Another Tidbit Of Mando Lore;

This is the Lucky Ace. Reblog to recieve a wad of cash that is oddly specific to your current needs.

4 comrades go to a Soviet hotel for a night during a business trip...

As they walk into their room, 3 of them, whip out some vodka, food and cigarettes and begin to make jokes about the government and be very loud indeed. The 4th one is trying to get some meaningful sleep and knowing that it would be fruitless to ask them to stop, hatches an ingenious plan. He goes downstairs to reception and asks for a cup of coffee to be delivered to the room.

“Make sure you deliver it exactly after 10 minutes starting from now”

Returning back to the room he joins his comrades midway a Stalin joke. He sits up shocked and exclaims:

“Comrades! You must not say these things! Don’t you know? They are listening to our conversations right now!”

The comrades jeer and laugh at him and say that that is impossible.

“Really? Then how do you explain this?”

He gets up and speaks into the lampshade by the beds.

“I would like a black coffee to be delivered to my room, please.”

And surely enough, in a short amount of time, a maid walks in with a cup of coffee and some sugar.

The other 3 comrades turn deathly pale and quickly turn in for the night. The last comrade drinks his coffee and peacefully goes to sleep.

Come morning the 4th comrade awakens only to find that his friends and all their belongings are missing.

Throughly confused and anxious, the man walks down the stairs to reception to enquire whether his friends had checked out earlier in the morning.

“I am afraid not sir. You see, the KGB raided your room during the night and placed your friends under arrest for ridiculing the Soviet regime.”

“B-but how come they didn’t take me?!”

“Oh, the Captain very much enjoyed your joke”

Read Along with Quincey Harker - 8th of May

This is a Blood of My Blood reading of Dracula, based on the Bad Ending AU created by @ and @ and others

First Read Along post with context

Blood of My Blood full AU in order

Helpful background reading for this chapter @bluecatwriter 's excellent novella Chapter 22 Indulgence, which has a lot of juicy interactions between Jonathan and Dracula.

This line hits him like a brick thrown at his head. What? Uneasy, unsafe? Things were going so well! What has happened in a single day to make Papa so frightened?

Only the Count, well, what's wrong with that? Father always explains things so well, so there is perfect clarity and no room for argument.

Papa was only shocked that Father didn't cast a reflection. Of course it may have seemed unusual, but there was no need for him to become dramatic.

Father! That's not responsible! So often Mum had repeated to Quincey the importance of being in control. Never act brashly out of anger or fear, she told him. Always be in control, or you will be controlled by others. For Father to lose control like that…

Father must have been frightened. People do all sorts of things when they're frightened, Mum had told him. He must have seen Papa's blood and been scared. After all, Papa's life and blood were always to be protected, and Papa was careless to cut himself like that.

And Father can move rather quickly, and it can be startling if you're not expecting him. Harmless, but maybe a little scary.

And sure, Father had smashed the mirror, but that was just to prevent more misunderstandings.

Very annoying - there. That sounded like the Papa he knew. Reasonable, unflappable. Like when Father was too taken by Papa's charm that he had kissed Papa's neck and shoulder all over and fed himself back to youth. Quincey hadn't liked it, hadn't understood, but then Papa had wryly explained that accidents happen, and Father made it up to him by asking forgiveness and taking him flying.

Just like the stone mentioned, Quincey's heart drops. No. No, he'd almost forgotten the shape of those sharp thoughts in Papa's mind. The memory had been smoothed over by happy family times, of stories and backgammon and fishing. Of Papa flying with Father and then Mum. But reading the fear in Papa's words in the diary, and the image of the falling stone... Quincey remembers.

This diary is revealing a dark and unknown edge to Papa's thoughts, just like those half-remembered nights.

Whether it's rational or not, Papa was scared. And he's thinking about the windows far too much for Quincey's liking.

He is being deceived. Papa is wrong about the castle and the Count.

He got scared and started seeing danger where he was actually safe, that's what it was. After all, what was he actually scared of? No reflection, a damaged castle and a few locked doors? That's nothing, that's just Quincey's childhood. He said he's a prisoner, but he hasn't even asked Father if he can go.

So there were no servants after all. Father was... pretending? Because he was ashamed, or embarrassed. A boyar should not be personally seeing to the needs of his guest, except that Father was personally invested in Papa's needs.

Quincey almost laughs at how Papa writes about the wolves again. What does it mean that Father could control them? He smiles. Only that Father is a powerful protector and knows how to use his power.

The unease that was building in Quincey disappates. It's all perfectly reasonable.

Such a familiar scene! How little Father has changed!

Quincey's eyes glaze over the passage about the battles of long ago, he knows those stories in detail. But Arabian Nights… Father had often told jokes about that story, more than once calling Papa his ‘little Scheherazade’, for all his skill at storytelling.

Quincey shakes his head, clearing the last vestiges of fear and tension from his body. He got so caught up in the vivid writing, the miscommunication that lead to fear, but he knows the end of the story. Soon the fear will give way to Love, and there will be the peace and happiness in Castle Dracula that he knows.

Popular with the troops.

so the rule in my previous workplace of longest employment duration was (and probably still is)

no personal internet use while on the clock.

employee handbook said so. every so often bosses said so. that was The Rule. no personal internet use while on the clock.

except it wasn’t. it couldn’t have been the real rule.

because most people were faffing around on the internet in between bits of work. some were even doing it on the work computers, not on their personal tablets or phones.

the real rule couldn’t even have been don’t get caught using the internet for personal stuff on the clock. because zero people got in trouble over the Harry Potter Myers-Briggs quiz and related links that took up two hours of my section’s time one day. the section manager was playing as happily as anyone.

and there was not going to be any way to get anyone to explain the real rule. because the employee handbook said no personal internet use while on the clock, and that was The Rule.

anyway one of the reasons I left that job was I was sick of being autistic in that allistic hellscape.

Hi there I adore your wriding on Dracula and especially how wonderful and sinister/sweet (is there a word for that? There should be a word for that.) Your Jonathan/Mina is. Is your plan for the novel/sequel to be published? Or will you be putting it up online either behind a pay wall or for free? If it's to be published formally I hope and wish you all the success with finding a publisher that you deserve because once again your writing is terrific.

if you have already answered this my apologies.

First, thank you, my ego is always happy for the confidence boost

Second, hopefully it gets finished and published! Something about Dracula Daily really hammered home how disappointed I've been with the bulk of Dracula-based media and how shoddy the pop culture understanding of it is. I want Barking Harker (and maybe some other Dracula-adjacent projects I'm poking at right now (🤐) ) to get out on the bookshelves.

Likewise for SO MANY COOL IDEAS that other folks have come up with since this book club started. Everyone should take a crack at writing and publication for their plots too! Don't just leave it in fan fiction where only a few of us will see it! We have to get our stuff out in the wider world so the characters and ideas we love get the limelight they deserve.

I’ve been seeing a lot of threat posts lately and honestly? Fuck that shit. People could have made nice posts but no - y’all gotta go and give people anxiety. No-one needs to reblog bupkis.

“You clap for us now.”

— Britain’s immigrants and children of immigrants who are key workers 

Credit: created by Sachini Imbuldeniya