#anno dracula

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would Annie Wilkes…

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[zippocreed501]

AUTHOR EXTRAORDINAIRE

'I don’t self-identify as a horror writer, or a science fiction writer, a crime writer, a mystery writer. I’ve done all of those things. But I do recognize that I operate best in that kind of arena.'

'Steep yourself in the research and then try to find a story that no one’s told before. That’s the key thing. If you are retelling a twice- or thrice-told tale, at least narrate it with a different voice. Find something in there that is yours.'

'That’s the scary stuff: when you don’t just make monsters but when you turn other people into monsters or when you find people who are willing to become monsters.'

'As with most of my books I’m never quite sure if the characters who get labeled as villains actually are villains because they tend to be monumentally self-destructive as well as monumentally destructive, which isn’t to excuse all the hideous damage that they do to people around them.'

'I think almost everybody in the world makes monsters in some way or another, and that includes the heroes as well as the villains.'

Author Extraordinaire Kim Newman

text source: www.medeleindeste.com

[see-arcane]

"Anno Dracula novel series – Mina becomes a vampire bride of Dracula after he marries Queen Victoria and vampirism spreads through England."

Damn at least kill her off

Anno Dracula irritates me almost as much as Coppola’s fanfiction if only because I genuinely like 1.5 elements of it. Namely, the notion of a vampiric English nation (with multiple variants of vampires!) and the setup of Dracula himself. I think A.D. Dracula’s ultimate form of all-but-king of the castle in a land dedicated to colonization is pretty near to what Canon Dracula might consider. It’s a terrifying, cool, and hideously logical way to spin the bastard. Which is neat!

But then Newman had to go and write the rest of the fucking thing.

The opening scene itself shot any hope I had for it in the throat and the rest of the book just left me wondering why folks like the author and Alan Moore write classic lit characters Like That if all they have to offer is meanly warped takes and vitriol. It just reads the way bile tastes. Mina got it bad, sure. But that’s the general rule for every character in this thing who isn’t Newman’s.

[stainlesssteellocust]

👀

[reinekes-fox]

@0nelittlebirdtoldme

I just stumbled upon Anno Dracula, it sounds like a wild ride!

[scarlet-came-back-wrong]

One thing I keep seeing in multiple Dracula blogs over the years is the statement that Kim Newman is rooting for Dracula in Anno Dracula and it makes me go just ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Did you read the book? Please read the book. Or don't, it's quite shallow and trashy and Newman can do better, but like. Maybe at least skim it a bit before writing furious walls of text with suggestions about Newman's personality and psychological problems just because you heard that X or Y happens there. There are problems with portrayals of other characters, but Dracula barely appears in the series and is shown as pure evil. I personally find his characterization there banal but serviceable for the author's purposes.

[yallemagne]

The novel Anno Dracula makes Arthur the villain because the author admitted that he hates him and finds him boring

ANNO DRACULA??? AS IN ANNO DOMINI???

Fucking hysterical. So Dracula is Vlad Tepes (the most annoying trope already), and Dracula wins purely because of Renfield attacking Seward that one time? WHAT? And then he kills Quincey and Jonathan (VH is apparently already dead) and Mina turns completely? JACK THE RIPPER??? ARTHUR AND JACK ARE BOTH JACK THE RIPPER AND ARTHUR IS VAMPIRE???

Well, this gave me a laugh. Of all the contrived ways to fuck around and have Dracula win, they blame Renfield. iojpgeio Seward sustained a small hand injury and it resulted in Dracula MARRYING QUEEN VICTORIA AND TURNING HER INTO A VAMPIRE. I'm crying oh my god.

GRAF ORLOK IS IN THIS???

Dracula starts a fascist regime where SHERLOCK HOLMES among others who refused to be turned into vampires (wow I didn't know consent now matters in turning) are imprisoned in internment camps.

It doesn't seem like this author liked any of the characters in Dracula. It really seems like he just wanted the worst for all of them. Mina doesn't even show up in the plot summary after being turned.

I think the funniest part is that Jack doesn't hate Arthur bc he's killing innocents. They were both killing under the same pseudonym, but Arthur became a vampire and Jack took offence to that and murdered him. What a tragic breakup.

[goshdangronpa]

"Screw it, Danganronpa Vampire AU" pt. 1 (Trigger Happy Havoc)

So, Danganronpa is my favorite video game series. My favorite book series is Anno Dracula, an alternate timeline created by Kim Newman in which Bram Stoker's Count not only survives the events of the novel, but becomes king of England and reveals the existence of vampires to the world. Newman's books explore the ramifications across world history, with real figures (Queen Victoria, the Red Baron, Winston Churchill) and even characters crossing over from other fictions (Inspector Lestrade, James Bond) being vampires thenselves.

Rereading the terrific first book naturally got my mind mixing these two fixations. How might Danganronpa's characters be different in an AU where turning isn't unusual and many vampires live alongside, and sometimes in tension with, the "warm"? I'm gonna write a few posts, starting with the cast of Trigger Happy Havoc

Aoi Asahina: swimming is hardly a problem for vampires, who don't need to hold their breath. It's all the more impressive that a warm girl like Aoi can beat them in races, winning her an Ultimate slot. She'll never turn - she loves the flavor of high-calorie snacks too much to settle for an all-blood diet.

Byakuya Togami: warm for now - he believes vampirism is the natural choice for supreme human beings like himself, but he'd rather not be a teen for the rest of his life. Unfortunately for him, that means Genocide Jack can still drink his blood, and Toko can simultaneously live out a vampire master/human servant fantasy. Proof that the warm can be just as cold as the dead.

Celestia Ludenberg: claims to be a vampire of Countess Elizabeth Bathory's bloodline, but isn't even a vampire. She sure wants to be, though, and fantasizes just as much as her normal DR version about living in a castle with a harem of vampire boys.

Chihiro Fujisaki: warm, yet a firm believer in vampire supremacy. Even in regular DR, she believes there are two types of people in this dog-eat-dog world: the strong and the weak. She wants Mondo to turn her so she can be among the strong. Something odd happens in her murder, causing her spirit to wander the school before settling in a laptop. From inside the computer, she manually codes a presentation of herself - not AI, but the two Chihiro.

Hifumi Yamada: honestly, he probably wouldn't be that different. I do like the idea of him becoming Celestia's drudge, manipulated into believing he must serve her even though she doesn't have any vampire powers to actually enchant him like that.

Junko Enoshima: the rare vampire who shows up on film, but her true nature is a well-kept secret. In this version of THH, it really is Junko who gets impaled on the Spears of Gungnir (sorry, Mukuro fans). However, she designed them to miss her chest and heart. She spends the rest of the game recovering with supernatural healing, fueled by feeding off the blood of victims and executed blackeneds. More dangerous still, she's an energy vampire who feeds on other people's despair. If ever Dracula had an heir, it was her.

Kiyotaka Ishimaru: despite his father turning vampire as a means of advancing his political career, he remains warm. His friendship with Mondo challenges his negative bias against vampires. "Ishimondo" remains as bizarre and inexplicable as in the game - he's no longer fully warm, though a gross attempt at drinking blood suggests he didn't somehow become fully a vampire either.

Kyoko Kirigiri: tell me this girl wouldn't be a vampire. She refuses to share her turning experience, which may have something to do with her perpetually gloved hands. Her nature enhances her perception of small details, an asset to her detective work. However, the transactional nature of vampirism strongly influences her worldview, making her sensitive when she feels like others aren't giving her as much as she's giving them.

Leon Kuwata: another character who likely wouldn't be too different. In besting and slaying Sayaka, he'd mainly serve in the narrative to prove that the warm can be just as physically powerful and lethally dangerous as vampires.

Makoto Naegi: warm and perfectly ordinary as ever. He's a little nervous around vampires, having not met many before. He warms up to them as he gets to know them, especially Kyoko, who gives much of her blood to him after he nearly dies in his botched execution. His first time in a bloodgiving interaction gives him the power and vitality to defeat the mastermind, and his spreading of hope to his peers deprives Junko of the despair that gives her such great power. If Junko is Dracula, Makoto is the sun.

Mondo Owada: turned vampire so he could be even gnarlier and stronger, though his brother Daiya chose to remain warm. He became reckless like so many young vampires and would've been killed once had Daiya not sacrificed himself for him. He tries to give Chihiro what she wants, but her twisted views of vampiric masculinity unintentionally hit him where it hurts. The resulting mental break makes him lose control of his feeding, draining her to death.

Sakura Ogami: fully warm. Even with their enhanced strength, all but the fiercest elders would fall in battle with her, more than earning her the title of Ultimate Martial Artist. Jealous rivals speculate that she allows vampires to feed on her so some of their power can transfer to her in the process.

Sayaka Maizono: turning vampire was one of the many choices she felt compelled to make for the sake of her music career. If she can't age, she can be a teen idol forever. This version really is an esper. A silver knife to the chest kills her just as good as in the game.

Toko Fukawa: her split identity was always too cartoony to really fit any real condition or disorder. Here, she's a halfa, Blade-style, compartmentalizing her human and vampire sides into Toko and Genocide Jack. Of course it's not healthy, as Jack tends to kill those she feeds on (cute boys are her preference). Even that changes when she meets a certain girl in Towa City ...

Yasuhiro Hagakure: warm, but a Hope's Peak research team infused him as a child with the blood of multiple psychic vampires until he became a greater psychic than all of them. Otherwise as chipper and unserious as ever.

And Monokuma can be a little bat. Monokomori.

[skeletalroses]

Jerry and Severen’s cameos in Anno Dracula

Posting by request from @rock-n-macabre! I’ve never seen anyone on this site mention the Anno Dracula series by Kim Newman, but it’s an AU/spinoff of the original Dracula novel wherein Dracula was not defeated and successfully took over England. It’s an alternate history of real-world events in which vampires live openly, and it’s populated by personages from all manner of vampire media, real history, and classic literature. The list of cameos and references is massive and they range from major characters to hidden Easter eggs.

For us 1980s film vampire fans, here are the relevant excerpts from the chapter featuring my beloved boys Jerry Dandridge of Fright Night and Severen of Near Dark. This is from book two of the series, The Bloody Red Baron, which centers on World War I. In this scene, Allied pilots are launching an attack against a German aerial force of huge shapeshifting vampires.

The pilots for tonight’s jaunt were already in flying kit. Allard had a few veterans of the old Condor Squadron, but most, like Winthrop, were from the new intake. Mainly, they were American vampires, purposeful as blades, solitary as cats.

...

Allard liked to have the patrol line up as if for inspection, and go over the particulars once more. Winthrop fell in by Dandridge, a Yank new to the war but skilled in predation. The elder had passed among the warm for centuries, stalking in the cities of the living. Others of the intake---the cowboy Severen, the insatiable Brandberg, the idealist Knight---were old, turned before the 1880s. Mr. Croft reasoned that those who lived through ages of persecution must have the instinct to kill and survive. There was friction between these elder aces and Cundall’s contemporaries. No arguments, just mutual distaste.

...

Allard favoured a barbed arrow formation: taking the tip position himself, ranks falling back above and below and to both sides. Winthrop kept steady immediately above and behind the flight commander, with the high man, Dandridge, immediately above and behind him.

...

Winthrop watched the flier tumble, wings like an umbrella reversed by a sudden wind. He recovered and cruised downwards. Severen was on the wounded vampire’s tail, whooping and firing like Broncho Billy. The elder had a killing thirst and was ignoring tactics. When his guns were empty, his enemy would recover and come for him.

...

Another burst. Another miss. The bat-creature executed a perfect Immelmann and swooped towards the slice of moon. Dandridge was on his tail, firing scientific bursts. The Boche came out of his turn and spread wings wide. Dandridge had hit him. Red gobbets dripped in black fur.

With a sinking motion, the shape-shifter got beneath Dandridge’s climb and latched like a lamprey on to the underside of the Camel, wings wrapping upwards, tail lashing. The Camel’s frame buckled and its engine stalled. The prop sliced into the Boche’s face but jammed.

Winthrop was appalled.

The Camel came apart. Dandridge’s upper plane ripped off and disappeared like a kite in a storm. The shape-shifter detached from the aircraft. Dandridge’s crushed wreck plunged, wind shrieking in the wires. As he went down, Dandridge emptied his guns.

The creature that had killed Dandridge struggled to stay aloft. He had taken many hits and the propeller slice was severe. His wings were ragged and torn. Ribbons of dark blood flew from wounds.

...

Fourteen had approached the castle. Five were returning.

Winthrop had seen Dandridge and Rutledge killed and known Severen would lose his match. Now, he realised he had for a half-instant glimpsed one of the shape-shifters with a human rag in his mouth, shaking his head as blood-trails whipped. That had been another of the pilots.

The rest had been killed without his even noticing. Nine men exchanged for two monsters. The dog-fight couldn't have lasted more than two or three minutes.

Poor guys had a rough night, but meh, they’ll be fine. (Jerry can turn into a bat; he was probably out of his plane before it hit the ground.) It’s fun to imagine the pair of them as coworkers/war buddies, and even more fun to picture them helping haul each other’s battered asses off the field. (Someone will have to draw that. That someone may even, eventually, be me)

I’m assuming there’s some kind of conscription going on, because I don’t envision Severen volunteering for an outfit that’s all about authority and discipline like the military (we see how well he follows orders). So I love that someone along the line looked at this unhinged, chaotic bastard and decided that what he needed was access to heavy munitions and the power of flight

[dreadbirate]

The plot of Johnny Alucard

[local-vampire-bracket]

Round one, bracket three

Geneviève Dieudonné (Drachenfels/Anno Dracula) vs Carmilla/Mircalla Karnstein (Carmilla)

[the-unspeakable-tsar]

Anno Dracula.

In the book anno dracula: Johnny Alucard

Maverick from Top Gun

Iceman from Top Gun

Angel from X-Men

Desire from Desire, The Vampire

Nikita from La Femme Nikita

And DC Comics Vincent Velcro,

Are all vampires working for the u.s army and the vampire who created them is

Grant Gardner, Captain America from The Captain America serials from Republic. But in the original short story, he is called "Rogers".

[ubyr-babaj]

Kim Newman, my good man, please explain why when a vampire fucks teen boys it means he's creepy and fucked up, but when your MC's love interest looks like a 16 yo girl it's totally chill and sexy.

[stainlesssteellocust]

Kim Newman aka Jack Yeovil: This is my hot vampire OC Genevieve she has a lot of sex and explicitly looks not a day older than sixteen, I will repeat that fact a lot, I will have her and the narration make jokes about it, she looks sixteen years old, this is not weird I swear

Every cover artist on Drachenfels and Anno Dracula, ever: Nah fuck that this is a grown ass woman and we are drawing her as such

[doormouseetcappendix]

My Winter 2023 Audiobook Listening Log Part 11

Anno Dracula: 1999 Daikaiju (2019) by Kim Newman 

Devil House by John Darnielle (2022) read by John Darnielle 

A Headful Of Ghosts by Paul Trembly (2016) read by Joy Osmanski

The Troop by Nick Cutter (2014) read by Corey Brill 

The Deep by Nick Cutter (2015) read by Corey Brill

Little Heaven by Nick Cutter (2017) read by Corey Brill

Threshold by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2001) read by Lauren Fortgang

Daughter Of Hounds by Caitlin R. Kiernan (2007) read by Suzy Jackson 

Paradise Lost  by John Milton (1667) read by Simon Vance

The Sandman Act II by Neil Gaiman (2021) read by Neil Gaiman, James MckAvoy, Emma Corrin, Brian Cox, Kat Dennings, John Lighgow, Bill Nighy