#not sure it's gonna go over very well

[cleolinda]

Varney the Vampire: A Preface

I want you to think back to what it’s like to reread your old work from years ago—your old stories or poetry, your old school papers, or even your old tumblr posts. Sometimes you’re actually kind of pleased, sure, but I want you to really go back and locate yourself in the heady cringe of that feeling.

In related news, I'm going to pick back up with the Varney the Vampire recaps I started in late 2010 CE. I got about nine chapters in, and then something, who knows what, derailed my life, as things tend to. Like, I'm used to this, it happens with the regularity of a lunar cycle. But I like writing about vampires (clearly), and since I feel like Dracula has been tread pretty thoroughly in recent times, I figured I might go back to something different; we had some lively discussions about Varney back then.

But 2010 was a time before A Lot of Things happened. I was in my early 30s at that point, so I won't say, "Oh, I was so young," but I had a very different energy as a blogger 12-13 years ago. So I've decided to rewrite the recaps a little—some more than others, some not much at all. I just feel like I have a really different perspective on the first chapter in particular, in 2023.

As before, I'm using the full, unabridged text. It is hideously long, something like 230+ chapters, but go big or go home, I figure. The thing is, I was using the files hosted at the University of Virginia, and now you can only get those through the Wayback Machine, but they are still usable for now. I have various backups saved, but I do want you to be able to see that I am, as ever, Not Making It Up.

I'm also not going to quibble anymore as to whether James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest wrote this behemoth. Per Wikipedia sources, scholars seem to agree that it was all or mostly Rymer. When it's mentioned that they figured this out based on his dialogue style, I went... yeah, that checks out. Because it sure is A Style, and I'll be honest, the repetitive filler dialogue in chapter 10 was such a speedbump for me that I just threw up my hands and said, "I don't know how to recap this. Something I can't remember now is going on in my life and I Cannot. I no longer Can."

Well, it's the 2020s and we're gonna. Like I can't tell you how much stress I do not have about this. I've had covid three times and also spinal surgery. Varney the Vampire can no longer hurt me.

To start, this ordeal has a preface—apparently written upon the occasion of collecting the serial into book form—wherein The Author expresses his gratitude for "unprecedented success of the romance of Varney the Vampyre." First off, Rymer uses "vampire" and "vampyre" interchangeably, because fuck me for caring about consistency, I guess. Second, as Wikipedia notes,

It first appeared in 1845–1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls." The author was paid by the typeset line [YEAH, I NOTICED], so when the story was published in book form in 1847, it was of epic length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages and 232 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words.

For comparison, all of Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit is 576,459 words. I sure do blanch every time I see those numbers! It's fine. We're gonna be fine. Back to the preface:

The following romance is collected from seemingly the most authentic sources, and the Author must leave the question of credibility entirely to his readers, not even thinking that he is peculiarly called upon to express his own opinion upon the subject.

"Seemingly" is doing a lot of work here.

Nothing has been omitted [for real, nothing down to the tiniest fly-swat has been omitted] in the life of the unhappy Varney, which could tend to throw a light upon his most extraordinary career, and the fact of his death just as it is here related, made a great noise at the time through Europe, and is to be found in the public prints for the year 1713.

I've seen more than one Dracula multimedia art project where people recreated the letters and diaries and recordings in the book (have you heard my whole thing about how Dracula actually was a cutting-edge techno-thriller back in 1897?), but I've never heard of anyone creating ARG-style media for the Totally for Actual-Fact Real tale of Sir Francis Varney the Vampire, and I think it would be hilarious if someone did.

I won't belabor the entire preface, but what I do want to touch on is Rymer's mention of "unprecedented success." Varney is actually standing on the shoulders of a vampire giant, and it's not the one we would think of. Nowadays, our big touchstone—the influence so great that most works either evoke it or take the trouble to say "Our vampires are different"—is Dracula, obviously. Which was published exactly 50 years after Varney, in 1897. But Varney's touchstone is Polidori's short story "The Vampyre" (1819). And for most of the 1800s, this was everyone's touchstone. Per Wikipedia (which I'm going to lean on for how concise it is, but I concur with this from my own research as well):

An adaptation appeared in 1820 with Cyprien Bérard's novel Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires, falsely attributed to Charles Nodier, who himself then wrote his own dramatic version, Le Vampire, a play which had enormous success and sparked a "vampire craze" across Europe. This includes operatic adaptations by Heinrich Marschner (see Der Vampyr) and Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (see Der Vampyr), both published in the same year. Nikolai Gogol, Alexandre Dumas [note: I have the Ruthven play he wrote around here somewhere] and Aleksey Tolstoy all produced vampire tales, and themes in Polidori's tale would continue to influence Bram Stoker's Dracula and eventually the whole vampire genre. Dumas makes explicit reference to Lord Ruthven in The Count of Monte Cristo, going so far as to state that his character "The Comtesse G..." had been personally acquainted with Lord Ruthven. [...]

In England, James Planché's play The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles was first performed in London in 1820 at the Lyceum Theatre based on Charles Nodier's Le Vampire, which in turn was based on Polidori. Such melodramas were satirised in Ruddigore, by Gilbert and Sullivan (1887); a character called Sir Ruthven must abduct a maiden, or he will die.

Back when no one gave a shit about copyright, Polidori's work was spun out into a cottage industry of knock-off stories and plays, an entire horror zeitgeist. Lord Ruthven was, for 78 years, who you copied, who you riffed on, who you parodied, what Count Dracula is to us now: the archetypal vampire. The Big Guy. And Varney is clearly cut from his cloth—the ostensible gentleman who worms his way into the lives of respectable, unwitting people. Unlike Dracula, there's no foreigner Othering, no "historical basis," no undercurrents of contagion and infection, no ambition to make the world his wine-press, none of that; Ruthven is a simpler figure, but the dominant one of this time no less. He is a stranger who shows up in the middle of London high society, icy and distant, his eyes “dead grey”—stern, yet somehow compelling when he cares to be. And when he cares to be, you're in trouble.

And this is the cultural consciousness when Francis Varney shows up.

[Chapter one will go up sometime this week, March 8-10 or so.]

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

Why do you think the tides have slightly turned from "Elia deserves better than Rhaegar" to shipping her and Rhaegar together? Like what is the psychology behind these people because I've seen some of them like/reblog anti Rhaegar posts while also shipping Rhaegar x Elia at the same time.

hey anon! my thoughts are a bit messy, but i’ve done my best to explain them coherently :)

so, rhaegar was the best man anyone could have when elia was alive, and most people want the best for their favs. he was considered the most handsome, didn’t have a bad personality, and he was crown prince—meaning elia was almost queen, which is often seen as the greatest role a woman can have. the narrative also treats rhaegar as a beautiful, tragic, haunting figure, and elia actually had this very aesthetically pleasing man all to herself at one point! she was married to him, had children with him, and her life was so close to perfect! but rhaegar just had to go and ruin it. 😠

for many elia stans, if rhaegar hadn’t fallen in love with another woman (they want him to have been a completely different character), then everything would’ve been perfect, and elia would’ve had the best, most desirable life. however, that’s not what happened—elia met a very tragic end, and as a result, these stans feel double the bitterness. because of this bitterness, they blame rhaegar for everything (even though it’s not logical to do so), but he’s just too ‘perfect’ to let go of. so, for years these stans have made rhaegar revolve around elia, filling his tag with posts about her out of bitterness. so, i do believe that this obsession with rhaegar x elia has always been there, but i think it’s become a more favorable stance on the elia stan side of the fandom because of a mix of reasons.

plus, rhaegar is one of the few canon relationships we know elia had, since she’s not much of a character. because of this, and the fact that most people don’t like to stray too far from canon, most elia stans are forced to focus on rhaegar, which has created an echo chamber. basically, if a sentiment about elia and rhaegar’s relationship becomes popular, then the whole elia stan side of the fandom will likely regurgitate the sentiment. (also, this desire to stick close to canon is likely why the elia x arthur ship was so popular. while it’s a total crack ship, it had good aesthetics, and since elia and arthur at least knew each other, it allowed the stans to create their perfect fanfiction whilst sticking it to rhaegar. but remember, elia was actually married to rhaegar and had children with him, so while arthur is cool, rhaegar was always ‘top dog,’ meaning arthur would never be able to match up to rhaegar to most elia stans. also, the arthur x elia crack ship is likely her second most popular ship, which just shows how little elia stans have to work with, so they’re always forced to eventually return back to rhaegar for a lot of things.)

however, even if the elia x rhaegar ship gains more popularity, these stans will never stop hating rhaegar because he wasn’t ‘perfect’—and he wasn’t perfect because he didn’t love elia. plus, rhaegar loving another woman and supposedly kidnapping her is what began the war that led to elia’s tragic death. that’s bitterness times 1000. and while i don’t actually blame rhaegar for the war, i do think that this is how an elia stan sees it. i also don’t view rhaegar’s complex relationship with elia as a bad thing—it’s actually a very realistic take on an arranged marriage between two decent people. but most elia stans will never be able to get over the fact that they almost had everything, which is why many have it out for lyanna, as they consider her a thief who ruined their ‘perfection.’

tbh, that might be why so many elia stans are so obsessed with the idea that rhaegar only got with lyanna because of the prophecy—they don’t want to believe that rhaegar actually loved a different woman and not their perfect self insert elia. that’s a bit mean of me… but i don’t know what else one would call the ‘elia’ elia stans have created.

now that i’ve laid all those thoughts out, i’ll try to explain why the tides seem to be turning… i think it may have something to do with the ‘targaryens are all evil and bad’ sentiment losing popularity. i think this shift has occurred due to a mix of factors, such as years of fandom fights and fandom cycles leading to the targs being more liked now than before. it helps that canon doesn’t actually condemn the targs/favors them quite a bit, and the influx of new targ fans from HOTD has also contributed. this combination of reasons seems to have shifted the way the mainstream fandom discusses all the targaryen characters, including rhaegar. so, with this shift, it’s only natural that some elia stans/elia x rhaegar shippers—who’ve always been there—are using this opportunity to push their agenda. while these stans still hate rhaegar and see him as the bad guy, they just can’t let go of him. and as the mainstream fandom moves away from the anti targaryen sentiment, these smaller corners of the fandom, which tend to be echo chambers, are also affected, which has therefore led to a rise in rhaegar x elia shippers and the ‘shifting tide’ that you’ve also noticed.

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been picking mostly only the essential flirt options with lucanis in the romance so far (I've personally found the dynamic much more natural and mutual when you do that, more like forming a solid friendship slowly and inevitably becoming something else and less like you keep pushing on him and getting little back b/c he seemingly just gets overwhelmed and goes into freeze instead), and I think rye is a pretty hard person to read at the best of times even though he's been Down Real Bad from pretty early on and their chemistry as people is naturally really good. so the way the almost-kiss plays out in this playthrough feels a lot like it has the added layer of lucanis realizing that no but for sure rook is flirting and not just being kind or a good friend* it IS actually happening it's not just wishful/fearful thinking!!! and then uh. maybe going a bit too hard a bit too fast in all the excitement at that revelation haha

*in lucanis' defense he has seemingly literally never had a friend who wasn't his cousin-brother before, under those circumstances I suppose some confusion is extremely natural if not outright expected lmao

[deoidesign]

Hello! I just discovered your blog and I immediately became captivated by your webcomic, but I'm unsure where to read all of it. I know it's on Webtoons, but I can see it hasn't been updated for a while, and you still post about it.

Are your physical novels just prints of the webcomic? Are they a continuation? Is the story complete? Thanks in advance!

Hi there!

Glad you found me and are enjoying my comic!

It's only on webtoons, and the story is not complete yet! We're 2/3 of the way through right now. It's currently on hiatus, and it's scheduled to come back in about 2 months!

I'll explain why it's been so long if you're curious, but also for my followers who might also be wondering about it under the cut. Sorry, it's pretty much just me complaining haha

I took a month off I took 2 months to get the books printed I took a month to prepare my next comic and I took 2 months to write the rest of the series (I knew the character arcs I wanted, but not the time periods or mysteries!!!) I've been working on actual episodes since then

I had to take some time off because of some pretty extreme burnout due to the sheer amount of work it was to draw over 800 pages and write 6 complete stories in a year and a half... I was getting sick almost weekly due to the overwork, it was really really bad honestly. I was having to work 60+ hours every week just to keep up...

The nature of the comic itself is also difficult... Each of the arcs is a complete, self contained story which can be read (ideally) without context, and my arcs need to be about 10-13 episodes each... And since I have an exact number of episodes to work with, it's even harder.

It takes a ton of planning and a ton of refinement, and working week to week with no breaks I was forced to put out second or even first drafts, so I just wasn't happy with the work I was doing... And to do that for the rest of the series? I wouldn't be proud of the work I did.

Plus... To be entirely honest, webtoon has treated me quite badly IN MY OPINION... They deprioritized me before I launched (I had to beg for more promotion, I'm not exaggerating), they outright denied me the opportunity to even ask for a raise, I don't make any money on fast pass and they pay me less than my partner makes working at trader joes. My first editor left me completely hanging, my second editor (who I loved) was fired... And they told me I wouldn't get a third season before my first season even finished. So it was just repeatedly completely demoralizing.

I'm sorry it has taken so long, it'll have been 10 months by the time I come back. But I realized... I won't get promotion either way. I won't get more episodes either way. I won't get more money either way. So to finish everything, to make it feel good, to make it something I'm proud of, I chose to take longer to make it better.

I am fully aware I will lose a significant amount of my readership for this and it might genuinely affect my career moving forward. But it's what I had to do! So I'm sticking to my guns on it, and I'm confident long term it'll be worth it. It never could have been this good if I didn't take this much time.

[skunkes]

the bad: i have been raised without much warmth from my parents in childhood, but also pressured to conform to familial authority, doubt myself always, and value familial connections above all else (<- failed at this, and feel guilt about it.)

but also in experiencing this i have been so isolated from the entire rest of the world and others, that it will be nearly impossible to create my own "family" -> find safety and comfort in anybody else once my family is Gone. despite dis i find it really difficult to break away from the familiar, disobey and disappoint, because, well, why are my wishes more important than anybody else's. why would I cause upset and distress in anybody, and exert so much effort into my doubt filled half decisions, for my meaningless little Wishes. being away would also mean less time with these people who I'll never see again once they're gone. being raised this way is definitely paying off for those who did so.

the good: yaaaay adjacent inspiration for writing talon lore

[ratatatastic]

local man haunts (me) open practise yet again more news at 11

[moeblob]

AU where Brent is a drone to help out at crime scenes and offer input after Right finds the drone. And basically he befriends the really weird guy possibly controlling the drone but has his doubts as to how human the drone's source can be. So Right and Brent just go around trying to solve crimes while Right just calls the drone "Fuckwad (affectionate)".

[icewindandboringhorror]

boy in silly sitting positions compilation

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

yk, its weird being Way Too Aware & In Control of yourself bc technically i believe im having a panic attack. but somehow i am Very Unbothered by this, bc i know whats happening and its illogical. my body's having an overreaction and i couldn't be fucked to join in

[seaofreverie]

NEW CONCERT ON THE HORIZON..... Going to see Franz Ferdinand next year !!!

[reel-fear]

MIKE BLOCKED ME ON TWITTER FOR ROASTING HIS DUMBASS RESPONSE TO THE GRAPHIC NOVEL STUFF!!

grown ass man scared of the 19-year-old queer being mean to him over his public meltdown more at 8.

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

When June confronts Solas please imagine it like that one scene in KH1 where Riku does his little "im evil now" speech and Sora goes "youre stupid!" at him

[raksh-writes]

I've had MCU fatigue for years at this point, can’t remember when was the last time I was actually excited for something (DS:MoM probably) but I've watched the trailer for the new Captain America a couple weeks ago and now the Thuderbolts teaser that Just came out like an hour ago and jendkrmjdnrkfnfurjr

OH MY FUCKING GOD ARE WE BACK????????

This feels like having The Winter Soldier glory days back and Im here for it. Gimme gimme gimme *insert grabby hands x100*

[north-wilkesboro-moonshine-cave]

How many more times must i be forced to go through an awful day and then remind people, who I know personally and previously knew to be very intelligent, that the reason why some people get worried about whether or not an online person they interact with is “real” is because there is such a thing as fucking scams.

[gigantomachylesbian]

Guys. I did not know before now that writing could be painfully millennial in a full prose book but the pho*nix ke*per has proven me wrong and I have to complain about it in the tags

[ratatatastic]

AND I CHEERED