#re: frankenstein

[re-dracula]

We're adapting Frankenstein next year, and we want to cast entirely Trans VAs! All roles are paid $35/hour of recording time. No previous VA experience required! We're using this call to form a roster to cast specific characters from.

We’re looking for good audio quality without reverb or background noise. We’re also looking for grounded, authentic acting - avoid leaning too theatrical or cartoony. We don’t care about how “masculine” or “feminine” your voice sounds; the submission form will ask what genders you’re comfortable playing and we’ll cast to that. The 22 characters in Re: Frankenstein span a variety of ages, genders, and accents.

Again, we’re only looking for Trans and Nonbinary voice actors at this time. No previous voice acting experience is required. Demo reel submissions are acceptable in addition to the audition monologue, but not in lieu of.

[see-arcane]

Welcome to Dracula Season 2025!

We're only a few weeks shy of May and our journey with Jonathan into the Carpathians. As we prepare for another helping of paprika hendl and ensuing horror, let's refresh with some of the Dracula-adjacent goodies that have accumulated over the last year...

1. Dracula Daily

The Substack that started it all. Dracula Daily was started by Matt Kirkland in 2021, though it took off in the Tumblr book club in 2022. Since then, we’ve turned Dracula Season, the period between May 3 and November 7, into a months-long undead extravaganza of memes, literary analysis, and overdue love for Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula as the fantastic gothic gift it is. With the simplified format of putting the book’s entries in chronological order, each one emailed out on the same date they were written, we’re forced to live on the same calendar and waiting game as the characters. Whether you’re a new reader or a returning bookworm, welcome to Castle Dracula!

Dracula Daily Substack: Link

2. The Holmwood Foundation

Fresh from crowdfunding and wrapping up production of its first season, The Holmwood Foundation, @theholmwoodfoundation on Tumblr, is an indie podcast coming around the corner with a genuinely unique take on a supernatural sequel to the events of Dracula…which didn’t end quite how Bram Stoker’s in-universe novel depicted. The first episode is out, featuring a pair of unlucky archivists—what horror podcast is complete without them?—the ghosts of Jonathan and Mina Harker, Dracula’s severed head, and a hiking trip across the moors to escape some shambling undead horrors. Give the preview and its miscellaneous teasers a listen if you want a taste of contemporary revenant scares (and to listen to the world’s most irate descendant of the Harkers pop a blood vessel).

The Holmwood Foundation homepage: Link

Podcast episodes and side content: Link

3. Dracula: 2004

Another indie audio drama trying to crowdfund its way out of the coffin! Not only an adaptation of Dracula, but one set just a short step into the 21st century, @starstrider-productions' Dracula: 2004 wants to tell the story of our beloved Victorian vampire targets-turned-slayers in an era of flip phones, Dictaphones, and found footage-tinted horror. To judge by the summary and extremely promising character bios for our refreshed cast, it’s going to be a one-of-a-kind listen. But only if we can get them to their goal! By the time I post this, they’ll have less than 20 days left to cover the production cost.

If you want to drag this beautiful undead carcass into the moonlight, please chip into their campaign if you can and share it with your fellow Dracula lovers and horror podcast enthusiasts! The smallest tier is £10 GBP, ($13 for my fellow ‘murricans), and every bit helps.  

Indiegogo crowdfunding page: Link

4. Re: Dracula, Re: Carmilla, (Coming Soon: Re: Frankenstein!)

Giving an undead rebirth to the original Dracula Daily format, the podcast Re: Dracula turns the same chronological date-by-date read of the novel an audio drama twist. It’s made of professional voice acting, soundscaping, and has its own soundtrack! This thing is also replete with many a meme and interview as the garlic garnish on top. Give it a listen if you haven’t already and check out their Tumblr, @re-dracula.

Likewise, you need to check out their most recent projects. Re: Carmilla, which gives Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla its own supple and sinuous sapphic treatment, and the upcoming Re: Frankenstein, currently on the hunt for voice actors to fill the roles of Mary Shelley’s gothic opus, Frankenstein. Everyone say thank you to this cast and crew for feeding us the overdue classic supernatural theatre feast we’ve been waiting on for actual centuries.

Re: Dracula: Link

Re: Carmilla: Link

Re: Frankenstein (Casting Call!): Link

5. The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk

You want the Drac Attack Pack (plus a surviving Quincey Morris) with the Harkers happily married and questionably human? You want Irene Norton née Adler treated with respect and allowed to actually have her chosen romance with Godfrey Norton that was half the damn point of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” along with appearances from a certain consulting detective and his doctorial companion? You want Dr. Jekyll as an upstanding scientist on the brink of some unsavory new changes? You want Wells’ Invisible Man being cantankerous and developing friendships against his will? You want sundry forces of mortal and supernatural peril roiling up from under the foundations of Victorian era literature like an eerie eldritch smoke? Then The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk is the comic for you!

An ongoing webcomic, fresh from its second story arc—a certain submarine, a bastard of a marksman, and an uncanny gothic villainess are involved—LXGF brings together a huge crossover cast of everyone’s favorite characters from the Classics section. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit that actually understands, acknowledges, and loves the books and their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Tumblr: Link

Comic: Link

Non-Canon Silliness: Link

Fanfiction: Link

6. Blood of My Blood (and Other Gorgeous Gothic Dramas of the Ibrithir-Was-Here Universe)

 I’ve made a lot of amazing friends since Dracula Season became my favorite time of the year (read: most of it). Many of those friends have been brain-meltingly talented and creative in the works they’ve made based in or inspired by Dracula and adjacent works. But one of the best in terms of artful storytelling has to be @ibrithir-was-here.

Me and other scribblers and spit-ballers tripped and fell into what began as a dark Dracula Bad Ending improv, everyone chasing after each other with ‘Yes, and—,’ additions to a vampiric domestic horror story. That’s turned into a full 100+ chapter tale with its concluding climax just now about to hit its zenith. That story is Blood of My Blood, an incredibly fun and fiendish gothic what-if? One in which we answer the questions:

What if things took a grim turn in the climax at Transylvania? What if half our heroes died and Mina turned, with a child already growing in her undead womb? What if Jonathan threw himself on the twisted ‘mercy’ of Dracula to protect his family, trading his servitude, sanity, blood, and participation in an intimately worrying series of mind games with his new master? What if young Quincey Harker was raised in this warped castle and then, at the cusp of manhood, was sent out into the world to learn the buried truths of his family? What if Dracula was none too thrilled about his adopted heir leaving the nest, and took grisly measures to bring him back..?

The answers have been written and lushly illustrated for the past year and change, ripe with romances, revenges, bloodshed, and one of the most gloriously fucked up family dynamics you’ve ever seen in a gothic drama.

…And if you’re in the mood for another flavor of the latter, Ibrithir has also cooked up a pile of sinister samples to indulge in.

(n)Ever Loved, a take on the origins of the ‘Weird Sisters’ before they were munching kids meals.

The Wretched Family, an AU in which Frankenstein’s Creature saved the little girl from the river a moment too late, and coerces Victor into reviving her drowned body as a Creature like himself.

A Cruel Love, giving a spotlight to a possible history of Countess Mircalla and how love played a part in her undeath and the demise of her first smitten paramour.

Second Stanza, a certain Opera Ghost returns to haunt Christine and Raoul’s son, supposedly as a guardian—whether the boy likes it or not.

Rosemary is for Remembrance, in which a young artist grapples with the bloody shadow of a man who shares her face. A long dead hedonist by the name of Dorian Gray…

Go give them all a read!

Blood of My Blood: Link

(n)Ever Loved: Link

The Wretched Family: Link 1, Link 2

A Cruel Love: Link 1, Link 2

Second Stanza: Link

Rosemary is for Remembrance: Link

7. Dracula’s Guest the Comic

Want a glimpse of what Jonathan Harker may have gotten up to prior to reaching Castle Dracula? Well, take a look at the comic adaptation of Stoker’s, “Dracula Guest,” by @isablooo! It features our good friend Mr. Harker, some sightseeing, and more than the usual bloodsuckers out for his neck.

Comic: Link

8. Dracula Beyond Stoker Press

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I had an anthology dedicated entirely to stories about one or more specific characters of Dracula?” Me too! And Dracula Beyond Stoker Press is here to deliver. Their most recent issue coming out is about our good friend Jonathan Harker—already preordered my copy!—with Mina Harker’s issue accepting story and cover art submissions starting May 1, 2025. DBS Press already has an amazing store full of paperback zines and merch to go through for other characters and general Dracula-flavored goodies. Go give them and the submission guidelines a gander.   

Dracula Beyond Stoker Press: Link

9. Harker (and Other Arcane Horrors)

Harker is my work-in-progress, a novel expanding on the experiences of Jonathan Harker which we never get to see between his and the others’ journal entries in Dracula. It also adds some creative and menacing fleshing out for just how and why Jonathan Harker changed on October 3rd—and perhaps explains what exactly he changed into.

As of now, I am well over twenty chapters in, with over 750 pages written. In the draft, Mina is only just now about to read Jonathan’s journal for the first time. This thing is massive. And I’ve been releasing preview chapters since last Dracula Season! The latest of which is due to drop very soon.

Until then, there’s also an abundance of other horrors I’ve scribbled up in the interim. Some serial, some self-contained, and one in the form of a published novella, The Vampyres, which concerns some undead bastards of classic lit caught under the blade of a very practiced psychopomp. There are a couple preview chapters up to skim too!

Hope you enjoy the read.

Harker (Tumblr): Link

Harker (Substack): Link

Substack (General): Link

The Vampyres: eBook Paperback

[REDACTED – Surprise en route April 18th]

10. What Manner of Man (and Another Gothic Queer Nightmare)

@stjohnstarling has completed one tale of queer horror, romance, and erotica, and is hard at work on the next story. The first was What Manner of Man, a novel with some borrowed blood from Dracula and a wonderful twist on an intense relationship that forms between a priest and a vampire. This book is now completed on the Substack and as an eBook! His next work in progress: A Companion in Vice, building off the patchwork anatomy of Frankenstein.

What Manner of Man (Substack): Link

What Manner of Man (eBook): Link

A Companion in Vice (Summary): Link

11. Project Gutenberg

An online library of countless classic public domain works. Get on it, bookworms!

Dracula - Link

Carmilla - Link

Sheridan le Fanu collection - Link

12. The Internet Archive

As the name says, it’s an archive. It preserves damn near everything, including my favorite ballet…

Dracula Ballet by Michael Pink – Link

13. Romancing the Gothic - My Wild Heart Bleeds

Carmilla fans, storytellers, and scholars, this one is for you. My Wild Heart Bleeds is set to be an anthology dedicated entirely to Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla, including commentaries, original works, international and historic perspectives, discussions of adaptations and works inspired by the story… And you have the chance to contribute to it! Regarding submissions, the page says:

Abstracts of 3-400 words and a bio of 2-250 words should be sent to the editors Dr. Sam Hirst and Simon Bacon by June 30th 2025. Chapter of between 5-6000 words will be required by July 2026. We also welcome original creative pieces (artwork, short stories [up to 1,500 words], flash-fiction, poetry, etc) that are inspired by and/or critically engage with ‘Carmilla’ or themes mentioned above. Abstracts or queries should be set to: mywildheartbleeds@gmail.com

My Wild Heart Bleeds: Link

BONUS

@cry-ptidd – Blessed us with getting to see the Dracula cast in Hellsing style and showing us why Kohta Hirano didn’t dare to have them in the manga: The Harkers are simply too badass when canonical. (And the Suitors would be too stylish.)

@bluecatwriter – Expanding from Dracula fic to Carmilla fic. Smut abounds.

Poetry – For bonus gothic vampire reference material:

“Lenore” by Gottfried August Bürger, translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Link

“Christabel” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Link

Libby the Library App (Sign Up! Support Your Libraries!) - Link

Dracula Season 2024

All the Dracula Season goodies compiled last year: Link

[butchherbertwest]

Who let this man near alcohol and the novel Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley….

[cowboycannibalism]

one of the things that annoys me so bad right now is seeing letterboxd reviews about Lisa Frankenstein being like "she's such a horrible character", "those people didn't deserve to be killed" blah blah blah

SHUT UP

it's a horror romance!! a girl keeps a reanimated dead guy in her closet and falls in love with him! what did you think was going to happen? it's SUPPOSED to be fucked up and weird and that's part of its charm. quit being boring, let female characters (esp in horror) be messy and chaotic and morally gray.

[odetokeons]

shoutout to fictional autistic(coded) men of science. gotta be one of my favourite genders. 🧪

[stjohnstarling]

When a man like this says you're beautiful on the inside, he really means it. 🫀

After a dangerous and illegal experiment ends in disaster, the scientist who survived finds himself tangled deep in webs of conspiracy and corruption as he searches for the man he loves - a man he brought back from the dead.

What sort of man is he dealing with, after the monstrous transformation that has taken place? And what lies at the heart of this labyrinth of institutional corruption, professional ambition, jealousy, sex, and death?

A COMPANION IN VICE is a gothic-noir novel about obsessive love, murder, and mad science - soon to be published serially, a chapter per week, in my (free!) newsletter. Coming to your inbox SUMMER/FALL 2025!

TAKE PART IN THE EXPERIMENT 🧪 →

[starlightshadowsworld]

It’s a shame people leave out that Victor Frankenstein was a University student because only that kind of insanity can be bred in that environment.

[it-was-dead-when-i-found-it]

Say what you will about Herbert West's crimes against the natural order, but at least THAT guy never ran screaming from his creations

[draculasweedsmokinggirlfriend]

Me: so in the original book Dracula can turn into a bat and a wolf but when he moves about the castle he does it in "lizard fashion" but he doesn't literally turn into a lizard, just crawls. So when Johnathan tries to escape he copies Drac-

The guy who broke into my house: and crawls out the window?!

Me: Exactly! He crawls down the castle walls and you'll never guess what he finds

[aprilrose-art]

Sketchy painting of the monster from Lisa Frankenstein ❤️‍🩹❤️‍🔥

[re-dracula]

Gentle reminder that we got about 600 auditions for Re: Frankenstein and it's going to take us more than a week to do casting :)

[see-arcane]

The Substack! It lives!

Please do get an eyeful of the whole thing, but for those who want to cut straight to one of the newer goodies, this is the link to the new preview chapter of Harker.

Minor note: For some reason the order of posts got a bit screwy. The chapters for specific stories are all still clustered together but a bit mixed around. I think it has something to do with me fussing with edits and the Substack publishing in order of what was tinkered with last, but oh well. I'll do better with future posts that aren't dropped in a bulk pile.

Hope you enjoy the early Halloween treat!

[butchherbertwest]

As y’all know I’m really into Frankenstein the novel, and I can’t help but think about Re-animator through the lens of it being a Frankenstein adaptation. How it goes beyond being “masturbatory” story, as Frankenstein is, making a life yourself without a woman, to just straight up homosexual, two men making life together. How Victor Frankenstein doesn’t have a Dan, which by proxy doesn’t make Dan Herbert’s companion, (who you would think would be a parallel to Clerval,) but makes him his monster. That following the formula of the Frankenstein book, Herbert is making his creation a wife to satiate him. Fascinating!! Really twisting the dynamics from the book in such a way that I really love and is super thought provoking. Not only noting, but expanding, on the romantic themes between Frankenstein and the Creature. So interesting to me and I know I’ve seen a post about this before but we need to talk about it more. I also love that reanimator uses the “chemical process” science that is present in the book instead of the “shock of life” that most adaptions lean towards. And again just thinking about how the bride (the LITERAL creation) reacts to being rejected, which is so important in the book. The themes of autonomy, and rejecting god, and selfishness, that just really sing with the themes of the book. Anyway. It’s great yay ❤️

[izzy140105]

Horror movies I watched this year and thoroughly enjoyed...

[mezucore]

just watched lisa frankenstein. the danbert parallels grabbed me by the throat so here we are

[heliopart]

"IT'S ALIVE!"

my gift for @meimalt for the @reanimator-holiday-gift-exchange! he wanted "Herbert and/or Dan Victor Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster au, 1800s vibes"

hope u enjoy milo! :-D

(special thanks to @thyfrankie for helping me with anatomy and posing and @andalusiapunk for helping me with lighting and shading! 🫶!!)

Pose reference and details under the cut!

I used the painting Adam Resolved to Share the Fate of Eve by Moses Haughton the Younger, 1806 :-)

and here's some closeups bc I'm very proud of this!

that's all! happy holidays everyone :-]