#rant time
Sorry about the lack of prompts as my lovely friend @shnuggletea said there’s a lot of drama in my fandom luckily I’ve not yet been a direct victim on my writers account I’m one of the lucky ones but I have at least 2 friends who have been the victims of selfish behavior I love these girls with all my heart and it breaks me to know they go through crap for just being part of it I have had some nasty anonymous reviews on ff but I delete them now if writers block could go away it would be pretty awesome
So 99% of the time I’m happy to keep my distance from Dracula Daily posts I disagree with or memes I find annoying, but there’s something I want to speak up about here because it’s a case where I think shipping & meme lenses are genuinely impeding people’s ability to understand the story.
Specifically: In today’s entry, Jonathan describes how “Last night the Count asked me in the suavest tones” to write three post-dated letters saying he’s fine and on his way home. Which Jonathan correctly understands as Dracula covering his tracks so it’ll take longer for people to realize if Jonathan doesn’t make it home.
The thing is, I’ve seen probably dozens of posts commenting on Jonathan using the word “suave”, and it’s always from a shippy lens. “Ooh, ~in his suavest tones~ huh”, “Jonathan worrying he’s about to die but still noticing Dracula’s suave tones”, etc. etc.
And I get it! Jonathan/Dracula shipping is obviously very big right now, and there are places in Dracula where the homoerotic subtext is very real. I’m not here to say that looking at Dracula through a queer lens, or the lens of whatever your preferred ship is, is incorrect.
But this is a case where I think looking at the story only through that lens is keeping people from picking up on the actual implications here. The point of specifying that Dracula said this “in his suavest tones” isn’t that Jonathan thinks he has a sexy voice. I mean, maybe Jonathan does think that! Who can say. But that’s not what matters here, what’s significant to the scene.
The significance of Dracula saying this “in his suavest tones” is that he’s still putting on the act of the charming, gentlemanly host, even now that he’s long past any possibility of Jonathan actually believing it. Not only that, but as his actions become more and more blatantly threatening - he’s literally forcing Jonathan to help pre-emptively cover up his own murder - he’s actually turning up the act, laying it on thicker than ever. Not just asking smoothly but in his suavest tones. There’s something so deeply cruel and mocking and infuriating about that, like he’s daring Jonathan to call him out on the act and face the consequences.
You get that sense of Jonathan’s fear and anger and frustration all throughout this entry. He knows Dracula’s a liar and he knows what he’s being forced into, but he feels helpless to do anything about it right now. And I think those feelings are very much there when he bothers to note Dracula’s ~suavest tones~, too. It’s not Ooh, he has a sexy voice, it’s How dare you smile politely while you torture me?
