Congrats to Art and Jack on their wedding

(definitely real and canon and what Bram meant)

Post-novel Holmward is helping me cope.

Jack: Old friend, a loved one of mine is dying from unknown causes, will you help?

Van Helsing: Of course! I’ll be there at once!

Jack: What is your professional opinion?

Van Helsing: *giggling and skipping away* I’ll never tell!!

Currently so very ill and crawling towards writing deadlines, but have a WIP of my next Dracula Daily painting: The Victorian Polycule Suitors! And our boy Jack.

BONUS: without glasses. This man hasn't slept a wink since medical school.

Attendant: “Sir your patient has escaped”

Seward: “Hold on I gotta record this down. Hark! The unexpected again! I am called-”

Attendant: “Sir he is strangling Robert”

I made this meme last year, but never got around to uploading it. It's just. The proposal scene is so funny to me.

Dracula mock cover variant 3 - the Abbey at Whitby

An important thing to note about Jack Seward is that he's the character who most embodies the "enlightened rationalism" of Victorian Britain, the precise rationalism that leaves them such a perfect victim for Dracula. Most of the western cast fit into this mold to some degree or another, but Seward is the asylum keeper, the ultimate authority on what is Reasonable and what is Nonsense. His entire worldview is built on the idea that everything, even the minds of madmen, follow certain rules, can be explained. He is not flexible in this.

Jack Seward is also the only link between Lucy and van Helsing. From early on Abraham realizes that this young woman is being preyed upon by a genuinely supernatural being. But he's only able to help her as long as his old student, Jack, maintains his view of van Helsing as an ultimately reasonable and sensible man of science. But Abraham knows Jack, knows that in that head is a mind that sees a world of cogs and chemicals. His only hope of saving Lucy is to keep his cards close to his chest while prodding his actually-quite-neurotic former student in the right direction. Occasionally, force him to confront surely undeniable evidence.

But Seward is inflexible. He sees the bites, the inexplicable and repeated blood loss. Yet his mind refuses to connect the dots. A part of him can sense that if he were to accept the conclusions of the evidence in front of him, the very foundations of his world would shatter. Irrational, inexplicable, unknowable.

And that, is scary. His mind leaps away from the possibility like a critter from a snake. This is an instinctual defence mechanism, meant to keep this particular human machine from breaking, as inflexible things often do.

What van Helsing sees when Jack reads Lucy's memorandum is a panicking animal. Here is someone unpredictable, someone just as likely to double down as to break.

And so, the rationalist becomes irrational. His reason kept on a leash.

But some day, in a moment of weakness, that reason will break free, and charge at the conclusion it always sensed was there.

What happens then?

Seward out here like what do you mean you don’t want to go to sleep? don’t we all yearn for the peaceful void of unconsciousness at all times??

if i asked, verbatim, "No one would refuse me a kitten, would they?" and then was immediately refused a kitten - my face would also fall into a sudden fierce, sidelong look which meant killing

the audacity of this doctor to refuse someone a kitten, diagnose them as an "undeveloped homicidal maniac" because of a mean look, and then follow that right up with "I shall test him"

Ah, yes, I believe that's from the opening preamble of the Hippocratic Oath that goes something like "Do No Harm - unless you want to fuck around and find out"

Jack Seward: enjoyer of men.

van helsing is the unexpected audience surrogate. my man read the diaries and letters of jonathan and mina & immediately went "i love you, i would risk my life for you, you're so cute together, you're my children, let's be friends forever"... just like we did. and if we came face to face with these characters now, after following their stories since may, would we not also go "it's such a pleasure and honour to finally meet you, i feel like i know you already"? :')

Some sticker designs from earlier this year, featuring The Crew Of Light and additional friends!

Todays Episode of Dracula Daily/Regarding Dracula

So much went on but I’m not going to talk about the angsty stuff though the voice acting was incredible. This episode made me love Seward more, he’s so anxious and full of wet cat energy. He’s so pathetic and I love him for that. But he’s also got so much drive and he just wants things to end well for everyone.

Mina is an absolute Queen. She just wants to get business. She knows all about the supernatural problems and she doesn’t need to be protected from the horrors she just doesn’t want anything worse go come.

Okay, so, I wasn't going to scream into the uncaring void of the internet about this but I gotta. A lot of people have been dunking on Dr. Seward about the August 19th entry, and especially about the phrase, "These infantesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being. How these madmen give themselves away! The real God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall. But the God created from human vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow. Oh, if men only knew!" But when I was first reading the book, this was one of my favorite quotes, and frankly it's not as about Seward as everyone is making it. It's a reference to Matthew 10:29, which says "are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father's knowledge." (NIV) It is right in the middle of a passage about Jesus appointing his disciples and giving them both encouragement and instruction for the persecution they will face when they follow him, and you won't believe what is written only a few verses before in 24-26: "The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household! So do not be afraid of them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known. "

So here we have Jesus telling his disciples not to fear the servants of Beezlebul, or the devil, because they are no greater than the devil himself, and really the devil's not such a big gun compared to God himself, who the disciples follow.

In 'Dracula,' we have Renfield serving his master who is Dracula, in similar authority structure to the devil, but he is also not to be feared in comparison to the power of the forces of good, and the verses after that even discuss the fate of evil which (spoilers) forshadows the end of the book and the character Dracula himself. If you ask me, using a scripture passage to foreshadow your entire book in such a subtle way is honestly just BRILLIANT and I love it.

Moreover, the particular verse he chose to actually reference helps to highlight the differences between Dracula (an embodiment of men's evil) and God. Seward is not bragging that he is in charge, or miffed that Renfield does not treat him as such, he is noticing a change in behavior, as Renfield often WOULD defer to him as a higher authority in the past. Seward is not illogical to think this is because Renfield has come to believe there is an even higher authority to appeal to, and is not wrong when he says that a human higher authority makes no distinction between men. Dracula does not care if someone is a lunatic, a beloved lady, or a lawyer, they are all prey to him, and he will use them to his own ends. Similarly men whose ultimate goal is to benefit themselves and make a "god" of thier own interests stop seeing others as individuals, but as means to an end. This is in direct contrast to the God who sees every sparrow that falls, and who seeks a personal relationship and to foster personal relationships between those who follow him. This is a trait shared by the crew of light in the book. They have a father in Van Helsing, brothers and sisters, and husband and wife in each other, and all love each other so deeply and tenderly, just as God cares for the sparrows, and so much more for his own people. Meanwhile Dracula has slaves he must bend to his will. He has the brides, who obviously don't even like him much. Dracula, in choosing to selfishly disregard the feelings of those he considers prey has made himself thoroughly and completely alone, and that is what makes evil so weak.

Maybe it is just Seward being arrogant, but in my understanding of the allusion, it's an expert highlight of the difference between good and evil, light and dark, selfishness and love, distance and relationship, the contrast of which is a central theme of the whole book. For let us not forget that Dracula was once a man, a man who has been twisted into the opposite of everything humanity was supposed to be, and that is what makes him so very horrific.

(Also just read Matthew 10. The whole thing lines up very well and it's super cool. Way to go Mr. Stoker.)

It's hilarious how Mina and Dr Seward convince themselves that their respective fugitives "won't" go far because they're only in pajamas.

Either these people genuinely believe that fashion and social etiquette reside within the unconscious mind, either they spectaularly lack imagination.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It

Mel Brooks 1995