#jonathan harker the third

[theholmwoodfoundation]

A small reminder that the deadline for submissions for celebrations is the 20th April Midnight (Not GMT, BST sorry about that!)

Holmwood Anniversary!

In just a few weeks time, we'll be hitting the one-year anniversary of the Creation of Holmwood! We were sat a convention, looking over our notes about Jeremy and Maddie, and we had that lightbulb moment...

...what if this story was a fiction podcast?

Since then, we've outlined three seasons worth of content, written over twelve hours of audio scripts, cast, recorded, released our pilot (plus bonus minisode) and are on the cusp of releasing Season One in the coming months!

It's been a whirlwind of a year, and we couldn't have done any of it without the support and backing of our wonderful listeners! Including the gorgeous artwork, memes and fics (which we don't read, but wholeheartedly support) some of which we've collected below. Oh gosh you are all so talented.

(There wasn't room for it all, and this is by no means a full list!)

To celebrate the 1st Year anniversary of The Holmwood Foundation being a thing on the 23rd April, we would love to hear from YOU.

Please send to our inbox your fan creations about Holmwood and we aim to share them on the 23rd as part of our celebrations! These can be Memes, a review, whatever you want to help celebrate the show with us.

Please share with us, either here or by email theholmwoodfoundation@gmail.com by 20th April! Midnight GMT

(Also, yes. We really do put them on the fridge.)

[see-arcane]

I thought I was reaching in Dracula that Jonathan got bitten by Dracula and that during his hospitalisation by the Hungarian nuns he got the "poison in the blood" as Mina calls it diluted by the holiness of the place. Because no one ever talks about that possibility. AND THEN IT HAPPENED. In Nosferatu 2024. I feel a sense of not being crazy! Someone else saw that possibility.

Everyone say thank you to Bobby Egg for not just reading the book but actually making use of really neat concepts Stoker left around for us to pick up

[topaz-mutiny]

"Seeing from his violent demeanor that he was English" is still probably one of the best (funniest) lines in Dracula, but I love how this part of the Post Script contrasts with the rest of the letter Sister Agatha sends.

The main body of the letter is to the point and polite on all matters (makes sense as it seems this part of the writing was overseen by our good friend Jonathan himself, though he's too weak to write) in contrast to the Post Script where Agatha adds in details that are emotionaly powerful and some aren't necessarily sordid but would absolutely be of concern.

Jonathan has nothing on him, he is shouting and in a rush, he has a frightening delirium, delirium can last and reemerge a long time into the future, he rambles about terrifying and grotesque subjects when in the throes of his brain fever (which is an old-timey way to describe a lot of mental illnesses and behaviors), and all of this overcomes a frailty and physical weakness from whatever else he's been through that causes him to otherwise be bedridden.

Even half of that could erode trust in someone. But as told in the rest of the Post Script:

He's recovering, he's gaining more lucidity, the Sisters notice his lucid moments are punctuated by gentleness and sweetness (hard to trust at first likely, due to frequent relapses, and the Sisters are eventually convinced a lot of his prior behavior was caused by the fading brain fever and not by his inherent personality), he is a cherished patient of the Hospital of St. Joseph And St. Mary, and it seems the staff are enamored with how often and with such love he talks about Mina, such that this spurred Sister Agatha to make the Post Script in the first place because it's the first thing she mentions.

[adjacentderulo2014]

my relationship to Jonathan Harker has now become similar to that of an amnesiac and his carer

"and the count crawled up the walls!"

"really?? and then what happened Jonathan?"

but I love him so dearly that I will do it year after year

[astriiformes]

The only problem with reading Dracula in the Dracula Daily style is that my non-renewable Interlibrary Loan annotated copies are going to be due in August :(

[merelymatt]

Any other day of the year, smashing a mirror is seven years' bad luck

But today, 8 May, smashing a mirror is simply showing appropriate contempt for a foul bauble of man's vanity!!

[erikmodi]

"They say that people who are near death die generally at the change to the dawn or at the turn of the tide; any one who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it."

Oh, I know what you mean, Jon-boy. Used to work overnights, but I couldn't adjust to sleeping during the day (and props to you, my man, for adapting to the Count's schedule so easily!) Yeah, that transition from night to day, especially when you've been up all night, is a really odd sensation. Almost magical, in a dark and unsettling way.

Here's hoping the Count lets you slip back towards a normal sleep schedule soon! I had to stop working overnights because I couldn't get more than three or four hours of sleep during the day, after a few months I could feel my health deteriorating, my brain fogged with fatigue and my mind either sluggish or zipping off in crazy directions. I hope you're better at handling it than I was!

[lysapadin]

It's time for another round of Daily Dracula/Re: Dracula and once again I am left wanting chicken paprikash/paprika hendl.

[grimgrinningghost456]

Welp! Chapter 2 is out for my complication of short story, Tickled Pink.

All the chapters take place at different times. Chapter two is maybe a few days after the incident, while chapter three will take place a month or so afterwards

[purpledanser]

[j-esbian]

taz vs dracula is also making me really want to try to run curse of strahd again. like i have time for that 😔

[theholmwoodfoundation]

half an hour left to vote on the next extract! Currently the leads are trans celebrity Tom Van Helsing, or Holmwood CEO Jonathan Harker the Third!

[redeemed-wren]

I do find it facinating how Dracula Daily has turned Dracula into a different kind of myth now that we're in its third year running. I've seen a few people compare it to Hadestown, or a timeloop. The enjoyment isn't JUST from engaging with the story now, it's engaging with the experience, and while the emails are still the same as previous years, we've been through this before.

The way we as an audience interact with this story and this way of telling the story changes the genre. Its no longer a gothic horror, classic lit story. It's become a mythology, a tragedy, a repeating loop. Jonathan Harker returns to the castle every year. Every year it happens again. And that changes it, builds up new mythos around it, even if the words stay exactly the same.

[see-arcane]

When it comes to the question of 'Would polyamory have saved them?' in terms of Nosferatus (Thoseferatu), the ranking goes like this:

Nosferatu, 1922: Orlok is way too interested in the Hutters, but in like. A weird bug way. All the plague stuff might have been avoided if the Hutters just let him cling ominously to a wall in their house. Maybe give him a little sippy cup of blood once in a while. He mainly just stares at them all night. It's fine. They're fine.

VERDICT: Polyamory would have saved them, if only on paper. Orlok is not their third, but he is there. Staring. No telling if it actually makes him happy as he has no expressions, but it's chill. The rats are just hanging out. The Hutters are very careful with their bread knives. It's fine, it's cool.

Nosferatu the Vampyre, 1979: Everyone's names are Draculafied, but for all intents and purposes, they're filling the same roles as Orlok, Ellen and Thomas of 1922. That said, Orlok (called Dracula) is the saddest wettest most soggy and mournful death-bringing immortal ever put to screen. He undeadifies Thomas (now Jonathan) and begs Ellen (now Mina sorry, 'Lucy') for a scrap of love rather than just blood. Acts like an elementary schooler with a crush. Wanted to collect the full Harker-Hutter duo so so bad, it's the first thing he's wanted in centuries p l e a s e

VERDICT: Polyamory might have saved the three of them specifically, but it'd be hell for everyone else as evidenced by Thomas-Jonathan turning full Nosferatu by the end and riding off to sow more death. The full polycule would have been a tripled plague on the world. But it'd be almost worth it to have all three of them still kicking.

Nosferatu, 2024: Oh man. No. No no no. At best, Orlok introduced the Hutters to the concept of antique BDSM, but the cadaverous bastard himself is a terrible dom. All aggro, no aftercare, no safewords, no acknowledgment of consent beyond some bullshit ~but we have a covenant~ technicalities to coerce both Hutters into a corner. Also, textbook abuser beats in threatening loved ones and assaulting Thomas and Ellen as shows of power. The Hutters deserve a better third, with or without the supernatural super-death plague.

VERDICT: Polyamory might have saved the Hutters if they had a better undead addition to their situation--I recommend Gautier's hedonistic dream-trysting Clarimonde, she'd show them a good time--but with Orlok? Fuck no. He's just in it to plant a flag of 'I'm owed access to you because you pinkie promised as a teenager!!' ownership on Ellen and be weird at Thomas in full 'It's not gay if I'm the top/I will prove I am more Man by making you the Woman' mode. Utter trashfire of a relationship in the works there.

That being said, the very rancidness of that hypothetical throuple is such an enticing gothic trainwreck to envision.

Orlok: "This is my contractually entrapped undead forever-bride, Ellen, and our wife, Thomas." :)

Dracula, wishing he'd stayed home on his end of the Carpathian mountain range: "You mean groom?"

Orlok: "I said what I said." :)

[lauralot89]

Dracula's Guest

AKA, What Do You Mean There's a Deleted Scene of Dracula Licking Jonathan?

"Dracula's Guest" is a short story written by Bram Stoker. It was first published posthumously by his widow, Florence Balcombe Stoker, in the 1914 anthology Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories.

Was "Dracula's Guest" Part of Dracula?

It is unknown exactly when Stoker wrote "Dracula's Guest." His earliest notes for Dracula are from 1890, and in these notes the second and third chapters of Dracula clearly reference the events of "Dracula's Guest."

Some Dracula scholars believe that "Dracula's Guest" was originally intended as the first chapter of Dracula, among them Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally. Other scholars, such as Robert Eighteen-Bisang, argue that "Dracula's Guest" was written later as an evolution of plot ideas cut from Dracula proper, rather than being an excised chapter. Clive Leatherdale argued that "Dracula's Guest" was intended as a completely separate story from the main novel, but at the time of Leatherdale's writing, Stoker's earliest notes were not available.

What Happens in "Dracula's Guest"?

The plot of "Dracula's Guest" is as follows: An unnamed English narrator leaves the Quatre Saisons in Munich to ride through the countryside. The coachman is eager to return before nightfall, as it is Walpurgis Night. The narrator asks to take a detour down a side road. The coachman refuses, stating that there is an unholy, abandoned village that way. The narrator leaves the carriage and decides to walk to the village on his own, despite the coachman's pleas.

In the distance, the coachman encounters a "tall, thin man" (presumably Dracula) walking down the road, which causes the horses to panic and break free of the carriage in their rush to escape. After witnessing this, the narrator continues down the side road until a heavy snowfall forces him to take shelter under nearby cypress trees.

Once the snow stops, the narrator realizes he is at the edge of a graveyard. There is a white marble tomb with a large iron stake going through the whole of the structure. This is the tomb of Countess Dolingen of Gratz, Styria, who sought and found death in 1801.

The storm resumes, now pelting the narrator with hail rather than snow. He leans against the tomb and its door opens. Lightning reveals a beautiful woman inside the tomb, seemingly sleeping. The tomb is then struck by lightning, throwing the narrator back out into the hailstorm.

He loses consciousness and wakes to find a massive wolf sitting on his chest, licking his throat. The narrator swoons again and is eventually roused by the wolf yelping. The wolf alternates between licking the narrator and barking until a search party nears, at which point the wolf runs.

The search party is made up of German soldiers, some of whom assist the Englishman while the others attempt to shoot the wolf. The narrator's throat is raw and abraded from the wolf's tongue.

The narrator is then returned to the Quatre Saisons, where the maître d'hôtel explains that he gathered a search party after receiving a telegram from Dracula asking that the hotel take great pains to ensure the narrator's safety, as "he is English and therefore adventurous."

The narrator concludes that he is under some form of mysterious protection that saved him from hypothermia and death by wolf.

How Does This Fit Into Dracula?

According to Leslie S. Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula, Stoker's 1890 notes state that the second chapter of the novel is set in Munich, after a first chapter consisting of correspondence between Dracula and the President of the Law Society, aiding in the Count's search for a solicitor. This second chapter would have involved Jonathan Harker staying at the Quatre Saisons hotel and visiting a museum and a morgue as well as experiencing an "adventure snowstorm and wolf" on 27 April.

In Stoker's manuscript for Dracula, containing certain lines missing from the published text, Jonathan speaks with Dracula about his experiences in Munich. First on 5 May, when Harker finds himself surrounded by wolves, there is a line "As I looked at them I unconsciously put my hand to my throat which was still sore from the licking of the gray wolf's file-like tongue."

At the dinner table during the same entry, Jonathan writes "He seemed very interested especially at my adventures in Munich. When I told him of the coming of the soldiers he appeared quite excited and exclaimed." Later, the manuscript continues "When I told him of the wolf which lay on my chest saving my life in the cold and whose howling seemed to direct the soldiers to where [illegible]."

Again on 5 May, in the original manuscript the text "As the Count leaned over and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder" continued with the line "It may have been that there is a morbid susceptibility about a wound and that we fear any approach to touching it—or it may have been that the Count leaned over me." This is in reference to the abrasion on Jonathan's throat from the wolf's tongue.

On 16 May, Jonathan encounters the vampire women and notes the blonde seems familiar. "I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where." In the original manuscript, Jonathan realizes after Dracula's arrival that this is the woman he saw in Countess Dolingen's tomb: "As he spoke I was looking at the fair woman and it suddenly dawned on me that she was the woman—or her image—that I had seen in the tomb on Walpurgis Night."

Also in the manuscript, as the blonde leans over Jonathan, he states "She started back and pointed to my throat where the rubbing of the wolf's tongue still left it red. Her eyes flashed angrily with bitter dis[illegible, likely distaste]."

How Does "Dracula's Guest" Differ From Dracula?

In "Dracula's Guest," the narrator is much more arrogant and belittling of the locals than Jonathan Harker is in Dracula. It is possible that Jonathan was originally envisioned as a more abrasive character, or that this misadventure humbled him in his dealings with the landlady in Bistritz.

The narrator of "Dracula's Guest" cannot speak German at all: "There was just enough of English mixed with the German for me to understand the drift of his talk...I tried to argue with him, but it was difficult to argue with a man when I did not know his language." In fact, in the original first chapter discussed in Stoker's notes, Dracula specifically requested a solicitor who spoke no German, presumably to prevent his employee from being frightened off by local gossip.

Oddly, the narrator is able to read both the German and Russian engraved on the tomb, as well as understand the soldiers in the search party. Perhaps he memorized the text and had it translated later, and perhaps the soldiers spoke English even to each other for his benefit.

By contrast, Jonathan Harker speaks a "smattering of German" and does not "know how [he] should be able to get on without it."

Is The Wolf Dracula?

Klinger argues in The New Annotated Dracula that the wolf who warms the narrator and yelps to attract the search party cannot be Dracula, as Dracula is later surprised to hear of Jonathan's experiences in Munich. Klinger suggests that the wolf is merely commanded by Dracula instead.

However, if Dracula were commanding the wolf, he would still know what had happened in Munich. It's extremely likely that Dracula's surprised excitement was an act. Given that the narrator saw a "tall, thin man" (matching both Jonathan and Mina's descriptions of Dracula) on the same day that he encounters the wolf, I would argue that this is definitely Dracula creeping on his adventurous English solicitor to make sure he can't die of stupidity before he gets Dracula's real estate finalized.

[dathen]

If you’re a new reader eagerly awaiting Renfield’s reaction to Jonathan Harker and startled when it never happens: there are in fact THREE versions of this scene in various editions and NONE of them avoid Jonathan glitching out of the scene.

The first doesn’t have Jonathan ask to come at all, and the rest of the scene goes with the remaining four, each addressed by Renfield.

The second, which appears in Re: Dracula, has Jonathan get permission to come, but then Jack says “we four went inside” (himself, Arthur, Quincey, and Van Helsing). All four are then addressed by Renfield.

The third, used by Dracula Daily, is the same as the second except it says “we all went inside,” and then the rest of the scene continues the same as the other two: Jack straight-up skips introducing Jonathan, and in turn Renfield ignores him.

There can be any number of Watsonian explanations for how the scene plays out in whatever edition you have, but it is funny how the Doylist reason is just Stoker going “ah shit, forgot Jonathan is there too. Fixed it!” “Ah shit, still needs fixing—there!” “Ah SHIT—“ over and over after the book was already published.