[ SECRET POST #3588 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3588 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 62 secrets from Secret Submission Post #513.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

Official advertise your fandom-related event thread.

RULES FOR THIS:
1. NO images bigger than 600x600 in either direction (banners, et cetera).
2. ONE POST PER USER under this thread.
3. What IS allowed: roleplay advertisements, fandom comms, fandom events, things like that.
4. What is NOT allowed: anything for profit, any kind of fic/art commissions, seeking 1-on-1 RP, that kind of thing.

[fscom]

Official clickables thread.

RULES FOR THIS:
1. NO huge images or columns of images that require scrolling, please.
2. ONE POST PER USER under in this thread.
3. If you're going to post, try to at least help the others.

[spacebabie]

[fscom]

General comments:

(If the thread contains spoilery/triggery content please post as 2nd comment so it collapses!)

Do you hide your nerd powerlevel?

[(Anonymous)]

inspired by 10

Dumb opinions

[(Anonymous)]

give me yours

Based on #3

[(Anonymous)]

What universes have you realized are actually pretty dark?

Bonus if it's something fans typically don't acknowledge, or if it's a comedy, played for laughs.

Online vs Offline

[(Anonymous)]

Are you nicer online or offline?
Are you more of an asshole online or offline?

Asking both since theoretically one or the other could tend to bring out both in a more extreme manner.

First horror movie?

[(Anonymous)]

What was your first horror movie that you remember seeing?

random

[(Anonymous)]

Is there a screenplay version of nanowrimo? There was script frenzy but it appears to have shut down.

What kind of people or topic of conversation makes you roll your eyes?

[(Anonymous)]

Either in annoyance or exasperation.

What's your BMI?

[(Anonymous)]

Inspired by an anon above.

Music recs

[(Anonymous)]

Help! I'm tired of my current playlists, but all the automated recommendation services are offering just the same old.
All genres welcome, I listen to just about everything (I do have favourites, but that's not important right now).

Inspired by 10

[supermanda]

Is there anyone else here who are in obscure or just straight up dead fandoms?

*raises hand*

Even for franchises that are pretty well-known, like Jurassic Park (films and novels), the fandom seems v small. Unless I'm not looking in the right spots...

but idk, I think, at the same time, I find comfort in that? I mean, I could easily throw myself at Star Wars, but it's so overdone and has reached a point where literally anyone, even those who haven't seen Star Wars, can make a Darth Vader joke, and it just wouldn't be special.

IDK WHAT I'M ON ABOUT, maybe this is a rant T_T

I need some horror/thriller/mystery audiobook recs

[kaijinscendre]

It is overtime week again next week so I will be working 11 hour days for the next five days. I got some podcasts to listen to but that will only last like...20 hours. So what are your favorite horror novels that have an audio version. Or thrillers or mysteries.

I've listened to World War Z (awesome), The Girl With All The Gifts (meh), and NOS4A2 (amazing). I don't like Stephen King all that much.

FINISHED!

[(Anonymous)]

The lesbian pirate book is done! (The first draft, anyway.)

Just in time for NaNoWriMo.

Imgur issues

[(Anonymous)]

I can't seem to get the image alone from imgur anymore. i used to use the url and add .jpg/.png at the end, and then it would come up in F!S-usable format. Is there a new trick with the new site?

[fscom]

Games thread!

Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[diet_poison]

Going to post my thoughts in response to this after taking a minute to gather them :) Feel free to post comments, questions, or thoughts in response to this as well!

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[diet_poison]

So the book was a bit of a slog at some points especially at the beginning, and probably longer than it needed to be, but still a good read and enthralling at certain points.

Dracula himself was quite a scary fellow but got very little page time, so to speak. I think it was the thought of him that haunted everyone that brought the most fear. I guess I don't really get fear from books, so as a "horror" novel it didn't do much for me (but they never really do), but it made for an interesting situation.

I think I was most interested in how Dracula set some of the "rules" for vampires in literature and some of the now-seen-as-colloquial vampirisms (driving a wooden stake through the heart, aversion to garlic, etc.) might have been more novel then - and more grisly, especially the stake, and the blood-sucking. The shock factor would have done a lot more then than it does now, when vampires and their many variations are a common aspect of horror and fantasy, and people grow up knowing some of the lore. What was interesting to me at the end was apparently the wooden stake thing was not a hard and fast rule, since Quincey killed the Dracula himself with a Bowie knife, lol. That was really not what I expected. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was sunset? And the simultaneous head-chopping on Jonathan's part?

I thought the most horrifying part of the story was probably meant to be Lucy's slow demise, and it was pretty bad, but to me the scariest part was when Jonathan was trapped in Dracula's castle. I wish we'd seen specifically how he escaped though - he talked about climbing down the walls and then next we see him he's already in the convent recovering with Sister Agatha (I think that was her name). I guess the climbing must have been successful?

Mina was probably my favorite character, in large part because she was clearly really, really smart and the men recognized and respected it and she was able to actively contribute to their mission in that way rather than just sitting around as The Damsel In Distress (obviously she played that role too, but not only that role). At first she was mostly just a secretary, but she wound up contributing some of the planning and puzzle-solving to the mission and that was cool. Of course it makes me roll my eyes that they constantly recognized her intelligence as saying she has "a man's brain" because of course it can't be normal for women to be smart, but that - and all the other ridiculous gender essentialism, mostly spouted by Van Helsing - was, I am sure, largely a product of its time. (The book was in many ways extremely Victorian, almost stiflingly so...)

The ending was tense and for a while I would have been sure Mina would die if the table of contents had not indicated the last chapter was one of her journal entries. I'm so glad she and Jonathan both lived because I shipped them hard by the end of the book and can only imagine what kind of bond they must have had after going through all that hell together.

Van Helsing was really cool at first, and while I still liked him as a character towards the end, I got really annoyed with his monologuing lol. I liked that he spoke in a way (even if it wasn't completely consistent) that made it clear that he wasn't a native English speaker - that was a well-done detail - but the fact that he just went on for so long got boring to read, and it was dumb too that he droned on and on when they were supposedly pressed for time.

I enjoyed the details of the castle, Jonathan's rooms, and the descriptions of the insides of the old houses Dracula inhabited in London.

It's too bad that Quincey was a throwaway character. I liked the juxtaposition of the American cowboy with the culture of Victorian England, and would have liked that to be explored more. I'm not in the least surprised he was the one to die the heroic death, but he was paid less attention than any of the other main characters throughout the book; I think it would have been better set up - especially since his death marked the final sentence (except the one-page epilogue) - had his character been more developed.

Perhaps the most interesting character was Renfield. I'm still not sure I understand the significance of everything he did or said, but some of it was possibly just to demonstrate to the reader that he was truly mad. His death was a sad one, especially since if he'd been released it would have been avoided, and he truly had Mina's (and the others') best wishes at heart. It's interesting that the moment of spiritual lucidity that allowed him to try to warn Seward and the others of the threat that existed to Mina, when he begged to be released, coincided with a moment of mental lucidity at the same time. I also predicted that his vague warning had to do with danger to Mina, and was correct. (that scene was pretty freaky, and well-written.) Also, I wondered at first why Renfield didn't just tell Seward the nature of the danger, but then I realized he had no idea that the others knew about the Count's identity, and he must have realized, in his lucidity, that telling the truth would have just made him seem more mad and been written off as a product of his madness (sort of like why Van Helsing didn't tell the others the truth until they could see it with their own eyes with Lucy, except he at least had some credibility as a professor; Renfield was a lunatic and anything from his mouth would have been met not just with skepticism but with a certainty that it was only a madman's ravings and thus must be false).

I'll leave it at that for now - I want to hear some of your thoughts! Some questions to get you going: was the book scary to you, and why or why not? What vampire tropes do you like in the book, and which ones do you like to see persisted in other vampire novels? What do you think of the individual characters and their relationships? What about Stoker's writing style? Any other thoughts, interesting things you noticed, etc.?

Comment away and I'll check back soon!

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[(Anonymous)]

Mixed feelings.

I really loved the first ~100 pages. Those are fantastic. It's atmospheric, suspenseful, much more serious than I expected. I didn't want to stop reading at that point. The buildup of tension is something else. The carriage ride to Dracula's castle with the wolves chasing behind manages to create claustrophobia in an open air setting. It's fucking lovely!

And, oh, the imagery in Harker's early entries is beautiful. Dracula moving along the castle walls like a lizard, the female vampires forming out of moonlight and dust, Dracula gorging himself on so much blood that he is bloated with it etc. This is the bloody, messy, sinister vampirism I want to see.

I loved Harker at the beginning. He's so, so afraid, and yet never becomes completely useless. The development of dread and entrapment in those chapters is great. The letters Harker was forced to write in particular was a genuinely creepy moment. It's simple, it's effective, it's elegant.

It was all so intriguing, including the confused sexuality between Dracula and Harker. I was ready to fall in love.

And then Van Helsing happens. And it takes such a nosedive. It starts going round in circles, becomes repetitive, boring, and all the fun evaporates.

It descends into preachy camp and never recovers. Someone called it 'Christian propaganda', and I have to agree. Admittedly, I'm never going to be a big fan of religious fiction or religious themes in fiction, but I can put up with it just fine, if the text is worth it. But, holy cow, this is probably the most obnoxious example I've ever come across.

Not a fan of the whole pure, godly woman vs. devilish whore thing. There is a lot of repressed sexuality in the whole book, with female sexuality being the most dangerous of all (surprise, surprise). But that's the Victorians for you. The whole staking of Lucy reads like a fetishist's wet dream, which is simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. Or rather Lucy's whole arc with the multiple proposals, kisses and blood infusions is one giant leadup to the deliverance through violent and blood-soaked death idea, executed by her noble, manly fiance. Like a fratboy jackhammer deflowering a blow-up doll. In this case, a stake is not just a stake.

It's also way too long. If our main characters had spent less time praising themselves as brave and righteous heroes, the book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. And it would have been better for it.

I didn't like any of the 'good' characters. Even Harker becomes just another noble, manly douche, as soon as he loses his doubt in himself and his past experiences. I actively loathed Van Helsing. That old fart really got on my nerves. I wanted him to die so badly, because it would have been the only way to have him finally shut up. But sadly, that didn't happen. I would have loved to see more of Renfield, the female vampires and Dracula himself, because those were actually interesting.

I don't regret reading it, even though I found the second half progressively tedious and annoying, and I had little to no desire to pick it up and continue reading. I'm a bit sad and disappointed how it turned out. It could have been so much more. It could have been amazing. Especially, because Stoker so clearly would have had the skill, but no, instead he just deliberately made a lot of stupid choices.

we could have had it all.gif

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[dethtoll]

I finished the book on time!

I've read this book several times, the first when I was just a teenager. But it's been some years, I think I last read it in maybe 2009? So coming back to it, with the stuff I know and think about now, as the person I am now, has been interesting, particularly since while I remember the basic narrative beats, I'd forgotten much of the details.

The first thing that strikes me about the book was the Victorian-era gender politics. It's EVERYWHERE -- but especially in the 2nd half of the book where it actively puts Mina in danger (and they STILL try to exclude her "for her protection." It's only towards the end, when she can be useful, that they take her along after she insists.

The obvious roots in Gothic fiction are there, though the first four chapters are definitely a subversion of how Gothic fiction usually works out, given that Harker is male (though, funny enough, he seems to be written as youthful and not strong by masculine standards of the day.) Though I wonder what pushed Stoker to write this book; it's not like Dracula was the first book of its kind. Popular literature such as Carmilla had introduced vampires as early as the 1870s, and Gothic literature itself had been around for most of the century (and arguably the genre was on its way out.) Ultimately it feels like Stoker pulled together some of the old superstitious lore behind vampires and centered it loosely around the legend of Vlad the Impaler. I read somewhere that he only chose the name Dracula because he read that "Dracula" meant "devil." He could have based the character on anybody, or nobody at all.

Based on how we see vampires in modern times with things like Twilight and True Blood, it's fun to go back and look at how Dracula seemed to establish the rules, including several that seem to be generally ignored nowadays, such as anything to do with running water. Interestingly enough, ol' D doesn't actually die in sunlight, which strikes me as odd given how that's one of the most long-standing and observed "rule" in popular vampire media. What's most striking, though, is how Dracula himself is killed not by a stake to the heart, but by a bowie knife. But that actually fits with the legends -- that silver or steel harm vampires just as they might werewolves.

The characters themselves are quite interesting in their own right. Mina makes for a good lead, especially since she does stuff, but it's obvious that Stoker was using her to push back against things like the New Woman movement and newfangled ideas about feminism. Lucy makes for an interesting contrast, as she's got that whole "purity and innocence" vibe and was therefore doomed -- her later debasement as a vampire was clearly intended to be all the more shocking for that. Harker probably serves as an adequate "everyman" character -- he's male, but well-learned and not exactly the strongest guy around, and he gets menaced in true Gothic fashion by the scary foreign nobleman in a subversion of Victorian-era gender politics. I feel like Dr. Seward is for all intents and purposes the main character; it's through him and Lucy that the rest of the cast is pulled in, and he has the most page time. And as a doctor, he represents Victorian science and skepticism standing in the face of the supernatural (a tactic HP Lovecraft would use to good effect in his own work 20-30 years later) and serves as a good contrast to Van Helsing, who is also a doctor, but much more knowledgeable and more open-minded. Van Helsing himself is perhaps the most entertaining member of the cast, with his stilted English and fatherly role to the others, as well as his willingness to believe in the unbelievable.

However, I was kind of annoyed at how Quincy and Arthur were mostly minor characters, especially Quincy who was almost barely peripheral at points. Arthur gets very little focus beyond his relationship to Lucy and his status as nobility; Quincy seems mostly to exist to round out the cast and perform as an exaggerated American stereotype (which promptly disappears after the first third of the book and he sounds as British as everyone else) and then he dies -- which is especially annoying because there's no buildup and we're barely made to care about him.

I can definitely tell that Stoker had a background in theatre -- the longwinded speeches by many of the characters (especially Van Helsing, good lord) definitely seem better suited to a stage play. The few added moments of levity feel like a Shakespearean joke too -- my personal favorite being Harker attempting to deal with people who can't spell "deputy."

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[(Anonymous)]

I think the thing that interested me most about the book was less the vampire-specific mythology, and more the general Gothic-ness of everything. It's so effectively atmospheric - especially the section that's just Harker's letters at the beginning. It's basically a Victorian travelogue that goes to this intensely weird place. The sections that are back in England are a little more formulaic but still very good at carrying across the feels. And Stoker seems really good at getting all the brooding, medieval, dark, ominous feelings out there, the whole Gothic sensibility. Lost beautiful women, storms, Catholicism, etc etc etc.

One of the things that does interest me - and obviously this is not new ground - but how much of the novel has to do with exoticness - the foreignness of Dracula, and especially the religious/cultural element between the English characters and Van Helsing and the rest of the continental stuff. It ties in with the Gothic stuff obviously and I think a lot of the unsettling alienness that Dracula has draws really effectively on those cultural ideas. All this Victorian-ass culture.

The one thing that really frustrated me about the book is when Mina is getting attacked by Dracula, and it's SO OBVIOUS what's happening and it takes them SO LONG to figure it out. Very frustrating. But Mina's character was good.

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[(Anonymous)]

For all that is holy, do not read the unofficial sequel to Dracula called "Bloodline" by Kate Cary. It will make you hate every character possible. (Poor Mina got so horribly destroyed..)

Graceling driveby

[caerbannog]

Tangently related, I read the next two books in the Graceling series!

Where is Fire!anon? I really liked Fire more than Graceling!!! and I think I liked Bitterblue the same amount as Fire, but in a different way.

Mostly I'm sad there's not a 4th book, as I feel each book the writing is more refined and polished.

I'm also pleased with the subtle incorporation of sexuality and disability into the books. I'm surprised it's not being flogged on tumblr (but maybe it is and I haven't noticed. They are newish publications?)

I'm now having a book hangover :(