xylatra > Recent Status Updates

Beauty as a monstrous thing/curse; feminine horror. Being in hospital, and STILL worrying about how cute/ugly you are (relatable, haha).

NOOOOOOOOO!!! What . The . Heck? No no no nope.. This is so chilling, agh!

I was not emotionally prepared for this.. I'm not even half-way through and it's getting worse and worse, and I'm wondering good god, how much worse can this possibly get?

He's such a nice man but he's too much of a flip-flop for me. I'd be livid about the repeated "u can find someone else, I won't stand in your way" crap.

There are books that feel like a mental work-out, and I feel like this is going to be one of those, but I need something with an extremely low difficulty setting right now.

I don't know if I'm becoming more stupid or impatient as I get older, or have read too much rubbish lately, but I'm on the first page of Frankenstein and I feel like English is a second language to me. It's not.
What in the wordy HELL is this!? I feel like my patience for classics is getting thinner by the year. Girl, I only have so many Earthly hours, please just say what you mean.

Omg Kirie girl fr? You know better than this now

"Even B.R. - Before Rick - she couldn't resist casting Caroline in a Titanic episode, in which, too busy drying her long blonde hair, she'd missed the last lifeboat." 💀
I'm so here for the next level teen girl bitchiness going on in these Point Horrors!

"I am a forgettable girl, thought Devnee, and this time the jealousy sliced her heart into thin ragged strips of pain."
Goddamn, well I wasn't expecting such a brutal level of teen-girl-experience hyper realism in a Point Horror, but here we are!

Oh.. I wasn't prepared going into this for "vampire as slave-owner" thing; I wince whenever I read the racist stuff.
I REALLY don't want this to be the 2nd book in a row that I DNF, but honestly don't know if I can power through a book where that stuff keeps coming up.

I do not enjoy being in this woman's head so far - she is so conceited yet so self-pitying. Why? She's rich, privileged, beautiful, but she's talking about all of these things as though I'm supposed to feel sorry for her, because...?

Ohh this feels darkly magical already... All of the nature and outdoor scenes are described so beautifully. It reminds me of midsummer evenings as a child, playing in the garden, and feelings that fairies might be real.

I have ~chills~

"Come, sir, bethink yourself"
Idk why that made me laugh but it did. 😂

Ha, the odd sexist comment still bugs me. Women are spoken of by the men as being such fragile, hysterical, empty-headed "little girls" in this book, that whenever Mina just behaves like a regular, functioning adult person, it's like the men are all going to either faint with shock, or kiss the ground she walks on, or both. The specific kind of sexism this book has is weirdly saccharine, infantalising and worshipping

The whole blood-lust thing aside, this partially reads to me as an interesting commentary on antiquated ideas of what women "should" be in terms of their character, and which (perfectly normal and human) traits outside of a particularly narrow scope are deemed "unsavory".
I particularly like the use of words like "sensuous" and "voluptuous".

Trying to keep this spoiler-free, but is it bad that I actually like and relate more to certain characters when they become vampire, more than when they are a human? It's like they are way too perfect as a human, almost uncannily so, but there seems to far more range of expression (and room for "uncomfortable" (sensual, anger, forbidden emotions)) in vampire form...

Dr Seward is like that guy who puts out a big Facebook status declaring "I'm leaving Facebook today, it's been a long journey but ultimatey I need to do this for the best. Love to you all." and is back the very next day.

Van Helsing is kiiiiind of a creep...? Idk. I don't like how he talks to women. He gives off a creepster vibe.

This is actually SO GOOD I don't want it to ever end...

"Hot, sick waif girl" vibes throughout. Endless, endless talk of roses in cheeks coming and going. A woman can be literally dying, and yet heavy emphasis put how beautiful / not beautiful she is in varying states of death or aliveness. I am loving this book, and I know "this is of it's time / what do you expect?" but still. I don't like that. 🫠

Okay I feel really bad for her now. Oh dear 😿

Mina is insufferable.

I gotta know what a "severe tea" is... This this like some kind of English Afternoon Tea, but... MORE???

Books like this make me feel so grateful to live in England by the sea. It's a foggy day, too!

"I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns."

Okay, I heard of "Attila the Hun", but "Attila AND THE HUNS"?

....THIS ISN'T A BAND NAME?!?!

This needs to be a band name.

He didn't believe his mother when she said that she saw a leprechaun as a little girl?! Aw.. That made me sad, lol.