Airfleck - Airfleck

The sad part of the poor captain’s determination to make it to England is that, in a way, it would be better if he didn’t.  Because he’s bringing a vampire to a place with a lot more prey than one ship can provide.

And he doesn’t know that!  He has no idea what’s killing his men, or that it would be a bad idea to let it get on shore.  The captain is doing his very best to be brave and honorable in a terrifying situation, and that’s part of why it’s so tragic.

Anyway, in an AU version of this story, this would be Dracula:

i wanted to draw utenanthy w their og hair colors

I AM NOT A WHO, ARCHIVIST. I AM A WHAT.

Some people have been making the joke about the characters of Dracula being stuck in a time loop but honestly it got me thinking about how epistolary novels feel like a potent manifestation of the concept of being doomed by the narrative

Because when I read a non-epistolary book, I’m not left with this sense that it’s all going to reset because the events of the book aren’t happening according to a very specific timeline. Like, sure, maybe specific dates get mentioned in the book, but it’s not as rigid as having a diary or letters with exact dates laid out over the course of six months.

Because Dracula has a definitive start date and end date, the characters are fixed in time and being (sometimes literally) railroaded. Your sense of the passage time is very concrete and there’s not a ton of wiggle room. Like, a book such as…idk, The Great Gatsby that doesn’t have any dates in it (IIRC) feels timeless. Sure, maybe it takes place in spring and summer, but you can kind of lose track of that because there isn’t a calendar keeping you aware of the date. Gatsby has to die within a certain window of time in the year but you’re free to imagine that as being whenever you want.

Not so in Dracula. Jonathan HAS to be on his way to Castle Dracula on May 3 and 4, he HAS to be there until at least late June. He cannot be already at the castle on May 2, and he can’t leave until after a particular date has come and gone. Every event in the book has to happen on or about the date it’s written about, there’s no room for deviation. We are free to imagine what might happen between specific dates (especially in the long stretches with no updates) but ultimately it all has to conclude in a specific event happening on a specific date.

That really lends the book the sense of being a time loop because we can pin down a pretty much exact timeline of the book. We know that these characters are locked in, and on the dates of the novel they cannot meaningfully deviate from the text. And because of that, they’re doomed to live those events out on the same exact date every single year for all time.

It adds the same layer of dread/grief/futility that you might feel when playing a game and reading in-universe diaries/news stories/etc from the early days of the game’s apocalypse. You can’t change the events of the past no matter how much hindsight you have, and none of us can change the canon events of Dracula no matter how much foresight we have. Jonathan is always going to be on his way to Dracula on May 3, and he’s always going to be completely unaware of what’s waiting for him.

Harrow: my deepest darkest trauma is that my parents killed a bunch of children in order to make me into a powerful necromancer. they died for me. their blood is on my hands.

Gideon: that sucks dude. anyways I'm going to sacrifice myself to save your life. you'll be an even more powerful necromancer. pretty sick, huh?

Gideon: why are you so upset about this

Gideon: is it because you don't like me

revolution

[ID by @jesus-iscariot: an illustration of anthy and utena. anthy is shown in her rose bride dress, with long wavy purple hair. utena is drawn in her uniform, with long pink hair. they both appear to be floating, with utena falling slightly backwards and anthy leaning towards her. their faces are close together and their eyes are closed, and they look as if they’re about to kiss. their hair appears to be flowing loosely upwards. anthy’s dress is also flowing. behind them is what appears to be a stroke of blue paint, patterned and coloured to look like a night sky, with a black silhouette of an inverted castle. the background is plain white. End ID.]

☆ - ̗̀✨ He's just Ken ✨ ̖́- ☆

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