience. Dracula includes some diary entries that are really too detailed for the character to realistically remember all that from their day, but it goes in the good category because for the most part it feels like the information included is information the characters want to record or convey, not only something the author needs to get to the audience.

[draculadailytracker]

Do you know how many days there are emails from our good friends? I'm trying to track it on my reading tracker by episodes but it won't let me leave the total blank

Answer under a spoiler cut because I know some people don't want to know in advance~

You'll get Dracula Daily emails on 111 days. (Source: this post by @peachesanmemes. It includes detailed graphs and some statistics about entry lengths, which vary greatly.)