Tall ships and tall kings, three times three

My nine-year-old neighbor: *crashes mom’s car into my yard*

A character has ominous nightmares and attributes them to eating too much paprika

Dracula first appears wearing a fake beard

The person he was trying to fool with the fake beard immediately realizes Dracula and Beard Guy are the same man, due to both having really firm handshakes

We are told parrots are immortal unless fatally wounded

A Texan cowboy opens fire on a bat flitting around a window, and lodges a bullet in the wall of an occupied room

A woman is called a polyandrist for receiving blood transfusions from multiple men

An incorrectly addressed telegram leads to two deaths, multiple druggings, and several children being assaulted

Dracula, while trying to maintain a low profile, takes a lovely trip to the zoo and freaks out the animals so badly that he gets mentioned in a newspaper article

The one character who knows anything about vampires spends a good two-thirds of the book refusing to talk about vampires

Dracula went to Satan's Witchcraft Academy and somehow this is only brought up in two throwaway lines

A character gets stuck inside a circle of communion wafer crumbs

A major plot point of the book is Dracula (who was said to be a brilliant scholar and has the strength of twenty mortal men) realizing he can move boxes without human help

Someone is referred to as "manifestly a prig of the first water"

Two characters have a hobby of reading train schedules

A hospital lets a mental patient escape to see what will happen

A character starts vomiting up feathers from eating whole birds

A doctor refuses to give a medical diagnosis and instead makes a speech about growing corn

Dracula impersonates another character just by wearing the same clothes, despite being taller and visibly much older. This deception is successful.

A character "cleans" a room by eating all the insects in it

Suddenly: rats. Thousands of them.

The heroes progress in their efforts through "the wonderful power of money," i.e., bribery

Dracula has three other vampires in his castle. Their relation to him is never explained, nor are any of them named.

A character insists his salvation depends on having a pet cat

Dracula is thwarted by flowers on more than one occasion

A group of vampires stand in the hall outside a man's bedroom, talking loudly about their plans to eat him. When he comes to the door to confront them, they run away laughing

Dracula wears an unfashionable hat and gets roasted for it

A group of Romanians encounter a disheveled, shouting man and, "seeing from his violent demeanour that he was English, they [give] him a ticket for the furthest station on the way thither that the train reached."

A boat crashes due to Dracula having the munchies

A wolf is thrown through a window and immediately runs off, confused and covered in glass

This is how I'll keep them in my heart - safe, happy, and together, always ✧₊⁺

It is now my favorite space movie/movie about going to space.

This contains spoilers for the movie and I will tag it as such but just be aware.

I haven’t felt so much over a movie in a longggg time, and I think knowing almost nothing when I started watching it helped. I had 0 spoilers (yes I saw the trailer but I forgot almost everything from it), which was awesome. Anyway I cried—multiple times!—and I laughed and I was on the edge of my seat and I grinned my face off. And I loved how much I felt all those things.

The reason this is my favorite space film now is that it genuinely had a happy ending. I feel like so many space movies have bittersweet endings, and this one had a straight up sweet ending. I kept being scared it would be bittersweet, that Grace or Rocky would die, but no. It was such a relief when they stayed alive.

(On a related note, I don’t feel the need for any sequels. I think they managed to nail the story and how it ended and that any sequels would ruin the magic.)

Ryan Gosling managed to make me forget he was Ryan Gosling, which is no mean feat. After the first 5-ish minutes I was just watching Ryland Grace.

The pacing and flashbacks were very well done; they told the story very nicely.

The visuals for this movie were sooooo good. The soundtrack too. I didn’t go in expecting to be amazed by them (Amaze amaze amaze ☺️) but I was. It was never too dark or too loud, like many movies and TV shows are these days, and I really appreciated that.

When they named the planet Adrian, I immediately thought of real-life astronauts on Artemis II giving a spot on the moon the name Carroll after Reid Wiseman’s wife last month and it made me tear up.

I loved the science with the astrophages :) it was cool and very understandable. Not all films do a good job with making jargon-heavy fields comprehensible to the audience. Sometimes that’s intentional I think, especially in the case of sci-fi, but I appreciated that I could follow what was going on easily.

I actually guessed the twist of Grace being forced to go on the mission very early on. It’s pretty rare that I predict a plot twist ahead of time, but idk, I simply kept thinking, “while he seems like a good guy, he just doesn’t seem like he would volunteer to go if there was any other option…I bet he was forced.” It didn’t surprise me when he remembered that he was, though it kinda broke my heart that I was right.

The threads of hope and love throughout the whole movie—especially in the face of such grim circumstances—were incredible and made me so emotional. It didn’t feel like there was only one “okay now let’s be brave and determined” moment; it was sprinkled throughout in ways that never felt too dramatic, and it showed that you have to make choices over and over again to keep going. There was discovery and perseverance because who else will do this if we don’t and kindness and bravery and celebrations when things succeeded and I loved all of it. Hopecore, indeed.

I saw a trailer for the movie back before it came out and went “huh okay there’s a rock creature. Standard ‘the-characters-have-to-go-to-space-to-save-the-world’ and ‘they-want-you-to-get-attached-to-the-pet-alien’ stuff. And Ryan Gosling is there. Whatever.” And I promptly forgot about the movie until people I knew—mainly online friends—started talking about how good it was and that it was notably very hopeful. Boy, was I glad I listened, because the movie was very different than what I thought based on that trailer. This was not a gimmicky comedy road (space) trip with the occasional “aww cute” moments between the human and an alien who basically fills the role of a pet dog. This was a serious mission where two beings from different planets, which both have made scientific discoveries, are trying to save those planets and collaborate to do so, and they form a deep friendship based on sacrificial love. While there are amusing moments (the part where Rocky rolls onto Hail Mary is hilarious and fun), the film did not shy away from the heaviness of Rocky and Grace’s experiences being the only two of their crews left, and how meaningful their friendship truly was to both of them. I am SO glad I saw Project Hail Mary.

Writing is the main thing I do for fun, but I’m a multi-faceted lass with many hobbies, and I also do Roman reenactment. I find that by actually doing something, you learn things that aren’t possible through theoretical research alone, so here is a collection of small things I’ve noticed while reenacting that you could add to your writing for a bit of extra realism.

Loose long hair is ANNOYING. There’s a reason most depictions you’ll see of women in history show them with their hair up and/or covered, and that is pure practicality. Having hair in the way is a massive pain (this would be particularly true for working women with stuff to get done).

Repetitive tasks aren’t boring if you have someone to chat to. When we do events, I’m in the textiles tent, and as the most junior member of the team I’m the one who does the spinning. Most events are 10-4/5, and you’d think 6/7 hours of spinning (with a break for lunch) would be boring, but actually, once you’re practiced you can do it on autopilot while you natter! I’m sure this is how people managed samey tasks back in ye olde days.

Speaking of spinning, working with textiles leaves its mark. If you’ve been spinning, sewing, or weaving for a long time, you’ll feel it. It knots up your shoulders and, perhaps less obviously, the friction of fibre against your fingers can wear away just enough skin to make them tender. Thimbles help with sewing, but not spinning or weaving.

Wool is WONDERFUL. I love it. It has a reputation as being scratchy and itchy, but when it’s finely woven/spun it is fantastic to wear. It keeps you cool when it’s hot, and warm when it’s cold. It also has the fantastic property of keeping you insulated even when soaking wet, which is why wool cloaks are so brilliant.

Linen is also wonderful. Lovely against the skin and cool in the summer (but for the average person in history, it’s more expensive than wool).

Woodsmoke gets everywhere. It stings your eyes and makes your clothes and hair smell smokey. However, after a little while the smell becomes just a background thing (and you get pretty practiced at anticipating when the smoke is going to change direction so you can move out of the way). It also keeps insects away!

Cooking over a fire takes longer than you’d think. If we start an event at 10 am, that means we’ll usually be having lunch at 1-2pm. However, we do have pretty elaborate meals, and have to start the fire from scratch every day (a lot of the wait time is getting the fire to cooking embers). If your characters are cooking simple fare over a fire that you’ve started from being banked, it’ll be quicker.

You want different footwear for different purposes. Hobnails give you great footing on soft/muddy ground, but on pavement they offer no purchase at all and will KILL YOU (okay, this is slight hyperbole, but there is an account of a centurion running from grass to pavement, slipping over and getting killed by his enemies). City wear would likely be leather and clogs/pattens.