#I actually like Seward don't come at me

[uri59]

I love how most people defend (I mean? No one is really attacking him? Just making fun, the attacks based on Renfield did were attacks) Seward based on his rationality because for me the most rational conclusion would be that Lucy is actually alive, that her supposed dead has to do with her sleepwalking and if I wanted to involve Van Helsing I'll say that Van Helsing made her worse by the blood transfusions and all those flower's garlic...

WHAT I'LL DO FOR SURE IS TO INVOLVE ANOTHER TRUSTED MEDICAL OPINION TO SEE IF SHE IS ACTUALLY DEAD INSTEAD OF LEAVING HER IN A FRICKING TOMB

Because otherwise how do you explain she hasn't decomposed yet Jack?? Either she IS a vampire or she is still BURIED ALIVE.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Tumblr user @thefirsthogokage asked why i hate being called Inuk in the tags of a reblog so to start with the word Eskimo, please check my faq pinned post here because that's the first point.

Inuit is not the chosen name of my culture. We've called ourselves Inupiat or Eskimos, but never Inuit because the word inuit just means people in general and the -piat suffix, in this context, means we're refering to our people specifically. So no, i'm not just inuk, i'm specifically Inupiaq

The visuals that come to mind when someone refers to the Inuit are also almost exclusively Canadian Inuit, which leads to non-Eskimos having a very narrow concept of the various cultures of peoples who have been called Inuit by accademics; peoples who are typically nomadic and can be found from the coasts of Greenland, across Canada, to part of Alaska so far out west it's on the other side of the International Dateline. Some of these peoples, like my family, don't feel the word Inuit accurately represents their cultural identity and feels overly generic for how much diversity and variation there is to be found.

Eskimo is also a bit overly generic, but feels truer to my cultural experience. For one, it actually includes the Yup'ik peoples (who deserve consideration in this conversation but are often ignored because fuck nuance and autonyms i guess?), and two, it's not a slur in Alaska. I wouldn't even compare it to how they call cigarettes "fags" in the UK. In Alaska you're more likely to be called a drunk or some variation of the n-word as an anti-native slur than Eskimo. And Eskimo is faster than saying "the North Slope Inupiat, Seward Peninsula Inupiat, Inupiat from either of the Diomede Islands, King Island Inupiat, Central Yup'iit, Pacific Yup'iit, Saint Lawrence Island Yup'iit, and/or Siberian Yup'iit" or even just "Inupiat and Yup'iit" because (if you'll allow me to indulge in some snark) hey, whaddya know, Alaska isn't Canada and has its own history pre- and post-colonization.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

scrolling through various people's dracula daily tags on the bus because this book is all i want to think about right now i was reminded that seward is only 29 (with his own lunatic asylum!) - which struck me (a 34 year old) now in a way it didn't before i'd gotten to know him and the others, way back before most of the Plot had happened. jonathan's Baby's First Job energy and mina's excitement about her impending nuptials radiate off the page, but seward's diary is so self-serious and intense that i think mentally i'd automatically been picturing him as much older, even though he's a longtime bro of arthur and quincey. it makes his self-seriousness, and his near-worship of van helsing, more endearing to me now that i've corrected my image of him - and it REALLY gives an even better cast (read: more delightfully awkward) on the scene where he and mina talk diary-stuff to remember they're likely fairly close in age.

it also just made me appreciate that this is ultimately a novel about fairly young people / a text i can slot into my personal canon of Texts About Your Saturn Return, and makes me think also about both the fact that the character relationships center on two engagements (this is literally what your late twenties is), and about all the non-dracula-related death content that permeates the book, from the parents and parent-figures dying left and right to the old man in whitby's monologue about the deaths. none of these bright, healthy, life-loving twenty-somethings have yet had their lives warped by tragedy, and the thing is, that's pretty normal. having your first brush with tragedy involve an undead bloodsucker hunting you and your pals is not normal, but hitting something on the road to thirty that changes you from a person who has never lost anything that mattered to a person who has kind of is.

i dunno, there's something oddly sweet to me in thinking about that - about how dracula is a book about unspeakable horrors, and also a book about when you're in your late twenties and you thought this was the part of your life where things were settling down because everyone's getting engaged and you finished grad school and you're in an actual career now, and then your friend's mom has cancer and you don't know what to say because you've never had to say something about this before, and at the funeral it occurs to you that it may be a while before the next one but this is something you'll be doing for the rest of your life. at the beginning of the book, four of the characters - jonathan and mina, lucy and arthur - think they're a few months away from their happy endings, while a fifth, seward, our last major POV character, is contentedly speculating about how his fascinating new patient may afford him opportunities for major advances in his field. now, one of those happy endings is shattered brutally for good, while the other one has technically transpired but looks nothing like they'd imagined, and renfield is dead while thoughts of his career couldn't be further from seward's mind. this is all very late-twenties, to me: the time when it starts to really click inside you that there are no endings until the very end.

anyway. i guess what i'm saying is, bram stoker's 1897 gothic horror opus is actually a coming of age novel, and i for one would fucking kill for a modern adaptation that really leans into this aspect.

[vickyvicarious]

Mina today like 😒🙄 anyway as I was saying, I could feel my husband who is Jonathan...

Oh man, imagine how offended she will feel when she eventually reads Van Helsing's memorandum and sees what he thought she was talking about. I don't think she noticed before, especially given how hilariously matter-of-fact she is about sensing Jonathan in this entry. But I can easily see her scoffing and kind of just tossing the memorandum down on the table in disgust at that part. Maybe leaving the room to go give Jonathan a kiss (in front of Van Helsing for extra measure) just because.

About her being so matter-of-fact today... It's funny actually, because when she's had premonitions about his condition despite physical separation in the past (thinking he's not on the water in Whitby, her fear to think of him/certainty he's not in danger soon after they part when hunting Dracula) she sounds a bit uncertain. But on November 5 (since both today and yesterday's entries occurred on that day), perhaps as she feels his presence getting closer, she drops any self-doubt or logical justifying in favor of utmost certainty.

"Let us go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us."

"It was late in the afternoon when the Professor and I took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming."

"The two men might be Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris. I knew at all events that neither of them was Jonathan. At the same time I knew that Jonathan was not far off; looking around I saw on the north side of the coming party two other men, riding at break-neck speed. One of them I knew was Jonathan, and the other I took, of course, to be Lord Godalming."

Look at all that knowing! She's not admitting any possibility of doubt at all. It's her husband (who, yes Professor, is of course Jonathan) who she senses and she knows exactly where he's coming from and which one is him. Sure, I guess you could say that she knows he's coming because they're all coming according to the plan, and she could recognize her husband even at such a distance because she knows him so well. But that doesn't really explain her certainty that Jonathan is close even before she sees him, or her consistent focus on only mentioning Jonathan when everyone else is coming towards them too.

And while it's a little less certain, there's even a moment in the middle of the battle where she seems to know he is safe (unlike Quincey sadly):

I should have felt terrible fear at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardour of battle must have been upon me as well as the rest of them; I felt no fear, but only a wild, surging desire to do something.

She says this just before Jonathan's approach sends the men cowering before him. In my mind it fits well with her certainty that he's in no danger when traveling on the ship, even though as far as they know he might have caught up to Dracula on the river and been in trouble. (In fact, after she says that he has a restful sleep.) It doesn't feel like too far a leap to say that Mina is so tuned in to Jonathan here that she can tell nothing will be happening to him.

If we harken back to early Whitby entries, where Mina woke when Lucy was in danger and felt deep worry about Jonathan, I think it's a lot easier to read as just her being a light sleeper and knowing her friend/husband well enough to tell if someone's off about their behavior or letters. But there's also a possible reading that she has always been a little bit psychic. Maybe she's only really tapped into that power since her attacks, when she was actively trying to use mental powers against Dracula, but at least some of it can be seen as inherently her own, which she's learned to use/trust/strengthen over the course of the book.

(Also, about that last quote - here's a fun theory. Maybe Mina does "do something" here. Maybe she psychically aids Jonathan somehow, helps him bring out the full pissed-off-vampire vibes to stare people down till they literally cannot stand in his way. That could be kind of fun, regardless of whether you assume Jonathan already is supernatural enough himself to do so and she's just helping him make use of it, or if you think she's loaning him some vampyness. ...Actually, I feel like the wafer circle around her should stop her doing any such thing via vampiric methods, so then it would have to be Mina using her normal psychic powers to bring out the full force of Jonathan's Supernatural Weirdness stolen from Dracula in order to protect him. Dunno that I believe it really but it's a cool idea I think.)

[snakeningel]

Heard you wanted Dracula prompts? how about: Seward suitor squad sandwich. That's it, that's what I've got. Feel free to run with it if you're so inspired.

bet.

Arthur Holmwood's Diary, Written in by Quincey P. Morris, October 14th

The sun isn't up yet, so I'll take this time to write. Journalling ain't usually my thing, but some good's gotta come outta this whole vampire mess, and I'm certainly not gonna lose this memory to time or whatever meets us in Varna. Art — if you're reading this, I hope you don't mind I nicked that journal of yours. I don't have one of my own, and I know you well enough that I'm sure you'd want a record of last night too.

The three of us have been through a lot. Probably more adventures than those folks who call themselves blood brothers. We know everything about each other. Art, I know you like to gussy up your animals when you're too worried to think straight, and I've heard that I cling to people when I'm dead asleep. So I don't know why Jack thought we didn't notice him shivering up a storm in that bunk of his. He's always the first one to feel the chill, but Lord forbid the man actually open his mouth to say something about it. Art told me it was something about medical school and blood pressure that got Jack to seal his lips? Some theory about womenfolk being more susceptible to the chill, I think. Now the man would rather let his skin go blue than admit that he needs some warm bodies by his side. But it's not like anyone in this group of ours is inclined to judge anything, and at the very least, Art and I already knew about what the doctor didn't want people to suspect. Mina was even snuggled up, happy as a clam with that husband of hers. The two of them made for such a pretty picture, and I can't think why Jack was so against being like them, all warm and comfortable-like. It's not like he would ever get mad at me though, so I went and cozied up with our darling doctor. That wasn't entirely altruistic on my part. A warm body can help stave off the cold, but the presence of a true, dear friend is more than needed to fight off that darkness that we see ahead. I told Jack as much. The man won't take handouts, but he'd do anything to help his own. He's got a heart as pure as gold beneath all that gloom; besides the professor of his, I can think of no better shepherd of the sick. He held himself stiffly for the first few moments, but soon enough he was melted to my chest like a frozen cold kitten scooped up off of the ground. Art, of course, was not one to be left out, and he was bright enough to see our doctor begin to flush and think of propriety. With the smarts of the hunter he is, he strolled over and laid himself down across our laps, all cat that got the canary like. Jack certainly wasn't going to stand up and cause our lordling to topple to the floor, so the poor lad was trapped between our affections. The darling thinks himself subtle, but both Art and I are sharp enough to notice the relieved smile that curled at the edges of his pretty lips. Even without the threat of someone standing up, Art's position was far too precarious for my liking. So I tugged the two of them back with me, arranging us all on the bed more comfortably than how we had been perching on the edge. It's sweet how Jack flushes whenever I haul him around, but I wasn't inclined to embarrass him further, so I didn't say much to that effect. The three of us have bunked in worse places than a traincar that's just a tad too cold, so we settled quickly enough into a position that's comfortable for all of us. Just as I like to cling with my dear ones in my arms, Jack likes to feel the weight of something solid on both sides of him; spending too long in the realm of the mind probably leaves him needing a reminder of what is solid and real. Art, of course, managed to take up more space than we thought possible, stretching across the two of us like he was making his claim. There was a moment of silent peace, all of us understanding each other without a word shared. But our doctor couldn't stop his buzzing brain, and soon enough he opened his mouth to speak.

"What if-"

It doesn't take the brightest mind to figure out that he was going to let himself discuss only the worst possibilities, so with all the grace that I could never muster, Art rumbled out the sweetest, laziest whine into Jack's chest. That was enough to stop that train of thought in its tracks. The claim that Art holds over our Jack's heartstrings is nothing short of impressive, but they've had decades to grow fond of each other, I suppose. Still, such an efficient shutdown of Jack's overthinking ways did tickle me, so I suppose a chuckle escaped my mouth. Again, our doctor goes red, though I suppose the rumble of my chest against his face sparked some other, better thoughts in his head. I wish he knew that he need only ask, and both Art and I would be happy to do whatever he wished to him. But this isn't time to push; perhaps after we come back from this latest adventure of ours, we'll sit our boy down to run another gauntlet of proposals.

But I'm not keen thinking too far into an uncertain future. There's no point until the evil we're hunting is cold and scattered on the wind. At some point, the warmth and comfort lulled us to sleep; I couldn't tell who went first into that land of rest, but as with all things, those of us left behind wasted no time to follow. That's where Art and Jack still are now, finally getting the rest and comfort we've all been neglecting of late. The train is still rolling along to our destination, and no matter what we face in Varna, I am happy to know that this moment will not slip into the oft-forgotten past. The two of them don't look like they will be stirring anytime soon, so I suppose I will return and join them for as long as they will have me.

[picklepie888]

My Personal Ranking of Every Dracula Adaptation I've Watched/Listened To Since Dracula Daily

(Warning: spoilers under the cut)

So since I've started reading Dracula for the first time via Dracula Daily, I have over the past few months watched three movies and two podcast/audio plays of Dracula. The three films I've watched are the 1931 film starring Bela Logosi, the 1958 film starring Christopher Lee, and the 1979 film. The audio versions were the Mercury Theatre radio play starring Orson Welles, and the podcast Murray Mysteries by Knöve's Storytelling. These five Dracula adaptations had varying degrees of quality, and now having completely finished reading the original story I can now make a definite ranking of them based on book accuracy. Without further ado, let's sink our teeth into the content.

5. Dracula (1979)

Differences from the book

Jonathan's saga at Drac's castle is completely skipped over and the film begins with the Demeter crashing

Lucy and Mina's names are swapped in this film. So the girl who Dracula drains to death is named Mina and Lucy is Jonathan's fiancee. I looked it up later and apparently the director just thought that 'Lucy' was a better name for a leading lady. Really stupid reason if you ask me, but whatever.

This is a very heavy Dracmina adaptation (or Draclucy in this case? IDK the girl he falls for is definetly meant to be Mina but with Lucy's name)

Both Quincey and Arthur are absent in this version

Renfield is sane at the beginning of the film and is shown interacting with the other characters before he descends into madness and ends up at Seward's asylum later

Dracula is a prominent character throughout and the characters interact with him regularly. Obviously Lucy (actually Mina) interacts with him the most (ugh)

Van Helsing and Seward are Mina and Lucy's fathers. And Seward is about the same age as Van Helsing, which I've noticed is pretty common in these adaptations

We never actually see Transylvania in this film

Lucy (Mina) becomes a full vampire at the film's climax

Van Helsing dies in the final confrontation, and Jonathan kills Drac via exposure to sunlight.

What I Liked

Starting with the things I liked about this movie, because there's not many. I like that Van Helsing and Jack Seward are friends in this version. The other two films I've seen didn't have the bond between these two characters which was a core part of the original story. I liked that they shared a good portion of their scenes together and they do act like two men who have known each other for a long time. I'll give this movie credit for getting this one thing right.

The cinematography is exquisite. The muted colors, the way the inside of Dracula's residence at Carfax is framed on camera, the eerie gothic aesthetic throughout the film is masterfully done. But pretty visuals don't make up for poor characterization.

Mr. Swales is in this version. He's only in two scenes, but I was still pleasently surprised to see him in an adaptation.

They did the Lizard Fashion™ scene.

What I Disliked

They absolutely massacred Mina's character. She was so unbearably hateable throughout the film. The narrative made it clear that she didn't give a crap about Jonathan, and she practically threw herself on Dracula the minute she saw him. There was also the scene where she tells all the men (yes including Jonathan) that she hated them for coming between her and Dracula. Can you imagine book!Mina ever saying such a thing to her beloved husband who was willing to damn himself for her?!?! And DO NOT get me started on the Baptism of Blood scene! The part of the story that's supposed to be a horrifying metaphor for rape is instead played out as an act of passion between two lovers. There's also no ambiguity here, Dracula and Mina just straight up have sex. And Mina loved every minute of it. Imagine someone made a film about a rape victim and framed their traumatic experience as a passionate love scene! I almost went into a fit of rage at this scene, it disgusted me to my core!

Jonathan is really bland in this film. The writers clearly decided to set his characterization aside so they could focus more on the spooky vampire vibes and the affair his fiancee has with the vampire. They didn't make him a bad guy, but I didn't feel anything but pity for him in this film. The only scene where he shows any other emotion aside from 'concerned husband' was when he got understandably jealous when Mina was flirting with Dracula and he called her out on it. Other than that, he doesn't show anywhere near as much passion for Mina as he does in the book.

There's a scene where Drac lizard crawls into Lucy's window, and when she sees him, she smiles and shows her neck to him. I didn't like this, because it implied she was giving consent for him to drink her, which again frames the victim on having some blame on what happens to her.

Dracula still brutally kills Renfield like in the book, but I didn't really understand why? I might of missed something when watching, but Renfield doesn't do anything to try to protect Mina in this version. Drac just teleports into the asylum, snaps Renfield like a twig, refused to eleborate, then kidnaps Mina.

Did not like this movie. Terrible adaptation and so many characters, especially the women, got screwed over in favor of framing a stupid 'forbidden love' narrative.

Rating: 0/5

4. Dracula (1931)

Differences from the book

Still no Arthur or Quincey

Lucy is in the film, but she only has maybe two minutes of screen time, and her arc never got a conclusion, she just stays a vampire forever I guess. They could've left her out of the film completely and it wouldn't change anything.

Seward is yet again an old man in this film, and he's Mina's father. He also doesn't have much of a relationship with Van Helsing, they act more like business partners than friends.

Renfield takes Jonathan's place in the beginning of the film as the solicitor who goes to Dracula's castle. The narrative frames his encounter as the reason he went insane.

Mina has nothing to do in this movie but be a passive damsel in distress. About 70% of her dialogue is her screaming her husband's name.

Jonathan is simply called 'John' in this version. Seward is never adressed by his first name, so there's no confusion.

Like in the 1979 movie, the characters regularly interact with Dracula throughout the film, and frame Van Helsing as the one guy who knows he's a vampire and has to prove it to everyone else.

Renfield also has way more scenes in this film than he did in the book.

The final confrontation takes place at Carfax, Drac kidnaps Mina, and he's killed by Van Helsing and Jonathan.

This version is more based off the play from the 20's rather than the actual novel. And you can kinda tell by the way the story is paced, and how the characters come into the sets.

What I Liked

Bela Logosi as Dracula and Dwight Frye as Renfield are both by far the most entertaining aspects of this film. Even though I think they both got more screen time than they should, I have to say they both pulled off their characters spectacularly. Especually Frye as Renfield; the way he was able to portray a mild-mannered solicitor and then a madman is incredible.

There's no musical score through out the film, which really adds to the creepy atmosphere. Especially for the scenes at the begining at Dracula's castle where there isn't much dialogue.

The sets are really cool! Dracula's castle in Transylvania looks enormous and all kinds of creepy, just as it was described in the novel.

There's no Dracmina in this version, and Jonathan and Mina actually care about each other!

What I Disliked

The pacing was really wonky. As I mentioned before, Lucy's whole story arc was just glossed over, she was dead almost as soon as she was introduced. And then they brought up that a woman that looks like her is going around kidnapping children, and then that issue's just...never brought up again for the rest of the film. So is she still a vampire? Did she die after Drac was killed? And her death had very little impact on the main characters, even Mina who is supposed to be her friend. The whole ordeal with Renfield at the castle and the Demeter was also over with within the first five minutes of the movie. I get that they could only fit so much of the story in an hour and a half film, but come on!

All of Mina's intelligence and agency she had in the novel is completely thrown out the window, and she's replaced by a sexist archetype that was shown in every horror movie in the thirties. She spends the majority of the movie screaming and crying and being under Drac's control. This version of Mina is still better than the 1979 on though. At least this one loves Jonathan.

Jonathan is still pretty bland. His whole personality is just 'concerned husband', and that's about the extent of it. We don't get to see his arc from a gentle Englishman to vengeful gremlin on the name of his wife like the og story. All of his feminine aspects is taken away too, and he basically just acts like the generic male hero with no moments of self doubt. I do appreciate that they kept the dedication to his wife though.

Van Helsing and Seward don't act like friends. In fact most of their interactions involve Van Helsing proposing an idea that vampires could exist and then Seward tells him he's full of crap. This goes back and forth until Mina starts to turn.

Several of the plot points happen offscreen and then is brought up later through dialogue by the characters. Namely Dracula's assualt on Mina.

Renfield died like a bitch in this version. He was crying and begging Dracula to spare his life, unlike in the novel, when he grabbed Dracula in his mist form and wrecked him in order to protect Mina. He still helps the heroes in this version, but it doesn't feel as genuine when he chickens out the minute Dracula threatens him.

Overall, not a great adaptation, but a decent movie on its own. It would have worked better if it had been a series of films, so that way they could have all the story arcs with more proper pacing. They still did Lucy and Mina dirty, and there's no justice for Arthur and Quincey.

Rating: 2/5

3. Dracula (AKA Horror of Dracula) (1958)

Differences from the book

Still no Quincey! Seriously, what does Hollywood have against the cowboy?? No Renfield either.

Jonathan dies at the beginning at Dracula's castle.

There's only one vampire bride, and Jonathan kills her at the start.

Arthur and Lucy are siblings in this version.

Mina and Lucy have also swapped fiancee's, but unlike in the 1979 version, they still have the same roles they had in the book. So Mina is married to Arthur, but Lucy still gets drained/turned into a vampire.

Both Jonathan and Seward are minor characters in this movie. Jonathan dies at the castle at the beginning, and Seward only appears in the scenes where Lucy is ill. For the most part, Arthur fills in the roles of all four men who aren't Van Helsing. So if you thought Arthur didn't have enough to do in the og story, he does literally everything in this version. Except one thing, which I'll get to in a moment.

Two new characters were made for this movie. Arthur and Mina's maid, who basically takes the role of Mrs. Westenra from the book, and the maid's daughter who becomes a victim of vampire Lucy.

Van Helsing is the one to kill vampire Lucy rather than Arthur.

Arthur kills Dracula in a physical showdown.

What I Liked

This was the first movie adaptation I saw with Arthur in it, and I liked that he has more of a role here, even more so than he had in the book. I just wish we didn't have to sacrifice the other male characters sans Van Helsing for it.

The scene where Bloofer Lady Lucy lures the maid's daughter away to the graveyard was legitametly disturbing. The way she talked to the girl reminded me of how adult predators tend to talk to children to get them to follow them. Really scary stuff.

Dracula himself shows up sparingly in this movie! Finally a film adaptation that understood that a part of the horror of Dracula is that he only shows himself when he wants to.

The Baptism of Blood scene is actually portrayed as a traumatic moment for Mina. She's terrified and clearly doesn't want what the Count does to her.

Christopher Lee made a pretty awesome Dracula, with the few scenes he's in. He nailed the mystery and creep vibes the Count had in the og story.

What I Disliked

This movie had Van Helsing stake vampire!Lucy while Arthur stood there and covered his eyes. I didn't like the direction they took with this scene, because Arthur killing Lucy was a pivotal part of his character arc in the book. At the very least, movie!Arthur makes up for it a bit when he kills Dracula in the ending.

I think making Arthur and Lucy siblings was a weird choice. Especially since they kept the scene from the book where vampire!Lucy tries to seduce Arthur with a kiss before Van Helsing stops them!! So there's some icky incenst undertones there because of that. I really don't get why so many Dracula films insist on making the characters related when none of them were in the book.

The main cast felt pretty empty without Jonathan, Jack, and Quincey. Again, since Arthur fills up all the other men's roles it felt like the cast was lacking, with the focus mostly being on just the two men (Art and Van Helsing).

Mina didn't have much to do in this film, although I did appreciate her devotion to both Arthur and Lucy. It was clear that she cares about them both. And there's no Dracmina thank God! Aside from that, she just kinda played the role of 'emotional support.'

There's a scene where after Van Helsing places the garlic flowers all over Lucy's room, she throws a fit and smashes one of the vases. She then has Arthur's maid get rid of all the flowers and open her windows, the very things Van Helsing instructed not to do. I get that this was probably because Drac hypnotized her, but again the narrative is kinda blaming Lucy for what happens to her. Plus the maid was kinda an idiot to listen to her and not the doctor who instructed her to keep the flowers there.

They made the final confrontation with Drac a big showdown, unlike how it was in the book. On the one hand, its much more dramatic, but Arthur was the only one who was really involved, as in the book where all the main characters had to defeat the Count via teamwork.

This was one of the better Dracula films I've seen so far. This one was more focused on the human characters (even though they got rid of half the cast), and they allowed Drac to be a mysterious monster rather than a typical villain. Again, I really liked Christopher Lee's take on the Count. I just wish they had at least kept Jonathan for the rest of the film.

Rating: 3/5

2. Mercury Theatre's Dracula (1938)

Differences from the book

No Quincey (again!)

Arthur and Jack are combined into one character (literally named Arthur Seward).

It's implied that Seward is the one who put all the journal entries together rather than Mina.

Mina and Lucy don't interact in this version, and Mina isn't introduced until after Lucy's death.

No Renfield or vampire brides.

There is minimal Dracmina, but it's all on Drac's side, and Mina doesn't reciprocate at all (thank God!)

Mina kills Dracula in the end!

What I Liked

Orson Welles might just be my favorite Dracula so far! He has such an incredible voice that is both mesmerizing and spinechilling. His take on Dracula will keep you awake for several nights.

Despite being the shortest adaptation I've seen so far (it's under an hour long), they somehow managed to get all the important plot points of the story, and it doesn't feel rushed or poorly paced.

The main focus is on the human characters, and the found family aspects from the original story are still there! Seward is still hopelessly devoted to his old professor, and Jonathan and Mina are in love and bound to each other.

There was no victim blaming for the female characters!

Mina got to kill the Count! After all these terrible film versions where she's been reduced to a screaming damsel or a promiscuous bitch, Mina finally got the justice she deserves!! I'm so glad Welles and his team understood that Mina's role in defeating the Count was just as important as the men's! I just wish later adaptations knew this!

What I Disliked

Mina and Lucy's friendship was left out of the narrative. I know this was probably to cut time to fit the hour-long timeslot, but their friendship was so important to the story.

It felt too short?! Again, I know they only had an hour to broadcast the story, but I felt like it could've gone on another thirty minutes at least. It was really good though, so that hour went by too fast for me.

As good as this version was, it still really could've used some vampire-hunting cowboy action.

This radio play came out in 1938, and somehow it understood the female characters better than most modern Dracula adaptations. The voice acting is great, the sound design is great, and Orson Welles nailed it as Dracula!

Rating: 4/5

1. Knöve's Storytelling's Murray Mysteries (2021)

Differences from the book

The characters have canon queer identities.

Jonathan is ace.

Mina is bi.

Lucy is pan.

Seward is a lesbian.

Art is nonbinary.

Van Helsing is implied to be aroace.

Seward and Van Helsing have both been genderswapped, and their first names have been changed to Jane and Abigail respectfully.

Arthur strictly goes by 'Art' and uses they/them pronouns.

Renfield is only refered by the initial 'R.'

The story takes place in the modern day, and the characters use modern technology and slang. Most of the characters use audio recordings rather than written diary entries.

Drac vapes and owns a cat.

The story starts with Mina and Lucy at Whitby, and we the audience don't get to know about Jonathan's encounter in Transylvania until Mina does, when she listens to Jonathan's audio diary.

Holmward becomes canon by the end.

Jonathan and Mina's roles are swapped in the final act, so Jonathan is the one Drac violates and is slowly turning into a vampire, and Mina is the one who goes feral for her hubby.

Jonathan and Mina have a dog in the epilogue rather than a son.

Quincey gets to live!!!

What I Liked

This is the most faithful adaptation I've seen by far! All the important story beats are there, as are the character dynamics! This is the first adaptation I've seen that has all the main cast, and they work wonderfully together!

This one has Quincey!!! And he has the best lines in the whole show! Seriously, they took his himboness from the book and dialed it up to 11! It's magnificent! And they included the iconic bat shooting scene!

The idea to have Dracula as a podcast spread out through multiple episodes was a brilliant idea! They were able to pace the story the way it should, we get to spend time with every character and really get to know each of them, and the whole 'found footage' aspect this podcast has was a stroke of genius!

All the voice actors have amazing chemistry together. If you watch any of the BTS videos, you'll see that almost all of them are friends IRL, which adds to their performance here. I especially love Mina and Lucy's interactions, they really do feel like they've been best friends forever.

The team makes the decision to leave Jonathan out of the vampire hunt due to his trauma, unlike the og story where they left out Mina because she was a woman. This makes more sense considering the changed time period, and it's less misogyny BS we have to deal with. It also gave us unhinged vengeful Mina, which I greatly appreciate.

The scene where Jonathan tries to get Mina to promise she'll kill him if he turns is so heartwrenching! I swear, the VAs got me screaming crying and throwing up at how regretful, angry, desperate, and terrified they both sounded at the same time! God all the emotions were on point!

Dracula himself only appears for about three episodes in this series, which was all we really needed of him. Almost all the focus was on the human characters, which was as it should be.

What I Disliked

Dracula and Van Helsing don't have accents. I know this is supposed to be a more serious adaptation, and the VAs attempting to do accents that aren't natural to them may come off as unintentionally goofy, but still it didn't feel quite as authentic to the characters. Van Helsing was already pretty goofy enough as a character, it wouldn't have felt out of place if they had kept her Dutchness. Dracula also sounds like Just Some Guy, which is actually kinda hilarious after all these adaptations that try so hard to be over the top villains with foreign accents.

There are some areas in the story where I thought they were a little *too* faithful to the book. Namely the relationship between Seward and Renfield. Granted, it's not quite as bad as it was in the book, but it's still not great either.

This was definetly the best Dracula adaptation, and I don't know how anything else could top it! Maybe if we get a fully fledged TV series some day that's faithful to the book, but for now this podcast is just the best! Great writing! Great voice acting! The whole series is on YouTube, please go listen to it!

Rating: 5/5

[ladyminaofcamelot]

Okay, so, I wasn't going to scream into the uncaring void of the internet about this but I gotta. A lot of people have been dunking on Dr. Seward about the August 19th entry, and especially about the phrase, "These infantesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. Oh, if men only knew!" But when I was first reading the book, this was one of my favorite quotes, and frankly it's not as about Seward as everyone is making it. It's a reference to Matthew 10:29, which says "are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's knowledge." (NIV) It is right in the middle of a passage about Jesus appointing his disciples and giving them both encouragement and instruction for the persecution they will face when they follow him, and you won't believe what is written only a few verses before in 24-26: "The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. "

So here we have Jesus telling his disciples not to fear the servants of Beezlebul, or the devil, because they are no greater than the devil himself, and really the devil's not such a big gun compared to God himself, who the disciples follow.

In 'Dracula,' we have Renfield serving his master who is Dracula, in similar authority structure to the devil, but he is also not to be feared in comparison to the power of the forces of good, and the verses after that even discuss the fate of evil which (spoilers) forshadows the end of the book and the character Dracula himself. If you ask me, using a scripture passage to foreshadow your entire book in such a subtle way is honestly just BRILLIANT and I love it.

Moreover, the particular verse he chose to actually reference helps to highlight the differences between Dracula (an embodiment of men's evil) and God. Seward is not bragging that he is in charge, or miffed that Renfield does not treat him as such, he is noticing a change in behavior, as Renfield often WOULD defer to him as a higher authority in the past. Seward is not illogical to think this is because Renfield has come to believe there is an even higher authority to appeal to, and is not wrong when he says that a human higher authority makes no distinction between men. Dracula does not care if someone is a lunatic, a beloved lady, or a lawyer, they are all prey to him, and he will use them to his own ends. Similarly men whose ultimate goal is to benefit themselves and make a "god" of thier own interests stop seeing others as individuals, but as means to an end. This is in direct contrast to the God who sees every sparrow that falls, and who seeks a personal relationship and to foster personal relationships between those who follow him. This is a trait shared by the crew of light in the book. They have a father in Van Helsing, brothers and sisters, and husband and wife in each other, and all love each other so deeply and tenderly, just as God cares for the sparrows, and so much more for his own people. Meanwhile Dracula has slaves he must bend to his will. He has the brides, who obviously don't even like him much. Dracula, in choosing to selfishly disregard the feelings of those he considers prey has made himself thoroughly and completely alone, and that is what makes evil so weak.

Maybe it is just Seward being arrogant, but in my understanding of the allusion, it's an expert highlight of the difference between good and evil, light and dark, selfishness and love, distance and relationship, the contrast of which is a central theme of the whole book. For let us not forget that Dracula was once a man, a man who has been twisted into the opposite of everything humanity was supposed to be, and that is what makes him so very horrific.

(Also just read Matthew 10. The whole thing lines up very well and it's super cool. Way to go Mr. Stoker.)

[bluecatwriter]

1, 8 and 14 for the artist ask meme :D

Thank you for the ask! <3

1. When did you get into art? I've been drawing since I could hold a marker! My dad has been a professional artist on and off my whole life, so art was very valued in my family, and all of my siblings and I can draw. When I was a kid we had two gigantic bulletin boards in the kitchen and these were filled with a rotating gallery of stuff my siblings and I had drawn. I always enjoyed it.

8. What is your favorite piece that you have done? I had to flip through my sketchbooks to answer this one, but I have to say it's this one I drew of Jack Seward. Something about the tiny pursed lips, the I-haven't-slept-well-in-20-years dead stare, the way I accidentally made him hot— well, it never fails to make me laugh, and it's probably the closest I've come to a character design that matched what was actually in my head.

Oh, and I'm incredibly happy with this one, too. (It's Jonathan.)

14. What do you like drawing the most? (Copied from earlier ask) Faces! Faces faces faces! Especially eyes. If I have a blank piece of paper and I'm doodling something, it's probably eyes and profiles. (My love of drawing people's faces is kind of ironic because I don't actually pay much attention to people's faces in real life— I'm terrible at recognizing people.)

(Art ask game here!)

[infamousmonkey-cat]

okayyy so i finally finished re: dracula (i know, i fell behind, in my defence *haunting banshee scream*)

anyway i haven't been following the tag or whatever so i don't know what's been discussed already but here we go, thoughts time (dracula spoilers obvs). i'm confining my reactions to the text rather than the production fwiw

first of all this is not my first time reading/experiencing 'dracula'; i actually did a whole module on vampire literature during my erasmus year, but that was over a decade ago (i shan't say how much over). some parts i remembered pretty well, others much less so

i feel like i've seen a lot of complaints about adaptations not being faithful to the novel, and while i share some of the frustrations (looking at you coppola), i feel like i should say that a) adaptations are actually under no obligation to be faithful and b) i think it makes perfect sense to streamline certain things. for example, while lucy having three suitors (plus van helsing) make a certain amount of sense in terms of symmetry with jonathan, drac and the three vampiresses, quincy and art are incredibly underdeveloped and largely extraneous characters (not entirely, i'm getting to that)

HAVING SAID THIS i feel like i finally got a handle on why quincy has to exist, which is that each of lucy's suitors represents a different mode of masculinity, or perhaps more accurately, a different source of masculine power. seward is the rationalist, art is the aristocrat (and this kind of justifies his existence for story purposes, since his status often smooths the way in terms of getting access to places that would otherwise be shut off from the gang), and quincy is the rugged frontiersman. what i'm less sure about is why quincy is the one who has to die at the end? we are of course at the point of writing coming to the end of the era of the american frontier (by the reckoning of some historians it had already ended), but it feels like quincy is still generally referred to as a figure who represents futurity (particular when seward says "If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed"). so i'm still wrestling with this particular choice

could write a whole thing about the epilogue through the lens of reproductive futurism. i mean it writes itself. interesting that both art and seward are now "happily married" to unnamed women, with no other details given whatsoever (seward is fruity as hell btw don't get me started)

lot of foils in this novel: jonathan and lucy, jonathan and renfield; dracula and seward, dracula and van helsing; the three vampiresses, the three suitors. are mina and lucy foils? they're often framed as such in readings of the novel, because they're both women or whatever. not sure how much i go along with that. i guess mina is also contrasted, by jonathan, with the three vampiresses. but i kind of feel like she, of all the characters, is the one who most stands alone as an individual.

it will never cease to infuriate me that van helsing and renfield, particularly van helsing, are the two characters who have gone on to have an independent life in the popular imaginary (other than drac himself obviously). mina harker is SUCH a fantastic character, absolutely the hero of the novel, and the adaptations have done her so dirty. i know i said they don't have to be faithful but the changes are always to her detriment. she's reduced to either drac's reincarnated love interest (WHY???) or "oooh, lesbian subtext between her and lucy", which like--i'm not saying it's not there, at a stretch, and i'm all for queering stuff, but i don't think it's by any means the most interesting thing you can do with mina (and there's already so much rich queer and gender subversive potential in the novel that actually feels a lot more justified). the novel spends so much time establishing the relationship between mina and jonathan as absolutely central to the narrative and to both of their identities and it seems silly to pretend that isn't true just because mina has a close female friend. i'm not saying people shouldn't ship it or whatever, i just don't think it's strongly supported by the text

not to repeat myself but the whole trope in pop culture of "i'm descended from van helsing" actually drives me nuts? van helsing doesn't have any living children FIRST of all. why not descended from mina and jonathan harker?? the protagonists of the novel who have a canonical child? jonathan deals the killing blow to dracula and mina is instrumental in finding him? van helsing is only a "vampire slayer" in the sense that he cuts off the heads of vampires while they're unconscious... why him

having said the above i don't actually like the trope of 'descended from legendary whatever therefore such-and-such is in my blood' btw. i'm just saying if you're GOING to do it then van helsing isn't the best choice

but also. what if the dormant vampirism in mina were passed down to her children in some way. isn't that more fun than "hereditary vampire slaying ability"

i did read a little bit of lit crit when this first started but i haven't read any since then, and as i said i haven't been keeping up with the tag, so these are just some raw thoughts i am tossing around atm so don't fucking come for me you freaks

[larissa-the-scribe]

Terrarium Lights 3.4

Previously on Terrarium Lights: Gail got plot-twisted and now she's trying to do something to help about it.

Most of the other customers had already moved on, so the café was largely empty by the time Gail made it in.

Mrs. Mary Seward saw her as she came in, and waved at her.

They knew each other due to the annual festival held at the lighthouse, and because the Sewards had recently started attending Gail's church—though perhaps it was better to say that they were familiar with each other rather than knew each other. They had talked some, and were vaguely filled in on each others' circumstances, but they were little more than pleasant acquaintances who got along well at after-church lunches.

As such, Gail was both surprised and unsurprised that Mrs. Seward came out to serve her personally, instead of the worker that… did not seem to be there at the moment, actually. Odd. They typically made a point to employ some of the youngsters from the surrounding area.

"How are you doing, Mrs. Goffrey?" she said cordially, pulling a pad of paper out of the front of her apron and smiling pleasantly.

"The good Lord made the sun," Gail replied, sitting down at a hopefully private table further in the corner, "and it's shining as it ought. So I reckon I'm doing well. How about yourself?"

"Busy," Mrs. Seward laughed. "We've had to cut down on some of the days we have extra hands about the place, so it's a bit heavier on us. But business is good. Speaking of which, anything I can get you?"

"One coffee, please," Gail said, "black, no sugar. And if you have any fruit pastries, I think that would go with it well."

"Coming right up," Mrs. Seward confirmed, jotting down things on her pad. She whisked herself away to the kitchen, and left Gail to wonder how on Earth she was going to be able to learn what she needed to. Over-thinking was something she took pains to avoid, but at this precise moment it looked more like she hadn’t done any thinking at all. Another prayer, it seemed, would be in order.

Beside her, she noticed that Samuel had made his appearance, materializing through the doorway as if he had just walked in. He waved at her tentatively, then stuck his hands in his pockets.

Gail nodded at one of the other seats at her (admittedly) small table. Inwardly, she wondered how well she'd manage to deal with a sensitive conversation to someone she didn’t know very well, plus an involved spectator that only she could, but well, it would be rude not to invite him. Besides, it would rather cut down on time (and an elaborate game of mailcarrier) if he could just hear what was going on, himself, and not rely on her second-hand summaries.

He hovered near the table but didn't take a seat.

The last customer (presumably belonging to the one remaining gearmount out front) carried their cup and plate to the kitchen counter, and left with a merry jingling of the café bell.

It wasn't long before Mrs. Seward returned with one of her fruit dumplings and a cup of steaming coffee.

"There you go," she said, sliding the plate onto the table. "Made fresh this afternoon."

"Thank you, Mrs. Seward," Gail replied. The smell of warm dough and fruit—mango, she'd guess—mingling with the strong, bitter smell of the coffee struck her stomach with the force of realization: she hadn't brought any extra food, and she was hungry after having walked this far. "It looks delicious."

Mrs. Seward smiled politely. "Thank you."

Gail patted the table, indicating the seat across from her. "Sit, get off your feet a bit. There aren't any other customers here, and if any new ones come in, you'll see them fine."

Mrs. Seward hesitated.

"How about this," Gail said, "I order one more of the dumplings, and you get a snack out of it, too."

Mrs. Seward coughed a surprised laugh. "I couldn't take your money for food for me to eat in my own café."

"Nonsense," Gail retorted. "I couldn't ask you to sit and share your valuable time with me and not reimburse you fairly. We don't get time to talk often, and I haven't had much opportunity for socialization or chatting with Michael gone."

"Well…" Mrs. Seward sighed. "I suppose that's true. And if I need to get up and working, I'll be able to get back on my feet right quick."

"Of course. I wouldn’t dream of keeping you longer that you’d want."

Mrs. Seward’s smile felt less polite and more genuine. "I'll be just a second."

Gail exerted a great deal of self-control and did not scarf down the entirety of the (thankfully large) dumpling before Mrs. Seward got back.

"Ahhhh." Mrs. Seward sank down into the seat opposite, thin cheeks flushed from the warmth of the ovens in the kitchen. "I will admit, sitting down does feel nice."

"You seem to be quite hard at work," Gail agreed. "Why are the part-timers off-duty?"

"We're needing to save a bit more money just now," Mrs. Seward said, slicing into the dumpling neatly.

Gail was already several forkfulls ahead of her. "Oh? Is the lighthouse not doing so well? Repairs of some kind?"

"No, all of that's going well," she said. Now that she was sitting down and eating, her early reticence had dissipated. "Something else happened that is quite a miracle, so I'm very grateful for it, though at this exact moment it's a bit difficult."

"Oh?"

"Well, it's all a bit strange, but a close friend of my son's showed up again after having gone missing for six years, and we've been needing to pay the doctor to be here regular, since he hasn't woken up for the past three or so weeks."

Gail nearly spat out her coffee. Apparently, she had not needed to be concerned about information.

It, belatedly, occurred to Gail that if something big and surprising had happened—such as a young man appearing at the lighthouse one day—she would likely have had more trouble avoiding the topic than not. She bit down onto her fork with enthusiasm and general gratitude.

Wait.

"Your son?"

"You’re familiar with the annual remembrance festival, right?" Mrs. Seward replied, giving her a quizzical look.

"Well, yes," Gail replied. "We've only been attending since a few years ago, but yes. A festival of remembrance for those lost at sea, and for those brought home again, right?"

Mrs. Seward chuckled a bit, taking a delicate bite of her neatly sliced up dumpling. "Well, it actually isn't specified where they were lost. Your son was lost at sea, though, wasn't he?"

"Aye. David."

"We lost our son six years ago, but it was under unknown circumstances. The next year we wanted to give something back to the community that helped us through such a difficult time, so, in honor of him and those around us who we knew who had also suffered losses, we started the festival of remembrance."

"O-oh." Gail found she didn't have much of an answer.

"But, well, we still haven't found our son. We may never." She pushed her fork slowly into the dumpling, contemplating it. "But, again, we never thought we'd find his friend again, either, so there may be hope yet."

[samd1o1]

Ableism In Renfield

Renfield is probably one of my new favorite movies I won't lie. I'm absolutely obsessed with it! But that doesn't mean it's perfect and that I can't have some complaints.

There's two main points I want to bring up;

Demonization of NPD, and Erasure

Ok so obvious TW for Ableism and Sanism!

1. Demonization of NPD:

I'm sure if you've seen the movie you know they basically use "narcissist" as a synonym for abuser. They call Dracula (Robert's abuser) a narcissist and it's the general term used by the support group.

NPD and other Cluster B disorders are often used as synonyms for abusers. Take for example the Amber/Johnny trial. Idc who you think actually was the abuser. What matters for this conversation is that Amber's disorder was used as LEGAL EVIDENCE that she is an abuser.

There's also a rise online of a term called "narcissistic abuse". Now fucking imagine if someone said they suffered from say idk "autistic abuse". That's disgusting right? Everything that is claimed under narcissistic abuse fits under emotional abuse!

Also do you want to know one of the main ways NPD ends up manifesting? FROM ABUSE. So not only is the movie demonizing NPD ableist it's also just alienating it's own target audience. It's an abuse survivors story for fucks sake!

If you want to call an abuser selfish then be my guest. But don't pull a real mental disorder into it just because you wanted to seem like a big boy who knows big words. Selfish is a perfect word for an abuser!

2. Erasure

This one is specifically about the character of Renfield. If you've never read Dracula let me fill you in on Renfield's part of the story.

Renfield is a patient in Dr. Seward's asylum. He has psychosis and bouts of mania and depression, highs and lows. He has these symptoms BEFORE Dracula ever interacts with him! In fact his symptoms just make it easier for Dracula to use him. (Like real life abuse wow).

Now I understand giving Renfield Jonathan Harker's backstory (the soliciter role) in fear of ableism (ironic lol). Asylum in the victorian era was torture (hell it was even worse in the book). (Also I think it's a reference to the 1931 movie).

But they still should have kept his mental illness. There are absolutely zero signs of any psychosis in Robert.

(Random side note, I really liked that deleted dance number because it was all in his head, should have kept it smh).

Anyway; it would have been really cool to have a protagonist/hero who had some of the most stigmatized mental illnesses/symptoms out there.

And in not giving Robert any of his symptoms he just comes out, well not Renfield.

This is just the Jonathan Harker movie. Robert is a bit awkward of a person but that's about it.

----

Either way I still love this movie. As an abuse survivor who loves gothic horror and homosexual vampires it's fucking awesome. But these problems sure as hell bug me. (Bug get it?)

[qqueenofhades]

1of 3) feel free to ignore this, but I'm doing Dracula Daily (never read it before) and I have a lot of feelings/thoughts and seeing as you've read it, I hope you don't mind if I rant a bit. I really want to shake Van Helsing until he starts telling people stuff. Like I can kind of get him not wanting to tell Seward that it's a vampire so he doesn't seem crazy and get institutionalized, but at some point, he should have told him anyway, or just made it clear that Lucy needs watching every night

2of3) and not just depend on telegrams/letters to tell him to watch her. But then she dies, and still instead of telling anyone what's going on, he just tells Seward that he needs to get him some surgeon tools so he can remove her head and heart (because talking about needlessly (at least to Seward) removing body parts of a corpse makes way more sense then mentioning a vampire and definitely makes him seem sane). He even talks about how they need to work together as one and need trust, of 3) and it's like my dude, have you even once considered how much easier it may be for people to work together with you as one, to trust you when you need it, if they have even a slight hint of what's going on? Personally if someone asks me to do something odd/hard/weird etc. I'm much more likely to do it, or at least complain less, if I know the reason besides a 'I'm so-and-so and you should do what I say' reason. Again, sorry for the rant.

Hush now. Of course I am delighted that people have so many feelings about a 19th-century classic horror novel that they want to come shout in my inbox about it! This is exactly why I love Dracula Daily as a concept, and think it's really clever. Everyone kind of.... already knows Dracula by cultural osmosis (he's a vampire! He has a swoopy dark cloak and he can turn into a bat! He sneaks around and Vants to Suck Your Blud!) but they are discovering they don't actually know many details about the text, and that modern adaptations have often totally slaughtered it in the aims of making it Sexy or otherwise introducing themes/readings that are not necessarily present in the original. So yes, I have read Dracula before, but I'm still really enjoying seeing the way Tumblr has gone ape for it and are all indignantly signing up for the Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray Defense Squad and drawing fanart and making memes and dropping casual references to the "polycule" and so forth. Yes.

Anyway, I wrote this post the other day discussing how everyone's over-reliance on traditional social conventions, and trying to follow the rules of how to be Good Victorians, has totally fucked them over. The whole point of what's going on is that they all keep trying to act like it's a normal situation and they need to be Decorous and Proper and Not Alarm Anyone, and like... that's the exact sort of thing Dracula feeds on (literally and metaphorically). Because he's weaponizing their extreme middle-class Victorian Englishness against them, where they can't talk to each other and they can't discuss how they feel and they can't be honest, all for fear of Offending Protocol, they're screwed. They can't coordinate, they can't do anything that might long-term help, and there is of course an interesting subtextual queer reading here, considering that Bram Stoker is universally considered to have been a repressed gay man who hid/denied his sexuality and lived in, to say the least, an openly homophobic society. Whether or not it was his primary intention to portray the rules of Good Victorian Behavior not working and instead actually actively harming people by forcing them to keep secrets and not trust that anyone else will believe them, it's an unavoidable theme in the text and one that a modern reader definitely picks up on with the benefit of hindsight.

Also, I think it's important to highlight that despite his 84 PhDs (of course he's a lawyer as well as a doctor) and generally being the book-smartest person in the story, Van Helsing has, at this point, comprehensively failed. He hasn't saved Lucy's life, he hasn't prevented her from turning into a vampire, he hasn't warned anyone else about what's really going on, he hasn't prevented Mrs. Westenra from being frightened to death, he hasn't told Arthur (poor Arthur!!!) anything about why he wouldn't even let him kiss his fiancee as she was dying, etc. And a huge part of this is because, as you point out, he hasn't told anyone anything. Van Helsing has often been narratively paralleled to Dracula, which I think is accurate: he is solely in charge of Lucy's health, as Dracula is the sole reason for hurting it. He tries to control Lucy, he tries to keep her loved ones in the dark, he tries to basically "have" her for himself -- all in the name of helping her, yes, but his treatment is just as ineffective as Dracula's assault is effective. Van Helsing means all the best, but he's kind of fucked it up!

And yes, the primary reason he's doing so is because he thinks that he alone is smart enough to solve the problem, he can't let anyone else onto his plans (even when Quincey strolled in, took one look, and was like "oh yeah this was like the time the vampire bit my horse" and asked the OBVIOUS FUCKING QUESTION of where all of Lucy's blood was going!) and he otherwise is the Only One. Just like Dracula's pride, arrogance, solitude, stubbornness, and insistence that his will/choices for Lucy are the only ones that matters, Van Helsing is doing the same thing, from the opposite side of the coin. That's why his methods can't possibly work to counteract Dracula and (as we will see in the latter half of the novel) they need to comprehensively rethink their entire strategy and discard all the old social rules and worry for "decorum" that has kept them from being honest with each other so far. But yes, we love us a good hero/villain narrative foil with the same flaws and the same methods. Which is what is definitely going on here. Because things such as Mrs. Westenra removing the garlic flowers happen because Van Helsing didn't even tell her that they were medicinal (you have one million doctorates, Abraham, make up a scholarly bullshit reason!)

So yes, as I said, and as we will see in upcoming entries, Following The Good Victorian Rules has fucked everyone over HARD, Van Helsing is acting like Dracula while trying to fix Dracula's damage and that's why it isn't working, and our heroes are going to need to have a comprehensive rethink of what they're doing and why, if they want to stop any of this in time. Dun dun dunnn!

[vickyvicarious]

why are you people hyping up jonathan harker he was fucking useless LMAOOOOOOO

just on the background while the doctors always did actual work and had insight and schemes and godalming and morris used their $$$

meanwhile he just fell on his knees crying I DEFY YOU STARS OH MY DOOMED LOVE

Oh, anon. I know I probably should just ignore you. However, I first of all find this ask very funny, and secondly you are giving me a golden opportunity to brag about my boy, here. I'm definitely gonna take it.

Behold - an incomplete list of things Jonathan Harker has done:

survived for months alone in Dracula's castle, maintaining a delicate balance of not rocking the boat too far and getting killed, but never giving up fully/seizing every chance to try and learn more or find a way out (letters, wall-climbing, etc.)

the only person to harm Dracula (shovel scar) and live (the only others were Renfield and Quincey, both of whom died the same day). the only person to hit him more than once (shovel, cut his coat open, sliced off his head). one of the two people who killed him (sliced off his head if you missed that one)

escaped by climbing down a castle wall and fleeing on foot through mountains full of wolves, without any warm clothes

was the person to recognize Dracula in London, and to direct the group to Carfax

did literally all of the footwork required to track down Dracula's boxes. began this task on his own without being given direction, and was well underway on it before even linking up with the others. (insight!)

bribery! lots of bribery! using his own inherited money at least part of the time ($$$!)

also, lied to/tricked various sources that he was either still Dracula's attorney, or utilized Arthur's status, to get information (schemes!)

suggested to a surprised Seward that Renfield may be reacting to Dracula and is "a sort of index to the coming and going of the Count." (insight!)

was van helsing's biggest primary source confirming what his research said about vampires, as seen in big speech day when he told everyone 'vampires do this (as seen in Jonathan's diary)' like five separate times

was the first to move to attack Dracula on October 3 (at his house not the asylum), galvanizing everyone else into action

um, kinda a big thing that he never considered his love doomed? like. yeah. willing to go to hell/become a vampire himself to stay with Mina. willing to doom everyone else for his love if necessary but never to give up on that. fell on his knees (I'll grant you) immediately... to comfort Mina when she felt unclean. set aside his immediate impulse towards revenge in order to comfort her first.

but also. very much willing to act to prevent such an outcome? urged everyone else to get on the move so he could go kill Dracula for everything he'd done?

nonetheless, didn't put his personal catharsis/revenge above the goal. was willing to take a backseat for the sake of success in the initial plan and just play guard rather than insisting on being the one to stake/behead him.

...honorable mention again for beheading him anyway in the end. Jonathan literally killed Dracula, bud. (fucking useful!)

I love all the main characters, and am not interested in devaluing anyone's contributions. The doctors are very smart (among other things) and important. Arthur and Quincey are very rich (among other things) and important. Mina, who you failed to mention, is extremely clever (among other things) and important as well. Jonathan, surprise surprise... is also all of those things!

And I love him. He's been my favorite character since my first time reading this book long ago. I (don't actually) regret to inform you that Dracula Daily has only increased that love, as well as vindicated it by seeing many other people agree that he's a great character really screwed over by adaptations, and thus even if I were generally inclined to feel upset about these kinds of messages, this'd still miss the mark. Rather, I thank you for the opportunity to reflect on some of the many ways Jonathan was an integral part of this vampire-hunting team.

[citrus-cactus]

CITRUS, YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO TALK ABOUT YOUR POOR LITTLE MEOW MEOWS

DR. CRINGEFAIL: 2 4 14 21

SAD SCOTTISH MAN: 2 7 20 22

Enjoy!

BLESSINGS BE UPON YE, YOU KIND, HANDSOME, OBSERVANT STRANGER, YOU. MY CROPS ARE WATERED, MY FIELDS ARE THRIVING!!

Ask game here.

Under! The! Cut! Cuz! I’m! Embarrassed!

The one, the only, Noodle-In Chief:

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

It's not 100% clear to me, but it was definitely around the September timeframe of the novel (the first time I read it, in ‘22). I don't think it was OFFICIALLY too late for me until he met the Harkers at the end of September and Mina was like "Hey Jack. JACK. You keep your diary on all these wax cylinders, and they're not even LABELED?!" And Jack was like "...Um. Yeah, actually... that never even occurred to me." gOD, you IDIOT <3 (I may be paraphrasing). But it was this and several of his earlier blunders paired with his dogged determination to remain genre-blind and skeptical of everything that he was witnessing that ultimately endeared him to me. There Is Most Definitely Something Wrong With Him (derogatory) (affectionate).

He’s truly a problematic fave, but he’s my favorite character in the novel nonetheless!

4. How many people I ship them with

Um, the entire vampire-hunting polycule? THIS MAN DESERVES ALL THE KISSES where canonically he has none, and he deserved to be one of Lucy’s three husbands, fr fr :(

14. Best storyline they had

The incredibly tragic story, told in his own words, of how John “Jack” Seward, MD had to watch the woman he loved waste away and die of a mysterious ailment, interspersed with personal asides regarding how full of vigorous manhood all of his friends are, and how his former professor is so incredibly hot good at everything and spry for his age, but who also may be (in Jack's professional opinion) a touch crazy. Peak sopping wet noodle time, it’s amazing <3

21. When do you think they were at their happiest?

September 30: "I got home at five o'clock, and found that Godalming and Morris had not only arrived, but had already studied the transcript of the various diaries and letters which Harker and his wonderful wife had made and arranged. Harker had not yet returned from his visit to the carriers' men, of whom Dr. Hennessey had written to me. Mrs. Harker gave us a cup of tea, and I can honestly say that, for the first time since I have lived in it, this old house seemed like home."

BUDDY!!!! T^T

"JUST SOME GUY(tm)”:

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

I mean, I’ve always liked him quite a bit (that voice, that tragic backstory, that Shakespearean flavor). But for whatever reason I didn't become obsessed until my rewatch last summer. CanNOT stop thinking about this man, the former king who has really just been a pawn his entire life; what he thinks, what he feels, how he's been going through the motions while searching for the one who betrayed him, yearning for a death that will not come for as long as he has. HE’S JUST SO SAD, YOU GUYS!!!!!

7. A quote of them that you remember

Every word that comes out of John Rhys-Davies’ mouth is SO GOOD, but the quote that sticks out the most is (of course) "KNOW her? I NAMED her." GODDDDDDD it's infinity good and I never get tired of hearing it, not even once (and since they use it in every relevant "Previously On," you hear it A LOT). It's ok though, because they 5000% knew what they were doing with that one.

Some other choice one-liners:

"I'm just… so... tired" is also top-tier delivery, and does a really great job of summarizing his entire existence since 1057.

"And I know how to read them" is such a sassy retort (and a GREAT callback to “Lighthouse in the Sea of Time”).

“For that matter… WHY ARE WE WORKING TOGETHER?” is sooooo *chef’s kiss.* Enjoy being a walking, talking meat puppet with your worstie for several more months, my guy!

20. A weird headcanon

Ummmmm soooooo I designed a gargoyle form for Mac as my headcanon for what he would've looked like in "The Mirror" (of course I did). My Watsonian explanation for why we didn't get to see him that night is he was way too busy getting drunk off his ass and crying over his long-dead wife (yet again) :C

22. When do you think they were at their lowest?

990-some-odd years is a looooong time to find your lowest point. Even though moments like Gruoch’s marriage to Gillecomgain, his first “death”, and the endings of “City of Stone” and “Sanctuary” were pretty low moments for him, I’m quite sure his lowest point was never actually seen on the show (centuries-long depression isn’t exactly Disney Afternoon-friendly). The day(s) he found out about Luach and Gruoch’s deaths were obviously waaaaay up there. I imagine he had a really rough time of it during the Black Plague, so I’ll say his lowest point was somewhere in there :C :C :C

I do hope he was able to enjoy the Renaissance a little, tho. I’ll bet he commissioned a lot of art.

If you’ve read this far, THANK YOU FOR PUTTING UP WITH MY RAMBLING ABOUT THESE SAD, SAD FICTIONAL MEN!

[lawyernovelistpersonal]

I'm sure plenty has already been said about Renfield from today's entry, but I'd just like to highlight some stuff we see about Seward.

Warning for talk of medical experimentation, animal cruelty, and mental illness

It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment. It might be done if there were only a sufficient cause. Men sneered at vivisection, and yet look at its results to-day! Why not advance science in its most difficult and vital aspect—the knowledge of the brain?

As a quick note, He's not suggesting cutting Renfield open here. I think there are two interpretations of this: first, that he's suggesting that he could allow continued animal cruelty for the cause of advancing psychology (vivisection also being animal cruelty which he says has advanced science). Second, he's suggesting that continuing to study Renfield by allowing him to continue building up his own personal food chain and observing him would be considered unethical but could yield good results, again for the advancement of psychology (much as vivisection was considered unethical but he considers it to have advanced science).

If only there were a sufficient cause! I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted

Here we see that he doesn't consider the advancement of knowledge (and, to take an uncharitable reading, his own advancement in his field) to be a good enough cause for unethical experimentation. He wants there to be a good reason because he does want that sweet, sweet knowledge, but knows there isn't one and so makes the decision that he's not going to carry out the unethical experiments.

This was actually a very active debate around vivisection at the time: the Cruelty to Animals Act, 1876 said that researchers who carried out cruel experiments on (vertebrate) animals could be prosecuted unless the experiments were "absolutely necessary for the due instruction ... to save or prolong human life". Unethical experimentation could be carried out if the cause was considered good enough. In this case, though, there might be benefits, but those benefits don't outweigh the costs and Seward doesn't try to claim they would.

Seward also shows a lot of self-knowledge here, acknowledging that he's susceptible to temptation and thus needs to avoid thinking about what he could learn from letting Renfield carry on his food chain experiments to their conclusion because he might actually fall to that temptation, come up with a justification, and start acting in a way he knows to be wrong.

And that's important: he does know it would be wrong and resists the temptation to do it anyway.

A good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an exceptional brain, congenitally?

There are a lot of headcanons about how Seward is neurodivergent and that's why he went into psychiatry, and for me this clinches that interpretation as canon.

First, we tend to use "exceptional" to mean "better than usual" but it really just means "unusual". Seward is acknowledging that he has had or may have had an unusual brain since birth, suggesting that, indeed, he has some kind of neurodivergence even though he can mostly hide it and he and others in his profession don't have the knowledge to analyse and name it.

The other part of what he's saying here confirms the idea that he got into psychiatry because of that knowledge about himself: he wants more knowledge in his field because his own mind is unusual. And, again, he has enough self-knowledge to be aware of his own susceptibility to this specific kind of temptation and be on guard against it.

To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new hope, and that truly I began a new record. So it will be until the Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance to profit or loss. Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my friend whose happiness is yours; but I must only wait on hopeless and work. Work! work!

If I only could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there—a good, unselfish cause to make me work—that would be indeed happiness.

That's really sad.

We can see from this that Seward hasn't moved on at all from being rejected by Lucy; just as in that first phonograph recording, it still hurts and he's still trying to throw himself into his work but here we also see that he feels hopeless and purposeless. He really hoped that she would accept him and when that hope was dashed it clearly sent him on a horrible downward depressive spiral that he's really trying to get out of but doesn't know how.

I particularly note that he specifies he wants an unselfish cause and I wonder a bit what the selfish causes are: self-aggrandisement might well be one, relevant to what he said earlier about advancing his field more than other famous researchers had. Avoiding his own pain might be another. There may also be a dollop of self-loathing in there driving him to believe that if he finds joy in anything that means doing it is selfish, so if, for example, he did really help a patient he couldn't feel that doing that gave him an unselfish cause to work towards. It's an ugly catch-22 with the fact that he specifies that an unselfish cause to make him work would make him happy.

Finally, it is quite touching that he's very clear he's not angry with Lucy for rejecting him despite the pain that rejection causes him and doesn't resent Art for being her choice. Keep drinking that Victorian Respect Women juice, Jack.

[yallemagne]

I was reading this Master's thesis on gothic literature online and among a lot of things it says: Insinuating that vampirism is a threat to his manhood, Jonathan will choose to risk dying as a man in an escape plot and later attempts to save what vestiges of masculinity he has preserved by marrying a woman.

Ok three things... where did he insinuate that vampirism is a threat to his manhood. It's not the first time I see this either because I heard in a lecture that he risked death to avoid castration from the Weird Sisters. Am I crazy here? Isn't getting bitten a threat to his humanity instead? Another thing, since "vampirism is a threat to his manhood" and he chooses certain death to persevere it, why does he later choose vampirism if Mina turns? This never got brought up. Lastly, how is he marrying Mina for masc points? It's her who wanted to have a wedding immediately??

read the first line and i just

you're gonna give me a headache anon

The only way that vampirism was "a threat to his manhood" is in the very literal sense, which is, the vampires would have bitten his dick off. How do they even come up with this when Dracula is the most fucking toxically masculine cunt in the entire book? Do they?? Not understand?? That Dracula is a man? And the main bitch?? Did the scene of him fucking making a bed feel too domestic for them so they forgot he's a dude? Oh my god, I swear, grow up.

lol I didn't read the whole thing before writing the biting part. I don't think they would have actually bitten it off. Can't use it much after that. It doesn't work the same. but apparently, these thesis writers have a castration fetish.

Perhaps they're trying to go the only plausible route (they absolutely aren't, they just hate to see a transwoman thrive) and say that by becoming a vampire he would become impotent? Because like vampires can't sire children? But this would be the same crowd that would claim Dracula sired Quincey II years after his death, so I doubt it is that. This is the most Freudian shit. Remember when Freud said a baby was scared of horses because he was scared of being castrated? That's what this is.

Jonathan is the least fucking manhood-obsessed man in the entire cast. If you're gonna make any comments about manhood why not turn to DOCTOR SEWARD???

Are they really fucking trying to say that Mina's his fucking beard?? DON'T THEY KNOW HE DOESN'T WANT/NEED A BEARD?? HE THREW A FIT OVER NOT BEING ABLE TO SHAVE. And yeah, just totally ignoring the fact that Jonathan was bedridden, so much of the decision to get married right away was in Mina's hands. Man can't even stand, and they're seriously bullying him for getting married.

Fuck them. Marrying Mina was very femme of Jonathan. Jonathan's not scared of "losing his manhood" bitch was trying his damndest just to save himself for his goddamn wife. And like? If vampirism "strips people of their manhood" what the fuck does it do to women? Anyway, it doesn't matter because Jonathan is trans, and I hope that person trips.

(also like the most manliest men to have ever manned [according to Seward] are Arthur and Quincey, two bachelors. So where does marriage come into play? Do you get a testosterone boost if you marry a woman?? Can I go marry a woman rn and get free T??)