#where's the dracula to my mina. WHERE. god.

[born-to-lose]

Dracula (1992) brainrot! All is well

[thisisworsethanitlookslike]

God damn Ben Galpin at it again!!

[bluehairedspidey]

Discussion prompt: what's a question you have about Dracula, or something about the book you'd like to discuss in class?

My classmates: I wanna know more about Dracula and Jonathan's relationship

Me:

[susiephone]

wtf is dracula daily?

i’ve seen a couple people ask this question on my posts about it, so i thought i’d go ahead and clear it up here!

ok so, the classic horror novel “dracula” is an epistolary novel - that means it’s told via letters, diary entries, ship logs, and news articles. (technically the term “epistolary novel” refers to works told solely through letters or emails, but many have expanded it to mean any work that is told via in-universe documents, hence why diaries and logs often get included as well. “frankenstein” is another classic example; the whole framing device is robert walton is recounting the story he heard from victor to his sister via letter. a modern example would be “several people are typing,” which is told via slack messages, or “the perks of being a wallflower,” which is told via letters from charlie to his anonymous pen pal, which is functionally more like you’re reading his diary.)

because of the nature of the narrative, we actually know the exact day nearly everything in dracula happens - the letters, news articles, diary entries, etc. are all dated.

“dracula daily” is a substack project where the novel is broken up into parts, with people who are subscribed to the project getting emails every day something in dracula happens - for example, the novel opens with jonathan harker’s journal entry on may 3, so on may 3, subscribers are emailed that entry. the action of dracula takes place from may 3 - november 6, plus an epilogue set some years later. the project started in 2021 (i think), but fucking BLEW UP in 2022, and they’re doing it again this year! lots of us are very excited - especially people like me who fell behind last time.

why not just read the book?

valid! due to some parts of dracula being told out of chronological order, dracula daily does reorder some things. for example, the first section of dracula is told entirely from jonathan harker’s pov, then the second section switches the pov to mina murray. their sections have some overlap in the timeline, so dracula daily jumps back and forth between their perspectives.

if you want to read the book as bram stoker intended, dracula daily may not be for you. but for a lot of people (myself included!), it breaks up a very long text into easily digestible chunks (....mostly. there is one entry that is 10k words), and the fact that it’s a big project means there are a lot of people reading along with you.

i think there’s also something valuable about experience the slow revelation of wtf is going on along with the characters. the book which you might otherwise get through in a few days is stretched out into months of suspense and agony as you wait for the other shoe to drop, and it’s great.

plus, the whiplash between “jonathan harker’s neverending horror” vs “lucy is basically on the bachelorette” that you get in dracula daily is very very funny.

how do i sign up?

right here! and if you sign up and fall behind in the emails, no worries - the dracula daily website posts past entries so you can catch up.

what if i prefer audiobooks?

have i got great news for you!

like i mentioned before, i couldn’t keep up with the emails last year. part of it is that it is much easier for me to focus on an audiobook or keep up with a podcast than it is for me to sit down and read, especially with longer entries.

this year, there is going to be a podcast titled “re: dracula” that was inspired by dracula daily. every episode will be a dracula daily entry, with a full voice cast! (seriously, if you listen to british podcasts, you will recognize some of these names. the magnus archives and wooden overcoats girlies are WINNING.) you can find that here.

there is also a podcast called “cryptic canticles” that has an already-completed audiodrama of dracula that i’m told is also extremely good, and was also broken up by date. you can find that here.

why do i keep hearing about paprika/the boyfriend squad/lizard fashion/cowboys?

you’ll see.

oh god am i gonna hear about this nerd shit for the rest of the year

yes. sorry.

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

As much as I am very much enthralled by "holiest love" propaganda, it is the time of year where I would like to once again state that I think people on here make it way way way too black and white. Like Jonathan's willingness to follow Mina into the dark is the absolute only way to exhibit true love. I don't think that's true. I see takes every year that sort of vilify the four men for being so willing to kill Lucy... Lucy is dead. Lucy is very much dead. Who knows how much of the old Lucy would have presented itself in vamp!Lucy if given the time to develop, but no matter what the new vampire Lucy would have not been anywhere close to the same person.

If you want to engage in how it works in the novel's canon, there's no such thing as a "good" vampire or "tortured" vampire or whatever. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, souls are real and you lose them when you become a vampire + you lose whatever kindness + goodness you have to become a bloodthirsty murderer.

It's not a heartless response from any of the four men to see vampire Lucy and say, "oh my God, this is not her, something has taken up residence and her corpse is being used to enact harm, we have to put an end to this because we loved her" I don't think that is an unreasonable response and I don't think that that's an unloving response either.

There are two scenarios here, one saying "I'll love you even when you're gone from yourself, I'll love you when your best parts have been taken away never to be returned, I'll love you when it will bring me nothing other than the knowledge that I love" with the counterpoint to that being "are you kidding yourself though. Is the person who you loved even still there. Who is this for?"

And the other being "I'll love you so much that I will protect and fight for the memory of your goodness and your soul. I will not shrink from whatever it takes to grant you peace and free you from this horrible curse which was itself inflicted on you through great violence" with the counterpoint to that being "tell me again how all that violent staking was so righteous + different from the vampire's attack. That's God's peace you saw on her face, right? How could you doubt it?"

You're allowed to prefer one over the other etc, but like. It's all subjective. Love is subjective. There's not one right answer. And people are going to buy into different things depending on which metaphors + subtexts we like best, what our belief systems are, etc. Let's keep the conversations open. Either one could be represented anywhere on the scale of good to bad depending on the type of story you want to tell.

[yallemagne]

God returned with a moth chained to his hand "There's so many things that you'll never understand... So come to me, we can change night into day. You'll hold my hand so you'll never go astray." GOD DEVOURED THAT OF FATHER

Honey I'm Home - GHOST ft. DEX

This is a project I have been working on since August, and I thought there was no better time to post these frames on Halloween!

This is art of my ongoing Orice series where Jonathan is targeted by Dracula in October rather than Mina.

My Ko-fi

[see-arcane]

I am truly thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of our deliberations. It is too great a strain for a woman to bear. I did not think so at first, but I know better now. [...] I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep silence after such confidence as ours; but I must be resolute, and to-morrow I shall keep dark over to-night's doings, and shall refuse to speak of anything that has happened.

Jonathan, no, don't give into the guys' peer pressure noooo

It is strange to me to be kept in the dark as I am to-day; after Jonathan's full confidence for so many years, to see him manifestly avoid certain matters, and those the most vital of all. This morning I slept late after the fatigues of yesterday, and though Jonathan was late too, he was the earlier. He spoke to me before he went out, never more sweetly or tenderly, but he never mentioned a word of what had happened in the visit to the Count's house. And yet he must have known how terribly anxious I was. Poor dear fellow! I suppose it must have distressed him even more than it did me. They all agreed that it was best that I should not be drawn further into this awful work, and I acquiesced. But to think that he keeps anything from me! And now I am crying like a silly fool, when I know it comes from my husband's great love and from the good, good wishes of those other strong men.

[...] Well, some day Jonathan will tell me all; and lest it should ever be that he should think for a moment that I kept anything from him, I still keep my journal as usual. Then if he has feared of my trust I shall show it to him, with every thought of my heart put down for his dear eyes to read.

Mina, no, you have to communicate now, in the present, you're you, you can un-acquiesce, you can break the curse, just talk to Jonathan now, noooooo

GOD this is masterfully infuriating work, Bramward Stokerbroker. Here we have on paper just how much this new status quo--the 'proper' status quo--grates against both of them. You can almost hear them grinding their teeth with the effort to keep smiling and nodding through this unanimous* decision. They know it is For Mina's Sake that they are doing this. Sure, they both hate every second of it and it breaks a loving rhythm they've shared for years together, BUT THEY KNOW BETTER NOW :)))

(Lucy is screaming in the afterlife. Renfield has his head in his hands.)

But all that aside, a thing I'm hooked on this read-around is the fact that, hey. We are reading this. Spoiler, but the entirety of Dracula is actually compiled together by Mina after the story closes. These are all written documents we're reading that the entire group has laid eyes on already. With everyone (bar Art and Quincey for some reason, thanks Mr. 3 Lines Allowed and Mr. Laconic :/, Jack is just talking and waiting for Mina to transcribe now, augh) on duty in some way to record the progress of things so that they can be read later as reference...I have to wonder now.

How honest are these pages the Harkers are putting down now versus what they wrote before joining Van Helsing's Scooby gang? Neither one is writing in shorthand. It's all plain English.

I had a class once where one of the assignments was to keep a daily journal. One page filled out every single day, about anything. Anyone want to guess how many personal secrets or honest feelings I put in those pages for the guy grading my class to read? If you said anything higher than 0 you're wrong.

The Harkers have an audience to worry about right now. An audience of Prof. Et Cetera, Dr. Asylum Director (whose asylum they're currently living in! the kind of place where Jonathan could've ended up and innumerable women have been imprisoned for being women the Wrong Way! whee!), Incredibly Wealthy and Empowered Lord, and Mr. Likewise Rich 'We Should Do Guns About It' American. Who all seem to like them, fresh-from-the-lower class, industrious and Dracula-confronting sorts that they are. Fast friends, all of them.

(Jonathan is still only Harker to them. Simultaneously the Man Who Survived Castle Dracula and the gofer guy doing the footwork and the paperwork/property hunt while Van Helsing hits the library and the others...well, I'm sure they're doing something. Other than re-reading the first half of Dracula.)

(...Which was compiled and transcribed by Mina. Who faced down Dracula in her jammies. Unarmed. At night. For Lucy. But she can't handle your scary stories about the houses full of dirt boxes, let alone join you on the hunt she was explicitly prepared and eager to help with. Can't risk it, little lady, off to bed now.)

This is where they are now that they've ~joined forces~ with Van Helsing and the Suitor Squad. After all they've done, all they're still relied on to do, the Harkers are with allies who have had their acquaintance for less than three days. And now, to appease those allies and their opinions and to keep everything placid with these nice, outnumbering, socially and monetarily endowed parties, they do what they've always done when faced with the fact of their being perpetually on the low rung of the ladder.

The Harkers accommodate. Including in their own diaries, as these too are now deemed forfeit important to the Cause, should the gang need to comb back through it all for clues.

That's why the Harkers are the only ones writing it down--because they already were. They're the kids in the group project who can be trusted to do the work. So just let them keep doing it. Keep an accurate record now, kids! You do such a good job of it, we'd only be getting in the way, ha ha. Remember that we can and will read everything you put down in the future.

Hence: All of what we read today. And will read in the dates to come.

The Harkers are writing under a (friendly) gun right now. They can purge some feelings, but not all of them. And not completely. And not in any way that certain doctors and upper class people of power they barely know might misconstrue as ungrateful or mad in any sense. The Harkers are good people. The Harkers are helpful. The Harkers are team players even if that means no longer being a team themselves. They chafe a little at this, but it's all so new to them! It's alright. God's will and Van Helsing's be done. They know better now.

With all this in mind, it makes much more sense why Jonathan chooses to use shorthand for a Very Particular Entry we see coming up. An entry that Mina alone could read and decide to enter in the distant future, after the storm had passed.

And why, in light of all that happens, he cannot trust himself to put more than a vignette's worth of lines down as time goes on. Not if he wants to keep himself from laying out some actual honesty for everyone to read. Mina's entries will be weightier things, while she still has the capacity to write--carefully. Always carefully.

[immediatebreakfast]

Well those contemporary ideas keep being superimposed upon this victorian text to the point that some academics try to impose the literary Madonna - Whore complex on Mina and Lucy where neither of their characterization, the text, nor the characters around them fit that perspective.

Textually there may be an interpretation for female sexuality with Lucy, but after reading this book a second time I care even less about that when Lucy is actively battling something that is more akin to a chronic illness.

Why would I care about Lucy's so "remarked" sexuality when in the text she barely can get out of bed? Dracula is an illness to her, a sickness, a tormentor, and everyone else around can only watch as she wastes away by the day. Comments about romance, marriage, and sexuality are brought by other characters (Van Helsing) while Lucy is a passive spectator.

Also, I personally really don't like how the racist text of the Bad Foreigner comes and rapes the White Pure Woman gets turned around to talk about Lucy's sexuality that somehow ends up something that needs to be stopped. For someone that comes from a latinoamerican country, when you take this racist idea and try to spin it around into something that is not about the racism, it awfullt sounds like "she only needs a good fucking so she can stop being a prude."

I'm not saying that I hate these kinds of readings for Lucy because they are specifically about sex. It's that they focus so fucking much on the possible Sex part that they lose sight of everything else that is Lucy the character. Her relationship with her mother, her own anxieties over how she acts around anyone else that isn't Mina, the themes of Lucy's social mask, her original letter, her standing as a gothic maiden within the narrative. Her relating to Ophelia, the blood that binds every suitor to her until her death. How Lucy and Van Helsing fit into the gothic mold of daughter and father and what themes come with it. Everything that comes now that Lucy is transformed into a vampire.

All of that is pushed aside for readings that put Lucy as a secondary character in her own narrative to give spotlight to Dracula. Her own murderer gets called her sexual savior for killing her.

One thing that I do have to ask (regarding of course that most of these academic discussions, interpretations, and analysis have put more thought into this than me, along with not spreading an anti-intellectualism sentiment) about Lucy, and her themes related to her gender, her metaphors, and her literal and symbolic death is:

Why do everytime I search about Lucy's death, and transformation into a vampire, the only responses that I seem to get are all about sexy sex, sexual liberation, "feminist" slut shaming, and stuff about modernism with a weird sexual twist?

I'm sorry if I sound pedantic, but how can anyone read about Lucy's suffering, illness, then death (that is textual in the novel), and get that the conclusion is somehow that Lucy is now sexually liberated from those icky victorian rules thank to Dracula.

You know... the same vampire who put her through hell until he killed her.

Nuance is everything with these analysis, and the themes that are laid out in the novel have enough dept to cover a lot of interpretations, yet I can't shake the idea that the only way someone can reach the "she is allowed to be a sexually liberated slut now!!!" idea with Lucy is by willfuly misintrepeting the actual written text to fit their reading of it.

Are Dracula's attacks to Lucy sexual in nature? Yes, he is an older man preying on a younger woman, and taking advantage of her chronic illness to inflict his power upon her, then leaving behind only pain and confusion. Are these attacks insinuated to somehow be good for Lucy? Absolutely not, the text is clear in Lucy's suffering, and how she grows weaker by the day thanks to Dracula's constant assaults.

The text even remarks that Lucy is finally happier when Van Helsing and Seward are by her side protecting her, and giving her the means to recover from these attacks.

It's like these reads don't consider Lucy's character traits, nor her words about her own situation. She has never expressed any type of disatisfaction with her love life, nor her fiaance, nor the romance around her. One could even argue that Lucy is the most "innocent" character regarding that theme in the novel despite her being very eager to marry Arthur.

Wouldn't be better to argue about the actual liberation that Lucy goes through in the text? The death of Mrs. Westenra symbolizes Lucy's final step into becoming an adult.

Lucy has been treated like a child by her mother despite being ready for marriage. It has been implied that Lucy even holds resentment towards her mother for it, and still acts like the perfect daughter. Which means that Lucy has never been allowed to put in practice all of the education that goes into becoming the lady of the house.

And what happens when her mother dies in the most gruesome way, and Lucy realizes that she is all alone, and that the power has shifted to her? She immediately does all of the steps to calm everyone down, to order what to do, and to write what actually happened so no one gets blamed for the atrocities of Dracula.

That is the liberating moment that Lucy goes through which finally allows her to grow. Even if it was short, it was a moment that mattered to conclude Lucy's arc.

Lucy sadly died, but her death is one transformed, a wiser Lucy dies. What is left is not her.

[belles-non-wallpapering-content]

Dracula and Mina E.S x FEM! Reader

Overture- Egon has to go to the mayor's annual Halloween party to babysit Venkman, but he's bringing you, and you just found the perfect costume

CWs- Checking each other out shamelessly, rented costumes, kissing, biting, this is actually just a love letter to Harold Ramis' teeth, because oh my god.

A/N- Day 10! Just about 1/3 of the way through and I still haven't decided between two Halloween costumes. Also I was generally picturing a short version of the red dress Winona Ryder wears in Bram Stoker's Dracula, just for reference. Lots of ruffles, a bustle, low cut, etc.

If you'd like to read the other things I've written this month-- October Writing Master List

Every year the mayor throws a huge halloween party, where he lets his rich and famous donors dress up, drink for free, and usually agree to give him more money. This year you and your boyfriend are going too, and he could not possibly be less enthused. 

Peter leveraged invites from the mayor’s office as payment for a few public service ghost busting jobs, because he wanted to make fun of rich people and drink for free. A noble endeavor, but one Egon was not excited to babysit. Ray begged him to go, and after he agreed that Egon could bring you, he accepted. 

You were over the moon. Even if you weren’t a big party girl, a costume party with your wonderful boyfriend was something you could never pass up. You started brainstorming costume ideas immediately, until you came up with the perfect idea. 

Egon would be Dracula, and you would be his love, Mina. It was purely selfish, you got to wear a short, low cut red dress (Watching Egon get incredibly flustered over it), and you got to look at Egon in a suit with his hair pushed back. You declined getting him false vampire fangs, his naturally sharp teeth were arguably one of your favorite things about him–physically anyway. 

You kept your lips sealed about what you’d both be wearing, but tonight was the night. After as many lie detector tests as he could get away with while you were half asleep, and some intensive snooping, he still couldn’t figure out what you wanted to be for the party. But when he got back to his apartment, while you were nowhere to be found, a garment bag was left on his bed. The suit was inside, with a note stuck to the outside. A hot pink sticky note that just said ‘No Biting 🖤’ written in your handwriting. 

You started getting ready early. You wanted your makeup already done, and hair all set by the time Egon knocked on your door, you knew he’d be here well before you had to leave. He knocked more as a formality, then let himself in with the key you gave him. 

You couldn't decide whether to swoon or laugh at Egon, walking fully serious through your apartment, with his little cape in hand, suit all done up. 

“So no biting? None?” You knew that would get him riled up. But what fun would it be to just tell him what you were planning? He loved surprises. 

“Mmm. I don’t know, this is kind of a work event for you, since we’re going with your coworkers and all.”

“This is only so that Venkman can get intoxicated and embarrass the mayor for fun, I don’t think professionalism is a concern.”

“Oh come on now, calm down. You haven’t even seen my outfit yet.” You winked at him and picked up the garment bag with your costume in it, and then closed yourself in the walk-in closet to change, leaving Egon to sit on your bed and wait. You took your sweet time pulling on the short, extravagant dress, and even longer pulling on the accompanying stockings you bought later. 

“Could you help me lace up the back?” You called out as you opened the door, just as you were walking back out. 

“Of course.” He agreed before he saw you, and he was immediately worried he wouldn’t remember how to tie a knot with how beautiful you looked. He was putting everything he had into focusing on the laces instead of how much he’d rather have no plans, and really forfeit the ‘no biting’ rule. He must’ve cleared his throat half a dozen times to try and reset his brain, just hoping to keep it together a little bit longer.  

“So what do you think? I thought it could be a cute matching type thing, you know? Dracula and Mina.”  He gave a wistful sigh, hands planted firmly on your hips. 

“I cannot believe I agreed to go to this party, I’d much rather be able to stay home with you–in this– tonight.”

“So you like it?” You threw your arms around his neck, his cape in hand, pushing yourself even closer to him. He was just starting to recover from the shock of your costume choice, but the proximity got him flustered again. 

“Yes– that–that is accurate.” But when he leaned in to kiss you, you leaned away, pulling back to wrap the ribbons of his cape around his collar. 

He pouted intensely, but once you got the knot tied loosely, and tucked into the collar of his button up, you gave him two kisses. One on the lips, and then while he was still distracted and smiling, one on the tip of his nose. 

He responded by letting himself fall forward, face first, until his mouth met your shoulder. He pressed one kiss before letting his teeth start to lightly sink into your skin. 

“You are going to leave a mark, and I don't think I can handle the teasing from your coworkers. Even Ray was picking on me last time.” He didn’t come up from his leaned down position, but he did release his teeth long enough to get out a retort

“You’re the one who chose a vampire costume.” 

“And I stand by that. Now let’s go, spend 20 minutes making fun of Peter, he’s probably already drunk by now. But then we can come back here. I have the costume until the 3rd.” You gently pushed him back up, cupping his face with your hand. 

 “I’ll clear my calendar.”

[dathen]

(Hits play on where I left off in the Oct 3 Re: Dracula episode and immediately gets clubbed with religious trauma Mina feelings AGAIN)

Her asking the others to be glad that they’re helping Dracula and not just her is so…I can’t see it just as her being saintly. I don’t even see it as just her being afraid the others will come to loathe her just as much, though that’s definitely a fear in there.

I feel that deep down, it’s her trying to dig deep in her own feelings to scour away any thought that fell short of holiness. We KNOW she felt the Count could not be pitied because of Lucy’s murder. I feel that she is afraid that such a thought is why she was allowed to go through this, to beat some dreadful “there but for the grace of God go I” lesson into her.

I say this because I’ve been there in my own way: the weird mind games you play with yourself to try to guess what God wants out of you, the “how do I have the exact right mentality so that I��m not praying out of selfishness” and of course the eventual “what I prayed for didn’t happen so it must be because my heart wasn’t in the right place.”

The way Mina wraps a “if God wills it” around every wish and thought only after her attack, repeating over and over that she dare not even wish to be saved if God doesn’t want to save her (but please, please save her, the fear pulses deep beneath). The demonstration of “I am loving my enemy as myself, see, I feel he’s as worth saying as I am!”

This is not a peaceful piety. This is a soul-deep terror as her salvation is ripped out of her hands, as she’s become a cursed thing that divine protection now sets aflame.

[lauralot89]

So I watched Nosferatu

poor Nicholas Hoult keeps getting tortured by vampires

also

that certainly was a penis

it has been years since I watched the original Nosferatu and I no longer remember what it did with any of its characters or plot so I will not be comparing this to that

so if you're going to do a Dracula/Mina romance (or in this case, Orlok/Ellen) and you're not going to base it around their shared hobby of reading train schedules, this is probably the best way to do it, because this isn't actually a romance. This movie gives Mina/Ellen the psychic sensitivity that Lucy/Anna has in the book, and establishes that Ellen has had mental connection with Orlok since her childhood, and he essentially groomed her. She even calls him out on it in the film. Yeah, there is one moment toward the end of the movie where she comforts him, but she isn't trying to save him or anything and also even in the original novel, Mina was the one who said Dracula deserved the most pity.

Yes, there was the scene where Ellen was saying Orlok loved her more than Thomas/Jonathan but she was clearly possessed

There is no romanticism of Orlok/Dracula here. He's the worst and he doesn't even have the illusion of civility that most adaptations provide.

also I was told by early reviewers that this movie was very horny and I think they must have watched a different cut than I did. I mean, sure, you see (flaccid) vampire dick once and some nudity throughout but the movie has two sex scenes and both are deeply unsexy in that in the first, you don't see anything and also both characters have gone out of their minds, and in the second, it's not even really sex. You can't just show me a dick that's not even in use and tell me that's horny. Come on, people. Raise your standards.

I don't say this to be mean but: I think the original Orlok makeup from the silent film was scarier. I get what they were doing here, I do, and the makeup was immaculate (as were the costumes, the set designs, etc. It's an Eggers film) but I personally find Original Orlok scarier, and this Orlok was most intimidating when he was kept in the shadows.

This movie felt very much like a fairy tale. It even sets up a "three nights" limit at one point sort of like the earlier versions of Cinderella. I find that Dracula adaptations, particularly in film, often put vibes above, say, characterization, and this movie felt pretty vibe-y.

If I were to make a complaint, it wouldn't even really be about the movie itself. But like, Nosferatu was originally made to be Dracula without paying for the rights to Dracula, wasn't it? You're not bound by the novel (not that most straight-up Dracula adaptations follow the novel all that closely either). You literally have a built-in excuse to do whatever you want, but it seems like what people want to do time and again in vampire movies is a highlights reel of the most famous moments in the book without ever really delving into the characters that made the novel so good.

Again, this is not a criticism of this movie. It's just that what I realized while watching this movie is that I really really want a Dracula adaptation that's a character study. Not even necessarily a character study of Dracula. If someone out there made an adaptation that focused the story on Jonathan or Lucy or Jack or whoever, I would love for that.

God bless Ralph Ineson's voice

Everyone in this film did well, but Nicholas Hoult's performance was probably my favorite. He emotes terror so damn well. And of course Dafoe is always a delight.

Did Original Orlok also favor biting people on the chest or was he a neck guy

[handkinkbis]

Notes from the ep 15 sex scene after my 10th rewatch 👩‍🏫👩‍⚕️👩‍💻👩‍🔬

hongjo giggling in the doorway and acting all shy like sweety YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO HIM

the way he went from cute and clumsy to AMBUSHING HER 👁👄👁

for a giraffe he's quite wolfish in his table manners 😏😏

PINNED AGAINST THE WALL, GOD IS GOOD

WHY WAS THAT CURSED LIGHT SWITCH RIGHT THERE

[wet kissing noises]

THOSE 6'2/187CMs ENGULFING HER

he started unbuttoning her almost immediately, (the shirt DOES look better on the floor, shinyu, u ARE absolutely correct)

the horny-cute gasp of "wait a minute [we should do it on the dresser, follow me"] WE LOVE A WOMAN WHO SHOWS INITIATIVE

the way hongjo backed up against the dresser and shinyu followed her like she was his preyyy

she was smiling but he was on a MISSION TO GET BETWEEN THEM THIGHS

he lifted her up on the dresser like it was nothing 🥵🥵🥵

hooded eyes, jaw clenched, heavy breathing 🌶🌶🌶🌶 10/10

they both looked like they were just lost in the sounds and sensations like literally blissfully unaware of anything outside that room

god bless u and your hard work in the gym, rowoon, is that a 12-pack (thanks for zooming in on the ahem scar camera crew)

the way they cooperated in stripping shinyu's shirt off him, TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK

his hands doing SOMETHING outside of the frame whatttt are they doingggg

him kissing her hard and pushing her down 😌😌🙌🥂

shinyu's big hand flexing on hongjo's thigh and calf like YES SIR, GRAB IT

hongjo grasping two fistfuls of his hair to keep him where she wanted him YES QUEEN

him helping her wrap her legs around him 🥵🥵🥵🍿🍿🍿🍷🍷

the final shot of hongjo's shirt slipping off her shoulders and him moving on top of her in a pose not dissimilar to dracula and mina's in that One Scene in the garden in bram stoker's dracula

they were feraaalll

no for real he might actually be part beast

no wonder because shinyu/mujin waited 300+ years to Do That

[talesfromthecrypts]

When you are asking “what the hell is going on” in regards to Dracula-what do you mean? Also different media with Dracula treat consent very differently tbh. For example in Castlevania TV series Dracula has consensual relationships with Lisa. Lugosi’s Dracula sneaking into bedrooms on sleeping women in his 1931 movie is not consensual. Dracula as played by Langella in 1979 movie has consensual relationships with Lucy but non-consensual relationships with Mina. Etc. There’s variety.

I didn’t say there wasn’t variety oh my god people. I was talking about the whole history of vampires! Not the examples where it’s totally fine actually don’t worry about it. I’m talking about text posts with 10k notes or 100k retweets going “oh when does a vampire kidnap me and drag me to their castle uwu” and then getting super mad when people “romanticize” the movies about that. About people talking like the 92 Dracula isn’t also coerced consent because they find it sexy. About people ironically getting mad at women for using these types of movies to explore sexuality. And for all that, about noncon being in with the vampire being an in text predator.

And it’s totally fine to have sexy feelings about that btw! That’s one of the reasons for fiction and roleplay is a safe space to explore. Hell one of the themes of this movie is Orlok being the personification of how society makes Ellen see her desire it’s built in!

[livefromcastledracula]

YES ABOUT CARMILLA.

Honestly something that pisses me off in crossovers like the Castlevania anime is

Dracula gets woobified, he is a tragic man, a widower who is suffering the loss of the love of his life

Carmilla is now basically Book Dracula. She's pure evil, she's conniving, she's a traitor, she's got big ambitions of grandeur. Except she's also a sexy seductress of men.

The male vampire gets the woobification, the complex backstory, the tragic torment, and the female one gets her evil amped up and stripped of her interesting traits. I mean, good for her being sexy and evil, but if you are going to do this all while making the male characters three-dimensional, I will not ignore your choices.

(You can see this even with the Dracula girls, Lucy so often becomes a woman who is too sexual for her own good so she gets punished, Mina gets almost turned because she just wants this man too much... meanwhile we learn that he turned because he just loved too much or got assaulted or he felt abandoned by God and often dies redeemed by the hand of the one who loves him. Why are the vampiric girls becoming a shallow prop, while the vampire man gets their complexity, their suffering, their tragedy?)

Oh yeah, it's another one of those things where the adaptation of the Victorian (and Regency) literature becomes more sexist than the original work (see: Irene Adler, rip, another incredible character who gets the Lucy and Mina treatment 🤮)

I consider Carmilla to be one of the very first maybe-sympathetic vampires, because everything about her is so ambiguous and mysterious. Was she just a vampire faking everything to lure her prey, or were any of her feelings of affection for Laura genuine? What about her many gloomy musings on the nature of life and death? She could go either way, any way, and while there are little hints of similar with Dracula (his "i too can love" and "wind breathes cold" speeches) he's much more unambiguously a ruthless villain.

I feel like the Castlevania show split Carmilla's book characteristics between her vampire girl posse; show-Carmilla got her cruelty, Striga and Morana got her lesbianism, and Lenore got her demure femininity. My biggest issue with show Carmilla is that she's all about how much she hates men, where book Carmilla was utterly indifferent to men, her passionate fixation with women was much more a focus of her character.

I love the Castlevania show but it operates in a very different 'dark fantasy universe' space, I don't really consider it to be attempting to be a canon adaptation at all.

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

I remember last year one response I saw to the level of outrage on here about What They Did To MIna was "oh modern audiences are so used to 21st century morals that they actually are shocked when Jonathan acts like a normal 19th century man." And idk that's not it for me at all. Like. I love 19th century Brit Lit. I'm very familiar with couples that the narrative wants you to love being problematic by 21st century standards. I get that 19th century novels are gonna have 19th century gender roles. I don't think there was any version of Dracula that Bram Stoker would have realistically written where all the men would have been like "ok great Mina is coming with us to go fight the Count in the dead of night." There was no version of Jonathan Harker that Bram Stoker was gonna write where he'd be like "actually fellas Mina is an adult and she's more than capable of deciding whether or not she wants to risk her life." I understand all this perfectly well.

This is precisely why I find the next three days so excruciating.

Mina and Jonathan Harker are the most 21st century couple I have ever come across in 19th century Brit Lit, and that means when the the ol' gender roles get slammed down on them it hits me like a ton of bricks. Mina has literally made no mistakes in the narrative thus far, she has a stainless record of intellectual activity and personal competence and bravery. And in the end it doesn't matter. She is still left home. Because she's a women, and therefore too weak to handle it. Jonathan Harker, up to this point in the novel has never treated Mina as anything less than an equal. He recognizes and values her intellectual capacities and he listens to her all the time. And in the end it doesn't matter. He tells her to stay back, he's part of the group that forces her to stay back. Because he's a man and the husband so naturally he believes it's ultimately his decision whether or not she can stay involved.

I go feral because if Jonathan and Mina can't break free of it then no one can. And obviously they're just fictional characters, and I'm sure real life Victorians were more radical than their literary characters but fictional relationships are a window into what was going on in real life and it makes my heart bleed, because god it must have been inescapable. If you were a woman who wanted/needed to marry a man chances were you were going to have to deal with being a little condescended to even if he was good, even if he loved you, even if he respected you! And if you were a man, chances you were going to not view your wife on the same level as another man. Even if you really adored her, even if it she was your most intimate connection. That's a fucking tragedy. It was a sickness, and it must have caused so much hurt. That's why I have such a raw emotional response to these days. Not because I wasn't expecting it, but because it's so real, and because nobody escapes it.

[jesterbells]

IT'S THE BOOK OF RUTH JONATHAN IS QUOTING FROM THE BOOK OF RUTH

Jonathan Harker to Mina Murray Harker (Dracula, Oct 3): "May God judge me by my deserts, and punish me with more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of mine anything ever come between us!"

Ruth to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-17): "Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may God do to me and more if even death separates between me and you”