#also fun fact for jonathan harker

[vickyvicarious]

The room was empty! It was barely furnished with odd things, which seemed to have never been used; the furniture was something the same style as that in the south rooms, and was covered with dust. I looked for the key, but it was not in the lock, and I could not find it anywhere.

Jonathan finds Dracula's room largely empty and clearly unused. This is naturally very disturbing, but he still makes a thorough search for the key that will free him.

The room is covered in dust.

Vampires don't disturb the dust when they walk; we saw as much on May 16. But people do, and Jonathan is searching the room. He's walking across the floor at the very least, to get a close look at the treasure pile and to go through the door leading down to the chapel. But since he's looking for a key, he's also probably checking in what little furniture there is.

Is he leaving a trail of footprints in the dust? The sentence structure might just be implying that only the furniture is dusty here, not the floor, so maybe not. But then, he's possibly looking in the furniture, and no matter how he tries he'd likely disturb some of the dust in doing so. Even beyond just this room, Jonathan goes barefoot down into the chapel and crypts, where the ground has been dug. Even if his footprints weren't noticeable in the freshly-overturned earth, he might have picked up some dirt on his feet. When he fled back upstairs, did he carry some? Did he leave a trace of his presence?

(Of course, the fact that Dracula stared right at him later would surely be the most obvious way to know he had been there. But Jonathan seemed to believe the Count was fully asleep and unaware despite his open eyes and angry expression. And even if he had seen Jonathan... Dracula could be a lawyer, he's able to think like one. And what's the one thing Jonathan himself always, always looks for? Evidence to confirm what he's seen. If Dracula saw him but there's no proof so he dismisses it as a dream, that's one thing; if he saw him and then found proof that it was true, that's another.)

[see-arcane]

"Oh, my poor darling!" As she spoke, she took her husband's grey head in her hands and kissed it. "Lay your poor head here and rest it. All will yet be well, dear! God will protect us if He so will it in His good intent." The poor fellow groaned.

Jonathan's like, I love you but how do I tell you as gently as possible not to talk about God's will when I'm this close to going full Faustus. Also, your wording isn't helping things.

On the one hand, I get that Mina was just being herself, trying to keep Jonathan and everyone's spirits up. But at the same time, I know in my heart that the only thing Jonathan heard was--

Mina: Don't worry, Jonathan! Just because God didn't step in for Lucy, or for Mr. Swales, or for the sailors of the Demeter, or for that mother who got torn apart by wolves, or those children Dracula fed to his Brides, or presumably any of the other uncountable legions of innocent victims Dracula's preyed on for centuries, doesn't mean He won't take care of our predicament! But hey, on the off-chance it's God's will that He fumbles my soul and humanity too, could you and our new friends maybe swear to double-kill me to prevent my chances of coming back as a vampire? It's cool, just think of it like it's olden times, when husbands and fathers would murder their families to prevent their enemies from getting to them. Also can you give me an early funeral rite? It'd make me feel better. :)

Jonathan: ...

Mephistopheles, sliding into his spiritual DMs: lol, that's crazy. Want to look at our Unholy Vengeance package?

[alanmartannielmoon]

"Do you know what day it is?" I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again:

"Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is?" On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:

"It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?"

Jonathan Harker's journal, May 4.

Fun facts:

1. Saint George was Vlad the Third's saint patron.

2. By the Orthodox Church St George's day is on May 6. In this holiday you mustn't work, you should praise your animals and reward shepherds.

3. The eve of this day was a dangerous time, when the evil creatures caused the terrible events to happen to the village people and their animals. For example, they steal milk from cows.

4. Saint George also has the function of wolves shepherd. There is a Slavic saying "What's in wolf's teeth is given to them by Saint George".

5. Saint George is the saint patron of my city, and I know his iconic image since my childhood.

Finally, I got this funny picture, because there were very picturesque thoughts about Dracula running away from St George in my head.

[moodsandtenses]

Dracula's Guest: in which a business trip gets off to a rough start

Welcome back to Dracula Daily season! If you want to kick things off a little early this year, why not treat yourself to a read-through of Dracula’s Guest? Cut from the novel in the drafting process (ETA: the specifics of where exactly it fit into the plot of Dracula are a little fuzzy, for complicated reasons), and later published as a separate short story, it takes place today on April 30, also known as Walpurgis Nacht. The whole thing’s available here, thanks to Project Gutenberg.

Some further discussion of this absolute wild ride of a not-quite-canon side trip below:

Dracula’s patented “when in doubt, address the problem with Wolves” strategy gets off to an early start

We join Dracula’s guest - unnamed in the story, but pretty obviously Rough Draft Jonathan Harker - in Munich, on the first leg of his business trip to Transylvania. If this had been part of the finished book, it would have really front-loaded the tension, giving Jonathan a whole Vampire Sidequest to get involved in before he even gets to Transylvania. A few fun facts worth noting here: 

The Dracula Daily community has done a lot to rehabilitate Jonathan Harker’s reputation, restoring his place as a courageous, resourceful vampire hunter and countering the pop-culture image of him as a clueless naif that’s persisted since the early film adaptations. Rough Draft Jonathan, meanwhile…well, he really is a whole lot more Like That. The whole first chunk of “Dracula’s Guest” mostly consists of him cheerfully ignoring a SPECTACULAR parade of red flags: 

Whereupon he burst out into a long story in German and English, so mixed up that I could not quite understand exactly what he said, but roughly I gathered that long ago, hundreds of years, men had died there and been buried in their graves; and sounds were heard under the clay, and when the graves were opened, men and women were found rosy with life, and their mouths red with blood. And so, in haste to save their lives (aye, and their souls!—and here he crossed himself) those who were left fled away to other places, where the living lived, and the dead were dead and not—not something. He was evidently afraid to speak the last words. As he proceeded with his narration, he grew more and more excited. It seemed as if his imagination had got hold of him, and he ended in a perfect paroxysm of fear—white-faced, perspiring, trembling and looking round him, as if expecting that some dreadful presence would manifest itself there in the bright sunshine on the open plain. Finally, in an agony of desperation, he cried: “Walpurgis nacht!” and pointed to the carriage for me to get in. All my English blood rose at this, and, standing back, I said: “You are afraid, Johann—you are afraid. Go home; I shall return alone; the walk will do me good.” The carriage door was open. I took from the seat my oak walking-stick—which I always carry on my holiday excursions—and closed the door, pointing back to Munich, and said, “Go home, Johann—Walpurgis-nacht doesn’t concern Englishmen.”

Abandoned village plagued by rumors of the Un-Dead? Carriage driver crossing himself repeatedly and refusing to go near the place? Even the horses are panicking and trying to get away? Sounds like a lovely place for an afternoon stroll! Sorry, I’m simply too English for foreshadowing. 

(Maybe this is just what comes of being engaged to Mina Murray, goth girl extraordinaire, who will later display the same “when in doubt, make a beeline for the creepiest local ghost stories” approach to vacation planning in Whitby.)

The inscription on the tomb of the vampire that Jonathan 1.0 encounters - who might or might not be one of the Brides of Dracula - identifies her as “COUNTESS DOLINGEN OF GRATZ, IN STYRIA.” Styria is, of course, the setting of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 vampire novel Carmilla, suggesting a direct connection between the two stories that didn't make it into the final novel.

The tomb is also inscribed with a Russian translation of “The Dead Travel Fast,” the same line from the German gothic ballad Lenore that will later get quoted at Jonathan on his first encounter with Dracula himself. He just cannot get away from that quote (and the gothic heroine narrative parallels inherent therein). 

Jonathan is saved from his nearly-fatal encounter with Countess Dolingen by a very familiar wolf, before being rescued by a search party of soldiers (who are understandably pretty freaked out about the whole affair). The maître d’ of his hotel later reveals to him that he knew to send out a search party thanks to a quietly hilarious telegram from Dracula himself, who’s evidently decided to take proactive steps to protect his guest/investment/snack for later:

Bistritz. Be careful of my guest—his safety is most precious to me. Should aught happen to him, or if he be missed, spare nothing to find him and ensure his safety. He is English and therefore adventurous. There are often dangers from snow and wolves and night. Lose not a moment if you suspect harm to him. I answer your zeal with my fortune.—Dracula.

The whole story is obviously Not Canon as far as Dracula proper is concerned - and in particular, the more oblivious narrator here is a pretty far cry from the Jonathan we've all come to know and love over the past several time loops. But all the same, it's a fascinating look at what could have been, and furnishes some intriguing ingredients for Dracula-adjacent storytelling (thanks to that Carmilla connection in particular). And it is pretty funny to imagine Jonathan going through All That and then just cheerfully getting back to travel-blogging his trip for Mina like absolutely nothing happened. All like, “Well, that was terrifying! Anyway.”

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

SUMMARY: Jonathan Harker rouses the ire of Count Dracula after he accepts a job at the vampire's castle under false pretenses. Harker's friend, Dr. Van Helsing, then embarks on a hunt for the predatory villain when he targets Harker's loved ones.

Fun fact: this movie is also known as Horror of Dracula.

It's Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee again! Like she said before, the mod hasn't seen any Hammer horror, but will eventually get to it, she swears.

[thethirdromana]

My journey is all mapped out: a two-week Dracula tour of Europe

A fun fact about me is that I enjoy planning holidays that I have no intention of taking. So, if I had two free weeks and more money than I actually do, here's the Dracula-inspired journey around Europe that I might consider.

(Spoilers under the cut)

Days 1-3: Whitby

This is the opportunity to visit all the key Dracula locations, from a coastal walk to Robin Hood's Bay to gazing out over the village and the sea from Mina and Lucy's favourite spot in the graveyard of St Mary's.

In non-Dracula things, Whitby Goth Weekend happens twice a year in April and October. I recommend the Magpie Café for fish and chips.

Day 4: travel to London

Most of the long train journeys in this plan are delightful overnight sleeper services that will make you feel like you're right there with Jonathan and Mina rattling across Europe. Unfortunately, the journey from Whitby to London is not one of them.

Services are infrequent and the journey takes a solid 5 hours. But the start, where you go very very slowly through the beautiful North York Moors, isn't too bad.

Days 5-7: London

There's a whole heap of things to see in London on a theme by either Dracula or Bram Stoker:

The Lyceum Theatre, where Bram Stoker worked for 27 years

The various houses that Bram Stoker lived in

Golders Green Crematorium, where Bram Stoker's ashes can be visited by appointment

Assorted Dracula settings, such as those the Harkers visited on their London day trip

I'd also suggest a visit to Highgate Cemetery, which may have been part of the inspiration for Lucy's tomb (pop in on Karl Marx and Douglas Adams while you're there), and the British Library for general literary joy.

Exeter is a 2.5 hour train journey from London, so you could also go there, either overnight or for a speedy day-trip, if you're a completist. But personally I'd skip it and spend the time going to see the Lion King at the Lyceum or a Shakespeare play at the Globe instead.

Day 8: Paris

The characters in Dracula take a number of different routes to get across Europe, but I've gone with the route that the Crew of Light take as they go to hunt Dracula down in his home.

That means following the Man in Seat 61 guide for travelling from London to Romania by train, taking an early Eurostar to get yourself to Paris. You'll only have a few hours in Paris before the evening sleeper train, but it should be enough to visit Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Oscar Wilde is buried.

Day 9: Vienna

You'll arrive in Vienna around 10am, then have the day to spend there until another evening train. Personally, I'd spend the time visiting the Hofburg Palace and Sisi Museum; Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) of Austria was famous in the late 19th century and her tragic life story feels fitting for a Dracula tour.

Yes, this plan involves fast trains crossing multiple European countries without much of a breather. Just like they do in Dracula :)

Day 10: Cluj-Napoca

Note: I've visited all the other destinations in this guide, but never been to Romania, though I'd really like to go to Cluj in particular. So from this point on, this is based on googling, not first-hand knowledge.

Cluj, referred to by the German name of Klausenburg in Dracula, is the unofficial capital of Transylvania. Your sleeper train from Vienna should get there around 8.20am, in time to hop on a tram to the Old Town's cluster of breakfast places. I've been told that Cluj is a lively, student-y city with great nightlife and festivals.

Days 11-14: Romania

Time to explore Romania! At this point there's a decision to make. On the one hand, there's strict adherence to the settings of Dracula, in which case you'll want to head to Bistrița, or maybe even extend your journey on to Varna or Galați.

On the other hand, you could go more on vibes. In which case, hire a car to drive through the remoter parts of Transylvania, then turn south to Bran Castle, which has very little actual connection to Dracula but certainly looks the part.

-------

In the unlikely event that anyone actually does this journey off the back of this post, please let me know how it goes. I'd be so thrilled to hear about it!

[fangedprinx]

The more I think about the Dracula novel the closer I get to wanting to dismantle the story and put it back together again in a way that would kill Bram Stoker if he wasn't already dead

He's not getting any less dead though so my antagonistic approach to the text can't kill him

When I say antagonistic I mean:

A story inspired by thoughts of how the Queen should get snacked on by Dracula along with the British aristocracy, actually, because for all the xenophobic imperialist mental backdrop of a book where the enemy is a spooky foreign dude, the British empire was bloodier than one single vampire in a silly little castle (even if we focus just on the imperial core, there's plenty to zoom in on with the British industrial revolution, e.g. "the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers", the poverty and deprivation of the working class, everyday exploitation with the added bonus of young men being asked to go off and die in wars because people in silly hats are having a pissing contest). Once Dracula is finished using them as a juicebox he should get beheaded in a worker's revolt because he would underestimate the courage and resiliency of the lower classes and expect to just rule over them. And he doesn't have an iota of awareness of how to manipulate the levers of power in a complicated post-feudal social system he ate most of the rulers of. (For context, I am Irish and a socialist and I will go toe to toe with the fear-laden mental landscape of one of the most famous Dubliners to ever write a novel where British aristocrats are some of the good guys.)

Dracula creeping on Jonathan Harker is spooky in the novel but I also don't respect Stoker's intent there. The overtones of unsavoury interest as supposed to imply some sort of homosexual proclivities was then part of the horror especially for audiences of the time, and I don't want to unquestioningly reproduce this dynamic because sincerely fuck that. The fact that Dracula is queer-coded as a villain as part of what makes him villainous is not something I care to take at face value and reproduce. Potentially writing Dracula/Jonathan Harker where Dracula isn't a manipulative creep engaging in subtle psychological abuse and torture of Jonathan is completely contrary to canon characterisation but there's been a long line of Dracula adaptations with a tenuous relationship to canon and I want to break free of the confines of the text and upend its assumptions. I want an aggressive reading/transformative work that disregards the author's intent to create something different from it, and maybe if I have time I will do it myself. Move over fear of the other we have fear of the self (as being attracted to the same gender) to tangle with and then overcome.

The least antagonistic to the text would be fun little bad ends where the failure of the heroes' mission is part of the enjoyment. I'm gonna write a bit of spooky sexy turning characters into evil vampires who are gleeful about being horrors of the night, as a treat.

I enjoy(ed) reading Dracula but I also want to explode it into its constituent atoms and reassemble them in a configuration that suits me more

[indecisivepsyche]

Dracula: The Evidence

Well, now that we've finished reading Dracula, I'd like to highlight yet another upcoming way to read Dracula! This one is Dracula: The Evidence by Beehive Books, a small press imprint in Philadelphia currently available to preorder. Let me preface this by saying that I'm not affiliated with the creators of this project. I'm just discussing it because I think it's cool. I'll also warn that the two cheapest options for purchasing these items are $400 (for the complete artifactual experience) or $100 (for a hardcover version). If that's too much for you, I'd still recommend taking a look at the neat prototype images and information about the creation process found on their product pages and project updates.

Dracula: The Evidence is a project recreating the primary sources that make up Dracula. As they describe it, "In our edition, you are not merely a reader – you are an explorer making your way through this archive of first-hand evidence, retracing this nightmarish story through the remnants it left behind: correspondence, charts and diagrams, memoranda, artifacts, photographs, and much more."

That means you'll be receiving items like Jonathan's journal and letters from Lucy to Mina in their complete (and unburnt) form.

For people willing and able to shell out the $400, these items will come in a suitcase. For those who can commit $100, you can purchase a hardcover art book with pictures of the artifacts and transcripts of their contents.

There's also the option to purchase a vinyl record of Seward's phonograph recordings (also for $100).

I'm going to ramble a bit more about the project under the cut, but before that here's a link to a post I've made with links to the project. One of them is a promotional Twitter thread written by a fictional archival intern hired to process the Stoker Papers. It's pretty fun.

Edit: It slipped my mind that there was a PDF preorder on offer on Kickstarter for $25. It's not currently on the Beehive Books storefront, but it might be sold once the preorder period is over.

Beehive Books has been transparent about supply chain issues and events like the calligrapher they cast to write for Jonathan Harker being conscripted in the army causing delays. However, it is currently projected that the products will ship in early 2023.

Speaking of calligraphers, they've hired over a dozen of them to write for the different characters. It's neat to hear that they've put a lot of consideration into how the personalities of the characters should be reflected in their handwriting.

If you want to hear a sample of their recordings for Dr. Seward's diary, check out the September 12th Kickstarter Update on either edition. The updates are open to the public, and they've posting a link to a Dropbox with a two-minute sample from Jack's May 25th entry.

Check out the update from January 10th, 2022 to hear how they're tackling the fact that most of the documents that make up Dracula are originally not written in standard English. Here's an excerpt from it:

"For Mina, we've had her switch back and forth between shorthand and longhand throughout her diary. We've used it to enhance character building and storytelling. She's using the journal as an opportunity to learn and practice shorthand -- so which sections does she feel most urgent about, and might she scrawl down in her natural hand without translating into her shaky shorthand? Which sections might she feel private about, and want written in an alphabet that someone who comes upon her diary might not understand?

And then we have Mina's typescript, which transcribes every word of every document contained therein, and more. This allows readers to work with the two documents side-by-side, decoding shorthand or Russian with the help of the typescript."

On the update from October 29th, 2021, they discuss how the Captain of the Demeter wrote his log before the modernization of the Cyrillic alphabet and how they had to find a linguist to rewrite their Russian translation.

Seriously, even if you can't afford to buy this, there's a lot of fun to be had in poking around the project updates and looking at the prototype images they've shared.

That's all from me! It's time to see some of the adaptations for myself, starting with Dracula (1931).

[bluecatwriter]

Mina going to the cathedral on Sundays will likely do her good. Her and Jonathan had likely attended before they were together since it's such a big part of Exeter. But this time they can go as a couple. A good place to meet new people too (if everyone gets cool about Jonathan's hair quick)

I have a fic based on the premise of Mina going back to church, but I just need to finish it one of these days! There are some pretty strong opinions in this fandom about the Harkers' (and particularly Jonathan's) relationship to religion/God by the end of the story— it's a place where a lot of us, including me, tend to project our own ideas about faith into the story, and base our headcanons on our own relationship with the idea of God/the divine/religion/etc. As a Christian myself, I do like the ideas of the Harkers remaining Christian at the end of the story, albeit holding their faith in a more complex and expansive way than before (because this is a reflection of my own faith journey). It's just one headcanon among many, but it is one that I like.

(Also, fun fact: I forgot Anglicans had cathedrals and I was like, "Wait, are you saying they're Catholic now? I mean, that does make sense, but...") ;)

[paperandsong]

The Phonograph in the Gothic

The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, twenty years before Dracula was published. The phonograph is important as Dr. Seward’s principle method of recording his observations of his work in the asylum and his involvement in the strange and tragic case of Lucy Westenra. He later shares those recordings with Mina Harker as she shares with him her own typed-out journal and that of her husband, Jonathan. 

I find it interesting that Mina has never seen a phonograph until that meeting with Seward. Seward himself sometimes used Lucy’s phonograph while he was treating her as his patient. Perhaps this is a marker of the class difference between Seward, Lucy, and Mina? 

Seward laments the fact that he cannot locate the specific sections of the wax cylinder which may be most relevant to Mina’s interest (the Lucy sections!). Which makes me wonder, why did he use this method at all?  I don’t see how this could be helpful for a doctor treating patients as he couldn’t easily refer to past observations. Was it just easier for him than writing a journal by hand? Did he simply like the novelty of it? Maybe he never intended to listen to it himself and was merely recording for posterity, not realizing how soon the recordings would be needed.  

But it’s easy to see why Stoker would include the technology in his Gothic novel. Although the phonograph had already been around for two decades, it was not yet ubiquitous - Mina had never seen one. And there is something eerie about hearing disembodied voices even today, when it has long since become commonplace. The quality of the recordings on wax cylinders was poor, distorting voice and memory simultaneously. Here’s a great essay on the phonograph in Dracula: His Master’s Voice. 

It is not a surprise that, among other shared details, Leroux also makes mention of phonographic recordings in the introduction to his novel, the Phantom of the Opera.

The corpse isn’t real - but the recordings are. They were sealed in a vault under the Palais Garnier on December 24, 1907 (see photo above), less than two years before the Phantom of the Opera first appeared in Le Gaulois. This is a great example of how Leroux masterfully mixes fiction with fact, making it so easy to believe the entire story is true. Because those wax cylinders really exist, this probably isn’t an overt reference to Dracula the way the Tokay most likely is. But it’s still fun to make these connections. 

When Guillermo del Toro wrote this scene for Crimson Peak, was he making a reference to Dracula? Are there other examples of the phonograph in Gothic literature and film? Feel free to make additions. 

[vickyvicarious]

It was almost impossible to believe that the things which we had seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears were living truths. Every trace of all that had been was blotted out. [...] We were struck with the fact, that in all the mass of material of which the record is composed, there is hardly one authentic document; nothing but a mass of typewriting, except the later note-books of Mina and Seward and myself, and Van Helsing's memorandum. We could hardly ask any one, even did we wish to, to accept these as proofs of so wild a story.

I love the book ending by emphasizing the ambiguity of its own truth. We don't see this in Dracula Daily, but Stoker prefaced the book with a note that implies he knew the Harkers and they had shared this with him:

How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with possibilities of later-day belief may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein a memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them.

This note frames Stoker as merely an editor of a true account shared with him, rather than the author of a fictional work, which is a common trope for older fiction (though I think most often travel fiction, not horror). This is aided by the modern technology in the story, something he even emphasizes in his note here. Not that I'm saying people would really be likely to buy that it's real, but if they wanted to they could pretend they did.

But here at the end the characters admit that they could never prove their account. And they aren't really trying to do so for the wide world, but time makes it difficult even for them to fully believe what they recall happening to them. And we all know the power of the written word - to preserve events more firmly, yes, but also potentially to alter them (Jonathan's diary preserving memories he has forgotten vs. the Whitby headstone preserving a lie about the sailor's death). Without even primary sources for almost all of the book (in-universe; for readers of the novel, even if they bought into the fiction that it's a true account they wouldn't have access to any handwritten portions), it's up to the readers to decide how much trust they wish to place in the truthfulness of this tale. Both potential in-universe readers (explicitly and probably only ever intended for Quincey Harker) and us too.

If you begin with Stoker's note, it's extra fun because the novel starts by the (real) author asserting this is all factual and trustworthy, and ends with the (fictional) characters admitting it's mostly unprovable and people would have to just take their word for it.

[see-arcane]

Today’s entry is one of many that really drives home why I can never quite bring myself to get into softer ‘uwu he’s just misunderstood and sexy-liberating’ versions of Dracula. Just. I can’t. I really really can’t.

Up to this point, he’s already had a monstrous moment in bringing the ladies their first on-screen kids meal crying and squirming in its sack. He’s had outright predatory back-to-back moments in imprisoning, coercing, robbing, and getting increasingly threatening and handsy with Jonathan. This, capped with the fact that he plans to kill/drink/gift him to the Undead Girl Gang by the end of June.

‘But what about his, “I too can love,” huh? He’s just loving as best a monster can! He could be tearing everyone around him to ribbons for annoying him, Brides and Jonathan included! Instead he goes out of his way to feed the ladies, albeit gruesomely, and has no retort when they laugh at and insult the lonely old bat. And he isn’t planning to kill Jonathan. He wants to keep him! Sure, it’s a sick version of it, but to him conscripting and collecting Jonathan rather than executing him outright is the height of affection! Surely that’s grounds for some of the more ~romantic~ takes in warped gothic flavor?’

To an extent, yeah. 

But he also just dressed up in Jonathan’s stolen clothes to cover up for the man’s own abduction, imprisonment, and undeadifying, while also increasing the odds of Jonathan already getting mistaken for a vampire, bringing home another child for the ladies to devour, and then ordered a pack of wolves to eat a grieving mother alive for making noise at his gate.

And this? This is just the tip of the iceberg for how downright hellish he gets as the novel progresses. 

Dracula can absolutely be a nuanced character within canon, offshoots, retellings, re-imaginings, and so on. And he should be! He’s a very interesting bastard who’s got so much more going on than a few one-liners and a taste for good cloaks and yummy company. But his actual actions in the book--even the smallest ones--just automatically torpedo 90% of my audience enjoyment when I run into yet another ‘Oh, but he did it all because he was in love!/misunderstood!/depressed!/unfairly maligned by the eeevil human Victorian characters in their journals and newsprint and body count records!’ version of the Count. 

Even sillier takes that try to heroify him for kids like Hotel Transylvania just kind of make my brain trip and fall into a pit of ??? 

‘Look kids, Dracula is really a nice guy and a sweet dad who runs a fun little hotel for his misunderstood Universal Horror monster buddies! Isn’t he neat?’

It leaves me biting my tongue and holding this mental grimace as I think about the sacks full of weeping children, the slaughtered mother, a young man imprisoned for making the mistake of endearing himself so much to a sadistic monster that the latter has decided to keep him as a tortured toy and undead pseudo-slave for eternity, with an entire blood buffet of human cattle still waiting to fill out the rest of the novel with trauma, horror, and death. 

‘Ohhh, but look at Francis’ tragique sweetheart version who stole all his redeeming qualities from Jonathan Harker! Ohhh, but look at the funny silly Adam Sandler cartoon and his new everyman-settling daughter! Ohhh, but look at how #cool and modern-sexyedgy an antihero/villain he is when penned by every projecting director and their grandmother! Lighten up, it’s just a different interpretation!*’

*Of the character whose whole deal is psychological torture, being a predatory creep, casual murder, and worse-than-murder of innocents.

I know it skews me towards being a whiny purist. I know. Let folks have fun. I know. But still, it feels so wrong every time I see someone try to ‘awww, he’s not so bad!’-ify him in new media when. No. He is exactly that bad and probably worse. If he’s not, then that’s not fucking Dracula.

tl;dr: Can people just make some new fun/sexy/antihero vampires instead of stapling Dracula’s name on all of them? Can Dracula just be an interesting villainous monster again?? Please??? (Please save me Renfield 2023 and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, you’re my only ho--)

[spacethatsit]

creature/adam for the character ask game?

AGAHAGHAGA I LOVE HIM SO MUCH

• favorite thing about them

Everything <3 his autistic swag and nasty ass looks have captivated me idk man I just vibe maybe a little too much with man just thrown out into the world with no sense of identity and struggling with it

• least favorite thing about them

How attached he is at the idea of needing another creature like him when I’m right here 😚😚😚 /j

• favorite line

I don’t have my Frankenstein book with me rn but I fucking love the line that’s like “you may be my creator, but I am your master; obey.” Cause that shit slaps and also the “I ought to be thy Adam but I am rather thy fallen angel” idk man I just fucking love the way he talks

• brOTP

Adam and Jonathan Harker I think they’d get along really well with Jonathan’s ignorance of slightly ‘monstrous’ red flags and also I really like the fic Cold Skins and Warm Blood on ao3 and that’s big on this pair

• OTP

Adam and Hyde mostly lmao but I fucking live for the polycule (polycruel) of scientific monstrosities <3

• nOTP

Adam and Victor D: self-explanatory

• random headcannon

I think because of his whole being undead and very large thing his heartbeat is like eerily slow, like to a level where he should be dead but he isn’t (as a bonus thing for the book; I think that by the end of the story Adam honestly pities Victor a bit with like how weak Victor truly was cause I love the idea that he still views Victor on this level of godliness, and seeing him all frail and dead he’s like ‘damn get good’)

• unpopular opinion

Idk if I really have any unpopular opinions but I guess here’s something I don’t see super often: mans hates eye contact, it’s like THE thing that made Victor desert him, and it’s a big feature that makes him ‘monstrous’ so I don’t think he’d be too big on eye contact (also autism)

• song(s) I associate with them

Fairly obvious but Rule #4 - Fish in a Birdcage by Fish in a Birdcage, Fighter by Jack Stauber, Choke by IDKHOW, and O My Heart by Mother Mother

• favorite picture of them

Bernie Wrightson’s creature my beloved <3333 (fun fact; I love this image so much that it’s my pfp and my wallpaper for my school laptop)

[entamewitchlulu]

i went to see a special showing of dracula (1992) at my local theater for the halloween vibes and since i’ve also being enjoying dracula daily as my first official foray into the original dracula, i have some Thoughts

- there was no reason for this movie to be rated R. the gore was minimal at best and hokey at worst. there were a few sexually charged scenes and like, a handful of naked boobs, but not nearly as many naked boobs as I had expected from some of the content warnings i had been reading before i went to go see it

- they absolutely Wasted keanu reeves in this movie. they cast him as jonathan harker and idk if he was just not as good of an actor back then or if the script for him just sucked or if he was directed poorly but he was so stilted and boring and i was like man. he deserves better than this. my friend jonathan deserves better than this.

- winona ryder was really good though

- the movie made lucy a lot more...mean? like she is very much portrayed as leading on all three of her suitors, and being kind of flirtatious and seductive and even a little mean in the way she kinda pulls the three men around. in the book i got more of a sense that she was like...sweet and maybe a little bit silly, but she genuinely liked all three guys and cared about them a lot and wouldn’t have played with their feelings like that just because. it made it kind of cheapen her eventual turning and death

- van helsing was made to be Too Competent. they very much went with the tack that he already knew that vampires existed and was an expert on defeating them. They also made him weirdly like. rude. in the book he’s the sweetest old man who’s like, 30% sure vampires are involved but he’s never actually had cause to believe vampires are real yet so he’s trying to move cautiously so he doesn’t jump into a hysteria or jump anyone else into a hysteria. and i liked that more

- making it a romance between mina and dracula was suuuuuchhhh a mistake. I am not immune to Dark Lovers plots but i found myself just sitting there rolling my eyes any time the two of them had a scene together. the fact is just like...dracula isn’t actually sexy. there are plenty of sexy vampires in the world, but dracula isn’t. to me. he’s just a predator, and i don’t meant that in the sense that he’s abusive etc i mean that in the literal sense of the term, he’s a hunter at the top of the food chain like a wolf or a lion and adding romance to that just has no interest to me. he was a creature that simply had the appearance of a person.

- also, to be completely honest with you, dracula is an incompetent idiot and that’s what makes him so entertaining to me. he’s like, super powerful, seductive, has all sorts of intense powers, but he’s running around like a dumbass trying to make them all work. he SEEMS more dangerous because the rest of the cast is so overpowered by his sheer abilities, but like van helsing says, he’s very much like a child when it comes to what exactly he knows he’s capable of doing. Making him more of a master criminal makes him like every other sexy villain which just makes him more boring me.

- (again. i like sexy villains. I am not immune to a good sexy villain. but for me the fun of dracula is that he is just putting on the face of a sexy villain but is actually essentially just a very hungry carnivore figuring out how to get the tasty meal hidden behind all the newfangled mortal contraptions. this is probably a personal thing that most people will not resonate with and that’s fine.)

- but on the other hand of making dracula into a tragic figure who just wants his reincarnted love back, i truly think making mina into his reincarnated love just...takes away a lot of what i liked about mina’s character. it doesn’t really serve to give her any more agency than the book already had for her, in fact it almost makes her feel like she has less. sure, she seems like she’s more direct about what she wants in the movie, but the fact that she’s a reincarnation makes it seem as though she’s just this lady getting pulled around helplessly by fate. rather, in the book, mina is just an ordinary woman who gets caught up in everything, and Decides to do whatever she can in order to bring this monster that’s killed her best friend and tortured her lover and tried to turn her into a monster as well down. She uses his own powers against him when he forms a mind link with her. In the movie, van helsing insists that he hypnotize her to find dracula, but in the book, it’s mina who puts together that they have this potential advantage and seeks out van helsing to demand that he do this.

- idk i just. mina is my favorite character. and i just feel like the movie does a huge disservice to her by making her just a reincarnated suicidal love interest.

- anyway i’m complaining a lot but the the movie was still not bad at all if you consider it its own thing apart from the book. I think it was really entertaining in that sort of campy, silly special effects from the 90s sort of way. I almost choked trying not to laugh in the theater when we got to see dracula climbing down the wall like a gecko with his stupid long cape trailing after him.

- on a totally different note, i feel like the plot of this movie was super similar to the plot of Curse of Strahd? From just the briefest search i can’t find out anything specifically, but i almost feel like Strahd was D&D’s take on this version of Dracula, but casting Strahd’s “eternal love” as a much more dangerous and harmful force than Dracula’s.

- i am also open to suggestions for other dracula adaptations or retellings in any format (books, movies, video games, anime, manga) that you think are worth looking into. i’m kinda in the zone to look more into stuff about dracula atm, especially with the halloween season

[monstercollection]

On track to finish The Picture of Dorian Grey today and I think I’ll be starting Paradise Lost next. Since Frankenstein’s Monster is a character in the book I’m currently writing, I feel like Paradise Lost counts as research since it’s one that he has read in the original book.

My co-author and I have been futzing around with what classics exist as published books in our universe and which do not because their characters are running around. Our approach isn’t quite consistent, but we’ve decided if we feel a book would be influential and have an impact on one of our characters, it exists in universe.

Our Renfield (who is significantly younger than Stoker’s, and also gay) read The Picture of Dorian Grey right before going into the asylum. He is struggling with the idea that the things he did to survive and escape the asylum have made him irredeemably hard and cruel and is afraid that he will never return to the person he was before he was institutionalized. He sees parallels between himself and Dorian and that makes him afraid that he will never truly come back from his trauma.

So The Picture of Dorian Grey exists within our setting but Dorian Grey as a character does not.

There are some books that exist as non-fiction within our world. So far it’s panned out that most of those are books that were written in the first person, but I don’t think that’s a hard and fast rule.

Particularly, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea exists as a published travelogue written by Pierre Aronnax who is a real figure within the setting. This is, in part because I am obsessed with the idea that Quincey Morris and Ned Land know each other. I just like the idea that some of our characters are aware of the events of the book even if the other characters never show up.

Others we’ve decided exist only in the form of private notes and journals (albeit with contents and events that may differ from the books or be written from the standpoint of a more unreliable narrator).

For example, a version of the events of Dracula were in fact compiled by Mina Harker (who will likely show up in future books but not this one) however they have not been released to the public. Some of the events recorded were different or happened differently than they were put down (Jack Seward is treated as a particularly unreliable narrator). Our book takes place after Dracula’s death.

Captain Robert Walton did record the final confession of Victor Frankenstein, but again, the account differs from the book and Victor is a supremely unreliable narrator. These letters remained private and have not been published in the setting. Victor is dead before the start of our book.

Our creature has still read Paradise Lost as it was very influential to him.

Carmilla as a book does not exist. Carmilla herself is one of our main characters and deviates most out of all of them from the original (her relationship with Laura was consensual and loving though ended tragically, she has a moral code and has generally set herself up as a protector of women and queer people).

Dr. Jekyll himself existed (but is dead at the time of our story) and his serum has found it’s way into the hands of Charlotte Thorpe (an original character) who uses it to protect sex workers and marginalized people. The book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde itself does not exist. Gabriel Utterson may make an appearance in a later book— I like the idea that he becomes a partner at Jonathan Harker’s law firm but this isn’t really relevant to the plot.

Basically it all falls to what we think is most interesting. Some of this may be subject to change as we’re still on our first draft, but it’s been fun establishing the metafiction of our universe.

[booksopandah]

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

The first truly popular book on vampires, and apparently an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Of course, it is much less popular now than the book that it inspired, but was still a fun read. I think the best part about it was that not knowing anything about the story other than the fact that there’s a vampire, I got to enjoy the twists more. It’s still got the same ancient, undead creature, but I think it does a better job of the terror. Also, rather than Dracula being just so incredibly into Jonathan Harker, we instead have Carmilla who is infatuated with Laura. What is it with vampires and being gay? Honestly, there’s probably some cool queer history there, but I don’t know anything about it.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard lesbian vampire book. Which, to me, says that modern authors really need to kick it up. I mean this is from 1872 and it still hits. Other than the language itself being antiquated this could’ve come out any time in the past 30 years. If you like, historical fantasy, or vampire stuff and you haven’t read it yet, you can’t really go wrong.

It doesn’t really last long enough or for it to dive all that deep, but while reading it, I had no issues with that. In retrospect, I would’ve liked a few more scenes with Carmilla and Laura, because they really spend very little time together. I think a few extra lines of dialogue could’ve made it all the more haunting for them both, and that’s really what I look for in horror. Otherwise, it’s a great vampire book. Happy Reading Y’all.