I chose an excellent day to dip back into the Dracula Daily tag. Yes, Mina fucking Harker. Hell yeah.

having read Dracula last year really made me just downright allergic to hearing about Dracula’s adaptations, i was watching a video about the tropes of the horror genre the other day and the guy confidently started to talk about the “Madonna/Whore” trope by illustrating it with Mina and Lucy because “Mina is virginal despite her attraction to the count and Lucy is a whore because she plays with multiple men and fucks the count”, while also throwing a totally unnecessary “also Jonathan is useless in this story it makes you wonder why he’s a main character” and i almost turned it off like “yeah lost absolutely all credit here”. and i wouldn’t be as mad if the youtuber had specified that it was only in the movie and different in the books but, when there were movies adapted from books doing things differently in the list, he would mention it, he just didn’t on Dracula so i was just oh. oh 🔪

@proditeur answered a meme for me once that made me decide that Dorothea has to do a vampire thing at some point (i also am nothing if not a vampire girlie at heart) so!

Dorothea was in an independent, unauthorized/unofficial retelling of Dracula (think like Nosferatu for unauthorized/unofficial, where it's not 'officially' Dracula, and the names and a bunch of other things were changed, but the inspiration was clearly Dracula; unlike the original Nosferatu, though, this film did have enough licensing that they weren't sued over it). the concept was a modern retelling utilizing a lot of 'found footage' techniques, unsent voice memos/failed-to-upload video messages, 'news' clips etc, to adapt the letters/journals/articles style of the original book. Brent Bradley's [x] sister wrote and directed the film, and most of the cast and crew were friends of hers or friends of her well-connected family. (Brent had scheduling conflicts and wasn't in it himself.) Dorothea played the Mina Murray character, and at one point at a film festival described filming the movie as 'cathartic.' (years later, after the video of her and Jason leaked [x], the clip of her referring to filming this project as cathartic recirculated on the internet, with many fans now assuming she was referring to Jason. she was.) the film got a fair amount of critical acclaim, didn't do particularly well at the box office, but became a cult classic.

We‘re all Disney haters here but with Dracula daily going on I desperately need tumblr to know the existence of this comic adaptation of Dracula that exists within a series of monthly published comic books and looks like this:

Please look at this effort - they really went all out on these, NONE of the other comics look anything close to these. It’s just this one randomly sitting between normal Mickey and Donald comics about going to space or smth

Aside from the lack of prominent character death and replacement by transformation into beetroots it seems surprisingly accurate so far

(Also Disney has like. Nothing to do with these books aside from owning the copyright to the characters, so it’s cool. Pretty sure they don’t even really know these exist lol.)

At this point I would’ve preferred them keeping the damsel in distress plot point for Annette. Because. Wdym she was a slave and is now a metalbender. Who the hell are you talking about.

Me reading Dracula: Omg just like Nosferatu

I think my first introductions to classic horror were all Mel Brooks. Young Frankenstein and Dracula Dead and Loving it were childhood favs of mine.

I know Dracula is everyone’s least favorite Mel Brooks movie but I hold a lot of fondness for it.

As the latest round of Dracula Daily is about to begin, some reflections on last year’s Tumblr Book Club of it. Fair warning for new readers - this has spoilers for the book.

I’ve loved the novel of Dracula for years, so I was both excited to see how other people on tumblr reacted to it, and nervous that they wouldn’t like it. It was delightful to see people embrace the books amd the characters, and realize how different they were from common tropes and adaptations - and wonderful to see how enthusiastically they dove into context that I’d never thought about before, like the Aerated Bread Company.

One of the things that struck me the most, though, was the reaction to Lucy. I’d largely regarded her simply as a literary contrast to Mina - passive and valued for ‘purity’ and sweetness rather than active and valued for talents and abilities and achievements, the Victorian woman compared with the Edwardian one. And I’d expected tumblr to largely dismiss her as an image of sterotypical Victorian femininity. What I had not expected was for readers to enthusiastically embrace and rally round her and empathize powerfully with her as a sufferer from chronic illness - a characterization that is accurate, but that had never occurred to me in my frustrations with Victorian ideas of female frailty and the era-common trope of the ‘ill girl’. People’s empathy and frustration with Lucy “not wanting to be a burden”, anger as her sufferings went unseen, and satisfaction at Van Helsing’s statement that “not to be all well is an illness” (paraphrased) showed how strongly she’d connected with people who had experienced patronizing attitudes or disregard from the present-day medical community.

In summer of 2021, I’d acquired a chronic illness that left me feeling weak and very easily tired, which was a new and frightening experience to me; I was frightened of what things I wouldn’t be able to do, and frustrated with my inability to meet my previous standards, particularly in terms of my work. By May 2022 I was very much on the mend (I was fortunate to have a diagnosis and prescription process much faster and smoother than many other people with chronic illness), but seeing how people reacted to Lucy still affected me strongly. I’d loved Mina - intelligent, active, contributing Mina - since my first read of Dracula. I didn’t dislike Lucy, but I didn’t care much for her beyond her literary role as a contrast. Seeing tumblr fall in love with her in all her vulnerability helped me see her in a new way, to be more compassionate and empathetic to her - and in consequence, more compassionate towards myself in my own weakness. And I want to thank all the Dracula Daily readers for that.

So many adaptation of Dracula make Mina the reincarnation of Drac's wife, because of COURSE they do, and try to force a romance between mina and Drac.

Dracula Daily has made me realize that Mina has pretty much *hated* Dracula on sight. Took one look at his rancid vibe having ass and said "take even one more look at Jonathan and I will not be held responsible for what happens next..."

Which made me realize, if you HAVE to make Mina and Dracula connected through reincarnation and shit, then make it accurate to the source material: make Mina the reincarnation of Draculas greatest enemy.

Mina was a peasant girl who got tired of Drac's lizard bullshit, rallied the peasantry, besieged Castle Dracula, burnt it to the ground, and then chased dracula into the wilderness with an army of pissed off serfs behind her.

Everytime she reincarnated, Dracula lives in absolute fear that she'll show up and beat him up before shoving him into a locker again.

He takes one look at her in London, shrieks like a banshee, and just hightails it back to his lair. Jonathan is confused but happy, Mina feels pleased and isn't sure why.

More Mina as draculas greatest enemy please and thank you.

I was trying to think of any of the on screen Harker adaptations to nominate and it turns out he gets killed off within the first ten minutes/the first episode of a movie/show including the newest one on a 3/5 ratio so I guess the answer is no.

Nobody gets it...

They keep massacreing our boy 😭

What's really telling is that not a single adaptation until re: Dracula (which walks a curious line between adaptation and audio-book) has ever included the Shovel assault - not even the largely book-accurate Manga. I really believe that the core of Jonathan Harker's character is Get You A Man Who Can Do Both - and nobody ever, ever lets him do Both. Instead they give away large chunks of his characterization and narrative role to other members of the cast - Renfield, Van Helsing, Dracula - do that he can be just one thing, and since he is very much the cold open/pre-credits victim, that's frequently all he is allowed to be.

They kill him off for precisely the qualities that allowed him to survive in the first place.

Book Carmilla vs Adaptations (SPOILERS)

Here are a few 'interesting' adaptations. I like some of them for their own merits, but mostly dislike them as Carmilla adaptations for the below reasons, with some notable exceptions: Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray (1932 film): The first Carmilla inspired movie, although it keeps almost NOTHING from the novella except 'female vampire'. In this case, a creepy old lady rather than a charming young lesbian. This is a really moody, slow, acid trip of a film though, a treat for fans of vintage vampire film. (3/10) Hammer Karnstein Trilogy: The Vampire Lovers is the gayest and most book-accurate. Carmilla still kisses/seduces men before killing them, boo. The second one her identically-named reincarnation is blonde and has sex with / falls in love with a man booooooo. She's not in the third one at all. It's all very 70's and nowhere near queer enough, but at least we got the incomparable Ingrid Pitt in the first movie. 5/10. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust: 'Carmilla' shows up as a surprise third act villain. She's an elegant and imposing vampire queen with a castle called "Cjethe" and the Vampire King offed her previously for being A Bit Too Extra. She's... Bathory. She's Elizabeth Bathory, right down to the name of her historical castle, the elaborate gowns and the blood-bathing. Bathory in Castlevania Nocturne even looks a lot like this one. Cool scary vampire lady, but Carmilla In Name Only. 4/10 Castlevania (Games): She's fine here, but mostly just kind of a big Dracula groupie like most of the other non-Dracula vampires. Often depicting as a flying skull or mask crying bloody tears, with optional succubus-like figure reclining on top of it. Cool. Rondo of Blood has her appear together with a ninja vampire Laura with bunny ears because why the hell not. 6/10 Castlevania (Netflix show): Baddass, angry Karen. She's amazing in the first season when she's scheming against Dracula, but after that she just sort of sits on her butt sipping wine and griping about men for a whole season until Isaac storms her castle. A cool character but not a great Carmilla, because Carmilla for me is defined by how much she loves women, not how much she hates men. Still amazing voice work by Jaime Murray though and her last stand was insanely baddass. 7/10

Carmilla Web Series / Movie: My favorite adaptation. It's obviously playing waaaay fast and loose with the canon and reframing her as a charming antihero in a zany urban fantasy, but there's deep current of love for the source material, especially in the movie. Natasha Negovanlis has charisma off the charts and the Hollstein romance is adorable. This Carmilla might be a black-leather-wearing snarky millenial goth with a Canadian accent, but as the show goes on it peels back layer after layer of the romantic, poetic, wistful, world-weary immortal hinted at by the novella. This show redeems LeFanu's lovelorn villain in all the best ways. 10/10. 2019 movie / Styria movie: I still haven't seen these, have heard good things about the gothic cinematography on the most recent one but not good things about the rest of it. The trailer looked moody and pretty though, I may watch it at some point.

Now that Dracula daily is over and thousands of people have finally read the book, I’m begging that ONE of you has the courage to make an actually book accurate movie adaption. It’s what we deserve

Dracula's roommates, in gifs

All gifs by talented tumblr gif-makers, commentary by me. I haven't seen most of the films so all commentary is on vibes alone.

Dracula (1931)

Full marks for spookiness, and here we have a book-accurate two brunettes and a blonde. I'm impressed by the amount of fabric that these ladies are collectively wearing, especially given that the front hem of their dresses is longer than floor-length. I wonder how many takes they had where they just tripped up and faceplanted the spooky stone floor?

Brides of Dracula (1960)

There are only two brides in this, as part of the plot is the acquisition of a third bride. The main vibe these two give me are of a sleepover just as the edibles are kicking in. They seem very friendly. Might get the munchies later though.

Dracula (1968)

It's hard to tell from the gif, but this is what Wikipedia claims to be the only version where one of the brides of Dracula is black (on the left, played by Nina Baden-Semper). I'm surprised more adaptations don't do this, given the physical description we get only requires that two are dark and one fair. Sadly they don't get any dialogue in this, just some expressive hand-movements.

Count Dracula (1977)

Dear lord, could this be more 70s?? The hair, the dresses, the makeup, even what I assume is a cod-medieval tapestry could only be from one decade. I don't much like the kind of brattish submissiveness happening in this gif (ymmv, of course). But apparently one of them is French, which is fun.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Interesting how much more active the brides become as the years go on. I mean, the lip-licking is right there in the text, but this feels very full on compared with the coquettish earlier brides. They do look fabulous though - so fabulous that all other brides follow the same model from this point onwards.

Dracula 2000 (2000, unsurprisingly)

A modern-day Dracula provides us with some modern-day brides, though in essence they're much the same as the 1992 ones. I have never seen anyone on Tumblr ever mention this film, which makes me suspect that it's atrocious.

Van Helsing (2004)

Dracula starts off with three brides in Van Helsing but if I remember correctly, they don't appear on screen at the same time (if they do, I couldn't find a gif of it). I kind of wish they'd gone for the period-ish costumes of the ballroom scene for the brides, but instead we get 1992 again, in both costume and general red-lipped vampishness.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Or Why The Probably Most Accurate Movie Adaptation Of Dracula Still Is Not Accurate Enough

I mentioned some time ago - while salivating over the marvellous razor scene of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula adaptation - that there is quite some stuff to unpack here. And now I found some time to unpack. So let's begin. I'll start with the good stuff, firstly the good stuff that's not in the book (i.e., the Flourishes), than the good stuff that's true to the book (the Well-Conserved). Thirdly, I'll make note of things that were, unnervingly, changed (by which I mean They Came Back Wrong), and then I'll deal with what is unfortunately left out from the book (the Missing). And finally, finally I'll rant over that one bad thing that never was in the book in the first place (a section I'll call JUST WHY?).

So. A tragedy in five acts. Here we go.

Act I - The Flourishes

The razor scene. I think I dealt with this enough by now. It's perfection and I'll die on that hill.

The music. Obviously, Bram Stoker's gothic lil masterpiece is lacking some gorgeous score. But mourn no longer, because Wojciech Kilar cooked up some dashing, pushing tune for us, fitting perfectly to this dark tale of spreading darkness and deepening madness.

Some basic knowledge about blood groups. Yeah, Stoker can't be blamed for this, but still. It's a nice addition to remind us that we do indeed live in a world where blood groups exist.

The Westenra Estate. As much as I pity that the lovely town of Whitby did not make it into the movie, I do love Lucy Westenra's house. Because I'm a sucker for hedge mazes. Simple as that.

Those glasses. Those. Fucking. Nice. Glasses.

Act II - The Well-Conserved

The plot in general. Yes, there are a lot of maddening differences, as we will see soon. But still, this movie at least makes the impression that most of the people working on it had indeed read the darn novel. Which is something that I can't say about many other Dracula adaptations I have seen.

The costumes, the sets, the atmosphere. Well done, everyone!

The Actors. The good thing about being not native in a language is that one is not very prone to dialects that seem off. And as I happen to not be a native speaker of English, I have little problems with Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder adding some US touch to what should be very, very, v e r y British characters. I even find Reeves perfectly fitting for the oh so darn young Jonathan Harker. And the rest of the cast is marvellous, too (with the exception of Winona Ryder, see below for details). Especially Tom Waits, who is hard-wired to the name of Renfield in my brain ever since I first saw this movie. And Gary Oldman as Dracula… Well. I think I already made clear what opinion I have about that sexy bastard.

Some lucky few of lovely quotes made it over to the film. Dracula's welcome. The Fowl Bauble of Human Vanity, of course. And Qunincey almost making me faint when saying "Little girl" when I least expected it.

Act III - They Came Back Wrong

The dates. Goshdarnit, the dates! It's an epistolary novel, so why make the effort of making up completely new dates for events that already had a precise date in the novel? I just don't get it. And it unnerves me. Every. Fucking. Time.

Time in general. Watching the movie after Dracula Daily makes it feel so very, very hasty. Jonathan travels to Castle Dracula like it's no thing at all. And the first few days in Castle Dracula are condensed into one weird evening.

Dracula meeting Mina before Jonathan is back. I really, really loved the book for avoiding the most terrible tropes. And then comes this movie, and struts right into this terrible pitfall.

Mina. I'm sorry, usually I love the work of Winona Ryder, but here she was way too bland. Maybe it was because her character had quite a revamp (ha. ha.) and no one cared to tell her what new approach she should take. But whatever reason, the clever, adorable train fiend of the original did not deserve this!

Act IV - The Missing

The Voyage of the Demeter is way too short. Where is "But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship"? Where is the poor sea captain tying himself to the wheel? And where is his funeral? Oh, I really missed all that. And, I mean, I don't mind hearing Anthony Hopkins read the lines, but would it have been such an expense to at least hire an additional actor to voice the correspondent or the sea captain?

Jonathan Holding Mina By the Arm. That's really not an objectively big issue. That's just me who fell in love with JonMina after reading this chapter. And almost no one does it properly. They deserve justice!

(Thanks a ton to @smieska for capturing my mood just perfectly!)

Act V - JUST WHY?

Elisabeta. Don't get me wrong here: All of the oh so tragic Drac backstory they invented for this movie is terribly unnecessary. But in this sea of uselessness, the tragically deceased wife of Vlad Țepeș that just so happens to perfectly resemble Mina Murray is an audience-insulting island of unoriginality. I mean, yeah, I guess someone wanted to add some romance to the story of Vlad the Fucking Impaler. Because, well, nineties or so. But Mina, of all women? Why not invent some new character that can be bothered with such stuff? Why ruin an all-nice JonMina ship? I don't get the whole new backstory, and I especially don't get this aspect.

Dracula raping Lucy in his shitty werewolf form. Everything about this is wrong. And it has no relevance for the plot. Just. Blergh.

Epilogue

It's cruel to watch Francis Ford Coppola's take on Dracula right after finishing @re-dracula. I know that now. Everything is still too fresh. It's a good movie, after all, but especially because it's quite good it is frustrating to be so terribly aware of all its shortcomings. In a few weeks or so, I would recommend it, again, I guess. As long as it's still Dracula Off-Season. 7 out of 10 points.

There is genuinely so much funny shit about the original Dracula book that few to no modern adaptations have taken advantage of and I think that’s a crime. He’s a weird old man with a mustache. The first time we meet him he’s wearing a fake beard and pretending to be a taxi driver. He lives with his three ex-girlfriends who refuse to help with chores and try to eat the food that’s clearly labeled his. He leaves his house via the window instead of the door. There’s a scene where he wears one of those giant floppy beach sun hats. There’s so much untapped potential for a book-accurate Dracula comedy

You know, I'm one of the biggest people to emphasize how I hate when Dracula adaptations make Mina into Dracula's reincarnated wife or justify everything he does by saying it's all for her, but I'm increasingly uncomfortable with overcorrecting and saying he doesn't care about her at all in comparison to Jonathan or Lucy. The way he talks to her is horrifying in part because of how personal it is, attacking her for using her wits against him, perhaps even remembering how she chased him away from Lucy. I don't know if I'm wording this well, but I think there is some accurate middle ground between "it's all about her" and "it's not about her at all."