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scratch that. everything sucks.

@personalspin / personalspin.tumblr.com

30, they/them, tired.
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depsidase
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gwydionmisha

A real thing that happened is me as a teenager.

I had what turned out to be a dangerous walking pneumonia, for a week, but the manager at Burger King wouldn’t let me off.  My breathing was very loud and ragged.  I was coughing on and breathing on the food.

I wasn’t allowed to leave.  I was told if i called out, I was fired.

So Im shuffling around wheezing loudly swaying with my high fever as I work drive thru by myself, and a paramedic walked in to order dinner.

He goes ballistic, My friends.  He demands to see the Manager.  he chews him out at the top of his lungs so the whole restaurant can here.  Guys working the back came up to watch.  Customers staring and thinking hard about the infectious food they were eating.  Dude losing his shit about how infectious I was and all the people management had been endangering for days judging from my breathing and I needed to be home on antibiotics RIGHT NOW and the health Department was going to hear about this.

I went home.  i got the week off.  Didn’t even need a doctor’s note.

Getting friends management doesn’t know to do this WOULD WORK.

Same manager not letting me take my influenza home a year later  despite repeated vomiting?  Threw up in front of customers.  Customers demanded money back and started threatening the manager with lawsuits.

I got to go home and got time off until I stopped vomitting.

GO AHEAD and THROW UP in front of Customers.  THEY will Complain.

Don’t be shy.  

They are supposed to let you stay home when you are sick.  Stop protecting management. (Hiding how sick you are protects management).  They are abusing you.  Let them reap what they sow.

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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the only one stopping you from lurking around an ancient ruin, dressing like a disgraced nobleman, and duelling everyone who comes your way, is yourself. 

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guildenstern

unfortunately no eclipse photography can ever outdo the waffle house one from 2017

i don't even know who took this pic. the only person who claims to know the photographer was this person who uploaded it to reddit without naming them. it just adds to the mystery of it

I know this photo!

This is a picture Nick Martino took outside a waffle house in Tennessee in 2017. It's still up on his Instagram page.

Finally a good fucking source

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oriocookie

obsessed with the way my robotics team lead talks

she’s reinventing hieroglyphics

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mp-lily

She’s the only person who truly understands how emojis were meant to be used.

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i hate that "that that" is grammatically correct. why is english the joke language

by the way, this post was inspired by some writing i was doing last night where i wrote "that that" and got so mad that i had to take a break for the rest of the evening

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toskarin

it's understandable that that "that that" that ended your writing session would inspire a post like that

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Very oblivious

Not oblivious at all! (positive, about to excited infodump) Biff knew something was up the minute he entered the room, but also that his humans were happy and excited. After a thorough sniff of the toy near the door, he made a beeline for where she was hiding without making it look like he was pursuing or hunting her. When he gets around the couch, he looks right at her, but shows no surprise or tension, just that friendly, gentle curiosity. He then IMMEDIATELY breaks eye contact, turns partly away (but not fully so she can still see his face) and starts sniffing the toys, and then again doesn't show any signs of surprise or tension that might get misread as aggression.

That's not an oblivious dog. That's a dog who knows that his humans are happy and excited and that the room smells like puppy, recognizes that the puppy is clearly supposed to be there, and is on his best "reassure the puppy that he is friendly and nonthreatening" behavior. That is a dog who is actively being careful not to scare her and is inviting Ducky to come out and say hi and maybe interact at her own pace.

In short, that is Biff being SUCH A GOOD BOY. BESTEST BOY. SWEETEST BIG BRO. GOOD DOGGO. 😭

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rannulfr

Things I need to see more of in Zombie movies...

Punching: Why does no one ever think about just punching a zombie? If they're walking around, then what's left of their brain is still susceptible to concussion. Sure, you should wear gloves, but still.

Maille: AKA "chainmail". If a shark can't bite through it, a human mandible sure as shit can't.

Bicycles: You know what vehicle is efficiently compact, requires no fuel & is virtually silent?

A fucking bike.

But noooo, it's gotta be a Harley for whatever reason.

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orcboxer

Me and my bike gang, Knights of the Fist, roll into town on decked-out bicycles, utterly silent save for the gentle rustle of chainmail and the little bell that Tommy likes to ring sometimes when he's feeling whimsical

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see-arcane

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

  1. Blood of My BloodA recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

  • Dracula Daily Sketch CollectionAn array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.
  • Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriterWith a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.
  • The League of Extraordinary GentlefolkAn ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

  • Re: DraculaProbably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)
  • The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.
  • Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.

……

………

The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

  • The VampyresA novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.
  • What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

  1. Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.
  2. ‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.
  3. Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.  
  4. “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.  
  5. Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.
  6.  “The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.

Got recommended another Substack addition~

Woman in White Weekly - The Woman in White

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