#dracula and everyone

[madrabbitsociety]

If you get a chance, please try to go see Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors. It's a show, it's in NYC. I took a day trip to see it (and I was in the front row!) and it's super gay and super funny.

Everyone except Dracula plays multiple characters.

Mina and Van Helsing (who is female presenting) are played by the same man.

Lucy's dad, the ship captain and Renfield (men) are all played by a female actor.

Harker... well I can't give it away but Jesus, I've never laughed so much in my fucking life.

DRACULA. Just go watch the tiktoks these people have been making and you'll understand.

Pan Dracula. Bi Dracula. Possibly Bi Harker. I just - I can't. It's so good. The whole thing.

It's only 90 minutes, okay? And it's not a musical.

I live in Maryland, so I had to get up at 5 AM, drive 2 hours, catch an 8 AM train, be on the train until 11 AM, get the 2 PM matinee and then catch the 5:20 train back, drive home and I didn't get home until 10 PM. And trust me- it was WORTH. IT.

[rooniearts]

I really, really wanted Shadow to have a kid in the Pitayaverse, but having it be Silver causes a time-space paradox that hurts my brain. So I just cloned him and called it a day. Enjoy Wodahs (aka Echo) <3

Bonus:

[tuserlivia]

"Remember how once we were?" — Nosferatu (2024), dir. Robert Eggers

[sylphidine]

My "Six weeks until we hear from our good friend Jonathan Harker" post went somewhat viral.

I've had several folks in my ask box and in replies inquire how they can be part of the "experience the novel DRACULA in real time" phenomenon this year.

So here's one of the replies I just sent.

There's two ways to follow along.

If you want to read along, you can subscribe to the Substack and get the entries in your email. https://draculadaily.substack.com/

If you want to listen to the ABSOLUTELY BANGER full cast audio drama [with transcripts], you can access it with your favorite listening platform via https://redracula.live/.

You can also get lots of thoughtful analysis and fanart by tracking the Tumblr tags #dracula daily and #re: dracula.

Hope this helps!

Disclaimer: I am not affilated with either DRACULA DAILY or with Re: Dracula. I'm just a humble bookseller, just another fan, enjoying this annual Tumblr tradition.

[harbingerofsoup]

dracula is defeated by 1) autism, 2) true love, and 3) incredible violence, and the fact that this isn’t the mainstream understanding of dracula in pop culture is a fucking travesty

[cry-ptidd]

The suitors and their Wikipedia enthusiast

[hoeswater]

the mortifying ordeal of being Jack Seward. God, can you imagine- you get rejected by a girl. Fine. You're a bit emo about it but you're holding up. She accepts a proposal from your close pal. Ok, that stings, but you do love Arthur and at least you have your work to focus on. You get cc'd on a message from your second close pal and it says you WILL be attending a celebratory dinner. Yeah, to celebrate your dream girl saying yes to Close Pal #1. Ok, whatever, you're a man of honor. You go. Girl falls ill. Close Pal #1 says hey man, please go medically examine my fiancee - yeah, the one that rejected you. I know it'll be weird but I insist. Please man, you're my Close Pal. Ok. Fine. This girl is still important to you. You do it. You're sitting by said Ill Girl's bedside, trying not to think about that embarrassing time when you sat on your hat, asked her out, and then got rejected, and then her MOTHER walks in and goes wow, dude, why don't you have a wife yet? You and the girl Do Not Look at Each Other Dear God Lucy Do Not Make Eye Contact With Me Right Now I Swear to God. Girl gets sicker. You phone a friend. Your friend comes and promptly breaks the ice with your Mortally Ill Dream Girl (who rejected you after watching you sit on your hat) by being like Well, You Know Jack. He Doesn't Know Anything about Women. Probably Why He Sat on His Hat and then You Rejected Him. Christ. Mortally Ill Dream Girl dies and you find yourself enmeshed in Horrors Beyond Your Comprehension and you think, well, ok, at least if I'm focused on the Horrors Beyond My Comprehension I won't be thinking about my tragic and thus far very embarrassing love story. Let me just focus on picking up this nice lady from the train station because she and her husband have some important information for us. And then the FIRST THING OUT OF THE NICE LADY'S MOUTH is Oh Yeah I Know You Lucy Told Me How You Sat on Your Hat and Then She Rejected You. Ohhhhhhh my god

[draculestigame]

"Vampires can sense what’s happening in a human’s heart. I hear yours going a mile a minute."

You've caught their attention 🫀 April's guest artist is @marcheriest , with a captivating Cez.

[thedupshadove]

Your father is dying. Your incipient mother-in-law is dying. Your fiancé might be dying. Said fiancé and future mother-in-law are both willing to confide about their health conditions to you, but insist that it needs to be kept secret from the other, despite the fact that they're mother and daughter and have known each other for all of your fiancé's life, whereas they both met you probably only a couple of years ago. Every day, Arthur Holmwood wakes up.

[ashes-in-a-jar]

[Image Description: The "they don't know" meme, which shows simplistically drawn people labeled 'All of Tumblr Again" dancing in a room as a tired-looking man wearing a party hat labeled 'Me' stands apart from them in the corner. The man says: "They're pretending not to know what's going to happen to our dear friend Jonathan Harker [crying emoji]" End ID.]

Again and again and again and again

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Ive been spending my free time watching dracula adaptations and good god you guys were NOT kidding about them doing jonathan and mina dirty, I have watched 17 movies so far, you wanna know how many of them actually did them justice??

ONE!!! (dracula (2006) i enjoyed it a lot, I'd definitely recommend it)

[alucarddaily]

"Castlevania: Awakening in the Moonlight" performed by the Takarazuka Revue Flower Troupe 🥀

[keawi]

"Oh Lucy, my dear sweet Jonathan is traveling abroad soon. I do hope he has a good time!"

[marghen]

It's Dracula Season, you know what that means...

[knightforflowers]

a couple days late, but happy 10th anniversary to the adventure zone!! <3

[see-arcane]

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

Blood of My Blood – A recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

Dracula Daily Sketch Collection – An array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.

Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriter – With a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk – An ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

Re: Dracula – Probably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)

The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.

Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.

Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes

The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man

Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles

Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves

…

……

………

…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

The Vampyres – A novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.

What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.

‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.

Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.  

“How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.  

Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.

 “The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.