As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph.
But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat; whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart.
It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumble into dust and passed from our sight.
I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.
I don't know what's getting to me about this scene this time around, but I can't help imagining a cinematic beat in which Dracula, head cleaved from his shoulders, steel through his heart, looks to Jonathan. Fire-eyed, white-haired, triumphant against his personal nemesis and would-be keeper at last.
For just a moment, Dracula is whoever he was before he was an inhuman monster. A great man? A warlord? A hero or a horror in human flesh depending on the history. But a man again, whatever else. He looks at Jonathan.
Maybe he sees him.
Maybe he sees someone else. Some long ago youth who lived and died and was remade in profane immortality for the sake of supernatural strength, taught by ancient Powers beneath a distant mountain. A youth who would sell his soul to accomplish his goal.
As the sun sets red, Dracula sees that long-ago youth victorious but not yet damned--the man conquering the monster--and, for the first time in centuries, thinks he sees his reflection. The hunter, the warrior, the victor. How strange not to see him in armor. When did you change your sword? Ah, well.
You did it just the same. You did it...
(What was his name before all this? Memory is cracking, turning to powder in his mind. His name is...his name was...)
((No, no, old man. He is not you. You know. You know he is--he's--))
Voiceless, his lips move. Red a final time as his throat's foam bleeds up and out of the stained mouth.
Thank you, my friend.
There is time enough to smile before he crumbles away to sleep.
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a taste of hannibal, a touch of megamind, a shot of venom (pours the whole damn bottle)
i love venom (2018) a lot, it’s my go-to movie when i’m bored or sad, i have seen it many many times. i saw it again a week or so ago with a bud and finally had the opportunity to pen down this lovely au i’ve been thinkin bout
i’ve got a much more fleshed out sketch of how this au plays out. not sure if i’ll write it yet
anyway some bullet points
noir (called, ofc, noir) arrives on earth-138 in the 1920s. his first host is robbie and they basically go through the venom movie, where noir slowly learns to love earth and humanity and all that jazz. up until the 50s or so they’re an investigative reporter and occasionally a scary vigilante superhero!
when robbie is killed (not ewaf style. i forbid it), it fucking devastates noir and he host-hops for a bit, doing fun anarchy things to keep up robbie’s legacy but also losing a few morals here and there. he can do a little murder and eat nazis as a treat
the symbiotes arrive en masse and osborn infects humans with them to turn into his fascist riot police army
through vampire-hunting-esque shenanigans, hobie and noir meet, and strike up a tenuous truce to fight the government. hobie does not like him at first, but noir very much does ;)
cue a slow burn gothic romance between a freedom fighter and a devoted monster <3
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favorite callbacks/foreshadowing payoff in A Power Unbound that made yell "oh goddammit" at my book
MY MOST SATISFYING "OH GODDAMMIT" MOMENT. FULL ON HAD ME PACING UP AND DOWN MY APARTMENT GOING "OH MY GOD THEY ACTUALLY DID IT, THE CRAZY SON OF A BITCH, THEY DID IT"
it wins #1 because this line always made me SO suspicious, but I also thought it was such a longshot. between the suspiciously specific phrasing of "blow up" and alan calling the lockroom easy to misuse in the same scene, my prediction was actually that the bad guys were going to do some fuckshit with the lockroom, because ART introduced us to the concept of "using hair to channel magic" and having a room full of everybody's hair seemed... uh, bad.
so I was just wrong enough to be delightfully shocked and just right enough to feel so satisfyingly smug. 10/10 felt terrific.
"adelaide tapping her ring" is SUCH a sneaky little detail. because she's tapping her ring all throughout a marvelleous light, and then sURPRISE it was the contract piece all along, beautiful bit of same-book foreshadowing, well done everyone go home
so when it showed up again in a power unbound, I was like "aw cute. I like that she's still got that little habit, even though it's not a Plot Relevant Foreshadowing Moment anymore, what a nice detail"
and then adelaide pseudo-flipped me off with her ring finger and went SURPRISE, GOT YOU TWICE, WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT MY PLOT RELEVANT RING?
this one didn't take me by surprise, but it's exactly what I love about reading a careful and deliberate writer.
this is in the same scene where we find out about jack's secretbind. so when I read it, I thought "okay well, we just found out he has A Mouth Thing. but he subconsciously touches his leg as well as his mouth, so probably he has A Leg Thing too." and then did a quick "probably from the war, right? seems most likely" and felt confident I knew that Jack had some kind of leg injury long before A Power Unbound even came out
and it's just SO FUN, because when you have a really good writer like this, you get the absolute joy as a reader of reading One Single Sentence and going "I see you, I know that means something." it's delightful, it's my favorite kind of puzzle, it's so rewarding
the way robin gets super uncomfortable with the penhallick crowd gossiping about what happened to jack and then changes the subject to magical people born into unmagical families who never discover their magic
the way jack and alan are linked together through this one worldbuilding-during-dinner conversation from two books ago. beautiful. profound.
and finally. my grand final of moments that made me go OH!! FUCK!!—
that's the first mention of jack by name, ever, at all, in the entire series.
that is the very first detail we ever learn about him.
AND THEN HE DID IT AGAIN, AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS OF NO MAGIC, AND I WAS SO PROUD, AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH, AND ALSO I HUCKED MY BOOK ACROSS MY BED.
HIS FIRST MENTION AND HIS FIRST ACT OF MAGIC AFTER OVER A DECADE, crying, crying forever, we have come full circle
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