#especially the van helsing scenes

[xxnashiraxx]

Don't We Make a Lovely Couple?

I literally. 💀 I commissioned this lovely set of Astarion and Ofelia in place of Dracula and Anna from Ven Helsing from @bby-bel-art !!! Bel did such a beautiful, wonderful, mind-blowing job and I haven't stopped staring at these for days 🥺❤ THANK YOU SM FRIEND 🖤

This was not only a recreation of these scenes from the movie, but of @caffeinatedmunchkin's amazing 2 part fic (which you can read here and here!) of Ofelia and Astarion and their fun adventures jumping through vampire flicks from Earth- I literally cannot describe it well enough to do it the justice it deserves, but I strongly, no DIRELY, recommend anyone read it- it's beautifully written and completely separate to the fic, that you wouldn't need to read mine at all to enjoy it- as long as you like Astarion, BG3, and creatures of the night, then you're set!!!

I'm honestly still in shock about it, and I never felt I deserved anything so wonderful and thoughtful, but I am eternally grateful and I would like everyone who can, to please shower Rose and Bel in endless love for these beautiful pieces of art. I love you guys so much and I never would have thought playing this game a year ago'd bring me such lovely, kind, beautiful people 💕 You have my heart forever 💖

[misterradio]

HE SUCKS JONATHAN ON STAGE ?!???!!!!!!??????!!!!!????

[ophelialoveshandsomemen]

Say what you will about Van Helsing 2004; hate it, love it, be indifferent, But the All-Hallow's masquerade ball went sooooo hard and it had zero right to do so! It's a fun, campy, monster mash movie with wonderfully dated ( and expensive) cgi and non-stop action meant to be a popcorn flick one takes out to watch around spooky season. And it has this* chef's kiss* GORGEOUS 6 minute sequence plopped arbitrarily in the second act, which unexpectedly surpasses nearly every other ball in the last 30+ years of film( notable exception being the Cinderella 2015 ball) for literally no reason other than to be dramatic af.

Like feast your eyes on this Gothic masterpiece!!! Who doesn't want to immediately live in this picture?!??

They used those candles with oil in them so that they would have real candles, real string orchestra( I believe), probably around 100 real life extras( something which is tragically absent in modern film), said extras are all in beautiful fully decked-out costumes( which are in luxuriously dark colours, but nearly no fully black, another thing you cannot say for much modern cinema), REAL CIRQUE DU SOLEIL PERFORMERS for all the acrobatics!!!! Hell, instead of filming in a sound stage, where they could control the reverb and the acoustics and the size of the set and the bloody lighting ( they apparently had a heck of a time emulating the firelight for this sequence) and the temperature( it's very cold in stone churches!) better, they filmed in a Baroque church in Prague! As I said, peak dramatic splendour, jfc...

Think about that a second...They filmed a vampire masquerade in a Baroque Catholic Church( St. Nicholas' in Lesser Town, if you were curious) with amazing over-the-top acoustics and marble statues and real, tiled floors and marble pillars and a choir loft which they very much utilized, covered the pipe organ and the altar with a grand brocade curtain so it wouldn't be so obviously a, you know, a church! And there's a gold gilt elevated and canopied pulpit into which they put two vampire kiddies for, again, the sake of being dramatic.

And the costumes! They remind me of the 25th anniversary Phantom of the Opera Masquerade costumes. Same quality, like they're old, well-cared-for costumes pulled out of a warehouse, instead of fast industry churn-outs. With lots of trim and colour and masks and lace and feathers and..just...ugh.. they are all perfect! Just look at all the head pieces on the ladies and the hats on all the gentleman ( save Dracula of course) and the powdered wigs on the musicians. ANNNNDD! The dresses are historically correct!!!!!! It's the 80's bustle era! Nobody does the 80's bustle era in film anymore and it's a bummer. Oh and one other thing! Anna's ( and other women's) hair, at least here in the ball, is also historically accurate because it's all pinned up! None of those fucken modern beachwaves at a ball! Everybody's got updo's!

Gah, I swear, Dracula in his gold cloak really does things to me in this scene!

By the way, the acrobatics are bonkers in here for just background stuff!! Especially the random guys on unicycles and the dude playing the violin whilst standing on a ball...Like....WHAT?

Anyways, all this to say, that this masquerade ball feels sooo real and tangible and because of that it blows every other film out of the water, and no, I will not change my mind!!!!!

Here's a few more gifs, bcuz, why the hell not, this scene is sexy as fuu*ck?

Alright I need to go to bed now.

[kazz-brekker]

saw nosferatu and it was a freaky good time! some non-spoiler thoughts:

robert eggers watching bram stoker's dracula (1994) and noticing the story has dracula look like a normal dude when interacting with mina: hm. cowardly. rotting corpse or nothing.

bill skarsgard is unrecognizable in extremely creepy prosthetics but i do actually think the scariest thing in this movie was lily-rose depp's tongue in that one scene. was unfamiliar with her before this movie but she was really giving it her all.

the sound design in this movie was absolutely IMPECCABLE, especially during the sequence when thomas hutter arrives at orlok's castle. the creeping sense of dread!

perfect way to spend christmas night is watching nicholas hoult, terrified, run around a vampire's castle.

also very happy that a large amount of this movie takes place at night and it's not only visible but also looks great, lots of blue and silver shades.

gonna be honest i did forget the name of two of the side characters and was just mentally referring to them as van helsing and seward because everyone in this movie lines up perfectly with the characters from dracula.

i really do see why there are so many articles about the number of rats on set in this movie because that was. a LOT of rats.

beautiful costumes, especially the dresses and hair.

not sure i've ever seen a character in a film roll their r's as much as count orlok in this one.

could have used more of the cat!

[gothhabiba]

Nosferatu (2024)

I'll tell you right now that I'm going to call everyone by their Dracula names because I'm sorry but I don't know the proper ones

The camera angle when the first Germany part of the movie opens! you're so in the streets, so in the crowds. idk if that's the cinematography or just that I haven't seen a film on such a large screen in a long time?

The scenes with Count Orlac in the castle and how civil he is in his speech (demanding to be addressed by his proper title; forbidding Jonathan to leave but saying "you will stay as I advise," not e.g. "as I command"), and how thin but impenetrable that veneer of civility is. For "civility" read here all of its implications of "civilisation"

The first scene of the ship being in perfect profile, sailing on a sunny sea with picturesque clouds in the background, just like a painting!! like an Age of Sail painting, and all the things about aesthetics, colonialism, depiction-as-claiming-of-ownership, that that implies.

And then the next time you see the ship, it's storming, the camera pans in from over the stern and forward, the ship is rocking, it's much more down in it, the sunny idealism of imperialist fortune-making brought down to its gritty reality

The East As Contagion (free square)

Major missed opportunity to make the ship more explicitly imperialism-flavoured

Female Sexuality As Dangerous And Inviting Contagion (free square)

Lucy and Arthur already being married and having children, specifically her being pregnant again, Lucy and Arthur as "heterofuture" (after @metamatar), reproductive futurity, him being a shipman, their money being conspicuous and being from shipping--

then Mina having one of her episodes just as they're about to kiss, in the water, dress pulled up, legs open to the water (to the Contagion From The East), convulsing--! Inappropriate female sexuality (inadequately contained, inadequately future-oriented, the West as future, heterosexuality as future, female sequestration in the home to raise children who are also appropriately heterosexual as futurity) and how inappropriate female sexuality interrupts the heterofuture that Lucy & Arthur's almost-kiss represents.

Lucy being very light in colouring and lit so as to emphasise that fact, obsessively dressed in white and placed in all-white rooms, versus Mina being dark in colouring (I mean of hair & eyes) and dress, reproductive futurity as whiteness

The Insane Asylum piquing itself as morally upright, scientific, humane, modern, future-oriented institution; the doctor's "don't lock him [Renfield] up, we don't do that here"--and then of course he stays locked up and restrained, and more so than he was before the doctor spoke to him (so gently and kindly and civilly)

Renfield caressing a bird Dracula had given him and saying "master likes the pretty ones," Mina as bird, birds in cages as metaphor for Victorian womanhood and sequestration within the home, Jonathan saying immediately when the men plan to go hunt Dracula down that Mina isn't going

Something about the drunk (?) man gently banging his head against a wall whom they have to pass to get to Van Helsing's, and this coming on the heels of the scene in the asylum

Mina becoming poorly specifically when Jonathan leaves, her saying that she's unwell because he's gone, Lucy saying "and Jonathan leaving caused your..." and Mina finishing "melancholy." When, like, obviously what's being elided here is the idea that Mina is unwell because she's sexually unfulfilled, the Victorian idea that once a woman has sex she has to continue to or she'll become physically and mentally unwell--a series of ideas you may be most familiar with under the heading of "hysteria."

Mina talking about her "epilepsies," insert everything about Victorian medical science versus popular culture and how ambivalently epilepsy was treated as effectively demonic and uncontrollable on the one hand, or subjected to modernising theories of disease (including and especially mental illness) on the other hand--

which, obviously, the "science versus popular superstition" is a significant part of what animates this. I think they brought this out very well & maybe even a little too explicitly

The fact that it is Germany's (England's) "modern" and "scientific" ideas that allowed this to happen, when Nosferatu had grown weak in Transylvania because of the superstitions of the local populace and especially the "g*psies"--I have to think about it more but there's a countercurrent in there somewhere--expressing anxiety not necessarily on behalf of, but about, "Western" modernity and heterofuturity

That Mina x Jonathan sex scene was so good even & especially because of the demonic possession / doing-it-to-prove-a-point thing. they're so endlessly devoted to one another and I love them so much

Needed an intermission. really really needed an intermission

Just the sexiest Dracula adaptation ever. horniest by far, by far. yes, even including that other one, which really wasn't sexy or horny at all imo.

Whoever was involved in making this movie is very, very familiar with Victorian anxieties and motivations and rhetoric and very, very psychosexually disturbed. perfection

My girlfriend complained that all the sex was missionary-style but I think that worked perfectly. For one thing, think of "missionary" and all the colonial implications there. The implications of heterosexual reproduction specifically within marriage that it carries. Also the implications of domination that come with being physically on top of someone, and the fact that the way Nosferatu feeds on Jonathan bears close resemblance to the way he feeds on & has sex with Mina--

then Nosferatu apparently telling Mina that Jonathan was "pathetic" and "weak" and "womanish"--!!!!!!! And the image of spread legs (recall Mina's scene in the water, also Lucy after her death) as surrender. If all the sex and quasi-sex scenes weren't so formulaically heterosexual in this particular way, these parallels wouldn't work as well.

And speaking of Jonathan, it's also interesting that his seduction-by-three-brides-of-Dracula thing is cut out to emphasise instead Mina's seduction by Dracula. We don't get any of that reference to his "indiscretion" (with Mina holding his hand sympathetically, forgiving, perfect angelic Victorian wife) that we get in 1992.

Stupid ending. there is never a good or poetic or touching reason to kill the woman at the ending of a movie. it's always stupid. like I get that she sacrificed herself to save everyone and took agency by reversing things so that inside, within the home, within the bed was where the war was fought, and outside, with the men was just a diversion and I get that this is an intentional subversion of the Angel-in-the-Home bird-in-a-cage situation. I still think it's stupid.

When Jonathan kisses Mina's hand as she's naked, covered in blood, legs spread, covered by the body of Nosferatu, and he pulls away, and he's so covered in tears and snot and saliva and all those liquids make so many stringy trails in the backlit space between her hand and his face as he pulls away. so so so good.

the sound design was incredible

[wretchedwitchpussy]

Thoughts on new WWDITS episode 6x07:

•Guidor is a red herring and I'm pretty sure we saw Nandor give up on her during the post credits scene when he saw Jerry at the door because we've seen previously whenever there's a little bit of resistance to his rebound loneliness relationships he tends to give up immediately. He literally said, "Fuck it," and gave up immediately when he was met with the smallest amount of resistance in the form of Jerry.

•We have seen that Nandor is routinely out of touch with his feelings especially when he's coping. He will actively say one thing because he's trying to convince himself of that thing, even though he feels another way. I believe that he doesn't actually think that humans are replaceable, because Guillermo is proof to the contrary. The amount of times that he has protected, stayed loyal to, saved Guillermo says that he doesn't believe that.

•I'm buying into the whole "Guillermo not being fully transformed means that he's an EV" theory and I'm pretty sure that's why Colin punched the shit out of him. Colin is the embodiment of milk toast. We've literally never once seen Colin angry EVER. Except once. EXCEPT when he was having an EV-off with Evie. I think Guillermo is feeding off of others' emotions (which emotion I'm not sure?? Possibly respect or admiration? We've seen EVs feed off of a variety of different emotions) and Colin got really fucking angry because he sensed competition, like he did with Evie. I don't think Guillermo knows he's feeding though, obviously, because I think we would see a lot more of the office staff fatigued/tired if he was trying to actively feed. Though I don't know why Colin wouldn't have picked up on it like he did with Evie—something something Van Helsing blood something something Colin is still a new EV because he was just born so he's not as good at sussing out competition yet?????

•The reason I think Guillermo is feeding off of admiration or something similar like respect is because we've seen that the office staff react positively to people putting others down. When Guillermo makes fun of Colin during their bit in the conference room, the room swells with "oooohs" and laughter. I think they admire Guillermo in this moment. Cue Colin punch. The next time, Guillermo is trying to talk to the office about mental health and be a "hero" for Colin, trying to give him some grace. I would imagine this would evoke a lot of admiration or respect again, since he's trying to be kind to Colin and very publicly offer him help. Cue another beatdown from Colin.

•I think that this would also fall neatly into Guillermo's arc of always having wanted respect and admiration from others. He's always wanted to feel like someone worthy of that.

•I don't exactly know how that would really work though in continuing his arc because I feel like I would rather have him find out that he needs self-respect and self admiration before finding that another people? But that's the best I got.

•Lazlo is most definitely going to turn Sean and probably Charmaine into vampires or learn something about mortality in the process if he doesn't

•Basically Paul Simms when I catch you. Paul when I fucking GET you.

•Add your thoughts

[bluecatwriter]

*evil sidekick voice* I am sorry, my lord... I have failed you...

Have seriously none of you shipped Renfield and Van Helsing??? Cowards???

[tanpopomugishu]

Anathema brought Aziraphale to a Halloween party, where he met Crowley. They hit it off right away, went dancing, and something unexpected happened.

(Click image for better quality) A: You're actually a vampire? I thought those were just costumes!!! C: These are real vintage clothes, you know, especially tailored just for me, from the 1800's, I think, and you're a werewolf? A: Not exactly a wolf... C: Huh? A: I'm a cat... C: Whot? A: I'M A CAT!!! ---- A closer look at their faces under the cut

---- So in this AU, Aziraphale is a werecat, Crowey is a vampire, and Anathema is still a witch. That mirror that exposed them is an enchanted mirror. This is heavily inspired by that mirror scene from Van Helsing, with an added twist.  😉 ---- 🖌 Yes it isn't Halloween yet, I'm posting it here as soon as possible before I lose my nerves.. The idea sounded great in my head, but once I finished it, I started having doubts. But oh well, hope you guys enjoy this. @goodomensafterdark

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Gene Kelly (Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, The Pirate)—It's hard to know where to start with Gene Kelly because he did so, so much, of such a high quality, from the ballet scenes in "An American in Paris" to the classy suave movie star act of "Singin' in the Rain" to the incredibly camp, sexy "The Pirate". He just never stopped finding cool ways to do things and he's just brilliant to watch, especially when he's dancing, but even when he's doing drama or being silly! He's one of those guys who could genuinely do it all and just radiates charisma through the screen, literally an #icon in every sense of the word.

Peter Cushing (Van Helsing, Dracula, Dr. Who and the Daleks)—His cheekbones. His. Cheekbones.

This is round 2 of the bracket. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage man.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Peter Cushing propaganda:

Submitted: this gifset

Gene Kelly propaganda:

[a-green-misstep]

Nandor x Guillermo episode list

This is a list of all the nandermo moments in What We Do in The Shadows (TV show). A good number of episodes have nothing substantial in them relating to the ship other then maybe one scene, and so are skippable.

W.I.P I've done seasons 1 to 5 so far.

Rating system:

A : Top tier interaction and or important for plot

B : Less important overall, but got some fluff in there

C : May having nothing or close to nothing, skippable

Season 1

Episode: 1 A

This is the pilot, important as it introduces the characters, their wants and desires (Gizmo wants to be a vampire) and there dynamics (master and familiar).

Creepy paper

26:10 the gift.

“he made Guillermo a portrait made out of glitter because he remembered his anniversary and wanted to give him something for it. He got the glitter to put on his face because he liked it and then used it to make a portrait for Guillermo. he used something he liked to make him a present and put some thought and time and effort in it. “ - @starlightmesss

Episode: 2 C

Skip

Episode: 3 C

Mostly skippable 

15:37 “I don't want you to die, master.”

Episode: 4 A

Guillermo is “heartbroken” over Nandors decision not to bite him

Especially the start of the episode is quite cute bonding between them

However also an important portrayal of how poorly Guillermo is treated  

Guillermo “quits” for the first time

Nandor shows his appreciation

“You are my…. Friend”

Episode: 5 C

1:00-2:00min bonding and playing chess together

Otherwise nothing

Episode: 6 B

Mostly skippable

18:00 Guillermo kills the Baron

Episode: 7 A

The Vampiric Counvil & The Vampire slayer/savior

Guillermo makes some important moves

Literally saves Nandors life

Episode: 8  A

Nandor has lost his country and sad about it

Guillermo tries to get him to become a US citizen  

Guillermos feelings about not being turned 

“Will you stop fucking complaining.” 🫢

First Nandermo late-night fight/deep conversation

“Guillermo I appreciate you…”

Episode: 9 A

A very horny epsiode

Nandor being possessive when Laszlo and Nadja are ordering Guillermo around

Guillermo dosent kiss :(

Guillermo being very shy about the orgy, a Catholic… yikes

Guillermo tries The Dildos(TM)

Nandor defending Guillermo when Laszlo is insulting him

Nandor checking on Guillermo in his room and basically sitting in Guillermo's lap 😂

“You’d you cum?”

Episode: 10 A

Important for the plot!

“ the heart wants what the heart wants”

Seman

Nandors 37 wives + kids

Guillermo does a DNA test! And is related to Van Helsing…

Guillermo pours holy water on Nandor

Holding hands as he gets into bed :) 

Nose boop

____________________________

Season 2

Episode: 1  B

Guillermo is the vampire slayer

15:20-16:20 Guillermo is underappreciated and doesn't appreciate it

18:30 Nandor saves Guillermos life

21:00 Guillermos plan B

Episode: 2 C

2:50 sassy GiGi

Holding hands and giggling at jokes

Otherwise skip

Episode 3:  B

19:30-20:00 “I guess I turned that part of my brain off, with the feelings and emotions”.

Guillermo facing the fact he's a murdered, and what that means for him (and as such his relationship with the vamps)

Otherwise a skip

Episode 4:  B

Not much Nandermo stuff, but an important episode for Guillermo's development + Derek

1:10 Guillermo teaches Nandor how to use a computer, its cute.

“Id never forgive myself if anything happened to Nandor”

Hug rejected :(

Guillermo staying with Nandor to help him sleep as music plays :)

Episode 5:  C

13:25 “Guillermo get over here and put your neck in my mouth”

Skip

Episode 6: C

2:00 Nandor tells some random vamp to kill Guillermo -_- 

Skip

Episode 7:  A

6:15 “Hes likes the last donut in the display case” 🙁

“It use to be difficult to resist” in relation to eating Guillermo 

Guillermo slays again! 

“Are you trying to make a girlfriend out of dust?”

Nandor is very chill with the vampire killing, even lies for him

FIRST instance of Guillermo almost stabbing Nandor, there is tension

Episode 8: A

Important

Nandor ex past familiar shows up 

Nandor tells Guillermo he should leave

“Are you going to be alright without me?”

Nandor whispers “your being stupid” as Guillermo leaves to sad breakup music :((((

GUILLERMO CRYING

Guillermo  breaks up with nandor  quits and finds a new  mommy  master 

Each feel disrespected

Nandor visiting Guillermo's room and asking his new master to be kind to him

Nandor finding Guillermo running in the snow

“I have been unhappy since you left… i just want to know what i can do to bring you home”

Guillermo got a weekend! Workers rights! (he needs to unionize)

Nandor promises to turn Guillermo… at some point

The boys flying off into the night 🙂

Episode: 9 B

Skip to the end

15:30 Memos man milk

He literally has jars full of Nandors “seed”

Nandor fucks Lazlo

Episode 10: A

THEATRE DE VAMPIRE, I love IWAV references 

Nandor plays peak a boo, and complains that Guillermos not holding his hand

Guillermo quits #3 and moves home

Nandors going through the stages of grief/breakup

“It's good to be wanted”

The vampires are on trial

Nandor sells out and yet covers up for Gizmo 

“When you cared about someone, and they just walk out the door”

Guillermo saves the vamps #2

____________________________

Season 3

Episode 1:  A

Gizmos in prison (sike) 

Nandor does care about him and shows him through little acts, like gift giving (nandors love language???)

Nandor argues to not kill Gizmo - “Hes the only one that can protect us” 

“Co-dependent much 🤪” - G after mentioning how he still wants to be their servant even though they want to kill him 

THE WARRIOR CODE, the code, the code between men, the warrior code. Nandor owes him a debt of eternal gratitude and mercy now

The sit-down convo in the basement is so sweet. I feel like we get more one-on-one convos between them than we do Nadja and Lazlo, which I feel like says.... something.

Nandor bringing him chicken that he has been preparing (let sit out at room temp) for days :) ?

Nandor standing with Gizmo whilst watching the tape from the vampiric council even though he was sitting a second ago.

Gizmos really big smile when Nandor says they aren't going to kill him (the bar is in hell) 

“Your guys are like my family” and then immediately told to stop by Nandor 😬(hey are we sure this ship is worth it?)

Episode 2: AA

Gizmo training in stabbing, and then with ✝️ cross brass knuckles is hilarious

Gizmo making poop jokes to Nandor lmao, i like seeing the silly bits of life that arent sad silly

Guillermo knowing Nandors exact measurements is very… intimate

Nandor flirting with the gym lady Meg :0 mans looking for a partner 

Gizmos is way too excited about looking just like Nandor

Gizmos' date with Meg is just so sweet, and her making him realize his feelings/him denying those feelings and fleeing (and as such what Nandor's feelings probably are) is one of my favourite scenes in the whole show, also SHOUT OUT to Kayvan for the phenomenal acting. I wish we had gotten to see Gizmo become friends with Meg later on :(

Meg: You like women and men! Nandor: Yes!  BFFR

Nandors going through things :(((( he is a "soft boy" 

Episode 3: A

Nandor is fucking and the gang is worried about him

Why did Gizmo know what Nandors sex sounds sound like

Nevermind… the dildostm

Nandor is in love with Gail! He knows her favourite yoghurt :)

Also, I wonder what the meds gizmo are taking

Gizmo immediately attempts to sabotage Nadors relationship when he finds out he's going to propose and turn her into a vampire 🫢

Yet gail compares Nandor to a sardine  😬

ASS OUT (and blurred cock and balls) hey have I ever mentioned hes hot

The juxtaposition between Gail who doesn't really care about Nandor, and doesn't want to be a vampire vs Guillermo who cares about him every moment and desperately wants to be a vampire. And how Nandor “loves” Gail, but has historically treated Gizmo like crap (even tho he does clearly care for him)

Guillermo watching Twilight with a corps dressed as Nandor…. certainly is something 

He is also way too happy when everyone else is pissed with Nandor for the fucking a werewolf thing 

Guillermo is Nandors “heart guard” omg

Nandor turns Gail into a vamp in front of Guillermo :( 

Guillermo comforting Nandor at the end of the episode :(

Episode 4: AAA

Quick shout out to Nadja for backing it up to the theme song

Guillermo staring at his useless master trying to use a fork and knife 0_0

Nandor defending Guillermo being a bodyguard and not a familiar anymore!

Nandor keeps repeatedly looking at G to see if the others acting interested in him is making him happier :D

The change in expression on Nadors face when they ask if Guillermo has a girlfriend and then ask if he has a boyfriend 👀 (it goes from  😁to  😬😐) WHATS UP WITH THAT NANDOR? (no but genuinely I'd never seen that before, that feels like something intentional) 

My boy gizmo is in the closet, hes got that catholic guilt :/

Nandor staring at him whilst Lazlo talking about how great sex is🧍🏻

I am truly surprised by how deeply Nandor is looking at Guillermo as Lazlo says “Before they meet the one”

Gizmo almost comes out but is interrupted, and Nandor just has this deeply caring look on his face as Guillermo is saying this, and then when he gets interpreted you can see in the foreground this look of disappointment on Nandors face :(

Guillermo sitting alone looking sad as everyone else leaves, and in the background, you can hear Nador shouting with joy :(

Yo, are we sure this is a comedy?

Guillermo worried about Nandor gambling too much + “Nap naps”

Nandor find out about how the universe works, and it is actually a pretty big deal for his character

Love that the episode ends with them walking side by side at the back of the group 

Episode 5:  C

skip

Guillermo fondling Nandors cape

16:40 Guillermo the schemer

Episode 6:  B

Pretty much a skip

Nandor bragging about Guillermos skills to the Baron

“How do you know what vampire piss tastes like” 🤨

GUILLER SLAPS NANDOR and another “stop feeling sorry for yourself”, this mans job half the time is just to get him out of his pity parties

Gizmos bait ouch

Guillermo shaking ass to entice a vamp

Nandor pulls Guillermo out of the way of danger and takes his place

Episode 7: C

skip

The guide flirting with Guillermo lmao

Nandor taking along Guillermo for help with the Nadja quest

Episode 8:  AAA

This ones important!

Creepy paper! Gizmo plans Nandor a party!

Gizmo made Nandor dolls of both of them 🥹

Vampire depression :(     “Nandors in crisis 😨”

Nandor casually taking a beautiful knee

Nandor joins a cult

Time for a very important scene

Gizmo refuses to give Nandor his things so that he wont go 

Gizmo running after Nandor

Nandor relieves Guillermo of his service, firing him 

N: “It is time for me to find happiness” G: “Well I want to find happiness too!”

They are both unhappy.

“Oh boy don't give me this shit” as Guillermo once again points out how long he's spent in Nandor’s service trying to make him happy :(

Gizmo begging to be a vampire, so he can finally be happy

N: "I've grown to have some affection for you. just a little bit you know?" G: “And I for you” N: "Well obviously, but vampirism is a curse- and I- care for you too much to burden you with that. it would way too heavily on my conscience..." "boop! there's that smile...”

When Gizmo says “And I for you”, Nandor looks away, in shame?

Guillermo ends the conversation alone and crying.

We then skip to a month later, Gizmo talking about how hes hurt, and staring at the nandor doll he made sadly.

“I guess I know how it feels, every time I left or I quit…” That one hurt, and this idea is important and will be brought back up in season 6 episode 5.

They both care for each other, and they are both sad and hurt ughhhh

Nandor in the short shorts…

G: “If anything wasn't okay I couldn't live with myself”

Literal sacrificial self-harm with the pulling out of the teeth, like that vampire lashes

The SLAYER is back!

Holding hands as he saves him… against his will

“You just punched Jeremey!” “FUCK JEREMY!”

I dont even know what to say about the final argument in the car. Nandor is just so sad, and its horrible because that also means that Guillermo isnt enough to make him happy.

Episode 9: A

Lmao been in jail so long his hair has grown again

Third show up of the Nandor doll

Guillermo is downgraded to familiar again :( after everything

“I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired” 

The SuperSlumber

Nandor snatching his hand away from Guillermo as he steps into his coffin

Guillermo needs a minute alone 🙁

N: “Again with the make me a vampire shit 😠”

G: “No […] I just don't want you to go…”

Nandors has had orgasms that are longer than 2 hours?! Yeesh

Guillermo appears to be very familiar with the length and girth of Nandors 🍆

Perhaps more of a grower than a shower?

wiggilines

Guillermo looking shell-shocked in the corner

“It seems pretty average to me”, Guerillmo looking at the camera whispering “No” 😐

Guillermo calling the gang a family, and getting Nandor from his super slumber so the family can be all together (do we think the camera crew is family too?) 

Episode 10:  A

Guillermo does deserve to be a vampire, I mean he is a serial killer, he’d fit in well

“Fuck you”

Guillermo running after Nandor as Nandor tells his wows of unfound love (bro hes right behind you)

Nandor is leaving Staten Island, and Guillermo is lost and confused 🙁

“You are one of the things I need to get away from” …. Ouch 

Not only does Nandor make Guillermo plan the travels AWAY FROM GUILLERMO for him, but then rubs it in that hes not made him a vampire

Guillermo running out of the room and to Nandors room, and Nandor going to comfort him in the most demeaning manner possible

“The only reason your alive is because i let you live”

Do you think Guillermo was shitting himself during this scene? 

Guillermo putting Nandor in a headlock and pushing him onto his knees and whisper in his ears about how he didnt want him to feel weak!!! 

NANDORS FIGHTIN BACK

PLANCHA!!

Oh my god the knife being thrown towards Guillermo's head, him catching it the “uhuhuh” and throwing it into the portrait of nandor

Nandor saying “Yes! Yes! This is what I've been waiting for” as Guillermo overpowers him is homoerotic text if I've ever seen it

Bro the heavy breathing as he says “you can take care of me” and asking him to join him as his companion around the world, and that he will turn him into a vampire at the banks of his homeland oh my god…

“Traveling the whole world with my Nand..Master!” YOUR NANDOR YOU SAY?? As he packs the Nandor doll

Nandor shouts for Guillermo at the train station and then leaves his suitcase behind as you embark on his journey alone.

____________________________

Season 4

Episode 1: A

The 1-year time skip is insane 

WHATSUUUUUUPPPPP

“I wish Guillermo was here :( “

Poor Guillermo literally falls through the floor

NANDOR JUMPS IN TO SAVE HIM!

I feel like in season 1 or 2 nandor would never have saved him

Nandor helping Guillermo dry off :( and wants to help him

Nandor “forgiving” Guillermo for being locked into a crate 😒

Nandor Finally remembers Gizmo's last name! And he looks aroused about it 

“Always my friend… by some definition of the word” 

Nandors getting married! And wants Guillermo to be his best man ?!? “now don't be jealous” lmao, ya that boy has been whipped for a decade, but then he was disappointed that he wasn't jealous

Guillermo putting Nandor in his place with just a look when he's laughing at him!

Guillermo the live-in nanny

Episode 2: A

Guillermo literally pulling a knife on the Gine to protect nandor.

Man wives! Love our Pan king

Guillermo got a boyfriend :) <3

He can not wait to explore Kublies body ;)

Guillermo putting Nandor in his place again with a silent and disappointed look 

Marwa my poor girl is now to be wed to Nandor, a shit fate if I do say so myself, especially as he changes her physically and mentally at a wim :( 

Episode 3:  B

He literally made the perfect woman, and yet she is still not enough

In-depth penis discussion

Guillermo has a “very shrewd and incisive mind when it comes to the penis stuff” apparently

Love the idea that Guillermo is now top of mind when Nandor's fucking and sucking

Yet unfortunatley, this does make him… limp

Guillermo being invited to see the penis not once, but twice

Episode 4: A

Guillermo's boyfriend's second sighting!

Nandor says Guillermo could pass as an Orc, Guillermo = not happy, and Nandor = looks sorta pleased about it

Oh poor Marwa :( 

https://www.tumblr.com/theshriekingsisterhood/690860073261596672/wwdits-s4-ep-4-promo-picture?source=share

NANDOR enters Guillermo into a goddamn fighting ring when he explicitly tells him not too

Guillermo “that little fucker can move” de la Cruz

“THAT MY FUCKING GUY!”

Guillermo managing to fuck up two guys in a row effortlessly is sorta hot 

“My closest companion for 13 years!” :(

“KILL MY FREIND! KILL MY FREIND! KILL MY FREIND!” At least he sees him as a friend, ugh

This brawl is sorta hot

The sassy ass “I didn't have to (cheat)!” is killing me! Damn they flirting

STAKES TO THE HEAD ONCE AGAIN, third(?) Instance of Guillermo trying to stab Nandor.

Oh my god sword fighting, and the “you're really starting to piss me off!”... hot

“Stop hiding behind Brian!

Guillermo calling him a fucking dick

Nandor getting more worried that he might have killed Guillermo and then Guillermo fucking kicking down the door of the building he fell through

“They are right Guillermo, finish me off”

“Thinking once again about how in WWDITS 4x02 Nandor bins one of his male wives for not letting him win in a fight and then in episode 4x04 Guillermo … lets Nandor win in a fight.”  - @luckshiptoshore

Epiosde 5: C

Nandor thinks Guillermo is jealous of nandor and lazlos fake gay rimming

Our poor single dad Guillermo 

“ you can burry your own nuts!”

Epsiode 6: A

Nandor trying to sabotage his own marriage / make it perfect

And Guillermo is being run ragged about it

Nandor reminiscing about “ a rainy Sunday together” watching TV shows and then acting like it's not special. Let's be real, if you remember a random rainy Sunday with your friend it is because it was special 

Nandor is an unreliable narrator, which constantly makes statements and then re-negs their importance. He is constantly bringing up the fact that Guillermo is not special after describing how he is, the fact he just must make that comment sorta shows that perhaps he doesn't mean it. It's more of a defence mechanism them anything else. It's not allowed to be special, because if those moments are special then that means that Guillermo is special… but he is a familiar that cant handle vampirism, so he cannot be special to the vampire nandor the relentless, because it's not allowed.

Lovers spat whilst wedding planning

Guillermo literally destroys the living room in the background out of anger

THE WEDDING IS HERE

And Nandors still try to self-sabotage and Guillermo points it out

Emotional talk between the boys about how Nandor is scared in this relationship and how this marriage is a big deal.

“If you get afraid I'll be there” “Thank you, Guillermo, you are my best…. Man" 🥹

Lmao the line of objectors

Guillermo looking up to Nandor smiling at 16:12

The fact that Nandors not turning Marwa into a Vamp :( 

Marwa being wished into loving everything Nandor loves, and then expressing so much love, gratitude and physical affection to Guillermo

🎵 WHO WILL CUM FIRST ON THE WEDDING NIGHT! 🎵

Nandor going to search for Guillermo during the after-party, and putting his jacket on him after he finds him asleep on a sofa 🥹🥹🥹

Episode 7:  B

skip to 19:00

Gizmo comes out to his family as ––GAY–– !!!

The vamps are his family too :)

"bad enough his relationship with nandor" lmao Nadja sees it too!!

everyone's gay! + Sassy Gizmo 😌

Episode 8: C

Poor Marwa, Nandor keeps making remarks about how hes changed her so much he doesn't even like her any more, and how “the novelty weres off” 🙁

Nandor planning the perfect space for him to get railed by a big man (and Guillermo turning away awkwardly)

Marwa spending so much time to make the “man” cave and then taking it over is very slay of her

Episode 9:  A

Guillermo telling us about Freddie his boyfriend finally! (also a weekend trip to New York from London?? Goddamn)

Jeremy introduced to Nandor as his Boyfreind… and the energy is weird from Nandor

What the fuck is wrong with you Nandor, Guillermo has a man and you get a crush on him immediately??? Jealousy is not pretty on you Nandor 

Marwa my beloved no!!!! WTF NANDOR, this shit is a horror movie

yall know that show Kevnin Can Fuck Himself? Ya this feels like that, except he are stuff in kevin/nandors perspective. 

Also… more gay nandor stuff atleast, this must be some physico symetic type thing were he dosent want to be with freidy, he wants to be freddy, cause freddy is what Guillermo likes.

You see how nandor and Guillermo are doin the same things? Almost like they are very similar, and could be really fun with each other if they just let themselves??

Also Guillermo talking about how hes thinking about Nandor all the time 👀

Guillermo and freddie walking in on Nandor and Marwa Freddie naked my the fire covered in furs is insane 

Guillermo putting Nandor in his fucking place once again for doing shity things! 

“You couldn't just let me have one thing of my own!”

“I really care about him!” “I know… :( “ hes a fucking idiot but like, he didnt mean to hurt guillermo and now he feels bad that he did 

Guillermo crying whilst explaining how hes never had a boyfriend before and how Nandor has ruined it is so sad, and also so ex coded right?

Freddie selfcest

Episode 10: A

Guillermo’s getting bored of the job

They are stuck in a never-ending hamster wheel 

Guillermo and Nandors vastly differing view of the world and time, Nandor literally has all the time in the world and is now bored oh the whole “finding love” thing, whilst Guillermo can feel the time hes lost sitting in that damn mansion. 

Everything stays the same

Guillermo quits #4 !

GUILLERMOS GETTING VAMPED BY DEREK!

____________________________

Season 5

Episode 1: A

Guillermo does not appear to be happy, and is dodging the vampire question.

Nandor’s in a good place :) 

Nandor and Guillermo go on a date to a basketball game! (What was the budget for that 3-second scene?!?!?)

Nandor laughing at Guillermo about even the idea of him being a vampire :(

Nandor breaking down a door to see what Guillermo is doing is so intense for no reason

Gizzmo literally thinks Nandor is about to kill him, damn (also very hot of Nandor)

Nandor thinking he missed Gizzmos birthday and feeling bad about it :,)

“Change into your nicest shity sweater :)” bffr

Guillermo having a damn panic attack low key 

Nandor mkaing fun of Guillermo wanting to Become a vampire again :(((

1. Guillermo being in denial about Nandor ever turning him into a vampire 2. Guillermo swooning over Nandor “he cares about me a lot, and he does a lot of really nice things for me 🤭”, he looks like he would be giggling and kicking his feet if he could right now, cute, but saaaaaaaaaaad. 3. “Cute montage” my ass oh my god

🫵 VAMPIRISM/BITING AS A METAPHOR FOR SEX OH MY GOD 

Gizzmo talking about his crush to a one night tght stand, that one night stand asking “ are you sure you want to do this?” (a line VERY often used in media when gaining consent during a hesitant sex scene), and followed by “yes”, i just didnt think it would happen (lossing my V-card (aka vampire card)) like this.”

completly forgot about guillermo almost saying no to being turned :( 

Guillermo trying to sit next to Nandor and Nandor not letting him :(((( 

Oh god this dinner is so sad

Nandor: “[whilst still laughing and guillermo and the idea of him becoming a vampire] Guillermo i’m sorry, eventually, of course i will definitly be turining you into a vampire, when the time is right.” 

“She didnt trust you, you hadent given her a reason to.” - Armand, interview with a vampire

Do you guys see what im seeing???? Cause it hurts, espcially knowing what happened in Season 6 episode 5.

Yo Nandor looking so hurt, he would kill gizmo AND THEN KILL HIMSELF??? That seems gay

Nandor looking for a “Guillermos gifts” shop oml 

Guillermo trying to bite into Derek is hilarious

HOLY SHIT, I feeling like showing a box cutter go into someones arm is the most grusome thing this show has shown oh my god 

Glasses less gguillermo!

Guillermo brushing nandors hair so delicatly :3, also oh my got Nandor is so much taller then him 

Bed time story and birthday present!!!he got him a foot locker because guillermo said he wanted one :((( that shit is so cute

“were all just doing what it takes to  survive” “were all just hiding in plain site”, Guillermo is not doing okay

it feels like he lost his virginity to early, when he wasn’t ready, and with just a one night stand, and he regrets it, but saying the truth to the person he cares about the most, wouldn’t lead to confront, just to more pain on both sides :(. bro i think guillermo cheated.

Episode 2: A

Nandor feels Guillermo being distant

“….bat…”

Lazlo knows!!

Guillermo looking scared oh Lazlo omg

“Please don't tell nandor!” “I don't know if he would even survive it.” ouch! Also, Guillermos sad puppy eyes when Lazlo says that is so sad 

GUILLERMO CRYING NOOOOOO

Man is a bottom 

Lazlo being willing to convince Nandor to turn Gizzmo into a vampire inorder to protect Guillermo :(

Episode 3:  A

Guillermo looking confused and horrified at the idea of a sean pride parade

Guillermo doing his little interviews in his new coffin/bed that Nandor gave him 🥹

Nandor and his little bird friend 

“Members of the LGBTQLMNOP Community!” honestly, with the brain scrammbelies, I forgive him, he is adorable 

“Literally the gayest things on the block!”

Nandor's jealous of Lazlo and Guillermo hanging out, hes literally lost for speech

“Vroom vroom!”

Nandor “soft after two bumps” the relentless

Cock ahoy

Guillermo immediately covering up the window during the day when nandor shows up

NANDOR GOES TO SPACE TO IMPRESS GUILLERMO AND ADMITS IT!

Its pride time baby! Happy pride Guillermo :) 

Lets have a clap for gay ;)

A firey decent back to earth with our lovely naked master

Nandor's butt, with trolls doll hair, and junk covered up only by a pride flag oh my god

Gay Guy :) 🏳️‍🌈

Episode 4: B

Nandor wants Guillermo to come to the guy with him, homoerotic 

Guillermo avoiding Nandor, and they both are sad about it :(

Nandor trying to make Guillermo jealous 

Nandor sad/angry that hes bad at getting freinds 

Nandor circumcision?!?!? Preformed by Guillermo?!?!?

Regenerated forskin

Nandor takes Guillermo to the movies

Epsiode 5: B

Nandor De Laurentiis (i genuinely call him this all the time) 

Guillermo going to a goodbye dinner with his mom and then its her god damn birthday :0

Nandor taking a cinderblock to the dick lmao 

Also Nandor looking for guillermo super casually “hes not back is he???”

Guillermo taking to his mom, and his soft and sad “i dont know…” when his mom asks him were his crufifcs is :( 

Guillermo crying :(( 

Nandor cutting down Colin so skillfully was super hot

Nandor lashing out at Guillermo and then immediately reggerting it when Guillermo takes it to heart :((((( bro why is this episode to sad

Epiosode 6: B

Why does guillermo know that nandors whacking it 

Guillermo falls when flying for the first time when Nandor calls for him, is it because: A. he got distracted and stopped focusing on flying, or B. super nervous around Nandor 

Noone helping guillermo with his broken god damn leg >:(

Drugged up Geillermo is so sweet

“The one i love most is Nandor, because hes like the queen bitch!” you heard it here first folks! 

Episode 7: C

Sky fucking 

“This is my DIARY! :(“

Guillermos a father 

“Having a wank?!”

Episode 8: A

Nandor and Lazlo fucking!!! Only 3 times a week tho :( 

Guillermo gets to sit at the main table with the vamps :)

Guillermo the slayer getting called out, and Nandor trying to cover for him :)

“RUN!!” “show him mercy!!” and then Nandor literally being dragged by the Barron whilst begging him “Baron, stop!”

Is Nadja okay? Why she want to die?? :(

Baron about Guillermo being turned not by Nandor: “It is a violation, a humiliation, a shame from which neither you nore Nador will every recover.” heyy uhhhh, i think he was right :(

Nandor being worried when the baron asks for a moment alone with Guillermo 

“I did all this because I wanted to be a great vampire, like Nandor”

Nandor begging for mercy for Guillermo

“Baron, I beg mercy! I know that Guillermo has made some mistakes, [...] but he did so to defend his master. Whatever Guillermos flaws may be, he has always been loyal to me…”

Dead Guillermo ?!??

Nandor craddeling “Guillermos” body in his lap and arms, whispering “oh no” to himself :(((

Nandor cutting back at the barron saying guillermo was just a familiar! 

“he was not just a familiar, he was my body guard, he was the best man at my wedding, he was my friend…”

Nandor shouting at Lazlo to stop as he cuts open his belly!

Nandor seems to be pathologically unable to show unrestrained affection for people (specifically guillermo) how many times has he shows affection or care for guillermo, just for it to be followed up by a cutting remarks? how many times has be gone to touch him and pulled away before reaching him?

“fly like the wind my little friend”

Guillermo in Nandors coffin!

“the first day guillermo become my familiar, he gave me a card… what did that card say?” your telling me he remembers what it says?? a decade+ later??? these mother fuckers forgot about jerry entirely, and he remembers a card a decade latter??? wow

“it said, to be a vampire is my dream, but to be your familiar is my honor, thank you for this opportunity” and tandoor mouthing the words too….. 😭

“we have a long history guillermo, i image that i know you almost better than anyone.”

Episode 9: A

‘Guillermo smell this jock strap!’

“Guy like that, gets a whiff of something musky, he absolutely will not stop” 👀Guillermos into Bears canon 

TBH skip to 17:00

LMAO the Guide casually letting slip that Guillermo is a vampire now

N: you asked… someone else, a vampire that was not me…” G: I felt like I had no other choice (eyes tearing up, said with a gulp). N: You could have asked me! G: Are you fucking kidding me? I asked you repeatedly for 13 years! N: Yes, and I was gonna get round to it! If have a lot on my plate at the moment! G: *sad scoff* N: Who? Who was it? it's relevant to me! …. N: now I’m going to be honest with you, I am going to kill you Guillermo, and then quite possibly myself.

Nandor immediately knowing what’s wrong with Guillermo and his half vampire state

Run Forest Run!

Episode 10: A

Guillermo is lost, scared and hiding from Nandor

Nandor destroys Guillermos Bed and pillow that he gave to him in seasons 5 and 2 respectively :( 

Nandor literally strangling a guy he thinks is Guillermo 

“I have given Guillermo my friendship, and this is a gift I do not give to just anyone. [...] I thought Guillermo had earned it.” :( 

More afraid of losing the vamps/Nandor than dying

Yo Nandor threatening Guillermo's mom is so intense

Guillermo and his stakes

G: I don't believe you. N: no of course your don't….

This feels like foreshadowing to S6E5

THE WARRIOR CODE!

Guillermo almost stads Nador #4! Also hot suicidal Nandor 

MAMA THE VAMPIRE SLAYER!!!

Guillermo will finally be an equal! 

Nandor smart, 

GUILLERMO THE VAMPIRE!! Lmao the lisp with the fangs

Nandor is so ready to accept him into the group now! Hunting with him, giving him vampire tips

Guillermo can't go through with it :( too human 

Nandor the creep, “just as i feared, guillermo is not cut out to be a vampire, i will fix…”

Also, him trying to use a gine wish to fix it is so sweet, (but also what happened to those 3 wishes Nandor got as a wedding present?)

The ceremony of vampiric transmogrification

The image of Nandor and Guillermo, face to face, close together, as for the first time Nandor tends to Guillermo instead of the other way around, carefully tying the bow on Guillermo's cloak….. The zoom into Nandors hands near Guillermo's heart and neck, hiding both of their faces, although showing Guillermo looking up at Nandor. Wow, the subtext is beautiful

Also, I LOVE those robes.

“ the answear must come from your heart” “ would you rather be a human or a vampire.”

The look on Nandors face, the look on guillermos face as he is essentially breaking the news to Nandor via looks. For a second it seems Guillermo will not have to say anything, but he does, “a human”. Nandor would have understood him either way.

Guillermo cant even kill Derek, G: “I cant do this”, N:”you want me to do it.” Nandor whispers to Guillermo softly. G:”i dont know…” N:”I do.”

Earlier in the season, Nandor tells guillermo that he knowns Guillermo better then anyone, this scene really proves it.

Long hair and bear Guillermo!!

Nandor just Had Guillermo's old glasses in his pocket?!?! Was that specifically because he anticipated the change, or does he just have a spare pair for him??

Nandor made up an entire ceremony to help Guillermo. Nandor putting his hand on Guillermo caringly.

Lazlo helping Guillermo with the body is very sweet

____________________________

Season 6

Episode 1: B

Nadja being causion not to upset nandor by talking about guillermo

“Its okay to just admit you miss him a little bit”, Nandor “in denial” the relentless

Guillermo fix the coffin/box that Nandor bought for him and then destryoed last season 

I love the little pride flags in Guillermos new room, also tbh it looks like a better place then his last room 

Guillermo putting boundaries down between him and Nandor, they havent seen each other in months! im happy for him, but sad for my ship

Nandor dosent look happy about it 

Good old Panera Bread

Nanodor just wants to talk about Guillermo to Jerry lmao 

Nandor hanging out in Guillermos room to talk, both of them sitting on his bed

“I ate your shit over and over!”

Everyone wanting guillermo to move back in :( 

Ya your definitely doing okay Nandor 

“As a former friend” ouch. Also Guillermo desperately trying to set boundaries

Episode 2: B

"Guillermo has a big time, big boy,  big dick job?!”

Guillermo, Nandor and Nadja are coworkers!

blue collar Nandor!

Nandor just wants to help and support Guillermo :( but

Straight^tm Guillermo

“no funny business! like murder…”

Episode 3: A

“now that guillermo has left the house, Nandor is a broken man”

Alconodar Nandor! + shirtless Nandor! been a while

“sashay away!”

Nixon Nandor???

Nixon Nandor going to Guillermo for help :(((( 

Guillermo immediately knowing something wrong with Nandor :((( 

“Sockittome” how romantic 

Love how after everything, Guillermo has a very chill relationship with the Baron 

Nandor x Lazlo, that ship has gotta be a thing right?

Baby Guilermo 😣 

Nandor playing along (also note the weird ass handshake)

This scene is so adorable and sad 

Guillermos excitement and joy about interviews and meeting a vampire, and having the possibility of being a vampire infront of him :(((( 

Guillermo got bullied :( was shy and no friends 

“I was rich and a jock”

Not Nandor wanting guillermo to stay as he is, saying he’ll let both of them just how one night like this (and then, once again, immediately cutting his words of affection with an insult to guillermo)

Episode 4: A

Lmao nandors into the Guide now….. Oh no… they, they arent going to make them end game are they??

“Yes mast…. Yes Jordon!” lmao freudian slip

Guillermo has to fire Nandor!? 

Gillermo really dosent want to fire him :( 

“When i was a warlord, I would always discourage none sexual fraternization amongst the men”, so… sexual fraternisation is allowed with your man colleges then  ?????

Nandor literally looking sadly through a window at Guillermo and his boss is insane 

Insane of drunk guillermo to stand right behind nandor on the couch, putting his hands on his shoulders and saying “the rest of it can go fuck it self” until he remebers about jordon

“Its about being the right fit, maybe thats what we were? Or weren't… Nandor couldn't make me a Vampire, and i cant make him a Janitor.”

This whole broken up vide is very sad

“Im proud of you.” and then Guillermo immediately firing him is so painful

N “Its fine!” G “Im so sorry…” N “good luck guillermm…” is he choked up? Was nandor going to cry?

I dont understand the handshake, its a very week handshake, with nandor not even grabbing his hand back. It seems maybe he was so sad man couldnt even shake his hand, even though he wanted to 

Hes humiliated :( Nandor for the first time asking for privacy from the Doc crew oh my god, and him breaking down and scream when they keep following him. Hes so hurt and angry ughhhh.

Epsiode 5: AAA (SORRY THIS ONE NEEDS CLEANING UP, i went a tad insane)

Nandors run away :( 

“The blade of the proverbial guillotine has dropped, and the blood has pooled at Guillermo's feet” damn Lazlo  

Nandors gone insane

“when one is burned, one feels most at home among the ashes” “amongst others that have been discarded” oh Nandor :(

Nadja calling out Guillermo for being mean to Nandor

Also Nandor doing weird shit in the background

“we are the hollow men”

Nandor talking to himself saying “you live a thousand years and you think you know what betrayal is, what horror is, but then in a single instant you find out what man is truly capable off.” AND THEN REQUESTING SIMON AND GARFUNKLE

Guillermo and Nandor fighting :(

S1E4: Guillermo “quits” for the first time (dosent really, but was ready to bounce).

S2E6: Nandor tells some random vamp he can kill Guillermo 

S2E7: Nandor is very chill with Guillermo killing a vampire, and even lies for him to cover it up.

S2E8 : Nandor tells Guillermo he should leave 

S2E8: Guillermo  breaks up with Nandor  quits and finds a new  mommy  master 

S2E10: Guillermo quits #3 and moves home

S3E8: Nandor leaves guillermo for a cult.

S3E8: G says, after Nandor has left for the cult: “I guess I know how it feels, every time I left or I quit…” 

S3E10: Nandor after anouncing hes leaving to travel the world to guillermo alone: “You are one of the things I need to get away from” 

S4E10: Guillermo quits #4 ! (does so quietly tho, thinking hed be a vampire by end of night)

S5E1: Nandor: “[whilst still laughing at guillermo and the idea of him becoming a vampire] Guillermo i’m sorry, eventually, of course i will definitly be turining you into a vampire, when the time is right.” 

“She didnt trust you, you hadent given her a reason to.” - Armand, interview with a vampire

S5E8: Baron about Guillermo being turned by a vampire that is not Nandor: “It is a violation, a humilation, a shame from which neither you nore Nador will every recover.” 

S5E10: (guillermo whilst holding a stake up to nandor at his moms house, after nandor has been trying to kill him due to him becoming a vampire) 

G : I dont believe you. N: no of course your dont….

Also the comparison of Nandor and Guillerms fight and Nadja and Lazlos fit. 

“Im not the enemy, and you know that!”

“Your just pissed you werent … a good culture fit.” :( way to rub it in 

Nandor playing ANOTHER BREAKUP SONG, AND, making guillermo listen to it fully lmao 

Literally a break up scene, this shit is insane 

N: I WAS HUMILATED! Do even know what loyalty is Guillermo?

G: Do i know what loyalty is?! Uh ya, i was blindly loyal to you for 15 YEARS!

N: Until you got rid of me! I never got rid of you. I protected you! Even through all the fuck up’s, and the time you forgot to buy glitter [G: Rolls eyes], and the “I want to be a vampire, no actually i dont want to be a vampire”! The time you vearly killed the Baron TWICE! Through all that shit! I was loyal. I may have done a lot of things Guillermo, But i never, got rid, of YOU!”

G: do you think i felt good firing you? I didnt want to fire you! But thats how things are! In the real world! In the human world! I had to do it! 

N: I used to be a human before i became a vampire, incase you forgot! I never betrayed by friends, my comrades in arms, NEVER! Maybe some of the wives, but you know it was a different time!” 

G: im sorry… i didnt know that the janitor job was so important to you. 

N: Well it was. It was my purpose, my purpose use to be raising you, to become a great vampire. Until you pussed out, and found a new master in Jordon. 

Guillermo then answering Jordons call, whilst Nandor angrily kicks stuff in the back is so sad. Even in there break up, Nandor cant get Guillermos full attention anymore.

….

G: You know, i do know what it feels like to loose your purpose. I use to want to be a vampire so bad, it guided every choice i made, i mean dont get me wrong, im happy im a human again, but it was hard. It was hard waking up every day with that not being the goal. To be a vampire

….

G: Well i think ive found a new purpose, you will to, somewhere… But maybe, right now, are purposes are taking us… in diffrent directations, and thats okay. 

N: Perhaps your right Guillermo, i am a warrior, but this is not my fight. 

Guillermo wearing the YASSSS Sean shirt from the pride epsisode is so sweet

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

“You are our salvation”: Von Franz Redemption and Alchemy

The importance of Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz to the plot of “Nosferatu” (2024) cannot be underestimated. His character not only works as a sort of self-insert Robert Eggers in the narrative, but he’s the one who unravels the puzzle of Nosferatu.

He also moves in-between the “Victorian point of view” of the story (Hardings, Dr. Sievers and Thomas Hutter) and the “Occult point of view” (Orlok, Ellen and Herr Knock): he’s the character who unites this non-linear and intricate narrative.

In a interview to “Deadline”, Willem Dafoe, explains his character, Von Franz, an expert on the occult and mysticism, is the only one who truly understands the psychic connection between Orlok and Ellen. But more on that later.

Professor Von Franz is based off Professor Abraham Van Helsing character from Bram Stoker “Dracula” novel. They are both metaphysicians, and called to help Lucy/Ellen by their former student John Seward/Wilhem Sievers. They both discover the cause of the female character disease is a vampire/strigoi. While Van Helsing is described as Dracula’s arch-enemy, who has been on the hunt for him for a very long time, this isn’t the case with Von Franz; however, he came to Wisburg because he had a intuition something would happen.

Professor Von Franz used to be an esteemed academic in his home country, Switzerland, until he became interested in the occult and alchemy, and started to propose a different approach to conventional medicine. Then, he became a laughingstock and was expelled from his university. During the events of the film, we see him living in isolation, locked on his attic with his books and cats. Like Ellen, he’s also ostracized by Victorian society.

His character is inspired by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, and even his surname is based on Marie-Louise von Franz, a Jungian psychologist, famous for her studies of Jungian archetypes in connection with fairy tales. We also see this connection in Eggers’ Von Franz talisman ring, a Abraxas stone ring, as Abraxas was a central figure in Jung’s esoteric texts, especially in “Seven Sermons to the Dead”.

Von Franz Abraxas stone ring: it’s considered a magical talisman or charm since the Middle-ages, connected to the Seven Olympic Spirits (Aratron (Saturn); Bethor (Jupiter); Phaleg (Mars); Och (Sun); Hagith (Venus); Ophiel (Mercury) and Phul (Moon)); and to Gnosticism (personal spiritual knowledge above organized religion), who considered Abraxas as “the God above all Gods”.

We are introduced to Professor Von Franz when Dr. Sievers and Friedrich Harding go to his home, asking for his help about Ellen’s case. He reluctantly agrees. In this scene we are introduced to Von Franz as a somewhat eccentric character, dedicated to his alchemist studies. He’s attempting to transform black sulfur into gold, but has miscalculated the stars. He failed.

This scene also features two Latin sentences: “Nolite dare sanctum canibus” (“Do not reveal what is sacred to dogs”) and “Neque mittatis margaritas vestra ante porcos” (“Nor cast your pearls before swine”). What does this mean? These sayings have the same meaning: don’t waste teachings in those who will not appreciate them. This is Robert Eggers making a gag in his own film; he knows his work is going mainstream, and he’s prepared for it to be misunderstood. But he doesn’t care and he won’t elaborate, because his work is for the receptive audience who will appreciate it.

Von Franz agrees to examine Ellen, and once he arrives at the Harding household, it’s clear he doesn’t agree with Dr. Sievers methods of drugging, tying and forcing Ellen to wear a corset to bed. He orders Sievers and Harding to untie Ellen, and notices she’s drugged. Ellen immediately sees he’s not like the other Victorian doctors, and is hopeful. Von Franz promises he’s there to help and asks Ellen about her childhood.

Here, the Carl Jung inspiration is also visible because Von Franz isn’t physically examining Ellen, he’s performing a psychological analysis of her. And he asks about her childhood to determine if she has any subconscious trauma. Ellen speaks of her supernatural gifts: “I know things. I always knew the contents of my Christmas gifts” and she had a premonition of her mother’s death (“I knew when… that my mother would pass”).

Then she talks about her father; when Ellen was a child, his father called her “his little changeling girl” (as in European folklore of children kidnapped by fairies or demons and a substitute child being left in their place), because she enjoyed playing in the forest and on the fields. However, this started to displease him as she grew older, and Ellen being a teenager would rebel: “but as I became older it worsened... Father dispraised me for it... I frightened him. My touch.” As Ellen was growing into a woman, her playing in the woods was not longer acceptable for a young lady in Victorian society, so, evidently, her father wouldn’t allow it, anymore. As it was expected of her, Ellen should learn how to be a proper lady, and future wife to a respectable husband. And as she was getting older, his father stopped giving her physical affection, as well, because that would be inappropriate. And this hurt Ellen, deeply.

She talks about when she summoned Orlok, next and without outright saying it: “I was so very alone, you see and… I wished for comfort… then a presence… and the nightmares, the epilepsies.” And Ellen tells Von Franz about the episode when her father found her naked and screamed “sin!” and threatened to have her institutionalized: “At last Papa found me once laying... unclothed, I was... my body... my flesh... my... Sin, sin, he said... He would have sent me to someplace... I shan't go... I-”

As I’ve talked about in my post about Victorian society, masturbation was considered deviant and seen as “evil” and “sin”, because only heterosexual married sex was considered acceptable during this time period, which provides the context for Ellen saying: “It all ended when first I met my Thomas. From our love, I became as normal.” Her sexuality was socially acceptable now, integrated in marriage, as Victorian society decreed.

And Von Franz also understand this, but then says her “visions” and “night wanderings” (sleepwalking) have returned, and Ellen is displeased because Thomas left her (“he left on a fool’s errand. I fear for him so”). Then Ellen reveals her dreams grow darker and sickened her: “does evil comes from within us or from beyond?”

Later, Von Franz physically examines Ellen, as her “trance” is beginning. He reveals she has “too much blood”: in connection to “Humorism” (or “humoral theory”) with possible origins in Ancient Egyptian medicine, and then used by Ancient Greeks and Romans. Hippocrates suggested that humors are the vital bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. This belief was common during Middle-ages in Europe, and also connected to Paracelsus. Ellen having “too much blood” means she has sanguine temperament; it was believed that, when in good health, “sanguines” are cheerful and loving; but when there’s an imbalance, they are “hysterical”. The treatment is bloodletting (still used by Victorian medicine), to remove the excessive blood; which is what Von Franz also advices.

Von Franz determines Ellen “epilepsies” are, in fact, her communicating with the spiritual realm. She inhabits the “borderland”, a peripheral area, a portal between the two worlds: the physical (matter) and the spiritual: “The pupil is expanded. It does not contract naturally to the light. […] A second sight. She’s no longer here. […] She communes now with another realm.”

Next, he tries to determine with whom Ellen is communicating with, and uses his Abraxas stone ring to compel her to speak, and he conjures both angels and demons during this scene. But what stands out to Von Franz is “you are promised to me”, as Ellen breaks from her trance and begs him to help her.

When the examination is over, Von Franz comes to three conclusions: Ellen is cursed, in the sense she’s haunted by a demon; she’s “hysteric” because, as sanguine temperament, she has “too much blood”; and she is a medium (“I believe she has always been highly conductive to these cosmic forces, uniquely so”).

However, he doesn’t know who this demon is, how it was summoned and unleashed. And he says he’ll return to his studies to see if he can figure something out. In the meantime, he orders Dr. Sievers and Hardings to observe Ellen’s behavior and report it back to him.

The next time we see Von Franz, he’s with Dr. Sievers to examine the captain of the ship which brought Orlok to Wisburg, and he says: “Sievers, I requested conference with your maniac, not a dead man”. This tells us, Von Franz already put two and two together about Ellen and Herr Knock’s cases being related.

With Harding and Dr. Sievers, Von Franz reveals the demon who is haunting Ellen is the same who’s responsible for the plague upon Wisburg, and he’s a Nosferatu, a vampyr. Friedrich Harding doesn’t believe it, and calls it “medieval devilry”. Von Franz describes Orlok as “a force more powerful than evil, it’s death itself” and “it’s desire is to consume all life on earth”. Which echoes with Herr Knock screaming “blood is the life”. Von Franz tells Harding: “if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists.”

When searching Herr Knock’s office alongside Dr. Sievers, Von Franz reveals he’s aware Knock made a compact with the Nosferatu, and he must be found. As they search the office, Von Franz recognizes Knock as Şolomonari (from Romanian folklore), and discovers a book, which he identifies as the Şolomonari codex of secrets. Later, Von Franz reveals to Dr. Sievers and Harding: “our Nosferatu is of an especial malignancy. He is an arch-enchanter, Solomonari, Satan's own learned disciple.”

As I’ve analyzed in a different post, Orlok has no Satanic symbols on his sigil and coat of arms, because he’s, in fact, a Pagan worshiper of the Dacian god Zalmoxis, but Paganism was demonized by Christianity and their followers labeled as “devil worshippers”. And Von Franz, student of the occult or not, is a man of his time.

Von Franz also finds out Orlok and Knock’s covenant: “His thunder roars from clouds of carcasses, I feedeth on my shroud, and death avails me not. For I am his.” Knocks wants to know Orlok “secret” of immortality; he wants to become a strigoi, too.

Von Franz is furious because Harding kicked out Ellen and Thomas from his house, and says they are in danger, because he knows Orlok believes Ellen is promised to him, but he doesn’t know why. Harding asks Von Franz how can they kill a strigoi, and Von Franz says he doesn’t know because the accounts are different from region to region: boiling wine, a spike of cold iron, decapitation, setting it on fire, etc. What all the legends have in common is that the strigoi needs to “return to the earth where it was buried, by the first crow of cock” = it needs to sleep on his grave by day. Von Franz is curious as to why.

Friedrich Harding, the Victorian patriarch, doesn’t believe any of this, and expels Von Franz and Dr. Sievers from his house. We also see Harding embodying Victorian society during this scene: Von Franz is deranged and a laughing stock; Ellen is mad and should be institutionalized, and there are no such things as “supernatural creatures” causing disease, there’s always a rational explanation. Symbolically, Friedrich Harding kicking out both Ellen and Von Franz from his household means they have no place in Victorian society.

Later, as Von Franz studies the Şolomonari codex of secrets he comes across a page with instructions in how to free a Şolomonar from his Nosferatu curse. And this page is filled with notes, which indicates someone has been studying it. And the instructions are: “And so the maiden fair did offer up her love unto the beast, and with him lay in close embrace until first cock crow, her willing sacrifice thus broke the curse and freed them from the plague of Nosferatu.” And, now, everything makes sense for Von Franz as he says: “she is the way”.

Von Franz just realized what Orlok truly wants, and why he’s haunting Ellen: he wants to be free from his curse, and Ellen is the one who can do it. And not only that, because these instructions mention love and “freed them” (the fair maiden and the beast) from the curse. And he remembers what Ellen told him the first time they spoke; how she wished for comfort and a presence appeared, and how it turned sexual, and Orlok saying she’s promised to him. Von Franz now understands the depth of Ellen and Orlok’s connection, and he sees, at last: Ellen was the one who summoned and unleashed Orlok. Now, he has all the answers he needs.

And the next time he meets Ellen, during Anna and the children funeral, his first words to her are: “more will be taken”. And now Von Franz will embody Carl Jung once again and observe and analyze Ellen’s behavior. And Ellen wants to speak to him, until they are interrupted by Friedrich Harding wanting to expel Von Franz, again: “Take that blackguard from this place! Your diseased-mind has brought all of this outrage-”

In the meantime, Thomas (a part of the Victorian POV of the story) manages to convince Harding that Nosferatu is real. Next, we see these characters in a carriage, as Von Franz talks about destroying Orlok and his lair in Grünewald Manor, so he’ll have no safe place at dawn, and Thomas says he’ll drive a spike of cold iron through him, as he saw it done in Transylvania. I might do a post about this, but Craig Lathrop, the production designer for “Nosferatu” has confirmed the Roma people work for Orlok (like in the “Dracula” novel), so Orlok wanted Thomas to see a strigoi getting killed for a reason.

All the while, Von Franz is attentively studying Ellen’s reaction to all of this information. Because he no longer cares about why strigoi need to sleep on their graves by day, or what method to use to destroy them. He knows Ellen and Orlok are connected, like Orlok and Herr Knock. And he wants her to accept Orlok’s covenant. And Ellen grows restless during this scene; she has taken Von Franz’s bait. And she wants to walk him to his door, for them to be able to speak in private.

Ellen tells Von Franz it has to be her to destroy Orlok; but she needs Von Franz to take Thomas out of the house; which is also Von Franz idea. “I’m but a able tourist in this occult world, you were born to it. It’s a rare gift.” Ellen reveals her attraction to Orlok is strong and powerful, but her spirit can’t be as evil as his. And Von Franz fully embodies Jung “integration of shadow theory” here, as he finally gives her the answer to her question (“does evil come from within or beyond?”):

“We must know evil to be able to destroy it, we must discover it within ourselves. And when we have, we must crucify the evil within us, or there is no salvation.”

Ellen says she needs no salvation because she has never done anything wrong, other than being true to her own nature. And Von Franz advices her to be true to it now, because only her can “redeem us”. But who’s “us”, exactly? “Us” is he and Ellen, or course. The outcasts of Victorian society, who have always been ostracized by their own natures, seen as social embarrassments, and as “deranged”. They will be redeemed because they are the ones “saving the day”. Which provides the context for Von Franz says to her, next:

“You are our salvation”. “Our” = you and me. Neither of them has a place within Victory society, they are both “relics” of a different time, a different place, with a different way of believing, thinking and behaving. In Pagan times, they would be respected as priestess (Ellen) and physician (Von Franz), but in the modern world they are demonized. And the same is true for Orlok himself; who’s the literal personification of demonized Pagan beliefs.

And so, Von Franz will spent the night stalling Thomas and Dr. Sievers, making them believe they will hunt down Orlok, while Ellen fulfills her covenant with Orlok, and breaks his curse, ending the plague of Nosferatu for everyone.

At the end, Von Franz succeeds in transform black sulfur into gold, as he, too, emerges redeemed and vindicated by Ellen’s integration of shadow. In modern occult beliefs, alchemy is considered as a mystical system designed to transmute the soul from a “base” or “leaden” state of spiritual impurity to a “gold” or purified state of divinity, with the chemical procedures of alchemy being an elaborate metaphor for psycho-spiritual development. This idea was popularized by Carl Jung, among others.

In alchemy, this “gold” wasn’t like common gold, it was a miraculous, incorruptible substance, “the true and indubitable treasure”, which could only be perceived by those who can see with their mind’s eye: “Nolite dare sanctum canibus” (“Do not reveal what is sacred to dogs”) and “Neque mittatis margaritas vestra ante porcos” (“Nor cast your pearls before swine”).

[gaysindistress]

Prompt 2 🌶️ for a Bucky please? 🥺

Tell me why I instantly thought about this scene:

warnings - smut. cursing.

I almost gave you a full ass fic but I had to stop myself to finish Van Helsing Retold.

600 celebration post here

I know better than this. 

I know better than to provoke him when he’s already in a bad mood thanks to Tony. 

I know better than to tease him when he’s on a mission especially since he’s cranky and on said mission with Tony. 

I most certainly know better than locking the front door and putting my phone on do not disturb after sending him nudes but I can’t help myself and he brought it on himself to be completely fair. 

Tony decided that 3am two nights ago was the perfect time to call him and tell him that he needed to be back at the tower in 15 minutes because they were going on a mission. At that exact moment however, Bucky just so happened to have me face down ass up on our bed and was railing me like an animal untamed by man. He tried to at least make me cum but Tony wouldn’t stop calling and I was getting afraid that he would bust through if Bucky didn’t leave immediately. 

So here we are now, 48 hours and several failed attempts at getting myself off later, I decided that sending my sweet super soldier nudes while he was on a mission and with others would be the best idea. After sending them, I turned my do not disturb on and locked the front door as a little extra teasing but what I didn’t anticipate happening was the scene before me. 

The bedroom window slides open and Bucky slips in without a sound. He’s still in the suit he wears on missions and if I didn’t see the flash of his left hand in the moonlight, I would’ve called for help. Instead, I smirk as I scoot up the bed to sit with my bed against the wall and push my blanket off, leaving my legs bare. He’s still standing where he landed but his eyes are trailing hungrily up them and narrow when they land on my curled lips. For half a second, the fear that it’s the Winter Solider starts to creep in instead but then Bucky speaks, “You sent me nudes while I was on a mission.”

“You were not. It was over and you were on your way home,” I throw back as my legs fall apart so he can see my black thong. 

A growl rips from him, “Fine. You sent me nudes when I was with Sam, Steve, and Stark.”

He pounces on the bed and grips my ankle, pulling me down the bed. I let out a giggle as he traps me between his body and the bed. My body feels light having him back after he had to leave so quickly and although I know I shouldn’t provoke him even more, I can’t help the way that my legs wrap around his waist. 

“You’re a menace,” he grunts against my lips before devouring them. 

I know better than to tease him but I can’t stop when it ends like this. 

[pasdetrois]

some nosferatu 2024 thoughts 🖤

this is the first jonathan (well, thomas in this adaptation because stoker estate lawsuit) that i have actually enjoyed watching—which was very much helped by his character not being shunted off to the corner after the castle arc, and by him being played by nicholas hoult instead of harry styles (yes, apparently he may have been the original casting choice. thank goodness for small miracles).

one of the few van helsings i've enjoyed watching as well. dafoe brought a compassionate earnestness to the role, which is an important element for setting him apart from a generic researcher/healer figure that would otherwise fade to the background (as the '79 version did for me, personally)

ellen being the lynchpin of this film from beginning to end—her loneliness, fear, desire, shame, defiance, and strength. (of course it's not ideal to blend mina and lucy into one character, because it does almost imply an interchangeability between them, but i can give some leeway here due to timing constraints.) there's an out of time and place aspect to her (she and others refer to her "fae" ways several times)—which is undeniably in part due to being a woman in a world like this, especially one who has experienced what she has and is offered only shame and silence for it—but also a fundamental Otherness that ends up becoming the salvatory key to a benediction only a few will ever know of... there was something touching about the doctor recognizing her power and how in their time it could offer everyone but her salvation. and while depp may not have quite the haunting presence adjani does, i still enjoyed her performance. the way she spoke of her wedding to death dream, caught between a laugh and a sob was so 🩶

the tragic pas de trois element of the story and the faustianesque covenants ellen and thomas enter into with the count were awful and fascinating and even poignant. this gluttonous, rotting corpse who can not love, but is the only one to hear ellen's pleas, who speaks to her through the conduit of her token of love to thomas, whose castle recognizes thomas and never willingly releases him. and thomas and ellen, standing together in the wreck, no longer talking past each other, for how little it matters now beyond these precious few moments. i'm still thinking about the harrowing scene in the third act where they simultaneously invoke and rebuke his spectre. "show him our love"!!!

beautiful visuals, when i could see them (unfortunately, it did occasionally suffer from the lighting problem that most of its horror contemporaries do, in that i probably resembled the squinting lady in pink trying to decipher what exactly was on the screen at times). the shadow work was sublime though (and i assume inspired by the '22 version). loved the shots where the count's fragmentary silhouette appears in billowing curtains or looms ever closer over thomas and ellen's wide eyed stares. significantly more evocative than the later scenes where we actually saw the count's physical form.

the visceral physicality of it all! lots of blood and sharp, staccato contortions lending a presence and urgency to the scenes.

harding's character didn't really work for me (there was just a bit too much of the cliche, especially with some of the trite landed gentryman dialogue™️), but i can appreciate that he and his family were likely intended to be the Victorian Ideal foil to thomas and ellen, and the cost that ultimately incurred. and to be honest, the coffin scene was still more poignant than the equivalent in fennell's 2023 attempt at gothic horror.

the film mostly follows its predecessors and the novel with regard to the treatment of the villagers. not ideal, to say the least, but from a straight adaptation position, you're in a tricky spot given how much the "fear of the uncivilized, foreign invader" bigotry is baked into the text itself. it likely wasn't egger's priority, given how short this chapter was in the film, but i feel there's more that could have been done here.

lovely string work in the soundtrack, especially the pendulum swing between a sense of poignancy and foreboding. these were a couple of my favorite tracks:

[see-arcane]

Eggers is really getting on my nerves - he now goes around saying how Ellen is actually a victim of XIX century and doesn’t belong, how her husband doesn’t understand her and how there’s a love triangle happening between Ellen, Orlok and Thomas. 🤦‍♀️ Just….why?! Why?

Playing very halfhearted devil's advocate, I can see how Bobby Egg would glean this from the original Nosferatu even without the Coppola influence.

Ellen is a victim of her time period!

Ellen Hutter is from a film made in 1922, with its story taking place in 1838. Neither period was a stellar one for taking women seriously or seeing them treated well/as equals (and fuck, just look around right now). A lot of directors and writers fall into this track of thinking when doing period pieces, because, yeah: Women Always Got the Short Stick. Especially women who behaved outside The Norm (c).

The problem here is that Ellen's weirdness is not a turn-off to Thomas, nor does it make her a pariah to her friends who host her while Thomas is gone. At most, Thomas can be pointed out as foolishly (but, fine, rationally) not taking Ellen's spontaneous Foretelling of Doom over a business trip seriously. Thomas' main character flaws amount to 1) Not believing Ellen until it's too late and 2) Insisting the supernatural reality is just him going mad/dreaming. But Ellen faces no other trial than the one she takes upon herself--the martyr sacrifice.

Herzog played with it pretty well, showing his Ellen/Mina-figure 'Lucy Harker' coming up against the walls of 1) Skepticism from the Learned Man, 'Van Helsing' bluntly refusing to listen to her about Nosferatu and 2) Everyone around her, men, women, and children, cracking under the fear and despair of the plague and just waltzing around in Danse Macabre happy-hopelessness, deaf to any warning from her. Again, not because 'Girl One Weird! Girl One is Girl! Let us jeer and torture her about it, as is right.'

Eggers is doing for his Ellen what he did to Thomasin in The Witch. Leaning heavy on extremely grim hyper-realism as it might have been for a young woman being Odd in the 19th century. A factor that did not exist at all in the 1922 or 1979 versions. But it adds to the 'All the time period's humans around her are trash and backwards! no wonder she would rather die with Orlok!' of it all. So yeah.

2. Her husband doesn't understand her!

Is Thomas himself weird? Creepy? Into dark and eerie things? Nope. Dude's a human golden retriever.

But he loves Ellen and all that she is. The entire first scenes with them are them hugging and loving on each other. The first thing he does upon returning from his escape (other than mentally grafting a belief that it Was All in His Head) is crushing her in an embrace. He is proof that you don't have to be Grim and Gothique and Misunderstood to love yourself a Morticia. At most, we could say that he fails to clock when Ellen is lying to him--because she is shown lying to him exactly once.

When she says she is sick and tells him he must run to Prof. Bulwer for help. He does so immediately, leaving the house for Ellen to call in Orlok for the sunrise trap. At a stretch we could paint this as Thomas, the 'lighter' half of the couple, failing to understand the 'darker' half's acceptance of a deadly price for Doing What Must Be Done. Thomas Hutter is, if not childish, very clearly meant to be in a different story. He is more the flighty loving and beloved maiden than Ellen, the self-sacrificing gothic hero, is. If Thomas is ignorant, he is ignorant in the way of someone who was meant to be in a sweeter fairy tale where he and his love were destined to live safe and happy together who realizes too late they are in a horror story.

But to throw that tragedy out and just graft in, 'Well he's too dry and proper to really get her, I guess," feels lazy. Usable, but lazy.

3. It's a love triangle!

I mean. Yeah, it is. A love triangle just has to involve three people with attraction floating around between the three points.

In the original and in Herzog's, the triangle is 'Human Couple is in Love. Nosferatu gets a Crush. The Crush is used to Bait Nosferatu into the Sunrise Trap.'

But Bobby Egg is pulling a Coppola by deciding aaaactuallyyy, Ellen is super goth-horny for Orlok, not her unsatisfying unmanly cuck husband Thomas. The sacrifice is still technically there--the whole "We belong dead" of Ellen giving her life to make sure Orlok dies by sunrise--but it feels so damn pointless from that angle.

I have said it before, this premise is peak gothic. It is a very tasty notion to consider: A misfit who, being too weird and unhappy to live, but still bound by Morals enough to destroy herself and her would-be Ideal*** mate rather than inflict their horror upon an ungrateful humanity, is some very meaty stuff! Excellent even!

If. It. Had. Been. AN ORIGINAL STORY.

Ellen of the original was terrified. She was repulsed. She did not want to do what she knew had to be done...but it had to be done. And so she abandoned joy. Abandoned life. Abandoned Thomas, who she loved. All to lay herself out as bait in a trap and ensure that her beloved and the dying townspeople, including her friends, would be saved. That is the tragedy. Ellen was happy. Ellen was loved and in love. Ellen was singled out by Orlok's craving and so left as the martyr under the spotlight: Well, Ellen? What will you do, knowing what you know? Will you sit by and live and be left free of violation as the deaths pile around you? Hmm?

And, as Mina Harker was prepared to do before her, she put herself on the chopping block. It is brave. It is painful. It is unfair.

As I'm sure Eggers' Ellen's end will feel to some degree. The audience will be honed by then into grieving her loss, this misunderstood and monstrous beauty dying by bleeding and writhing to death under her would-be undead beau. But it will be an end less than the sum of its original.

[vickyvicarious]

They jump at shadows oooh that would make a good suspense section!! Especially if you don't know how the story goes and you as the viewer/reader get into their shoes, anxious, sleep deprived, away from home in liminal spaces like trains and inns, scrutinizing teeth, no sanctuary. I dreamed she mesmerized me in the hallway on my way to my room at midnight, what a strange dream. Like Jonathan in the castle but you are trapped with, or sharing bed with, a different vampire.

Yes, absolutely! The stay in Varna is absolutely nail-biting for them. It could be so easy to get paranoid or to lash out at one another. I think they are all actively trying to avoid doing anything like that but the stress must have been eating away at them... as well as being supported by physical matters such as unfamiliar spaces, lack of sleep, and so on.

Since we only get a few short entries, it's easy to skip over this type of building dread in the original book. The daily format helps to emphasize it, but I wonder if a good visual adaptation might be able to do more. Thinking like failing to see Mina's shadow in a darkened room for a moment, or hazy glimpses of a character's nightmares, or a close-up on Mina taking a bite of a pastry and red jam oozing out, then switching to Van Helsing watching closely with a look of concern... People trying to be cheerful but conversations dying quickly, everyone falling into a habit of gazing out at the water... All that could happen in art, but in a movie you could more easily add in stuff like the way she holds herself and walks beginning to seem slightly different at times (especially if established in other vampires). You could also do a lot to emphasize the eeriness with audio. In a movie montage, maybe Mina's voice overlaps as she says the exact same thing over many different hypnotism sessions, and it sounds dead and emotionless. Not to mention musical stings or just kind of creepy music over what might otherwise seem like an ordinary travel scene could totally transform the mood.

[thethirdromana]

Dracula's roommates, in gifs

All gifs by talented tumblr gif-makers, commentary by me. I haven't seen most of the films so all commentary is on vibes alone.

Dracula (1931)

Full marks for spookiness, and here we have a book-accurate two brunettes and a blonde. I'm impressed by the amount of fabric that these ladies are collectively wearing, especially given that the front hem of their dresses is longer than floor-length. I wonder how many takes they had where they just tripped up and faceplanted the spooky stone floor?

Brides of Dracula (1960)

There are only two brides in this, as part of the plot is the acquisition of a third bride. The main vibe these two give me are of a sleepover just as the edibles are kicking in. They seem very friendly. Might get the munchies later though.

Dracula (1968)

It's hard to tell from the gif, but this is what Wikipedia claims to be the only version where one of the brides of Dracula is black (on the left, played by Nina Baden-Semper). I'm surprised more adaptations don't do this, given the physical description we get only requires that two are dark and one fair. Sadly they don't get any dialogue in this, just some expressive hand-movements.

Count Dracula (1977)

Dear lord, could this be more 70s?? The hair, the dresses, the makeup, even what I assume is a cod-medieval tapestry could only be from one decade. I don't much like the kind of brattish submissiveness happening in this gif (ymmv, of course). But apparently one of them is French, which is fun.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Interesting how much more active the brides become as the years go on. I mean, the lip-licking is right there in the text, but this feels very full on compared with the coquettish earlier brides. They do look fabulous though - so fabulous that all other brides follow the same model from this point onwards.

Dracula 2000 (2000, unsurprisingly)

A modern-day Dracula provides us with some modern-day brides, though in essence they're much the same as the 1992 ones. I have never seen anyone on Tumblr ever mention this film, which makes me suspect that it's atrocious.

Van Helsing (2004)

Dracula starts off with three brides in Van Helsing but if I remember correctly, they don't appear on screen at the same time (if they do, I couldn't find a gif of it). I kind of wish they'd gone for the period-ish costumes of the ballroom scene for the brides, but instead we get 1992 again, in both costume and general red-lipped vampishness.