#agatha van helsing was one of the characters of all time | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

anncanta · 1 month ago

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Savior

Fandom: Dracula (2020)

Characters: Dracula, Zoe Van Helsing, Agatha Van Helsing

Relationship: Dracula/Zoe Van Helsing, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing

Rating: Mature

@alma37 @hopipollahorror @moremoveslessannouncements-blog

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‘Doctor Helsing.’

‘You're not surprised.’

‘Why would I be?’

Dracula stepped aside, let her pass, and Zoe entered.

‘Are you bored being alone?’

‘Rather, I indulge in thoughts.’

Zoe took a few steps, looking around.

‘A tall building, stands alone, no churches nearby’ She turned to him. ‘You're easy to find.’

‘I'm not hiding.’

She nodded.

It had been two weeks since they had last met. Zoe chuckled to herself. She had never believed in the power of ‘special’ meetings, turning points, or fateful events. Scientists believe in cause and effect. And yet it was after Dracula had appeared, the same evening he had left Harker's Center. She had written her resignation letter – and, despite Kate's protests, said goodbye without looking back.

Was Dracula the reason she had quit? Was it bitterness and irritation, a vague sense of being used, or simply that she was fed up with... everything?

Zoe glanced at Dracula. She wished she had that kind of nonchalance, even if it was feigned. Her eyes slid over his slightly disheveled hair, his shirt, casually unbuttoned and apparently buttoned again, his rumpled, elegant trousers. He had clearly just arrived.

Dracula bowed his head.

‘You don't look like the type to visit at night.’

Zoe smiled and turned away. She walked around the long table, approaching the penthouse window.

‘You said it yourself. Childless, loveless, friendless, keeping myself apart from this world, I'm empty, alone.’ She turned. ‘But that also means I can do what I want.’

Dracula walked up to her.

‘You came here.’

Zoe shrugged.

‘I wanted to have some fun.’

They looked at each other for a minute.

‘Is that what I think?’ Dracula asked.

Zoe shrugged again.

‘I couldn't find anyone better.’

Dracula looked at her with admiration.

‘Zoe Helsing, did you choose me thinking any hole's a goal?’

She didn't have time to answer. Finding herself lifted and pressed against the window glass, Zoe thought for a moment that it would all be over. But the man's palm under her T-shirt had other plans. Running over her sensitive skin, it moved up, stopping between her breasts. Covering the left one, it froze, as if listening to her heart. The fingers grabbed the nipple, squeezing almost to the point of pain.

Zoe held her breath.

‘Doctor Helsing,’ Dracula said, looking up at her. ‘This is going to be a long night.’

With these words, he lifted her T-shirt with his other hand and pressed his lips to her right breast.

Zoe arched her back and closed her eyes. For a moment, she imagined what she looked like – disheveled, open, spread out before him. Understandable, finally visible. For some reason, this was important.

She wanted to go further. Deeper, where those hands and lips would extract everything she was afraid to admit to herself.

Further, harder, further. No need to take off her jeans. She barely understood whether she was speaking to herself or out loud. One of his palms under her shoulder blades, the other on her waist, down, down. Tight and damp, there, in the core, and not enough... yes, more. No... tenderness... Let me splash it out... like this.

She woke up when she realized that she was lying on the table, and her bare buttocks were cool on the smooth marble. Opening her eyes, she looked at Dracula. He looked as crazy as she did. Just as blind. Drunk. Disheveled. Jacket and shirt untouched, trousers unbuttoned and lowered. Zoe raised an eyebrow.

‘Maybe we should move to the bed?’

Dracula shook his head.

‘Here.’

She grinned and wrapped her legs around his waist.

This time she knew for sure that she wasn't speaking – he was simply doing what she wanted. Because he could hear her heartbeat, feel her blood, feel the same. Don't stand on ceremony with me, act like I don't matter, like it's not me, like it's just you and what you want. Like I'm here for you...

‘...Yes!’

When her last screams died down, Zoe felt his hand on her cheek. She smiled a tired smile – she didn't even have the strength to open her eyes. For several long minutes, she just lay there, listening to her breathing, and then she felt Dracula carefully lifting her and carrying her somewhere. Through the fog that filled her mind, she heard his footsteps, then the door creaked, and Zoe sank onto the bed.

She thought it was funny that he was pulling her clothes off – now. She laughed, stood up, tried to help him, but her hands wouldn't obey. Her body was still shaking slightly. Dracula stopped her and, leaving her naked at last, covered her with a blanket.

‘Sleep, Zoe Van Helsing,’ he said and left.

***

The penthouse kitchen adjoined the living room, a nook with a high-tech worktop and sink.

Dracula stood with his back to her, fiddling with some nickel-plated designer gadget, humming softly to himself. The kitchen smelled of coffee.

‘It would be foolish to lose sight of the head of the center created to capture you,’ Zoe said, pulling her housecoat tighter around her chest.

‘You mean the one who managed to keep me in this center for about three hours?’ Dracula asked, turning around. He was holding a cup of freshly brewed coffee. ‘Good morning, Dr. Helsing,’ he added, handing her the cup.

‘Good morning.’ Zoe took the cup and made a sip. The coffee was delicious.

‘How did you sleep?’

Zoe shrugged vaguely. She was in no mood for small talk. The evening's ardor had passed, but it left no shame or awkwardness behind. She took another sip from her cup.

‘I didn't know you could…’ she said, pointing to the cup. ‘Oh, of course. The Turks.’

‘The Turks?’ Dracula frowned. ‘Oh. No, no, no. I didn't learn how to make coffee from the Turks. Believe me, the Italians left them behind long ago.’

Zoe nodded. They spent a few minutes in silence. Zoe drank coffee, Dracula opened the fridge and took out a dark red transparent bag.

‘What do you want, Dracula?’ Zoe asked, watching him open the bag and fill a glass with blood.

‘I want to take you from behind, and the sooner the better,’ Dracula said. He leaned over and threw the empty bag into the trash can.

Zoe finished her coffee in one gulp and put the cup on the table.

‘But that's not why you came.’ Dracula licked his lips and pushed the glass away. He walked around the narrow kitchen table and stood in front of her. ‘We had a great time, but that's not why you came.’

‘How do you know?’

Instead of answering, Dracula turned and left. He returned a few minutes later with Zoe's bag in his hands.

‘Get it,’ he said, handing her the bag.

The vial with the word ‘Dracula’ written on it was at the very bottom, in the back pocket.

‘You wanted to know what I meant when I said about the secret of the blood.’

Zoe looked up from the vial in her hand, startled.

‘I won't drink it.’

‘Do you think it's a trap?’

Zoe was silent. She looked at the vial again. The dark red blood inside looked completely harmless.

Why was it so hard?

Zoe quickly uncorked the vial, brought it to her lips, and drained it to the bottom.

…Zoe stood in the dungeon. In the dimly lit room, she noticed two tables: a stone one by the wall and a wooden one in the center. Both tables were covered with stacks of books, with bottles of some kind of medicine wedged between them. Zoe recognized a pickled bat and a frog.

Leaning over so as not to hit her head on the low stone arch, Zoe walked forward. A man in dark trousers and a white shirt stood in the middle of the room with his back to her. Dracula. A woman in a nun's robe froze in front of him.

Suddenly the woman looked away from Dracula and looked straight at Zoe.

It was like looking into a mirror. Strange, unfamiliar. Alive. Zoe had seen these features many times, she knew them. As if possessed by the same thought, the woman opened her eyes wide.

Feeling sick, Zoe grabbed her head and slowly sank to the floor.

***

‘I saw her,’ she was shaking. Dracula was sitting next to her and silently looking at her. ‘I saw Agatha Van Helsing,’ Zoe raised her hand to her face and pushed her hair off her forehead. She threw the empty test tube away with irritation. ‘I saw her, Dracula.’

She still felt sick. The room was swimming before her eyes.

Reaching out for Dracula, Zoe leaned on his arm and stood up from the sofa they were sitting on, but immediately sank back down.

‘What was that?’ Zoe asked.

Something inside her was wrong. As if it had split in two, opened up, revealing something hidden, new, like in those pictures where the images are visible only in defocus. And at the same time, it felt as if she had finally found something important.

‘Dracula, what the hell –’

‘You'll be part of me. You will travel to a new world in my veins.’

Now she knew what he meant. More than that, she remembered. And that could only mean one thing.

‘You bastard,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘You brought her with you. Like on a flash drive. And now you've downloaded her into me.’

Dracula smiled.

‘It's not that simple. But now we can talk about it.’

He stood up from the couch and looked over his shoulder.

‘Coffee?’

***

‘Dracula,’ Zoe said, putting down her almost empty cup. ‘I don't believe in reincarnation. Maybe blood is lives, maybe it's stories, like Agatha said, like you always say. But I'm not her.’

Zoe looked at Dracula almost with regret.

‘Agatha is dead.’

‘What is death?’ Dracula grinned.

‘I'm sorry?’

Dracula picked up the glass he was holding.

‘Young man, twenty-six or twenty-eight, tall, thin, blond. Graduated with honors from college, majored in finance. Dropped out in his second year, made a career as a jazz musician in the Bronx. Recently returned, plays in an orchestra. Married, two kids. Happy.’

He ran his finger along the rim of the glass. He looked at Zoe.

‘I know all that about him,’ he said, in response to her confused look. ‘What I don't know is whether he's alive or not.’

‘Dracula –’

‘Agatha is dead, that's a fact,’ he interrupted sharply. ‘What I'm trying to explain to you…’ Dracula fell silent. ‘That DNA and time…’

‘Wait,’ Zoe said suddenly.

She stood up.

‘If it's as you say... If you're convinced she's dead. Then why…’ She paused. ‘That night in Whitby... You couldn't possibly believe…’

‘I didn't.’

Zoe nodded. The sudden realization struck her as so obvious.

‘You slept at the bottom of the sea for a hundred years. Your box may have drifted away. In fact, you came up in a completely random place. What were the chances that she would be waiting for you there?’

Dracula smiled.

‘Helsings.’ He became serious. ‘That's what made me wary. Even if Agatha had become a vampire, we don't have the gift of foresight. She wouldn't have been able to find me.’

Zoe thought about it.

‘So it was a trap.’

‘Exactly.’

She paused, considering what she had heard.

‘DNA,’ Dracula said.

She shuddered and stared at him.

‘After I left your center,’ Dracula smiled, ‘I dropped in for a quick visit to St. Bartholomew's. They have an institute for genetic research. Renfield told me about it.’

Zoe rubbed her forehead tiredly.

‘All the experts are alive.’

She snorted incredulously.

‘And even the service staff.’

Dracula paused.

‘What bothered me,’ he said finally, ‘was that you were so much like her and that I could learn so little about you.’

Zoe sat down at the table and crossed her arms.

‘What you call DNA,’ Dracula said slowly. ‘It's not exactly a data bank or a specific record. Rather, I would say it's like a single thread on which individual lives are strung, like beads.’

He looked at Zoe.

‘From the point of view of that thread, time doesn't exist. It's you and me, Jonathan, Sokolov, and Agatha, all together. Like in my blood. That context is unchangeable, independent of historical situations and physical bodies. Blood is the perfect material, it contains information about who we are, who we were, and who we can be.’

Zoe looked at him in amazement.

‘All it needs is a vessel.’

For the second time that day, the room spun around her. Zoe gripped the table with white knuckles.

A few long seconds passed before she heard Dracula's worried voice through the roaring in her ears. Zoe looked up.

‘I didn't speak until I was five,’ she whispered. ‘Power outage... my mother went into labor late at night, during a snowstorm. They couldn't revive me right away. The doctors said I was lucky.’ She closed and opened her eyes.

It needed a vessel.

‘I'm just a vessel. I was born... empty.’

All her life she had been haunted by this strange feeling – as if she were a black-and-white photograph, a matrix, a negative. Zoe was smart and very strong. Hard-working, inquisitive, and stubborn. But for as long as she could remember, she couldn't find what made her different from others. In her teens, this especially tormented her. All her peers rebelled, tried to stand out. And she was…

She had no special hobbies, no preferences. She even started painting her nails black because that's what her friends did.

Loveless, childless, friendless. You keep yourself apart.

‘Zoe!’

Dracula's voice barely broke through the panic that had gripped her in a vice.

‘That's not what I meant,’ he spoke very softly. He stood up and came over. ‘Life is not a constructor, not glue, not a form. It does not seek emptiness. But sometimes,’ he chose his words, ‘it is difficult to say where someone's Self begins and ends.’

Suddenly he leaned over and took Zoe's face in his hands.

‘Why do you think that you missed Agatha, and not Agatha missed you?’

…

‘What troubles you, my child?’

Agatha raised her head, without unclasping her hands, clasped in prayer.

‘I have sinned, Mother. I have been carried away by the dark forces. I cannot be trusted.’

Mother Superior closed the door behind her and crossed the room. She paused at the table, littered with papers. She snorted, glancing at the jar with the pickled frog. In a few steps, she was next to Agatha and sat down at the table in front of her.

‘The dark forces are part of nature, – perhaps part of our own nature,’ she said. ‘It is natural for us to want to know this world. And to know ourselves.’

‘I have gone beyond knowledge,’ said Agatha. ‘Much further. I was proud and unrestrained. I... went to extremes. I wanted to find Him too much.’

‘You were looking for our Lord,’ there was understanding in the Mother Superior's voice.

Agatha shook her head.

‘I've gone too far. I've lost my way.’

‘Our Lord is the good shepherd. ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?’* Mother Superior quoted. She reached out and stroked Agatha's clasped hands. ‘Do not lose faith, child.’

Agatha looked at the plump fingers clutching hers for a moment, then took her hands away and stood up.

‘There's a dead man in the monastery, Mother Superior,’ she said. ‘A creature of the night. The fishermen brought him. Because they know I understand such things. They know I'm interested in them. Sometimes lost sheep die in the mountains,’ she said bitterly. ‘And there's nothing you can do about it.’

The memory ended as abruptly as it had come.

‘Zoe, can you hear me?’

Agatha stared at Dracula, who was sitting next to her. He was holding her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes with concern.

The feeling of inner duality grew stronger. She was Zoe. She was Agatha. The nun. The woman who ran the Harker Center. The passenger of the Demeter. The scientist who was searching for Dracula. The nun. The vampire expert and the specialist in the field of dark forces.

‘It's a good thing we slept together,’ Agatha said absently.

They were sitting in the living room again. A spring breeze blew through the half-open doors onto the terrace.

‘Delightful,’ Dracula looked closer. ‘Are you… are you okay?’

‘It was long overdue,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I don't know what I was waiting for.’

‘Zoe!’ Dracula barked.

‘What's wrong?’

‘What's happening to you?’

‘What you wanted,’ Agatha was surprised. ‘I'm back. I was Zoe Van Helsing. A wonderful girl. It's strange.’ Agatha listened to herself. ‘She is still me. It is hard to explain. But now I understand all this stuff about DNA and genes –’

‘Zoe,’ Dracula called her.

She fell silent.

Dracula suddenly smiled.

‘You were always only yourself. Don't doubt it.’

Agatha chuckled.

‘Expert opinion.’ She suddenly became serious. ‘Now I understand not only about DNA. How did Zoe find you? Why, of all the staff, was she sent to ‘meet’ you on the shore? Who was really looking for you?’

‘Welcome back,’ Dracula grinned. And added in response to her irritated look: ‘I am sure that you, as well as I, understand that all these questions come down to one thing.’ He looked at Agatha. ‘Who finances the Harker Center?’

***

‘I used that money for good.’

‘Agatha, I'm not going to judge you,’ said Dracula. ‘God knows, I'm the last one who would. But we need to know’ he paused ‘who arranged this whole fucking rock concert.’

‘Language,’ said Agatha tiredly.

Dracula snorted.

‘Or you'll deprive me of my treat?’

‘Dog-eat-dog world.’

She closed her eyes.

‘You have to understand,’ she began, ‘things were going terribly at the Harker Center. Zoe… I applied to a bunch of organizations, wrote grants. They all turned me down. Mina's fund was running low, and I didn't know… It didn't seem fair to just close… The Center was their life's work,’ she finished quietly. ‘How could I?’

‘What did they offer you?’

‘Provision. Full funding for all research.’

‘And what in return?’

Agatha was silent.

‘Their representative said we might be asked to go back to a few old projects,’ she finally said.

‘Look for Demeter, for example.’

She nodded.

Dracula thought for a long time.

‘Something doesn't add up here.’ He stood up. He said to Agatha, who was looking at him in surprise: ‘In these strange times, people don't believe in vampires. Stupid movies and books don't count. The Center could have been an excellent cover for illegal experiments, drug production, biological weapons. But they,’ Dracula looked at Agatha, ‘remembered an old fairy tale and brought it to light. Besides, how did they know the ship's route? You said that a sailor and a cook were saved. They could tell this story for the rest of their lives, but they hardly managed to write it down. There must be someone else.’

He walked back and forth across the room.

‘Who were you talking to?’

‘What do you mean –’

‘You must have made arrangements with someone,’ Dracula said impatiently. ‘Who was it?’

Agatha frowned.

‘I don't know. Some clerk. Middle-aged, short. Small eyes, round cheeks. Spoke with a German accent. Stuttered, I think… Dracula?’

Dracula froze. Turned slowly.

‘A German accent, are you sure?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said cautiously.

Dracula approached her.

‘One learns to keep a tidy slaughterhouse,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Of course, he knew where to find me.’

***

‘How could you turn a sailor?’ Agatha screamed.

‘Most of my victims die!’ Dracula screamed back. ‘And those who don't die are no better than zombies. You've seen them,’ he said, suddenly calm.

He sat down on the sofa and closed his eyes.

‘No, I haven't,’ Agatha said.

‘Then you've seen others,’ Dracula responded. ‘In Budapest, in the cemetery. They're all the same.’ He shook his head. ‘That's why Jonathan was so important. He was a treasure.’ Dracula paused. ‘And he hated me.’

‘Okay,’ said Agatha. ‘Okay. Let's say that man –’

‘Portman.’

‘Let's say Portman became a vampire and retained his personality and will. Let's say he learned to choose his victims. That was a hundred years ago. Why would he need you?’

Dracula smiled, and there was no trace of his usual mocking amusement in that smile. He stood up slowly and walked to the door to the terrace. He stopped, looking at the skyscrapers against the blue of the night.

‘You weren't listening?’ he said. ‘Jonathan hated me.’

‘What does Jonathan have to do with it?!’

Dracula turned around, and Agatha saw an expression on his face that she hadn't expected to see at all. An expression of devastation and – indecision. She stood up and walked over to him.

‘Portman is unimportant,’ said Agatha. ‘We need to find out who he works for.’

‘You don't understand,’ said Dracula. ‘You really don't understand, do you?’

They froze facing each other, and for a moment Agatha imagined that she was naked, as if the previous evening, when she came to him, he had taken everything off her, and now she was standing before him, dressed only in silence and the scents of a spring night.

This was long overdue... Zoe was experienced, and Agatha was a virgin, and when, obeying her desire, he filled her to the brim, Agatha understood why she had hesitated, could not, did not want to do it – before. Because never before had she been ready to accept someone with all of herself, entirely. And even more so – she hadn't been ready that it would be so wonderful.

‘What don't I understand?’ Agatha said, looking him in the eye.

And then he leaned over and did what Agatha had been secretly waiting for all this time.

The sea roared steadily and quietly. The creaking of the wheel echoed the distant scolding of seagulls. Above them shone the sky, full of bright stars.

Lowering her head, Agatha saw the wooden flooring and in the corner of the deck – the wreckage of a broken barrel. The lights of Whitby flickered over Dracula's shoulder.

‘Remember,’ said Dracula.

…She was not in pain. She was not lonely or afraid. She did what she had to do, without hesitation and without regret. Such was the price of her knowledge and her mistakes. Agatha was calm. Only the thought of what would happen… later tormented her terribly.

Looking at him, she inhaled sharply, convulsively, as if a noose had once again caught her neck.

‘You see,’ said Dracula. ‘Now you understand.’

The rumbling of the sea and the deck of the Demeter disappeared, leaving only Dracula's embrace and the trembling of his lips on her neck.

‘I thought you left me to die,’ Agatha said, watching him pull away. ‘Left me to drown because I lied to you and because I didn't become a vampire.’

‘Every vampire knows who turned them,’ Dracula said. ‘The one who condemned them to this… existence between earth and sky, where daylight is your enemy and blood is your comfort, but only until you're hungry again, and where you're not welcome anywhere. Every vampire remembers who took their death from them.’

Agatha buried her face in his chest.

‘I couldn't let this happen to you,’ Dracula whispered, burying his hand in her hair.

Agatha smiled weakly.

‘But you just drank Portman and threw him overboard. He managed to survive and decided to take revenge.’

‘Yes. That's why me. That's why you.’

The resignation in his voice struck Agatha.

‘He didn't succeed,’ she said, raising her head and looking at Dracula. ‘He didn't catch you.’

‘Did he?’

Turning to the door to the terrace, Agatha stared at the skyscraper opposite Dracula's house for a moment. She absentmindedly rubbed the wound on her neck.

‘You bit me.’ She turned to Dracula.

‘At least you noticed this time.’

Agatha came closer.

‘The last time you tried to drink my blood, you poisoned yourself. What's different now?’ She frowned. ‘And if Portman was planning on using me to find you and maybe trap you, how could he be sure it would work?’

Dracula did not answer.

‘He could have thought up a thousand plans,’ said Agatha. ‘But how could he be sure that by the time you showed up, I would not be dead? Oh, no,’ she moaned, seeing the innocent expression on Dracula's face. ‘You bloody dirty, vile, lying –’

‘Language.’

‘Damn you!’

Dracula raised his hands.

I didn't deceive you. At least not completely,’ he admitted. ‘In that woman's house, when I bit you, I saw that you thought you were sick. But that didn't make sense. Your blood had no signs of any illness.’

‘And you dared –’

‘I realized that in front of me was a piece of cheese,’ Dracula interrupted her. ‘A mousetrap, then. No wonder. I'm used to it. What I didn’t expect was that you were not on their side.’

‘Otherwise, why would they lie to me?’ Agatha said slowly.

He nodded.

‘That explains why he was so sure he could do it. And they tricked you to tie you down. To paralyze you with fear of illness and imminent death. When did you get the news?..’

‘Shortly before we raised the Demeter. Maybe before a week. He'd been planning this for years,’ Agatha whispered.

‘I'm glad he had a good time.’

Dracula closed the door to the terrace and moved into the room.

‘You can’t leave,’ he said suddenly when they had settled back on the living room sofa.

‘What?’ Agatha asked in surprise.

‘Portman used you as bait,’ Dracula replied. ‘For the obvious reason, I'm harder to get to – ask Renfield. But then you missed me.’ He paused. ‘I suspect he'll want to… punish you.’

‘Damn you all,’ Agatha cursed. ‘What should I do?’

‘Oh, if only I could order you,’ Dracula said dreamily; his eyes glittered.

‘Concentrate.’

‘I'll contact Renfield,’ Dracula smiled. ‘Let him find Portman first. Let's try to talk.’ Dracula took out his phone and dialed a number. ‘Portman doesn't know you're back, so you're just a doll to him. I order you to lie in the box and wait.’

He reached up and kissed her forehead.

Agatha opened her mouth to speak, but Dracula pulled back and raised his hand. Renfield's voice crackled on the other end of the line.

‘And what will I do in your enchanted castle?’ Agatha asked when Dracula hung up.

‘Like all princesses,’ he said, ‘wait for news and be attacked by a monster.’

He grinned and threw the phone aside.

***

‘So my blood won't kill you?’

‘So it won't.’

‘What a pity.’

Getting out of bed, Agatha began to dress. ‘I'll go downstairs,’ she threw over her shoulder to the chuckling Dracula. ‘I need tea. Sandwiches... And a break!’ she snorted, dodging the fingers sliding up her spine.

‘The losing side.’

‘One must never rush a nun,’ Agatha grinned and left. A deafening laugh followed her.

In the kitchen, she made herself a large cup of tea. Looking into the fridge, she cast a critical eye over the bags of blood, closed it, and pulled a plate of half-dried crackers from the table towards her.

Agatha drank tea and absentmindedly tapped her hand on the table. Pictures of her reality overlapped one another. The evening before yesterday, yesterday, night, morning, day. Zoe Van Helsing's old blouse. Agatha's nun's dress.

Zoe Van Helsing grew up in the English countryside. Many years ago, her father, who was fond of all sorts of strange things, took her to a fair. There was a pavilion there, stylized at the beginning of the twentieth century. ‘Incredible Cinematography,’ said the gaudy sign above the entrance.

Inside, in addition to many old films, they were showing an attraction – a projector in which images from different slides were scrolled together. On the white big screen, African elephants roamed English parks, elegantly dressed gentlemen and ladies swirled in underground caves with rock frescoes on the walls, and the giant chandelier of the London Opera illuminated the forest landscape.

She felt something similar now.

Agatha remembered her childhood in the Amsterdam suburbs. Her mother's lullaby in German – her father was Dutch, married late. The young German's parents came from Hanover. Angus Van Helsing took her in penniless. He adored her.

She remembered herself in a house in west London – adjusting a stepladder to a bookcase, balancing on the top step to get an encyclopedia of the animals and plants that inhabit England.

She remembered Uncle Gregorius and Aunt Julia, their stories about the fish market in the center of Amsterdam, and about her Great-grandmother Agatha, who went to a monastery before they were born.

The event projector twirled and twirled the slides, and like the images on the umbrella of Ole Lukøje, they revolved above her.

Ole Lukøje was Zoe's favorite fairy tale. As a child, she had reread it hundreds of times.

She remembered very well that there were two of them. A colored Ole Lukøje, with bright pictures on the umbrella, and a black one – on a horse and with two fairy tales, a happy one and a scary one.

Which one Ole Lukøje is for her, Agatha thought, when the doorbell rang. She put down her cup and, looking into the living room and seeing that Dracula was nowhere to be found, went to open it.

‘You are early, Mr. Renfield,’ Agatha said, throwing open the door, and choked on the stinging drizzle that splashed into her face.

The smells and sounds of the Demeter surrounded her again. The sea and flames raged around her, and there was someone else – on the shore, in the distance, and for some reason, Agatha could see and hear him. He stood and watched the ship burn, the fire die out, and the blackened hulk sink into the water.

‘Ich komme wieder,’** said the stranger. He turned and walked away.

***

‘He's nowhere to be found.’

‘It can't be. Keep looking.’

‘I'm trying, Dark Lord.’

Renfield leaned over his laptop, his face grey.

‘They're well hidden.’

‘I don't care.’

Dracula stood up from the table and walked around to Renfield.

‘Find him, or I'll tear you to pieces.’

Renfield's face went white, but there was no fear on it, only stubbornness.

‘The Harker Center's trail leads to Argentina,’ he said after a pause. ‘Most of the transactions over the last three months came from there.’

‘I don't care about the transactions,’ Dracula said. ‘I want to know where Portman is.’

He barely had time to finish speaking when his smartphone on the table came to life. Dracula reached for the phone, opened the message. He stared at the screen for a minute, then picked up his jacket from the chair and walked to the door.

‘Dark Lord!’ Renfield called out to him.

Dracula turned around.

Renfield bit his lips.

‘Dark Lord... Dracula... Don't rush. Wait for backup.’

Dracula shook his head.

‘It says I must be alone.’

The door slammed behind him.

***

Agatha woke up in a room that looked like a cell or a hospital ward. The walls were mirrored, and it was impossible to see anything behind them. As soon as Agatha got up from the bed she was sitting on, the narrow cot folded up like a book and disappeared into the hatch in the floor with a quiet hiss.

If they were watching, she couldn't show fear. However, Agatha didn't feel fear. More like curiosity and anger at herself. How could she have been so careless?

The last thought made her smile. She was no better at being an investigator than a nun. Agatha closed her eyes and tried to remember how she ended up here. But the memory felt... crumpled and sticky, like raw dough, it had gathered into one uneven lump.

The problem was that Agatha still felt uncomfortable as if she hadn't fully returned. She looked around. Zoe Van Helsing knew this place – this room, the mechanics, and the strange walls – but Agatha's anxiety prevented her from fitting the familiar pieces together.

All Agatha could think of was that she was just a living bait, toyed with before being released onto the prey.

Something inside Agatha twitched at the thought. She sucked in a sharp breath, and a new memory crashed on her.

…

‘I fainted? My God, what a shame!’

‘To be fair, anyone would have fainted.’

Agatha looked up. Dracula was standing next to her, looming over the narrow bunk she was sitting on. She winced.

‘Move away. Unless you want me to faint again.’

‘You are no longer in danger of this.’ He smiled.

The floor beneath her feet swayed rhythmically. So he took her to the ship.

‘What if I get seasick?’

‘It would have manifested itself by now.’

Agatha stood up.

‘Why didn't you eat me right there?’

‘I don't know.’ He told the truth. She was sure of it – his voice sounded too surprised. As if he were asking himself the same question. ‘Maybe I…’ he grinned, ‘maybe I thought Jonathan wouldn't approve. All these people around. Killed. Torn apart, desecrated.’

‘It's my fault what happened to them,’ Agatha said.

‘I killed them.’

‘I let the beast in.’

Agatha bit her lip. Standing right in front of her, in Jonathan's bloody white shirt, his fangs bared, he seemed more terrifying than he had been completely naked at the monastery gates. As if the humanity stolen from another had made him more of a predator. He stood in front of her, and Agatha barely heard what he was saying to her. She saw only his face and only his fangs, and then everything went dark. How shameful.

She shuddered when she heard him calling her.

‘I deserve everything you can do.’ She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. ‘You took me on the ship, so you're going to –’

She didn't have time to finish. Nor did she have time to retreat, escaping the embrace Dracula had taken her into.

A new expression appeared on his face. Agatha caught his greedy gaze, cast at her skinny body. This strengthened her suspicions.

‘If you expect me to beg you –’

‘Agatha,’ Dracula interrupted her. ‘I'm sorry I frightened you.’

It seemed that these words surprised him. They were standing in the middle of the cabin... embracing, and it was so strange. Agatha bowed her head and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘How will it be?’ she blurted out.

The pause lasted a long time.

‘As you wish,’ Dracula answered.

‘I don't…’ she fell silent, licking her lips. ‘I only wanted to save this poor girl. I…’

He stood, his arms around Agatha, – and looked at her.

‘It will be as you wish,’ he said. ‘I will be there. And you will be there.’

Something sharp, bright boiled in Agatha's blood. Responding to the touch of his palm on her exposed neck.

She raised her hand and pulled the edge of her dress.

‘Come, boy. Suckle.’

***

Dracula pushed the door and walked through the corridor, illuminated in green. At this late hour, there was not a soul in the above-ground part of the complex. At first glance, the bunker was also deserted. The round lamps on the walls were out, the dim light of those under the ceiling was reflected in the edges of the glass chamber, inside which there was complete darkness. Dracula stopped.

‘You asked me out on a date. I thought it was dinner.’

No one answered him. Dracula moved on.

‘So many years have passed,’ he said, ‘I am impressed. I did not expect this from you.’

‘You thought I was an idiot.’

The voice echoed in the almost empty hall. Dracula turned around.

‘I think everyone is. Experience of life among people teaches that most of them are stupid and stubborn. That is why vampires from them turn out wild and useless.’ He took a few steps forward. ‘But you turned out to be different.’

‘I had to learn.’ A short man in a dark suit stepped away from the opposite wall. ‘If I wanted to survive.’

‘You're dead,’ Dracula smiled.

The man shrugged.

‘You get used to it.’

‘Really?’

‘You said it y-yourself, ‘You are what you eat.’

Dracula paused, looking at him.

‘I see that you have mastered the art of... good hunting,’ he said with exaggerated nonchalance. ‘However, I do not understand why you need such secrecy.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘All this ceremony. A hundred and twenty years have passed. Morals are different now. You could have simply called me.’

Portman grinned slightly.

‘Perhaps I am old-fashioned. Or perhaps I have a g-g-good memory,’ he added.

Dracula was silent.

‘Maybe I remember being attacked on d-deck, having my throat ripped out and thrown out like a piece of shit,’ Portman grinned. ‘The water was cold. You know, that's the first thing I felt when I woke up. Cold, icy water. It was everywhere, filling me. It took me a while to realize that it wasn't cold outside, that the cold was inside.’

He fell silent.

‘I tried to drive away this cold for weeks. Food saved me. I ate. I ate everything, but as soon as I warmed up, the cold would start eating me up again. I ran from it, but the cold always caught up with me. I killed, killed, killed. I ate again, and I felt sick.’

‘But it didn't get any warmer.’

‘But I got smarter.’

Portman came closer to Dracula.

‘It's worst at night. You're f-free. Do what you want. You can hunt, eat, remember. The time when you weren't Bavarian bacon. When you were worth something. When it was warm.’

‘Portman –’ Dracula began.

‘I had a bride!’ Portman screamed. ‘Her name was Brigitte!’ His voice rang out and broke. ‘You turned me into a monster,’ he said; a foxy anger flashed across his puffy face. But it froze immediately, like a mask. ‘It was not easy to f-find the place where the Demeter sank,’ he said. ‘It took me years to find a way to raise your box from the bottom. But I was in no hurry.

Portman licked his lips. His face was wet, his eyes were shining. He walked along the wall, stopped. Dracula watched him without moving.

‘I have imagined this moment for so many years... I have dreamed of it for so long that I was almost disappointed when it came. But you gave me a gift,’ Portman said quietly. ‘I was there, on the shore.’

Dracula raised his eyebrows.

‘You were gorgeous when you came out of the water. Wet hair, shirt stuck to your body, oh, pure sex. I wanted to jump out and merge with you in an embrace. But then I saw the way she looked at you.’

Portman smiled happily.

‘And then I knew what I had to do.’

His smile was like a spill of black oil. Dracula ran his hand over his face.

‘Where is Agatha?’

‘Oh, are you changing the subject? Are you scared?’

‘Portman. Where is she?’

‘Still, he softened with time,’ grinning, Portman took a couple more steps. He stopped behind the glass triangle. ‘I can't understand why you call her by that name,’ he looked back. ‘Is this her pet name? Well, it doesn't matter. I don't care what you two play. Today I'm playing.’

The light flashed in the cell.

Agatha was sitting on the floor inside it. When the lamp lit above her head, she shuddered and hugged herself. Squinting in the bright light, she slowly rose.

‘You came for her,’ said Portman.

Dracula was silent.

‘So go and get her.’

The silence that followed was almost absolute.

Still a little confused, Agatha walked over to one of the glass walls. She watched as Dracula raised his head and looked at the hatch in the ceiling. He glanced in the direction of the control panel that Zoe used to control the camera.

Portman, who had been watching him, smirked and reached into his inside jacket pocket. He pulled out something that looked like a magnetic car key and weighed it in his palm.

‘Modern technology is so convenient,’ he purred. ‘I can't get enough of it. Oh, sorry. Hands on top of the blanket.’ He raised his hand with the key and twirled it above his head. ‘Do you want to c-come with me?’

Dracula turned away from him. He walked up to the wall of the cell and placed his palm on the glass.

‘Don't do this,’ Agatha said.

‘I'm to blame for everything that happened,’ Dracula said. ‘For the sinking of the Demeter, for the death of your sisters.’ He turned halfway around. ‘I'm to blame for the fact that this madman lived for decades, turning into me.’

Agatha was silent.

‘Didn't I deserve this?’ Dracula said.

He sank down, crouching in front of the cell, and pressed his forehead to the glass.

‘Don't do it,’ Agatha said barely audibly.

Dracula raised his head.

‘The rules of the beast,’ he said, looking at her. ‘The beast obeys, even if it doesn't understand their meaning.’

Agatha held back her tears.

‘Please help me,’ Dracula asked.

It took forever for Agatha to nod.

Dracula smiled briefly and nodded back. He turned.

‘Nicholas Portman,’ he said, raising his voice, ‘I accept your condition. I will enter the cell and take Agatha.’

He stood up.

Portman grinned happily.

‘But first, you will promise me that you will let her go.’ Dracula's face was stern and severe. ‘I will enter this cell, and you will let Agatha Van Helsing go.’

‘I agree.’

‘You will make a promise,’ Dracula continued, ‘the only one you cannot break. The vow given to the one who turned you.’

A shadow of doubt flickered across Portman's face. Agatha, who had never heard of such a promise before, straightened up in alarm. Dracula waited.

‘Breaking means death,’ Portman croaked.

‘Breaking means death.’

‘I agree,’ Portman said again.

Dracula stepped away from the wall of the cell.

‘I, Nicholas Portman,’ he said, looking at Portman.

‘I, Nicholas Portman,’ he repeated.

‘…I give my word to the one who turned me, Vladislav Basarab, Count Dracula.’

Agatha looked at them, standing opposite each other, and the words they spoke seemed visible, like lamps flashing in the darkness.

…to let go of Agatha Van Helsing, who is here before me.

...in this time, in the year of our Lord 2020, bearing the name Zoe Van Helsing...

...alive and unharmed, free...

...of sound mind and sober memory...

...not attempting to subject her to the action of sleeping, stupefying, or any other poisonous means, as well as to the action of bladed or firearms or any weapon unknown to her or Count Dracula...

...to allow her to go independently, without anyone's help, wherever she wishes, not to pursue her on land, water, or in the air, alone or accompanied by others, under her own name or someone else's...

...not to attempt to harm her directly or indirectly, independently or through third parties...

...not to attempt to induce her, directly or indirectly, independently or through third parties, to harm herself...

‘I promise before the face of the one who turned me,’ said Dracula.

‘I promise before the face of the one who turned me,’ Portman repeated.

Dracula turned and looked briefly at Agatha. The promise was exhaustive and left no loopholes. She was free.

‘I think you'll want to watch to the end,’ Dracula said, turning to Portman. ‘Don't turn on the toy. You might not have time to get aroused,’ he added, approaching the isolation cell and opening the door.’

Let it be quick, Agatha thought, taking a step toward him.

Let it be quick, she thought, touching his shoulder and running her palm over it.

Let it be quick, she thought, hugging him and burying her face in his shoulder, inhaling his scent and feeling how fear ran down Dracula's spine like a light shiver and how Dracula let it go.

The camera starts moving and spinning.

Agatha hugs him, closing her eyes, and stands still.

Until she realizes that nothing has happened.

Pulling away and breaking their embrace, she and Dracula look at each other.

The sun lashes through the hole in the roof, hitting their eyes.

Reaching out, Agatha places her palm on Dracula's forehead and feels the cool skin under her fingers. Taking her hand in his, Dracula brings it to his lips and kisses the center of the palm.

‘And there was light.’

A deafening ringing broke the silence.

‘Sumpfkreatur***, you're not going to leave like that!’

Having grabbed her with his arms and covered her with his body, Dracula pressed Agatha against the opposite wall.

‘Can you do that too?’ Agatha asked, looking over his shoulder at the shards of super-strong glass that littered the floor of the cell.

‘Of course I can,’ he answered irritably. ‘Do you think I talked to you in this cage because I was afraid of cutting myself?’

‘But the mercenaries –’

‘Agatha!’ Dracula roared. ‘For God's sake, step back!”

‘He promised not to touch me,’ Agatha said hesitantly, retreating.

‘I don't want to hurt you.’

Dracula stood there, staring at Portman.

‘Daddy finally realized this is serious,’ Portman said. ‘Okie-dokie. Not as cool as burning you alive, but it works for me,’ he added and lunged at Dracula.

Agatha had never seen wild animals fight. On her aunt and uncle's farm, she had watched the poultry fight; the worst was when the neighbors' goats started bucking.

Now the predators were locked in combat before her eyes, arms and legs entwined, growling, biting, and rolling on the floor.

Portman was strong. He was like a vicious bulldog, winning not so much by weight or skill as by mad tenacity and... training. Agatha frowned. She had never seen Portman before, but everything about him – his face, his figure, his mannerisms – seemed strangely familiar to her. And at the same time, wrong. Surprisingly... old-fashioned.

This strangeness seemed important, it pricked and irritated. Portman said that he was learning. He drank blood, choosing victims, learning... but learning what?

The opponents in front of her had separated and were standing in front of each other, breathing heavily. Dracula's suit was torn, Portman's arms and chest were all covered in blood. Agatha examined him, watching how he leaned his palm against the wall of the cell, leaving a scarlet mark on it. Even his gait was uneven, she suddenly realized. It happens to those who spend a lot of time at sea. And his shirt was too small for him, looking like it was cast-off clothes.

‘You are mistaken,’ Agatha said slowly.

Dracula turned to her. But she was looking at Portman.

‘Who were the people you ate?’

Portman wiped the blood pouring from his nose.

‘Who were you hunting?’

Agatha didn't wait for an answer. She turned to Dracula.

‘You are mistaken,’ she repeated. ‘He did not turn into you.’ She paused. ‘He would like to, and he would like you to think so.’ Agatha looked around the broken cell, at the darkened hall beyond. ‘He wanted to look like some kind of… criminal genius. But he is still the same as before.’

There was no evil plan, Agatha suddenly realized. Invoices and receipts and documents came flooding back from Zoe's memory. There was no mention of Dracula in any of the contracts, neither in the main paragraphs nor in the supplementary protocols. No hint that Zoe was supposed to do anything other than the medical research described there. Agatha closed her eyes and sighed. She had simply received the grant. Her own fear and depravity had made her think otherwise. Portman had simply used them. He must not have even been working for those people, but had simply tricked his way into the meeting and put on a little show. When Agatha opened her eyes, her head was buzzing and her cheeks were burning.

Dracula looked at Portman.

‘Your English,’ he said. ‘Primitive, almost childish. The German accent is still there. Comment vas-tu?’**** he asked experimentally. ‘Tu, mostro ignorante.’***** Have you learned nothing? All you know is how to fight?’

‘Oh, my God, of course! Fight!’

Agatha pushed herself away from the wall. She waved her hand at Dracula, who jerked.

‘That's who you were hunting. Wrestlers, murderers, and mercenaries.’ She looked at Dracula. ‘I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. It was at the fair. In the ultimate fighting pavilion.’

‘Comment vas-tu,’ Portman muttered. ‘No use in your science. Damn aristocrats. All talk, no use in it.’

He straightened up, taking out a gun.

‘I hated you and wanted to punch you in the face,’ he said. ‘That's what I was preparing for. A couple of good fists are always better than all this play.’ He spat out blood. ‘All the best fighters in England, France, and Germany are here in me. The toughest, the ones who didn't shy away from anything. The only thing better than them is a couple of silver bullets.’

He raised the gun and aimed it at Dracula.

Agatha stepped between them.

‘That's clever, that's really clever,’ she said. ‘You could fight him all day,’ she said to Dracula. ‘It's no use. He'll anticipate every undercut, block every blow.’

Portman looked at her with a satisfied grin.

‘You're right,’ he said, ‘a human woman. He can't defeat me.’

Agatha nodded.

‘And if I'm right,’ she said, ‘then you still don't know how dangerous it is to rely solely on reflexes.’

And she stepped forward.

A shot rang out. Agatha was thrown back, right into Dracula's arms. She watched as Portman, still holding the gun, crumbled into ashes, and as these ashes floated in the light pouring through the hatch in the ceiling.

Dracula picked her up and laid her on the floor.

‘Well, that's it,’ Agatha said quietly.

Dracula leaned over her.

‘Why?..’

‘If you don't have enough strength, use your weakness,’ Agatha said. ‘It was the only way.’

‘I wanted to show you all the happiness in the world,’ he said, confused.

‘As always, grandiosely,’ Agatha smiled. ‘And as always, life flicked you... on the nose.’

She was choking.

Dracula's pale face was blurring above her, slipping away into the fog.

Agatha grabbed the sleeve of his bloody, crumpled shirt.

‘I don't know about all the happiness... But what happened in cabin number nine was wonderful... Despite everything,’ she whispered, already losing consciousness.

And fell into the darkness.

…

The darkness accepted Agatha ingratiatingly, softly, as if it had been waiting for her.

Agatha was not surprised.

Black Ole Lukøje.

For naughty children.

For lost sheep.

It was understandable. Not surprising. What was surprising was the pleasure.

‘Dracula,’ said Agatha, watching the golden rays disperse the darkness.

‘I have experienced a lot in my long life,’ Dracula chuckled, ‘but I have never been confused with death before.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I am making love to you.’

‘You are drinking my blood.’

‘Captain Obvious.’

‘You said you did not want to turn me.’

‘Yes. Not today.’

‘I am dying.’

He smiled.

‘Think, Agatha.’

‘Portman shot me. He hit me in the chest.’

‘Yes. And the bullet?..’

It was starting to dawn on her.

‘...still there. If it had been different…’

‘...he would have hit me. I was standing behind you.’

In her youth, Zoe had worked as an ambulance attendant. They often brought in patients with gunshot wounds.

‘The bleeding should have killed me,’ Agatha said, ‘but the bullet inside stopped the bleeding; or it should have been the shock of pain.’

Dracula leaned toward her lips.

‘After all this time, did you think I'd let it hurt?’

The sun blew around them. It washed away the anger and grief, the rage and fear of poor Portman. Agatha thought that if it hadn't been for his stubbornness and anger, none of this would have happened. She would have been Zoe, half of half, or Agatha, far away, lost to herself. And there would have been no blinding light in the cell. And Portman would not have been able to leave.

‘I should be grateful to him,’ Agatha said.

‘As am I,’ Dracula smiled.

She felt him again, all over her. His strength, his sadness, and hope.

Black Ole Lukøje or colored, Agatha thought, it doesn't matter. Anyone can be a savior.

She looked at Dracula.

‘A fairy tale stops being scary when you're ready.’

‘Oh, yes.’

Notes

* Luke 15:4, New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

** ‘Ich komme wieder’– I will return (Germ.)

*** Sumpfkreatur – swamp creature (Germ.)

**** Comment vas-tu? – How are you? (French)

***** Tu, mostro ignorante. – You uneducated monster (Italian)

#bbc dracula #dracula 2020 #count dracula #dracula bbc #agatha van helsing #dragatha #zoe van helsing #dracula netflix

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ranthebow · 2 years ago

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Thoughts about BBC Dracula

So, I ended up watching the entirety of BBC Dracula yesterday and I have thoughts. Don’t know how many will make it here and how coherent they will be, but I’ve just been thinking about it all day and I’d like to just write them down. Warning, spoilers ahead.

On one hand, I think I quite enjoyed watching it. There is clever dialogue, fun sexual tension with the women clearly being the top (Sister Agatha’s verbal whipping of Dracula in the first episode is such a delight). They also took the story of Dracula and tried to do something new with it, taking characters and situations we know and turning them into something new and surprising, just enough to keep me, an avid Dracula fan, on my toes.

However!

So, so many things were just...bad, at the same time. The clever dialogue sometimes turned into cringey, modern one-liners, because that’s just what shows do these days. Character’s actions didn’t make sense based on what we knew motivated them, usually within the second or third act of their own character arcs. Queerness was kind of thrown into the mix, in a really random way, just to say it was there? Like, yes, Dracula has a lot of queer energy, especially his interactions with Jonathan, even in the book, but considering how they handled that as the episodes went on (starting with a very dramatic “Did you have sexual intercourse with Count Dracula?” at the beginning of episode 1, just for the shock), it really felt awkwardly placed in there. The first episode was so queer coded. There was so much potential!! And then Jonathan dies, and all that potential is thrown out the window. It was strange. And then, the worst of it all...the very last episode.

Episode 1 was focused on Jonathan Harker’s experience and escape from Count Dracula, as well as introducing Agatha Van Helsing and having her interact with Dracula in a very confident, sexually charged way, with her tentatively winning. That is, of course, until the end of the episode, where Dracula gains the upper hand and does something with her (we don’t know what yet). Then, episode 2, Dracula has the upper hand in another sexually charged battle of wits with Agatha. Only for...Agatha to die and episode 3 (the final episode) to be set 100 years later? With an Agatha look-a-like? This comes back to the idea that things were set up, had so much potential, and they went for the easy shock, rather than a satisfying conclusion. Like, yes, I was very shocked when Dracula walked out onto the beach and was immediately surrounded by helicopters and cars, indicating that he was no longer in the time we had just seen him in. But then it quickly became clear that was all they had planned to do with it. All the character interactions we had come to love and expect, just gone. Everything we know to be true about the world, gone. It’s new and alien, even for the viewer. So much of episode 3 was just spent on setting up new characters. And for what? That’s not what I had hoped to see at that point. Agatha had won, than Dracula had won, making them equal for one last showdown in what could have been a very interesting episode 3. But that’s not what happened! It made me want to not care for the new characters, almost out of spite of how different the show suddenly felt. And the writers tried to rectify this problem (clearly showing they knew it was going to be a problem) by...essentially making Zoe be possessed by Agatha? Like, why though?? Zoe clearly was a different person and didn’t have the same chemistry, or history, that Agatha did with Dracula. And the writers knew that was the main hook of the first two episodes, the interactions between Dracula and Agatha. So to tie it all together, they had to bring Agatha back somehow? When they killed her in the first place, just for the shock of it? And then!! Even more annoying...they had set up this big thing, from episode one, that there was a singular reason that ties all of Dracula’s lore together, from his fear of the cross to his inability to stand the sun, all things that only he experienced, no other vampire. And it was just because he had convinced himself to be afraid? That’s what made him different from other vampires? That he was a coward? Then how did he stay sane for hundreds of years when, apparently, no other vampire can? Everything was made to seem so clever, only for everything that happened at the end, that ties it all together, to be so silly. That entire final scene in Dracula’s apartment is so unsatisfying, until the very end, when he is killing her (and killing himself in the process). That scene was lovely and an actually great ending. But it was clearly Agatha at that point again, so what was the point of making it modern in the first place?

Okay, I have so many more thoughts haha, from how BBC Dracula missed the point of Dracula (which I still want to see, even when adaptations do cool, new stuff with the story) to more things that I actually liked about it, because there is a lot more than I mentioned (like Lucy. I really liked Lucy...until they messed up her motivation just as she died too), but I feel like I wrote a lot so that might come later. Hey, if nothing else, this is a piece of media that made me think! I had fun with it, for sure. The more I like something, the more likely I am to critique it, especially when my like of it feels like such a guilty pleasure considering all these things I clearly didn’t like about it lol. I’ll always be a sucker for Dracula content, it’s true

#bbc dracula #dracula bbc #dracula #dracula discourse #agatha van helsing #van helsing #my thoughts #dracula 2020 #reviews

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the-damnable-fool · 2 years ago

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Dracula (2020), the most disappointing piece of media I've ever seen

This fury has been rotting into my brain for at least two years now, so now I'm going to subject you to it. This is going to be a very long rant/critique/violent catharsis.

Netflix's Dracula miniseries is a three episode series starring Claes Bang, Dolly Wells, and John Hefferman. The show ran for three episodes and was written by Stephen Moffat. You may recognize him as the longtime writer for a relatively insignificant little program known as "Doctor Who".

Episode one presents us with an interesting and well executed premise. Jonathan Harker, scarred and deformed from his encounter with the eponymous Dracula, recounts his experience to Sister Agatha Van Helsing. Much of what transpires is based heavily on the events of the original novel, though you may have already gleaned from the name "Agatha Van Helsing" that some creative liberties have been taken. I won't spoil much, since I believe this episode to be worth watching. Suffice to say that the whole of the main cast is great, Harker and Agatha Van Helsing doubly so, and there's some excellent special effects work being done.

Episode two is, by and large, my favorite episode of the lot. Because of that, I'll speak even less of it. The entire episode is framed as a murder mystery aboard a boat which Dracula himself recounts to Agatha Van Helsing, which is an interesting parallel to draw with the first episode. Dracula is, obviously, the murderer, but the actual twist is truly unexpected. Agatha Van Helsing is one of those rare and delightful characters that comes across as genuinely witty, intelligent, and dangerous in all the best ways. There's very few times a character has done something and I've thought to myself "wow, that makes perfect sense, but I never would've thought to do it". She's a treat, and that wonderful character writing makes every interaction between her and Dracula come across as a devilish battle of wits. What's more, there's some genuinely heartfelt and emotional moments between the background characters that stick with me to this day.

Then you hit the cutoff point.

If you've liked the series so far, and have become attached to its tone, characters, and general quality of writing, you should stop watching five minutes before the ending of the second episode. Unless you want to be disappointed in the worst sort of way I would encourage you to cut your losses, switch off your TV, say to yourself "Damn, that was a really good two-part movie", and move on. It is not worth it. You have been warned.

Beyond this point there be spoilers.

So Episode Fucking Three

Up until now, the series had been doing a great job of constructing some very compelling, well written, and likeable characters. Agatha Van Helsing in particular was genuinely intelligent, witty, bitingly cynical, and had a character dynamic with Dracula that could only be described as "If we weren't diametrically morally opposed to one another, we'd be fucking". The crewmen of the ship they came in on were, while not heavily characterized, very human and easy to sympathize with. Johnathan Harker was both tragic and heroic while he lasted and, while I don't remember much of Mina, I remember liking her well enough. So, what do you do with a slam dunk roster of characters like that?

Well, you kill them all off in an offscreen time jump of course!

Episode three takes place in modern London and I immediately hate it. Agatha, my favorite character, is gone, as are all of the characters we've come to know and love. In their place is Agatha's indirect descendant, played by the same actress and so woefully boring that I don't remember her name at time of writing, and a couple of other generic stooges. There's a junior researcher at the facility, a couple of wildly shallow club-girl side characters that he pines after, and a few others that I forget.

If I'm completely honest with you, I didn't watch the entirety of episode three, and you'll see why in a second.

So the episode starts. We open up on Dracula, soaking wet and crawling out of the ocean on the shore of modern day London. He's immediately surrounded by a group of mercenaries armed with cameras, a helicopter, and conventional firearms, along with our new Agatha Van Helsing wannabe. Long story short, he kills a mercenary and escapes into the city as day breaks, has his cliche little "woah I'm immortal and experiencing the modern world for the first time" bit, and then gets captured in the sloppiest way imaginable.

Turns out, Mina spent the vast majority of her inherited money on creating a foundation in memory of John Harker with the specific purpose of locating and containing Dracula. It's sort of like the Foundation from the SCP universe except they only contain one mildly boring, vaguely bisexual anomaly. They've got money, professional mercenaries, trained scientists, a secret Dracula holding chamber specifically for holding Dracula, the works.

So Dracula gets dragged into the Dracula containment chamber, and this thing is the real deal. Constructed of bulletproof plexiglass and steel, able to be remotely exposed to sunlight at any time, surrounded by open floor and armed mercenaries, it's pretty safe to say that this Dracula containment chamber is easily the finest chamber ever constructed with the sole intention of containing Dracula. All he's got is a table, a chemical toilet, and an ipad loaded with digital books. He gets fed blood through a tube at regular intervals and occasionally gets poked at by researchers trying to figure out just what the fuck he is.

Now, by this point, we the audience were doing our best to get back onboard. Sure, our favorite characters were gone, save for the villain, and sure, the tone had taken a weird lurch with the time jump, but that was all fine. Just have Agatha's great great grand-niece be just as charming as she was and we can all have a grand time watching Dracula masterfully manipulate his way out of the Dracula time-out box. We've seen his guile before, so we're all primed and ready for another fantastic battle of wits, just like on the boat.

But that doesn't happen.

What follows is a brief summary of events that happen in the episode in vaguely chronological order. By reading it you may be made privy to the sudden and utter incompetence of the new lead character and to the wildly stupid turn that the writing took in episode three.

The Harker Foundation finds Draculas coffin at the bottom of the sea in the wreckage of the ship from episode two. For no good reason, Agatha's descendant (the director of this foundation) personally goes to scuba dive into the ocean to take a look at the unconscious Drac.

Also for no good goddamn reason, she sticks her whole ass thumb in his mouth to feel his fangs. He bites her thumb off instinctively, giving him the small amount of blood he needs to reawaken. That's one instance of complete incompetence before the ten minute mark.

Instead of recovering the coffin immediately, the Foundation pulls back and waits on shore with armed mercenaries until night falls hours later. Why they don't just nab him immediately while hes sleeping, I don't know, but I'll count that as a second instance of complete incompetence.

Drac escapes and kills some people, including a few mercenaries. It is established that the Foundation has the power and influence to make these deaths disappear.

Drac is transported to the Dracula holding chamber.

In the course of less than 24 hours, Dracula FIGURES OUT HOW A TABLET WORKS, GUESSES THE FUCKING WIFI PASSWORD BECAUSE ITS HIS FUCKING NAME, AND SKYPE CALLS THE LAW FIRM THAT USED TO REPRESENT HIM TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Do you see why I was furious? Do you see why my friends and I stood up and yelled at the TV screen? Do you see why we turned it off immediately? Do you see why I want to hit Stephen Moffat with a chair?

Needless to say, the lawyer takes a call from someone claiming to be a man that employed his firm two centuries prior completely seriously. He walks directly into the facility with no explanation as to how he found out where it was or why the guards let him past, and threatens to sue the Foundation if they continue to hold his client against his will.

The inferior Agatha throws up her hands and says "welp, guess we gotta let him go" and just. Let's Dracula leave. No consideration for the consequences of doing so beforehand. No thought given to the possibility that they might simply inform the relevant authorities that he'd killed people that very night and therefore should be contained and studied. They just fuckin' let him leave.

So lets recount all the insane leaps of logic that need to have transpired in order for this to happen.

One, Dracula would need to have figured out how the internet works within the span of 24 hours despite having only just learned that electricity existed. I'll give that a pass since its implied he can absorb knowledge by drinking blood.

Two, Dracula would have to guess the wifi password for this top secret, high security facility... Which is literally just DRACULA. Why the fuck was it set to his name? Why was he given a tablet that's physically capable of connecting to wifi? Why didn't the mercenaries that guard him at all times not see him using Skype and say "Hmm, maybe we should stop him from doing that"? Moreover, why the fuck does the room he's contained in even have wifi? Isn't everything I just said a massive security oversight for an organization that's poured millions into this containment facility?

Three, Dracula's lawyer would have to believe that an unknown, unsolicited caller, who has neither modern means of identifying himself nor any records verifying his existence for over two hundred years, is genuinely a client of his from two hundred years ago in need of legal counsel. Furthermore, Dracula would need to have some way of communicating his exact location to this man.

Four, the security teams responsible for keeping the facility safe and free of intruders would have to not only let this lawyer into a top secret facility based solely on his own claim that his client was inside, but let him directly into the main holding chamber that is under constant guard all without so much as warning the fucking director of the Facility.

Five, the director of this facility would have had to completely thrown out any alternative to letting a known mass murdering superbeing out of confinement despite full knowledge of what that would entail. They could've just fought the battle in court. It's easy to prove that he needs to be locked up when you can show the judge the bodies of the people he killed that day. Even if that's too much trouble, why not pop the lawyer in the back of the skull and make him disappear like the mercenary? Or Dracula's victims? It can't be that hard if you've done it three times this episode.

It's the kind of twist you would expect out of a piece of satire, not an actual, serious work written by an accredited writer. To this day I have not seen any other work of fiction take such a sudden and sharp decline in quality, and I doubt that I ever will again. It's as though the writers intentionally made every character at least thirty percent stupider just for the sake of giving Dracula his "gotcha".

So what went wrong?

Honestly, I think that the writers mistook their villain for the main character of the series, which ultimately just doesn't work. Sure, we love Dracula. We didn't come to watch the Dracula show out of our rabid love for Johnathan Harker, we came for the big scary villain. The problem is that a villain still has to be a villain. While we do love him, we don't root for him, we root for the people that oppose him despite the odds. They killed off every recurring character except for Dracula and changed the setting and tone so massively that it was completely unrecognizable from the first two episodes, and they did this because they thought the audience be invested enough in this villain for it not to matter. Not only did it backfire, but the ridiculous amount of plot mandated stupidity and Deus Ex Machina that it took to get Dracula out of his first jam in that new setting completely killed any further drive that I had to continue watching.

This lazy twist not only made the main characters look incompetent, it made Dracula look lame. He's the Prince of Darkness. The fucking Nightwalker. The King of Vampires does not call his fucking lawyer.

Anyway, I'm finished with my rant now. Congrats on sticking it out this long. There's no prize or anything.

#dracula 2020 #dracula spoilers #jonathan harker #agatha van helsing #dracula #media critique #long

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rallamajoop · 2 years ago

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Dracula canons in Yuletide 2022

Unsurprisingly, in the wake of that whole Daily Dracula thing, there were a lot of Draculas nominated for this year's Yuletide exchange this year ‒ not just a lot of Dracula characters, but whole different adaptations of the novel. And being that kind of terrible Dracula-nerd, I figured I'd make a list and share some notes on which-version-is-which. Now, I've only seen about half of these, and can't speak to what all the other folks who actually nominated them loved about them, but I'll take any excuse to ramble on about different Dracula-adaptations at this point, so here we go.

We've got a couple of movies, a couple of telemovies, a TV series and even a musical to cover here, so I'm just gonna put them all in chronological order, starting with the novel.

Dracula - Bram Stoker (Novel 1897)

Nominated characters: Abraham Van Helsing Arthur Holmwood The Correspondent Dracula John "Jack" Seward Jonathan Harker Lucy Westenra Lucy Westenra's Mother Mina Murray Harker Mr. Hawkins Mr. Swales Quincey Morris

Damn, Daily Dracula has done it's thing: folks have nominated basically everyone. (Well... except Sister Agatha. GDI, where's Sister Agatha, people?! Has that 2020 Moffat/Gatiss version put everyone off?)

But, moving onto the adaptations-

1. Dracula (Movies - Hammer) (1958-1974)

Nominated characters: Dracula Lawrence Van Helsing | J. Van Helsing Lorrimer Van Helsing

Okay, yes ‒ this nomination was me. Look, Peter Cushing's Van Helsing was being reincarnated into whole new eras and having confusing chemistry with Christopher Lee's Dracula long before anyone ever thought to do the reincarnation-thing with Mina, and I want all the fic about it, is that so wrong? (Or, you know, the excuse to write some myself. Or really anything about these versions of the characters interacting ‒ I'm not picky!)

2. Count Dracula (1977)

Nominated characters: Abraham Van Helsing Jonathan Harker Mina Harker Renfield

One of the two British telemovie Dracula adaptations to come out of the 1970's (the 70's was a BIG decade for Dracula). This one was the more faithful to the novel ‒ too faithful, if anything, since some new ideas or creative storytelling could have gone a long way to distract from the limitations of the budget. That said, I did like their Dracula: the costuming isn't much to write home about, but he has enough presence to elevate every scene he's in (and, I mean, if you're going to get one thing really right in a Dracula adaptation...)

3. Dracula (2006)

Nominated characters: Abraham Van Helsing John Seward Lucy Holmwood Mina Murray

Yet another British television Dracula, this time one where Arthur Holmwood is tricked into helping bring Dracula to British shores by a vampire-worshipping cult, in the mistaken belief the Count can somehow cure him of congenital syphilis. No, really! Seriously though, my biggest disappointment with this one was it didn't go wild and weird enough ‒ the sad soap opera life of Arthur & friends just can't hope to compete with all that high-gothic camp, and 90 minutes just isn't time for all these ideas to breathe. But it must be said, Marc Warren makes a surprisingly compelling Dracula, and his one big vampire-sex-scene with Lucy is... quite something. Basically, I can definitely see why someone might want fic about these versions of the characters ‒ there's lots in this universe left to expand on.

4. Dracula: l'amour plus fort que la mort - Ouali (2011)

Nominated characters: Jonathan Harker Poison Satine Sorci

Well, okay. This one is, er, a French musical version? XD God, do I love the stuff you'll find nominated for Yuletide! So: not a version I'm familiar with, but going by this one summary I found, what we have here is one of the (MANY) post-1991-Coppola-version rip-offs where Mina is a reincarnation of Dracula's wife... but also one where Dracula hasn't spoken since his wife's death, and now employs three very gloriously campy servants to speak for him (Poison, Satine and Sorci, from the noms above). As someone who doesn't speak a word of French and knows this thing only from 5 minutes on youtube (I mean, the whole show's up there, though the quality's not great), these three are great value, and I can totally see why someone would nominate them for Yuletide.

5. Dracula (TV 2013)

Nominated characters: Lucy Westenra Mina Murray Alexander Grayson | Dracula Jayne Wetherby

A short-lived TV series reimagining of Dracula, where the Count shows up in London posing as an American steampunk inventor called Alexander Grayson, and yet another of the (many) post-Coppola versions where Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula's tragically-dead-wife, etc. Admittedly, this is an adaptation I know only by its reputation as the show that that finally gave us lesbian!Lucy (!!!) only to have her turn around and sleep with Jonathan for dubious plot reasons (theFUCK?) ‒ but I'd be the last to judge anyone who enjoyed it as a guilty pleasure and/or just wants to run away with the characters and let them have some real fun.

6. Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021)

Nominated characters: Abraham Van Helsing Arthur Holmwood John Seward Lucy Westenra

Huh. Well, okay. First point: the poster is a lie ‒ this actually seems to be a fairly-straight, (very) low-budget film adaptation of the novel ‒ just one that starts about when Van Helsing arrives (ie, when Lucy is already very ill). So, more drawing-room-drama than Hugh-Jackman-material. Have not seen it, but have a trailer! Now you know just about as much about it as I do.

Honourable mentions

In the "do I even count this?" bonus round, we've also got the 2016 Van Helsing TV series (nominated characters: Axel Miller and Catherine) ‒ a show set post-vampire!apocalypse and starring a Van Helsing descendant. There's also a character called Van Helsing nominated for the Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu | The Vampire Dies in No Time manga, and a "Dracula Vance" nominated for a video game called Panilla Saga, about whom google will tell me nothing very illuminating. Ah, well. Seriously though, the total number of different Van Helsings nominated in this year's Yuletide must be some kind of record.

I'd also be remiss not to mention that the original 1872 Carmilla is also nominated, as is the excellent 1970 Hammer adaptation The Vampire Lovers. And rounding out our list of Victorian vampire lit, some weirdo has also nominated Varney the Vampire, but that one really needs its whole own post...

#Dracula #Dracula Daily #Yuletide 2022 #Hammer Dracula #Count Dracula (1977)#Dracula (2006)#Dracula: l'amour plus fort que la mort #Dracula (2013)#Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021)

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nitrateglow · 2 years ago

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Halloween 2022 marathon:16-18

Deathtrap (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982)

Depressed by the third theatrical flop in a row, thriller playwright Sidney Bruhl (Michael Caine) smells an opportunity when one of his students (Christopher Reeve) sends a cracking good draft to him for a second opinion. Aware this pay could be the hit he needs to revive his flagging career, Sidney’s mind turns to thoughts of theft and murder. And then the twistiest plot ever ensues.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ira Levin’s smash hit play Deathtrap, it is essentially a deconstruction of the style of stage thriller made popular by Agatha Christie and Frederick Knott. It’s extremely meta, and has an absolutely bonkers and unpredictable plot that is at turns hilarious and sinister. It was a massive success in the late 70s, running on Broadway for four years. When Warner Brothers purchased the movie rights, the studio spent over a million dollars for it, which at the time was the highest sum ever paid for the film rights of a non-musical play.

I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot in case anyone here has never read/seen the play or watched the movie before. I read the play years ago and remember reeling from all the turns the story took. It’s great fun and I would love to see this done on-stage someday.

I will say that the movie benefits from theatrically inspired direction and great performances. I was particularly blown away by Christopher Reeve. It saddens me that this man is only known as Superman, because he was immensely talented. I don’t want to say anymore because even praising his acting will spoil the movie-- just go get a copy!

Dracula (dir. Tod Browning, 1931)

Do I need to even share the plot? Count Dracula moves to England to snack on some fresh blood. Dr. Van Helsing says no. With a stake.

Tod Browning’s Dracula was a huge smash in 1931, but in the subsequent decades, historians and horror fans have feuded over whether it’s actually a “good film.” It is true that the screenplay has a lot of talky scenes-- a carryover from the movie’s stage source material. The middle act drags a bit too and some of the supporting actors are stiff and awkward. (Some might include the rubber bat as a flaw, but the sight of it bouncing giddily on a string fills me with glee, so I give it a pass.)

However, I still say the movie’s strengths outshine its weaknesses. Nitrate Diva made a great defense of the film years ago, which is much more eloquent than anything I could ever write about it, but I want to quote it in part:

Dracula may appear primitive, but therein lies its uncanny beauty. Sometimes sophistication isn’t half as convincing as simplicity. Eschewing ostentatious special effects and action sequences, the director chose to chill his audience with the silence and stillness of the grave.

As the documentary Universal Horror pointed out, audiences were accustomed to music during the silent era, so Browning wisely deployed the hissing nothingness of Dracula’s early talkie soundtrack to spook viewers. Similarly, the somnambulistic staging and acting reflect the emptiness of Dracula himself, a walking, talking corpse. Why do we wonder at film’s inertia? Its deadly title character freezes all that surrounds him, transforming every space into a tomb.

Basically, the film’s “creakiness” is part of what makes its atmosphere so compelling. (I find the same is true of Frankenstein.)

And then there’s the movie’s golden trio: Lugosi, Frye, and Van Sloan. Bela Lugosi is still absolutely uncanny and charismatic as Dracula, and Dwight Frye is both creepy and funny as Renfield. Edward Van Sloan makes for a great foil to Dracula, every bit as strong-willed and determined. I love the scene where he resists Dracula’s mind control in particular.

So yeah, the critics can try to stake this movie through the heart all they want. Flawed it may be, but it still endures as iconic horror cinema-- and a staple of my Halloween viewing.

Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)

Master surgeon Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur) desperately seeks to repair the face of his disfigured daughter Christianne (Edith Scob), so he starts kidnapping young women and removing theirs. However, his efforts prove futile and with each failure, Christiane only seems to fall deeper into despair and perhaps even madness...

I’ve known about Eyes Without a Face for years, but never got around to watching it until now. Holy crap-- it’s every bit as good as the hype: beautifully shot in black and white, and at points, genuinely uncomfortable (let’s just say they show one of the surgeries where the doctor removes the women’s faces-- and it’s genuinely disturbing and gross).

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how horror is best paired with two other moods: comedy or melancholy. Eyes Without a Face weds its horror to the latter and the result is a film that is lyrical and touching just as much as it is viscerally shocking. You feel bad for just about all the characters, even the villains.

What I find most fascinating about the movie is the dynamic between Christiane and Dr. Genessier. What a complicated duo-- Christiane longs for a normal face again, but she becomes horrified when she learns how her father has essentially kidnapped and maimed innocent women to pursue his goals. Christiane also harbors an amount of bitterness towards her father, who she sees as tyrannical in his desire to control everyone and everything. It is significant that the accident that disfigured her was his fault, the result of his dominating behavior manifesting itself behind the wheel.

As for Genessier, he’s more than just a tyrannical brute or your average mad scientist. His yearning to restore Christianne’s face is motivated by many factors: guilt, love, and yes, a desire to pursue his scientific interests (we see he also experiments on animals, suggesting that even though he loves his daughter, he does somewhat see her as a convenient human guinea pig). However, even he is disturbed by what he’s doing to his victims-- he’s reluctant to even kill them when he’s finished stealing their skin, though his empathy only goes so far.

The sad, sinister atmosphere reminded me a lot of another French horror classic, Les Diaboliques... and then I learned some of the writers behind the source material for that film actually did have a hand in the screenplay for Eyes Without a Face! So if you’re a fan of that film, you’ll probably enjoy this one too. I cannot recommend it enough!

#deathtrap #dracula #dracula 1931 #eyes without a face #thoughts #halloween 2022 marathon

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flutteringphalanges · 4 years ago

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Summary: “Am I in Hell?” Agatha’s voice was hoarse, a hint of fear in her tone. “That depends on your definition,” Dracula answered. “Perhaps.” His fingers felt cool against her burning skin, the fever raging through her body. “If you’re going to kill me, then do it,” she mumbled. The count chuckled, gazing into her eyes. “On the contrary,” he smirked. “I’m going to save you.”

((In which Dracula cares for a gravely ill Agatha))

Characters: Agatha Van Helsing/Dracula

Rating: M

Read on FFN and AO3

A/N: Well it’s been several months! Hope you guys haven’t forgotten about this little fic! I won’t keep you waiting too long! I highly suggest you read the second author’s note which can be located at the end of the chapter on either FFN or AO3 if you have any questions! With that said, feedback is greatly loved and appreciated! Huge thanks to @mitsukatsu for always letting me bounce ideas off of her! Thanks, girl! Hope ya’ll enjoy! -Jen

Chapter Thirteen

Though the sky was shrouded in near darkness, the full moon peaked through just enough to illuminate the scattered clouds that blanketed the night. It was eerie to say the least and even Agatha, despite what she now was, stuck close to Dracula as they made their way down an off-beaten path towards the small village. If her still heart could, it would be beating with such ferocity that her very chest would've felt the crushing blow of each throb.

"You're awfully quiet." Her mate commented, offering his hand as they stepped over a log. "You have nothing to fear. It is quite a simple process and I assure you that I would not allow any harm to come to you."

"That's not what I'm afraid of you." Agatha said quietly. "I am not worried about my sake."

"Then what?" The Count inquired, stopping them both in their tracks. "This isn't about your moral standards is it, Agatha? We've discussed this on numerous occasions. I only wish what is best for you. I think in time you will see that. How much, I cannot promise, but it will get easier." He smiled gently and tilted her chin to press his lips to hers. "Come," he urged. "Let us not wait. Time seemingly moves much faster than one would presume."

Part of her wanted to say something. Outright deny any participation in this immoral act. But perhaps it was her selfish love for him that even made her consider the possibility. Why was romance so damn desirable? Holding her in a vice grip where eternity with her former enemy was a far more pleasant option than being without? Was this love sickness? Could he feel the same way? That only made it worse. The former nun sighed, trying to clear her head of such thoughts. So much had happened in these past few months. Her skull hurt and she wasn't quite sure if it was due to her fall or just the strain of it all.

"Ah! We're here!" The excitement in Dracula's voice pulled the former nun from her thoughts. She looked to the vampire, his teeth glinting in what little moonlight shone from the clouds. "It's right outside the city of Brașov, secluded enough that we shouldn't be bothered." He reached down and gave her hand a squeeze. "Fear not," he murmured. "I will be right by your side guiding you the entire time." Though his words offered little relief.

The village was nothing special, far from appeasing to the eye. It was small, perhaps used at most for those passing through or people making just enough to get by. Agatha absentmindedly dug her nails into the palm of her hand, feeling their newly found strength press indents into the skin. Dracula was speaking to her, but his words sounded so distant as she took in her surroundings. As a greater part of her wanted to turn back and return to the castle, an unexpected sight captured her immediate attention.

"No, please! I'm begging you! Leave me be!"

From the entrance of an alleyway, a woman stumbled backwards, her hands outstretched as if in some poor attempt to protect herself. Agatha stepped forward instinctively, but found her mate's arm outstretched in front preventing her from going forward.

"Wait." He said quietly. "Allow this to play out."

Agatha threw him a look of horror about to protest when a stranger strode out from the shadows something glinting in his hand. Without warning, the figure slashed the object at the woman's neck causing a gurgling choke of surprise to escape past her lips. Something sweet filled the air. The scent was more alluring than any blossom the former nun could remember smelling. Blood. Fresh blood. Human blood.

Whizzing, the lady collapsed on the ground, too weak to ward off the man as he began to dig through what little satchel she carried. Finally snapping from her trance, Agatha looked in horror at the sight before her. At the intense feelings that bombarded her mind after witnessing what she had just seen. How both her former and immortal sides were battling against her sanity.

Agatha's eyes remained locked on the man's as he stood unmoved just meters from her. With her new found abilities, even in the nearly moonless night, she could make out the thick, crimson liquid as he dripped down the shimmering blade. It was almost teasing. Watching it fall to the ground below where it became soiled by dirt.

"What are you waiting for?" A voice coaxed softly from behind, its excitement barely masked. "Go, I'll follow."

Yet Agatha's attention was not drawn to Dracula. Instead, her gaze briefly flickered to the figure lying nearly lifeless off to the robber's side. The woman's hands wearily grasped at the deep slash drawn across her throat as her life blood gushed between her fingers. An easier prey, she knew, but not one of good consciousness. If the former nun was to kill, then there had to be a reason.

"Two for the price of one." She heard Dracula say from behind. "The girl is merely a mercy kill."

They had different ideas about compassion, and the younger vampire's attention redirected once more to the man. The soon to be murderer. If it could, her blood would be boiling. A strange emotion began to fill her. Almost primal in nature. Her smooth teeth began to shift as she took a step forward towards the thief.

"Stay-stay back!" The man warned, swinging his knife shakily between Dracula's and Agatha's direction. "I'm warning you!"

But Agatha's ears no longer heard the desperate, empty threats. Nor did she feel the anticipation of her mate by her side. Instead, she lunged forward and knocked the man to the floor. Predator finally becoming prey.

Fangs cut through soft flesh like a spoon through room temperature butter. Instantly a flood of hot, sweet liquid coated her tongue and flowed down her throat in deep, hungry gulps. Agatha wasn't sure what she had been expecting. As a child, she'd once fallen and bitten straight through her bottom lip. Through the pain, the blood had tasted salty. Unpleasant. But now, here where she feasted, it was like honey straight from the comb. This wasn't the putrid taste from animal gore. No. No, this was far, far delectable.

"Agatha."

A hand clamped down on her shoulder but Agatha ignored it, choosing instead to keep suckling away at whatever remained of her victim. The grip, though gentle, tightened slightly causing an unanticipated low grumble to escape from deep within the former nun's throat. Finally, she sat up, blood dripping unceremoniously down her chin. She blinked, slightly confused for a moment as she began to take in her surroundings once more. Dracula smiled fondly at her, an almost proud sort of expression. Agatha blinked again and, looking from the dead man to her lover, quickly wiped away at her chin in slight embarrassment.

"I must admit I am quite impressed." The Count mused, admiring her handy work. "You took to it much better than I had anticipated." He ran a hand through her hair, his dark eyes flickering away from the body. "Now might I interest you in some dessert?"

The blood that bubbled around the entry wound on the woman's neck was already blackening with clots when Agatha arose to her feet. With great care, the younger vampire made her way over, careful not to step on the crumpled body. The lady gazed up at her with grey, uncertain eyes, each breath more raspier than the prior. Perhaps she didn't see the act Agatha had just committed, or was too out of it to even fully absorb what had occurred.

"Scared…" It was about all Agatha could clearly make out. "Please…"

Ignoring what Dracula could possibly be thinking, his Bride gingerly sat on the ground and cradled the woman like one does a babe. Her skin was grey, cold as what little blood left stuck to Agatha like a paste. A waste, she knew, but her own needs were none of her current concerns. She held the woman close, as best as one could for both being around the same height.

"There is nothing to fear." The former nun said softly, her eyes locked onto the woman's. "Soon there will be no pain. No horror. Be at peace with your Savior. Go now with God."

Her pulse stopped and Agatha watched the woman's chest rise and fall one more time before all with still. Gently, she closed both eyelids, covering the irises that reflected the moonlight like glass. She turned her head to see Dracula watching her, his expression hard to read. Chewing on the inside of her cheek, she lowered the woman back down onto the ground and rose to her feet.

"She didn't deserve to die like that." Agatha finally said, not turning to meet the vampire's gaze. "No matter what you say, I made the right call."

The Count exhaled. "I take it you know your way enough to start walking back towards the direction of the castle?" Agatha merely nodded and Dracula cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose then I'll clean up for tonight. We can make that a lesson for another day." He smiled, trying to lighten the tension. "You did well, Agatha. Give yourself some credit. We'll have to celebrate amongst ourselves."

Dracula kissed her cheek and Agatha forced a small smile. She tried not to look at the two bodies as her mate gave her hand a small squeeze. Though she physically hadn't felt this great in a long while, the repercussions of what she had done had struck her hard.

Honestly, she quite yearned for the vampire's company as she followed the trail that led back to their home. Right now, the idea of being alone wasn't all that pleasant. Then again, crushing the chest of a human to prevent it from turning was far less appealing. So she went by memory, trying to push past what she had done until the castle was in sight.

"Foolish, foolish…" She thought to herself, the brush and stone crunching under her feet. "Just let it slip away. If there is some higher power that thinks I have done some good enough to deserve the least bit of mercy, allow me to forget for a few precious moments."

A humorless chuckle escaped from between her lips. At least Dracula hadn't called her out on her biblical speech. That had taken her by some surprise. But as a nun, the dying always seemed calmed by the idea that God awaited for them with open arms and complete, forgiving nature. She hadn't quite understood that. Then again, she hadn't quite understood much of that the more she considered it.

A pair of arms wound themselves around her waist just as Agatha reached the top of a hill. Dracula pressed his face into the crook of her neck and inhaled. She could smell the heavy scent of blood on him, though it was far from pleasant. Corpse blood never did have the same effect she was beginning to pick up.

"You walk too terribly slow." He murmured against her skin. "If I were a fox and you were a rabbit, you'd be dead."

"Always lovely with your analogies." Agatha snorted, rolling her eyes. "And we both know I'm too wise to be a rabbit." She paused, hesitation in her voice. "Is it done?"

"As I've said before," Dracula turned the former nun so that she now faced him. "You are my true bride. I have no intention to turn others." Her eyes narrowed, pressing him for a better form of confirmation. "Yes. You have nothing to worry about." The Count exclaimed, admiring her in the moonlight. "Have I told you how ravishing you look tonight?"

Forget. Forget. Agatha gazed up into his dark eyes, taking in the lust and excitement that they held. She could taste the thief lingering on her tongue. Feel the dried blood from the innocent woman against her skin and on her clothes. Forget. Forget. She wanted to block it out. And here stood Dracula. Completely unaware, far too focused on what he thought was right. Was okay. In that moment, she needed him to help her forget. Wanted him to make her forget.

"Then show me." She whispered, his eyebrow quirked in surprise as she moved his arms to the straps of her dress. "You tell me I'm exquisite, but words have no meaning over actions." Agatha locked eyes with him. "Take me here. Right now."

Dracula's lips curled into a smile. "I did not realize how much tonight meant to you."

A blur of emotions. A tidal wave of feelings. Agatha bit her lower lip, glancing once at the night sky before back at her lover. They still had time. A few hours before dawn. They'd make it back. She just needed to be distracted. If just for a little while. Forget.

Agatha forced her second smile of the night. "Then let me show you."

#Dracula #Dracula 2020 #Dragatha #Agatha Van Helsing #BBC Dracula #Dracula x Agatha #Bad Moon Rising

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roominthecastle · 5 years ago

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[For Dracula] we wanted somebody who could own the part the way Christopher Lee once did. So it was extraordinary when the very first person we looked at was exactly the impossible brief we’d given out to our brilliant casting director. We watched The Square and went, “Oh look, there is Dracula.” Physically, he is ideal. He’s astonishingly handsome, looks like two and a half James Bonds at the same time. Literally tall, dark, and handsome. Very tall. He has amazing cheekbones and his eyes are like black pits. But also, he is very funny. You can tell from the first frame [of The Square] he’s got funny bones. And the Dracula we were trying to come up with was a “more fully rounded inhuman being”. So we wanted to give him a very dry sense of humor because I think if you were 400 years old, you’d have one.

[With Agatha] we started with the idea of “atheist nun”. A nun who, as she got older, realized, “I don’t believe in any of this” and started researching the dark arts. Immediately, that character bounced off the page. “Atheist nun” is Van Helsing. It’s Sister Agatha Van Helsing. And we were immediately realizing it’s correct. Who is Dracula’s arch enemy? A woman wearing a crucifix. She is wearing the superhero outfit already that is appropriate to battling vampires. And Dolly can turn any line funny. She’s amazing. Sparky and funny and slightly quirky. And she’s got that off-kilter, sort of twisted smile. When Dracula arrives at the convent, she looks out the window and says, “How exciting!” There’s that wrongness. You want a hero who you think will plunge you into danger all the time. Sister Agatha is always gonna take tremendous risks and there’s just a lot of strange things going on when Dracula and Agatha have their face-off. Because as much as they sort of loathe each other, it’s also the most interesting conversation either of them have ever had.

Dracula is like the dark compass. The darkness points you to the light and that became a whole thread. Agatha doesn’t believe anymore but if he’s the ultimate evil, there must be a devil, therefore… There is something about Sister Agatha leading the charge, deliberately taking on the vampire because she’s simply fascinated by him. And Dracula thinks, “She’s great and smart. I’d like to get to know her better.” which, in his case, means opening the jugular. Agatha is full of learning and insight and intelligence. When he drinks her blood, he learns. In our version of the story, blood carries everything with it. He thinks she is an exceptional vintage and says, “I’m gonna make you last.” There is nothing good, kind, or compassionate about this. He does like her, though. He’s careful how much he drinks, how much he makes her dream to make it nice while she thinks she’s in this outside-of-time world.

--- Dracula commentary by Mark Gatiss & Steven Moffat [x] [x] [x]

#bbc dracula #claes bang #dolly wells #dracula x agatha #long post #mine #as they say he's been cooped up in his castle and she in the convent both bored af #and then they meet and all hell breaks loose and the fun begins #seriously that convent gate scene i will never be over it #he arrives w/ full-blown theatrics amidst a literal cloud of bats #and agatha's like 'put away your silly pets i can't hear myself think'#and he immediately does ??! lmaoo #i am fascinated by this to an unhealthy degree #pushing and pulling each other to mental/physical extremes to learn more about each other #while being equally stubborn and unyielding until the very last moment when he bends and she finally drags him into the light #d e l i c i o u s #sidenote: creator commentary that's not full of b.s. i am not used to this?? ? just pleasantly confused and thankful

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latter-day-saint-nick · 5 years ago

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I heard that the BBC Dracula adaptation written by Stephen Moffat was really bad, and it made me curious to see just how bad it was, so I decided to watch it for myself. It was not one of my smarter decisions.

But in order that my suffering won’t have been completely in vain, I’ll recap it here for those who are curious as well, to spare you the pain of actually having to watch it. You’re welcome!

Let me describe the viewing experience as best I can.

I have a BBC iPlayer account, so I could watch the show legally. My wife tells me to pirate it instead to avoid giving Moffat the views. She is right. I click on the first episode.

Episode 1

We start with a framing device of a severely ill Jonathan Harker in a Hungarian monastery, telling his story to two nuns. I do not hate this framing device. The original novel was told through diary entries, newspaper articles and letters, so having different characters tell the story of what happened to them to others is a neat way to adapt this type of literary device. The dialogue quickly takes a turn for the ridiculous, though, when one of the nuns, Sister Agatha, asks Jonathan in a silly accent if he had sexual intercourse with Count Dracula. Because queerbaiting? Is vampirism an STD now?

Still, the show tricks us into thinking that it’s going to be a fairly straightforward adaptation of the story as Jonathan recounts how he arrived at the castle, met the Count and became his prisoner. Later, this will turn out to be a sweet, sweet lie, but I don’t know that yet. At first, Dracula looks about a hundred years old and has a bad Romanian accent, but the more he feeds on Jonathan, the younger he gets, and the more refined and posh his British accent. Because this Dracula does not just absorb his victims’ lifeforce but also their knowledge. I find that stupid.

Dracula says the famous “I do not drink... wine” line. Badly. Still, the reference is mildly cute the first time. He repeats the line several times throughout the show, and it gets progressively less funny each time.

Jonathan reads a letter from his fiancee, Mina. In it, she jokes about how she’s going to sleep with all the cute men in the neighbourhood while he’s gone, as well as the adorable bar maiden, if she needs some variety. I sigh as I realize that this is probably what Moffat considers good queer representation.

At one point Jonathan talks about falling asleep, and Sister Agatha proceeds to ask him if he had dirty dreams about his fiancee. She persists with the question, even after Jonathan tells her that that’s private. It doesn’t seem like a pertinent question, but I guess Sister Agatha is just a pervert. Or maybe Moffat is.

Jonathan finishes his story about how he escaped from the castle. He bemoans that he can’t go home to England, because he is such a changed man and he can’t even remember his fiancee’s face. Sister Agatha reveals that the other nun with her is actually Mina. What a tweest! Apparently even before Jonathan told his story, Sister Agatha managed to figure out that he is English, tracked him down, found his fiancee and had her brought over to Budapest. The show is clearly hoping that the unexpectedness of this twist is going to distract us from the fact that it makes no damn sense at all.

It also turns out that Jonathan has become a vampire, and the sight of blood nearly makes him attack Mina. Of course, being one of the main heroes, he was never turned in the novel, not that that matters.

At this point Dracula shows up at the gates of the monastery in the form of a wolf. And I don’t mean that he shapeshifts like an Animorph. He is literally inside the wolf’s body, and he claws his way out of it, emerging at the gates naked and covered in wolf blood. I really don’t know why.

He and Sister Agatha proceed to have a sass-off. My wife makes fun of the dialogue by saying that it’s basically this:

“I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!” “Yeah, but I’m a badass sister!” “Yeah, but I’m Dracula!”

By the time my wife has finished the joke, the banter is still going on. It feels like it’s never going to end.

The Mother Superior tells the nuns to arm themselves. My wife starts wondering if we’re actually watching a Mel Brooks movie. Also, Sister Agatha is revealed to be Van Helsing. This is not as meaningful as the show seems to think it is, as she and Dracula haven’t had any past encounters. So it’s really just, “Oh, she’s actually a gender-swapped character from the book. That’s cool, I guess.

Finally, Dracula slinks off because he can’t get inside the monastery without being invited. He manages to find Jonathan, now fully a vampire, at a window and gets him to invite him in. You’d think this would be the end of the stupidity, but clearly I haven’t suffered enough yet.

Jonathan finds Mina and Sister Agatha. Sister Agatha tries to fend him off, since he’s, you know, a vampire and tried to feed off of Mina earlier. Mina, however, believes that the power of love can save him, so she approaches him. I point out that in the book, Mina was characterized as being very intelligent, not that that matters. As it turns out, it wasn’t Jonathan at all, but Dracula, wearing Jonathan’s skin, which he rips off, like something out of Hellraiser. He never uses this power again in the rest of the series.

The episode ends with him attacking the two women. Against my better judgement, I decide to watch the next episode, because while this was bad, it was bad in a fascinating way. Almost like something Tommy Wiseau would make. Okay, maybe not. Tommy Wiseau as Dracula would have been a lot more entertaining.

I click on the next episode.

Episode 2

We start with another framing device. This time Dracula is telling the story of his voyage to London to Sister Agatha while they’re playing chess. See, it’s symbolic, because they’re having a game of wits where they’re trying to outsmart each other! Okay, to be honest, I have no idea what Sister Agatha is trying to do. I guess Moffat is too clever for me.

Sister Agatha asks Dracula how he got to England. He tells her that he went on a ship. Inexplicably, this is not the end of that, but he proceeds to tell her about everything that happened on the ship, including conversations between characters that he wasn’t there for. Maybe he was listening at their doors.

I sense impending doom when I realize that this boat journey is going to take up the entire episode. In the book, it only took up a few pages, not that that matters.

Rather than staying in his coffin in the hold during the day, as he does in the book (not that that matters), Dracula mingles with the passengers. When Sister Agatha expresses surprises at that, he comments on how stupid it would be to stay in his coffin in the hold. You know, more adaptations should have lines about how stupid the source material is. It makes you look so smart.

How does Dracula avoid the sunlight during the day, though? Never fear, he simply spits out a pall of fog that surrounds the ship at all times and blocks out the sunlight, because I guess that’s a power he has. Like his wearing of other creatures’ skin, it’s not one he ever uses again, though. He tells Sister Agatha, “Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you.” Because referencing songs from a hundred years in the future is apparently also a power that he has.

We are introduced to the other passengers, who are a surprisingly diverse bunch. I can’t get too excited about this, however, as I know that they are all going to die. One of the passengers is an Indian doctor who has encountered the undead in the past. That would probably make for a more interesting story than this one, but then again, I don’t really want Moffat to tell it, so I don’t know why I’m complaining.

Dracula starts killing off crew and passengers one by one. I keep expecting the show to cut back to the chess game, with him telling Sister Agatha, “To make a long story short, I killed them all.”

The passengers begin to fear a killer on board, but never seem to suspect Dracula, who plays them against each other. They also discover that they’re all travelling to England at the behest of the same mysterious benefactor, who of course is Dracula, using a pseudonym. Because he hand-picked all of them for the special qualities he would gain from drinking their blood or something. It is way more convoluted than it needs to be. Is Moffat capable of writing a protagonist who is not an arrogant white man too clever for everyone around him? We may never know...

Throughout the episode there’s references to an unseen invalid staying in cabin 9. It turns out to be Sister Agatha, whom Dracula has been steadily draining. The chess game is just a hallucination that he induces in her while he drinks her blood. What a tweest!

Just like in the previous episode, the framing device is dropped about two-thirds through and we are now seeing the story in present tense. Dracula frames Sister Agatha as being the mystery killer, but she manages to reveal that he is a vampire just as she is about to get hanged by the crew. They manage to fend him off, but not before a few more characters die by being incredibly stupid.

One of the characters is a young English lord who just got married to a rich heiress, but is secretly having an affair with an African man pretending to be his servant. I can never remember his name, so I call him Gaylord (I’m allowed to make jokes like this). Gaylord is Dracula’s new business partner and he betrays the rest of the humans, because he thinks Dracula is his BFF and values his skills as a businessman. As it turns out, Dracula only chose Gaylord because of his wife’s wealth. Now that he has killed her, her money goes to Gaylord, and by draining Gaylord, it goes to Dracula. I was unaware that being someone’s business partner entitles you to inherit all their money after their death, so I assume that Dracula acquires people’s money by drinking their blood, just like he acquires their skills and attributes.

Sister Agatha assumes command over the ship, using her divine nun powers, I guess, and she prepares for Dracula to return and finish off the rest of the humans. I get bored and finish a chapter in a book I was reading earlier.

Eventually Sister Agatha blows up the ship to prevent Dracula from ever reaching England, which they keep referring to as “the New World”. That’s not what that term means, but who cares at this point? Dracula, encased in one of his boxes, sinks to the bottom of the ocean, only to break out and walk the rest of the way to England along the ocean floor. There he is greeted by cars and helicopters and someone who looks like Sister Agatha, but wearing modern clothes. What a tweest! Did it take him a hundred years to break out of his casket, or is this like The Village, where we were in modern times all along? The episode ends here, so I guess I’ll have to watch the next one to find out.

I am curious to see this stupidity unfold, but not sure I can take any more right now. But my wife applies some peer pressure, and I put on the final episode. Pray for me!

Episode 3

The previous two episodes were pretty bad, yes, but mostly in a way I can handle and even laugh at. They have not at all prepared me for what I am about to witness.

This episode doesn’t have a framing device, which makes me wonder why we bothered with those in the other two.

The Sister Agatha clone turns out to be her great-grandniece, Zoe. So it’s like Back to the Future where people keep having relatives who look exactly like them. Except Back to the Future is a comedy, and this is meant to be taken seriously.

Dracula escapes from the Anti-Dracula Brigade on the beach and breaks into some poor woman’s home after killing her husband and stuffing him in the fridge. I’m not sure if this is meant to be funny or scary. It ends up being neither. Dracula kills the woman as well, after lecturing her for taking all her modern-day luxuries for granted. Social commentary, I guess?

We are introduced to Seward, a young medical student who makes up for his lack of personality with a creepy obsession with his friend, a vapid, selfish party girl. Yes, this is Lucy Westenra. I found her a likable character in the novel. Not that that matters. I call this Lucy a slut, only for Lucy to make a comment on slut-shaming, which makes me feel bad. The irony is that I’m pretty sure we’re meant to see Lucy as slutty and shallow.

We’re also introduced to Quincey. He’s a douchebag. In the novel he was kind, brave and heroic. Not that that... whatever.

Seward is contacted by the Anti-Dracula Brigade, which is actually called the Jonathan Harker Foundation, but I prefer Anti-Dracula Brigade. It was formed by Sister Agatha’s relatives and Mina Murray with the goal to find Dracula and then to keep him alive to study him. I honestly would have thought that Mina would want Dracula dead, after he terrorized her and murdered her fiance, rather than sticking him in a cage for science, but it’s not like character motivations have to make sense. After all, this is Moffat, bitch!

Van Helsing explains to her students that Dracula was in suspended animation for over a hundred years at the bottom of the ocean until she accidentally woke him by sticking her fingers in his mouth, which allowed him to draw blood and be renewed. She doesn’t explain why her Anti-Dracula Brigade consists of medical students, rather than experts in their fields. She also doesn’t explain why he didn’t grow old again, like he was at the start of episode 1, after not having had anything to eat for over 120 years.

Dracula has been caught and is contained in a cell at the Brigade’s headquarters. I honestly don’t remember how that happened. Did they forget to show us that or did I just black out? Both seem like likely options. The cell contains what I assume is a Kindle, to keep Dracula occupied. Van Helsing comes to talk to him, and he scoffs at the idea of a woman being in charge. She tells him that he slept through the women’s rights movement. I am paralyzed with fear that Moffat is going to attempt to explain women’s rights to me. Why would God test me like this? My relief knows no bounds when the characters change the subject immediately. God is good after all.

This reprieve doesn’t last long. My faith is once again tested when I am forced to witness one of the most idiotic scenes I have ever had the misfortune to watch on screen. It begins when Renfield is brought in. I know that a Dracula adaptation turning silly when Renfield is introduced is not unusual, but Moffat always strives to exceed expectations of ridiculousness. In this version Renfield is Dracula’s lawyer, working for the same firm that he hired 120 years ago when Jonathan was their representative. They have been Skyping, using what I thought was a Kindle, but turns out to be a proper tablet. It wasn’t supposed to be connected to the internet, but all Dracula had to do was guess the WiFi password. Which was his own name.

I cannot deal with this. This scene has broken me. I am a broken man. I cry out in anguish and despair, for what else can I do? My wife, who has gone to the kitchen to get herself a drink, comes to see if I am okay. I am not. I may never be okay again. Moffat has marred my soul forever.

Renfield argues that the Anti-Dracula Brigade is keeping Dracula against his will and that he hasn’t actually done anything illegal, so they are forced to set him free. On the way out, Dracula finds Seward’s phone and uses it to meet up with Lucy. There’s also something about Van Helsing having cancer and drinking some of Dracula’s blood in the hopes that it will cure her. I don’t really care about this, but it’s important to the plot.

There’s a time-skip of a few months. Lucy is engaged to Quincey, but still sneaks off regularly for dates with Dracula where she lets him feed off her. I suspect that this is Moffat’s attempt at making the character more feminist. You see, instead of just passively being attacked by Dracula in her sleep at night, she actively goes out to find him and chooses to be drained by him! This does not make her a better character. Really, it just makes her seem stupid as well as callous, since she doesn’t give a damn about any of Dracula’s other victims who don’t give him consent to drink their blood.

There is a very annoying reference to the novel when a vampire child calls Lucy “Bloofer Lady”. Like the wine line, it sounds more stupid every time the show repeats it. Also, the vampire kid shows up in one more scene before Dracula kills him. Glad he served a point.

Dracula finally drains Lucy. Her family holds a funeral, thinking that she’s dead. But as she’s been infected with vampirism, she is fully conscious while she is being cremated. So we get to watch her burn alive, screaming in pain all the while. Hey, did I mention that Lucy is played by a black actress? Remember in season 10 of Doctor Who when something terrible would happen to Bill Potts every other episode, like having a hole shot through her chest or being turned into a Cyberman? Now, I’m not saying that Moffat enjoys having horrifying things happen to his black female characters... but I’m not not saying it either.

Lucy escapes from her coffin and takes revenge on the crematorium workers. During this scene we only see her reflection, in which she looks normal, which makes it painfully obvious that this is only how she sees herself, and in reality she’s going to be revealed to be horribly burned. The show plays coy with this for an annoyingly long time.

Van Helsing, still dying of cancer, breaks out of the hospital with help from Seward and they go visit Dracula in his flat. Yes, Dracula has a flat. It’s not hidden or anything. It’s even listed in the phone book. Look, it’s almost over, so who cares?

Lucy shows up as well and after more pointless build-up, we finally get to see her real appearance, which, surprise, surprise, is horribly burned. She is oblivious to this, because vampires’ reflections are weird in a way that is never really explained. Dracula sees himself in the mirror as old and decaying, whereas Lucy sees herself as being still pretty. I don’t know what it means, apart from that Moffat doesn’t understand vampire mythology and feels that it needs to be made more interesting.

Seward encourages Lucy to take a selfie, which reveals her true face. Why the rules for cameras are different from the rules for mirrors is not explained either. Lucy breaks down crying because being ugly is a fate worse than death. Seward tells her that he still wants to kiss her, because I guess this was meant to be the message? Something about true love? She begs him for death. They kiss and he mercy-kills her. In the book the people who loved Lucy had to kill her to save her immortal soul and to protect the world from the monster she had become, which has a bit more emotional resonance than saving her from having to be ugly for eternity. But, you know. NOT THAT THAT MATTERS.

Van Helsing sends Seward away for her final confrontation with Dracula, because she has him figured out. Having the memories of her great-aunt Agatha within her, which she gained from drinking Dracula’s blood, which he gained from drinking Agatha’s blood, she exposits that Dracula isn’t actually harmed by sunlight or crosses. He just fears death more than anything and so he doesn’t like the sight of the cross which represents someone being willing to die. Okay, but that doesn’t explain his aversion to sunlight! What does that have to do with death? She also spouts off some nonsense about how his fear of death originated from being the weakest in a family of noblemen and soldiers. Um, Moffat? You do realize that Dracula is based on Vlad the Impaler, right? Someone who was known for, well, impaling his enemies? But, again, it’s almost over, so let’s just get on with it!

Van Helsing tells Dracula that because she is dying of cancer, she is accomplishing the one thing he is afraid of doing, which somehow convinces him to kill himself by drinking her cancerous blood, which is poison to him. To make this experience painless for her, he creates an illusion for her where they’re, um, tenderly making love? What the hell? Is that what all their previous scenes were leading up to? Okay, if you say so.

Wait, is that the real reason why Moffat made Van Helsing a woman? Screw you, Moffat! Screw you so much!

Credits roll. This ends one of the worst television viewing experiences I’ve ever had. I go on YouTube to rewatch Sherlock Is Garbage, and Here’s Why. It is deeply cathartic.

#bbc dracula #flipping moffat

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ebaeschnbliah · 4 years ago

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Alice and Claire

It's you. You then and you now. You are here and you are there. ... You. It's all about you. (Jekyll BBC, 2007)

Alice, a woman of the past, the old, victorian world and Claire, a woman of the present, the modern world. Both of one kind, related but not quite, completely identical but not twins (it’s never twins) ... It’s a story that sounds a bit familiar. Somthing similar happens with Sister Agatha and Zoe Van Helsing in Dracula BBC. The same actress plays characters who look like twins but live more than a century appart. And in the Sherlock BBC special episode The Abominable Bride, it is Sherlock, who travells back in time to victorian London ... a man both here and there.

The solution to the puzzle in Jekyll BBC literally lies in the genes, because the modern woman turns out to be an exact clone of the victorian woman. And then, there are the names - Alice and Claire - both names turn up repeatedly in more than one project created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

TBC below the cut ....

Alice

The name derives from the Old French name Aalis, short for Adelais (x), which is a short form of the Germanic Adalheidis, better known as Adelaide (composed of adal=noble and heid=kind/sort/type ... meaning noble type). The most prominent literary character with that name is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland ... well known and repeatedly mentioned in connection with Sherlock BBC (x x x).

The very first person who comes to mind in Sherlock BBC is, of course, Lady Smallwood. This character is introduced as Lady Elizabeth in HLV but three episodes later, in TLD, her first name suddenly changes to Alicia. At least that’s what can be read on her business card. Additionally the lady shares some interesting similarities with Mummy Holmes (x x).

When Sherlock walks among the ‘Funny Gravestones’ in TFP, on one of the stones the name Alice Holmes is engraved. Apparently this woman died together with another person (maybe husband, maybe sibling) in 1818, both at a rather young age.

The name ‘Alice Holmes’ could very well be a reference to the lost and resurfaced silent movie ‘Sherlock Holmes’ from 1916, created by William Gillette who also starred in the leading role as the great detective. In this adaptation, based on the stage play of the same title and authorised by Arthur Conon Doyle himself, Gillette gave Holmes a love interest, shaped (very loosely) after Irene Adler. Doyle’s famous words "You may marry him, murder him, or do anything you like to him" derives from this adaptation. The love interest was renamed into Alice Faulkner .... which of course, would change into ‘Alice Holmes’ after a marriage (strongly suggested by the emotional film-kiss at the end of the story).

In October 2014 it was announced that a copy of that film had been discovered in a film archive in France. The French premiere of the restored film took place in January 2015, the US premiere followed in May. Among the patrons of the restauration are listed Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Sue Vertue.

For more detailed informations I can highly recommend this post by @heimishtheidealhusband .

Claire

This name is the French version of Clara .... and, although she has never appeared on screen so far, Clara is a frequently discussed character in Sherlock BBC because she is (most likely still) married to John Watson’s (equally invisible) sister Harry.

Clara and Harry split up three months ago and they’re getting a divorce.

Clara is part of Sherlock’s deductions regarding John’s phone in PILOT/ASIP, based on Holmes’ famous pocket watch deduction in ACDs novel The Sign of Four. As @shylockgnomes already pointed out in 2016 ('A high incidence of Katherines’) the name Clara (bright, clear, clean, pure) basically has the same meaning as Catherine.

In the early Christian era it became associated with the Greek ‘katharos’ (pure), and the Latin spelling was changed from Katerina to Katharina to reflect this.

Clara could very well be a Catherine hiding in plain sight, one might say. Reason enough to take more than one look at her, because the name Catherine (in a number of variations) turns up eight times throughout the whole story ... nine times if one counts CAT, the gun in HLV (a brand of that name doesn’t even exist). To sum it up once more:

Clara, John’s sister in law (ASIP)

Karen, the woman murdered by her boyfriend/husband Barry ‘Bezza’ Berwick in Minsk (TGG)

Kate, Irene’s PA (ASIB)

Kitty Riley, investigative journalist for the SUN who wrote the exposé about Sherlock (TRF)

Cath, Mary’s briefly mentioned friend (TEH)

Kate Whitney, the desperate mum of a drug addict who wants to find her son (HLV)

CAT, the gun which Sherlock assumes to be the weapon used to murder him (HLV)

Helen Catherine Driscoll, underaged pen pal of Lord Smallwood before his marriage with Elizabeth/Alicia and reason for his suicide (HLV)

Catherine - the name John would like to give to his daughter but Mary disagrees and chooses Rosamund instead (TST)

As @shylockgnomes pointed out in the above mentioned post from 2016, the etymology of the name ‘Katherine’ can be debated: it could also derive from the Greek name Hekaterine, which comes from hekateros ... meaning “each of the two”.

But what does that imply? Two of something? But it’s ‘never twins’ Did I accidentally stumble upon a hidden secret? A girl or woman who is hidden. One of a pair? To paraphrase Sherlock (shylockgnomes)

And then Series Four happened and Eurus entered the stage in TFP and puzzle pieces started to fall into place. It looks like you really stumbled right into the centre of the mystery, @shylockgnomes :) Because in Sherlock BBC the meaning of two/double/pair/twin seems to be a key factor in understanding the story (PairsTwinsDoubleOhhhs)

Each of the two main characters have sisters who are mistaken for brothers by the respective other man when they are first mentioned in their presence.

JOHN: Harry and me don’t get on, never have. Clara and Harry split up three months ago and they’re getting a divorce; and Harry is a drinker. SHERLOCK: Spot on, then. I didn’t expect to be right about everything. JOHN: And Harry’s short for Harriet. (ASIP)

.....

JOHN: Sherlock’s not your only brother. There’s another one, isn’t there? MYCROFT: No. JOHN: Jesus! A secret brother! What, is he locked up in a tower or something? (TLD)

Each of the two sisters have male names. Harriet was shortened into Harry (the name of Dr John Watson’s brother in canon) and Eurus is the Greek name of the God of the East Wind, who is very male as @gosherlocked pointed out here.

Each of the two sisters stay invisible for the majority of the story. Eurus appears only by the end of the (for now) penultimate episode. Harry is still a faceless presence and exists on screen only in short references. A good place to remember Mycroft’s advice in The Sign of Three:

SHERLOCK: For one person to be in both groups ... could be a coincidence. MYCROFT: Oh, Sherlock. What do we say about coincidence? SHERLOCK: The universe is rarely so lazy.

Two problematic sisters who are both called by a male name, who appear rarely or not at all on screen and are mistaken for a brother by the best friend of their sibling. And one of those sisters is (maybe still) married to a woman called Clara ... meaning ‘bright, clear, pure, (incandescent?) .... the same as Catherine ... which might also mean ‘each of the two’. What would the universe say to this case?

Alice, Claire & Catherine

In Jekyll BBC everything circles around the characters Alice and Claire. It’s not some mysterious potion ... it’s the potion of love, the chemistry of love, which rises Hyde, the ‘monster’, in Jekyll. “It's you, it’s all about you ....”

Alice, Clara, Catherine (different versions and meanings of this name) seem to play an important, though still mysterious, role in Sherlock BBC. And what's the main theme of this story? In TFP Mycroft says: “This is all about you (Sherlock). Everything here ...... So who loves you?”

This leaves Dracula BBC. Are there characters included in that story too, named Alice, Clara or Catherine? Unsurprisingly .... yes! There are Alice and Kathleen (a variation of Catherine). Both characters appear in The Dark Compass.

Alice is one of the girls who accompany Lucy Westenra in the pink limousine on her hen night. She sits opposite Lucy, next to Zev. Alice is the only one of the girls who, like Zev, interacts repeatedly with Lucy.

Kathleen is the wife/life partner of Bob, the man who gets bitten and locked up in the fridge by Dracula. The Count watches a movie about elephants in Kathleen’s house before Zoe Van Helsing and her team are able to take him captive.

And then there is the Dracula-canon ‘Catherine’ ... she’s a ship

There we find that only one Black-Sea-bound ship go out with the tide. She is the Czarina Catherine, and she sail from Doolittle’s Wharf for Varna, and thence on to other parts and up the Danube. (Bram Stoker’s Dracula)

Czarina is the female version of Czar, the Russian equivalent of Emperor, derived from the Roman ‘Caesar’. This ship can only be named after the famous Russian Empress Catherine the Great.

Count Dracula travels on the Demeter from Varna (Bulgaria) to England and then, after his plans faile, he boards the Czarina Catherine in London. This ship brings the vampire back to Galatz (Galati) in Romania. That’s a port town on the Danube about 80km from the Black Sea. From here he tries to return to his castle in Transylvania.

And that’s exactly the point where the stories told in Bram Stoker’s Dracula und in Dracula BBC are linked. In the original story the ‘Czarina Catherine’ brings Dracula to the mouth of the Danube from which the Count takes the same escape route as Jonathan Harker in Dracula BBC. They travel in opposite directions though. Bram Stoker’s Dracula flees from the sea TO the castle while Jonathan Harker falls into the river and is born FROM the castle to the sea. Two characters ... one escape route. (‘The river bore you out to the sea’)

It’s a hidden link. One becomes only aware of it, if one knows the original story. Therefore it might not be a very relevant link after all. Who knows. But surely, there are people in this world who simply are in love with a certain type of story which they tell over and over again and who also have a great affinity for certain names. :)

September, 2020

#alice & claire #alice #claire #clara #catherine #jekyll bbc #sherlock bbc #dracula bbc #names #vampires

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my-fanfic-library · 5 years ago

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Something Different {BBC Dracula x Reader} [2]

Masterlist

~^*^~

His wicked eyes were set on your form. You were trying hard not to quiver under his heated gaze. How had he managed to get out? Did he have to rip his way out of that cell or was he allowed to walk free for some unknown reason? Not that the answer to those questions even mattered. A 6’4” vampire who had openly discussed your influence on his appetite was standing before you.

Should you flee? How does one overpower a vampire, anyhow? You had read in the account and heard it right from his mouth that Dracula could turn into certain creatures. It would take one shift of him into the black, beastly wolf for him to hunt you down with ease. You’d never even make it back up the slipway.

Your mind pounded and the indication that your heart was doing summersalts came to your attention as Dracula audibly took in a breath. He hummed in satisfaction as he released your scent. He knew he had managed to catch you completely off guard.

Within your bag, your phone began to vibrate and Dracula looked accusingly down at it. You bit your lip, fingers delving in to grab the decode and quickly answer.

“[First]?” Zoe’s voice rang through your ear.

“Zo-Zoe...” your lips trembled and it had nothing to do with the cool sea breeze.

“They let him out. They let Dracula out!” Her voice was in a similar state of panic and you knew it was because she was one of the only other people in the world who knew of his capabilities.

“Zoe, I-“

“Apparently he has a lawyer! Can you believe it?! Anyway, you need to be careful. He seemed to take a liking to you during the time you spent with him today. Promise me you’ll look after yourself.”

“Zoe-“

“Promise me, [First]-“

“It’s a little bit too late for that...” you trailed off, eyes locking with the man’s towering above you.

“How do you-... Where are you?!”

You had no chance to reply as cool fingers brushed against your own. You watched in horror as Dracula snatched the device from you and lifted it to his own ear.

“Dr. Van Helsing, how nice to get into contact... yes I know... trust me, I know... I suppose you could say it is a curiosity of sorts. It’s mere curiosity... what am I doing it for? Something different. Don’t bother us again, we’re busy.”

You could hear Zoe’s desperate pleas on the other end of the phone but Dracula had already figured out how to end a phone call and that was that.

“Absolutely amazing...” he breathed, turning your phone through his fingers as he inspected it, “they gave me a larger one in the Foundation. Did you know you can do practically anything on these little things? And it must be enchanted, considering it can deliver your voice to someone else so far away.” The wonder held in his eyes as he spoke made him seem almost human. Almost.

“Yes, I knew that...” you began, voice slow and as steady as possible, “but it’s not enchanted, it’s electric.”

“Electric...? How curious...”

“What is it that you wanted, and don’t just repeat your answer.” You folded you arms, trying to remain composed but your mind was whirring with the thought that this may be your last moment or two alive. If he really had decided to choose you as his next meal...

He sighed, an agitation growing deep in his chest. One of the only things he had ever craved so deeply was company. Most humans that he had interacted with were dull, cardboard cutouts of one another. Over 500 years of the same specimen got old and fast. There had only ever been a handful of humans that satisfied his thirst for something other than blood - good company. And Jonathan Harker, Sister Agatha Van Helsing and her descendant Dr. Zoe Van Helsing had been the only ones to peak his curiosity. But hours ago, when you had come in with a front of iron, and a poorly hidden core nothing short of anxiety-ridden, you had peaked this curiosity once more.

The sea groaned away in the distance and the seagulls had decided on steering well away from the undead figure on the sand. It was much more quiet, much more intimate and grew much more darker with every passing moment. Dracula’s eyes seemed locked on you, eyebrows furrowed as he tried to read between the lines of your stoic gaze up at him.

“What would you like my answer to be, [First]?” He inquired softly.

“Truthful, for starters.”

“Alright. You see, after 5 centuries of the same old types of people, one becomes accustomed to those who flee and quiver at the mere sight of a beast such as myself. I will never forget the day I made my entrance at the nunery Sister Agatha resided at.” At the mention of this woman’s name, you noticed a tenderness fill his voice and a small smile threatened the corners of his lips. A spark of wonder lit up in your chest. Had a cold, ancient, blood drinking beast grown a soft spot for one of the only people to put him in his place? His eyes glazed over momentarily and he seemed to look right through you.

“You still haven’t answered the question and you’re about to drool at the thought of this Sister Agatha.” You rolled your eyes. He immediately snapped out of it and there was a low rumble emitting from his chest for a split second.

“I like good company. Sister Agatha was good company. She was inquisitive and intrusive of my routine. While she lost our personal battle, she most certainly won my attention.” He looked down at you and noticed goosebumps rising on your skin. The sky was darkening even more and the navy had stretched out and was almost kissing the horizon, “goodness it’s late for a mortal, isn’t it?” His eyes glossed over the North Sea that expanded far into the horizon.

“Count Dracula?” You spoke, “are you going to kill me - or are you waiting for me to submit myself to you?” You has to ask. You needed to know if your life had reached its expiration date.

“Hm? Oh, not at all.” He looked down and then back towards you, a most wicked and mischievous grin taking hold over his features, “whilst I do enjoy a little food play every now and again,” he stepped forward and his right hand came up to cup your face delicately, “I have no intention of feasting upon you. Not yet, at least. Your scent alone is intoxicating. But your wit, your strength and your character are making me so very interested in you, Miss [First].” He stepped forwards, beginning to close the already small gap between you, “no, I think I’m going to have to keep an eye on you, young lady.” He spoke gently, eyes now boring down into your own. His orbs glistened in the moonlight, “I want to see just what you’re capable of.” He whispered.

“Maybe another time.” You suggested. Your eyes flitted up to the moon and back to him, “if all of this vampire lore is real, surely you should be off to your Transylvanian Earth to protect yourself?”

“And why would I do that?” He scoffed.

“Because it’s a full moon and that means werewolves.”

At the mere notion, the Count could no suppress the deep and hearty chuckle that bubbled up from his stomach. His eyes crinkled and his laughter caused him to bare his white teeth, currently blunt and of no means a weapon brandished to hurt you. For a moment, disbelief struck you as his laughs echoed along the beach and he let go of your face to smooth over his jacket. It took another moment for him to gain composure.

“Werewolves - now you’re being ridiculous.” He smirked down at you. He shoved one hand into his pocket.

“So a 523 year old vampire from Transylvania who wants to befriend a human because they’re using scientifically proved tactics to not die as prey and wants to know if there is any more substance to that is totally just mormal but you draw the line at warewolves? The supposed arch-enemy of vampires?”

“It’s ridiculous, I mean, how on Earth would the first warewolf even be created?”

“Well how were you created?” You challenged.

“Well, when a man loves a woman-“ he smirked.

“If you continue to speak, I really will drive a stake right through your chest.” He groaned inwardly at your response.

“I must admit, I do like your flare. You are very much lively, aren’t you?” He cocked his head.

“Livelier than you.”

~^*^~

When you awoke the next morning, you knew that you were in for some serious trouble. Zoe had left you over 30 missed calls, along with a plethora of concerned text messages inquiring about your and Dracula’s whereabouts. Although you could no longer answer for the Count, you found yourself sending a snarky reply that you were currently in bed. This turned out to be a mistake as within 10 minutes, your front door had burst open and Zoe, along with five armed men appeared at the foot of your bed.

You should have known that Zoe of all people would have freaked out over your contact with Dracula - she had been chasing him her entire life. Now he had been found. Not only had he been found, he had somewhat been resurrected and was on the prowl again for food and destruction. And you were a prime target.

After checking your body for bite marks, she began to harass you for every single detail about your encounter with Dracula the previous evening. You told her about him finding warewolf lore ridiculous, the obvious obsession he seemed to have with Sister Agatha, and how he had most likely revealed just a little too much to you about his true intentions. He wanted good company and anyone who rose to challenge him or stand out from the usual screaming meals he usually dealt with was a possible target for his attention.

“I don’t get it... I mean, I kind of do, it must be lonely to have everyone be afraid of- no I don’t get it.” Zoe sighed, “he’s an unnatural predator. Everyone is meant to be scared of him. A lion would never go for a snake because the snake would never be afraid of a lion. It wouldn’t even pay the snake any attention whatsoever! It would go after a zebra or something. So why is Dracula so focused on the snakes...”

“Thank you for insinuating that I am a snake, Zo.” You rolled your eyes.

“Not just you, but it seemed Jonathan Harker was a snake in Dracula’s hunting ground as well as Sister Agatha... I am said to look just like her, and I take no bull crap from him either...” You could tell she was losing you as she drifted off into a train of thought, “you’re going to have to cater to Dracula. We need to know what makes him tick.”

“What? So you’re going to use me as bait to do your little experiments on him?” You frowned.

“You said yourself he doesn’t intend on harming you.”

“Yeah, because a vampire never lies, huh, Zoe?”

“Please, [First]. I promise you we will do everything to keep you safe.”

“You better have a whole S.W.A.T. styled team on my ass at all times, Zo.”

“Only the best for my favourite assosicate.” Your ease to obey her wishes and commands caused a smile to break out on her features.

~^*^~

Walking along the pier, you allowed the hot summer breeze to ruffle your hair and cool your hot skin a little. Looking to your right was the Abbey perched high on the cliffs. You could make out some forms of the last tourists enjoying their visit. The sun had yet again sunken well below the horizon and your heart thumped in your chest. You anticipated a certain undead male’s arrival at any moment. It wasn’t that you had invited him out, but you knew that if he had become attached to your scent, he’d find you.

It was only a matter of time before he did find you. And you dreaded that moment.

#probably sucks like the last one sorry but yall asked for it #also i kind of know where im going with this but not really #im just enjoying writing drac #dracula #bbc dracula #claes bang #dracula x reader #bbc dracula x reader #dolly wells

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anncanta · 7 months ago

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Psyche

Fandom: Dracula (2020)

Characters: Agatha Van Helsing, Original male character

Relationship: Original male character/Agatha Van Helsing

Rating: Explicit

@alma37 @hopipollahorror @moremoveslessannouncements-blog

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Or read below

Agatha left immediately after Dracula was released from the Harker Center. She left her office, took a cab and, as soon as she got home, she pulled out her suitcase and began throwing things into it. When the suitcase was almost full, she stopped, realizing that she no longer perceived herself as Zoe. She tried to remember when she changed. She remembered her way from Kathleen's destroyed house, how she looked out the window of the company car, periodically falling into a semblance of sleep or stupor. And when they got to the center, she was Agatha. Absolutely sane and completely healthy. And this did not surprise her at all.

Agatha didn't have time to think about it. She needed to leave, and as soon as possible. Rummaging through Zoe's memory of places she could go, she remembered a tropical island in French Polynesia where Zoe spent the summer in her first year after graduating from university. The relief soon turned to horror when, after calling several travel agencies, Agatha discovered that all tours for this season were sold out.

Renfield unexpectedly helped. While searching for an old notebook where the phone number of her friend, the owner of a small travel agency, was written down, in her bag she came across a business card that a strange lawyer had given her before he left.

Agatha didn't know why she called him. But Renfield helped her. As she exited the taxi at the airport, Agatha asked herself why she thought she could even trust him, but she brushed the thought aside. Renfield was reserved, businesslike, silent, confident. He didn't ask any questions, answered to her desperate request that he would see what he could do, and an hour and a half later he called and said that he had sent information about booking accommodation on the island and plane tickets to her email.

‘Why are you helping me?’ asked Agatha. In response, Renfield smiled thoughtfully and said nothing. In parting, he shook her hand and wished her to take care of herself.

With that, she left.

The island of Moorea was sunny, tiny, and filled to the brim with peace and joy. Having settled in a small bungalow on the shore of a sandy beach, Agatha spent the first few days simply sleeping, eating, and lying on the snow-white sand. Lying on her back, she stared at the clouds, looked closely at the birds soaring above, squinting from the sun, and absorbed the surrounding silence with all her body.

Nobody bothered her. The bungalow she stayed in was the only one left from the old hotel complex. A couple of decades ago, several huts standing next to it were washed away by a flood, and the hotel was closed. But this small house survived, and from that time on it became a refuge for newlyweds who love solitude. Agatha liked it immediately.

She spent whole days splashing in the bright blue water and gorging herself on fruit, and after sunset, she lay for a long time dozing on the sand. There was something primordially crazy about it. She even refused to wear clothes – why would she, if the beach is closed and there is no one in this part of the island for weeks?

The days were the same and it was wonderful. Agatha, who was always responsible for something, was always in a hurry somewhere and was worried about something, physically felt something inside her being smoothed out, like a crumpled sheet of paper on which there was an important thing written that until now no one couldn't make out – because it was squizzed in someone's hand for too long.

That evening she came for a swim just after sunset. Coming ashore, she shook herself off like a cat and, anticipating several hours of sweet slumber, lay flat on her stomach.

Later, in the bedroom of a small hut, lying alone and looking into the tropical night, Agatha asked herself why she wasn't surprised, didn't twitch, wasn't scared. Why, when there, on the beach, a man's palm lay on her back, she didn't turn around and drive the stranger away.

She lay there, inhaling the sea-salt-saturated air, spreading out across the cooling sand, not trying to get up or move. He had large palms, warm and strong, they slid over her skin, collecting the remaining water, moving down to the small of her back, gently squeezing her thighs. It was so strange to realize that she was completely naked, and he didn't even have to spread her legs to get to... Agatha held her breath as his fingers lightly touched her. Moving up and down, teasing, he began to lazily caress her. He was in no hurry. He was in no hurry at all.

Agatha lay motionless. She felt that now he was closer, felt the touch of his lips on her shoulder, but he still simply caressed her, then approaching, then moving away, then pressing his fingers to the most sensitive point, then releasing it. It was like he was catching a butterfly.

Agatha moaned and bit her lips. Ready, crazed, revealed. When she came, his hands lifted her by the hips, and without turning her over and still remaining invisible, he plunged into her. He was big, and it would probably hurt if she didn't want him so much. She lay with her arms outstretched, feeling him thrust, carefully and gently, and the beach beneath her became a thin line on which she balanced, as if on a tightrope, and then disappeared altogether. Agatha hung in the air, and her body was a gift to this stranger who lifted her into the heavens.

When Agatha woke up, the first stars were lighting up in the sky. She was alone on the beach, a cool evening wind was blowing from the sea. She was terribly hungry. Laughing, she stood up and, taking a towel, walked towards the bungalow.

She didn't go to the beach for the next few days. Half of it was because she was afraid to break the spell – the next morning the crazy adventure began to seem like a fantasy, an afternoon dream. She didn't even ask the maid, who came every three days, if she had noticed anyone nearby. However, even if she asked, how would she describe him? She didn't see him. Agatha laughed at her stupidity and, the more time passed, the more convinced she became that she had simply imagined everything.

A week later, she woke up in her bedroom in the hut to a slight movement of air. Turning over on her side, she managed to notice the high outline in the doorway of the terrace. That night was burning, prickly, sweet. And this time she screamed.

He always came to her after sunset, and she saw neither his face nor his figure. She knew that he was tall, strong and that he had a big dick. In the morning, while making coffee, Agatha thought about what Zoe would say. But Zoe had a turbulent youth, so perhaps she would have shrugged her shoulders and advised Agatha to enjoy it.

The days on the island, as before, were viscous and languid, like drops of honey. Agatha was saturated with them, as all northerners strive to be saturated with the warmth of spring. She was accustomed to the spartan atmosphere of Budapest, to the prickly frosts – and loneliness. Therefore, she unmistakably felt when it was time to leave.

She guessed that he was watching her, and since she didn't like goodbyes, in the morning the day before departure, she sent the maid away, saying that she would clean the rooms herself.

But he came anyway. Agatha was walking from the corridor to the bedroom when he grabbed her and slammed her into the wall in the dark. It was like that day at the beach. Agatha felt him on her back – his palms, shoulders, fingers. Not affectionate, as then – hot and angry. Pulling up her nightgown, he spread her legs and entered. He took her hard and severely until Agatha gave in, letting him in and submitting. He thrusted, sharply, painfully, finishing, and pulled out of her, leaving a taste of melancholy and parting.

The next day, Agatha went to work at the Harker Center.

Agatha did not feel any inconvenience from living and working under Zoe's name – her great-niece seemed to ‘meld’ with her, becoming her full-fledged part. Overall, none of them were seriously injured.

None of the employees were surprised by her presence, just as they were not surprised by her departure. Agatha once again mentally congratulated Zoe for hiring Kate Bloxam, the ideal crisis manager, and plunged into a routine.

The Foundation needed a new vision of the future, reforms, and financing. At the end of the fourth month, she was finally able to find suitable sponsors, and since the negotiations were successful, she planned to open another laboratory. Agatha worked from dawn to dusk, sometimes forgetting to have lunch. The adventure on the island of Moorea remained on the periphery – consciousness, soul, and memory. Until one day, in a rare free minute, scrolling through the internet, Agatha came across an advertisement for a closed nightclub.

She read the ad once, and then twice, and reached for her phone.

‘Renfield,’ she said.

‘Miss Van Helsing. How can I serve you?’

Agatha paused, hesitating.

‘I need to book an evening at the Cupid and Psyche club. For two. On Friday.’

‘With whom?’ Renfield seemed not at all surprised by either her call or her strange request. It was as if women he barely knew were calling him every day and asking him to book an evening at a club for erotic meetings.

‘You know with whom,’ Agatha answered.

‘I obey,’ said Renfield after a pause.

After saying goodbye, Agatha hung up.

Entering the door on Friday evening, above which a sign with the words Cupid and Psyche was softly glowing, Agatha loitered a little.

The closed club Cupid and Psyche was intended for intimate meetings of a special nature. According to its rules, one of the participants had to remain blindfolded throughout the entire date – or the meeting had to take place in the dark. In the latter case, the participant who was chosen to play the ‘sighted’ role received a photo of the partner in advance. This made it possible to achieve the effect of a one-sided blind date.

Agatha entered the hallway, took the key from the elegantly dressed head waiter, and moved to the second floor, where the meeting rooms were located. She booked a date in the dark, so when she opened the door, she couldn't see anything inside. Entering, Agatha closed the door behind her and stood for a while, trying to get her bearings. Having taken a step, then another, she felt that she had hit an obstacle. Realizing that she had found a bed, Agatha sat down on it and began to wait.

‘When did you understand?’ a voice came from the darkness.

‘I think right away,’ Agatha smiled.

‘Renfield?’

‘Renfield.’

Silence.

‘But if so, then why …’

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and still, she saw only his silhouette approaching her.

‘I think I guessed from the very beginning,’ she said again. ‘But it's difficult ... you know, to admit that you love dates.’

‘Dates?’

‘An instrument of sin,’ Agatha said with a laugh. ‘That's what we were taught at the monastery school. Dates and chocolate and I don't know what else. Everything that brings pleasure has a flaw. Dates make you thirsty. Chocolate destroys teeth. And you are a murderer.’

‘I haven’t killed anyone since I started drinking donor blood.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Absolutely.’

Agatha looked up at the dark spot in front of her. It probably would have made her nervous if she hadn't slept with him every other day under similar circumstances.

‘What do you want?’ Dracula asked her.

‘You know, what I want,’ Agatha answered.

The bed dipped and he sank down next to her.

‘But why?’

Agatha raised her hand and pulled him towards her.

‘I want to feel you.’

They always understood each other. In a monastery, on a ship, on an island.

She felt him bend down, smooching her, and she found herself in his arms. He was everywhere, from all sides. It was as if she was inside him. ‘So huge,’ Agatha whispered, smiling. He pulled her close to him. His lips slid from her cheek, along the chin, warmed the skin on the neck.

He drinks her like expensive wine, a priceless beverage. Like an offering, he had waited too long for. And when he breaks away from her, Agatha feels her fingers trembling on the back of his head, tangling in strands of damp hair.

For a short moment, it suddenly seems to her that they have switched places, and it is he who is lying on the evening beach, and she comes up to him from behind, touching his shoulder.

Smiling, Agatha frees herself from his embrace and looks at him for a minute. He's still just a blur against the darkness, but she sees him. Now she sees him.

And yet... Looking around, Agatha gets up.

After taking a few steps, she feels the heavy velvet with her hands. Here. She finds the edge, grabs it.

‘You must have a blindfold. Those are the rules,’ she says. ‘In case the guests want mutual impenetrable darkness. I have.’

‘Me too.’

‘Put it on.’

‘For what?’

‘Put it on.’

A fuss is heard in the darkness, then a rustling sound.

After waiting another second, Agatha moves the curtain aside. A bright light floods the room, falls on Dracula and on the bed. Dracula sits blindfolded, turning his face to Agatha.

Letting go of the curtain, Agatha approaches Dracula. She takes him by the hand.

‘Tell me, do you feel good?’ she asks.

‘Incomparable,’ he brings her hand to his face, lightly biting her fingers.

She smiles.

‘Then open your eyes.’

She sits on the bed, watching as he takes off the bandage, as he blinks blindly, realizing that he is bathed in sunlight. He brings his palms to his face.

‘How … can it be?’

‘Some beliefs are important to check sometimes,’ Agatha laughs. ‘There is a large archive dedicated to vampires in the Harker Center,’ she said, still smiling. ‘Quite a lot is known about them now. Some wrote diaries, others were told about by those who lived next to them or ran away from them. None of them were afraid of the sun. There is no evidence of anyone being burned by sunlight. I thought you couldn't be that unique.’

They were silent for some time.

‘I love you, Agatha Van Helsing,’ said Dracula.

‘I know.’

‘Is that your answer? In the spirit of this unfortunate ... What's his name?’

‘Han Solo. You drank my blood. You know the answer.’

‘I need to hear it.’

‘Count Dracula, I love you,’ said Agatha. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Almost. Marry me.’

‘For God's sake. We live in the twenty-first century.’

‘I am tormented by the pains of noble honor.’

Agatha burst out laughing.

‘After so many years?’

He looked at her completely seriously.

‘Marry me,’ he repeated.

And she agreed.

‘We'll spend our honeymoon in Moorea,’ Dracula said, pulling her towards him.

‘There are good beaches there.’

‘Sunsets.’

‘And understanding staff.’

‘Almost like in my castle. Five-star service.’

‘And we will spend our wedding night in the light.’

Dracula laughed and threw her onto the bed.

‘Do you want to see my eyes when I take you?’

‘I want to see you cum.’

‘Well, why wait?’

***

Renfield turned off the computer and stood up from the table. Preparing for a wedding is a tedious thing, he admitted. On the other hand, the good news is that he won’t have to organize night celebrations. Dark lords, of course, can have their quirks. This does not mean that you have to pay the waiters double tariff because of this.

#bbc dracula #dracula 2020 #agatha van helsing

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dirthavarens · 5 years ago

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Late Night Work {Dragatha}

Fandom: Dracula (2020) Characters: Count Dracula, Agatha Van Helsing Relationship: Dracula/Agatha Rating: Explicit Warnings: None Word Count: 3796 Notes: Yeah, it’s Vampire!Agatha related, leave me ALONE. Gifted to: R (for always being the inspiration I need to keep going)

[READ ON AO3]

or read below;;

Agatha, having closed her book on succubi found throughout southern European nations, looked to her husband with silent amusement. His dark brows were drawn together in annoyance as he focused on the papers in his hands. They twitched slightly when his foul mood slipped between the cracks of his collected facade. It had been some time since she had found him in such a state. The last having been one caused by a very unpleasant run-in with the law and resulted in more bribe money and dead bodies than she cared for.

Dracula brought a hand to his face and rested his two forefingers against his temple, rubbing the spot as though it would help settle his despondency. Agatha admired the way the light painted shadows across his visage, outlining his jaw and nose, giving him a sharper, more severe, profile. He gave a sigh through his nostrils, quiet enough not to disturb his wife, despite not knowing that she was focused entirely on him. His torso moved enough to draw her attention downward to explore more of him.

The column of his throat looked particularly appetizing as he swallowed and flipped a page, behaving surprisingly human in his focus. Her tongue ran along the inside of her lips, peeking between them enough to part them and let out a breath. From there, Agatha turned her attention south to his clavicle, remembering how it felt beneath her lips the days before.

She paused, closed her mouth, as her gaze settled on his torso. His chest was exposed beneath his red wine button up, the first three undone, and gave her a view of the deep onyx curls that resided there. How wonderful his fur felt between her fingers, the still of his chest faltering as she would trace patterns through it. Her fingertips flexed involuntarily at the still-fresh memory.

Continuing her journey as a silent voyeur, Agatha looked down to his thighs and noticed the frustrated rigidity of his posture ran entirely to his feet. For a vampire, he was far too tense. Even more so for a man of his standing. Without a sound, she placed her novel onto the stand beside the sofa, an idea coming to mind.

An unsettling flip of a page was paired with his finger meeting his brow in frustration. He could do with a break. A mountain of paperwork, even for a vampire, crammed into one night because they couldn't keep their hands to themselves when Agatha returned, proved to be a challenge. She had been away for a month, off exploring ancient ruins and studying the mythology related thereto, and he had been busy making investments in both businesses and properties, securing more funds than necessary. His hubris was always at work, especially in her absence.

When she stepped off the airplane, he had been waiting in broad daylight for her. Once, that would have sent a surge of consternation through her. Once, her mortality would have been threatened. But she could not help but return the toothy smile he granted her, both relieved to see one another after their brief separation.

The drive home had been awash with clear intent for what the near future would hold, despite Agatha regaling tales of her adventures. His hands were on her before her key entered the lock, gripping tightly at her thighs. He had muttered enough filth in her ear to make her squirm in his hold as she felt her juices soak the fabric of her undergarments.

For the days that followed, he fucked her to oblivion, made love to her, and worshiped every inch of her body. Knowing that he still had work to do, she had cautioned him to complete the paperwork and transcribe it to his laptop, but ever true to himself, he was persistent. He wanted only her, focused only on her, her needs and her comforts. Not that she had complained.

Deftly, she stood from the sofa and crossed the room to where he sat. She squeezed at his shoulders and gently massaged them with her thumbs. Only then did he withdraw his attention from his work. The hand that had been placed at his temple moved to grab at hers as his tension eased under her touch.

“Finished already?” he inquired as he craned his neck to look up at her. “At this rate, I’ll have to purchase encyclopedias for you to read, though they are rather boring.”

Her free arm dropped lower, her hand slipping under his shirt to tease at his chest hair as she slowly spun him around in the chair. Before he could protest, she grabbed the documents from his hand and rested it on the desk. With her breathing steady, she straddled him, a hand resting at his cheek.

“A vampire has no business turning to stone,” she started, the wicked smirk on her lips growing as her face moved closer to his. “Count Dracula, I advise you to take a break before finishing your work.”

"Agatha, darling, I know when I’ve reached my limits," he paused and caught what was gleaming in her eyes. Dracula shifted and grabbed at her hips, returning her smile with one of his own. "But you make a rather compelling argument."

With a tantalizingly tender kiss, she disarmed him entirely, a hum in the back of his throat signifying her victory. He deepened it, sliding his tongue between her lips as he leaned forward in his seat. Agatha could taste his meal from hours before, the particular song of blood seeping into her taste buds as he held tight to her. When they broke the kiss, Dracula shifted to place his lips against her throat, grazing his teeth against the flesh and drawing a sigh of approval from his wife.

“Gorgeous sound, that,” he purred before pricking the skin below her jaw with his fangs. Agatha drew in a hiss and tightened her grip on him as she felt her own feral urges begin to sweep through her frame. The former nun rocked forward, thinking purely now of her body, and moaned ever so softly as he ran his tongue over the fast-healing wounds. “Ooo, I enjoyed that one, too.”

“Mm, perhaps you should continue. It is late and you must have this finished by morning, yes?” Her sharp nails dug into his shoulders as she held to him, trying to keep her bearings as he toyed with her. Another, more productive, thought was forming in her head as he pulled her tight against hard mass in his trousers.

Before he could act any further, she was sliding down to her knees before him. Agatha looked up at him with her grin firmly in place and pulled him closer before resting her hands on his upper thighs.

“Tsk, tsk. You’ve played on my hedonistic tendencies and you know better than anyone I simply can’t resist,” Dracula returned after clicking his tongue. He placed his hands over hers and slowly guided them to his belt. “Just as you know I cannot refuse my Countess.”

Agatha made intentionally slow work of his belt and went even slower as she unzipped his trousers. The boxer briefs beneath were the same shade as his pants and pooled in an onyx void around his ankles as Agatha tugged them down. When his cock sprung free, she felt her interest grow and reached for it.

Never had she thought she would find any genitalia attractive, especially not a man’s member, but when she saw his dick, something in her was drawn to it. Sex was not something that had ever been high on her priority list. That changed when he came barrelling into her life, naked and covered in blood at the convent. It had called to a darker part of her, perhaps the part that knew her fate. Perhaps, her soul had known his throughout the ages, finding him and connecting whenever Fate found it fitting.

Dracula moved forward in the seat, his gaze honed in on Agatha. Her hair fell to one side as she shifted closer and swept it over her shoulder so as to make what came next easier. Without another moment’s hesitation, Agatha pressed her lips to his cockhead, her tongue coming out to coat it in saliva. She brought him slowly into her mouth as her jaw accommodated for the girth of his cock, shifting as she took him deeper.

Above, she heard a warm sigh of approval and took that as permission to continue, pulling her head up as her tongue worked along his shaft, suctioned loosely to him. Her mouth dripped over him, making him slick and easier to tighten her lips around as she worked the base of his cock with her hand.

She glanced up to take in the sight of him. Agatha watched with a sense of pride as his eyes slipped shut as she took him as deep as she could into her mouth. Only when he hit the back of her throat once, twice, thrice, did she release his cock from her mouth and worked him with her hand alone. His eyes opened to reveal a mixture of pleasure and confusion as his hips rocked up to chase the warm wetness of her mouth.

“Why did y--” He cut himself off when he caught sight of her. Her lips fixed in a smile and long brunette tresses messily tucked away as she twisted her wrist and pumped him. Even in his lust-hazed mind, she could see the adoration behind those infinitely dark eyes of his. “How beautiful you are.”

To her surprise, Dracula reached down, grabbed her wrist, pulled her hand away from his cock, and brought her up to meet his lips all in one fluid movement. He kissed her hard, stealing whatever saliva and breath was left as he swept his tongue into her mouth. Her hand returned to his erection as she returned the kiss, matching him as they set a rhythm.

“Wicked little thing,” he chuckled against her mouth as she pumped him in time with their kiss. Her hand didn’t remain there long, however, as he lifted her into the air, kicking off his shoes and trousers in the process.

“Only as wicked as I see appropriate,” she remarked as he sat her on the table and away from his papers.

“Appropriateness has no place here, Agatha.” Dracula all but ripped her slacks from her body, tearing at the underwear as he pulled the clothing from her body. Her blouse came next, her bra easily unclipped from the front. Her breasts fell from the cups and were quickly received by his eager mouth. “When I fuck you, I want it to be as inappropriate as possible and entirely wicked.”

Her fingers carded through short onyx locks as he teased her nipple, the sensation at the small point enough to make her sway forward. She pressed herself against his mouth, relishing the way his tongue rolled around the nub and teeth pricked gently as he sucked before pulling away. A clawed finger sank between her legs, running the length of her inner thigh and she spread them on instinct. With her ankles against the backs of his legs, she pulled him closer. Agatha did not want to feel his fingers toy with her entrance. She wanted him, his perfectly hard and dripping cock, inside of her without mercy. Enough, surely, to relieve the tension the papers beside her brought upon him.

He took her meaning and aligned himself, rubbing himself against her entrance and coating himself in her slick juices. She stifled a groan behind a bit lip as his erection ground against her clit.

“Now darling, that won’t do. Not in our own home,” he growled and yanked her hips to the end of the table. Her head hit the mahogany with a thud and she kicked at his ass with her heel. “I want to hear it all.”

Without another word, he plunged into her, giving no time for adjustment. A startled gasp ripped through her and he swept a hand under her back, drawing her up and kissing her as he slammed into her again. Agatha found hers nails digging into the fabric of his shirt, bunching and tearing it as he set a punishing pace. The table groaned beneath the force of his thrusts as it moved incrementally away from him.

She found her bearings as he took to shallow thrusts, fucking her with tip of his cock, and tore his shirt from his chest. The buttons clattered against the floor as the shirt hung loosely from his shoulders, lost to the growl sounding in his throat as he drove himself to the hilt inside of her.

He kissed her as he filled her to the brim and Agatha did her best to maintain focus. It shattered instantly as he moaned against her mouth. The warm rumble was stolen into her breath as she deepened the kiss all the while holding him tightly to her with her legs. He rocked inside of her as best he could with the position in which she had him locked, hitting a spot deep inside of her that had her hips shaking and pushing onto him. Whatever he gave her, she wanted more, more sensation, more of him. Everything was simultaneously enough and too much.

A symphony of praises and curses alike fell from her lips as he struck the final chord, as though pushing her from a mountain top and throwing her to the heavens. Agatha felt herself tear apart as she came hard around him, walls clenching to hold him in place as her hips writhed against him. Her legs broke their hold of him as her back arched against him, breaking the kiss and leaving him to play voyeur to her undoing.

She felt her orgasm spill from her as he pulled out and heard the breath of admiration come from above her. He loved to watch her lose herself to him, she knew, and felt no shame as her body twitched in the rush following her orgasm, every nerve feeling as though it were pure electricity.

When she opened her eyes, Agatha saw Dracula above her, a toothy and satisfied grin spread wide across his face. He leaned down, kissed her once upon her lips before drawing back. The lust had not left his eyes, and as he gently rolled her onto her stomach, Agatha understood why. However, she would not feel hardwood against her abdomen for long.

He sank back into her aching heat, even wetter than before, and pushed a few gentle thrusts into her, his grip firm at her hips as her legs supported her. Agatha refused to be fucked like a dog, refused to let the only contact be his hips against her ass. She pushed herself up, grabbed behind her and wrapped her hand into his hair. The other found his hip and dug into his flesh as he thrust hard into her.

With one hand over her abdomen, Dracula let the other wander to her breast and played with her nipple. Her head fell against his chest as he tugged the flesh between his fingers and found a steady pace. His hand traveled from her breast to her neck and Agatha rocked her hips backwards, sending him deeper into her as he kissed the side of her head.

“You’ll be my undoing, Agatha Van Helsing,” he groaned against her temple as he shifted and slipped out from her. Dracula turned her in his hold, lifted her into the air, and sank her onto his erection. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, and kissed him as she raised and lowered herself on him.

His teeth gnashed against her bottom lip as she rolled down over and over, trying to break his restraint. Blood dripped from her mouth and he swept his tongue along the wound, swiftly taking it in like a starved wolf.

“Would you not prefer to call me Countess Dracula?” The question caused him to falter beneath her, a thick swallow in his throat before he pressed her tightly against him and dropped them to the table below. His back landed against the surface with a thud and her hair fell around him, framing his face in waves of brunette.

“Always, my dear,” he breathed in return and reached for her face. “And as your Count, I have but one request.”

Agatha shifted into his touch as she freed herself from around his body and realigned herself with his cock. “Only one? A small number for such a gluttonous man.”

“Mm, selective, exclusive with such a unique beauty,” he chuckled and teased at her entrance. She shivered as she sank his head into her, telling herself that was as far as she could go. He moved his free hand to her hip and savagely thrust into her. “Never be gentle.”

Her claws dug into his chest as she cried out and exposed her fangs. They quickly set a rhythm of viciously slapping skin as Agatha rode him, bouncing on his dick with her head tossed back. Every groan, every breath fell into the air of his study, ringing against the walls until she could no longer hear herself. Dracula’s nails held her hips, secured loosely in the flesh, the sting at her sides drawing her back from ecstasy.

“Let,” she breathed out and looked at him. “Let me.”

Confusion had no place between them and Dracula silently obeyed instead of questioning her. Satisfied with his silence, Agatha grabbed his hands and removed them from her body and pushed them to the table on either side of him. He lifted his head and planted a kiss at her lips and she hovered atop him, so close to him, she could smell the combination of amber and blood along his skin.

His cock pulsed inside of her, constricting and twitching with each passing second she had not moved. She could feel he was close, knew he could not wait much longer for his release, and as she pressed her breasts against his furred torso, she felt him physically restrain himself from fucking into her.

“Good boy,” she hummed and placed a kiss on his neck. “Until I tell you otherwise, you are to remain still.”

Without another word, Agatha began to raise and lower herself on him. She went slowly at first, savored the heat pulsing against her walls, until she could no longer hold back. Something within her snapped as she rode him, quicker and harder with each motion, and Agatha found herself unable to regain control. Every motion of her hips sent him deeper, closer. She heard something cracking beneath them, but ignored the sound entirely, able only to hear their discordant claims of love and lust, voices thick and heady with the fire of their passion.

“Hold to me,” Agatha groaned quietly against the side of his head without breaking her increasingly haphazard motions.

He obeyed. A hand twined tightly into her hair and another wrapped over the small of her back to press her tightly to him. His cock shot into her like a piston as he took the liberty of fucking into her. Agatha’s head fell against the table and her teeth sank into his neck to keep herself from falling off some invisible plane. Her mind left her as she drank him in, another orgasm washing over her.

He rolled them, then, her teeth ripped from his neck as he drove into her. Each thrust proved less gentle than its predecessor, the wood beneath her creaking, and his hips stuttered as his orgasm came at last. Agatha shook and groaned as he emptied his seed into her, panting beneath him as though she needed air. Another push into her and he came again until he couldn’t help but slide out of her. His cum spilled from her entrance and he was quick to lap it up, fucking her now with his tongue to keep it in.

She ached terribly, but the feeling of his tongue delving into her and rubbing against her clit sent her over the edge one final time. His name burst from her lips as though he were God himself. She wrapped her thighs around his head as she writhed against him, nails digging into the wood and carving out animalistic marks deep enough to render it useless.

Once the shockwaves left her body, Agatha unwound her legs and looked down to see him already on the way up to kiss her. She met him in time and could taste the result of their sex on her tongue as she moaned softly into the kiss.

When he pulled away, Dracula’s eyes settled on the tablet. As he inspected the new marks a smile washed over him and his gaze flickered to Agatha then back to the damage. He removed himself entirely from the tabletop and Agatha joined him. He grabbed at the trim and rocked the table easily back and forth on now wobbly legs. The former nun could sympathize as her legs were no steadier.

He wrapped an arm around her, pulled her close to his side, and gave a sigh. “I do think it might be time for a new table. After all, this one could hardly withstand one go.”

Agatha hummed in agreement before looking to him, ignoring the various fluids and woodchips atop the table. While there rested amusement and relief in his eyes, she could tell he had, at one point, had some hopes for the table. She could also discern that he was considering commissioning a new one at that very moment.

“Surely you can finish your work in another room and leave your materialistic nature alone for the moment,” Agatha noted as she moved from him and gathered his trousers and undergarment.

She handed them to him and looked for the tattered remains of her own outfit, finding only her bra and blouse still intact. His bestial nature had cost her quite a number of clothes, but he always replaced them.

He took them from her and planted a kiss to her forehead. “I suppose work does often come before play, though I did rather enjoy our little break. I should put off my work more often.”

Agatha ran her tongue between her lips and shook her head disapprovingly. “That is not what you were to take away from this. Now, go finish before you lose contracts.”

“As my Countess commands,” he remarked with exaggeration before dressing. He quickly gathered the documents, swiping off any splinters that had appeared, and turned back to her. “Thank you, Agatha.”

“My pleasure.”

#my writing #dragatha #dracula #dracula x agatha #count dracula #agatha van helsing #dracula fanfiction #i'm back babey #but only to post this filth and then peace out because i'm moving so soon #dracula 2020 #bbc dracula

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chiiquititamoved · 5 years ago

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ep 1 of bbc dracula - observations

beginning looks very creepy. am i down? not sure.

there’s a cool nun! i’m getting some very good badass vibes

wHEw, okay, i was expecting some queerbait-y type stuff from this show but literally before even the intro, this (AMAZING) nun just goes “mr harker. have you had sexual intercourse with dracula?”

just. right out of the gate

we’ve established that this nun doesn’t have any faith in god

okay now we’re getting into the castle stuff. (this is right after the intro)

aw mina (from her letter) seems like a sweetheart so far

this is very beauty and the beast so far. like when belle’s dad goes into the castle and there’s no one there

oooh we just met dracula. he’s very wrinkly and old

“they [people of transylvania] are without... flavour.” “perhaps you mean character?” “ahahahaa.”

i feel like i should clarify that harker is staying in a convent, being cared for by nuns while he’s sick. he’s telling his story to badass nun and this other nun and the viewer is seeing what happened through cuts or whatever

okay you know just some book stuff is happening - dracula’s being a weirdo, johnny harker notices some odd goings on, etc.

so, this has always struck me - in the book as well - why is dracula always climbing up walls like a fucking lizard? why? first of all, he can turn in to a bat, so if he needs to get OVER the wall then he can fucking FLY. if he doesn’t need to get over the wall then wtf is he doing? harker is going to see or hear him - i mean, god knows he’s acted weirdly/suspiciously enough for harker to be scared/nervous around him - like??? dracula really is an idiot psychopath bisexual

harker’s having an *ehem* mildly i n n a p r o p r i a t e dream. he and mina are having sex but then mina turns into wrinkly old dracula. yucky yuck.

now harker sees ‘help us’ written on his window

it’s in english! very convenient for mr harker - so our wonderful nun points out: “you are an englishman: a combination of presumptions beyond compare.” (no hate to englishmen)

harker starts to explore the castle. uh oh.

he gets lost + dracula finds him

our man dracula is wining and dining johnny!

Dracula looks younger now. :| this is suspicious

dracula is EVEN YOUNGER! glow up!!!!

harker is starting notice there’s NO STAFF IN THE CASTLE... and his health is deteriorating

wow johnny is actually being very brave!! i must say i am proud

johnny is finding a bunch of old pictures in a wooden bin somewhere in the castle. are these dracula’s previous victims?? WHO KNOWS

FUCK there’s a fucking dead lady in the wooden bin. yuckkk i do not approve

she just chased him down this tunnel, and now dracula’s there and harker passes out

badass nun (agatha) is telling us about the UNDEAD. explains a lot

drac says he found johnny asleep on the floor in the basement, all the while looking SUSPICIOUSLY young.

HEY drac is calling him johnny! that’s my thing >:(

now johnny doesn’t recognize mina’s picture! what’s going on?

he’s making johnny write three letters to mina: one saying he’s almost leaving the castle, one saying he’s leaving the next day, and one saying he’s left safely, etc.

john’s hallucinating that a baby’s crying in the distance. OR IS HE?

harker is willing to sacrifice himself for a baby he doesn’t even know exists. i’m actually proud of how brave he is :’(

AGATHA!! i love her

so harker is starting to plot an escape - he looks for a map to the castle. he knows that drac said that it doesn’t exist but his reasoning is that the architect was an artist and would have wanted his art preserved. he finds the map in a painting of the architect’s dead wife (because she’s the sunlight of his life and he built this place to escape the actual sunlight when she died?? i think?? Sorry that was confusing)

so, the architect made hidden passages through the maze of the castle

harker finds a passage! yay

okay the passage led to a room, and in the room there’s a lady in a wooden box thing eating rats. she comes out of the box, she’s a vampire, and johnny’s talking to her. she left the message on the window earlier? maybe? this is unclear.

she bites john

harker askes nun agatha why she’s got no “faith” and she says “I have looked for god everywhere in this world and never found him.” “Then why are you here?” “Well, like many women of my age, I am trapped in a loveless marriage, maintaining appearances for the sake of a roof over my head.” GOD I LOVE THIS WOMAN

eww there’s a deadish baby in the box thing

drac kills the lady in the castle

harker: “you’re a monster!” drac: “and you’re a lawyer. nobody’s perfect.”

okay drac and harker have a suspenseful chat, bla bla bla. drac is trying to REPRODUCE?

If this turns into some fucking mpreg fanfiction bullshit i’m suing

drac goes outside onto a balcony thing in the castle w/ johnny and they lay down (drac in the shade and harker in the sun) and drac asks johnny to describe the sun to him?? cool i guess??

drac, about the sun: “But that’ll burn me to dust.” my man john harker: “Good.” “fair enough.”

i LOVE how johnny is literally on death’s door, and still manages to snark at the man who put him there

okay so john’s still outside w/ drac, it’s established that he’s either going to die (fully) or be stuck in the castle for the rest of his “life”. harker is shaking, bla bla, and he goes “drac! spare me!” and drac’s like “how, dude?” and then we cut to agatha and harker in the convent and it turns out that harker just wrote pages of shit like “dracula is my master!” “dracula will be obeyed!” “dracula is god!” when he got to the convent and it’s like... whew

turns out he thought he was writing an account of his stay at the castle but he really just wrote like 100 pages of that

oooookay - now, johnny’s begging drac to let him go and drac’s like “how?” and john says he won’t tell anyone about drac’s plans to move to england and kill everybody so drac’s like “sure,” and harker’s like “wait really,” and drac’s like “oooh i’m going to destroy everyone you love bla bla bla but if you swear you won’t try to stop me i’ll let you go.” UM.

but now harker gives this impressive last hurrah thing where he kinda like... climbs up dracula’s body? like drac pulls him? and he goes “i swear that if you let me out here alive... I’LL DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO STOP YOU!” psych

and then drac kills him and he falls down

“SO HOW IS HE ALIVE?”, you ask

“HE’S A VAMPIRE,” i say

oh no! he’s not! my lovely agatha reveals that he’s “undead, but not a vampire,”

aggie: “it’s not something that one anticipates asking: but, what happened after you were murdered?”

okay so now johnny becomes undead and he still has a spirit! johnathan harker has a will, etc and he tries to jump off of the balcony thing. drac’s like hey you should stay w/ me! ur kinda like me u kno and john’s like NOPE

then the sun hits drac’s face and johnny falls from the balcony

now aggie reveals that a river, which john fell into, bore him out to sea and a fisherman found him caught in his net. he was brought to the convent/agatha

agatha: “i am known to have some expertise in the realm of witchcraft and the occult.” johnny: “You’re a nun.” ag: “We can discuss my imperfectly suppressed fascination with everything dark and evil another time.”

oh!!!!!! so - the sun reflected the cross that harker was wearing onto drac!!!! and that’s why drac fell/was hurt whatever

so basically like minor vampires and shit don’t fear the cross??? but big guy (drac) does?

agatha’s like “i looked everywhere and finally i found god!!!! yay” and she’s happy

OH FUCK!!! THE SECOND NUN IN THE ROOM IS MINA!!!

basically aggie found out who he was, traced him back to london, and found mina (she mentions a detective acquaintance - sherlock crossover, anyone?)

mina: “we are to be married, so who you are will always be my decision.”

they have a really touching “i still love u!!” type scene and then a bunch of fucking bats fly in

turns out drac’s at the convent now

mina got bitten (on her face) by a bat and she’s kinda bloody and harker’s like woooh take this stake so you can stab me if i try to drink that

god agatha has SO MANY good lines!!!

now dracula has turned into a wolf and he’s outside the gates of the convent

mina hugs johnathan and he licks her blood :(

now he backs her into a corner and tries to drink her blood, but then he stops and tries TO IMPALE HIMSELF ON THE WOODEN STAKE

the wolf has this really gross transformation scene and he turns into dracula as a human

OOKAY so a bunch of nuns come to the gates (i should clarify that that’s where dracula is) and they pull out wooden stakes and agatha’s like drac you’re going down.

agatha opens the gates of the convent!!! and tells dracula he’s not invited in and he can’t come in

agatha to drac: “I expect a beast to follow rules, I don’t expect it to understand them.”

agatha cuts her hand open and like taunts him w/ the blood

SHE’S AGATHA VAN HELSING OH MY GOD

THEY REALLY TURNED VAN HELSING INTO A WOMAN!!!!!

drac: “who are you?” agatha: “your every nightmare at once. an educated woman in a crucifix.” !!!!!!!!

OH FUCK!!!! johnathan really is dead!!!!! :((( i thought he wouldn’t be but nvm i guess

mina and aggie have a talk and mina says she’ll never love anybody else :’(

oh shit!!! i was right he isn’t dead! drac does that weird lizard wall climbing thing again and goes into his window and tells johnny that “suicide doesn’t work.” great.

dracula’s like hey bud i can kill you properly! since it needs another person! all you’ve gotta do is invite me in! :))))))

we cut to the mother superior and she’s giving a nice little lecture about god

and then dracula comes in and cuts her head off

the nuns are obviously terrified BUT they’ve got their crosses and they push him away, whatever, but then drac calls a bunch of wolves

“I’m undead, I’m not unreasonable.”

the nuns get attacked by the wolves EXCEPT for agatha and mina, who went to agatha’s workshop to escape

harker comes down to the workshop! (which they surrounded by sacramental bread or something) and they’re arguing over whether they should let him in and mina’s like i’m gonna do it! and she almost does but she sees that harker’s eyes aren’t blue anymore, so she’s like hey what’s up with that and then harker starts PEELING HIS FACE OFF and it’s dracula

THE END OF EPISODE ONE

phewwwwwww. So this is almost 2000 words? And very incoherent. If you’ve had the courage to read this far, thank you.

IN CONCLUSION: will i keep watching this show? yes. i’m very squeamish so i’ll probably skip some of the gory stuff later on but other than that i will definitely continue.

did i like this show? YES. i honestly started it with very low expectations but so far it’s really good. to be fair, though, i found that in the book the beginning was the best part and i didn’t love it after, so i guess we’ll see.

did i like it better than the book? so far, yeah. The book was full of bullshit like “ooh you have a man’s brain and a woman’s heart,” to mina, which :/. (obviously it’s not like i could have expected much better from a male victorian author but still.) i love how they made van helsing a woman! I know agatha is going to be wonderful.

#dracula #bbc #bbc dracula #this is so long #i'm sorry #agatha van helsing #mina murray #johnathan harker #mine

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