Dracula (daily or otherwise)

The return of Jonathan Harker went down very well on Tumblr. As did the "violent demeanour" gag.

Now we have gone to the point where I stopped reading the book, I'll have to get myself to get back on tracks.

I actually found this interesting post about Dracula Daily.

Basically, it notes that the reaction of the majority of people participating in it to Dracula was not the stereotypical "swoony and reverent and 'oh, he’s so awful, drain me, Daddy'" fucking around, it was pure, undiluted disgust and ire.

This confused some people as to how vampires and Dracula became passionate, ardent sex symbols in modern media and, well, it turns out that we basically blame the likes of Carmilla for that sort of influence, which came out nearly a third of a century before and had choice passages like this:

It actually reminds me of an old conversation in 2018 in these forums in the "Male-Female Role in Fiction" thread where an old poster, Ambar Sonof Deshar, basically called the idea of Dracula being seductive, even in a metaphorical sense, as basically nonsense.

We used to talk this in the politics thread but in general dracula have this idea of manipulative monster who take jonathan "girlfriend" so the idea even if totally evil was there.

In many way I will feel once we start to reduce the amount of "vampire are inherely evil" was when the "torture creature of the night" take is place.

Yes, even if Dracula was meant to be seductive (even in a rather xenophobic way), I believe it wasn't as straighforward as in other adaptations. In fact, my favorite part of Dracula Daily's spread was all the fanart and comments about Dracula trying to disguise himself as a legitimately well-intentioned host through the first few chapters and thus having to do trivial chores like cook all the food for Jonathan and tiding up his bed to keep his suspicions low. Dracula has been in our popular consciousness as the archetypical vampire for so long that the idea of such a wicked being trying to look hospitable and friendly against all the odds and clues to achieve his goals and succeding at first seems almost subversive nowadays, not to mention it builds some good and genuine suspense, as the dread is much more psychological than physical.

Edited by good-morning on Jan 22nd 2023 at 2:01:06 PM

Is a sort of stuff that happen with pop culture adaptation, kinda like how "elementary my watson" become homes catchpharse even if never use in the series proper.

Well, "Elementary" and "my dear Watson" are individually phrases Holmes said in Doyle Canon; it's just adaptations like to put them together.

Anyone else keeping up with this year's Dracula Daily?

I'm certainly trying to! I flaked out like a month in last time because I made too much of a thing about it.

I’m not doing the readings/getting the emails, but I’m checking out people’s tumblr posts and casually listening to the Re:Dracula podcast of it. I rarely listen to podcasts, but this one is excellent, both the reading/acting of the characters, and the sound effects. I highly recommend it.

@Why did Dracula keep Jonathan: I always thought Dracula intended to try to get Jonathan under his thrall either by hypnotizing or turning him, since having a pawn versed in English legal matters and altogether familiar with England would have been useful. Jonathan saw too much when he encountered the Weird Sisters, but Dracula still doesn't try to kill him right away. He only tries to kill Jonathan when Jonathan manages to escape the castle.

Anyways, I love Dracula and it makes me sad that to this day there's still no very faithful adaptations of it.

Edited by PhiSat on May 11th 2023 at 12:13:00 PM

Question - one of the Memetic Mutation entries for Dracula mentions Values Resonance as a reason why people have preferred the original novel's depiction of Jonathan and Mina's marriage, but there is no actual Values Resonance entry. Should one be added or is it fine as is?