Hello all! It looks like this will be another break after this entry, if I’m not mistaken, so I might as well just write up a post for it.
I also feel the need to note that today is Canada Day! Which I like to call Colonialism Day (#landback). Most of this blog has been written while I occupy the unceded land of the Mi’kmaq people. Luckily this city is centering a lot of indigenous voices for the holiday, and has been for the past few years now. Regardless, under the yoke of capitalism, we deserve to take full advantage of our few government-mandated holidays, especially in the summer. Unfortunately it’s pretty gloomy outside and we probably won’t be seeing the sun until Wednesday, so party vibes are limited.
As for our entry today, we go back to Renfield and Dr. Lobotomy.
Renfield treats his spider farm with much more love and care than the British government treated the indigenous people of Turtle Island, but Dr. Lobotomy demands that Renfield get rid of them all the same, as they’ve become “as great a nuisance as the flies.” He apparently is so sad about this that Dr. Lobotomy backpedals and asks Renfield to downsize at least, and Renfield agrees.
Renfield at one point in their meeting catches a fat fly and eats it, to Dr. Lobotomy’s disgust. He scolds Renfield but Renfield argues that the fly had a good life and gave it to Renfield. Dr. Lobotomy is now worried about how he’ll get rid of the spiders.
He has evidently some deep problem in his mind, for he keeps a little note-book in which he is always jotting down something. Whole pages of it are filled with masses of figures, generally single numbers added up in batches, and then the totals added in batches again, as though he were “focussing” some account, as the auditors put it.
This is interesting but I don’t know if it’s here to say anything aside from “look at how CRAZY this guy is!” But I’ll keep it just in case.
The timing directly after our previous entry, Jonathan’s last Hail Mary to escape, is interesting again. Perhaps Jonathan’s attempt at freedom, now that he’s been tasted by Dracula (I assume), is being called to here with the spiders and flies. Dr. Lobotomy is worried they’ll be “discarded” by being eaten, and it does appear that Jonathan is being left to be eaten by the three vampire girls while Dracula embarks to London.
This is so fun. It’s like a secret puzzle for those who are reading the book non-linearly. I love it.
So I’m a queer as well as mentally ill person, so making sex jokes about the institutionalisation of Renfield makes me depressed. BUT last time I did fish up this article about sexy gay roleplay that includes “shrink and client” as well as “strait-jacketed in the insane asylum,” so I think I’d rather think about the Renfield and Dr. Lobotomy chapters through that lens.
Let’s pretend that Renfield and Seward are a couple and actually just fucking around at home, but maybe Renfield has some real trauma about institutionalization, so we’re using kinky shit to reprocess this safely. Dr Seward is the king of consent, and all the sexy stuff is dropped as soon as his partner eats a fly. He deploys the safe word and they have a serious talking-to about Renfield getting a little too deep into subspace and they cuddle on the couch and Seward cooks them paprika chicken or something that has flavor. Once they disentangle themselves from the RP they have hot, sweet, consensual gay sex. The end.
As the next few weeks will be one of the last quiet periods in Dracula Daily, I’ll try to whip up a bonus post or two.