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More actual things that happen in the 1897 Dracula novel without context, as people kept pointing out things I'd missed:

The entire plot happens because Dracula is a teaboo

A character proposes marriage with a scalpel in hand and keeps playing with it throughout the conversation

Dracula roasts a chicken

A vampire bat (not a vampire) somehow drinks enough of a horse's blood to cause the horse to collapse

Dracula gets smacked in the face with a shovel

After attributing nightmares to paprika consumption, a character eats more paprika for breakfast

The heroes hire a locksmith to make their home invasion look more respectable

To prepare for raiding a vampire's lair, one character brings three small dogs

A character laments being unable to wed multiple people at once

A therapist starts speculating about elephants' souls mid-session

An official cause of death is written as "misadventure in falling from bed"

Dracula has a Krampus-esque sack that he shoves children into

A character realizes that his host has no reflection but is more concerned with shaving than investigating that

A reporter brags about his running speed mid-article

Dracula, while trying to maintain a low profile, goes by the incredibly subtle alias "de Ville"

A character is misled by phonetic spelling

A character receives three marriage proposals in one day

The SPCA tries to adopt Dracula

A doctor refers to a patient as his "pet lunatic"

We are told vampires can be defeated by putting branches on their coffins

A character gets slashed at with a knife and loot splatters on the floor, like a video game NPC

Dracula is a horsegirl

A character brings anti-vampire flowers but doesn't tell anyone the purpose of said anti-vampire flowers, which leads to another character moving them and enabling a vampire attack

A character's hair turns from dark to white literally overnight

Twice in the novel, Dracula says "Bah!" The second time is his final line of dialogue

There's a deleted scene of Dracula lying on top of the protagonist and licking him for hours

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Christopher Lee “I Was Bitten By Count Dracula” Button

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Modern Dracula retellings of any media tend to erase Lucy's mother, in favor of making Lucy more grown up (and thus her encounters with Dracula to be hot), more sexually forward (only to get punished for it), and an independent woman. Often claiming that this "fixes" her story.

However, Mrs Westenra is important to exist partly because it makes Lucy such a Persephone figure.

A daughter (kore/κόρη) on the cusp of adolescence and adulthood, taken forcibly away from the living to the land of the dead by the lord of Death, to marry him (white clothes in her tomb, when she was supposed to be in a bridal dress soon), to dwell in darkness for eternity under his ultimate power.

Lucy also dies/"goes to the underworld" on the Autumn Equinox, signaling winter coming and light (the meaning of Lucy's name) fading for darkness to reign.

Peresphone's abduction to the underworld, a girl taken away by death too early, mourned, was meant to be a tragedy. And so is Lucy's story.

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Bela Lugosi and Frances Dade in publicity stills for Dracula (1931)

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Van Helsing in movie adaptations: Dracula's nemesis

Van Helsing in the book: Dracula's real estate lawyer's wife's girlfriend's fiancé's boyfriend's university professor

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The ruins of Whitby Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, completed by drone lighting.

Blog: https://artifactsmuseumhistory.blogspot.com/?m=1

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Painting details by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Russian, 1817-1900)

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Origins of Dracula at Whitby.

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Since Dracula is a 400-year-old Count, he was initially the Feudal Lord in the region.

Considering that he then became a vampire whose castle symbolizes power and fear, where he reigns on and on by draining the people under his power and stealing what's precious to them for his own gain, he actually never stopped being a feudal lord.

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Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle.

Oh Dracula has double and triple isolated Jonathan...

Letter of credit is his finances. He is officially with no money on his name (and no name either, his identification has also been now taken away...)

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John Carradine on stage as Dracula in the 50’s.

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Joining in with #DraculaDaily for the first time, having not read the book since being a teenager, it's fascinating how the story feels so different as an adult.

Teenage Me read a classic book about scary vampires. Adult Me is very much reading a story about an abusive relationship.

May 28th/30th where Jonathan's desperate letters home are discovered and burned right in front of him (before he is locked in the library while the rest of his writing material and his travelling clothes are confiscated) is far more frightening to me than the vampire imagery.

Dracula is monstrous in a very human way, deliberately and blatantly making it very clear who has the power. Something about the "smoothness" and "calm" and "cheefulness" he's described with (as he demonstrates the destruction of the cries for help) is really chilling and ominous.

And the format of reading each extract on the date they're set means the reveal of the missing belongings hits hard - although we may have expected it, we learn it for certain along with Jonathan.

At least we have Mina, Lucy and The Suitor Trio as relief in between the increasingly panicked updates from the castle.

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I too can love, and I will love again.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) dir. Francis Ford Coppola

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Dracula’s reaction to the letter in shorthand is such a chilling warning that hints at how things could be if Jonathan steps out of line again. First, the actual sign of rebellion goes up in flames. Second, Jonathan is locked in a room—in an area he’s been warned to never sleep in—for a few hours.

Jonathan stumbled in the game of cat and mouse and finds the flames licking at his heels. That could be him held over the fire, just based on the whims of his captor. Or if Dracula chose, he could be locked up as easy as thinking, whether in a deep dungeon cell or out where the other vampires prowl, like a cage lowered into a shark tank. But Jonathan immediately goes back to playing along, so is just given this warning to hang over his neck—that imprisoned as he is, things could get much, much worse if he stops pretending everything is fine.

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Jonathan Harker: Wow, it's comforting that the Count has a book of law in his library! He must really be a lawful, decent guy 🙂

Count Dracula: What an informative text on how to get away with atrocities by following certain surface-level guidelines

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MAY 7

a stranger in a strange land, he is no one

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Drawing of Count Dracula from 2014