Maedhros my beloveeeeed

Yuh Maedhros drawing, not exactly complete but I can’t focus on the finer details. I’ll touch up on it next year ☠️👍 then some closeups of details

One day I’ll make a version for Maglor

The eyes are definitely a real thing!

Archaic and Classical Greek iconography almost never show frontal faces, with a few significant exceptions. [...] What these groups have in common is that they are such a take possession of another's wits or such as have lost their normal consciousness because themselves possessed. [...]

For this reason also most frontal faces in art belong realm of Dionysus, the god par excellence of abnormal states. Even gorgons and panthers cross into the Dionysiac realm: in the Doric dialect, we are told, masks were called gorgeia, after the Gorgon; Steinhart argues that the panther first came to be associated with Dionysus through the iconographic trad of depicting the panther as a frontal-faced terror which gradually acquired mask-like abstraction. Above all, the god's icon, the mask, and the masks theatre may be depicted frontally. Frontal faces can also distinguish all who are possessed by the god-his apostles: drunkards, satyrs, maenads, ecstatics, actors wearing masks, musicians, and especially pipers (an instrument invented by Athena to imitate the sound of gorgons and which she discarded because her cheeks puff out like a gorgon's). All, like drunkards, are possessed power of Dionysus. But satyrs, pipers, masks, and actors in masks are not only possessed by Dionysus; they share the god's power to take possession. The glare of the masked actor, like the Gorgon, casts a trance-like spell upon his audience, transporting them into different worlds and different identities. That the po can also take possession is an important expression of Dionysiac duplicity confuses active and passive, assailant and victim, god and worshipper. M are the concrete embodiment of the power of Dionysus, because Dionysus works his particular magic through possession, especially through the eyes, creating a kind of enthusiasm in the etymological sense of enthios, the god being inside one. --Eric Csapo

Awesome that you got that through UPG, @winedarkgod!

some unconventional things I associate with Dionysus (based on my personal experience/upgs):

🍇 - eyes and eye symbolism

🍇 - red or purple carnations

🍇 - spiders

🍇 - blue raspberry flavored anything (but especially if it has something like thc or alcohol in it)

🍇 - old school goth music/aesthetics

🍇 - liminal spaces

28 May - Jonathan tries to send some letters.

these are part of an animatic summarising Dracula, which you can watch here (new readers beware; it has spoilers for the entire book!)

Oh dear…

Ways I am like Count Dracula:

-Wear lots of black

-Have had trouble with roommates stealing my food

-Often make inside jokes that only I think are funny

-Really enjoy telling family stories

-Like disguises and fake beards

-Attracted to Jonathan Harker

Ways I am not like Count Dracula:

-Dislike it when solicitors show up on my doorstep

-…*gestures vaguely* All that.

I just finished Astarion's romance questline and I am beside myself.

Glove.

Alucard really is the disaster bisexual representation we all needed and deserved.

His polycule broke up (died of old age) so he took a depression nap (entombed himself for a 300 year slumber), bleached his hair (lost all his color from said slumber), and switched up his style (put his tits away in a frilly shirt).

He really is one of us.

Obsessed with the idea of Castlevania from Alucard's perspective 'cause like. Imagine your dad is one of the most dangerous people on the planet but you keep forgetting about it because he's also hopelessly and pathetically devoted to your mother to the point of borderline neglecting you which kind of sucks but y'know whatever. And then your mom is brutally and publicly murdered so you head out for your dad's estate already presuming he's cooking up some pretty chill, sweet revenge, only to find out he's actually Actively Planning A Genocide against your own mother's people, of which you're also still technically a part of. So you try telling your dad that's actually Not Chill and he just fucking lunges at you, permanently scarring you and leaving you in a year long coma so now you have to kill your weirdo loser dad which sucks hard cuz y'know. You really don't have anyone else but ok.

But you're still in a coma so then you're woken up by a random mage girl who thinks you're Jesus Christ Reborn and a loser homeless boy who immediately (and homoerotically) tries to fight you and he actually manages to stab you in the gut but you think that's sexy and you ask them if they wanna help you kill your dad and now suddenly you're part of a murder polycule. So like. What I'm trying to say is 10/10 the character of all time

Occult emblems from Mellon MS 72.

This sounds like a much more horrifying version of the game Hades.

Something I haven’t seen discussed much (perhaps I’ve just missed where it’s being talked about) is that Edwin’s escape from hell must have been an iterative process, and what survival instinct and strength of hope it took to achieve it.

At least 3 different entities “owned” him while he was down there, the baby doll spider had him for decades but seems not to have had him the whole time - but it chased them right to the door of Hell when he and Charles escaped together the second time.

He must have been back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. He would have had to figure out the layers of hell and the path from scratch. He would have taken wrong turns, suffered the torments. From his notes, he seems to have ended up in Avarice at least once. I’m pretty certain he’s the one who created that hidden hole in the wall. I wonder how many years it took him to do that. I wonder if he only got the chance to start after the spider owned him because it doesn’t seem sapient in the same way the demons did.

He figured out the hard way why not to ring that bell. I wonder how many times he made it to the Lobby before he was caught, and how many times he only got as far as gluttony or lower down. I wonder if he made it halfway up the staircase before and was dragged back, which is why he made Charles stop to talk when he did.

Maybe he made it to the lobby the 56th, 57th, 58th and 61st attempt, but not the ones in between. Maybe he despaired when he failed at it twice in a row. I wonder, after the first years of being nothing but a frightened teenager in a terrifying place, how many chunks of years he lost in the middle to defeat and hopelessness before deciding to try yet again. No wonder Esther wants to eat his soul so bad, you don’t find strength like that every day

Dead Boy Detectives is honestly really fucking good and you guys need to watch it. It's queer, yeah, but most importantly it's camp as hell. I'm talking weird, spooky, Halloween-type vibes. Witches who walk around with spider necklaces and most of their tits exposed. Insane cat gods. Cartoonishly large magnifying glasses. A spider made of baby heads. A man who used to be a walrus. Genuinely we are so fucking back with goofy insane media that makes you bite at the bars of your enclosure.

Weird alchemical art from Mellon MS 110.

I love reading Dracula analysis on this website and comparing/contrasting different adaptations, different schools of thought on the novel's themes and interpretations and what they say about the people advancing these interpretations, but the best part is that a lot of it is Dracula Daily people engaging in a one-sided ship war against most movie adaptations over whether Mina should end up with Jonathan or with Dracula.

The alchemical notes of Isaac Newton.

These leaves mostly contain quotes and poetry from other texts. I copy stuff into my own Book of Shadows all the time!

I do think the ‘comedy’ of Dracula in this part of the story only adds to the horror. Like we can all go ‘haha lizard fashion’ because it is ridiculous, he’s crawling barefoot on that wall like 🦎

But also fucking imagine a whole ass man skittering down a wall like that, the fact that his cloak is billowing like wings means he must be going fast too bc otherwise it would just fall over his head. (Or idk maybe he is using magic powers to make his cloak look cooler who knows.)

And it’s in his pretending to have servants too, I know, my most popular post rn is calling him a loser for it which he is!! He’s probably really embarrassed about it too bc it’s demeaning for a boyar to do those chores!

But Jonathan doesn’t have the luxury of laughing at this stuff.

One thing that really caught my attention this time is the uncanny valley of it all. From the moment Jonathan meets the Count, he can tell something is off. No matter how thickly he puts on the charm, Dracula can’t hide the fact that he’s not human; he’s something else, a ‘creature in the semblance of a man’, there’s something innately off-putting about his presence. His eyes, his teeth, his hands, his smell: he has the aura of a predator and Jonathan, his prey, can feel it.

From Jonathan’s point of view, every hilarious weird thing the Count does is another sign of him being Not Human, as well as the fact that he’s in total control—as his ruse of normality is slowly falling apart, but there’s still nothing Jonathan can do. The mask is slipping, the Count is revealing his true nature—whether accidentally or on purpose—and Jonathan can only watch and keep pretending in the hope that it will prolong his life.

May 12

Lizard fashion