#dracumina
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I always thought if i adapted Dracula I would play up Dracula's envy of Mina. I think thats why the 90s Dracula annoyed me, you read the book and she's the one he particularly seems to loathe. Lucy and Jonathan are his new pretty pets he wants to perhaps brideify, Johnny he especially seems to love in his own demented way. Mina is that bitch who his two pets will always chose over him. Like they'd have hatesex at best imo.
OUGH GIVE ME THE DRACUMINA HATE SEX HNGNGNGNGN
I do love how this go around people are really keying in on Dracula and Mina as adversaries,,,
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You know, it's really funny how execution can make or break a concept.
In the Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker's Dracula and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Dracula had a wife before he became a vampire, and said wife's death drives him to villainy. Centuries later, he meets the reincarnation of his dead wife, who he has a doomed romance with.
Yet because Bram Stoker's Dracula derailed a lot of characters not named Dracula and tried to make him out to be a tragic hero while he was still doing terrible things, I disliked the film, while the Castlevania games never pulled such a thing. It used his tragic backstory as a reason why he is the way he is, without excusing his behavior. As a result, it adds dimension to Dracula's character without feeling out-of-character.
Oh yeah, IGA clearly liked the movie and introduced elements of it with his own spin, such as Dracula descending into villainy because he returned home after an expedition only to find his wife Elisabetha dead, or him having the chance to live again with a girl named Mina (although Dracula needs to be reincarnated into a good person first lol)
Something I like about CV is that it has tragic villains, but it has a good balance between showing them in a sympathetic light and still reminding you that they're bastards. Dracula is a grieving man stuck in a cycle of rebirth, but he's also a petty monster who wants to make everyone pay for the sins of a few. Isaac lost everything he held dear through no fault of his own and fell prey to his own master's curse which lead him to a pointless death, but he's also a cruel, bitter man who unfairly caused the death of an innocent woman out of jealousy spite. Brauner lost his dear daughters in the war, but he also took two daughters from another man to turn them into vampires, and he gets called on his delusion by Jonathan. The story never tells you "look at these sad meows meows 🥺 they're not so bad after all 🥺", but they're not generic baddies either, and you come to see at least where they're coming from.
The show takes the "sad meow meow" approach when it comes to Dracula, Isaac and Lenore, and that's why I'm less than impressed. Dracula is a poor man too bereft with grief to think logically and who deserves to live again with his wife. Isaac is actually a gentle man who deserves peace after killing innocents to grow an army because he wanted to continue Dracula's slaughter. Lenore is actually a good, pacifist vampire who only wanted to protect Hector after resorting to deceit, manipulation, gaslighting and rape. You can feel the narrative holding your hand to push you to think a certain way.
Carmilla is a weird case because you'd expect her to be meowified, but she's just a generic badass #girlboss who gets no sympathy for her offscreen trauma. Still, not an elegant approach.
#castlevania#akumajou dracula#anti netflixvania#haven't watched the dracula movie so i can't say#but from what i know they did my man jonathan dirty to push dracumina#bro cmon that's lame lol#(harkula is the superior ship lmao)
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ok no yeah i deleted it because i got nervous but i’ll stick to my beliefs. the 2023 film “renfield” seems to be wwdits if it was made by marvel. like if guillermo sometimes said “erm… he’s right behind me isn’t he” and characters pointed out explicitly “umm.. you’re the guy that gets bad guys groceries??”. i liked that renfield ate a spider though
#also crazy how they’re making him get with quincey but like a weird rule 63ed version of quincey#fucking cowards should’ve just put the cowboy in there#it’s better than dracumina though i guess#renfield 2023#renfield movie#wwdits#renfield#dracula
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Everyone appreciating Jonathan and Mina’s relationship fills me with a joy I cannot describe. Like YES FINALLY YOU GET IT
#The romanticism of saying if we cannot be together in heaven we will be together in hell#Jonathan planning to pinata the fuck out of Dracula because he dared touch his wife#Jonathan holding Mina close even though she might turn into a vampire at any moment and the count can see through her eyes#Like yES YOU GET IT#This is so much more romantic than any dracumina bullshit. Jonathan literally walked through the wilderness barefoot to get back to Mina#I love them SO MUCH#And even better Mina’s the girlboss in the relationship#She’s the one who sits down and figures stuff out#She’s driven and she’s smart and she loves her husband so much and AHHHHHH#Foaming at the mouth for them#Girlboss goth wife Mina and her malewife ready to murder for her husband Joanthan#Joanthan-? Well I’m not typing that all out again#Sigh#I love them so much#dracula#dracula daily#pluto reads emails#jonathan harker#mina murray#mina harker#jonmina#my beloveds
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How can people making Dracula adaptations look at todays events and be like yeah let’s put a dracumina romance in this… it’s actually appalling.
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There’s been a lot of discussion of dracula and mina and the ‘reincarnated wife’ plot with recent dracula daily entries, and i’d like to give my two cents. Spoilers ahead for people who aren’t familiar with the novel or films.
I think the problem with discussing it is that people are coming at it from the direction that its a symptom of bad dracula adaptation. I’ve seen a lot of lamenting that ‘they’ obviously didn’t understand the source material, and some fun and creative posts about alternate ‘reincarnated mina’ concepts.
But i think everyone is missing the real mechanism that drives the adaptations with the ‘reincarnated wife’ and dracumina plots: in these adaptations Dracula is framed as the main character.
There was another good post a few months ago talking about it, but dracula is generally speaking a difficult book to adapt to film if you want to follow narrative screenwriting conventions. The only character who is consistently ‘showing up’ across the book until the various people he’s been terrorizing all meet is dracula himself. Thus it makes sense from a screenwriting point of view to make the narrative arc belong to dracula and refit the other characters as ‘supporting cast’, and likewise for mina as the most obvious female lead it makes sense from this standpoint to make her the love interest.
As the most obvious example let’s take Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The book doesn’t tie Dracula to his historical counterpart, but the prologue of the film not only does this, it establishes the ‘conflict’ of Dracula’s storyline by showing the ‘reason’ he became a vampire and setting up his emotional arc in the film. This is main character stuff. The film is framed around him and his storyline. The plot and character attachments are realigned to support Dracula as the main character. The timeline of events is changed to support Dracula’s emotional arc of finding then losing then finding Mina again. The end of the film is refocused on ‘resolving’ the conflict that lead to Dracula’s vampirism. It’s a very good adaptation, actually, of the story of Dracula if Dracula was the main character. He’s shown in a sympathetic light and the ending is the resolution of the conflict driving him, not, as in the book, the resolution of the horror that has beset the actual main characters of the book. (And i will say that i very much respect the FFC film for keeping aspects of the epistolary form in the film).
A lot of Dracula adaptations do this!
But it’s not a failure of adaptation, nor a misunderstanding of the characters. It’s a reframing of them to streamline adaptation and, if you want to be a bit of a cynic, to profit off the popularity of other vampire romance media.
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As Much As Is Realistically Possible We Should Avoid Getting Our Panties in a Twist Over Being Faithful To The Canon: Me Giving Dracula Opinions Alongside a Good Does Of Generic Fandom Philosophy Because I'm A Procrastinating Idiot Who Likes To Hear The Sound Of My Own Voice
Don't get me wrong I fucking hate when what I personally love about the canon is ruined in adaptations. Still waiting on any adaptation to actually give me a post-castle Jonathan which is in any way as interesting as he is in the book. But also, the nature of fandom and fanfiction and fanon and all that is we all engage with a story, are drawn to some aspect of the canon which resonates with us, and then typically use this as a jumping off point to explore things that the text doesn't. This is true for pretty much everyone out here draculablogging.
For example, there is in my opinion absolutely no evidence that Lucy Mina and Jonathan were a trio of childhood friends. Lucy's family does not seem to have property in Exeter and Jonathan literally never thinks about Lucy on his own. It seems obvious to me that Mina and Lucy met at boarding school. I'm quite happy to keep this element of canon in my fics because it makes sense to me. Conversely I do like to dabble in Van Helsing: Vampire Slayer, and that is expressly not canon. But idrc because it's more fun and interesting to me to have it that way. People who want to see Lucy, Jonathan, Mina childhood best friend trio bc they think it's cute are just as valid, even though I don't particularly care one way or the other. It's kinda silly to be like *eye roll* well this is fanon not canon when I guarantee you if you really look at your own preferences you're doing it too, and who really cares? People just like different things. Plus the whole point of fandom is you can go places where the canon didn't like if you write in a best friend trio then you get to explore why Lucy and Jonathan apparently grew apart. If you write an occult background for Van Helsing you get to maybe color in some of his odd edges. That's cool and good who cares if it's not strictly accurate as long as you don't pretend you're being canon compliant.
Now, those two examples are pretty innocuous, but bc this novel gets pretty heavy at times, naturally the Discourse amps up when things amp up. For example, I really like to write Mina having a lot of rage. I like her to want to rip Dracula limb from limb (granted my fics always have her role-swapped with Jonathan in the books). I am well aware that this is not in her book character at all, who consistently pities Dracula and counsels against vengeance. Personally, I just think vengeful Mina is more fun, and it's also true that I don't appreciate how Bram Stoker is like "yes perfect christian woman. perfect. all mercy. so pitying." I don't think it's quite realistic to what her feelings would be to a man who assaulted her and I also think she should get to be waaaayyy more angry about the way Dracula abused the two people she loved in all the world. I like feminine rage and I think Mina should have some and so I write her as having some. But I also get that plenty of people don't really vibe with righteous anger and like Mina's whole mercy bit and find it really really compelling, and sure plenty of victims of assault in the real world are not preoccupied with revenge. And that's such a valid take and fics that run with it are more reflective of Mina's book characterization than mine. And once again both are good. Neither side needs to be going "well MY changes are inherently more feminist than yours" to justify our preferences, it's just what we like, we can just like it, and if there is a feminist slant to what we think/write/draw it does not mean the other take is anti-feminist.
This is also why, in my opinion, it's truly not that deep if people want to ship their little harkula dracumina dark romance ships. Like full disclosure I think some of the most fucked up harkula stuff can be hot, but I have 0 interest in reading the stories that really focus on Dracula embodying the repressed desires of either Jonathan or Mina. I do absolutely exclusively read the stuff where Dracula is an unsympathetic abusive monster, and I want to read stories that use that as the anchor for horror, and I want to read stories that have Jonathan and Mina overcoming that abuse.
Now That Doesn't Mean I think the people who want to do the whole twisted love stockholm syndrome thing are bad or shouldn't do it. They are clearly just coming to the text from a completely different place than I am. It's not like I would disagree that at the very beginning before the torture began Jonathan was kinda attracted to Dracula in the Victorian queer horror way. If people want to do the whole reincarnated wife thing with Mina bc idk they really like the Coppola film or whatever, sure. I will not read that, but I'm not going to invent reasons why they're Bad Dracula Fans. It doesn't matter if it's not canon, so long as you don't say it's canon (why did you name it Bram Stoker's Dracula Francis it's not Bram Stoker's Dracula you did not adapt ANY of the characters faithful why are you lying)
Anyway I know I'm not really saying anything new, and mostly the Dracula fandom has been fine but I have seen a few takes out there acting like canon is a trump card that it truly isn't, and i've also definitely seen people get up on the moral high horse on like, depictions and portrayals of abuse etc. and although fandom can be a wonderful space to tell important, compelling stories about heavy topics, when people don't want to do that, they're not less moral than you. Lots of the time they're trying to tell important, compelling stories about heavy topics of a different sort, and sometimes they're writing porn. This is normal fandom stuff.
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Yes I think that the reason why almost every other novel or show or film or ballet Dracula adaptation makes Dracula and Mina be in love is specifically because of Coppola.
(The Vlad Tepes thing gets debunked only in some novels that want to make Mina fall in love with him even when she's not a reincarnation of a wife of his)
Really not a big fan of DracuMina. Not at all.
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Will Mina Harker be in TOWL? The truth is that I love the ship DraculaXMina
Indeed she will be! When I first read the book I was a bit iffy on it, but 1992 version did a great job at making it interesting, genuinely romantic, and mostly healthy. In TOWL she’ll be a Lois Lane type figure, and works at the local school with Laura.
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#dracula#dracula 1979#dracumina#no fear one fear#usually it’s Bad and Terrible#but i think the 79 version actually handles it very well#also the lighting is just Bad in the movie lmao so sorry bout the middle pic being so dark#mine#ALSO her character name in this is actually lucy???#because they flipped the names for some dumb reason??#but she’s the mina character if u go by the novel chars#so like this is a drac x mina situation
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On second thought, there is one interpretation of Mina-the-reincarnated-wife trope that I might be interested in seeing in an adaptation: making her not happy about it. Either she doesn’t believe in reincarnation and thinks Dracula is just mad, or she has some vague memories of her previous relationship with him and it’s precisely why she doesn’t want to go back to him. The horror aspect of being an object of obsession of a centuries-old undead monster instead of the romance one. That would actually be original.
#i wonder if there are fics that use this idea. there must be! but that means that i'll have to go through the dracumina tag on ao3#which must be A LOT of content that is not my cup of tea for the most part#maybe i'll search for it later at some point#dracula#bram stoker#mina harker#i am truly sorry for being unable to shut up
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Every once in a while I think about the Dracula musical and get mad. Then I remember how much “Life After Life” and “The Master’s Song” ~slap~ and I feel better. Then I remember the Drac/Mina relationship and get mad again. It’s a vicious cycle.
#Dracula#Dracula the musical#I only ever listen to songs that don’t have that asinine gotdam Dracumina ship#I can’t believe the only stage adaptation that includes all the major characters and plot points did *that* also
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me listening to the dracula musical but skipping all the drac x mina bullshit: I am free
#take me to go see dracula#i GUESS#im still not really warmed up to it bc of the dracumina bs#the shart gallery#dracula
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JonMina is a f/m ship for the gays and DracuMina is a f/m ship for the str8s that’s all I’m gonna say
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I've never really thought about DracuMina beyond just considering it to be a thing that has to be tolerated in adaptations, but the more I think about it the more dubious it seems.
The dead wife trope is bad because it diminishes the role of a female character down to a device the writer can use to make a male character more complex, right? The reincarnated-wife trope is just this same problem but doubled in this case. Not only is this character of Dracula's wife a woman who was invented only to be killed off to make Dracula more understandable or sympathetic [something I already question bothering with], but then Mina is reduced to the role of a dead woman who had no purpose other than to be a looking-glass for Dracula. It takes a significant portion of Mina's identity and throws it away for Dracula's sake.
And then on top of that, in order to have DracuMina be in any way mutual it requires Mina to fall in love with someone who actively preyed on and victimized her.
Having the relationship be a singular obsession on Dracula's part helps with the second issue but not the first; Mina is still turned into a tool which an author uses to develop Dracula. It's an interesting idea and much better than having a mutual romance, but I still feel like it uses Mina in a way that doesn't do her justice. The issue is that women in media are seen as important only if they have some sort of impact on how we see the male characters in the narrative. To develop Dracula without devaluing Mina, some other character should be used or some other method altogether [why always romance?]. However, if done well enough, it might add to Mina's character as well.
Ultimately, I'd just like one accurate adaptation with nothing weird thrown in, but if someone wanted to push the idea of transformative, progressive fiction in a Dracula adaptation, perhaps Mina shouldn't have any relationship to Dracula aside for he killed her friend. Maybe even some other cast member could be the second victim after Lucy. Say Arthur or something. That might cause issues in the sense that it could villianize gay/bisexual identities, but only if the narrative focuses on some sort of sexual association with being bitten by a vampire. Which it certainly doesn't have to, it's just hard to swing when so many vampire narratives are associated with sexuality in this way.
#You know what else helps with all this?#Mina killing Dracula herself#dracula#gothic#lit#I've seen a few posts about this and I just wanted to write out my thoughts real quick#Don't mind me too much#Imagine being more misogynistic than a man in 1897 who wrote a woman who claimed to not be like other girls#nabalysis
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Fic: The Door That’s Shut Between Us
Fandom: Dracula, Dracula the Un-dead
Ship: Jonanthan/Mina
Rating: M
Tags: Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, Past Cheating, Marriage Problems, Drunk Sex, It’s Complicated, Implied DracuMina
***
Jonathan stumbles into the house, late, well past midnight. Again.
Mina sighs as she sets down her book on her lap. Bothered by visions of some macabre future she’s powerless to stop, and unable to stand being up in her lonely bedchambers a moment longer, she tried to distract herself by reading in the downstairs drawing room. Something light and cheery to take her mind far, far away from here and the consequences of her bad decisions that she continues to make.
For a moment, the two of them stare at each other.
In his early 40s, Jonathan’s dark hair is streaked with silver again, and the vivid night of his near-black eyes has long faded to a dull void. Mina can smell the whisky from here. Heightened senses and the like, as much of a testament to what she has done as her eternally youthful appearance. She still looks for all the world like a young woman in her early twenties, back when she was too young to resist the charms of a centuries-old vampire but too old to not know better.
Tonight is another bad decision in the making.
“Hi,” Jonathan slurs, swaying unsteadily on his feet. Mina simply nods in acknowledgment.
He might just go on to bed. For once.
Many years ago, when they were just children, they shared their entire world with each other. Now they slept in separate bedchambers. Mina has the sudden, wild thought that she can’t bear enduring another morning waking up alone. Specifically, waking up without Jonathan lying next to her. Despite his extremely disheveled appearance, unshaven jawline, and lines on his face resulting from age and trauma, Mina thinks her husband is as handsome as he’s ever been. Or maybe that’s just the loneliness talking.
She knows how this is going to go.
It will not be the first time.
“I’m grateful to see you are home and not in some cell,” she says cooly, forcing her wits about her. “Public intoxication is even worse when you are a lawyer.”
“Heh.” Jonathan just gives her a slight, lopsided smirk and shrugs with little care. Suddenly, he looks boyish.
This longing she has for her own husband is now tainted, because it is the same longing that jeopardized her marriage in the first place. She can’t let it happen again. Every time it does…
She stands up and straightens her skirts, book now closed in one hand, determined to go back to bed maintaining her dignity. “Good night, Mr. Harker.”
Jonathan suddenly sways too much to one side and topples over. With an unnatural quickness, Mina is across the room and grabs him before he can hit the floor.
God. Dammit.
Here she has been hoping to avoid all contact with him. She sighs with resignation. Well, it can’t be helped now. She's starting to think he does this on purpose.
“C-come now,” she says, feeling her cheeks heat with an embarrassing warmth. “It won’t do to have you crack your skull open.”
“Aw, you do care,” Jonathan says with a drunk giggle that borders on near hysteria.
“Our son will be upset if you were injured,” Mina retorts.
Jonathan has a habit of writing lengthy letters to Quincey as if trying to be a devoted parent from across the English Channel while the boy is away at school. Quincey has complained on several occasions that while he appreciates his father’s well-meaning concerns, it’s embarrassing to read for a lad who is about to turn twenty and is grown enough to be out on his own in the world.
“And you won’t be?” Jonathan presses, teasing. He pushes a little against her, and the heat of his body makes Mina shiver.
“Of course!” Her voice squeaks, irritation flaring to quickly replace the growing alarm that this situation is starting to spiral out of control again. “Come on then, let’s get you to bed.”
Jonathan groans as Mina, shockingly easily, hauls him toward the stairs. “I don’t wanna,” he whines with flimsy resistance.
“Stop being a baby.”
“Nnnnnnnnn!”
Though Mina possesses a strength that cannot be explained for a woman her size, it does not negate the awkwardness of hauling a man almost a full foot taller than her up the grand staircase. So when he stumbles the moment they reach the first immediate landing, he takes her down with him.
Mina’s breath bursts out of her lungs when she hits the carpet. It takes her a moment to recover. When she does, Jonathan’s face is buried in between her breasts.
Read More at AO3
#dracula#dracula the un-dead#jonathan harker x mina harker#jonathan harker#mina harker#dacre stoker#dracula fic#i can't believe this fucking book made me write fic for it
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