46 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — To Fight Draculas, We Need a Dracula Gun

September 23

Mina writes in her diary that Jonathan had a difficult evening but went off to work at his new job as leading solicitor without issue. Oh she’s so proud blah blah.

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41 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — With All the Moods and Tenses of the Verb

I put off the September 13 entry so I could a. organize a sendoff party for my pal Waverly who is moving to San Francisco because they’re in LOVE and b. prepping for Hurricane Lee, who was due to arrive the evening of September 15. Waverly crashed at my place for the storm and power went out at some point in the wee hours of September 16th, came on long enough for me to make coffee, and has been off ever since. I write this with cold coffee leftovers by the overcast daylight through my window, using up my phone data and hoping my battery lasts. The power has been out for a little over 24 hours now, because Nova Scotia power is a scam.

The storm hasn’t been too bad, all considered, mostly because it was a near miss from us. Lee traveled up the west side of the province and made landfall with earnest near New Brunswick rather than in Nova Scotia, but the storm was large and the wind didn’t let up for quite a while, so there are leaves all over the place. I’ll try to add some photos to this entry.

Please enjoy this special edition power outage entry.

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34 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — Europe Teleportation

I’m excited because tonight I’m going blackberry picking! I love foraging for stuff. This summer has been a disappointment because of the rain but I’m pumped as blackberry and apple season is nigh. I’ve started a batch of raspberry wine, which I’ve never made before, but it tastes really fucking good. Much better than dandelion wine which, in its early days, tastes like lawn.

I went to see Barbie with my niece on Tuesday and we blew a ton of money at the arcade. My nephew didn’t come because he didn’t want to see Barbie but I guess we left him with a nasty case of fomo so now I’m doing the same thing with him next week. I don’t think he wants to see Oppenheimer so the new TMNT will have to do.

I said I’d tell you about the pigeons but I’d have to dig photos out of my phone. I’ll do it next time.

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5. Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — Inconvenient Boners

May 11

The next entry does NOT bring us back to Jonathan! Lucy Westenra replies quickly to Mina’s previous letter saying she’s not as bad a correspondent as Mina would imply. Besides, she has absolutely nothing to write about, except for boys.

As to the tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who was with me at the last Pop.

Pop???

I think my favorite thing about this book is that everyone’s just being mundane and ridiculous in a way that isn’t too far off from modern blogging, except that it also shows how far out 100 years is since the book was written. Cat meat man? Pop with a capital P? What are these people talking about? In my local dialect “pop” is our “soda pop” but I doubt she means that.

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4 Let’s Read Dracula and Embellish Events a Bit

May 8

Jonathan learns that shaving can get dicey

Would you judge me if I told you I gasped when I read this at the top of the Dracula Daily email?

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3 Let’s Read Dracula – The Truth About the Cat Meat Man, and Other Digressions

I want to open this one by saying that I’ve discovered that by cat meat, Jonathan wasn’t saying he eats cats. He was talking about a dude who sells leftover butcher meat for cats. A cat meat man. Probably stinky but wow, what a job. The meat is sold on skewers so the kebab comparison is valid. Animal cruelty aside, Jonathan is still pretty racist.

gif of Britta from the tv show Community saying "I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty."

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1 Let’s Read Dracula – What Happens in Transylvania Stays in Transylvania

May 3rd

So a couple months back I found this academic book, Reading the Vampire by Ken Gelder, at a used bookstore for six bucks. I picked it up with the intent to read it and send it to a friend who likes this kinda stuff more than me (shout out to Leigh, if you’re reading this). That book’s discussion of Dracula and the introduction of “Buda-Pesth” as opposed to “Budapest” brought me down an interesting rabbit hole about the city and how it’s kind of two cities and there’s a lot of local baggage about it—look it up if you’re into that. John Harker doesn’t care about any of this, leading me to believe he’s a basic bitch, but I suppose he is just spying on it from the train so maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. Checking on the modern Anglicizations makes me feel less like white colonialist scum.

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