Pardon, but your tie is not symmetrical.

Dracula at the Finnish National Ballet: ⮡ Harker & Dracula's first meeting [1/2]

"It seemed as if the whole, awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion."

Bram Stoker's Dracula | portfolio | prints

Wow, what a welcoming and friendly letter! This Dracula guy seems like a good host, doesn't he?

...Except, no, of course not. I admit, in any other situation this would be the worst bad-faith reading of a relatively polite and friendly note. But knowing Dracula and the kind of games he likes to play, I feel like I can spot some unpleasant undertones. He's doing a couple things here immediately, in fact, which continue on throughout Jonathan's stay.

He's being overfamiliar, immediately overstepping a professional relationship for a more intimate one. He's being commanding, telling Jonathan what to do, even if under the guise of wishing him well. He's being possessive - maybe not quite the word? Here I don't mean it as in "you can't have him, he's mine" so much as it is arranging things for him and expecting Jonathan to fall in line and do what he wants. Jonathan is his new toy and will play along, will be manipulated into whatever Dracula wants him to do, even without direct instructions. Dracula has control of the situation as a whole, and Jonathan in particular. He is also being sarcastic, making little jokes to himself about how he knows the real situation here and Jonathan doesn't yet.

Also, significantly, he hasn't told Jonathan where he's going. And sure, he's arranged the travel so it's not a big issue. He'll still be able to get there. But he's going to be dependent on Dracula to do so, and he won't know the way out afterwards. More to come on this score when Dracula actually drives Jonathan to the castle.

Particularly on that last point - Jonathan hasn't been able to find Castle Dracula on a map, and the Count isn't being forthcoming either. Given Jonathan's language barrier issue is only going to get worse, the claustrophobia and isolation is already setting in.

It's also interesting how in earlier drafts (when Dracula's castle was solidly in Austria, in Styria) Dracula had asked for a solicitor who doesn't know German (the local language)

Oh, yes. I like the theory that the castle has soaked up some magic of its own and can't be put precisely on a map in much the same way vampires can't be accurately painted/photographed (though that is partly drawn from earlier drafts as well and isn't technically canon to the final book).

But even if it isn't magical at all, Dracula shows a consistent interest in limiting information about himself. I could see him having made the effort to destroy older maps that do mark his castle, or something. Regardless, he definitely wants Jonathan to be totally isolated and dependent on him, even before he's outright trapped with him.

Guys, guys, look, guys, I know that Dracula is terrible. But I unironically want to start greeting people with his "Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!". I want to find a sign that says this and hang it on my front door. I need to incorporate this in my every day speech. I'm 65% of the way to making it my lock screen on my phone. I am actively adding it to my blog as we speak. This is by far my favorite line of the whole book. I just.

Still obsessed with Arthur Conan Doyle’s letter to Bram Stoker gushing about how wonderful a book Dracula is, but particularly how it makes such a good template for leaving fic comments, so I’m gonna to a BREAKDOWN:

Next time you don’t know what to say on a fic you enjoyed, just use the ACD method~

Sound designing a vampire being hit in the face with a shovel is... challenging. Who would've guessed.

#loony toons bonk and wilhelm scream

@scp-1296 you understand me

[Audio transcript: Ben Galpin voicing Jonathan Harker from Dracula by Bram Stoker. He says, "There was no lethal weapon at hand, but I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases, and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful face," followed by a cartoon "bonk" and the Wilhelm scream. End transcript]

Can’t believe Bram Stoker once sent a 2000-word fan letter to Walt Whitman which included his exact height, weight and how much he loved his poems and wanted to be friends with him, and that Whitman wrote back saying he liked his letter and hoped they could meet some day, how cute is that

And then he finally got to meet him and Stoker said “I found him all that I had ever dreamed of, or wished for in him” HOW CUTE IS THAT

bram stroker just mailed walt whitman his grindr profile just like that huh

Ok, I went to look this up, and it is amazing. Bram Stoker actually wrote this long-ass stream of consciousness letter that spanned about 2000 words and which–judging by most sites–had 0 paragraph breaks and just went on and on about his Feelings. He then proceeded to keep that letter in his desk for four years because he was too shy to send it. He finally sent it, along with a slightly less rambly letter, on fuckin Valentine’s day in 1876. In it are such wonders as:

Three weeks later–which, considering the speed of transatlantic mail at the time, pretty much means immediately–Walt Whitman wrote back. He had, at the time, been recovering from a paralytic stroke three years earlier that had left him, in his own words, “entirely shattered—doubtless permanently, from paralysis and other ailments,” but he still found the time to respond with a much briefer but still very affectionate letter, the opening paragraph of which read as follows:

[letter source]

Despite Whitman’s parenthetical remark about the improbability of meeting, Stoker did eventually manage to call on Whitman a couple of times some years later, and expressed that 

Whitman, meanwhile, found Stoker “an adroit lad,” and “like a breath of good, healthy, breezy sea air.” Adorable.

#did walt whitman fuck BOTH bram stoker and oscar wilde?????#i’m so enchanted by this (via wildehacked)

Yes.

#sending your crush a note that says i am ugly but have sensitive nostrils #get on bram’s level (via @door)

they literally refer to jonathan harker as “madame mina’s husband”… not “mr harker” or “jonathan”… i think of how jonathan is less typically masculine than a lot of horror main protagonists and how it’s totally fine with everyone and he’s ok with it. everyone relies on mina’s smarts and he’s not jealous at all, he’s sharpening is machete in case anyone tries to hurt her again

It's so funny to me that Mina's two hyperfixations, transcription and trains, JUST SO HAPPEN to be the two things needed to defeat Dracula.

Bram Stoker really wrote a story about defeating vampires with the power of friendship and autism

How on earth did we get to modern vampire lore being like ‘yes being fed on by a vampire is like super sexy!!! Hot stuff!!’

When in original canon it’s more like developing chronic illness, watching yourself waste away and having no one around who sees or understands the severity of it.

The informative answers

[ID 1: a screenshot of a comment by "whumpy-words-main":

We got there — at the latest — in 1891 with Polidori's novel "The Vampyre," which, while still very much being a "vampires are scary" horror novel, also equated vampiric thirst with sexual desire. From there, it's really not that much of a leap to "vampire bites sexy."

(Leaving aside the fact that all of Dracula is, in the words of another Horror writer who's work I enjoy, "very Victorian Sex Panic," including the victim's declining health from definitely-not-syphilis).

ID 2: a screenshot of a comment by "voidandchill":

I'd argue Carmilla (which was written 25 years before dracula) portrays vampirism as sexy or at the very least erotic, while also portraying both the vampire and the victim as suffering from a chronic illness. You're right that the second part has been forgotten in today's adaptations, but literary vampires were definitely also an expression of victorians' fear of sexuality. /end ID].

And an even better explanation:

[ID: a screenshot of a comment by "dreamer-in-a-far-awqy-land":

Dracula clearly has a good PR team. /end ID].

still feel like we have not appropriately tapped into the comedy goldmine that is: Dracula's first canonical appearance features him wearing a goofy hat and a huge false beard. this is uproarious. this is rib-tickling! this has so many implications!!!

where on earth did he get the beard? he lives in the middle-of-nowhere and all of his neighbors are too terrified to cook or clean for him. where did he find someone to sell him a false beard?

was it mail-order, the way presumably all of his books and maps are? did they even have cartoonish disguises available by mail-order back in late 19th cent Romania? did Dracula have to sew it himself? i need to know these things!!!

@chaos-has-theories truly you live up to your url:

i love quincey’s brain. like his thought process is so great it’s just:

i once saw a bat drink so much blood from a horse that the horse nearly died -> the woman i love is losing massive amounts of blood everytime there’s a bat outside her window -> i now shoot bats on sight

like forget “doing the math wrong but reaching the right conclusion” motherfucker barely did math At All but he got the answer Perfectly

Mina after reading Jonathan's journal:

[ID: a picture of Homer Simpson, holding a wooden club, saying "the strong must protect the sweet." /end ID].

The gender role reversals are SO STRONG in today’s update.

Like even aside from Mina looking out for her husband’s delicate constitution and taking great pains not to make him think of upsetting things, her entire approach of “I learned something horrible and have to respond with action SOMEHOW” is so much more stereotypically masculine.

And then as the cherry on top you have Van Helsing writing to her as an important authority, with even the addendum of “no need to bring your husband into this, it will be upsetting for him.”

Dracula: Hm, that human mother is being super annoying about her dead kid at the gate. How do I fix that? Wolves? I’ll say wolves.

Dracula: What’s that? My good friend Jonathan Harker wants to leave ahead of schedule? Think I’ll do some wolves about that.

Dracula: Damn, seems that old Dutchman has blocked off one (1) single window with garlic blossoms and now this one (1) specific girl in all of England is barred from me. Maybe I should use my title and/or some invented pretense to cajole the girl’s mother into letting me in. Or maybe I could just move on to a different victim out of the nigh endless blood buffet I specifically moved here to enjoy, none of whom have a small legion of blood donors and vampire-proofing scholars on their side.

Dracula:

Dracula, about to slam dunk a wolf through the window: Or,

The funniest part is where the wolf came from. Did Dracula turn into a wolf? Summon a wild beast from the forests? Cause it to apparate out of shadows and nightmares alone?

Nah. He went to the zoo that day, talked to the zookeeper, and pet a wolf. Then later the wolf “mysteriously” chewed through the bars, only to show up again later with broken glass in its fur. All business as usual.

Favorite thing about Dracula Daily so far is that yesterday I read a post that had in-depth, well-researched analysis that could easily be mistaken for a published literary criticism of Dracula, except it casually makes a passing reference to "the polycule" without feeling the need to elaborate

Any academic paper can fail to elaborate on terms on the presumption that it is understood by the expected audience

when did we decide that vampires and (were)wolves hate each other. look at the blueprint. wolves are dracula’s favorite little guys. they are his best friends. come on.