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I'm thinking about responses to Dracula - both adaptations and critical responses - and how the main thing that they seem to get wrong (at least from my perspective) is their approach to the romantic relationships in the novel. You know the kind of thing: Arthur is boring, Jonathan is boring, Lucy lusts after all three suitors, Mina lusts after Dracula, the suitors must all be suppressing their jealous hatred of one another.

It feels to me like it all comes from the same place, and that place is the idea that romantic relationships, particularly at the start of a story, can't or shouldn't be straightforward.

Instead, Dracula begins, near enough, with two women who have both met and are set to marry men who they love and who love them in return, and where it seems like there is no intrinsic reason why they shouldn't live happily ever after.

And normally we don't expect that. Certainly these are not the narrative rules of a romance (which Dracula isn't, but bear with me). It's a little bit like if Elizabeth Bennet was actually really into Mr Collins and accepted him right away, if Jane Eyre was blissfully happy with St John Rivers, or if Margaret Hale fell for Henry Lennox. Jonathan and Arthur are the safe choices for Mina and Lucy, and we don't normally expect heroines to want the safe choices.

Mina and Lucy do. Arthur is strategically the best husband for Lucy - good family, pots of cash, no weird job, her mum likes him - but he is also the man that Lucy loves. Mina and Jonathan are utterly besotted with one another, and though Jonathan isn't as wealthy as, say, Jack Seward, his career is also on the up. He's a good choice.

I think this works brilliantly in Dracula, because the later threat is so much the greater for the fact that everyone starts out the novel so strong. The fact that they are so happy to begin with means they have more to lose.

So many responses to Dracula want this to be a novel in which love is complicated, but instead it's a novel in which love is both pretty straightforward and always good. And I think it's more interesting for it.

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Got bored and decided to tally how many diary entries/letters/telegrams/memoranda/whatever each character in Dracula has

I included in this tally notes and telegrams and whatnot that did not get their own entries, so long as we saw the actual text of said items. So, for example, I counted Jonathan's notes on Carfax shared on May 7 as their own separate entry, but did not count his secret letters to Mina and Mr. Hawkins from May 28, as we didn't see the text of those. I did not count "later in the day" updates to journal entries as new, separate entries, unless there were other people's entries between them. My thinking was that if Stoker gave us a May 12 entry by Jonathan immediately followed by a May 12, Later entry, they were mean to be read in one go. Meanwhile, if Seward gives us a diary entry from the morning of September 29, and then we go check in with Mina and Jonathan before coming back to Seward on the evening of the 29th, that was meant to be read as its own separate thing.

The tallies:

Jack Seward: 54

Mina Harker: 43

Jonathan Harker: 41

Captain of the Demeter: 10

Van Helsing: 10

Lucy Westenra: 9

Arthur Holmwood: 4

Count Dracula: 2

The Dailygraph: 2

The Westminster Gazette: 2

Rufus Smith: 2

Quincey Morris: 1

Mr. Hawkins: 1

Sister Agatha: 1

The Pall Mall Gazette: 1

Samuel F. Billington: 1

Carter, Paterson & Co: 1

Patrick Hennessey: 1

Jack Smollet: 1

Mitchell, Sons & Candy: 1

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May 7: The Count expresses his curiosity and enthusiasm for England

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Goddamn wowee, your Johnathan Harker is *fine* as hell. I want to congratulate Mina and high-five her through my screen on bagging a man like that. You go, girl!

(Pardon me, this is admittedly a bit unhinged, but your art is incredible and the thirst was unexpected and I am currently unsurprised and I cannot be stopped)

Everyone thinks the same and Mina knows it

I do headcanon Jonathan as being very pretty (not necessarily hot, but pretty). Until he becomes completely unhinged in that train station. But nonetheless, pre-plot Jonathan just strikes me as the type of guy to retrieve unwanted attention due to his youthful looks. I think he would've developed a whole mental workout to ignore it or to escape it tactfully. He can be a bit oblivious sometimes though.

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Robert Montagoat Renfield

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Starting out Dracula season with my interpretations of the characters!

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My take on Count Dracula 🧛‍♂️

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The suitors and their Wikipedia enthusiast

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The Weird Sisters, interpretations, stories and design ideas.

Creative process in the tags

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post canon van helsing actually invented successful gender affirming hrt he just forgot to tell anyone outside of his greater international polycule so no one else noticed. congrats mrs and mrs harker.

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She's here! Mina Murray, the single most important character enters the story!

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"I wish you would write a fic where..."

Honestly would love to see your take on anything a fic where Lucy gets to chomp Arthur 👀 🧛‍♀️

One of my absolute favorite unused Bad Ending AU openings.

Arthur ruins Van Helsing's stakeout plan by dint of his grief. How?

He gets back to Lucy's tomb first.

At sunset. Weeping still, though his eyes burn in his head. He's brought more flowers. Roses--

(I do not need them, my husband. Leave them.)

--which he casts aside on his way to the door. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Lucy is dead. Lucy is gone.

(I am neither, my husband. Come and see.)

He brought the key to the tomb. Not sure until now that he would use it; that he could bring himself to stand beside her final bed on Earth without collapsing at its side. But the key is in the hand where the roses were and he can see himself unlocking the door. He steps inside as the sun sinks away. There is a miracle inside.

Lucy.

Lucy sitting atop her coffin's lid, feet dangling as they had when they shared a bench or a couch to save their stinging soles after a dance too many. She smiles at him, her lips no longer pink petals, but heavy and red as if painted. Had she ever looked so before? So enthralling, so wanting? He doesn't recall. He doesn't care. It doesn't matter.

"Lucy?"

As if to be sure. The dream will break apart like a soap bubble now. Lucidity will smash her apart.

But no. She is there, her arms open, her laugh like crystal music. Why does it nettle something awful in his core? Why do his legs wish to betray him, betray her, and flee? No matter. He is master of himself. And he marches forward into her embrace, tears running in bliss to wash out the grief.

"Lucy..."

"Yes, Arthur. There was a mistake. A terrible mistake by that silly doctor. But see? I am better. I am awake. All will be well now."

"Yes," he nods as if his head is on a string. Her arms are so cold around him. Padded ice.

"Kiss me, Arthur. I have missed the taste of you."

"I missed you--," She doesn't let him finish. The cold of her is on his mouth, pressing in. Her teeth scrape his lip and open a seam of thin skin. Blood wells, but he doesn't pull away. There's no breaching the lock of her arms. All he can do is make a small pained noise as she suckles at his mouth, lip and tongue both running red now. Kissing it better.

She kisses him again, under his jaw. He can't see, can't feel, but he knows it. A sweet and bitter certainty.

When Van Helsing and Jack come to him later, asking for the tomb's key, they look at Arthur warily. He has turned so pale since they last met.

"I feel quite fine," he insists. And it's the truth. Quite fine. He is still fine when they rush back to him, announcing the unthinkable: the Westenra tomb has been robbed! Lucy's coffin is gone! "Well. It cannot matter to her, can it? So it does not matter to me."

"Arthur?" from Jack. "Arthur, look at me. Arthur."

(Arthur...)

"Don't worry about me. This will pass soon enough." He smiles. They see the sharp edge of his teeth. "Quincey can attest to it. You trust his sense, don't you? He's downstairs."

(We can show them.)

"What? When did he--?"

"Friend John." Van Helsing's voice trembles more than steels. His hand is a vise on Jack's shoulder. "Perhaps we overstay and overstep. We can call again another hour." Pulling, retreating. The sun is low outside the windows. It is so awfully quiet out there. Almost as quiet as it is inside. Have they noticed there are no servants about? Arthur wonders. But not with any great interest.

(Come, my husband. Are you not hungry? We are.)

He is. As is his friend, smiling in wait as Van Helsing jerks open the door. Quincey has always had such a charming smile, he thinks. It almost won Lucy's heart before he could. It is still charming as it locks into Jack's throat, cutting short the rising scream. Arthur ponders doing the same for Van Helsing, but--

(No. He cannot be allowed to linger, even with us. He has no use for elderly meddlers.)

--he opts instead for a polite farewell. The old man's head pops off in his hands like that of a daisy.

"Such excellent timing." Her lips at his cheek, his throat. "Our fellow newlyweds will come soon. They will want to leave me flowers and tears, poor things. Perhaps my widower should invite them here to show the mistake of their mourning."

"Perhaps."

Quincey agrees through his scarlet mouthful. Jack twitches. Somewhere, hearing and seeing through them, he gives his permission...on one condition. He need not say what.

The Harkers arrive two evenings later, dressed in black. There is time for only a minute's sharing of condolence before Lucy steps out to greet her friend.

And he steps out to greet his.

The screaming is brief. Someplace in the burial bedrock of himself, Arthur feels something like displeasure at the sight of their hands; how frantically they had clung and clawed toward each other as they were wrenched apart by separate embraces. Wedding rings glinting as one friend and another gave their kisses. He would swear he almost hears his own voice crying out, howling in tandem against the sight.

But it passes. All bad things do now. Lucy, her smile lacquered with fresh red, introduces Mina Harker to her husband. Mina twitches in her arms. Jonathan Harker's eyes stare blank and damp after Arthur shakes his hand. Tears stripe the young man's face as he carries him away to some far corner of the manse, still drinking.

Within the week, all is well. All their friends are too. And Lucy, his love, his Bride, flatters him in insisting it was thanks to him. Her kisses are many and delighted and cold.

And if they hear echoes of their voices screaming still, it does not matter.

It never will again.

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saw a theatre adaptation of dracula last night where lucy and renfield were played by the same woman, and honestly i feel like i could write essays about that casting decision.

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Dracula: Cast of Characters

a gouache illustration for "Windows into Dracula" - I was figuring out all the character designs and vibes at that point

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Johnathan: Oh my god, look at this Library!

Dracula:

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Man RIP Count Dracula. He would have loved the SuperWhoLock fandom.

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Doing Dracula Daily for the first time, love it so far, and it's gotten me back into my Dracula obsession, so!

Dracula is a horror, obviously. The creeping dread of each new entry, especially Johnathan's initial diary and the letters between Lucy and Mina, the growing desperation as Dracula gets bolder, the tragedy of knowing the story and the monster while the characters scramble to figure it out...

It's wonderful, I'm hoping reading it with Dracula Daily will only enhance it through the time gaps.

But!

Dracula is also, at its core, a love story — a tragic one at points, but a love story nonetheless.

There's love in the way the locals Johnathan meets on his journey to Dracula Castle try their hardest to warn and ward him against the monster that plagues them. There's love in Johnathan's attempt to save the child from the vampires, the mother that comes knocking on the castle doors for her baby. There's love in Johnathan's notes for Mina in his journal, in the fact that he keeps the journal, especially in so much detail, largely because of Mina, to not omit details when he discusses his journey with her.

There's love in Lucy and Mina discussing their lovers, in Lucy saying that Mina is not to tell anyone — except for Johnathan, of course, because that's her partner. There's love in Mina's constant worry for Johnathan, but also in her talks with the Whitby locals about old stories and legends, and in Lucy and Mina attending funerals of strangers. There's love in Quincy and Jack congratulating Arthur for winning Lucy's hand despite also vying for it. There's love in how the Suitors drop everything when Lucy gets sick, how they reach for any resource (Van Hellsing) they can to help her, how they don't hesitate giving her their blood. There's love in Van Hellsing, who's never met Lucy, arriving as soon as he can in England despite being Dutch. There's love in Lucy's mother throwing out the garlic flowers meant to stave off Dracula, because she hadn't known and simply wanted Lucy to get some fresh air. There's love in the Suitor Squad + Van Hellsing's hunt for Lucy, in her reaching out to Arthur despite her transformation (manipulative as it may be), in Arthur being the one to stake her and Van Hellsing giving him the option to do it, in Van Hellsing prompting him to kiss her goodbye now that it can be done safely.

There's love in the man who got a delirious Johnathan onto a train, and in the nuns who nurse him to health and help him get married the moment he can. There's love in Johnathan's diary and what it represents in their wedding vows, and there's love in Mina refusing to read it until necessary. There's love in her finally reading it and subjecting herself to every minute horror within it for Johnathan's sake, in Van Hellsing doing the same and immediately reassuring Johnathan of his sanity. There's love in everyone's vow to destroy Dracula, to protect England from him, to avenge Lucy (and, to some degree, Johnathan and everyone else who has suffered beneath the vampires).

There's love in the men keeping Mina out of the loop to protect her, terribly as it ended. There's love in the Suitors' vow to Mina, and in Johnathan's lack of it ("the holiest love" indeed). There's love in Mina's pity for Dracula, for herself and for the monster. There's love in Quincy's sacrifice, and in Mina and Johnathan naming their son after him and the rest of the Squad.

There's love.

It fuels the actions of nearly every human character — both the main ones and those that are such sidenotes they don't even get a description or spoken line. Truthfully, it's love that destroys Dracula — because he can't love, just as the female vampires said, despite him denying it. He doesn't understand love, doesn't understand that strangers will risk their lives for others, let alone friends and family and lovers, so he doesn't know how to counter it, and it destroys him.

Johnathan gets out of the castle because he loves Mina enough to try, hopeless as it seemed. Van Hellsing, the one character that knows how to fight vampires, joins the party because Jack loves Lucy enough to ask for his help, and because Van Hellsing loves Jack enough to answer despite the long trip. Mina gets her psychic link with Dracula that allows them to locate him because the men love her enough to try and protect her, disastrous and patronizing as it was.

Dracula is a horror story, yes. It has more than earned its title as one of the classics.

But it has always been a love story as well.