#Abraham Van Helsing

[r-2-peepoo]

The entirety of Dracula by Bram Stoker is really just:

Dr Seward: I wish we could figure out what’s wrong with Lucy.

Van Helsing: I figured it out immediately but I’m just going to let you solve it yourselves.

Dr Seward: Or you could just tell us.

Van Helsing: Friend John :( I have known you for one thousand years and you have been one of my very good friends and best students :( Do you not trust me? Why do you not trust me, friend John? Have I ever given you a reason to doubt me? Do you not think I have a good reason for withholding vital information? :(:(:(:( Have faith in me, your very old and good friend.

Dr Seward: You’re right :(

Lucy: I love everyone so much and I’m going to tell them every day 🥰💕 also legalise polyamory wtf

Renfield: look at all my pets that I’m definitely not eating 🪰🪰🪰🪰

Dr Seward: What happened to all the birds I gave you?

Renfield, with a mouth full of a feathers: I have no idea.

Arthur: I think… I miss my wife… also how the fuck didn’t we realise Dracula’s house was right next door?

Quincey: I keep saying I’m not that smart but I’m the only one to immediately point out that something was actively taking Lucy’s blood. Brb need to go shoot a giant bat with a gun.

Mina: I am the only person keeping this shit show together. We literally would not have made it without me and no one who adapts my character seems to get that. Women are the heart of this story. I am the glue that binds this group together. I just want ONE MOVIE that understands that and values my intelligence, which is at the forefront of my character.

Renfield: I have an entire character arc but don’t expect any adaptations to show it.

Quincey: ok but what if… we shot Dracula with a gun??? Also stop fucking cutting me from all the adaptations.

Jonathan: has seen indescribable horrors, is a shell of his former self, will literally never be what he was before going to Transylvania

Dracula: oh Jonathan! 🥰🥰🧛🏻🧛🏻🥰🩸🩸🥰🥰

BONUS: everyone is constantly holding hands, especially all of the men, and talking about how they’re going to be best friends forever. The male friendships in this book are shockingly pure and the women are incredible. The Crew of Light are actually the only found family ever, I think.

[see-arcane]

Van Helsing: “I hope it’s okay if I, a man-stranger, compliment your wife in front of you”

Jonathan ‘Does Not Know What a Jealousy Is’ Harker: “I have my entire schedule cleared in the hopes of hearing people talk about how great Mina is. Please go on.”

[tiffycat]

Felt like drawing a bunch of Dracula memes just to be silly :p

[another-chaotic-bisexual-vampire]

Van Helsing & Mina: We're going to defeat Dracula with the power of friendship!

Quincey: And this gun I found!

[wiliecoyotegenius]

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.

[moonsun2010]

6 November - It's finally over 🌅

these are part of an animatic summarising Dracula, which you can watch here (i would say new readers beware, it has spoilers for the book but well... we are at the end already)

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[immediatebreakfast]

Happy "Van Helsing calls Seward bitchless in front of Lucy" day to everyone! 🌹🌹🌹

[kastalani123]

Not my usual content, but I just. I wanna ramble, ig.

Do you understand how baffled I was about how the vampire book, written by a man in 1897, is essentially a PSA about how important proper communication is?? Even after I scrolled through Tumblr, saw the memes, read people geeking out about the relationships (platonic and romantic) in Dracula, I was still caught off guard, because. Like. Everything in this book is about communication.

Sure, it's kind of a given, considering it's an epistolary novel partially made up of letters between the characters, but. I dunno. From Dracula controlling Johnathan's lettres, van Hellsing refusing to tell anyone shit, the men keeping Mina out of the loop, to Mina using her telepathic link with Dracula, it's. It's literally all about how important actually talking to each other and sharing information is. Fuck, throw in the fact that "Harker", Mina and Jonathan's, arguably the main characters, last name means "to listen"/"eavesdropper", and that the book is Mina's in-universe creation to help compile, organize, and share what they know about Dracula, and the book's very essence becomes centered around information-sharing!

And I just. The narrative punishes just about every secret hidden, every time the characters don't communicate. There's the obvious, Dracula keeping Johnathan from sending out letters for help and Mina getting bitten because the men leave her home alone, but also. Van Hellsing not telling Lucy's mom that the garlic flowers and closed windows and so on are the treatment and she is not to touch them is what kills Lucy and her mom! They maybe could have survived if he just told them what's happening/what he's doing! And even the godsdamned telegram he sends to Seward! If he had just addressed it properly (communicated to the telegram boy properly!) then Seward wouldn't have been late and maybe could have prevented the massacre!

There's also Jonathan's diary right after he finally reunites with Mina, and obviously Mina's whole ✨ thing ✨ with the diary during their wedding is like. Peak romance, but Johnathan doesn't fully get better until Mina reads and shares it with van Hellsing and van Hellsing assures Johnathan that he's not insane. Sure, it's an oversimplification of PTSD and healing and such, but it makes sense, especially if you consider communication and information sharing as a major theme! Only sharing his experiences, reading through them himself after blocking off the memories, is what heals him! He cannot get better without knowing what happened, and without others knowing what happened, because knowing and sharing is important.

Renfield's also an interesting case. I don't have the book with me right now to check, but as far as I remember, he tries to talk about Dracula, tries to get Seward to release him from the asylum so Dracula can't use him against Mina, but is dismissed entirely; as a consequence, Dracula gets in the building, kills Renfield, and bites Mina.

Even the language barriers! The villagers Johnathan meets on his way to Dracula's castle try so hard to warn him of the danger but they can't. They can't, because they don't speak enough of the same language, but they try so hard. But whatever does get through to Johnathan, such as that woman begging him to take the crucifix she gives him — that might've saved him. It keeps him unsettled and wary and he does keep the crucifix, which wards Dracula off. They can't communicate the full extent of the danger, but what they managed is probably responsible for him surviving.

And the whole idea is even mentioned in-text! Sure, Lucy saying that a wife ought to share everything she knows with her husband is definitely sexism-flavoured, but Johnathan says it too! He says that his idea of an ideal marriage is one without secrets! And Johnathan is effeminate, yes, he spends a good chunk of the book as the "damsel in distress", but he is still the hero! He is still the one who kills Dracula (with Quincey), and can therefore be assumed to be an intended role model. The (male) main character and hero of an 1897 novel says that a good relationship relies on communication. Sure, he doesn't always stick to it, mostly by agreeing to keep Mina out of the loop when van Hellsing pushes for it, but that doesn't discount that that is what Stoker set as the ideal.

I just. I love this book so much. It subverted just about all expectations I might've had about it and I'm so glad for it. It's undeniably a product of its time, with plenty of racism and sexism and ableism, but it's also so. Not, at the same time? It's so good.

[agentem]

My sister found the best thing at a second hand shop. Dracula! And this artist did the homework! Dracula, lizard style on the side is my fave. But there is also the Captain, the brides, three men proposing to Lucy, our friend Jonathan cutting himself shaving, and more!

[evydraws]

Seven years ago we all went through the flames; and the happiness of some of us since then is, we think, well worth the pain we endured. Jonathan Harker

art zine & prints | digital version

[thebibi]

They should make a Van Helsing Barbie since she can be a professor, a meta physician, a philosopher, AND a lawyer

[ambafaerie]

My major grievance against Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula film adaptation and why I think it is a travesty was the writing of Mina. She is a self assured brilliant woman, a caring friend and loving wife with no past connection to Dracula.

So the film decides to have her be the reincarnation of Dracula’s ex wife so now Mina considers Dracula her mysterious prince who makes her feel alive because Jonathan is so dull that being his bride makes her feel lost so much that even though she married Jonathan and Dracula reacted by killing her best friend Lucy, she is so in love with him that she becomes his willing accomplice and is convinced their love is so much stronger than death that it will release them from the darkness.

It is just so terrible because the Dracula the novel is no feminist politically correct masterpiece but at least it didn’t dumb down Mina to have her be romanced by the monster that assaulted her and killed Lucy and betray Jonathan, Van Helsing, Arthur, Jack, and Quincey because she is Vlad the Impaler’s reincarnated wife. But because film was so popular the general public thinks she is Dracula’s lover when it is anything but that with adaptations following suit to portray Jonathan a a terrible husband to justify why Mina should go be with Dracula who is portrayed as the progressive exotic partner.

The novel is pretty clear that without Mina the group would have died to Dracula. She was key to their triumph and she and Jonathan are passionately in love literally ride and die for each other.

[treespen]

I was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the door, he entered, and at once began to speak:—

Van Helsing, barging in: "Friend John we must -stop screaming it's me- we must behead Miss Lucy"

[see-arcane]

In which the Harkers take advantage of the lull between diary entries.

[tathracyn]

I'm again reminded why Dracula became (and remains) such a hit. The suitors and Van Helsing's days-long hunt of Lucy seems normal enough, to us who know of vampires now, but when the book was first released, Van Helsing would've come across as blasphemous and ungodly for what he asks of them. Something that's reflected in all the boys' reactions, and only slowly drawn away as pieces of evidence are shown, and rebutted, and reexamined, until finally they believe him - and then commit, and reach some measure of peace as Lucy is at last laid to rest.

Stoker did an excellent job of drawing his contemporary audience into his story, assuring their own doubts and skepticisms. Through Van Helsing, he asks them to trust that what is being done has purpose, that the characters are acting not out of madness but out of a deep and noble understanding of Evil's weaknesses.

I can only imagine how hard a sell that must've been for its time, and looking at how he managed it is fascinating.

[wiliecoyotegenius]

I love that Mina chose to tell everything to Jonathan when they had supper, despite Van Helsing telling her to not shock him until he examines him... and when Jonathan arrives to fetch Van Helsing it's like

Van Helsing: Time to meet Madam Mina's unfortunately wrecked husband.

Jonathan, all fresh and robust and energetic: Greetings!

Van Helsing: How!

Jonathan: Mina told me everything you discussed! The truth set me free. So I am now ready to fight the devil when do we start

Van Helsing: surprisepikachu.png