one of my favorite things abt the beginning chapters of dracula is how jonathan is writing his diary, so he just will say all kinds of stuff super briefly about his own life and not think to elaborate on it because he already knows it, so we get our glimpses of who he is and where he’s from real sparingly as he’s thrown in media res into the experience of Being In Dracula. also how he name-drops mina ALL THE TIME but doesn’t actually say ‘my good friend and fiance, mina (who’s a teacher)’ so we learn about her in snippets of ‘mina would enjoy this chicken dish too’ and ‘mina probably wishes she could be road tripping through europe right now so he wants to make sure he brings back an accurate description to share it with her’ and ‘it looks like mina wants him to be confident in himself and his accomplishments, she wouldn’t be happy to hear him downplaying himself as just a clerk in his head’ so by the time we meet her and she’s this self-possessed, practical woman who would make the trek alone to find her disappeared fiance, and who is always lucy’s first and staunchest caretaker and defender, and who is so emotionally tough she resists a vampire’s mental thrall consistently enough to be instrumental in helping to locate and defeat him - well, we already know who she is, cause jonathan from our emails is so in love with her and has been quietly telling us all the while
Guys, did I write that Seward talks to Rennie in a condescending way or about him? Because I noticed he’s actually relatively polite during their conversations and the disparaging rambles is what he later records in his fancy diary.
But damn, he’s definitely nicer than any hairdresser. You dare to experiment with color or cut yourself bangs and they treat you like a criminal. Hair police should kick in your door and take your hair away from you.
Ok seriously now, I went to the hairdresser again after ages and that snobbish attitude is one of the many reasons why I didn’t go for so long.
I want- no, I need for dracula adaptations to stop reading Lucy and Mina as the madonna/whore complex.
what makes them so compelling is that they’re just some girls. Lucy is rich, kinda naive and ditzy, super sweet, and everybody loves her and thinks she’s so nice. Mina is rather dorky, a nerd, a working class woman who’s super in love with her equally dorky boyfriend.
neither is the madonna and neither is the whore. they’re literally just women.
Lucy is friendly and nice and sweet and remains a virgin, and her reward is being preyed upon by a monster that turns her into one of his kind, a shriveled husk of a girl, a walking corpse devoid of personality that can only crudely mimic the person she used to be to further devour literal children. her body is twisted and her mind is destroyed, and she did absolutely nothing to deserve that other than being the essence of all that’s good in this world. Because Dracula wants to destroy all that’s good in this world.
Mina is spunky and transgressive. She is hard-working, and wants to further study and work to be a good wife, which in her books involving learning skills that women had only begun to learn at the time. She’s a proto-feminist and literally complains that the moral standards of the time don’t allow her to have premarital sex. Mina is just a regular woman who gets married and has sex and enjoys is, and, get this, she still gets preyed upon by Dracula. Because Mina also represents goodness, but in a different angle- she’s weird, and smart, and loves science and technology, and she’s helping a crew of amateur vampire hunters. Of course Dracula wants to destroy her as well.
Lucy represents the goodness lost to everything Dracula is a stand-in for (illness, war, conquest, ignorance; we also have to be aware that he’s also a stand-in for the Scary Foreigner, for jewishness, for the East, etc). Mina represents the ultimate triumph of science and good.
Stop trying to make Victorian era characters fit sexist stereotypes that were only created for modern horror. There is Victorian era sexism present in Lucy and Mina’s writing, but to force them into the madonna/whore dynamic absolutely kills the strong points on both characterizations. Which is only made worse by the fact that, despite the (nowadays obvious) underlying misogyny in Dracula, its female characters are surprisingly three-dimensional and respectfully written for the time. We can’t take that away from it.
Jonathan Harker: This is my fiancée Mina, and Minas girlfriend Lucy, and Lucy’s Fiancé Arthur, and Arthur’s Boyfriend John Seward, and Seward’s boyfriend Quincey, and
In selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for themselves. What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal; when duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.
-Dr. John Seward’s diary, immediately preceding a letter from Quincy P. Morris
I just… I love that so many people are going to be meeting the other vampire hunters and the actual characterizations of the ones they do know.
The gung ho cowboy, the skeptical psychiatrist, the ride or die lordling, the determinator solicitor, and the little old widowed Dutch Catholic who thinks too fast and knows florists and asks permission from his priest before vampire hunting.
And of course Mina, with the biggest heart, brightest mind, and steadfast resolve, without whom all the men would be absolutely lost.
I’m also looking forward to people reading Mina’s actual thoughts about Count Dracula. :D
Not to be all “rip, I’m different,” but I’m relatively sure I’m the only one bobbing through the Dracula Daily community due to reading a fantasy book in tenth grade, finding out the author wrote another book about some guy being a vampire, finding out it’s basically published Dracula fanfiction, spending over a decade hunting it down in spite of - and this is important - really not liking vampires (but that first book was just so good), finally finding it, acquiring it, and dawdling through it, only to be about halfway through by the time Dracula Daily became a prominent thing. It’s just such a weirdly specific way to end up in the community, you know?
tl;dr: I’ve got a very specific, personal reason for being excited for the cowboy to show up; also this fanfic is way more revisionist of the original text than I first thought but also I don’t care, it’s fun!
@ri-writing You’re going to give us the name of this fanfic book, OP, right?
Sure! It’s very subtly called Quincy Morris, Vampire and the author is P.N. Elrod. Also, check out the super understated cover:
Isn’t that amazing? XD XD XD
Gotta admit, for all I’m ragging on it a little, it has been a very good read so far - I mean, the reason I went hunting for it in the first place is I enjoyed the author’s writing so much, and they’ve come through! If you want to give it a try, I got my copy on Thriftbooks and there are a few copies available as of the time I’m making this post. Though, reminder, while it’s officially published, it’s still fanfic, and the author is running a touch buck-wild with the original text and has obvious character biases for who they do and don’t like. If you end up really liking the cowboy when he shows up, though, 10/10, highly recommended, very fun AU starring him!
Me reading Tumblr’s posts about Lucy and polycules: Haha. Yes. Very nice.
Me suddenly remembering the comment Van Helsing makes leaving lucy’s funeral about him and all the suiters being married to her since they gave her blood while trying to save her:
NOICE.
I can’t wait to see Tumblr’s reaction when THAT entry drops! ;)
(Spoilers) I mean I think multiple interpretations very valid, but I keep wondering if all these people who have already settled on Seward as The Worst Villain ActuallyTM are actually going to enjoy the rest of Dracula Daily? Like, if they are going to be able to engage with it and have a fun time with it? Because I mean. There’s a lot of Seward.
I also find it interesting that this is the tipping point for many. Like, the ableism and 19th century bad medical practice is, well, bad. But yesterday (which I love) was a hotpot of misogyny and racism, and even back with Dracula and Jonathan there was quite a bit of racism and xenophobia going on. And yet I found the discussion there either more nuanced (great!) or non-existent, because people wanna focus on memes and fun times. I’m curious why that is. I would say that maybe it’s because this hits closer to home for many but it isn’t like the types of racism and misogyny explained isn’t alive today as well. Hmm. Food for thought.
Dracula really does include one of each kind of guy. You’ve got your Foodie Lawyer, your Career Gal, your Sweet Angel Everyone Wants to Marry, your Nervous Doctor, your Texan, your Dashing Suitor, your Fucked-Up and Evil Moustache Guy, and his Three Weed Smoking Girlfriends. Bram is covering all the bases, a little something for everybody
#and soon to be announced: Sea Captain; Fly Farmer; Dutch X Files-Truther: Graveyard Fella With Incomprehensible Accent #the only thing missing is wizard hippie burn-out and then we’ve got ourselves a dnd party (via @cascadiums)
Dr Jack Seward: So I mean like do you think it was the size of the asylum, the playing with the knife or the sitting on the hat that put her off in the end?
Renfield, who just wants to eat spiders and do his own thing:
Can’t wait for The cinematic parallel of Dracula taking blood from Lucy while the three men who love her giveblood instead. Sort of a commentary on possessive vampire love vs true human love.
You think Dracula wants to fuck Jonathan now? Just wait until he forcibly inserts himself into Jonathan’s marriage. He’s like “oh no you don’t, you are NOT getting married without me! If I can’t fuck you I’ll fuck your new wife!”
