#Dracula daily August 30

[yousaytomato]

"noooo Lucy! Don't listen to Arthur! You're not fat you're beautiful!"

shut up shut up shut up

She can be both

Fat is not a bad word. Fat is just a description of the type of body you can have.

If you immediately assume fat is an insult, a descriptor meaning "ugly" please do some re-evaluating

#i understand that reimagining this in a modern context is fun! i enjoy everytime they say something is queer or gay or whatever #but. even in a moderb context. that sentence is not an insult in this context #i cannot believe we are still doing this in 2022?? #like. she probably isnt actually fat. she probably has gained weight. because she was ill. #but my point is. even without that context. fat does not mean bad #there doesn't have to be justifications about 'oh well when stoker wrote it...' #like you're absolutely right! but. regardless! it isn't a bad word! #i am fat and hot and smart #and it makes me mad that so many of you #seem to think i should hate myself. that when i describe my body as fat #that you think that's an insult #it's neutral!! it's just a way of being. goddamn #remind me to never leave my bubble re: body neutrality. again lol #this was really not where i thought I'd be having this conversation lol #woes of emily #Dracula daily #Dracula daily August 30

[vampanoia]

Lucy: Hi Mina! I'm doing great! :D

Arthur: Lucy is awful and getting worse every day. Jack, please, you gotta look at her.

#dracula #dracula daily #Dracula daily august 30 #Dracula daily august 31

[nonproductive]

August 30, 31 | The last two entries of Dracula Daily are sad and chilling when read back to back, and exactly why this project works so well! It's fascinating to see what these characters know, what they don't, and how they choose to present themselves.

#dracula daily #dracula daily august 31 #august 31 #august 30 #dracula daily august 30

[c-schroed]

Well folks, you heard Lucy. Save the date for the 28th of September. Wedding day! Surely nothing bad will happen until then. It'll be just fine.

#dracula daily #re: dracula #august 30 #lucy westenra #arthur holmwood #lurthur #wedding #save the date #fingers crossed #schroed's thoughts

[joannamarieart]

A couple things are becoming increasingly evident the further we get into Dracula Daily...

1. Almost every single adaptation of Dracula has been absolute trash at portraying the human characters and their relationships, as well as the portrayal of the monster himself, which in many cases has been to heavily romanticize.

2. We are absolutely STARVED for genuine, honest, unabashed displays of affection and love. We are inundated with sarcasm and 4th wall breaking to the point where just reading these characters show genuine and constant affection for each other feels revolutionary. 

You can just be in love without having to be ‘enemies’ first, and can be affectionate without hiding it behind pretending you dislike each other. 

---------------------------------

Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband. ... By the way, I forgot to tell you that Arthur is here. We have such walks and drives, and rides, and rowing, and tennis, and fishing together; and I love him more than ever. He tells me that he loves me more, but I doubt that, for at first he told me that he couldn't love me more than he did then. But this is nonsense. There he is, calling to me. ~ Lucy Westenra to Mina Harker

#dracula daily #humans and their relationships #letters from lucy #lucy westenra #literary love #dracula is not sexy #the way these humans love and care for each other is sexy #august 30

[throwawaydracula]

Once again, language clarification time, and while we're at it discussion of shifting social values time: When Lucy says Arthur tells her she's 'getting fat', it's not meant as teasing, it's not passive aggressive, it's not, god forbid, negging-- it's meant as an unambiguous compliment. Lucy is saying Arthur is telling her she looks much better and healthier than she has been, she's saying that he's happy she's recovering from her illness.

This is consistent with beauty standards of the era; if you read other material from a round the same time, you'll find the word 'plump' is a go-to word for complimenting a woman in terms of conventional attractiveness. Off the top of my head, it also happens in Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore and that F. Marion Crawford story I recently recommended, The Blood is the Life. The general connotation was healthiness.

I thought I'd mention this because I've seen people worry about Lucy and Arthur's relationship. I want to stress that whatever else, Lucy is not dealing with body shaming from him. I have more thoughts on this, but due to spoilers they need to wait until tomorrow's entry.

#dracula daily #dracula daily 30 august

[his-lizard-fashion]

trying to figure out how lucy is actually doing like

#dracula daily #lucy westenra #august 30

[unabridgedisbetter]

I will fight anyone in a Kmart parking lot with pool noodles if they gun for my boy Arthur for calling Lucy fat. As someone who grew up with a chronically ill sister this hits me in the gut. She was constantly under weight and my dad would even make football gain weight smoothies we called fat babies because we all wanted her to gain weight and she WANTED to gain weight and NEEDED To to stay alive; so Lucy proudly telling Mina Arthur called her fat is supposed to let us know she IS GETTING BETTER. This is to give us HOPE-she’s eating again, she’s sleeping better she might be getting fat (yay!) but this is DRACULA DANG IT WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN TO MY BABY

#Dracula daily #daily dracula #august 30 #lucy westenra #mina harker #arthur holmwood #text post #story

[ourgoodfriendjonathan]

#dracula daily #august 30 #lucy westenra #200+

[disco-tea]

ALRIGHT EVERYBODY SHUT UP. Look Lucy is happy! Lucy isn’t sleepwalking! Lucy is full of life and has an appetite!! LUCY IS LOVED. That’s it we’re done! Everybody go home! Book is over! Jonathan and Mina are together and joyously married and Seward is merrily chasing his patients around the courtyard with a net and Quincy is off doing fun cowboy stuff I’m sure AND DID I MENTION LUCY IS ALIVE AND HAPPY AND HEALTHY AND TO BE MARRIED SEPTEMBER 28! We’re done we’re done this has been so much fun. Such a great experience thank you all for reading along BUT ITS OVER ITS DONE END THE BOOK RIGHT NOW BRAM STOKER OR I SWEAR

#dracula daily #lucy westenra #August 30

[arbitrarity]

new headcanon about Lucy's happy August 30th letter:

the description Lucy gives and the date definitely don't line up, both in terms of being in Whitby and feeling great; it's even more clear with Arthur's letter to Seward the next day pleading for help with Lucy's health. I thought it might be either the letter having the wrong date or Lucy just putting on a face for Mina. but what if it's a bit of both? what if Lucy wrote the letter when she was back in Whitby but didn't actually SEND it until August 30, after she got Mina's letter about her marriage?

I can see Lucy in Whitby, actually getting that reprieve from being drinked by Drac after he leaves for London. Arthur comes to visit and they have a lovely time, and she starts to feel better! full of blood life! she writes a letter to her lovely Mina gushing with hope. but then she hesitates...

Mina has left to go meet Jonathan. in a foreign hospital. with no idea what's happened to him and barely an idea of his current state. she's given Lucy the address but neither know what she's going to find when she arrives there. can Lucy really send Mina this letter of happiness when she doesn't know the state it will find her in when it arrives? what if The Worst has happened to Jonathan... Mina might be glad to hear Lucy is feeling better, to know that she doesn't have to worry too much, but how would she feel reading a letter of Lucy's dates with Arthur if her own love is a broken man or dead...

so Lucy doesn't sent it. she waits. she waits until she hears from Mina, til she gets the letter she sent full of happiness and hope and love! Mina is a happy, married woman! what a relief, Lucy can absolutely write back to her now. but now she's back in London and she's drained ill again, and she's afraid and alone. how can she possibly reply and tell Mina that she's glad for her, but that she herself is wasting away. Arthur has noticed and is so worried; she doesn't want to worry Mina too, when she's finally gotten some happiness in her life...

so she doesn't write a new letter. instead, she picks up the letter she wrote back in Whitby... thinks that's what she wants Mina to hear, and sends it dated for today, August 30. the letter is true, afterall, just not the whole truth. and who knows, maybe her health will be restored again by the time Mina returns home anyway. it's a compromise but also maybe a hope, maybe a small reassurance to Lucy that things could be okay again soon...

#there is like no textual reason to believe this is accurate #but I'm headcanoning it anyway #dracula #dracula daily #lucy westenra #August 30 #this also means the 'oceans of kisses' line was not relates to Mina getting married and is just how they greet each other #and I'm a-okay with that #arbitrarity talks

[yousaytomato]

Dear Lucy and Arthur,

Congrats!! I'm so excited for you guys! But you seem to have forgotten the address to which is should send my RSVP for September 28? So just letting you know here that I can attend the wedding and can't wait to attend! See you then! Hopefully you see this!

Also, I think you forgot to send my invite...

#dracula daily #woes of emily #Dracula daily August 30 #this has to be my last Dracula post today that entry was only like 3 sentences long

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

Arthur taking Lucy on the cutest dates ever and then hitting her with this smooth ass line

#imagine a kind rich man taking you for romantic walks and long drives and boat rides and somehow winning the No I Love You More game #you bet your ass i'd set a date for our wedding in only two fortnights AND NO MORE #👀💗💦 #dracula daily #dracula #re: dracula #arthur holmwood #dracula spoilers #dracula memes #dd august 30 #august 30 #dracula august 30

[actualrachaeltad]

AITA for telling my (30M?) fiancée (19F) that she is ‘getting fat’ when I just meant her health is improving after she was (hypothetically) drained of her blood? She won’t go rowing with me anymore :( :( :(

#dracula daily #august 30 #dracula #he was so out of pocket here lol

[mxcottonsocks]

Book Order of Late-August Dates in Dracula (for context)

There's a lot of confusion following the 30 August Dracula Daily email about several things:

Is Lucy actually better or is she lying / hiding the truth?

Is Dracula no longer feeding on her? If not, why not?

Has Lucy travelled back to Whitby? If so, why?

Is Arthur's "getting fat" comment caring or mean?

(And this is all in addition to previous confusion about Dr Seward's recent-ish entry where he talked about events which supposedly happen a week later than an event of which actually only happened the night before.)

To have a better idea of understanding what's going on, I think we need to take a step back from the Dracula Daily order, and return to look at the order of events in the book, i.e. the order Stoker actually intended us to experience the events in.

Too Long, Won't Read: All the dates at the beginning of Chapter 9 (late August) are suspect, and many of them are likely to be wrong. Lucy wrote the supposed-30 August letter before leaving Whitby, so she genuinely is getting better at that point because Dracula is all the way down in London. Arthur's comment is highly likely to mean "thank god you're putting some healthy weight back on". Dr Seward's diary entries of 20th August (supposedly) and 23rd August (supposedly) are meant to come nearer the end of the month than their dates indicate, and Lucy's diary entries of 24th August (supposedly) and 25th August (supposedly) immediately follow Dr Seward's and show us exactly where that bat flew off to.

So what's the order of the end of August in the book?

The time period we're looking at spans Chapters 8-9.

Here's the original order of entries:

Chapter 8

(I think this chapter is mostly, if not entirely, fine date-wise. You can pretty much trust these dates, but this is provided for context of what happens before Chapter 9, which is the one with the weird dates.)

Chapter 8 begins at 11pm on 11th August. You may remember that it was later that night that Lucy sleepwalked to the churchyard and was fed on by Dracula for the first time. I won't list all the dates, but the first half of Chapter 8 consists of Mina's diary entries about Dracula trying to get to Lucy to drink her blood (and sometimes succeeding). Then:

17th August: Mina's diary. She writes, "No news from Jonathan, and Lucy seems to be growing weaker [...]"

Also 17th August: The letter from Samuel F. Billington & Sons saying that the boxes will leave Whitby by the 4:30pm train (on the 17th) and arrive in London tomorrow (18th). There are stern instructions to deliver them that night (18th) to Carfax, near Purfleet (East London).

21st August: Confirmation from Carter, Paterson & Co that "Goods are delivered in exact accordance with instructions" (i.e. on the evening of the 18th).

18th August: Mina's diary. A jump back in time, to resume Mina's diary where we left off. We read this entry in the context of firmly knowing that Dracula left Whitby on the afternoon of the 17th. So when Mina says, "Lucy is ever so much better. Last night she slept well all night, and did not disturb me once," and that, "all the morbid reticence seems to have passed from her, "we know it is because Dracula is no longer in Whitby. However, she notes that Lucy "is still sadly pale and wan-looking".

19th August: Mina's diary. "Joy, joy, joy!" Mina has had news of Jonathan and will begin the journey to join him tomorrow morning (20th).

12th August: A jump back in time to Sister Agatha's letter, included in the place it was received by Mina (19th) rather than the date it was written.

ALSO 19th August: Dr Seward's diary. "Strange and sudden change in Renfield last night." Renfield is being uncharacteristically rude to the staff and no longer cares for spiders. 'Last night' was the 18th, the same night where Lucy, up in Whitby, slept undisturbed; the same night we know Dracula and his boxes arrived at their destination. On the night of the 19th, Renfield escapes, and Dr Seward follows him over the wall "which seperates our grounds from the grounds of the deserted house", which we find out in the next paragraph is called Carfax - the same place we know from earlier this chapter the boxes were delivered to. Renfield speaks of/to a "Master", and is restrained and put in a padded room.

So: at the end of Chapter 8, Lucy is still in Whitby, and is returning to normal. It is now Renfield, who Dracula has just moved next door to, who is acting outside of his usual patterns of behaviour (which we've had time to learn over previous chapters).

Chapter 9:

This is where I suggest you mainly ignore the dates and pay attention to the order.

24 August (maybe): Mina's letter announcing her and Jonathan's marriage. She seals up Jonathan's journal. We worry about the consequences of locking this knowledge away but:

30 August (supposedly - unlikely to be this date): Lucy's letter to Mina, written from Whitby. So the time of writing the letter, Lucy has not yet left Whitby (i.e. she just hasn't left; it's not that she goes away and then returns later). This letter is almost certainly written after Mina's letter to Lucy, as she makes mention of "[Mina's] husband". While she knew Mina was intending to marry Jonathan abroad, I doubt she would have been confident enough of Jonathan's survival to write about Mina's husband before she knew for sure that he lived long enough. As for Lucy, at some point since Mina left in the morning of 20th August, she has finally been joined by Arthur, as he was always intending to do. When he arrived, Lucy was probably still looking ill following Dracula's departure. However, he's now been up there with her long enough that they've done a whole bunch of activities and she says she is "quite restored" ("quite" here meaning "completely" not "slightly"). She talks about her recovered appetite, her vibrancy, and her quality of sleep and the fact that she hasn't sleepwalked recently. It is immediately after this that she mentions Arthur's "getting fat" comment. She therefore doesn't say this out of the blue; it is yet another symptom of her returning health. Readers know that this is because Dracula is still far away.

20th August (supposedly - unlikely to be this date): Dr Seward's diary saying "For the first week after his attack [Renfield] was perpetually violent". 'One night' (approx 26th) about a week after 19th, Renfield grows quiet for the first time, and remains so until just before dawn. This happened for 3 nights in a row (say 26th-28th). Dr Seward plans to help Renfield escape "tonight" (probably 28th or 29th).

23rd August (supposedly - unlikely to be this date): Dr Seward's diary. This is the one where he initially was hoping Renfield would escape, but he didn't, and then Renfield escaped later in the night (of the 29th?), and they saw a bat heading west "as if it knew where it was bound". What's to the West? Well:

24th August (supposedly - unlikely to be this date - however, it does and should be the next day from Dr Seward's supposed-23rd August entry): Lucy's first diary entry, written from Hillingham, in North London. She talks about "last night" (the same night the bat flew west from Carfax which is in East London; possibly 29th?) when she "seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby. Perhaps it is the change of the air, or getting home again." So it seems that Lucy only got home yesterday and immediately got preyed on by Dracula again. She is today (probably not the 24th - maybe the 30th?) unhappy and scared, and when Arthur saw her, he immediately clocked that something was wrong. Lucy resolves to try to "sleep in mother's room tonight".

25th August (supposedly - unlikely to be this date - however, it does and should be the next day from Lucy's last entry): Lucy's diary. She was not able to sleep in her mother's room last night and so had "another bad night", where she heard "scratching or flapping at the window" and then had more bad dreams. She wakes up very ill indeed. This entry likely takes place near / at the very end of the month, which brings us to:

31st August

I won't say what happens on 31st August as that's spoilers for Dracula Daily. But I think the 31st August entry definitely follows on a lot better from the supposed-25th August entry than the supposed-30th August entry.

So the beginning of Chapter 9 sees both Mina and Lucy happy, in Buda-Pesth and Whitby respectively. The only person who is majorly unhappy is Renfield, who is aware of Dracula's proximity but can't get near him for a long time. When Lucy returns to London, her health and happiness take a sudden and drastic turn for the worse as she is again preyed upon by Count Dracula.

(I might be wrong, but I think the dates return to being pretty-much reliable from 31st August. Which is good, because a lot happens in September.)

#dracula daily #lucy westenra #renfield #arthur holmwood #count dracula #mrs westernra #whose name I've been spelling wrong but oh well #dr seward #dracula #30 august #except probably not #long post

[your-friend-bram]

August 30

Lucy's excitement at addressing the letter to Mina Harker, is so sweet! Her showing concern for Jonathan's well-being was kind, but part of me can't help but wonder if she's extending the invitation just to have Mina back with her because she's so lonely even with Arthur there now... Her excitement for her own upcoming marriage is sweet as well— if not a little bitter, for I know what happens next.

-Bram

#dracula daily #re: dracula #august 30 #lucy 'sunshine' westenra #mina 'the train fiend' harker nee murray #bram blogs