#c: dracula (dracula)

[bribinart]

hear me out hear me out hear me out..... dracopia but it's the dracula (1992) rendition (prints!)

[see-arcane]

Trying to imagine Lucy’s situation right now.

Sleep means nightmares (if you’re alone).

Sleep means your blood is disappearing (if you’re alone).

Sleep means you’re doing worse than dying (if you’re alone).

And it’s all just Dracula playing with his food. The only thing keeping him from getting straight to the conclusion is his own restraint for the sadistic sport of it and practicing stealth in a land where he doesn’t yet rule the whole territory through fear.

But he could get away with it in one go. He could find half a dozen easy ways to pull it off before Van Helsing starts meddling in earnest.

…and that would end the game, wouldn’t it? No, no. Can’t have that. He wrung two whole months of fun out of Jonathan. Your turn now, Lucy.

[wynought]

i think dracula never meant for jonathan to be alive longer than today's entry. sure, he wanted to keep jonathan around for a few days to toy with him - which is why dracula barely bothered to hide his true nature (the calèche ride and being the driver, the lack of servants, the unnatural strength, not hiding that he doesn't eat or drink, the reverse sleep schedule, the pushing of jonathan's boundaries). jonathan was meant to pick up on all of that, he was meant to realise that dracula was not only a dangerous man, but something supernatural preying on him.

then, after playing with his food for a few days, dracula would have killed him and moved on. he drags out the legal matters until today, but seems to have resolved all of them by now. talking about obtaining the services of multiple other solicitors is both something you would ask to tie up any legal loose ends, and to implicitly threaten your current solicitor - the last veiled threat, before putting everything out in the open.

after finishing this conversation, dracula suddenly stands up and asks about jonathan's correspondence. this is the point where he tells asks jonathan to stay for a whole month longer. i believe, this was dracula purely acting on impulse. he has had so much fun playing with jonathan, he doesn't want to end it here.

it is only now that he provides jonathan with the means to contact the outside world, so that nobody comes looking for him too soon. if dracula had planned on jonathan's stay extending for that long, why not ask him to write back home on the first or second day, when jonathan's suspicions might not have been raised as high and the chance for hidden messages was much lower (dracula is arrogant enough to believe that he would catch any attempt of jonathan's to communicate the situation, but he is also good enough at what he does that he would have minimized any potential risk to himself).

my biggest piece of evidence is that, before going to post the letters, dracula finally gives jonathan the warning to "not by any chance go to sleep in any other part of the castle". this is, of course, because of [redacted for spoilers]. up until this point, however, dracula didn't care if [redacted] happened to jonathan.

today is the day that dracula decided that jonathan is his, and his alone.

[immediatebreakfast]

I think it's also notable that her expectations for marriage is "the stenography and typing skills I'm cultivating will be useful for work!" instead of more typical housewife skills and having children immediately. It's 1897 and she can't have a career while married, but she's trying to juggle both.

She wants a partnership with Jonathan as her top priority!

Exactly! This is a noteworthy detail that really establishes a lot of Mina's characteristics for the whole novel.

Mina wants to marry Jonathan, she loves him with all of her heart, but her priorities in this future marriage are quite different from one may expect from a lady of that time.

Instead of writing to Lucy about the transition from schoolmistress to housewife, Mina talks about typewrites and shorthand, and training herself like lady journalists (👀), so she can become adept in basically documenting information (👀!!!!).

Why is Mina doing all of this? Because she intends to work alongside Jonathan in his solicitor job. Since lawyering is a profession with a lot of paperwork, then Mina decides to cultivate similar skills as much as she can in order to take charge of that part of the job.

It's incredible how, while she is sad for leaving her current job, Mina isn't lamenting that she can't work because she is (correctly) expecting to work with Jonathan. Housewife skills, home care, and children are last things in her mind. Mina is ready for marriage life, and all of the stuff that comes when you, and your spouse are working in the same space.

[treffys-thunder-thighs]

Happy Valentines, here’s a cosplay of the throuple ever 🥰

Sypha: @queenofcringe

Trevor/Ralph: Yours truly 💅✨

[georgeromeros]

Dracula 2000 (2000) dir. Patrick Lussier

[raingkun]

恶魔城DLC上线正式服喽，爽玩

[crowfatherd]

starting castlevania while thinking really hard about that roleplay. hundreds injured. thousands dead.

[the-crow-binary]

I'm not fully satisfied... but drawing Alucard horrified is kinda fun tbh ❤️

Maybe I'll redraw it at some point in the future. Because that fight is horrible and I love when Characters are in pain ❤️

[incorrectdracula2020quotes]

[weirdlookindog]

Glenn Strange in House of Dracula (1945)

[ibrithir-was-here]

Are there any Vampire Harker Power Couple in any books or comics or anywhere?

None that I can think of in traditional media/publishing :(

But there's plenty of good stuff here on Tumblr!

They're not vampires in it but you've got the excellent excellent @lxgentlefolkcomic where the Harkers and the rest of the Crew of Light are continuing to battle eldritch beings after Dracula /whilst/ being in love and in character

@see-arcane has some excellent Vampire Harkers stuff on their Substack

And the above and me and several other authors have made a Bad End AU thats got Vampire Harker Power Couple called "Blood of My Blood" thats just about to wrap up if you want to check it out!

(Since it is a collab AU that's been written between November of 2023 and now there's a lot of chapters but they're of varying lengths. Think of it as a written out television series with like, three seasons 😅 )

Edit: Also not vampires but ghosts--the amazing @theholmwoodfoundation Podcast! Only one episode out so far but they're already nailing the Jonmina dynamic 👌

[see-arcane]

Forgot just how much I love not only Jonathan's return to his journal (hooray!), but also just how immediate the turn from 'absolute wreck of self-doubt' to 'Oh, the unholy supernatural peril is real? Cool, that means I get to break out Vendetta Mode (tm) and finish what the shovel started :)'

Sometimes all it takes is knowing you can kill your demons (literal) to vastly improve your mental health (✿◡‿◡)

[mewkwota]

Being in this new realm must be a nightmare for Trevor. He lost his weapons, his powers are suppressed...

And he can't even fit in the lockers.

[bubblecrumbled]

Haven't posted In a while

So... Here's some Seras and Pip

[wynought]

to me it is evident that jonathan already knows that his situation is precarious at best and actively dangerous at worst. all the "he doesnt see the red flags" stuff that people used to say about him is utter nonsense.

he recognizes that drac is purposefully keeping him awake at night and, while he doesnt remark upon his suspicions, his wording and choice of details to include (e.g. drac going "you must be less interesting, so i don't keep you awake", which is more a reflection on drac being a bad host than on any fault of jonathan's) makes it clear that he understands that this is done on purpose and not by accident.

he keeps taking note of situations in which he would expect to see other people, but doesn't. he is aware that he is isolated and alone with a dangerous man (he took special care to highlight drac's unnatural strength and cold skin, the nauseating feeling he got upon being too close during that first supper, and he keeps taking note of any incident in which drac makes him feel uneasy - the nasty smiles, the way drac comes and goes without letting jonathan know when to expect him).

he is wants to be the model picture of an english gentleman guest, trying not to snoop and wander about the castle, when he doesn't have his host's permission. still, he can't help himself but try the doors, and the second door he tries is already locked (which is, of course, important in conjunction with the fact that drac tells him that he wouldnt wish to go anywhere that was behind a locked door, anyways). additionally, he notices that there are no mirrors, which he tries to frame as "oh, i am lacking one of the comforts i am used to, haha, sure weird that these transylvanian people don't have those", but it gives him pause - especially, considering the obvious wealth and opulence he is otherwise surrounded with.

to me this all reads as a continuation of that sentiment from may 4th where he already penned down that if he doesn't make it back himself, he hopes that his journal does (and that one of the last sentiments he wished to convey was his love for mina, i am still not okay about that). obviously, he isn't yet at the point where he wants to give shape to his fears by outright writing them down, but he is meticulously keeping track of all those red flags people joke about him missing. if he wasn't, he wouldn't be writing them down. their inclusion in his journal shows that jonathan knows what's going on (with the limited information he has, obviously), shows his wariness of his host, and shows that he isn't sure if he will safely return to mina.